In these extreme times, some supposed satire just doesn’t work. Instead of being funny, it seems merely to repeat what is objectionable.
I think this video does work, but if anyone wants to argue it should not be here, please do.
Many thanks to ck for her comment on this post of Jender’s.
Google’s controversial project to digitize the world’s literature. It looks like a wonderful idea, especially to someone like me who doesn’t expect to lose royalities. They do, however, invite reviews. Below you’ll see the two reviews for the classic, Treasure Island.
I’m personally looking forward to when museums catch up and post viewers’ reactions next to the art work.
McCain put a woman on the ticket! That’ll get all the women voting for him, right? Because that’s what we do– mindlessly support other women with no attention to boy-stuff like actual positions on issues. But oh no! Maybe it’s not working out that way after all! Women say Palin choice makes them less likely to support McCain. How mysterious: they actually care about like, equal pay and control over their own bodies. And maybe even the Iraq war. Or the economy. Or the environment. Nah, can’t be that– we must just not yet have realised she’s a woman.
When will there be a US election destined to end with either an African-American President or a woman Vice President? When cats sprout wings, apparently.
The Daily Mail assures us that “Experts claim there is nothing angelic or magical about the condition”. Thanks, Mr Jender!
Gov. Palin, McCain’s choice for running mate, is a woman of many accomplishments. Some of them, such as her being a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and a hunter, along with her winning “Miss Congeniality” in a “Miss Alaska” beauty contest, are ones that one might see as negative. And, of course, she has the conservative agenda that gets called “pro-life” which McCain advocates. Even all taken together, they do not amount to adequate qualifications for the job, Democratic commentators are claiming. Nonetheless, she looks to be very bright, assertive and an excellent debater.
Among the questions her candidacy raises are some that do not bear directly on her ability to take over the presidency of the US, should McCain win but not fill out his term. One we can think about here is what will be its impact on discourse about professional female politicians in the United States. Having seen the outrageous misogyny that Hillary Clinton faced, and that many, many people deny, I think the discourse about Palin may be revealing. Some random observations/questions:
- Does anyone have any ideas about what to predict regarding the appearance of sexism in the press? Of course, we can expect conservative commentators not to go after her with such glee, can’t we?
- I’m not expecting all those guys in the press, along with Maureen Dowd and some other women, will necessarily indulge themselves. In fact, I’m betting that they’ll have seen that the country has had a lesson in what is sexist and, despite the wide-spread denials by the public, people are ready to play “gotcha” this time around. This view might be wildly optimistic.
- Nonetheless, understanding what is sexist really involves confronting such things as gender schemas and implicit associations. How much failure to understand them will show up this time?
- Was she chosen in significant part because she’s an attractive young woman? If so, is it different from all the ways in which being an attractive young man have gotten men all sort of places?
- Finally, What Do You Think?
I know someone whose SISTER thought that she was Percy the train. I know several little girls who are wild about Thomas. And the Thomas people know this– that’s why they actually have lots of trains with girls’ names. So WHY, WHY call them “toys for boys”? I mean, it doesn’t even make good economic sense, since it may make people less likely buy them for their girls. And then who’s gonna buy Rosie or the other girl trains? (Other than the “we don’t care about your gender stereotypes” market, which sadly isn’t huge.)
Susie Tompkins Buell writes:
Over the past two months I have become the poster-child, in the press, for the so-called Hillary holdouts; Hillary Clinton supporters who were angry and frustrated with the way she was treated in the primary and post-primary and weren’t ready for unity….
The turning point for me was the Democratic Convention in Denver this week. I saw how Hillary was treated by the Obama campaign and his supporters and I saw how President Clinton was greeted as a hero in our party and our country….
I know that Hillary’s most important work is yet to come and I know with a President Obama, her dream of Universal Health Care for all Americans will come true. Senator Obama has done the right thing; he has honored her and her policies in the way they deserve to be honored. Do I wish she were at least Vice-President? Absolutely, but that’s water under the bridge. We live in dark times and we need the kind of leadership that can take on our problems head-on and I know Senators Obama and Biden will do just that. So I hope everyone will join me and Hillary in saying, NO WAY, NO HOW, NO MCCAIN.
She has founded an organisation which is now devoted to fighting media misogyny, Women Count. Hurrah!
For more of Buell’s statement, go here
Am I the only one who thinks it’s really icky to suppose that I need a condom to protect me from McCain?
Via Broadsheet.
Lilly Ledbetter is the Goodyear employee who sued for sex discrimination after a lifetime of pay raises that were less than those received by her male counterparts. She won her lawsuit, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision because she did not file a suit within 6 months of her first discriminatory pay raise. (She of course didn’t know about the disparity till near the end of her career.) This led to the Fair Pay Restoration Act, which John McCain opposed, saying that women just need more training not equal pay. She spoke at the Democratic Convention, but I’ve seen many people complaining that this was not carried on most TV stations. Her speech is important (and short!). See it here. Or read it here.
From the ACLU’s Blog of Rights:
Last Thursday the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released proposed regulations (PDF) that could seriously undermine women’s access to reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion. Now the public has 30 days to let the Bush administration know precisely what we think of these regulations…
What’s really new about these proposed regulations is that they appear to take patients’ health needs out of the equation. They expand the ability of health care workers to refuse to provide complete and accurate information and counseling to women who seek services. Moreover, both the regulations, and Secretary of HHS Michael Leavitt’s public comments about them, leave the door open as to whether institutions and individuals can refuse to provide contraception.
Make no mistake: that lack of clarity is intentional. As the Washington Post reports, “…when pressed about whether the regulation would protect health-care workers who consider birth control pills, Plan B and other forms of contraception to be equivalent to abortion, HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt said: ‘This regulation does not seek to resolve any ambiguity in that area.’” Indeed, the Wall Street Journal notes Leavitt’s admission that some medical providers may want to “press the definition.”
