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statesmanship. [18 Jul 2008|10:45am]

hortensio
In the realm of gendered terms for no-longer-gender-specific professions, "statesman" isn't particularly bothersome by itself, as "stateswoman" seems fine and "statesperson", if clunky, could also be acceptable without too much complaint. But some trouble seems to arise from the fact that we have another noun derived from it -- "statesmanship". I don't see any self-evident corrective measures that can be taken with that one.

Should the stateswomen of the future be resigned to demonstrating good statesmanship, or is this unacceptable? Has feminism invented another word? Should it? Or is this all beside the point?
42 comments|post comment

Femininity vs. Masculinity [17 Jul 2008|02:01pm]

sunoftheskye


Nigel Lythgoe (Photo Credit: Getty Images/Frederick M. Brown)

For some gay fans of Fox competitive reality shows American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance there has long been a whiff of intolerance floating over both shows. Why? Neither has ever had an out gay contestant during their actual competitions (as opposed to the UK and Australian versions). In fact, when Jim Verraros' Livejournal blog entries discussing his being gay were discovered while he was on AI during its first season, they suddenly disappeared. Additionally, somewhat frequent homophobic comments from judges, hosts and contestants occur on both shows.

At yesterday's TCA I got a chance to ask Nigel Lythgoe, one of the judges on SYTYCD and an executive producer on American Idol, about why neither show has ever had an out gay contestant.

AfterElton.com: What’s your response to the criticism that neither American Idol nor So You Think You Can Dance has ever included any out gay contestants?
Nigel Lythgoe: You mean homosexual guys who have come out? We’ve never thought about it, to be honest. I don’t actually go around and say, "Excuse me are you gay or are you straight?" It isn’t a question that we ask.

AE But it would come up.
NL: No it wouldn’t. I’m never worried if anybody’s gay. What I don’t like on the dance show, to be frank, is effeminate boys that mince around the stage. I don’t care if they’re gay or straight. That’s got nothing to do with it for me.

AE: Why don’t you like the effeminate [dancers]?
NL: Because they need to be very strong. Dancing is role-playing most of the time. And you need to be strong and lift girls. You need to look stronger than the girl you’re dancing with. You control the dance, especially in ballroom. So if you mince about the stage, you’re not doing what the choreographer is asking you to do. He’s asking you to be strong. If your choreographer then wants to do an effeminate routine, then that’s fine, but most of the time we don’t do effeminate routines so straight or gay doesn’t come into it for me.

You'll note I didn't ask Lythgoe if he asks folks whether they're or gay not. I asked why neither show has never had any out contestants.

I see a couple of odd things here. Nigel seems to be confusing effeminate with weak and as many a drag queen can tell you, there isn't anything weak about many drag queens. As well, I've met plenty of effeminate large men who could mambo Nigel across the dance floor until he dropped.


This interview with Nigel itself isn't exactly relevant to this community, but this amazing response my a female reader is.  And I just thought I'd share it.  I'm really sick of men calling each other women as insults, as if it's such a horrible thing to be a woman.  Katy Perry has her new album titled "One of the Boys".  Do you think a male artist would ever flaunt that he's "One of the Girls"? Anyway, here's the response.

The fact that effeminate equals weak insults me - as a woman. What's so horrible about being a woman / or having womanly qualities? Most women I know cope pretty well with being effeminate.

I am an ardent figure skating fan, therefore I read and hear lots of comments concerning the style of skating. Words like "feminine, effeminate, flamboyant, flashy, showy" are often negative criticism.

One of the more "flamboyant" skaters was Alexej Urmanov, and because of his style he was often called superficial, phony, they (official US-sport commentators) called his costumes "elaborate" and he was generally seen as the negative opposite to the North-American "masculine" skaters (Browning, Stojko, Hamilton). Not the best example - it's also possible that the US-commentators just hated him because he is Russian.

Johnny Weir is my favourite example - commentators are careful to be politically correct when they comment on his skating, at least when he is skating his normal graceful style. But in 2006/2007 he tried a new style, and Dick Button was praising the new style as "more serious, more masculine, stronger, much tighter" - calling is old style "somewhat more frivolous". I just found that program and the style profoundly boring in comparision to this or this
(The second clip is from eurosport - with British commentators, these commentators never use words like "masculine", "feminine", "effeminate", they are really much nicer to listen too.)

One of the funniest headlines ever appeared on icenetwork (sponsored by the United Skates Figure Skating Association) after he won the Bronze in March at the Worlds. It said something "Never say Johnny Weir isn't a he-man - today he proved that he can shoulder the heaviest of burdens" When I read that I immediately asked myself: If Weir has now proven his "masculinity" by not losing his nerve in the freeskate - what's with the 17-year-old girl who just became World Champion a few days before? Does the fact that she hold her nerve (after a devastating fall at the beginning of the program) make her somehow masculine? Do you have to be masculine to shoulder a burden?

Very fascinating was also this NYT-article on Weir and Lysacek (IMO not worthy of such an exceptional newspaper), And on the ice, Lysacek will keep wowing the crowd with his feats, Weir with his flair. This is one of the more hilarious quotes of the article, IMO it kind of says that Weir doesn't have feats in his program?

