sexism

tags: I'm A Teabagger For Jesus, teabaggers, America, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, socialism,humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, social commentary, cultural observation, Edward Current, streaming video What would Jesus do to help America? In this video, William Current, one of my favorite social satirists, explains how he decided that he would be a Teabagger. No taxation without representation!
Reader Jason commented on my post about compulsory smiling thusly: I just wanted to thank everyone for the comments here. They've been enlightening... to be honest I had never heard of anyone being ordered to smile outside of greeter/public relation jobs (chalk it up to youthful naivete, I suppose). With that in mind when I first read the post it struck me as an overreaction to something minor, but it's hard to argue with a few dozen women from all over with the exact same stories and reactions. I don't know if I've ever been guilty of this behavior in my life (I hope not, though I am a…
On Terra Sigillata, Abel Pharmboy reports on "sporadic, worldwide shortages of Arimidex," a drug officially approved by the FDA for inhibiting hormonal transitions in breast cancer patients. But up to a thousand times more men use this drug than women, as a non-FDA-approved therapy for testosterone deficiency. Pharmboy wonders if men taking Arimidex has resulted in some women "facing shortages of a drug essential for their survival." On Christina's LIS Rant, Christina Pikas asks if men are at a professional disadvantage in women-dominated fields such as "Nursing, Librarianship, Elementary…
The things Zuska has to say often make me uncomfortable, and the way she says them often irritates the hell out of me. But I still read her blog, because she almost always makes me think about things in ways I hadn't before. Her post about the recent Lindsey Vonn Sports Illustrated cover is a great example of all of that. Rudeness makes me want to stop reading. The "d00dz", "ladybraned ladeez", "mansplaining", and generalized sarcasm and condescension that littered Zuska's post irritated the hell out of me. But after spending just a small amount of time on actually looking at the issue, I'…
On July 25, 1920 the English biophysicist Rosalind Franklin was born. She was instrumental in discovering the molecular structure of DNA, though her vital contributions were only posthumously acknowledged. After receiving her PhD from Cambridge in 1945 she worked as a research associate for John Randall at King's College in London. Beginning in early 1951 she took X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA that showed a helical form of the molecule, a finding confirmed by James Watson and Francis Crick who subsequently won the Nobel Prize for their DNA research. In lecture notes dated November…
A three part conversation between two women overheard on the University of Minnesota campus. Part 1 of conversation: "So, did you read that obnoxious post that that Isis the Scientist, that Goddess blogger, did and her yelling at ERV and all?" "Yeah, I did. What a bunch of stupid." "If you listen to Isis, all you get is 'misogyny this, misogyny that, he touched me, he looked at me, yadayadayada' but if you listen to ERV you get a whole different thing about what working in a lab is like." "Yeah, I know. S'all stupid shit." "You work in a lab, right?" "Yeah." "You're hot, right?" "Yes, baby,…
Since Flickr is being an ass these days and won't let me share images with you that they don't approve of, which includes just about everything I put on my blog and no doubt includes screen shots of ads that I am using to illustrate my points, you'll just have to accept that I am not misleading you if you can't see the offending ads themselves. Basically, if you take a peek at the ads in the top and right sidebar of this blog, you'll notice that Seed Media has revised their advertising policies recently. One of the results of that revision has been to run Google ads on both these blog…
The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science (Routledge, 2007), with its author Martha McCaughey. McCaughey is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of Women's Studies at Appalachian State University. Professor McCaughey's work fits at the intersections of gender, sexuality, science, technology, social movements, and the media. I first met her during her tenure at Virginia Tech, where she distinguished herself as a leading feminist scholar in science studies, an atypically…
... well, not really, you should not burn any book. But don't just leave this one around for your kids to accidentally read. Source of book.Hat tip
Sooooo....it appears some of you take your comics quite seriously. At least, should one be so foolish as to point out painfully obvious, boringly everyday occurrences of sexism. Danimal asks of Comrade Physioprof: "So you are saying the comic reflects real life?" What Physioprof said is this: "Every single one of the Foxtrots themselves represents absolute conformity to patriarchal gender norms. And the characters who are not part of the family who appear to violate those norms serve the patriarchal narrative purely as foils." Inasmuch as patriarchal gender norms represent Real LifeTM,…
I love the comic pages in the newspaper. Some of them are just mildly amusing, but some are bitingly funny and offer real social satire (Pearls Before Swine comes to mind here, as does Non Sequitur). But I was definitely not amused this past weekend when I read the April 19 strip of Foxtrot. In case you aren't able to view the strip: the first panel shows a string of numbers, below which is a key. Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a semi-complex mathematical formulation, which must be solved to yield the number, which in turn allows one to substitute letters for numbers in the…
