Apr 05 2022
Where will you draw a line?
Where will you draw the line?
I know I’m going to sound like a prude, but fuck it. I’m not. (And evidence for that claim falls into the ‘too much information’ category.) So, I’m going to ask:
If men want you to wear shoes with high heels and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear bras designed to push up your breasts and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear clingy leotards/tights/leggings without a skirt and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear wide-necked shirts that fall off your shoulders and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear short shirts that expose your belly and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear tops with plunging necklines that expose your cleavage and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear halter tops that leave everything uncovered except your breasts and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear very short skirts that expose your bum when you bend over and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear thong bathing suits that leave your ass cheeks completely uncovered and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to wear pasties that leave your breasts completely uncovered and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
If men want you to be totally naked and it becomes fashionable to publicly sexualize yourself in that way, you’ll do it?
Where will you draw a line?
Mar 29 2022
An addendum to Ghodsee’s Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
Apparently many men fear that socialism will encourage parasites—people who won’t work because, due to socialism, everything they need will be paid for anyway. Hm. I suspect they’re thinking of people like themselves. Men would rather be unemployed than accept a job that’s beneath them. That is, jobs they consider fit only for immigrants or women. They’re the welfare bums.
Show me women who are freeloaders. Welfare moms? Explain to me how a woman can work if she has a child under six years old to look after. She’s supposed to leave it unattended for eight hours? She’s supposed to pay $10-$20/hour for daycare on a $10-$20/hour job? There would be nothing left for things like, I don’t know, food, clothing, and rent. Well, I hear some guy say, she shouldnt’ve gotten pregnant in the first place. No, YOU shouldn’t’ve fucked her. In the first place.
Mar 28 2022
Funny but true … new dictionary …
Jane Smith’s Translation Dictionary of Everyday Lies, Insults, Manipulations, and Clueless Comments
NOW AVAILABLE and FREE TO SITE VISITORS (just send a request, specifying your preference of epub or pdf)
Jane Smith is a character In my novel A Philosopher, a Psychologist, and an Extraterrestrial Walk into a Chocolate Bar (blurb below). And she started this dictionary. I’ve continued it. And everyone else is supposed to finish it. Well, add to it. (It’s unlikely it’ll ever be finished.) Send additions – new definitions to the entries already listed and/or completely new entries – for future editions to me at . (Additionally, you can add your entries to the tumblr page I set up, hoping it would become viral like “Everyday Sexism” and “Why I’m a Feminist” and #MeToo. Sadly, it did not.)
Jane also started a list titled “And here’s something else that would never happen to a man …” – which I include at the end of the dictionary (it’s also in Sexist Shit that Pisses Me Off, 2e). I created a tumblr page for this as well, similarly hoping it would become viral, but, similarly, it did not. Pity. (But it’s not too late! Add your additions to the page and send them to me for future editions of the Dictionary.)
*
A Philosopher, a Psychologist, and an Extraterrestrial Walk into a Chocolate Bar: When a self-appointed independent activist and her office-temp-with-a-doctorate buddy embark on a quest for a chocolate bar (a bar that serves not alcohol, but chocolate – in all its deliciously decadent forms), they pick up a hitchhiking extraterrestrial who’s stopped on Earth to ask for directions. Trying to explain Earl (Earth), confronting sexism (rather like bashing your head against a jellyfish), and committing assorted outrageous acts and everyday rebellions, they help “X” find the information she needs to get back home – and go with her – to become chocolate bartenders. A (way) off-the-beaten-path first contact story.
Mar 16 2022
from Greta Thunberg’s speech – wow.
from her speech at the 2019 UN climate action summit in New York (just reading this now) (yeah, I know …)
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth – how dare you!”
(complete transcript here)
Mar 12 2022
Some great bits from Kate Manne’s Entitled
“Why, and how, do we regard many men’s potentially hurt feelings as so important, so sacrosanct? [She’s just described the common instance of women agreeing to sex so as not to be rude.] “And, relatedly, why do we regard women as so responsible for portecting and ministering to them?” p59
“[Hoffman and Tarzian] found that men received more pain medicatin than women … [W]omen were more likely to be given sedatives instead of pain medication. … more minor tranquilizers, antidepressants, and non-opioid analgesics than men … [B]oys were significantly more likely to be given codeine; girls, acetaminophen …” p79 And then she quotes Hoffman and Tarzian” “Women who seek help are less likely than men to be taken seriously when they report pain and are less likely to have their pain adequately treated.” p80 Surprise, right? Women being taken less seriously than men? Men being taken more seriously than women?
“Such woeful ignorance of pregnant bodies has not deterred many of those who continue to try to regulate them.” p103 She’s referring to the guy who thought that ‘the female body had a way of shutting the whole thing down in the case of rape’. (Wouldn’t that be nice?) And to another guy who thought the stomach was connected to the uterus. She goes on to say “There are evidently many men who feel entitled to regulate pregnant bodies without having the remotest idea about, or interest in learning, how they work.” p105 So well-put.
“As Oberman and Ball put it: ‘The novelty of prosecuting men for abortion_despite the sound legal footing of such charges—tells us something important about the way we have, until now, framed the debate. Boys will be boys, but women who get pregnant have behaved irresponsibly. We are so comfortable with regulating women’s sexual behavior, but we’re shocked by the idea of doing it to the men. … women don’t have unwanted pregnancies without them.'” [p108-9, my emphasis]
“… men often prefer unemployment to taking on jobs in nursing (for example, as a nurse’s assistant), elder care, or working as a home healthcare aide.” p128 showing that “Even paid care work among men is strikingly unpopular. Guess what she’s said about unpaid care work …
Mar 05 2022
COVID deaths – compared to …
It’s hard to get upset about 5 million people dying per year from COVID when more than twice that, 13 million, die each year die from air and water pollution.
And over 120 million have died of global warming as of 2000 according to WHO. (Can’t find stats for since then.)
Not seeing daily coverage of either of those facts. Nor a bunch of emergency restrictions on what can be put into the air and water …
Feb 27 2022
Knowledge? Truth?
So I went to get my COVID booster vaccine the other day, and I asked one of the attendants whether she knew the science, any statistical data, regarding my likelihood of experiencing side-effects (I’d had a rough go of it after the second dose and wondered whether I’d be in for the same with the third), and she simply replied “Oh, everyone’s different.”
Well, that certainly absolves one of the need, the responsibility, to actually learn anything about human biology, human chemistry, and psychology. We’re all unique little snowflakes, so you can’t really know anything about anyone … Hell, maybe you can’t really know anything about anything.
And then, one of the people who’d just received the vaccine said, helpfully, that he didn’t feel any side-effects.
Well, then. I guess I won’t either. Case closed. Seriously? I know, he was just trying to reassure me. But I was clearly asking for information. Apparently reassurance trumps actual knowledge. I’m reminded of the movie Don’t Look Up.
I wanted the facts. I asked for the facts. Not for what you believe or hope or want to be the case. Can no one handle the truth these days?
Feb 27 2022
On being wanted.
Also while reading James Morrow’s The Wine of Violence…
” … a world finally wanted his ideas.” (p119)
That stopped me. Because even academia, not just the world at large, had never wanted my ideas. Simply because they come from a female-embodied person.
Maybe that’s why ‘love’ is so much more important to women than to men. And so too marriage and kids. It’s the only way they get wanted. (I bet when you read the title of this post, you were thinking about being wanted emotionally, sexually … see?)
fiction