The deadline for feedback on this is 20 September, and volume of replies is very important, so please go here– it only takes a few seconds– to let them know what you think.
As the news coverage of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s impending address to the Democratic convention intensifies, I brace myself, cringing, for one last round of obedient journalistic attention to the ”PANTsuit.” Have you ever noticed the way broadcast newsbozos always stress the first syllable far more than necessary? PANTsuit. Sheesh, we get it. She’s wearing clothes.
And now that it’s 2008 already, why the modifier? I notice that Sen. Obama is never pointed out as wearing a PANTsuit. Indeed, he is wearing a pair of pants and a jacket that matches. If his clothing is referred to at all, it’s referred to as a suit. Which we all understand, because men are known to wear those, and it’s appropriate to wear while applying to be America’s executive-in-chief.
Is it news to journalists everywhere that women in executive positions don’t go to work in trailing ball gowns? Of course Clinton’s also wearing a pair of pants and a matching jacket. It’s a suit. IT’S A DAMN SUIT! Yes, I get that she can occasionally mix it up with a skirt. That still doesn’t render it necessary to point out every time she sticks with the eminently sensible choice of pants, which men regularly choose to wear without comment.
Either that, or start conducting convention coverage of all those men in PANTsuits. Sigh.
Today is the 88th anniversary of (some) women’s suffrage in the United States. Speaking to this fact, and connecting it to HIllary Clinton’s run for the White House is problematic, since both can be read as emblematic of the “whiteness” of American feminism. Nonetheless, Susan Faludi’s reflections on this and on the fact that Hillary Clinton is speaking tonight at the Democratic Convention have some important points.
In fact, there’s lots in her article that is worth remarking on, but her central point is particularly important. That is, there’s a cycle that feminists are experiencing again.
Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, not merely a cause in itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American law, its retinue was turned away.
In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women’s voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the women’s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor inroads into elected office, and women’s advocacy groups found themselves at loggerheads.
Among other things, the flapper succeeded the feminists, eerily like those young women today who think that the US is “post-gender.”
Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.
Women’s real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions on women’s ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.
Women’s numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929 for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20 percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers and their children uncollected.
Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of “new masculinist” misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton’s campaign coverage). Again, the news media showcase young women’s “feminist — new style” pseudo-liberation — the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so “beyond gender” that they don’t need a female president.
I can’t verify all her facts, so please pitch in if you have other documented data.
I can’t remember now how I came across this, but I’ve been meaning to suggest that you check out the blog of Irshad Manji, a Muslim feminist author and documentary maker.
She’s got fascinating discussions of, for example, misplaced reliance on ‘experts’ about Islam in deciding what books to publish or what’s OK put in a documentary, based in part on ‘expert’ reactions to her own documentary, Faith Without Fear (contrasted with the reactions the film actually received). Really good stuff to read if you’re interested in epistemology, multicuturalism, freedom of expression, etc etc… So if you’re wanting a break from the US Democratic convention, head on over and read Manji!
There’s plenty to think about.
It’s easy to get the feeling that the world is falling apart. Pakistan’s “fractious coalition” is falling apart, Russia is happy to sever ties with NATO, Australia is rejecting a request to take East Timor guest workers, and…well, you get the picture. Is there some good news worth point out?
There’s a very major national election coming up. Are you watching the convention or clips from it?
We’ve had some discussion recently of implicit association: I gather Biden has said that he didn’t press Anita Hill’s charges against Thomas because he thought she was lying. That sounds like a case where implicit associations may well be working. The woman says P, the man says not-P. Someone is lying. Slam dunk, right? I don’t think so.
Have the ideas that charges of sexual harassment are not incredible and that women are not generally very fond of bringing them gotten through to the public consciousness yet?
I was taking a break from a paper I am writing (two papers and two evaluations due Sept. 1!!) to check email. And I find from the NY Review of Books, which has already made some preferences too clear, the following:
This month, we are publishing two books that highlight man’s connection to the forces of nature: Richard Hughes’ In Hazard, a spellbinding tale of a ship caught in a vicious hurricane; and Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, an innovative and intimate study of the Aran Islands. Both offer adventure and startling insight into the natural world and humanity’s place in it. Each title is available at a limited-time 25% discount.
Wondering whether I should ask them to stop sending me email, I scrolled down the message to see lots of names of very distinguished women. “I have misjudged them,” I thought. And then looked more closely. All the women were writing Intros to guys’ books. Why does that seem so familiar?
Are you starting a fall semester? Are there good things about it to look forward to? Are you scrambling to meet end of summer deadlines?
What are you thinking?
Forget those garish cat toys! Your home can be its own cat amusement center:
Damn, I really want to like Joe Biden. And there are things to like a lot, like his writing of the Violence Against Women Act. Why does he have to keep saying stupid things? Why oh why? First there was that fabulous remark that Obama was the first “clean” and “articulate” African-American candidate. Now he says his wife is drop-dead gorgeous. And has a doctorate, which is a problem. I KNOW it’s meant to be a joke. And maybe it’s necessary to make such jokes in order to make voters comfortable with a woman with a doctorate. (But I doubt it, since Dr Rice should have them used to it by now.) But… Sigh. Why does he keep doing this shit? Legislative actions are indeed more important than utterances like these, but these do matter, and I don’t like them.
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This was a genuine billboard placement error, courtesy of the fabulous Fail Blog. Thanks, Mr J!
The Times Online has an article about the ten great moments of past Democractic Conventions. Some are quite weighty in comparison to the one below, but we lost this remarkable woman, Ann Richards, very recently, and the comment was delivered in her impeccable style. You need to remember the reference is to the former President Bush, not the present one.
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