Annoyance is the least of it. Especially when it happens in the workplace, it’s distracting; let’s just get the job done.
Then there’s the disgust, the eew factor, of a man jiggling his crotch, for example, while looking at us. We do not find that appealing; we are not aroused by that.
Then there’s the insult: to be always sexualized as if there’s nothing else to oneself.
Then there’s the intimidation: if this, then what next?
Men, do you get all this? When you make sexual comments, when you brush up against us, etc., etc.,?
(Note that ‘compliment’ isn’t on the list. AT ALL.)
In In Our Time, Susan Brownmiller, the author of the ground-breaking Against Our Will tell what it was like, the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Highly recommended.
p2 re jobs for men and women
p5-6 what it was like before abortion was legal
“Women the world over are required to modify their behavior because of things that men fear and do.” p13
p35-39 the Miss America event
(I was reading this chapter the day I paddled past a group of young people having fun on the beach, one young woman wearing a thong ‘bathing suit’ – I almost pulled over to say something, but my god, where to begin; a week later, I paddled past the same spot, similar group, the young men in board shorts—not codpiece thongs—having lots of fun splashing around and swimming, the young women almost naked and very limited in their movements, walking across the sand in tiny steps as if they’d just learned how to walk, waving their hands as they stepped into the water as if they were afraid … and I got so fucking angry … it was all for nothing, the 60s and 70s, what those women did …it’s like we need to start women’s liberation all over again, start consciousness-raising groups again) (read Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen)
“The personal is political! Housework is political. Abortion is political. Standards of feminine beauty are political. Women’s oppression is political. Sexual satisfaction is political. A re-evaluation of male-female relations is political.” p45
Ruth Hershberger (Adam’s Rib, 1948) must have felt the same way about the 1950s. Again and again and again … how many times do we have to ‘discover’ all this shit??
about Naomi Weisstein, Ph.D. from Harvard, first in her class, “wound up in the tiny psychology department at Loyola after a humiliating round of job interviews punctuated by ‘Who did your research?’ and’ ‘How can a little girl like you teach a great big class of men?’ p51
the same old same old … Women saying simply “Women must take control of our bodies … We must define our own issues. We will take the struggle to our homes, to our jobs, to the streets.” and the men went berserk, screaming “Take her off the stage and fuck her!” “Take off your clothes!” “I’ll go to the streets with you. Down an alley!”
Again with the sexualizing us to reduce us. (Which is why it is sooooo annoying when women voluntarily sexualize themselves.
In the 1970s, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen, and so many others were run by men. In The Ladies’ Home Journal, more than half of the articles were written by men. p83-4
So if you read these magazines, you’re listening to a man telling you how to look, how to act …
So articles you’d never get to read … “How to Get a Divorce”, “How to Have an Orgasm”, What to Tell your Draft-age Son”, “How Detergents Harm our Rivers and Streams” …
“… men speak to woman through the bias of their male supremacist concepts” p85
[…the magazine’ purports to serve the interests of mothers and housewives” but doesn’t provide free daycare facilities on the premises for its employees’ children. p85
And still, 55 years later, so many ads in women’s magazines degrade women.
And still, 55 years later, so many “celebrity articles [are] oriented toward the preservation of youth…” p86
In 1971, an abortion ban challenge, Abele v. Markle, the judge ruled that the 850 plaintiffs lacked legal standing because they were not pregnant and thus had “an inusiufficient personal stake in the outcome” p118 (but read the whole chapter)
unfuckingbelievable.
Roraback had to actually argue that all women of childbearing age had a direct personal stake in the outcome.
…the classic Women’s Liberation position: “Pregnancy to a woman is one of the most determinative aspects of life. It disrupts her body, it disrupts her education, it disrupts her employment, and it often disrupts her entire family life.” p130
“… the internal damage to people’s psyches that resulted from years of conforming to low expectations” p145
“Lester Bernstein, my old boss in Nation … I’d thought he had understood my frustration and boredom. But now he inquired with puzzled sincerity, ‘When you worked here, Susan [Brownmiller] did you have ambition?’ / For two years not a week had gone by without my asking if I could ‘do more’. He hadn’t noticed.” p145-6
So they’re not cruel. They’re just clueless?
Even so, that doesn’t absolve them. If you are in a position of responsibility, you’d better NOT be clueless.
re Shere Hite’s The Hite Report – the all-male sales department hated the book so much, it got a small first printing p254
And another thing (from Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes): the guy who considered his football game to be far more important than knowing whether or not his girlfriend was pregnant. Not unusual. Most men worship football.
Guys, especially jocks—you have been brainwashed. It’s a fucking GAME. A game of tag with a game of catch. To see which side ends up with the highest score. That’s all.*
Compared to any one of being pregnant, giving birth, and having complete responsibility for the survival (and, hopefully, the flourishing) of another human being, your little football game is not even on the same scale. To think otherwise suggests a disconnect from reality akin to psychosis.
Why don’t women say more, a lot more, about how fucking important it is? How consequential?
