People say that women can’t have, can’t combine, a family and a career, that it’s having family responsibilities that keeps them from advancement – the inability to work late or on weekends, the tendency to need time off to tend to kids… I’m not so sure. I’ve never had such competing obligations, and I don’t …
Category: gender issues
May 20 2012
Trust – the movie
I’m so bloody sick and tired of men who assume center stage is for them. The way the movie ends, and most of the way it plays out, it’s about the dad, about how he can’t deal with his failure to protect his daughter. Mom’s not quite so important, apparently, despite her greater empathy with …
May 07 2012
Walking Alone in a Park at Night
In a rape trial, that the woman was walking alone in a park at night has been considered relevant – presumably it’s a mitigating circumstance: the accused can be excused for thinking she wanted it if she was walking alone in a park at night. What!? Why? Why is it that a woman walking alone …
Apr 16 2012
Making Kids with AIDS
What has been glaringly absent in news stories about children with AIDS in Africa is comment about why there are so many children with AIDS. “We are going down,” a woman says, “Theft will go up, rape all over will be high. People – ” Wait a minute. Back up. “Rape all over will be …
Apr 10 2012
Grey’s Anatomy, Flashpoint, and Who knows how many others (I don’t – and this is why)
Why didn’t Bailey get the Chief of Surgery position? For the same reason Ed jokingly says to Greg, when he questions his rank, “Should I get you a dress?”—and they both laugh. Because in 2012 being a woman is (still) (STILL!) (STILL!) being subordinate. I love that on Grey’s Anatomy, so many main characters, surgeons every …
Apr 04 2012
Making Taxes Gender-Fair
Since men commit 90% of the crime, they should pay 90% of the tax that supports the judicial system. Prisons are expensive to build and maintain. As are prisoners – they don’t work while they’re in prison, so we have to support them. Then there’s the expense of the police forces and courts that get …
Mar 25 2012
The Soaps vs. The Game
While both ‘the soaps’ and ‘the game’ have been criticized as poor viewing choices, only the soaps have been dismissed as fluff. However, a close examination reveals that, in fact, the soaps have more heft than the game. In both cases,
Feb 19 2012
Boy Books
Boy books. You’re thinking The Boys’ Book of Trains and The Hardy Boys, right? I’m thinking most of the books I took in high school English. Consider Knowles’ A Separate Peace. Separate indeed. It’s set at a boys’ boarding school. The boys are obsessed with jumping out of a tree. This involves considerable risk of …
Feb 05 2012
The Superbowl: knock yourself out
So does anyone think someone’s going to get knocked out during this year’s Superbowl? It’s happened before. And frankly, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Just like that latest disgrace with our prisoners of war. I mean, consider the similarities:
Jan 17 2012
The Other Sex
Men, I mean. After all, they are the ones who define themselves in relation to us: to be a man is to be whatever is not to be a woman. If women are graceful, then to be graceful is feminine. A graceful man is effeminate. A real man is not graceful. He’s not necessarily clumsy, …
fiction
