Check it out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinchack/pointlessly-gendered-products Be sure to read the comments/captions. They’re great.
Category: sexism
Feb 23 2014
Dangerous Sports
I haven’t really kept up with the sexism in the Olympics, mostly because the nationalism bothers me so much I don’t even watch them anymore, but I suspect there are still some sports in which women aren’t allowed to compete. Perhaps because of the tired, old, and fucking patronizing ‘You could get hurt!’ This from …
Feb 02 2014
Show a Little Initiative!
If you just do as you’re told, you don’t get promoted, you don’t get advanced up the ladder, because you’re not showing initiative. Yeah right. Every time I showed some initiative, I got fired. Or at least reprimanded. Then I realized that’s because there are different rules of advancement for men and women. Initiative in …
Jan 07 2014
Arrogance, I think
Fresh from the office of my supervisor who persists in gently giving me unsolicited advice, despite being neither older nor wiser, I’m struck by Rousseau’s tone (in his “Marriage”): “Extreme in all things, they [women] devote themselves to their play with greater zeal than boys. This is the second defect. This zeal must be kept …
Dec 27 2013
What’s wrong with being a slut?
slut, n. Slovenly woman, slattern slovenly, a. Personally untidy or dirty, careless and lazy, or unmethodical slattern, n. Sluttish woman Not what my mother meant when she called me a slut. For whatever else I am, I am tidy, clean, careful, industrious, and methodical. Quite methodical. So just what did she mean? I don’t know. …
Dec 18 2013
Let’s Talk about Sex
[This one’s a little old, as you can tell by the Salt-n-Pepa reference, but still relevant, I think. Sigh.] Disc jockeys generally come in two sexes: male and female. So what, you may think, sex doesn’t matter. Oh but it does, so sad to say. I used to deejay for weddings and other parties, and …
Oct 17 2013
The Wife
The Good Wife, The Trophy Wife, The First Wives Club…why in the 21st century do women continue to be so frequently identified as wives? That is, identified in relation to men? We don’t see a similar proliferation of tv shows and movies with “husband” in the title. The word is emasculating. It would be especially …
Oct 10 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. …
Oct 04 2013
School Crossing Signs
You’ve seen the signs I mean – silhouette figures of two children about to cross the road: one boy, one girl. (How do we tell? One’s wearing a skirt.) (That’d be the girl.) (Really, do most girls still wear skirts to school?) So, yes, let’s emphasize sex. Boy and Girl. Ms. and Mr. Nothing else …
fiction
