being a girl, pt 2

i'm totally bloated. and i have a date tonight. niice.

but this isn't about that.
if you haven't noticed, this week is not shaping up to be good to a girl.

for instance, if you've discovered that you're getting paid less than your male counterpart because you have ovaries and he has testicles (which somehow means that he needs his whole dollar and you don't - you only need .77 cents because once you have a baby that clearly means you've lost all right to a full paycheck - or something asinine like that), then the SCOTUS has something to say to you: Shut the frak up!

and, if you're a girl who lives in montana and you'd like to continue using the Pill, well, there's a certain pharmacist who has a special message for you, too: too bad, you whore!

[update: and did you read about this? an intern sent me this news item last week and it just about made my head explode. a highschool girl gets gang raped then rescued by 3 other women at a college party and, for some reason, the DA decides not to press charges against the 8-10 guys who raped her for 'lack of evidence' even though their were plenty of witnesses, including the 17-year old girl who was raped! aargh! the comment thread is really good.]

being a girl

thanks to my friend L- who sent me this article about the woman who stonewalled the inquiry at the justice department: How Monica Goodling played the gender card. - By Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine although i read newspaper reports i haven't been all up in this story. (i have a job, you know!)

but it's a smart, savvy take on gender performance and how our public eye is still more comfortable and accommodating when women weaken themselves rather than stand from a position of strength. (which gives credence to that recent study about 'uppity' women being targets of sexual harrassment more frequently than women who adhere to traditional gender roles.)
...
speaking of being a girl, it's dating season (for good or bad.)

had drinks last week with a very naughty actor guy and yesterday had dinner with a divorced father of two who lived in the burbs. (thanks, eharmony. those 29 dimensions really know how to pick 'em!)

but i think the surprise of the weekend was running into an old boss of mine in the supermarket and, while we were chatting and catching up, suddenly thinking, 'dude. he's totally hot.'

it's going to be a rough summer.

totally can't concentrate.

Roomie just reserved a villa in italy for next year!

we're going with a bunch of friends!
italy!
tuscany!
villa!
wine!
cheese!
pasta!
vistas!
i have to learn italian!

all of us are in a tizzy of planning (wardrobes, activities, day trips, food, music, wardrobes.) we haven't been able to work sensibly for the past hour.

dude. this is completely better than the cocktail date i have planned for tonight.

when it comes to women getting killed, the MSM is a little slow on the uptake

this is the front page story of today's paper: Iraqi girl's horrific death | Chicago Tribune.

this is the story when i first read about it on may 8 - on feministing. in between these two stories are 10 days of virtual silence - 10 days for a horrific stoning of a girl to make it to our mainstream, 'the pussycat dolls are feminist,' eyes.

in the trib article we have this reaction:

"Kurds, who include Yazidis, suspect Sunni Arabs of circulating the gruesome images to fuel anger against Yazidis and undermine the Kurdish community, which exercises a degree of autonomy in northern Iraq and is seeking more.

"It seems they are trying to make it big for political purposes," said Mohsen Gargari, a Kurdish member of parliament.

In an interview, he and two other Kurdish lawmakers condemned Aswad's killing. But they noted that in February a Sunni woman had been killed by relatives for having a relationship with a Yazidi man. "Nobody talked about it. Nobody filmed it or turned it into a big issue," he said."

in other words, it's 'normal' for this to happen, it happens all the time (over there), it's what happens to women and it's not about how women are still invisible and vulnerable and killed in our world because they're women, but about political power structures scoring points off other political power structures. it's about those people and their culture.

but 10 days before this article, samhita at feministing had this take and put the focus right back on the issue at hand - it's not about culture or religion, it's about patriarchy:

"Violence of this kind is a production of male ego and woman-hate and this truth is pitifully disguised when justified through religious or cultural circumstances. There is no cultural defense when it comes to mob mentality, woman-hate and violent murder. Unless, you want to talk about the global culture of patriarchy.

As I browsed articles, questions of whether or not the woman had converted to Islam, or whether or not it was just an honor killing, or if she fell in love with the wrong man, were used as possible explanations. As though any of those reasons can justify such a hideous display of violence."

i spoke with a hate crime investigator a couple of weeks ago and he said he didn't understand why crimes against women weren't called hate crimes. he said, 'i go into a neighborhood and this woman has been attacked by her husband or a boyfriend or a guy off the street - we've been called but there's nothing we can do. her being a woman doesn't give her the protection that the other categories of discrimination would give - even though we see crimes against women surging and we know they're targets because they're women.' i was surprised at his reaction. i honestly didn't think a man would get it. i wish more got it.

one of the demonstrators in the kurdistan protest carried a banner that said honor killings were terrorist acts against women. i wonder what the world would look like of women the world over began to fight against this kind of terror.

r. kelly: narsty ped

R. Kelly to magazine: 'I'm the Martin Luther King' :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State

if i had to compile a list of the most egregious women-hating men who make me gag, i think i'd put kelly right on up there with joe francis, jailed sleazebag. come on, 14 counts of child pornography??

i know there are black women who are disgusted by r. kelly but i wonder at the deafening silence coming from black male activists who don't call out kelly for being what he is: a nasty sexual predator.

