So about this guy in Taiwan who drops his child in order to catch a foul ball at a baseball game… I don’t know whether to be more appalled at the man’s action or at the media’s framing of it. Am I appalled that we condition our males to value sports over parenting? That they’d …
Category: gender issues
Jan 01 2018
Toller Cranston on Janet Lynn
[obviously written a while ago, but this shit keeps happening…] Toller Cranston, as Janet Lynn takes the ice: “You wouldn’t know by looking at her that she’s a housewife and mother of three.” What? Would he have said of Kurt Browning, “You wouldn’t know by looking at him that he does stuff around the …
Dec 25 2017
I am Mary, Chris Wind
from Thus Saith Eve, by Chris Wind I am Mary mother of God. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now—it’s immortalized. I am indelibly identified by my relationship to a male: all of me has been denied, except that one part. And yet even that part has not been accorded full status: …
Dec 22 2017
The Last Man on Earth explains everything
The Last Man on Earth explains everything. But he’s too stupid, too infantile, and too self-centered, to know it. Which is exactly why he explains everything. 1. He enjoys knocking things over, breaking things, destroying things. He rams his grocery cart into a pyramid of cans. He rolls bowling balls into a row of …
Dec 17 2017
Artificial Intelligence Indeed (Ex Machina)
So I first heard of the movie Ex Machina when I read a review (by Chris DiCarlo) in Humanist Perspectives—and was so disgusted that I wrote a letter to the editor. Why? Because the reviewer had revealed his own misogyny by failing to address the elephant in the room: the fact that the body the …
Dec 13 2017
a couple poems from UnMythed, by Chris Wind
from UnMythed, by Chris Wind Narcissus she unwraps the traditional gifts: first, the brush-comb-and-mirror set, pale pink marbling with gilded edges— they lie heavy in her hand; then the jewelry box, gold and cream lined with velvet— it plays “Fascination” the new thirteen-year-old hands them back to her mother and says “Narcissus was a …
Dec 08 2017
The Waiting-for-the-Elevator Thing
So I’m sure this has happened at least once to every woman. You’re standing in front of an elevator, waiting for it, and a man comes up and presses the button. Oh is that what that’s for? I saw the button, with an upward-pointing arrow, and I understand that elevators go up, but you know, …
Dec 08 2017
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 …
Dec 04 2017
Imagine that …
…all males had to have their DNA on file with the government. …all newborns had to have their paternity established by law. …all males discovered to be fathers had their wages garnished at the source to support the mother of the child for six years (assuming she would be the one to be with the …
Nov 08 2017
Kids Behind the Wheel
The other day, I was walking on the gravel/dirt road I live on. It’s a back road that might see a dozen cars in a day. As one such car passed us, I noticed that a kid was at the wheel in dad’s lap. Proud dad, happy kid. What is it with that? Why, of …
fiction
