Jan 23

Harvard

            “The all-male club members of Pi Eta, whose members are Harvard undergraduates and graduates, received a letter in the 1980s that promised ‘a bevy of slobbering bovines fresh for the slaughter’ at their parties.  As Peggy Sanday explains, the logic of such parties (at which women are frequently raped, including at this fraternity) is ‘Its male participants brag about their masculinity and its female participants are degraded to the status of what the boys call “red meat” or “fish”.'”   (The Pornography of Meat, Carol J. Adams, p119)

            I used to be surprised that Harvard, the university of so many of our future government and business leaders, is so misogynistic.  Now, looking at our world, I’m not surprised at all.

Jan 03

Social Experiment: 10 boys unsupervised; 10 girls unsupervised

Check it out:

Dec 05

Why won’t misogyny die?

Because believing you’re better simply because you’re male is, like believing you’re better simply because your skin is white, the only way to high(er) status that doesn’t depend on actually doing something.

Dec 04

barely tongue-in-cheek bit from Grant Naylor

“The GAS (Genetic Alternative Sports) … Sports fans were no longer interested in seeing a conventional boxing match, when they could witness two genetically engineered pugilists — who were created with their brains in their shorts, and all their other major organs crammed into their legs and feet, leaving their heads solid blocks of unthinking muscle — knock hell out of one another for hours on end in a way that normal boxers could only manage for minutes.”  Red Dwarf Omnibus (Better than Life) p490

Nov 30

Toddler vs Male CEO

Great list by Justine Cotter at McSweeney’s:

“Are You a Parent of a Toddler or an Assistant to a Male CEO of a Tech Startup?”

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/are-you-a-parent-of-a-toddler-or-an-assistant-to-a-male-ceo-of-a-tech-startup

Nov 11

from Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus

Just read this first novel by Bonnie Garmus. It’s great! Unapologetically feminist and funny! Here are some of my favourite lines (not counting Six-Thirty’s quips about German Shepherds):

“Idiots make it into every company. Then tend to interview well.” (p111)

And the bit about Dr. Spock (p144) and the bit ending with “Never seen a grown man run so fast.” (p145)

“They either wanted to control her, touch her, dominate her, silence her, correct her, or tell her what to do.” (p237)

“She shook her head in wonder. She had no idea why men believed women found male genitalia impressive or scary.” (p275)

“Sometimes I think … that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.” (p323)

Oct 30

Three Rules, Phyllis Chesler

Three Rules:

  • The measure of your success is the resistance you encounter. Embrace it.
  • You can’t be a bystander without being complicit.
  • We don’t need a room of our own. We need a very large continent of our own.

Read the whole piece at https://4w.pub/our-feminist-revolution/.

Oct 27

And there it is again … this time in Rob Grant’s Colony

And there it is again, this time in Rob Grant’s Colony: the belief that babies just … happen (they’re brought by a stork or found in a cabbage patch, perhaps?).

“Everyone finally agrees that global warming is a serious problem, now they’re up to their necks in water.  And as the land masses shrink, as resources drown under the swelling waters, the world population has exploded.  There are more people alive now than ever lived in the whole of human history.  Billions and billions trying to scrape a life from the receding land and its dwindling supplies.  More born every day.” (p25).

That SHOULD be “And as the land masses shrink, as resources drown under the swelling waters, men continue to impregnate women. … More made every day.”

‘Now’ is not the time to suddenly deny agency, control, power–all the thing you men so love.

Oct 25

Marianne LeNabat on Abortion

“Nowhere in Alito’s entire decision would you ever get a glimmer of why women actually seek out abortion.”

“That abortion happens later for one of two reasons: because of how difficult it is, geographically and financially, to access abortion sooner. Or because severe and often life-inhibiting abnormalities can only be reliably detected later. We are all still searhcing for the woman who just changed her mind about beign pregnant in hthe third trimester.” 🙂

“The ‘sanctity of life’ that is upheld by abortion opponents is unrecognisable in any other milieu. … There is no restriction against allowing a family member to die when they could artifically be kept alive. Physicians have no obligation to provide care to people who are not their patients, say at the scene of an accident. There is no obligation to donate much-needed organs or marrow or plasma to those who need them to survive. Medical decisions, like public policy are in no way guided by the notion that life must be preserved and prolonged and maximizsed at all costs, or even ats some kind of pirority over liberty and whatever else.”

from “Dobbs, Reality, and the ‘Moral Question’ of Abortion,” Marianne LeNabat, in The Philosophers’ Magazine 97

Oct 23

The Privilege of Men, Judith Mazzucco

The Privilege of Men by Judith Mazzucco starts as an unremarkable novel about the meat industry, but then WHAM! the metaphor in chapter 16—  At least I think, I hope, it’s a metaphor and not something that’s actually happening somewhere right now.  Though—and I’m not sure whether this is Mazzucco’s point or whether she’s ‘just’ making a point about the meat industry—it would be completely logical for it to BE happening, given what is ALREADY happening, with respect to trafficking women for sexual services (i.e., surrogacy and prostitution).  Worth the read if only for that chapter.  And that point.

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