feminism
pharyngula | May 27, 2011I thought this was pretty funny.
But then I realized that this was the answer to the whole problem of the political assault on women by Republicans. If they don't give a damn about women's rights in the first place, we just have to reframe the whole question: Rick Perry and the whole lot of abortion-hatin', planned-parenthood-defundin', make-life-more-difficult-for-women patriarchal party-poopers are interfering with men's ability to get laid.
Put it in those terms, and I expect the party of plutocrats will turn right around. Nothing may be allowed to get in the way of a man and his sacred…
sa smith | May 15, 2011Amanda Marcotte, big internet name in skepticism and feminism just put up an article on The Guardian blag:The soft underbelly of the right's hard abs
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... I dont get it.
Or rather, I 'get it', but I find it distasteful, and I dont 'get' why she thought it was appropriate for her to post that.At first, the June cover of Men's Health seems par for the course for a magazine that aims to stoke male anxieties about physical perfection to sell products to men the same way that the beauty industry has done to women for decades:
Umm... Its not a magazine about knitting or fly fishing. Its a…
mikethemadbiologist | May 8, 2011We read about "the dumbest-ass things that any state could possibly do" according to one retired New Orleans judge to prevent prostitution:
In their neighborhoods, they are sometimes taunted with dirty looks and jeers. Their pictures hang on the walls of local community centers where their children and grandchildren play. And their names and addresses are listed in newspapers and mailed out on postcards to everyone in the neighborhood.
Landing a job or even finding a landlord willing to give them a place to stay is a challenge.
These women wear a scarlet letter -- rather, 11 letters --…
sastyk | April 27, 2011I don't know that I ever announced this on the blog, but I'm off tomorrow to NYC for an event run by CUNY Feminist Press - last fall they named me one of 40 Young Feminist Writers under 40 whose work on food and environmental issues was changing the way people think about women's issues. I didn't make it to the October Gala for family reasons, but I'm excited to head downstate tomorrow and meet the other folks!
I admit, I'm excited that the context that I've been working to bring to connect our energy history to the way gender roles have changed has been noticed! I've won a bunch of awards…
pharyngula | April 14, 2011I've got some flyin' to do — you'll be hearing from me after I arrive in Honolulu, with reports on sun, sand, and science from the West Coast Regional Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology all this coming weekend — but for now you can enjoy this fine article by Paula Kirby. If there were any sense and justice in the world, the next atheist meeting I attend would be populated entirely with angry women looking to overthrow the temples of the patriarchy.
pharyngula | April 8, 2011As a member of the professoriate, I like to think that we are egalitarian and do our very best to correct the social inequities that are so prevalent outside of our relatively benevolent, enlightened institutions. Only…not. It looks like women get screwed over in academia, too.
The gender gap in faculty pay cannot be explained completely by the long careers of male faculty members, the relative productivity of faculty members, or where male and female faculty members tend to work -- even if those and other factors are part of the picture, according to research being released this week at the…
pharyngula | March 25, 2011You would think Canadian universities would be particularly sensitive on the issue of discrimination against women scientists and engineers—it is, after all, where the École Polytechnique murders occurred in 1989 (major trigger warning! That is the coroners report, containing a detailed, dispassionate description of a man hunting down and butchering women), one of the most horrendous crimes against women in recent history, in which a gunman singled out women engineering students for execution, killing 14.
During this time, Lépine moved a little closer to the group of 9 girls who were standing…
sa smith | March 25, 2011Classic moment in ERV history:Me: *ranting to my mother about my interactions with a big-box-store veterinarian not understanding what 'platelets' are and letting smaller dogs attack him while he was waking up from anesthesia when he was getting neutered and my inability to get across to the 'vet' how FUCKING STUPID her actions were*
Mom: Now honey, you know you dont deal well with those kinds of people.
Me: *stops mid rant*... What kind of people?
Mom: ... You know. Stupid people.
I dont. Some people are just so stupid I honestly cant figure out how they know how to 'feed themselves' or '…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2011A recent evaluation of M.I.T.'s efforts to redress the underrepresentation of women on its faculty has been discussed widely on the bloggysphere. I don't have much to add, except that this section from the NY Times' coverage leapt out at me:
Because it has now become all but the rule that every committee must include a woman, and there are still relatively few women on the faculty, female professors say they are losing up to half of their research time, as well as the outside consultancies that earn their male colleagues a lot of money.
I guess we will have finally reached gender equality…
mikethemadbiologist | March 19, 2011Even movie villians aren't this twisted. And, no, I'm not making this up (italics mine):
Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?
