notes and quotes from Victoria Smith’s Hags

“… equivalent numbers of middle-aged men are not getting themselves treated in order to look less angry, aggressive, or miserable.”  p49

“When female bodies deviate from the paths set by male ones, this is till treated as a design flaw …  We need different ways of organizing education, work, and relationships to accommodate specifically female needs.  Workplace accommodations are ‘special treatment’; the front-loading of education and career progression into the life stage during which one might also get pregnant cannot be questioned.” p76

Right.  And isn’t justice supposed to compensate for bad luck?  Both male and female choose to reproduce, but it’s just the female’s bad luck that the thing grows in her body, not his.

“Women are penalized towards the end of life for having been progressively exploited at earlier life stages.” p97  (re wages)

“… during the 2020 lockdowns women’s home work involved far more interruptions for domestic and care work, ‘irrespective of [the couples’] pre-lockdown relative pay’ …” p98

“You know what men could do that would ‘dispel the myth of a binary existence’?  Do the laundry.  Wash the dishes.  Do the cooking …  Do some of their family’s emotional labour … Now THAT would be revolutionary.” Gia Milinovich  p104

“… men are progressively stealing time and money from women”  p106

“People find it particularly shocking when a woman refuses to be kind: there’s something unnatural, offensive about a female mouth declaring that the limits of her care are here and she will not be giving any more.”  Sarah Ditum p116

“For younger women, the belief that you are destined for greatness … relies on the conviction that older women were never really worth it, and that you will never be them.” p133

“women who began their adult life assuming their sex didn’t matter can be shocked to find that, actually, it matters a great deal.” p141

And men who made a similar assumption remain clueless, have yet to be shocked.  (Tell them to read What Happened to Tom.  And about those two people, one male and one female, who accidentally switched email accounts and found response to them, their work, waaaaay different …)

“Imagine we lived in a time in which there was no Pornhub, no OnlyFans, no revenge porn, no mega brothels, no normalization of prostitution as a way for female students to fund university courses.  No choking and hitting as ‘standard’ sex, no ‘rough sex’ defences, no child sex dolls on Amazon, no exponential rise in sexual assaults in schools. …” p159

I don’t have to imagine it.  I lived then.  I was a girl, a teenager, a young adult then.  A popular book was The Joy of Sex.  The Hite Report.  Masters and Johnson.

And I’m appalled at the present.  HOW THE FUCK DID WE GET HERE — TO ALL THAT?

“there is no male equivalent of the scold’s bridle, no history of women using ‘nagging’ as an excuse for slaughtering their husbands, no stories of great civilizations in which women forbade men from speaking at political assemblies.”  p209

re being at the YWCA … p227

“That in Salem widows were allowed to own property outright may have been the reason that the witch hunt there was especially intense.”  Barstow  p261

Interesting.

“Until 2018, the murders of women over the age of fifty-nine were not included in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.” p276

WHAT?

Share

advertising spending

“All 50,000 workers at the Yue Yen Nike Factory in China would have to work for 19 years to earn what Nike spends on advertising in one year.”  No Logo, Naomi Klein  (p352)

“According to the 1998 United Nations Human Development Report, the growth in global ad spending ‘now outpaces the growth of the world economy by one-third.'” No Logo, Naomi Klein (p8-9)

In 1998, the overall ad expenditures n the U.S. were $200 billion.  Which was (and still is) more than the GDP of most countries.

Share

Covering Viagra, But Not Birth Control

“In response to the “informed consent” bill the Kentucky House passed on January 28th, which requires women to consult a doctor–by video conference or in person–at least 24 hours before having an abortion, Kentucky state representative Mary Lou Marzian proposed a rather tongue-in-cheek bill of her own: a law requiring women to approve their husband’s request for Viagra, and making only married men eligible to receive the drug.”

Great idea!

Share

Seems to be a bit heavy on the killing … Ya think?

 

Share

God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways …

Share

“Bear, because If I got attacked by a bear people would believe me.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/us/man-bear-safety-tiktok-question-cec/index.html

Share

Man or Bear?

Read esp from “I need to get away …”

Share

If men could get pregnant …

“She glances down at the members of Parliament strolling in across the pea-green carpet below. Suits, bald heads, and shoes shinier than mirrors. The men who never in their lives had to worry about getting pregnant, dying in childbirth, or trying to access an abortion within their own restrictive system.” Looking for Jane, Heather Marshall (p140)

Indeed. If men could get pregnant– That might have been the single most thing that would have changed everything …

Share

“clear, coherent, willing, and ongoing”

Read the whole article here:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/university-montana-rape-sexual-assault-experiment-education-training

 

Share

Identity Politics vs. The Law of Identity

Very nice essay here!

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Identity+Politics+vs.+the+Law+of+Identity.-a0555411046

 

Share