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Bits and Pieces

Jill

Filament: The thinking women’s porn mag (images are NSFW).

The GOP is campaigning against Rep. Betty Sutton with fliers reading, “Let’s take Betty Sutton out of the House and send her back to the kitchen.”

Over at the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart argues that Obama should put a mom on the Supreme Court. I agree with him that role models matter. I think it’s notable, though, that so many women in positions of power don’t have kids — and while putting a mother on the Supreme Court would be nice, it would also behoove us to look at the various institutional factors that allow fathers to succeed, but put roadblocks in the way of mothers.

The more educated you are, the more likely you are to support abortion rights. Education is an even larger factor than gender in determining whether or not you think abortion should be legal. College-educated women are the most likely to think that abortion should be legal. The majority of people, male or female, take the position that abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances.”

Trigger warning on this post by our own Cara, but a disturbing, heart-breaking must-read about sexual assault the media response, if you feel up to it: This is not an analysis of rape culture. This is a rant.

The religious right’s new racial playbook: After promoting segregation and racism, conservative religious leaders focus on African-Americans and Latin@s in their war against abortion, contraception and women’s rights.

The Art of the Confession, with this pertinent quote from Emily Gould: “If a woman writes about herself, she’s a narcissist. If a man does the same, he’s describing the human condition. But people seem to evaluate your work based on how much they relate to it, so it’s like, well, who’s the narcissist?”

One woman’s year in prison, written by a Smith College graduate who was imprisoned for money laundering. In the piece, she discusses (briefly) the racism of the prison system, which is a well-taken point. It would be nice if the media coverage of the prison system actually took that point to heart, and elevated the voices of women who live that kind of racism every day.

The New York Times’ Muslim problem.

19 thoughts on Bits and Pieces

  1. “Latinats”?

    (I know what you mean, I’m just being a smartass.)

    But really, isn’t this the same Republican playbook that’s been around since Goldwater? I mean when, in recent memory have they NOT been race-baiting? And I say this as a completely non-partisan hater of both parties (I just don’t loathe and despise Democrats as much as the Republicans).

    I found I could really pump my fist to Greenwald’s piece, if you don’t follow his work and Twitter feed, you should. Some might argue his entire argument is Tu Quoque, which it is, but that’s only because it exists to counter the argument, Ea sol (or whatever the Latin happens to be for “Them only”.) Meanwhile, what drives me batty about it is that the threat was oblique and came from what is a tiny group of nutters in NYC who stand outside a mosque there every Friday and yell bullshit nonsense only to be ignored by the worshipers. Why should the entire class of people who identify as Muslim be considered responsible for something they literally have no control over- rather than Comedy Central take the brunt of criticism for something they have absolute control over?

  3. “I want to say a word to the young ladies: Stop making it so easy for the young men,” Culbreath said. His words were met with applause. “God has designed us to be the pursuers,” he continued, “and you to be the pursuees.”
    -The religious right’s new racial playbook

    Yeowza

  4. Maybe I’m different than most, but I don’t think that a woman who writes about herself is a narcissist. Introspection and confessional stuff to me is always fascinating because I can see bits of myself in it. I’ve always been interested in psychology, so I love reading that sort of stuff.

    And if, for example, you’re romantically interested in someone, you have a natural desire and a craving to know as much about them as you can, so those who are unusually self-aware and brave enough to talk about themselves are ever more appealing.

  5. Filament is hot. We should send copies to all the conservatives who think god designed us to be “pursued.” Bleh.

  6. Yes, putting a mom on SCOTUS is an idea worth talking about… but a lot of this seems to be missing the fact that there IS a mom on SCOTUS. And she’s awesome. Let’s hear it for Ruth Bader Ginsburg!

  7. This makes me proud of the fact that I discovered Filament all on my own, kind of (yay StumbleUpon!) and introduced my friends to it. I’m pleased to see it getting positive publicity. Also, it has naked/seminaked men with LONG HAIR. I get to see that pretty much every day in my own house, but I like that it’s not all about greasy orange dudes with gelled hair. I mean, um, the photography is excellent. Or something.

    Just thought I would leave a positive comment before I read all the other links and burst into flames from pure rage.

  8. “I want to say a word to the young ladies: Stop making it so easy for the young men,” Culbreath said. His words were met with applause. “God has designed us to be the pursuers,” he continued, “and you to be the pursuees.”

    But what about guys who like to be pursued and womyn who like to pursue?

  9. I’ve casually looked through a couple copies of Filament, but I’ve not (yet!) bought a copy for myself. As someone who really does like looking at attractive men, I think well of the project – it’s a refreshing break from the endless ‘naked chicks naked chicks naked chicks!’ formula that most sexual media (yep, even lots of the purportedly sex positive stuff) fall back on.

  10. Co-opting female gamers to sell a porn magazine? Really? I find this insulting, I don’t see why there can’t be articles like this in reputable gaming magazines. It’s like they’re saying girls who game are deviant, and fetishizing it. Yes, that’s what is bothering me about this.

