I finally figured it out — why the men in my neighborhood react with such escalated lack of consideration whenever I ask them, politely, to limit their noise. I’ve asked snowmobilers who are out racing around the lake and having a good time going VROOM VROOM to please just turn around a few seconds before …
Category: gender issues
Sep 12 2018
Football takes precedence over climate refugees
People are fleeing for their lives from North and South Carolina, but there may not be enough rooms in hotels because — football. Apparently there’s a (male) game scheduled for play and (mostly male) people have come to watch. Clear evidence of the male obsession with competition having a stranglehold — wait, the hurricane itself …
Sep 12 2018
“The Adult Market”
What’s adult about forcing someone to do something she doesn’t really want to do? What’s adult about doing sexual things to children? What’s adult about humiliating another person? What’s adult about hurting another person? We should call it what it is. The psychopathic sociopathic misogynist market. The sick fucks market. (I’d intended …
Sep 12 2018
Women Writing Science Fiction as Men — why bother?
I’ve just finished reading Mike Resnick’s collections Women Writing Science Fiction as Men and Men Writing Science Fiction as Women. There were two rules for submissions to the anthologies: “First, each story had to be told in the first person of a man [woman]; and second, if changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria [or …
Aug 29 2018
Gretel, by Chris Wind
Gretel, by Chris Wind (from Snow White Gets Her Say) www.chriswind.net We read fables in school to teach us a lesson. And we read fairy tales at bedtime to put us asleep. And indeed they do: especially those of us, a full half of the human species, who are lulled lower and lower into a …
Aug 24 2018
13 Reasons Why: How to Make a Movie (and maybe Write a Novel *) without acknowledging the Elephant in the Room
So I’ve just finished watching 13 Reasons Why (Netflix) and am struck by the completely unacknowledged elephant in the room. Not one character acknowledges that almost all of the problems leading to Hannah’s suicide stem from sexism and its many tumours – misogyny, male entitlement, male privilege, hypersexualization, objectification, the rape culture, etc., etc., etc. …
Aug 22 2018
Men and Illegal Words
Lying is illegal when economic interests are at stake: libel, slander, fraud, misrepresentation, false advertising.* Why isn’t it illegal otherwise? Why is loss of income more subject to compensation than, say, loss of self-esteem (which may, of course, result in loss of income)? And words are illegal when physical violence is involved: uttering threats, ‘fighting …
Aug 22 2018
The Grammar of Male Violence – quick perception-changing read
Read this (takes a couple minutes) and your perceptions will be forever changed: http://www.ncdsv.org/images/GrammarofMaleViolence_9-10-2004.pdf
Aug 20 2018
Responding to Wolf-Whistles
Many men will wolf-whistle at any woman.* So it’s not a special insult toward the woman in question (yes, men, wolf-whistles are insulting when they occur in everyday contexts—because they emphasize our sexuality when we’re trying to be seen for our personhood and our various competencies; it thus reduces us to sexual objects) (a wolf-whistle …
Aug 15 2018
Sex and Salespeople
Given that the people who use washers, dryers, ovens, dishwashers, and the like are usually female, I find it puzzling that the people who sell these items are usually male. Especially because it’s inconsistent with the rest of the sales world, in which men tend to sell things men use, such as hardware and men’s …
fiction