In testimony to a House taxation…
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2011Last week, I described how the Texas Republican party proposed legislation that would require a woman who wants to have an abortion to receive a vaginal exam (two actually). Well, the Texas Democrats at least fought back (which is more than the national Dems ever do):
Houston state representative Harold Dutton got the most coverage for repeatedly making the point that "pro-lifers" drop all pretense of caring about life the second it can't be used to punish sexually active women. In rapid order, he introduced three amendments that were tabled by the majority, who really didn't want to…
pharyngula | March 10, 2011Admit it. You all have wanted to see Daniel Craig in a dress.
That's a fantastically effective spot, and also…Craig looks damned good in that dress.
Another interesting thing is that the MRAs are enraged by it. I did think this comment was amusing:
Craig's Bond is faggy anyway.
Sean Connery not only would've NEVER posed for these drag pics, he would've told the gay publicist to "sod off and suck my knob, mate."
Then punched him.
So the MRA masculine ideal is violence and angrily demanding gay sex? I am not surprised.
(Warning: if you follow that link, it contains links to the Spearhead, a…
gregladen | March 8, 2011Courtney Martin examines the perennially loaded word "feminism" in this personal and heartfelt talk. She talks through the three essential paradoxes of her generation's quest to define the term for themselves.
sastyk | March 8, 2011Today is the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day, founded to celebrate the achievements of women. Founded in Europe to advocate for greater participation of women in the public sphere, International Women's Day focuses heavily on those public sphere accomplishments of women - as political leaders, in education, in activism. Those are important and powerful things, the more important because most of us still have visceral memory of women's past. Consider this Guardian interview with women talking about what has changed in their lifetimes.
At the same time that we speak about the…
pharyngula | March 8, 2011Several readers have noticed that lately we've had a plague of whiny, entitled, childish Men's Rights Activists in the comments. They're usually clueless and petty and annoying…and now I've found out why. And the source of my information is unimpeachable: it's Whirled Nut Daily.
According to Kay Hymowitz, whose new book, "Manning Up," was featured prominently in the Wall Street Journal in February, "legions of frustrated young women" are dealing with a new crisis in America: modern men refuse to grow up.
It appears the 21st-century male is living a kind of extended adolescence. In the past…
mikethemadbiologist | March 5, 2011Kirsten Powers attempts to debunk the claim that increased access to contraception prevents unwanted abortions:
In the U.S., the story isn't much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant. For the 46 percent who had not used contraception, 33 percent had perceived themselves…
mikethemadbiologist | February 10, 2011There's a very interesting Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences article, "Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science" that's available to the public. Andrew Moseman summarizes it quite well:
...Ceci and Williams say, external and social factors--some matters of choice, some not--are the major ones hindering women in science today. Those factors include the much-discussed, such as the fact that a mother with young kids is still expected to stay on the fast tenure track, and the less-obvious, such as caring for aging parents or following a spouse who gets…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2011...getting an abortion. Because that seems to be the message from the presidents of the third-year class of the UC Davis veterinary school--with the apparent approval of the Chair of the Department of Medicine & Epidemiology. By way of ScienceBlogling Dr. Isis, the enlightened solons:
Dear Colleagues,
One of our classmates recently gave birth and will be out of class for an unknown period of time. This means she will undoubtedly miss one, or more, or all quizzes in VMD 444. Dr. Feldman is not sure how to handle this and has requested the class give input and vote. He has provided us…
sastyk | December 17, 2010If you haven't seen this video by Richard Heinberg and the Post Carbon Institute, you should. In a lot of ways it is an excellent summary of the history of fossil fuels, entertainingly and creatively done. In some ways, it is extremely valuable as a basic educational piece.
I'm very impressed with the clarity of this video, but it does have an odd gap in it - all of the human history of 300 years of fossil fuels doesn't have a single female person in it - not one. Women are addressed by implication when population is mentioned - but all the little hand-drawn people are men. There is a…
pharyngula | December 9, 2010It's got to be rough. On the one hand, you've got monsters like Tucker Max or Joe Francis (the Girls Gone Wild guy) hitting on you hard, expecting you to respond with instinctive lordosis so they can grapple you in amplexus; and on the other hand you've got the Nice Guys, who think that buttering you up with smarm will generate exactly the same response. Jezebel provides us with an example of the latter behavior. This guy is creepy, be warned.
So, whatever happened to the idea of just treating women as people?