Jul 06

aurora linnea’s review of Laura Lecuona’s “Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers

Excellent and clarifying summary and review of Lecona’s book (and gender and sex and why it’s such an issue …).

We Just Can’t Shut Up About Gender: A Review of Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers, by Laura Lecuona

“…sex is a biological fact while gender is patriarchal fiction; the gender system is a hierarchy, not a binary; persons taking on a “gender identity” affiliate themselves with sexist stereotypes, not any innate bodily reality; it is wrong to perform medical experiments on children in the service of “congruence” with regressive cultural ideals; males are not female and remain members of the dominant sex class regardless of how they “identify,” continuing to pose the very same very real threats to women and girls as do their more straightforward (or less deluded) brothers.”

“Put bluntly, “gender” makes feminism impossible.” [but read that whole paragraph, para 5, to see how that’s the summary sentence]

“To bring on the return to a clear-eyed view of the status quo, Lecuona advises that we as feminists quit talking about “gender.” Instead, we’d do well to reacquaint ourselves with the reality-based terminology of our foresisters: sex and sexism, sex roles and sex class, sexist stereotypes, sexual equality, male supremacy and female subordination.” Yes. YES!!

Jul 06

Men and Women in the 21st century

None of these quotes (all from The Unmade Bed by Stephen Marche) are representative of what the book’s about, but they do reveal, perhaps unintentionally, Marche’s subtitle, “The messy truth about men and women in the 21st century”.

“Eventually, David Granger, the editor-in-chief of Esquire, read something I’d written for the Toronto Star and called to ask me if I wanted a column in his magazine.”  p42

It’s stuff like that that sends me into a rage.  Thinking back to the twenty or thirty queries I sent out, each with five to ten pieces …  And I didn’t even get a reply.  Except for one, in which I was told that one had to work as a reporter for ten years or so before one is offered a column.  (Apparently not.)  Marche doesn’t recognize that if the Star piece had been written by Stephanie Marche, Granger would most likely not have contacted him.  It’s quite possible Granger wouldn’t even have read the piece.  Quite possibly because it would never have appeared in the Star in the first place.  The ‘Jane/John’ studies go back decades (what ‘John’ writes it taken more seriously and given higher value than what ‘Jane’ writes, even though they’re identical) and was just recently validated by the Martin and Nicole thing (https://www.elle.com.au/culture/news/male-and-female-email-signature-sexism-experiment-8328/).

“Every fourteen-year-old boy with an Internet connection has seen a woman anally penetrated with a baseball bat.”  p110

Seriously?  Well, no wonder then.  There’s no way women are ever going to be taken seriously, for their abilities and aspirations.  Not until pornography is illegal (which is, really, a no-brainer, given hate speech laws).  Until then, women, don’t waste your time.  (And, men, why aren’t you trying to get it illegalized?  Do you not see the damage it’s doing to you as well?  Y’all can’t even have pleasurable consensual sex with a real woman anymore.)  And, women, I guess it’s fair to say that every time you meet a man, assume something like that is going through his mind.  And act accordingly.  (And men, don’t you even think of complaining about that.)

“Virtually every feminist scholar and female critic of any kind has to endure outright threats of physical harm.”  p152

And y’all wonder why we hate you.  Get a clue.

“The typical eleventh grade boy writes at the same level as an eighth grade girl.”  p164

How is it then that they become our supervisors??  Ah.  Because they can’t see any one of without picturing us giving some dick a blowjob.  And it’s because they play by different rules, rules whereby it’s okay to exaggerate, to lie, to cheat, to bribe, to threaten.

Jul 05

from Pretending, Holly Bourne

“You are a fucking disgrace.  You have RAPED someone you claim you love and now dare to be upset that she’s upset about it.  Why are you all such dicks?  What’s wrong with you?  WHAT The ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? …” p222

“This is how it feels when someone doesn’t stop, I say to him.  You don’t like it, do you?  You don’t like it at all, you pathetic piece of shit.”  p246

“YES, I KNOW NOT ALL OF YOU DO IT, BUT ALL OF YOU CAN DO IT. THAT’S The POINT; THAT’S The FUCKING POINT.

            The fear is always there. The threat is always there.  Because, really, unless you are a fucking championship kick-boxer or something, if you are ever alone with a man, all he has to do is decide to do it and he’ll be able to. …

            If only they could have a day of feeling as scared as we do.  Please just let them have one day.  Of not having the power, of us having it instead.  …”  p247

“I wasn’t crazy … You made me crazy.” p252

“You don’t see a problem with a man who probably hasn’t ever been violated getting to decide what counts as a violation? … ” p272

“It’s the violation that’s the violence, don’t you see?  It’s knowing your boundaries mean bugger-all that’s the trauma—that anyone can touch you, that how you feel about it doesn’t count.  That’s the trauma.  That’s the violence. …” p272

Jul 01

A quick note about sexual harassment

Annoyance is the least of it. Especially when it happens in the workplace, it’s distracting; let’s just get the job done.

