Category: sexism

On the Radfem Doctrine of Separatism

Here’s the thing.  Men are already separatists.  (So really we have no choice.)

Men already exclude women from anything, everything, important.  (Any inclusion is tokenism: a false symbol, a PR move.)

Men already refuse to get involved with ‘women’s issues’, whether personal or political.  That feminism itself is …

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Why aren’t there any great women Xs?

A new (for me) answer to the classic question, Why aren’t there any great women Xs, occurred to me when I saw a website for a small company of composers specializing in music for dance troupes (all four composers were male) shortly after a male friend of mine confessed that if …

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Brilliant Piece – “Little Women, Big Men” – check it out!

“…what many unthreateningly call “the male ego” (an inadequate term to describe the drive behind men’s collective undermining of women)…” – one of the many brilliant lines in “Little Women, Big Men: Sexism and the Language of Size” by Andrea Safran.  http://www.saidit.org/archives/vol4no2/language.html

Brunettes, Blondes, and Redheads

So the other day I started reading Iron Shadows by Steven Barnes. He’s apparently a bestselling author. Which is really disturbing.

Because four sentences in, he describes a woman as “a small wiry brunette”. Seriously? Does anyone actually identify women by their hair colour any more? That’s so—1940s. Isn’t it? I check. The book’s copyright …

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Pointlessly Gendered Products

Check it out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinchack/pointlessly-gendered-products

Be sure to read the comments/captions. They’re great.

Dangerous Sports

I haven’t really kept up with the sexism in the Olympics, mostly because the nationalism bothers me so much I don’t even watch them anymore, but I suspect there are still some sports in which women aren’t allowed to compete. Perhaps because of the tired, old, and fuckingly patronizing ‘You could get hurt!’

This from …

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Show a Little Initiative!

If you just do as you’re told, you don’t get promoted, you don’t get advanced up the ladder, because you’re not showing initiative.

Yeah right. Every time I showed some initiative, I got fired. Or at least reprimanded.

Then I realized that’s because there are different rules of advancement for men and women. Initiative in …

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Arrogance, I think

Fresh from the office of my supervisor who persists in gently giving me unsolicited advice, despite being neither older nor wiser, I’m struck by Rousseau’s tone (in his “Marriage”):  “Extreme in all things, they [women] devote themselves to their play with greater zeal than boys.  This is the second defect.  This zeal must be kept …

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What’s wrong with being a slut?

slut, n. Slovenly woman, slattern

slovenly, a. Personally untidy or dirty, careless and lazy, or unmethodical

slattern, n.  Sluttish woman

Not what my mother meant when she called me a slut.  For whatever else I am, I am tidy, clean, careful, industrious, and methodical.  Quite methodical.  So just what did she mean?  I don’t know.  …

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Let’s Talk about Sex

[This one’s a little old, as you can tell by the Salt-n-Pepa reference, but still relevant, I think.  Sigh.]

Disc jockeys generally come in two sexes: male and female.  So what, you may think, sex doesn’t matter.  Oh but it does, so sad to say.

I used to deejay for weddings and other parties, and …

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