Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff. I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve. I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent minds, and perhaps a certain specific ability to boot. Continue reading
Apr 25 2013
On “hitting on”
I bet a man came up with that term as well.
But what most intrigues me here is how? I mean, what exactly made the first man to introduce the term think that approaching a woman for, what, a date? sex? was like hitting (on) her???
It does not bode well when the very initiation of a relationship is imbued with violence even in the terminology.
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 19 2013
People Skills
I’ve always been rather proud of not having any ‘people skills’. Of not being able to ‘talk to people’, smooth things over, talk them out of their way of seeing things, talk them over to my way, persuade, influence, manipulate, control. No wonder supervisors, salespeople, and customer relations people need good people skills. And no wonder I resent them: I’ve always been the subordinate, the consumer, the customer – I’m the one the people skills are used on.
Of course, subordinates are expected to have good people skills too, but what’s meant then is the ability to get along, follow, fold, obey. And, well, as I said, I’m not very good at that.
But no, no, I’m told, you’ve got it all wrong. Continue reading
Apr 18 2013
On “lurking”
So I’m noticing that although there are a lot of registered users here, no one’s commenting. And that’s cool. I guess everyone’s just lurking. Wait a minute. LURKING?? Who the fuck came up with that name for sitting quietly at the edge of the room, just listening to what’s being said, deciding not to speak up until one has something worthwhile to contribute?
Lurking is what one does prior to invading, prior to breaking and entering. Or, as the case may be here, entering and breaking.
So, yeah, I’m gonna go with “A MAN came up with ‘LURKING’.”
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 about a man getting pregnant?
Apr 12 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. I’ll give one of each: Continue reading
Apr 07 2013
King of the Castle
Octavia Butler got it right in Xenogenesis when the aliens identified one of our fatal flaws as that of being hierarchy-driven (they fixed us with a bit of genetic engineering) – but she failed to associate the flaw predominantly with males.
And Steven Goldberg got it right in Why Men Rule when he explained that men are genetically predisposed to hierarchy (fetal masculinization of the central nervous system renders males more sensitive to the dominance-related properties of testosterone) – but he presented that as an explanation for why men rule and not also for why men kill.
And Arthur Koestler got it right in The Call Girls when, recognizing that the survival of the human species is unlikely, a select group of geniuses meet at a special ‘Approaches to Survival’ symposium (and fail to agree on a survival plan) – but I’m not sure he realized (oh of course he did) that one of his character’s early reference to a previous symposium on ‘Hierarchic Order in Primate Societies’ was foreshadowing.
The reason the human species will not survive is simple: Continue reading
Apr 03 2013
In Commemoration of the Holocaust
I’m not saying it didn’t happen.
I’m not saying that, in any way, it was okay.
But I’d like to point out that a devout Jew would’ve done, would do, the same thing to the Germans – if God told him to.
‘Oh but God would never command such a thing.’
Take a better look at your Bible: Continue reading
Apr 02 2013
Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t)
Is it physiological? Do males produce a larger amount of saliva? Even so, why the need to spit it out? Why not just swallow it?
Would that remind them of swallowing semen? Which is female, effeminate, gay? (I’ll ignore for the moment the assumption that all, or even most, women swallow semen.)
But no, that can’t be right: it seems too…too reasoned. Spitting seems to be more of a reflex, a habit, a that’s-the-way-I-was-raised sort of thing, a cultural thing, a subcultural thing: to spit is to be manly. Little boys spit to appear grown up. Grown up men. So what’s the connection between spitting and masculinity? Continue reading
fiction