Then there’s the disgust, the eew factor, of a man jiggling his crotch, for example, while looking at us. We do not find that appealing; we are not aroused by that.

Then there’s the insult: to be always sexualized as if there’s nothing else to oneself.

Then there’s the intimidation: if this, then what next?

Men, do you get all this? When you make sexual comments, when you brush up against us, etc., etc.,?

(Note that ‘compliment’ isn’t on the list. AT ALL.)

Jul 01

Reading In Our Time, Susan Brownmiller

In In Our Time, Susan Brownmiller, the author of the ground-breaking Against Our Will tell what it was like, the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Highly recommended.

p2 re jobs for men and women

p5-6 what it was like before abortion was legal

“Women the world over are required to modify their behavior because of things that men fear and do.” p13

p35-39 the Miss America event
(I was reading this chapter the day I paddled past a group of young people having fun on the beach, one young woman wearing a thong ‘bathing suit’ – I almost pulled over to say something, but my god, where to begin; a week later, I paddled past the same spot, similar group, the young men in board shorts—not codpiece thongs—having lots of fun splashing around and swimming, the young women almost naked and very limited in their movements, walking across the sand in tiny steps as if they’d just learned how to walk, waving their hands as they stepped into the water as if they were afraid … and I got so fucking angry … it was all for nothing, the 60s and 70s, what those women did …it’s like we need to start women’s liberation all over again, start consciousness-raising groups again) (read Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen)

“The personal is political! Housework is political. Abortion is political. Standards of feminine beauty are political. Women’s oppression is political. Sexual satisfaction is political. A re-evaluation of male-female relations is political.” p45

Ruth Hershberger (Adam’s Rib, 1948) must have felt the same way about the 1950s. Again and again and again … how many times do we have to ‘discover’ all this shit??

about Naomi Weisstein, Ph.D. from Harvard, first in her class, “wound up in the tiny psychology department at Loyola after a humiliating round of job interviews punctuated by ‘Who did your research?’ and’ ‘How can a little girl like you teach a great big class of men?’ p51

the same old same old … Women saying simply “Women must take control of our bodies … We must define our own issues. We will take the struggle to our homes, to our jobs, to the streets.” and the men went berserk, screaming “Take her off the stage and fuck her!” “Take off your clothes!” “I’ll go to the streets with you. Down an alley!”
Again with the sexualizing us to reduce us. (Which is why it is sooooo annoying when women voluntarily sexualize themselves.

In the 1970s, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen, and so many others were run by men. In The Ladies’ Home Journal, more than half of the articles were written by men. p83-4
So if you read these magazines, you’re listening to a man telling you how to look, how to act …
So articles you’d never get to read … “How to Get a Divorce”, “How to Have an Orgasm”, What to Tell your Draft-age Son”, “How Detergents Harm our Rivers and Streams” …
“… men speak to woman through the bias of their male supremacist concepts” p85
[…the magazine’ purports to serve the interests of mothers and housewives” but doesn’t provide free daycare facilities on the premises for its employees’ children. p85
And still, 55 years later, so many ads in women’s magazines degrade women.
And still, 55 years later, so many “celebrity articles [are] oriented toward the preservation of youth…” p86

In 1971, an abortion ban challenge, Abele v. Markle, the judge ruled that the 850 plaintiffs lacked legal standing because they were not pregnant and thus had “an inusiufficient personal stake in the outcome” p118 (but read the whole chapter)
unfuckingbelievable.
Roraback had to actually argue that all women of childbearing age had a direct personal stake in the outcome.

…the classic Women’s Liberation position: “Pregnancy to a woman is one of the most determinative aspects of life. It disrupts her body, it disrupts her education, it disrupts her employment, and it often disrupts her entire family life.” p130

“… the internal damage to people’s psyches that resulted from years of conforming to low expectations” p145

“Lester Bernstein, my old boss in Nation … I’d thought he had understood my frustration and boredom. But now he inquired with puzzled sincerity, ‘When you worked here, Susan [Brownmiller] did you have ambition?’ / For two years not a week had gone by without my asking if I could ‘do more’. He hadn’t noticed.” p145-6
So they’re not cruel. They’re just clueless?
Even so, that doesn’t absolve them. If you are in a position of responsibility, you’d better NOT be clueless.

re Shere Hite’s The Hite Report – the all-male sales department hated the book so much, it got a small first printing p254

Jun 24

The Psychosis of Jocks

And another thing (from Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes): the guy who considered his football game to be far more important than knowing whether or not his girlfriend was pregnant.  Not unusual.  Most men worship football.

