[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 …
Category: sexism
Jul 23 2013
“Royal Male”
Noticed the headline while I was standing in the check-out at the grocery store today: “ROYAL MALE”. Right. It could have half a brain, but hey, as long as it’s MALE.
Jun 11 2013
Short Men
I recently watched, with horrified amusement, a tv program about short men who choose to undergo excruciatingly painful surgical procedures (which basically involve breaking their legs and then keeping the bones slightly apart while they mend) in order to become a few inches taller. Asked why they would choose to undergo such a drastic, and …
Jun 02 2013
The Gender of Business
Business is male. Make no mistake. Everything about it smacks of the male mentality. First, the obsession with competition. You have to be #1, you have to outcompete your competition. So hierarchy, rank, is everything. As is an adversarial attitude. It doesn’t have to be that way. Business could be a huge network of co-operative …
May 03 2013
Being Josh (Monday Night Basketball)
It’s Monday night basketball, an all-comers pick-up game, supposed to be fun and a good sweat. But week after week I steel myself against the anger, the frustration of not knowing how to correct the problem, and the despair of not being able to even begin to do just that. Eventually it happens: this time …
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 12 2013
What’s so funny about a man getting pregnant?
I recently read The Fourth Procedure by Stanley Pottinger, in which, during a surgical procedure, a man is given a uterus containing a fertilized egg. He is enraged when he finds out, afraid that if it becomes public knowledge he’ll be a laughingstock. Turns out he’s right. But I don’t get it. What’s so funny …
Mar 29 2013
Redundant Women
I just read an article about the Brontes that mentioned “redundant women”. Apparently in 19thC Britain, there was such a male/female ‘imbalance’ in the population that about 500,000 women would remain unmarried. They were called “redundant” women and one of the big questions of the day was what to do with them. Geezus.
Mar 13 2013
Pretty Frickin’ Amazing.
Check out this video, “Pretty” by Katie Makkai: Pretty – Katie Makkai
Feb 14 2013
Mr. and Ms.
I’m in this world, okay, and the people identify each other by sex. All the time. It’s like ‘Female Person Smith’ and ‘Male Person Brown’ or ‘Person-with-Uterus Smith’ and ‘Person-with-Penis Brown’ – I don’t know the exact translation. But sex-identity is a mandatory prefix. They distinguish males from females. Before they do everything else. Before …
fiction