Some do. And get dismissed. Because, same old same old, anything a woman does must be both unimportant and inconsequential.
And the others? They’ve been drugged by their bodies to forget, or at least minimize, the pain: of pregnancy (a condition that lasts for nine months compared to a mere ninety minutes); of giving birth (a condition that can last for twenty-four hours and can easily be more painful than tearing your ACL, several times) (yeah, the baby tears its way out). And they’ve been similarly brainwashed, not to inflate but to minimize the consequences (goodbye bladder control and fifteen years of plans and aspirations).
*Unless you’re of the 1% of high school players who end up playing pro. Then it’s a job; you get paid. So, consequential. But need I point out that far less than 1% of women get paid to be pregnant? And those who do get paid get maybe $20,000? For the nine months of being pregnant and the twenty-four hours of giving birth. Compared $5 million. For 14 games. That’s about $350,000 for an hour and a half. Yes, there’s the training. But women are pregnant 24 hrs/day. Men don’t train 24 hrs/day.
Jodi Picoult’s excellent novel, Nineteen Minutes, got me thinking, yet again, about when people (most often males) claim they were “just kidding around” or that it was “just a joke”, what they really mean is “I don’t want to be held accountable for what I just did.”
And it’s appalling that such immaturity persists well into adulthood.
A few days ago, I bought some stuff from a new local bakery, not because I needed what I bought or even because I really wanted it, but because I wanted to support the business, I wanted to help the owner and her small staff stay in business, because so many local businesses in the area’s towns do not survive and our main streets look like ghost towns.
And so I finally got it. How buying something can be seen as supporting someone. Until just a few years ago, I either spent my money on stuff I needed or saved it—to later buy what I really wanted or for “a rainy day” (i.e., the day on which I was laid off from one of the many part-time jobs upon which I depend for self-sustaining income). But now that I have more income than I need and my savings account is reasonably robust, I can afford to do what I did, I can afford to make a purchase in order to support. And I realized that’s how rich people look at spending.
And so now I understand how/why Trump sees over-spending as being overly generous. Rather than, as most of us see it, as buying more stuff than you can afford.
And how/why he sees a trade deficit as charity. Rather than as just buying more from the other person than they buy from you.
“Last year was the hottest year on record, but that did not stop global banks from walking back climate pledges and significantly increasing fossil fuel financing. Over 65 banks across the world, including CIBC, TD Bank, and Royal Bank of Canada in the top 15, have committed $10.8 trillion to fossil fuel financing since 2016 …”
from “Banking on Climate Chaos”
https://thepointer.com/article/2025-06-24/across-canada-politicians-are-forcing-laws-in-the-national-interest-and-dismantling-our-democracy-along-the-way
Maybe I’ve just been naïve, but I found this movie very frightening. It gets a bit silly about 1.5 hours in, but otherwise …
Via ‘new’ tech that exacerbates to the nth degree everything that’s horrifying about AI and apps that enable fake pictures, videos, and text/news—essentially, lying—it shows
the concentration of power
in the ‘hands’ of four white men
who are puerile, narcissistic, delusional, and so out of touch with their own selves, nothing is personal
who speak in metaphor, as cowards do, afraid to admit what they really mean, what they really do
and in a sort of insider ‘bro’ code, so desperate are they to be considered cool and winners (as measured by net financial worth)…
It’s certainly an argument in favour of a profit ceiling.
And it makes me wonder whether only tech from China, where the pursuit of profit is fettered, should be trusted/used.
Pity our choice seems to be between capitalism and dictatorship (though Trump seems to be marrying the two). Where is ‘pure’ communism? Or even socialism? Sweden?
(You seem to be painting yourself into a corner, and you’re 79, and you need an exit strategy …)
‘You know, someone asked me the other day, what am I gonna do next? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m gonna quit. Quit while I’m ahead. That’s the smart thing to do. I’m the richest man on Earth. No one else can say that. I’ve tripled my money in just the last few years. No one else can say that. America’s great. I love America.’
You know, I’m confused about this whole trade war thing. Better a trade war than a nuclear war, for sure, but … Isn’t it good for a country to reduce its dependence on other countries? Isn’t it good to reduce one’s deficit, to balance the budget?
If the States doesn’t want to buy as much oil from us, that’s a good thing! It means we can drill less. We shouldn’t be drilling in the first place. Read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything.
If they don’t want to buy as much lumber, that’s also a good thing. We can stop cutting. Given the forest fires of 2023 and 2025, don’t we need every single tree that’s standing? To absorb some of the global-warming carbon dioxide that’s filling our atmosphere?
I guess Trump’s decisions are a problem if he’s breaking promises to purchase, especially if we’ve already prepared to sell. But can’t we either just sell to someone else or keep it for ourselves? Maybe then our own prices for gas, wood, etc. could go down.
And/or maybe the problem is the system. Why shouldn’t countries be able to increase or decrease how much they buy and sell from each other? Is the problem that he just suddenly decided to reduce purchases rather than renegotiate trade agreements that bound him to said purchases?
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (full-length drama and short drama)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…
