Blog Against Sexism Day

Sexism sucks. See previous blog posts for more specificity. And treat yourselves like rock stars today. Minus the drugs and STDs.

Here are some things you can blog about today if you're so inclined (list courtesy of http://www.takingplace.org/blog-against-sexism-day).

*Data on women’s/girls struggle for equality has gone missing in the Bush Administration. The current administration continues to engage in a pattern of omission, distortion, and spin when it comes to information about women and girls. Data on the Department of Labor website has gone missing and the FDA continues to block approval of Emergency Contraception despite research findings that support its use.

*Women are still underpaid. Women earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. (Former MA democratic Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy is doin great things to shake this up…check out www.womenaregettingeven.org) Also, can 1 million women against WalMart be hallucinating? This is serious!

*Women are still massively underrepresented in the sciences. Despite substantial gains in the number of women pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences, women currently earn only 20% of all PhDs in computer science, less than 27% in physics, and only 17% in engineering. Studies show that women in science experience discrimination and double standards (sorry Larry Summers, but its really true.)

*There are too few female tenured professors. Despite the fact that women have been at least half of all college undergraduates since 1978, women represent only 36% of all tenured faculty nationwide, and only 13% of doctoral granting universities boast women presidents. Many women in academic settings report discrimination.

*Women are underrepresented in corporate leadership. Women have made up more than 40% of the workforce since 1977, and are currently almost 50%, yet only 9 women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

*Too few women lawyers make partner. Women have been 40% of all law school students since 1995, and over half since 2001, but are only 15% of partners in law firms nationwide. Many female lawyers attest to double standards and discrimination.

*Media: Stereotypes Abound!

*Men still dominate the airwaves, music industry, film industry, etc, and are most decisionmakers and critics (often with a silent or not so silent male perspective.) Women make up only 11% of the national experts on Sunday morning political talk shows, and only 6% to 7% of the repeat guests. No major record label is headed by a woman. Most major film studios are headed by men, and nine out of ten music videos are produced by men. For the most part, women need to be sex objects and to be young to be successful in music and to some extent, films, TV. (Men,not so much…can you say Sean Connery? Harrison Ford? Woody Allen? David Letterman? Larry King?.) Women are chosen/allowed to direct only 5 - 7 % of major Hollywood films, and rarely are nominated for or win major awards for directing (despite \nsome very talented female directors out there.) This is not just Hollywood insanity….it’s workplace discrimination.

*Women are poorer. Women constitute about 70% of the world’s absolute poor – those living on less than a dollar a day. In the United States in 2004, there were 20.1 million women living below the poverty level. Worldwide, women’s access to resources and education still lags behind boys/men due to double standards.
Slavery still exists! Women and girls are the majority of the 800,000 to nearly 4 million people trafficked (bought and sold as property) internationally every year.

Some food for thought and discussion!

Because rape is so very fashionable

So, some knobs at Dolce & Gabbana (actually, Dolce and Gabbana themselves) thought this ad was a good idea. Gabbana claims that the ad does NOT depict a rape scene and suggests that we interpret it as an erotic dream or a sexual game.

Now, if the woman in the ad were looking lustily into that dude's eyes - the dude who is wearing dark sunglasses and pinning her down, by the way - I could maybe buy it a little. Then it might just suggest that she's a little slutty. But she's not looking lustily into sweaty dude's eyes. She's looking to the side, and she doesn't look happy. Perhaps she's looking for an escape route.

But aside from that, the woman is also pushing up on those strappy spiked heels in a pose that looks a teeny bit like she's trying to push herself back away from the dude. It's not an invitational pose, anyway.

And then there are the creepy, sweaty men standing around watching the activity, suggestive of a gang rape. Six-pack dude is already half naked and is clearly interested in something.

Perhaps some people's "erotic dreams" or "sexual games" involve rape fantasies, but I would venture a guess that this is only true because advertisements like this suggest that rape is just another sexual (and sexy) act. It's not. It's about overpowering and degrading women (and sometimes men) with the metaphorical and literal phallus. It's about putting women in their place. It's about telling women they are nothing more than a collection of holes and that access to those holes is to be controlled by others. There is nothing erotic or game-like about it. Not for the rapee, anyway.

On a side note, who the hell wears high heels with a swimsuit anyway? Do men hate women's bodies so much that high heels are called in to "fix" the way those bodies look at all times, even in swimsuits? 'Cause it's men who design this shit, and even when it's women doing the designing and wearing, it's still through men's eyes we're all trained to see women's bodies. Like our very own deeply-imbedded Patriarchy-tinted sunglasses.

Hey, maybe that's what the sweaty dude is wearing.

Done deal

All right, folks. The deal is sealed. Except for the signature on the contract part. Adjustments were made to the offer, and while it's not exactly what we were hoping for, it's acceptable. And was accepted.

So, we're moving to upstate NY so MonkeyPants can have her dream job at her Dream College! This college was her number one pick last time around, but they didn't call her for an interview because the position wasn't a match. They remembered her application and were hoping she would apply for this position. And then the universe kept putting things in line, kind of like a slowly-closing Ziploc seal. Yellow and blue make green, and we're gonna be New Yorkers!

