Body Basins… and more

Over at feministing, news of some strange and disturbing wash basins…

And this took me to their ‘disturbing product poll’. Some of which are very disturbing, such as the T-shirts proclaiming ‘I like my women like like my chicken: battered’, ‘I’m too pretty to do math’ and ‘it ain’t rape if she ain’t awake’. Disgusting.

But perhaps useful in teaching as examples of blatant sexism. And a useful example of the potential illocutionary disablement of ‘no’ here (scroll down).

I then ended up linking to this ‘sexy furniture’ company website (click on portfolio and scroll along). It doesn’t seem to me that there’s much sexy about women’s dismembered bodies. Creepy.

More Critical Thinking Fodder: Presuppositions

Surprise, surprise, Fox has a backlash-y new reality series coming out, When Women Rule the World. Jessica Pozner does a nice job dissecting their press release. But she doesn’t note something which really fascinates me. The whole show is based around the idea that women ruling the world is a reversal of the normal order of things. That is, it’s based around the presupposition that men currently rule the world. But this is what anti-feminists routinely DENY. The most common negative response to feminism these days (at least in the US and UK) is that women already have equality. In its press release, it seems to me, Fox is tacitly admitting that this just isn’t true. To see what I mean, here’s a taste of the press release:

The participants will be brought to a remote, primitive location where the women will have the opportunity to “rule” as they build a newly formed society – one where there is no glass ceiling and no dressing to impress. For the men, their worlds of power and prestige are turned inside-out and upside-down. And for these women, turnabout is fair play!