It’s been a while since we reported on breastfeeding fuss here on femphils, so I thought it would be nice to toss one in again (thanks to @allenstairs for pointing this one out to me): controversy about military moms breastfeeding in uniform.
Some people equal that to urinating and defecating in uniform (i.e. should be in private). I briefly wondered what they have been fed as infants.
Read the article here.
UPDATE: The second conference has already been much discussed, as Sergio points out in comment. Very admirably, in my view, the organisers called attention to the all-male lineup and apologised for it. I failed to notice that this was the same conference when I blogged in haste earlier today, and I apologise for that. I think the organisers should be praised for openly acknowledging the problem, though, so I’ll take this opportunity to praise them again for that.
They just keep coming…
Ancient Skepticism, Voluntarism and Science.
Extended Cognition and Epistemology.
If you don’t know about the Gendered Conference Campaign, learn why we’re calling attention to these here.
Alexis Shotwell, author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding, has accepted a position at Carleton University. Interestingly, her position is not in the Philosophy department. Instead, she will join the faculty of their Department of Sociology and Anthropology. This strikes me as a lovely gain for Sociology and Anthropology; I am trying not to think of this as a loss to philosophy, and to take my lead from Alexis’ comment, “I find it inspiring!” Surely we should find it invigorating that an excellent philosopher can contribute notably to analyses in other disciplines. Way to go, Carleton University! (And our sympathies to Laurentian University.)
I never thought, when I joined this blog, that we’d need a “sexy doll for kids” label, but actually, there’s some good news in with the bad: While Mattel makes a doll based on the strong and gutsy girl in Brave which looks, as one blogger says, like the character’s hotter, older sister, Disney actually offers dolls and toys which emphasize her more youthful and active qualities. “Merida is described as passionate and fiery. She is most at home in the outdoors honing her impressive athletic skills as an archers and swordfighter, and racing across the Highlands on her Clydesdale.”
Excellent!
Standards Australia released a report proposing an overhaul of how employers advertise jobs and evaluate candidates, including suggestions to employers on how to list criteria sought. The Gender-inclusive Job Evaluation report said gender bias often occurred where jobs were not properly described.
All fine, but I admit I was surprised that these changes hadn’t already been made. The report recommends switching from ‘firemen’ to ‘firefighters’ and from ‘secretaries’ to ‘office managers.’ I thought that these sorts of gendered job titles bit the dust decades ago. Guess not.
More here.
According to Queen’s University law professor Kathleen Lahey that’s the year Canadian women will be celebrating Women’s Equality Day.
Just a mere 581 years from now.
“Because women do over half the unpaid work in Canada and do nearly half of the paid work in Canada, economic parity is a long way away. And the rate of change has been virtually non-existent since 1997,” Lahey said Tuesday.
Read more here.
That is, Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee?
In fact the commission that plans things has come up with an intriguing idea: a kind of giant commonwealth diary of those 60 years. You can pick any day and write about what interesting or significant things happened on that day. The only restriction is that it is about some commonwealth things.
And you can also get an app for viewing the results.
So let’s go and mark the fact that women and feminism have been extremely important over the last 60 years.
Here’s the site: http://www.jubileetimecapsule.org/
Alternatively, you can write angry letters to the BBC for their list of the New Elizabethans, those UK people who have significantly affected the history in those 60 years. Does (approximately) 20% women seem right to you? No women authors, despite Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize. As I remember, no women visual artists, even though Tracy Emin and Fiona Rae, our contemporaries, are the only women to be professors at the Royal Academy since its founding 350+ years ago.
Perhaps people compiling the list did not keep sufficiently in mind that making very significant changes in the futures possible for women is indeed changing history. Or perhaps this is unfair. You can hear the head of the panel that selected the new Elizabethans, Lord Hall, discuss the process.
One could go on. Sigh.
On Saturday 26 May 2012 Roseline Akhalu (“Rose”), 48, a kidney transplant patient currently detained in Yarl’s Wood detention centre was served with removal directions for Lagos, Nigeria on 7 June 2012.
Rose, a Nigerian university graduate, came to the UK in 2004 on a Ford Foundation scholarship to do a Masters degree in development studies at Leeds University. Soon after arriving she was diagnosed with renal failure and began treatment the following year. In 2009 she had a successful kidney transplant.
As a kidney transplant patient Rose needs to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life. However, the cost of such drugs in Nigeria means that there is no way Rose will be able to afford them and so, if deported, she faces certain death.
There’s an online petition in need of signatures here.
As part of preparing a lecture,I needed to find some examples of aphorisms for the class. But looking at lists of aphorisms on the web, I quickly determined that most of them were by men. (Will Rogers “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice Doggie’ until you can find a rock.” Abraham Maslow “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”) Great, right? But where are the women
Here are some excellent aphorisms by women:
The President of today is the postage stamp of tomorrow. — Gracie Allen
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor. — Betty Friedan,
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before. — Mae West
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all from The Archive of Amusing Aphorisms, http://www.squidoo.com/amusing-aphorisms
What are some good feminist aphorisms? Help me out!
Whew!
Thanks PJ!
Feminist Philosophers 