At 3quarksdaily, Sam Kean has an interesting essay on the future of theoretical mathematics, whether computers capable of generating proofs will supplant human mathematicians, and what that will mean for the "beauty" of math: There's general consensus that really genius-level mathematics is beautiful--purely and uncorruptedly beautiful, the way colored light is, or angels. More particularly, it's regarded as beautiful in a way that science is not. With a few exceptions--Einstein's theories of relativity, string theory, maybe Newton and Darwin--no matter how much science impresses people, it…
Over at Fairer Science, at the end of an excellent rant about the uselessness of one-shot workshops, Pat Campbell writes: One other thing, if I see one more article about why there aren't more women in science that concludes "it's the children" I am going to run amuck. This one says "Women don't choose careers in math-intensive fields, such as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry, and higher mathematics, because they want the flexibility to raise children..." Say what? Good to know that it's only the math intensive fields; so friends if you want a science career and a…
I love Ursula K. le Guin's the Earthsea series, and recently finished reading the final novel, The Other Wind. Those who are familiar with the Earthsea books will know that among other topics, le Guin explores traditional gender roles, their change, and men's disparagement of women's power. Towards the end of The Other Wind, one of the characters, Tenar, observes How men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. Not as individuals, but women when they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another - then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps being…
Dan MacArthur has started a big discussion on whether or not the relationship between IQ and race should be studied. Inspired by a pair of essays for and against the idea it has created a pretty healthy debate among the sciencebloggers including Razib with whom I will likely never agree on this issue. For the record, I'm on the side of those like Richard Nisbett (for a good review of his analysis of race and the black white divide see here PDF) that genetics are a poor explanation for the divide. But this issue aside, why do I believe this is a still a bad idea to expend resources to…
I keep pandagon.net on my google reader. I don't agree with everything I read there, which is a good thing, but I do respect Amanda Marcotte's opinions (and they are always well-written). I must take some exception with her recent analysis of the octuplet fiasco. It's not just that I have a problem with blaming everything bad on Teh Patriarchy (which I do), but I think that sometimes dealing with patriarchy distracts from other real issues. Yes, sexism and patriarchy are important in society, but not everything is that simple. Let's take a look (emphasis mine): At this point in time, I…
You know, we catch a lot of flack around these parts for being too "political", and for straying away from "science". Well, that's a big load of crap, and two posts by Isis show why. It is impossible to separate politics from science from personal life, at least on one level. Now, perhaps I've become more conservative with age (although I doubt it), but certain parts of the discussion really disturbed me. The rhetoric turned to some classical 70s-80s feminist themes, which can be rather useful, but as with most ideologies, trying to hard to cram all the facts into the theoretical…
Jezebel proclaims: Dov Charney May Be More of a Scumbag than Anyone Realized, and I agree if the reporting on a sexual harassment case, Mary Nelson v. American Apparel, rings true (the opinion is unpublished, and I haven't obtained a copy yet). Charney is the founder of American Apparel, and has been the focus of several sexual harassment suits over the years for allegedly maintaining a sexually-charged work atmosphere. Over at Conde Nast, Karen Donovan reports: Female employees have filed three sexual harassment lawsuits against Charney. The last active suit was settled earlier this year,…
A number of us in the blogosphere have been outraged by Bush's Department of Health and Human Services' desire to put the arbitrary wants of doctors before the needs of patients. At first it was just a draft proposal, but now Mike Leavitt is pushing to implement the changes. Soon, it may be legally acceptable to deny you a needed health service because the health care provider thinks your decisions are immoral. I've already written several times about why there can be no "conscientious objectors" in health care. This law would essentially allow doctors to ignore the standard of care set by…
I'm so angry I can barely type coherently. I have very strong feelings about abortion, but I believe it is possible to respectfully disagree about the ethical issues involved. I have an obstetrics colleague who does not perform abortions, but refers patients needing this service to others. That's the ethical way for a doctor to oppose abortion---don't do it, don't prosteletize, refer out. My personal feeling is a woman has the right to control her body and all that dwells within, but I can see why others would disagree. All that being said, if you chose a profession that will, by its…