I haven’t said this in a long time but…

You go girl!

It’s very true. I think Americans always tend to make foreign issues about our own culture war. Are there any org’s trying to help the women over there? I’d consider promoting that effort.

So unfair

Fangy Kate demonstrates why it’s so much easier to be a female blogger than a male blogger.

Aaron’s got my panties in a wad (well, he would have if I’d been wearing any)

I mean, come on. That’s just fighting dirty. A sexy female blogger throw…

Blogathon Awards

Well, I’d better address the subject of Blogathon Awards before any of you get any bright ideas. If nominated, I will not run. If I win, I will not accept. If something arrives in the mail, it will be taken…

I’m honestly of two minds (and don’t ask which one’s the right one, because I’m not out of it…) about feminism in general.

On one hand, I wholeheartedly support the point of view that there is (or should be) little or no difference as far as equality goes. There are some things that women just naturally do better than us guys, and vice versa - I don’t think acknowledging that takes anything away from either side. The entire idea of discrimination based on gender generally makes me pretty angry…

On the other hand (mind?), there’s something to be said for things being taken too far. Not referring to you, Kate, or to anybody in particular, but I have observed a certain portion of the female population calling themselves “feminists” that are much more of the mindset that “women are BETTER than men, at everything.” They also give the entire womens’ rights movement a bad name, because it allows others to point and say, “Look at this, isn’t this silly?”

The biggest mystery to me is that I’ve often heard feminists refer to their stance as gender equality…if that’s the case, why name it after females? Some men feel the same way they do, but shy at pinning a label on themselves for that very reason.

Anyway, that’s my $.02.

Excellent points, WG. The “grrrrlist” stance that a lot of younger women are taking these days (e.g., the t-shirts that read “Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them.”) is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand: when I was a girl, they didn’t make those shirts and even if they had, few stores would’ve stocked them (and few schools would’ve permitted them to be worn). So we’ve come a LONG way in promoting the collective female self-esteem, and that’s thanks to the first-wave Feminists that came long before us

On the other hand, you’re right that all too often the stance on gender equality is twisted into an entirely pro-female, anti-male approach. Curiously, the few people I’ve met who think that’s a perfectly acceptable approach claim that it’s justified after so many, many years of the female gender being repressed. Interestingly, when I ask if they are also in support of African-Americans hating Caucasians on the same grounds, they get pissy.

Go figure.

Since this is a topic I tend to follow, I can only presume that in Aaron’s terminology, I’m not a feminist.

Not an unreasonable presumption, given that all of the feminists he referred to by name are either Hillary Clinton, or groups and individuals well to her left. Obviously, they don’t speak for all feminists, but they do speak for a large number of them, and probably an absolute majority among self-identified feminists - bearing in mind, of course, that many women who hold arguably feminist views eschew the F-word, while those on the hard left invariably embrace it. If dovish “give peace a chance” boobs didn’t predominate among self-identified feminists, surely NOW would have been one of the biggest supporters of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, and their only cause for protest would have been over the fact that we didn’t invade the rest of the Middle East.

If 1) it’s all in fun, and 2) nobody’s taking it seriously enough to be offended by it, then I wouldn’t care about my girls wearing a shirt that said something like that. As a matter of fact, I take the 11 year old shopping at Hot Topic all the time (although the 5 year old’s the one that’s into punk…go figure). The problem with that is that to some people, there is nothing that can be taken lightly - wearing a shirt saying something like “A woman’s place is in the home” equates to genital manipulation and forced prostitution.

When’s the last time you saw a sitcom on American TV involving any kind of family where the “Dad” wasn’t 1) totally, stereotypically engrossed in sports to the exclusion and frequent frustration of his wife, kids, and/or friend-with-benefits, 2) kind of dim-witted in the sense that the no-nonsense-loving-wife-soccer-mom-sharp-cookie type had to explain something fairly basic to him in terms that would make you cringe if it weren’t SUPPOSED to be a comedy, or 3)a complete, total, and utter blockhead when it comes to understanding anything a woman means by what she says? For the life of me, I can’t come up with anything more recent than the Cosby Show. I have observed (being in the human services industry, professionally) that most marriages I would term healthy or functional tend to have partners that are pretty adept at figuring out what the other one’s thinking. Characterizing men by and large as emotionally retarded is, in my opinion, both discriminatory and a subtle form of emasculation.

Anyone who was serious about gender equality would take issue with this…but honestly, how often does it come up?

Okay, that’s more than $.02, I’ll admit. My ex-wife was more of the no-sense-of-humor variety femenist; I put her on the spot with this very point on more than one occasion, and usually felt like crap afterwards, because she’d end up in tears. Guess it’s just a near-and-dear-to-my-heart topic.

