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 …
Category: sexism
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 …
Sep 12 2013
Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men?
Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men? 1. Religious belief is more of an emotional thing than a cognitive thing. (Consider the fact that merely thinking about religious beliefs is usually sufficient to reveal they’re unwarranted.) And women are raised to be more emotional than cognitive; men are raised to …
Sep 04 2013
Why aren’t women funny?
Well, they are, of course. It’s just that many men don’t find them funny. Which is why many stand-up clubs (those managed by men) (that is, almost all of them) actually have a rule: only so many stand-ups on any given night can be women. Too many and they kill the night. But, of course, …
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 …
fiction
