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 …
Category: gender issues
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, …
Dec 24 2011
Bang Bang
Ya gotta love Christmas. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men, and record sales of toy guns. But, my friend says, her son, and all of his friends, will make a gun out of any old thing. The problem isn’t the toys. Okay, so it’s the boys. Seems they’re hardwired with a propensity toward killing. Why …
Nov 29 2011
Smile!
If I had a dollar for every time someone (i.e., a man) told me to smile, I’d be rich. (And if I had five dollars for every time that same someone did not tell a man to smile, I’d be really rich.) Why is it that women are told, are expected, to smile a lot? …
Nov 14 2011
King of the Castle
Octavia Butler got it right in Xenogenesis when the aliens identified one of our fatal flaws as that of being hierarchy-driven (they fixed us with a bit of genetic engineering) – but she failed to associate the flaw predominantly with males. And Steven Goldberg got it right in Why Men Rule when he explained that …
Oct 22 2011
Leadership?
Some time ago, I attended a “Women in Leadership” conference put on by one of Ontario’s larger unions. Wheat I learned there disillusioned two parts of me: the labour part and the feminist part.
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