Category: sexism

Justified (fiction from Fighting Words)

It was inevitable.

By 2035, almost overnight, all of my classes were two-thirds female, one-third male.  We’d finally achieved the critical mass I thought wouldn’t ever happen.   Correction.  I thought wouldn’t happen in time.  I was middle-aged when the most powerful county in the world elected for President not the former Secretary of …

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A huge insight late in life

“We all wield different portfolios of knowledge.  We have different values, different priorities, and different understandings of all that unfolds around us.”  Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Yes.  There.  That first one.  My life-long error.

I have assumed that we have different values and different priorities, and I’ve been prepared to argue …

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The Husbands, Chandler Baker – quotes and comments

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It took me until p79 to see where this was going—the title should’ve clued me in sooner, but—without spoilers, let me just say that compared to her husband, the husbands’ behavior at the dinner party (p91) is so … stark.  And therefore so telling.

The boxed online chats are so …

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“Home for Unwed Fathers” (short story from Fighting Words)

About a month after, they came to get him.

“Hello, is there a Rob Ellis here?”

He heard the polite voice at the door.

“Yeah,” his mother replied.  “Rob!” she called up the stairs. 

Rob came down the stairs and warily approached the two people standing at the door.

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They Never Learn, Layne Fargo – quotes and comments

Great read!  Some quotes and comments …

“He tosses the cap onto the floor.”  p2

As soon as he takes a bottle from the garage fridge and tosses the cap onto the floor, I hated him.  Is he going to pick up the cap later?  Clean up after himself?  Don’t think so.  …

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Men Need Sex (fiction from Fighting Words)

We got so tired of hearing that.  Men need sex.  There were so many iterations, so many variations  … 

In 1943, Maslow, in his hierarchy of needs, included sex among the physiological needs that must be satisfied before anything else.  Unfortunately, his theory, along with an unforgettable pyramid illustration, became accepted as fact, …

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Excellent piece on calling women crazy

https://zawn.substack.com/p/why-is-patriarchy-so-obsessed-with

“We tell women deprived of sleep and support in the postpartum period that their exhaustion must be due to their crazy woman hormones. When girls enter puberty—and the world of dehumanization and male abuse it brings—we pretend their distress is due to vague “puberty hormones.” And when, after a lifetime of exploitation, …

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“We don’t occupy their imaginations …”

“We don’t occupy their imaginations the way they occupy ours.” Black scientist about his white colleagues (from the movie “Black Cake”)

Yeah. Now imagine that ten-fold for a female scientist.

from The First Political Order: How sex shapes governance and national security worldwide, Valerie M. Hudson et al.

Part I is a must-read.

Excerpts follow.

“Men seeking their own security attempt to construct strong male-bonded alliances, typically based on patrilineal (agnatic) relationships … [Women] biologically reproduce the group, providing brothers and sons for this male alliance. The fraternity’s dependence on women … leads to the necessity for men to control them.” p2 [This …

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McSweeney’s List about the Birth Rate – brilliantly hilarious

Check it out!

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/americas-op-ed-columnists-brainstorm-future-headlines-about-the-birth-rate

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