Hell Yeah, I'm a Feminist!

Aug 23

Male privilege

By ptittle

Excerpts from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/06/male-privilege-female-top-surgery-workplace

“After returning to teaching, I started to receive very little, if any, pushback when I said no. This was especially the case with students. Within academia, it is not an uncommon belief that students make more requests (for grade changes, deadline extensions, and so on) of female-presenting professors. In my case, requests for extensions and grade changes decreased, and for the few that did occur, there was zero pushback to my response. It’s like I have a new superpower: the first time I say no, it is heard. Similarly, I rarely have to ask for something twice. I also experience fewer interruptions, and there are more apologies for taking up my time. Language in emails to me is more deferential than it has ever been before. I am no longer a McDonald’s where students place their orders. …

“In research that specifically addresses transgender men in the workplace, sociologist Kristen Schilt has found that a majority of her respondents report receiving some type of post-transition advantage at work, including gaining authority, respect and recognition for hard work, and gaining economic opportunities and status.Respondents spoke to how men can get away with more, and are given the benefit of the doubt, while hard-working women are ignored and their work is unrecognized.

1 comments

Aug 22

What harm does it do?

By ptittle

So I’ve received a 1/5 review of Gender Fraud: a fiction at Goodreads by someone claiming, basically, TERF!!! Expected. Sigh.

But the reviewer did ask a question that I should have been able to answer, which was ‘What harm does it do if a transwoman wants to call herself a woman?’

Well, here’s the answer:

The Removal of Female Sex Based Rights – Female Erasure

Leave comment

Aug 20

from Jack Holland’s A Brief History of Misogyny

By ptittle

(All quotes are from Jack Holland’s A Brief History of Misogyny)

“It was a battle for the ultimate mechanism of control within a woman’s body—her reproductive cycle. For a woman, this right is the most crucial of all, and the key to achieving real autonomy. Misogyn denies her autonomy; her subordination depends on the lack of it.” (p237) Well-put.

“Before, men had women more or less at their mercy in deciding whether or not to employ condoms, the most common contraceptive device. In theory, of course, a woman could refuse to have intercourse with a man unless he wore one, but in practice men bullied, coerced, bllackmailed or otherwise pressurized women into taking risks for the sake of the man’s pleasure.” (p238) Which is why men should never be trusted with any sort of competing goods decision: they think that their ten seconds of pleasure (or, as is often the case, relief) outweighs a woman’s nine months of pregnancy, seven-plus hours of labour (with various physical injuries, temporary and permanent, up to and including death) (as well as the emotional pain due to forced motherhood), five years of round-the-clock vigilance and nurturing, and another ten years of care.

“When I told people I was writing a history of misogyny, I got two distinct responses and they were divided along gender lines. From women came an expression of eager curiosity about what I had found. But from those men who knew what the word ‘misogyny’ meant—” (p268) Stop right there. Because that pretty much says it all.

“What history teaches us about misogyny can be summed up in four words: pervasive, persistent, pernicious, and protean.” (p270) Again, well-put.

“Had the victims of [Gary Ridgeway’s] murderous rampage been Jews or African Americans, there would have been a national alarm sounded, and acres of print covered with soul-searching questions about the state of race relations in the United States as we enter a new millennium. But the actions of a Ridgeway, or a Jack the Ripper, are usually left to a psychiatrist to explain. Their urge to kill women is seen as an aberration when in truth it is simply an intensification of a commonplace prejudice.” (p271)