Guys, especially jocks—you have been brainwashed.  It’s a fucking GAME.  A game of tag with a game of catch.  To see which side ends up with the highest score.  That’s all.*

Compared to any one of being pregnant, giving birth, and having complete responsibility for the survival (and, hopefully, the flourishing) of another human being, your little football game is not even on the same scale.  To think otherwise suggests a disconnect from reality akin to psychosis.

Why don’t women say more, a lot more, about how fucking important it is?  How consequential?

Some do.  And get dismissed.  Because, same old same old, anything a woman does must be both unimportant and inconsequential. 

And the others?  They’ve been drugged by their bodies to forget, or at least minimize, the pain: of pregnancy (a condition that lasts for nine months compared to a mere ninety minutes); of giving birth (a condition that can last for days and can easily be more painful than tearing your ACL, several times) (yeah, the baby tears its way out).  And they’ve been similarly brainwashed, not to inflate but to minimize the consequences (goodbye bladder control and fifteen years of plans and aspirations). *Unless you’re of the 1% of high school players who end up playing pro.  Then it’s a job; you get paid.  So, consequential.  But need I point out that far less than 1% of women get paid to be pregnant?  And those who do get paid get maybe $20,000?  For the nine months of being pregnant and the twenty-four hours of giving birth.  Compared $5 million.  For 14 games.  That’s about $350,000 for an hour and a half.  Yes, there’s the training.  But women are pregnant 24 hrs/day.  Men don’t train 24 hrs/day.

Jun 24

Maryann (substack) on women’s health

FemmeHealth Ventures Alliance

Only 12% of AI researchers are women.

We are training algorithms to diagnose female bodies using data created by men who’ve never had a period, never been pregnant, never felt dismissed by a doctor who said their pain was “stress.”

Meanwhile 60% of women say doctors don’t take their health seriously.

And now we are automating that bias.

https://substack.com/@femmehealthventures/note/c-126178962

Jun 04

Research into male/female differences: is a redo required?

Does any research into the differences between male and female distinguish between females who have experienced pregnancy and childbirth and those who have not?  It’s doubtful, since most research is conducted by men, to whom making such a distinction would not even occur.

But there are permanent changes to the brain as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.  “Gray matter becomes more concentrated” and “Activity increases in regions that control empathy, anxiety, and social interaction.”  There are also changes in the amygdala, “which helps process memory and drives emotional reactions like fear, anxiety, and aggression” (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/what-happens-to-a-womans-brain-when-she-becomes-a-mother/384179/)

So are the much touted differences between male and female differences between male and only mothering females?  If so, that entire area of research needs to be redone.

Jun 04

Unpregnant (the movie)

The movie titled Unpregnant has been on my list for a while, but I’ve just subscribed to CRAVE.

One, I was appalled to see that the movie is categorized as a comedy.

I suspect the categorizing is done not by CRAVE staff, but according to the movie’s submitted metadata, which means it’s the writer, director and/or producer who are calling it a comedy.  And I suspect that whoever is responsible for the category identification is a man.

Because only a man would find it funny that

– a teenager finds herself pregnant because the condom broke, finds her whole life about to change direction in what she may well consider to be a horrible way—all her plans, her aspirations, her goals, no longer possible

– she discovers that the nearest place at which an abortion without parental consent is available is almost a thousand miles away; she doesn’t have the money to get there

– she discovers that the teenage boy knew the morning after that the condom had broken, but did not tell the young woman; if he had, she could’ve obtained the morning after pill—problem solved

Have I gotten to the funny part yet?  Where are the giggles?

As I watch the movie, I see that yes, there are comedic moments.  The movie becomes a road trip between previously estranged friends.  But who would decide to write a comedy based on such traumatic premises.  Again, only a man.

So I was surprised that two of the three writers are women.  What the hell?

Shame on the three of you for perpetuating the clueless view that pregnancy and abortion are no big deal.

So when abortion is prohibited altogether in ALL fifty states, oh well.  No big deal.  Right?

(And to think people have DIED to secure your right to decide for yourself whether or not to reproduce.)

Jun 03

from Slow Motion: changing masculinities, changing men, Lynne Segal

“The question of why it is men, and most often fathers or step-fathers, who sexually abuse children is not addressed [in recent books on fathering].”  p55

“And far from criticizing women for failing to satisfy men’s needs, feminists … question whence these ‘needs’ derive, and whether these needs themselves should not be seen as the problem—the problem of men.”  p55

“As Andrew Hacker suggests, wives who work ‘are not the cause of divorce so much as their husbands who still expect to hold center stage.'” p99

“Retrospectively, it is startling to realize that rape and men’s violence towards women became a serious social and political issue only through feminist attention to them.”  p234

“According to Phillips and Taylor, the work which women do tends to be low in status and reward simply because it is women and not men who do it.  Ben Birnbaum has illustrated this from his study of the clothing industry: the same type of machine work was classified as skilled when performed by men, and semi-skilled when performed by women.” p299

“Women [can] not share equally with men at work until men share equally with them in the home.”  p304

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