28 12 / 2012
“I think at this point in our world, we’ve got a really confused idea of the way gender and sexuality works. I think we’ve created this really superfluous sort of like binary in the way we think about gender. And I guess I identify as queer because I don’t identify with that. I think that makes us less whole as people. I don’t need to be assigned to what it is I can do or who I can love. And it seems like we keep drawing these battle lines which are completely unnecessary. So that’s what I basically mean. When I say I’m queer, I’m saying that I think human beings are amazing. And love is an honor and an opportunity. And a fragile thing. A fragile process in which there’s no room for doubt, or shame, or hatred.” — Ezra Miller
(Source: ttimeturner)
16 12 / 2012
"For many men it is unthinkable that women could possess a technical competence equal to their own. Women would have to be paragons of competence to be accepted by male colleagues (Cockburn, 1985, 188)"
Finn, Geraldine. Voices of Women, Voices of Feminism: Limited Edition. Fernwood Publishing; Halifax. 1993. (pg. 113)
Relevant: a recent study that found women face persistent gender bias in the sciences:
Science professors at American universities widely regard female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same accomplishments and skills, a new study by researchers at Yale concluded.
I’d wager that you’d find similar results if you conducted the same experiment in other fields.
(via downlo)(Source: gynocraticgrrl, via downlo)
18 11 / 2012
"Boys continue to be boys because no one expects them to be men…No one expects them to behave better. Men are perfectly capable of controlling their biological impulses just like everyone else. On a practical level, guys who are not participating in these behaviors—and that’s most guys—should say to others: ‘You’re making women afraid of men. Stop it.’"
(via downlo)
22 10 / 2012
Map of gender income inequality by state and county
Women in Utah have it the worst. There, the average working woman makes 55 cents for every dollar the average working man makes. The state is followed closely by Wyoming, at 56 cents; Louisiana, at 59 cents; North Dakota, at 62 cents; and Michigan, at 62 cents. The best states for income equality are Hawaii, Florida, Nevada, Maryland, and North Carolina. In each, women make about three-fourths of what men make.
County-level data illustrate the best cities for pay equality: Washington, D.C. and Dallas lead, followed by San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Santa Fe, New York, and Boston. In each, women make at least 80 cents per dollar that men make. In most other major cities, they make about 70 cents.
(Source: downlo)
18 10 / 2012
Biden on 'binders' - POLITICO.com
“Maybe where Romney is most sketchy is on women’s rights. I got a daughter and lost a daughter. I’ve got four granddaughters and Barack has two daughters. And this is to our core. Our daughters and our granddaughters are entitled to every single solitary operation, every single solitary opportunity!” Biden exclaimed, according to a pool report. “And you heard the debate last night. When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders. Whoa! The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house. He didn’t need a binder.”
(Source: sarahlee310, via downlo)
25 7 / 2012
Discourse, male privilege, and women’s lived experiences
Men build discursive spaces and discursive norms based on their own experience. And for instance, in a male-built discursive space, a threat of sexual violence may be viewed by male participants as an obvious joke. After all, the vast majority of men will never experience sexual violence in their lifetime. (Fewer than 4% of men will be sexually assaulted.) And so within the context of a male discussion on a World of Warcraft forum, for instance, it may seem entirely innocuous to use ideas of sexual violence to express one’s views on the game, or to use “rape” as a verb to describe one’s gameplay skills.
Women as a group have a vastly different experience with the idea of sexual violence. One in six women will be a victim of sexual assault during her lifetime. (Yes, some men are also sexual assault victims. But the numbers are overwhelmingly female — about 90% of sexual assault victims are women.) Rape is not an abstract idea or an obvious joke. For thousands of women, it is an immediate and extremely painful reality.
[…]
The same goes for statements about violence in general. In a male-dominated discursive space, it may be viewed as normal to make aggressive, threatening statements. However, men’s and women’s experiences with violence are also vastly different. One in four women in the United States has been a victim of domestic violence. Suddenly, the joke about wanting to punch somebody else isn’t so funny.
(Source: feministlawprofessors.com, via downlo)
04 2 / 2012
Abortion Tactics and Conflicted Moral Ambivalence
If the Republicans had wanted to prevent abortions, they would have…
- Funded a thorough and mandatory sex education initiative from the earliest grades in all schools and combined it with the distribution of free contraceptives in all high schools, public and private (religious schools included)
- Legislated generous family leave for both mothers and fathers
- Provided federally funded day care as a national priority
- Expanded adoption services, including encouraging gay parents to adopt children, and they would have encouraged gay couples to marry and adopt
- Provided a generous tax incentive to have children and direct financial assistance and educational opportunities for all families, including single parents
- Raised taxes to pay for these programs
- Never have equated stem cell research with abortion, much less with murder, thereby making the anti-abortion position patently ridiculous
- Above all, they would have addressed the injustice of the growing gap between the superrich and everyone else and fought to raise the living standards of poor people. (Forty percent of all women seeking abortion live on $10,000 a year or less.)