Ok - I meant “genital mutilation” and wrote “manipulation”. My bad!

…would that be a Freudian slip?

…and how do we know Freud wore slips, anyway? Maybe he didn’t celebrate National Underwear Day.

See, I’ve always secretly suspected that Freud liked wearing slips and other girly things.

As to your point on the characterization of men these days, Kim du Toit did an excellent job of addressing this nearly two years ago in an article on The Pussification of the Western Male. At the time, I laid into him full-force (which you’ll probably find in his trackbacks) until both the Du Toits clairifed for me. Imagine my surprise to find out that we actually shared the same opinion, we just had different ways of expressing it.

Men are, indeed, being portrayed as bumbling, fumbling idiots inept at marriage, parenthood and friendship unless it involves sports or a remote control. And such a portrayal is not only inaccurate, but serves to perpetuate a denigrating sterotype of men, making it socially acceptable to think of men as incompetent, bumbling and inept. Were women portrayed in the same light today, we would be outraged. There would be boycotts, protests, all sorts of hell to pay.

And yet, for some reason, we’ve come to not only accept this portrayal of men but also to think of ourselves as “sophisticated” for believing in it, and god help those poor backwards traditional types who believe that a family is best led by a strong male figure and a marriage is best served by a woman who supports — not castrates — her man. Women think, “See how liberated I am? I can make fun of a man!” Men think, “See how sensitive and caring I am? I can make fun of myself!”

But I repeat: none of that has to do with feminism. Our culture has allowed itself to confuse equality in legal rights and paychecks with a whole slew of other issues that have less to do with gender equality than personal taste.

Damn. All I meant to do was to sit down and type one little reply. Guess I had a rant still left in me.

Literary elephantitasis. I love it.

I think it’s that very dichotomy betweeen men and women that bothers me the most….it’s like the only socially acceptable prejudice left is against Caucasian men.

At nearly every Presidential election since 1984, at some point it’s hit me that the most powerful democracy in the history of the world has never had as its chief executive anything other than a white, usually somewhat upper-class, man. I guess that’s why I welcome the distant rumblings I hear these days about a Condi Rice vs. Hillary Clinton showdown. Either one would be good, if for no other reason than to break the paradigm….although I suspect that might not fly with the Deliverance set. LOL

Working on a worthy response…

Sorry it’s been a while. Son was hospitalized. He’s OK, but at 2 1/2, we don’t take anything lightly.

There’s a piece in Opinion Journal Tuesday by AYAAN HIRSI ALI, entitled “Unfree Under Islam: Shariah endangers women’s rights, from Iraq to Canada.”

Key point is in 4th paragraph:

It seems strange to associate the context of Canada with that of Iraq, but a closer look at the arguments used to reassure the demonstrating women in both countries reveals the similar ordeals that Muslim women in both countries must go through to secure their rights. It shows how their legitimate and serious worries are trivialized, and how vulnerable and alone they are. It shows how the Free World led by the U.S. went to war in Iraq, allegedly to bring liberty to Iraqis, and is compromising the basic rights of women in order to meet a random date. It shows how the theory of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies is working against women in ethnic and religious minorities with misogynist practices. It shows the tenacity of many imams, mullahs and self-made Muslim radicals to subjugate women in the name of God. Most of all, it shows how many of those who consider themselves liberal or left-wing see their energy levels rise when it comes to Bush-bashing, but lose their voice when women’s rights are threatened by religious obscurantism.
…
In Canada, battered Muslim women say that their husbands told them that it is a God-given right to hit them. If the current Iraqi constitution goes through, Iraqi wife-abusers will be able to add “It is my constitutional right to beat you.”

I think it’s quite reasonable that those which comprise an abused group be the ones most active on their own behalf. They will be the most informed and naturally the most sensitive to the matters.

Yes, there’s a difference between feminists and Feminists. There is little left good to be said about professional Feminists, just as there is little good to be said about most liberal activists whose organizations employing them were formed B.R. (Before Reagan)

My daughters are now ages 17, 15, 13 and 11. It pains me to see them grow up in a world where I haven’t seen a single campus protest or divestment campaign concerning cultural misogyny.

Forgive me for interpreting the allocation of “outrage time”, an unreplenishable resource, as a quantifiable measurement of one’s values. It should be reasonable to compare, using a utilitarian calculus, the sum of American female hours spent protesting “boys club” exclusions versus murder, honor killing and female genital mutilation.

Yeah, I’ll eventually get around to complaining about the “Boys are stupid” shirts, but frankly, there are life and death issues that are more troubling and I’m trying to light a fire under the butts of the handful of talented folk who might be able to accomplish something.