Sep 23

Testicular Battery and Tranquilizer Guns (what the world needs now is)

Given the relative vulnerability of men to sexual assault (all it takes to disable them is a swift forceful kick, or, at closer quarters, a good grab, pull, twist – almost anything, really) (whereas women have to be partially undressed and then immobilized), given the relative vulnerability of men to sexual assault, it’s surprising that we hear far more often about rape than – well, we don’t even have a special name for it.  Testicular battery?

Since most women are physically capable of such an assault, the reason must be some psychological social inhibition.  And, of course, this is so.  Girls are not permitted, encouraged, or taught to fight; boys are.  All three.  Women are socialized to see men as their protectors, not their enemies.  Men are – well, this is the interesting bit: men used to be socialized to see women as in need of protection, and so would never dream of raping them (well, okay, they’d dream of it – perhaps often and in technicolor – but there was a strong social stigma against assaulting the fair sex: boys were shamed if they ever hit a girl, and if you ever hit your wife, let alone another woman, well what kind of man are you?), but feminism got rid of such patronizing chivalry.

And rightly so.  Unfortunately, it has yet to make its replacement, self-defence, as commonplace.

There’s another problem.  We’re afraid that if we hurt them, they’ll come back (when they can walk again) and kill us.  Which is why women’s self-defence should include a small tranquilizer gun.

(‘Course they might still come back and kill us.  After all, to be decommissioned by a woman!  It would be a new kind of honor killing…)

 

[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]

Sep 17

Message to Amy Farrah Fowler: LEAVE HIM NOW.

(Thought I’d better post this one before the new season in case she DOES leave him!)

 

Is anyone else really really disturbed by Amy Farrah Fowler’s character on The Big Bang Theory?  She is so intelligent, has a Ph.D., is a neurobiologist, and yet she stays in a relationship with Sheldon Cooper, the most infantile, the most arrogant, the most selfish person ever.  That in itself is boggling.  But – the relationship.  It’s not.  How low does her self-esteem have to be for her to think she can’t do better?

Maybe, though, she’s right.  Eliminate the 99% who aren’t as smart as her.  Of those, eliminate the ones who are already married.  Then eliminate the ones she’s not likely to ever meet.  Is there anyone left?

But wait.  Why does the guy have to be as smart as her?  How bad does the world have to be for it to be true that no man less intelligent than her will have the maturity to want her, to love her?  Maybe her choices really are Zack, Sheldon, or no one.

Well, given that – it’s a no-brainer, Amy!  A life lived alone is far, far better than a life intertwined with someone who ignores you, who belittles your interests (neurobiology is not nearly as important as theoretical physics), who belittles your achievements (remember the time she was published in a major journal?), who knows what you want (because you’ve come right out and told him) and still does not give it to you (romance, sex).

II’ve actually started fast-forwarding through the Sheldon-and-Amy scenes because they’ve become just too sickening to watch.  ‘Emotionally abusive’ is the phrase I’m looking for.  (And who is it who thinks that’s entertaining?)

 

[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]

Sep 15

p.s. (the grounds for assuming a woman is a lesbian)

The guy in the pick-up did not know if I was a lesbian.  He apparently assumed so.  Because…

(take your pick; they’re all exemplars of flawed reasoning)

– I do not live with a man.

– I am not married to a man.

– I am not a mother.

– I am not feminine in appearance or behavior.

– I have not made myself sexually available to any man he knows.

– I have not made myself sexually available to him.

(did i miss any?)

(oh, yes, i did)

– He just doesn’t like me.

– He knows I’m smarter than him.

– He knows I’m more competent than him.

Sep 14

On Being “Good for somethin’!” (or On Being Fuckable)

So I was talking to a guy yesterday and happened to tell him my “Nice to see you’re good for somethin’!” story: one day while I was picking up all the garbage on the sides of the gravel/dirt road I walk on every day (it’s something I do twice a year, picking up after the hunters in Spring and again in the Fall once all the summer people have left), some guy in a pick-up truck slowed and called out to me, “Nice to see you’re good for something!”

‘Pretty homophobic,’ the guy commiserated.

‘No, misogynistic,’ I replied.  I’d thought the guy in the pick-up had implied that women were just good for cleaning up, especially cleaning up after men.