  11. Oh this Filament magazine looks really cool, it’s wikipedia page has a link for the female gaze society or something like that. I will tell all my friends about it.

  12. I think the Filament magazine is really great! It’s high time women have a magazine that serves the female gaze of society. Heck, there are a lot of heterosexual guys who also like to look at naked men.

    But there were some comments on Jezebel about how a flaccid penis is the most disgusting thing in the world.

    So until magazines like Filament can show a fully erect penis, and I think in the US, like in Australia, if you show a fully erect penis, you have to seal it and have an X-rating on it, they might not be able to capture more of their intended demographic. But I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon, though, as I can’t see a magazine like Filament wanting to be bagged as an X-rated magazine.

  13. Like Amanda said, there already is a mom on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And Sandra Day O’Connor? Also a mother.

    Nobody seemed to get up in arms about David Souter not having kids or freak out about the fatherhood of the next male justice. So why the push for “a mom” just because Sondra Sotomayor, the third woman to ever sit on the Court, doesn’t have kids?

  14. Abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances.”

    AKA Abortion should be illlegal! Unless it’s MY circumstances – because I am special and I have reasons and I am not one of those slutty mcslutsluts that uses abortion as birth control”

  16. That article on “One Woman’s Year in Prison” BLOWS MY MIND, not necessarily because there’s anything wrong with it, but because it is the best example of the difference in how different people are treated I’ve seen in a while.

    It is obvious straight away, from the TITLE, that it’s about a non-poor white woman, because her being in prison is not some criminal or similar matter–it’s a crazy thing that happened to someone! It’s a life EXPERIENCE! Imagine if such a thing happened to you! Then there’s the picture–like a picture from a college admissions catalog with some handcuffs added. Then the first line just goes out of its way to reinforce all these impressions:

    “The post-college years can be a tough time for young adults trying to find their place in the world. For 24-year-old Piper Kerman, who in 1993 was one year out of Smith College, it meant seeking risky situations.”

    She went to jail–man, kids do some interesting stuff in their gap years! I read an article like this last week about a young adult who tried to find herself by going to India!

    Can you imagine for a flat second ANY article about a young poor (or even wealthy) girl of color being framed this way? The introduction’s entire point is to immediately raise your sympathy and identifying curiousity, which is good, because then you can deal with the actual issues about prison life that Kerman wants to address. But if an article about a young girl of color sent to jail for smuggling drug money started this way, with a different picture, the tone of it would seem so forgiving as to be almost parody. And the comments would all be about how sure, it’s nice she wrote a memoir and all, but she was involved in the drug trade and its appalling that she thinks she can get out and make money off her punishment and, what, is this supposed to be our role models now, it’s disgusting that we’re endorsing her behavior, she needs to learn to live like a responsible normal person.

    The thing is, I definitely don’t think this is a bad article, or that it’s wrong of Time to frame the article like this. Just the obvious contrast with EVERY OTHER ARTICLE I’ve ever seen about any person of color, and the laughable impossiblity of seeing this article written the other way around, really slapped me in the face. It’s a quite stunning difference.

    It makes me think of a few other interesting differences in reporting, too:
    – “One Woman’s Year in Prison” makes it a confessional, a personal experience, along the lines of a mini “Eat, Love, Pray,” or something, and encourages the focus on the ‘finding yourself after college’ storyline. If it was a man’s year in prison, the experience would be societal commentary and hard-hitting insight into the truth about the social justice system.
    -I often see these things, which take such an unusual! situation, like being in jail or working for minimum wage, and purport to give you insight on what it’s like, and wonder: millions of people live this. Why does it take this young white college grad to tell you about it? So I realized, if this were written about a poor person of color in jail, the voice in the article would be that of the journalist, and the person in jail would be being explored as the subject, through which we also learn something about the criminal justice system; instead, in this case, the person who was in jail is the voice, and explores the subject of jail herself.

  17. Jackie, #10:

    I’ve read the magazine that article is in, and it didn’t come across as co-opting female gamers or fetishising them to me- and I’m saying that as a female gamer who has no interest in being the token girl in the cosplay chainmail bikini. Obviously people interpret stuff in different ways, but Filament’s staff make a point of saying that the magazine is there to talk about pretty much everything women’s magazines don’t talk about. That includes female sexuality and pictures of naked dudes, but it also includes hobbies, politics and history.

  18. Heck, there are a lot of heterosexual guys who also like to look at naked men.

    Uhhhh. ummm.. I’d say they’re not as heterosexual as you think.

  19. @timothynakayama Both Filament and Playgirl show erect penises. Filament fought a high-profile battle to be able to do so when their printers refused. Apparently it hadn’t been done before in Britain. But I would disagree that flaccid penises are ugly anyway. All penises are fine with me!

    @Jackie The article you refer to is the exact opposite to what you think. It has nothing to do with porn or sexualizing women at all. It says there are no need for dumbed-down versions of games without violence (the industry apparently thinks that’s what would get more women into games), but there is a need for game with more realistic female characters.

    I think the confusion comes from how porn mags have pointless articles as an excuse to read it, but with Filament the articles are all good reads that make you think. I recommend it.

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