I've wanted to be a New Yorker for awhile now. I was hoping to be a New York, New Yorker, but this will do. And even though saying you're a New Yorker makes people think you live in The City, I'm gonna say it because a) it's technically true and b) it makes me sound way cooler than saying I live in upstate New York. Plus, we'll only be three and a half hours from Manhattan and will visit there occasionally, so yadda, yadda, yadda I'm a New Yorker!

Perhaps now that I will be one of her constituents I will finally get Hillary to listen to me. She's got some 'splainin' to do about her Iraq position. Maybe when all the 2008 Presidential Hoopla dies down, after President Gore extracts us from the Middle East Mess, Hillary and I can discuss where she went wrong.

Happy Wednesday, all!

One ends, and another begins

Dear readers,

I know so many of you have been sitting around obsessively hitting your refresh button, just hoping I would post something today about the job search. To reward your diligence, I will not disappoint.

The search, my friends, is over. Chris has received an offer that she's planning to accept, pending a slight alteration in the salary. Which means, if said alterations result in a satisfactory number, that we will be moving to New York!* This college has courted her pretty heavily, so we fully expect that the salary offer will be raised to an acceptable level. The department chair wants Chris so badly that he offered to do the negotiations on her behalf. I like this guy already!

So, now that Chris' search is over (or her "tour," as we were calling it), mine begins. I've started looking at area colleges for interesting positions, and I'm considering going back to school. At this point, anything could happen, which is a bit scary and doesn't help us determine when we can/should move. I had blocked it out, but now I remember how much this part of the process sucks! Not as much as Chris' interview process, but sucky in its own right.

Anyway, perhaps you can help me out here:

What should I be when I grow up?
	A secretary (please don't vote for this one!)
	An athletic director
	A librarian
	A circus performer
	A slam poet
	A residence director
	A waitress at Applebee's
	A truck driver
	A kept woman
	A Pussycat Doll
Free polls from Pollhost.com

*Specific details will be given after the offer has been accepted.

Is John Edwards fabulous?

I'm just gonna throw this out there: I'm fabulous. There's just no way around it. Sure, I have my flaws, but on the whole I'm pretty great.

That's why I can't figure out, no matter how much brain juice I lose to the effort, why someone as unfabulous as Ann Coulter would reference me (and all my equally fabulous homobrothers and sisters) when trying to knock John Edwards down a few pegs. I mean, there are lots of ways you can tar candidates, several of which deal specifically with their job performance or political philosophies.

Setting aside for a second that it's inappropriate to talk about a candidate's sexuality in the first place, what I really want to know is why insinuating that someone is gay is the worst of all possible insults.

The reaction to Coulter's comment has betrayed the deep-seated homophobia on all sides, conservative and liberal. They're all absolutely beside themselves, waiting for their opportunity to grab the spotlight long enough to take Coulter to task. Only in their zeal to be the Righteous Ones, they're doing no favors to the gay community.

The overall tenor of their comments seems to be, "How dare she call John Edwards gay? That's beyond insulting!"

But is it? Really? I don't mean to suggest that what Coulter did was acceptable in any way. Her use of the word "faggot" alone was over the line. And her intention to smear is absolutely contemptible. But her actual insinuation? It's only bad to call someone gay if you believe being gay is bad. And that's why the "liberal" reaction to this has been so disappointing. The affront here was not to John Edwards. It was to the gay community.

Edwards could have scored some points if he had pointed this out. He released a statement saying that "in America, we strive for equality and embrace diversity" and that Coulter's use of an anti-gay slur was "un-American." I agree with him on that point - "faggot" is undeniably hate speech. But he didn't say that her use of gayness as the ultimate bogeyman was offensive. I might have let him slide with his mild implication of such if he hadn't also released this:

Can you help us raise $100,000 in "Coulter Cash" this week to keep this campaign charging ahead and fight back against the politics of bigotry?

Yes, because when there's a decision to be made between lifting up a community and trading on the very thing you're denouncing to raise a boatload of money, we know on which side politicians of all stripes will come down. If the Edwards campaign really believed that Coulter's comments were offensive to the gay community and not just to John Edwards, they'd donate every dollar of that "Coulter Cash" to gay organizations.

Now, that would be fabulous!

A little weekend music

Friday Weigh In, 3/2/07

Greetings, dear readers!

It is with much excitement that I announce that the scale was very kind to me this morning. I wasn't sure how it might go, as it took me most of the week to work the sodium from the Chinese food out of my system. Consequently, I spent most of the week pissed off.

But this morning, I nudged the scale awake and waited for the zeroes to settle. Then I stepped on up and waited anxiously for the judgment. And, I gotta tell ya, I don't really feel that judged today! The scale told me that I weigh 198.5, winked, and wished me a good day. I could tell she was proud. As was I.

So, that makes a total of 14 pounds since my first weigh-in on January 9. Feelin' good. Not as winded by small energy expenditures. My coat fits much better. But my pants are kinda falling down. The nice thing is that I bought a bunch of clothes for my body at this weight before we moved to New Hampshire, and most of them still have tags on them on accounta I hated this place right away and started gaining weight almost immediately. I'm calling this first 14 pounds my "New Hampshire weight."

Now, if I could only lose New Hampshire...I might have an update on that next week.

Happy Weekend, all!