24 8 / 2011
"
I remember thinking [the Nevermind album] was the beginning of the end. Like, there goes the neighborhood! Everything that was so fun, home-grown, community supportive, and stimulating was about to go McGrunge. I loved Nirvana, but I could see it was something no longer special to our community. They were great, but their audiences got worse and worse as they expanded. There was no longer a place for us politically minded girls. Well, there probably never was, but we inserted ourselves in there anyway, and I think those bands valued us.
I remember Nirvana’s first big show at the Paramount in Seattle, just before Nevermind’s release. Bikini Kill and Mudhoney opened, and a bunch of us riot grrls went up to the show. A lot of people backstage treated us girls badly. We weren’t taken seriously. In that arena, Bikini Kill wasn’t taken seriously either. […]
My [twin] sister told me she was at a Nirvana show once after they got really huge and was just getting pummeled. It was not a safe place for women. And they played “Rape Me,” all these sweaty shirtless guys screaming rape me and being pushed around – and she was just like I’m done. And she went backstage and told Kurt and he was really upset – [he kept saying] “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do. And I always remember that story. After a while, it gets out of everyone’s control, even the creators.
"
Allison Wolfe of Bratmobile, “Race, Riot Grrl, the Black Rock Movement, and Nirvana: The Teen Espirit Revisited Overflow”
As you might guess from the title of the post, it’s a big mixed bag of stuff, but really fascinating, good stuff….and leftovers from this Spin magazine article by Latoya Peterson
(via downlo)
12 7 / 2010
I was raised by a single mother. I think the definition of a man’s man has shifted in recent times to this sort of fratty bro, different from the older version, which was aloof and distant—Gary Cooper or Cary Grant or James Bond. Now it’s a little vulgar, kind of lowbrow, adolescent. I’m not that guy. Part of being an adult is treating women like women. Jon Hamm, W Magazine
(via crabcakes)
10 2 / 2010
I need this to be explained to me.
Me too, especially in light of the rampant posts of late regarding the blatant and pervasive sexism in Superbowl advertising.
Patriarchy isn’t just bad for the ladies. It’s also bad for the dudes. Patriarchy sets up unrealistic and unnecessary expectations for both genders. Women are expected to be quiet, pretty, pleasant, not too bright, and domestic…and inferior to men. (Sugar and spice and everything nice.) Men are expected to be strong, unemotional, fearless, intelligent providers…and superior to women. When people violate those expectations, one can expect retribution.
We’ve been over the way a patriarchy society retaliates against women who violate gender expectations repeatedly. What we don’t talk about much is what happens to men. Boys get teased when they cry (a perfectly natural thing to do for either gender), picked on at school because they are small for their age or aren’t good at sports, receive disparaging comments from male authority figures, colleagues, family members, and friends for failure to be sufficiently macho. Many of the insults directed at men directly bring into question one’s masculinity/ability to replicate properly expected male behavior: “You throw like a girl,” “You’re such a pansy,” “What a pussy,” “Don’t be such a faggot,” etc, etc. And while these can seem pretty innocuous (like telling sexist jokes around the water cooler when the women aren’t around to hear it), they can have very negative effects on men.
For instance, suicide rates for men are much higher than they are for women, even though depression occurs far more frequently in women than in men. This phenomenon is most commonly attributed to the fact that men feel it is admitting weakness to seek help for depression and other mental illness. They are less likely to talk to someone about their problems or reach out for professional help because “men don’t do that,” or “only girls do that.” Psychotherapy or relying on friends and family for support is decidedly not manly.
The constant struggle to achieve “machismo,” or the masculine ideal for men, is kind of like the constant struggle for women to achieve “femininity”—no one can ever fully live up to the expectations set forward by society, and the truth is, there’s really no reason why they should. People are punished for failing to reach arbitrary ideals.
When we talk about “patriarchy” or “sexism” as a social ill—literally, it is a mental sickness that perverts the way we look at ourselves, each other, the entire world around us—we aren’t just harping on it because it perpetuates a lot of bad things for women (discrimination, rape, abuse, etc.) It perpetuates a lot of bad things for men, too.