But then the guy explained what he thought the guy in the pick-up had been thinking.  I was stunned.  It had never occurred to me.

If I am a lesbian, then I’m not fuckable.  So I’m not good for anything.

(Which implies the guy in the pick-up thinks that women are only good for fucking.  If you’re not fuckable, what good are you?)

(Men, you wonder why so many of us come to hate you?)

 

Sep 12

Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men?

Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men?

1.  Religious belief is more of an emotional thing than a cognitive thing.  (Consider the fact that merely thinking about religious beliefs is usually sufficient to reveal they’re unwarranted.)  And women are raised to be more emotional than cognitive; men are raised to be more cognitive than emotional (in fact, they are encouraged, even taught, to deny their emotions).

2.  Religious authority figures, mythological (God, Allah, Zeus, and so on) and real (priests, rabbi, ministers, and so on), are male.  And since women are raised to be subservient to males, to regard males as authorities, it’s easy for them to accept God, for example, as an authority and to subordinate themselves to him.  Men, on the other hand, are encouraged to be the authority; they’re also encouraged to compete with other men.  So to accept God, for example, as an authority and to subordinate themselves to him would not be easy – in fact, it would be emasculating.  (Which is why the macho Promise Keepers came to be.)  (And why the movement’s popularity didn’t last very long.)

3.  Except for the war element (note that men are okay with claiming religious belief when it’s associated with war), religion is very much about morality.  (Or so people think.)  And it’s women who are the designated moral guardians: young women are the ‘gatekeepers’ when it comes to pre-marital sex (often considered immoral), wives are referred to by their husbands as ‘their better half’ (‘better’ referring to some quality of moral goodness), and mothers are assumed to have the primary responsibility of teaching their children right from wrong.  

When a man introduces the matter of morality, questioning, for example, whether it’s right to do whatever it is that’s about to be done, he is accused of ‘going soft’, or being weak, or being a ‘boyscout’, or being a ‘bleeding heart’, and so on.  (Note that the last accusation, with its reference to the heart, connects morals with the emotional realm, which neatly connects this point with the first one – as does this excerpt from a novel, whose author I unfortunately failed to note: “The boy’s nothing more than a bleeding heart waiting to cry over this injustice or that!…you’d think we raised a bloody priest.”)

Sep 04

Why aren’t women funny?

Well, they are, of course.  It’s just that many men don’t find them funny.  Which is why many stand-up clubs (those managed by men) (that is, almost all of them) actually have a rule: only so many stand-ups on any given night can be women.  Too many and they kill the night.

But, of course, that’s so only in clubs where most of the audience is male.  Because, as I’ve said, men don’t find women funny.  Partly, this could be because men find farts and burps funny.  (Except, of course, when women fart and burp.  For some reason, they find that horrifying.)

The other mainstay of comedy (for both sexes) is ‘(heterosexual) relationship humour’ – so men laugh at the caricatures of women presented by men (and women laugh at the caricatures of men presented by women).

But my guess is that even with sex-neutral comedy, women comedians fare more poorly than men.  A woman tells a socio-political joke, and people (men) just sort of stare at her (as if they’re seeing a dog walking on its hind legs?).  Give a man the same material, and the audience will respond.  Ironically (given my topic), I think this is so because men don’t take women seriously. To laugh at someone’s joke is to accord them some sort of authority, if only the authority to make some sort of comment through humour.

Either that or they’re just not interested in women (except as sexual possibilities).  (I’m reminded of a brilliant skit I once saw, on “A Bit of Fry and Laurie”: a woman was giving a business presentation and all present, mostly men, were paying such close and supportive attention – I was, frankly, surprised (that had certainly never happened to me!); then the woman casually mentioned that she’d come up with her proposal on the weekend when she was out with her boyfriend, and their attention turned off as quickly and as completely as a spotlight – a woman is either a sexual possibility or she doesn’t exist.)

This would explain why, for example, Susan Juby didn’t win the Leacock Medal of Humour with I’m Alice, I think.  It’s a hilarious coming of age story.  But it’s about a girl.  So while generations of girls have had to read about boys coming of age (The Apprentice of Duddy Kravitz, A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and on and on), boys have only had to read about Anne Frank (no doubt, it was ‘saved’ by the wartime setting) (oh, well, put guns in it and…).  When a boy comes of age, that’s important, because, well, he’s becoming a man.  But when a girl comes of age, well, she becomes a woman.  Unimportant.  In fact, the Medal has been won by a woman only twice in 30 years.  I wonder if the panel of 17 judges consists mostly of men (the judges aren’t named on their site, but the President and Vice-President are, and they’re both men, whereas the two secretaries and person in charge of the dinner? they’re women).

