At one time, bank tellers and secretaries had a certain prestige – the time when such positions were held by men. Schoolteachers used to be schoolmasters – before women entered the classroom. People who boast that many doctors in Russia are women fail to mention that doctoring in Russia, well, someone’s gotta do it. The …
Category: gender issues
Apr 25 2013
Dr. Frankenstein, meet Dr. Spock
Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff. I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve. I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent …
Apr 25 2013
On “hitting on”
I bet a man came up with that term as well. But what most intrigues me here is how? I mean, what exactly made the first man to introduce the term think that approaching a woman for, what, a date? sex? was like hitting (on) her??? It does not bode well when the very initiation …
Apr 18 2013
On “lurking”
So I’m noticing that although there are a lot of registered users here, no one’s commenting. And that’s cool. I guess everyone’s just lurking. Wait a minute. LURKING?? Who the fuck came up with that name for sitting quietly at the edge of the room, just listening to what’s being said, deciding not to speak …
Apr 12 2013
Marriage: A Sexist Affair
Marriage, by its very (traditional) definition, is a sexist affair: it involves one of each sex, one male and one female. And I suppose this is because, traditionally, the purpose of marriage was family: to start a family, to have and raise children. This view is fraught with questionable assumptions, glaring inconsistencies, and blatant errors. …
Mar 29 2013
Redundant Women
I just read an article about the Brontes that mentioned “redundant women”. Apparently in 19thC Britain, there was such a male/female ‘imbalance’ in the population that about 500,000 women would remain unmarried. They were called “redundant” women and one of the big questions of the day was what to do with them. Geezus.
Mar 25 2013
Freakonomics Indeed
I remember when I first read Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics, in which they present an astounding connection between access to abortion and crime: twenty years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. crime rate dropped. Astounding indeed. That men are so surprised by that! I mean, just how clueless are you guys? About the power, the …
Mar 20 2013
Whose Violence?
I initially wrote this piece in the mid-1990s. It was published in Philosophy Now in 1999 when I was a columnist there. Ten years later, in 2010, I posted it at my other blog; it seemed required. Another three years later, I’m posting it again, here, because the people in power in mainstream media apparently …
Mar 13 2013
Pretty Frickin’ Amazing.
Check out this video, “Pretty” by Katie Makkai: Pretty – Katie Makkai
Mar 09 2013
“And son? Take care of your mom while I’m gone.”
Excuse me? I don’t need a child to take care of me. I know, he might reply, I’m just trying to – trying to what? Teach him to be a man? Teach him that grown women need looking after? And that he, as the one with the penis, is just the person to do it?
fiction