Jerry Falwell: meh

Jerry Falwell, Leading Religious Conservative, Dies at 73 - New York Times.

"I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, USA Today Chat, quoted from The Religious Freedom Coalition, "The Two faces of Jerry Falwell"

'god-ordained minorities.' ah, that jerry. whatta guy.

manly men for god and nation

please, sweet baby jesus, tell me this isn't true:

What can we say about a country so anxiously hypermasculine that it can give rise to Godmen, a muscular-Christianity movement that seeks to lure Real Men back to church with services that feature guys bending metal wrenches with their bare hands and leaders exulting, "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!"

read the article here.

all clear!

my ob gyn called today to let me know that my irregular pap is all clear! whoo hoo! the biopsies they took are clear, too! more whoo hoo!

i've been so worried about my fibroid (aka, Agatha) that i totally forgot i had a weird pap. so: no std's. no cervical weirdnesses (as of right now). just one poolball-sized fibroid to be eradicated.

life's good.

(oh, and i broke down and re-upped with eHarmony. frakking commercials!)

when law school students run amok

fascinating.
i wonder how you'd design an experiment to see how fast it takes for a group of guys to totally devolve into a pack of Lord of the Flies-ish anti-semitic, misogynist racists with rape fantasies.

i mean, does the transformation from clean cut ordinary dude to spittle-covered savage take an average of 24 hours? two weeks? a year? or, is it just something that occurs instantaneously whenever a bunch of them gather on an anonymous chat board?

Bitch Ph.D. writes about it here.

and if any of my law grad friends are out there, have you even heard of this board? what's up with that?!

the onion: smarter about the current state of choice feminism than most feminists

Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

my favorite part (other than the whole thing):

Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today's feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word "Hoochie" spelled in glitter.

"Don't tell this bitch what to do," said Kari Eastley, 24, a participant in the Oberlin study and, according to one of her T-shirts, a "Slut Goddess." "I wear what I want when I want, and no man is going to tell me otherwise. We're talking Pussy Power, baby."

and, in an eerie echo of linda hirshman's main thesis in her manifesto, Get to Work!, there's this part:

Klein said empowerment is now accessible to women who were long excluded.

"Not every woman can become a physicist or lobby to stop a foundry from dumping dangerous metals into the creek her children swim in," Klein said. "Although these actions are incredible, they marginalize the majority of women who are unable to, or just don't particularly care to, achieve such things. Fortunately for the less impressive among us, a new strain of feminism has emerged in which mundane activities are championed as proud, bold assertions of independence from oppressive patriarchal hegemony."

i bow to the onion. this piece is a fantastic skewering of how the women's movement has been rendered banal by the deliberate misreading of 'the personal is political.' bowing bowing bowing.



[the Big Idea in hirshman's book:

"The Opt-Out Revolution may be in reality only a leveling off, but in this context it is the end of the beginning. Deafened by choice, here's the moral analysis these women never heard: The family - with its repetitious, socially-invisible, physical tasks - is a necessary part of life and has obvious emotional and immediate rewards, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust." (p.24-25)]

ah, the female gaze

it's gettin' all springtime everywhere, and i don't know about you, but my sap is running. (it's running nowhere, but that's another, more private, post.)

yesterday, the roomie (who is, incidentally, enjoying her unemployment more than a normal human being should) went to Artopolis with a girl friend of ours. she saw some awesome art and came home swooning about industrial, metal furniture that she wants for our new place (when that happens, i'll let you know) but then the swooning over furniture evaporated when she started ranting about all the female nudes all over the place:

roomie: i couldn't believe it! i mean, if i saw one more nipple i was gonna die. painting after painting, statue after statue, naked women! i mean, what the hell?! even the female artists - all their feminist painting and crap and STILL ONLY NAKED WOMEN! i started to get seriously pissed off.

ding: hm. (keeping her mouth shut because roomie gets mad when ding mentions 'patriarchy.')

roomie: for the love of god, show me some naked men! where where the naked men? oh, yeah, over by the sensual masculine gay art! arrgh! you know? and, seriously, where do they expect me to mount a wall length painting of some naked chick and her pudenda? my dining room?!



anyway, Where Sheelzebub indulges in the female gaze at Pandagon.

of course, any and all beefcake suggestions are welcome down in comments.

heh.