(Thought I’d better post this one before the new season in case she DOES leave him!) Is anyone else really really disturbed by Amy Farrah Fowler’s character on The Big Bang Theory? She is so intelligent, has a Ph.D., is a neurobiologist, and yet she stays in a relationship with Sheldon Cooper, the most …
Category: popular culture
Aug 22 2013
The Little Birdies
So I’m out walking today, and as I pass a neighbour tending his bird feeder, I wave. And the guy calls out to me “I’m feeding some seed to the little birdies!” The little birdies? What am I, twelve? No, I’m female. (I have a hard time believing that he would’ve said the same thing …
Aug 16 2013
Sex and So You Think You Can Dance
When So You Think You Can Dance first started, they had one winner. In season 9, they decided to have two winners: one male and one female. I thought it was because they realized the odds were stacked in favour of male dancers since most of the viewers/voters were female (and, presumably, heterosexual) (and, presumably, …
Jul 30 2013
Parents furious? Please.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/01/15/parents-furious-after-young-boys-suspended-after-playing-with-imaginary-weapon/ I’d be uncomfortable around any child who enjoyed pretending to kill–anything. Especially if that child was going to grow up to be a man, was going to be flooded with testosterone for several years. I’d also be uncomfortable around any adult who considered that behavior “a game”.
Jul 25 2013
Bare Breasts: Objections and Replies
[I wrote this piece back in the early 90s when Gwen Jacobs did her thing (yay, Gwen!), but apparently it all still needs to be said. A couple years ago, I was ‘spoken to’ by a neighbour for taking my shirt off on a hot summer day when I was out kayaking. Most amusingly, I …
Jun 22 2013
Every Man, Woman, and Child
There’s an interesting phrase. Man, woman, and child: those are my options, are they? Identifying oneself by one’s sex is a prerequisite for adulthood: if I don’t want to identify myself by my sex, as either a man or a woman, I’m left with identifying myself as a child. How interesting. Actually, it explains a …
May 19 2013
Why aren’t more men insulted by the low standards we set for them?
If he changes a diaper, he’s father of the year. If he cooks something, anything, he’s a chef. If he marries, but otherwise continues to live pretty much as he has to that point, he’s suddenly respectable. If he continues to pay a child’s ball game into adulthood, he gets paid a six figure salary. …
Apr 21 2013
Barbie – great post at gendertrender
Great post here at gendertrender. https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/life-size-barbie-scary/ Is it wrong for me to love most the line “If Barbie was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours”?
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 07 2013
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 …
fiction