Aug 31

Sex and Gender Conflated

I recently spent some time at another blog (someone had linked to one of my posts and invited me to the discussion), and I discovered that several of the discussants conflated gender and sex.  I was shocked.  (And in fact, that possibility so didn’t occur to me that I continued the surreal discussion for some time before I realized they’d made that mistake: the moderator objected to my suggestion that we do away with gender, claiming that that was what made us, or at least him, human; another commenter said something like the species couldn’t continue without it).

They seemed to be intelligent people (the moderator was intelligent enough to use the word “incumbent” and to demand evidence for a claim).  So why—how—given the 70s—how is it that the distinction between sex and gender has not become common knowledge?

Aug 22

The Little Birdies

So I’m out walking today, and as I pass a neighbour tending his bird feeder, I wave.

And the guy calls out to me “I’m feeding some seed to the little birdies!”

The little birdies?  What am I, twelve? 

No, I’m female.  (I have a hard time believing that he would’ve said the same thing to a middle-aged man.)

And (many) men talk to women differently than they do to men. They talk to us like we’re children.  Idiot children.

Aug 19

Police urge riders to use caution after second sexual assault by fake taxi driver.

Right, that’ll work.  Women should use caution.

Okay, as long as we’re putting the responsibility on the women (sigh), how about a women-only taxi service?

Anyone out there looking for a job?  Someone with a BBA could prepare a business plan, someone else could prepare a Kickstarter proposal to get funding (I offer my editing services if need be), and a lawyer to set it up as a franchise or whatever you call it so it can be in every city, and away we go!

Women taxi drivers picking up women customers.  We could grab half the market overnight.

Aug 16

Sex and So You Think You Can Dance

When So You Think You Can Dance first started, they had one winner. In season 9, they decided to have two winners: one male and one female. I thought it was because they realized the odds were stacked in favour of male dancers since most of the viewers/voters were female (and, presumably, heterosexual) (and, presumably, not voting for dance ability as much as for sexual appeal). However, in the preceding eight seasons, there were four female winners and four male winners. The runner-ups were a bit more skewed, with two female and six male.

Then I read in an interview about the change, this comment: “Girls dance totally differently than guys.” Yeah, if that’s what their choreographers demand. (Who may, in turn, be providing, what Nigel Lythgoe and the other producers demand.) I have to say I am so very sick and tired of almost every dance being a presentation of the stereotyped (i.e., gender-role-rigid) heterosexual romance/love/sex scenario, right down to the music, the costumes, and, of course, the moves.

But now, they’ve reverted to one winner – suggesting that sex is irrelevant to dance. Does that mean they’re going to make the dances – the music, the costumes, the moves – as sex-independent? Not likely.

Pity. Because I, for one, would love to see more like Mark Kanumura’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” audition piece and Mandy Moore’s “Boogie Shoes” (the latter was, like the former, pretty much just asexual fun with music and movement despite the gendered costumes – cutesy skirt/dress for one, long pants for the other, pink shoes for the one, blue shoes for the other – yes, yes, we must must MUST separate, distinguish, the girls from the boys, the patriarchy depends on it, the subordination of women depends on it!). (And that’s another thing: would they PLEASE stop calling 18-30 year-olds ‘girls’ and ‘boys’?)

They (the So You Think You Can Dance people) really should make up their minds. If sex is important to what they want to be doing, then they should have best male and best female dancer awards, continue to pair in male/female, and continue to insist the males look and dance in a hypermasculinized way and the females look and dance in a hyperfeminized (which in our society means in a pornulated way).

If sex isn’t important to what they want to be doing, then they should have best dancer award, and pair at random – actually, since the heterosexual mating concept would no longer be the central motif, they wouldn’t have to be limited to pairs at all – and let the dancers dance with strength, balance, coordination, musicality, and skill, with beauty, drama, fun, and quirkiness, regardless of their sex.

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