Category: feminism

Suppose that worldwide …

Suppose that worldwide, women flood the military, soon comprising, say, 40% of the ranks (which will be perceived by men as a majority) (go figure). Suppose then, as happened when women flooded the ranks of bank tellers, secretaries, and teachers, being a soldier became devalued, losing its prestige, its glory, its funding, its media coverage. …

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Suppose two married women …

Suppose two married women get jobs outside the home at the same time, forcing their husbands to hire someone to do the cooking, cleaning, and childcare.  Ten hours/day, 5 days/week, at $20/hr.  It’s a lot to afford, but the men have so-called ‘breadwinner’ salaries. Suppose it turns out that Emma is hired by Alyssa’s husband …

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Suppose by some biochemical quirk …

Suppose by some biochemical quirk, the hormones we’ve been feeding cows inhibits testosterone in humans, so the more meat men eat, the weaker they become. Suppose that within a year, males lost their 30% physical strength advantage over women. What would happen?

Naomi Alderman’s The Power meets Monty Python’s “Hell’s Grannies”

A man struts and huffs and puffs and expands like a blowfish, but all the old women close their eyes. Deny him the female gaze. Refuse to be a witness to his Almighty Greatness, let alone a cheerleader. And not only does he deflate, he disappears in a puff of, well, nothingness. Existential nothingness. Beauvoir …

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from Fraternity Gang Rape, Peggy Reeves Sanday

“Rape [is] rare in 47 percent of the societies studied and common in 18 percent of them. … In the more rape-prone societies there [is] greater sexual segregation, male social dominance, interpersonal violence, and the subordination of women” p4 “… in the United States, which is in all likelihood one of the most rape-prone societies …

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aurora linnea’s review of Laura Lecuona’s “Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers

Excellent and clarifying summary and review of Lecona’s book (and gender and sex and why it’s such an issue …). We Just Can’t Shut Up About Gender: A Review of Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers, by Laura Lecuona “…sex is a biological fact while gender is patriarchal fiction; the gender system is a hierarchy, not …

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Men and Women in the 21st Century

None of these quotes (all from The Unmade Bed by Stephen Marche) are representative of what the book’s about, but they do reveal, perhaps unintentionally, Marche’s subtitle, “The messy truth about men and women in the 21st century”. “Eventually, David Granger, the editor-in-chief of Esquire, read something I’d written for the Toronto Star and called …

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reading In Our Time, Susan Brownmiller

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 …

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from Slow Motion: changing masculinities, changing men, Lynne Segal

“The question of why it is men, and most often fathers or step-fathers, who sexually abuse children is not addressed [in recent books on fathering].” p55 “And far from criticizing women for failing to satisfy men’s needs, feminists … question whence these ‘needs’ derive, and whether these needs themselves should not be seen as the …

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Use protection. Use contraception. A HUGE difference.

When we talk to/about men and condoms, we say ‘Use protection’, but when we talk to/about women about various options, we say ‘Use contraception’.  The difference is NOT insignificant. In the second case, we’re talking about preventing conception, about not becoming pregnant, about not becoming a parent. In the first case, we’re talking about protection …

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