Hmm, somewhere during this post I have lost my train of thought. Well, my point was that I consider these gender-specific attributes as absolutely irrelevant - not just because there are strong drag-queens, but also because there are lots of strong women. I also don't think that a certain amount of "effeminacy" in a male dancer makes him a "bad" partner in a dancing team - there have been lots of "effeminate" (hate that word, hate that word, hate that word...) ballet dancers who were absolutely amazing in the most prestigious Pas-de-Deuxs ever written for Ballet.

I think we should have moved beyond these prejudices a long time ago - it works the other way around too. My university is mostly technical and scientific - so I know lots of girls who study engineering, physics etc., they can tell lots of funny anecdotes where they were asked "A little tomboy then?", "Oh, that's unusual for girls", "I wouldn't have guessed that, you look more like a language student", "Wow, that's amazing, but isn't it rather difficult for girls?" and people automatically start looking for more "ungirlish" behaviour or attributes.

Well, I will now stash my inner feminist back into the dark corner of my personality where she normally resides. Being a feminist is just so masculine and unattractive.

  Source

59 comments|post comment

save the brown women! they eat clay! [16 Jul 2008|02:01pm]

hortensio
An article in the Canadian Globe and Mail about the practice of eating clay when pregnant (which is widespread in parts of Africa and Asia) is reproduced for your reading pleasure ( under the cut. )

Right. ( So where the hell to begin? )

I'll point out in parenthesis that fucking around with the shit people eat traditionally is a bad idea unless you really know what you're doing. I mean, if you have entire peri-mountain villages peopled with goitered cretins because there's no iodine, and you have some evidence linking goiters and cretinism with iodine deficiency, that's one thing. If people are basically okay but just eating termites or something, check if the termites aren't their protein source before you declare that eating bugs is nasty and wrong and dangerous because those bastards can bite you.

Edit: Personally, I'm intrigued by "remove 'bad water' from her stomach". Any time I had runny tummy as a kid I'd be fed charcoal -- either as tablets or as a couple of spoonfuls of powder -- so I wonder if a similar remedy for mild gastrointestinal upsets didn't get mythed-up into an all-purpose pregnancy thing. From another angle, isn't eating clay the most common form of pica? And aren't cravings for clay fairly common during pregnancy?

Edit II: Eating clay in Georgia (the US state, not the country in the Caucasus). More.
246 comments|post comment

5 reasons why maternity leave is holding women back. [15 Jul 2008|09:46pm]

mintogrubb
The link at the bottom leads to another one that you may have missed.

In these two articles, appearing in the London 'Times', the argument is made that although the legislation was well intended, the way it has worked in practice has been counter productive.
One boss has admitted that he bins the CVs of women applicants of childbearing age as he considers them a 'bad risk' for the company.

Yet what about redressing this by giving an equal amount of parental leave to fathers as well?

You may want to read this one first-
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article4327438.ece

The 5 reasons stated here-
http://timesonline.typepad.com/alphamummy/2008/07/5-reasons-why-e.html
510 comments|post comment

The Feminzation of the American Male [14 Jul 2008|10:18am]

sunoftheskye

If popular culture in the United States is to be believed, we are now a country of tough females and weenie males. A gradual emasculation of the American male has been under way for quite some time now, accelerated by things such as the aggressive branding of overactive boys as "ADHD" and the subsequent over-drugging with Ritalin, etc, or through the way the media and culture portrays the male.

Salvo Magazine has run a very interesting article titled "Girly Men - The Media's Attack on Masculinity". In the article, author S.T. Karnick points out how not only has "femininity become the human norm", but "women have become the new men" (quoting from a Salon article). Karnick points out how popular culture is replete with examples of wimpy males and that even the toughest of the tough guys must somehow be shown to have a "feminine side."

Even roughnecks such as these, however, are subject to cultural education into the joys of femininity. The hero of the movie The Game Plan, an NFL quarterback played by hyper-muscular Duane "The Rock” Johnson, is narcissistic, arrogant, egotistical, and selfish—both on the field and off. Only after dancing in a ballet and being reeducated by his 8-year-old daughter, his sister-in-law, and the daughter’s dance teacher does he finally win a Super Bowl ring. In today’s culture, women even make the best football coaches.

As I read the article, I had to admit that I am hard-pressed to come up with a male figure on TV that possesses strong (traditional) male characteristics and who isn't some sort of bombastic oaf who is all tough and no brains. Where are the Ward Cleavers, Mike Bradys, Cliff Huxtables who used to populate TV? I guess the closest thing I could come up with is the dude from CSI, but even he is often portrayed as somewhat wimpy. I loved Karnick's portrayal of the current crop of TV males:

Thus, the war against boys seems to have created three main character patterns for the adult male of our time: sensitive guys who want to please women; weenies and dorks who want only to be left alone to drink beer and play video games with their dork buddies; and thugs who, in rebellion against their unnatural education, are perpetually concerned with proving their toughness through increasingly loutish behavior. There are, of course, examples of decent, positively masculine males in the culture, but they are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the products of educational and cultural feminization.

To tie this to the 2008 election: I think the Barack Obama/John McCain dichotomy is a classic example of this - a guy who seems to be in touch with his feminine side (BHO) versus an older guy who is being painted by the MSM as another brainless cowboy like George W Bush. And the conditioning that has been applied through popular culture will simply reinforce these stereotypes. Since the current hero of TV is the feminized male, Barack should fit in quite nicely.

Source

I'm gonna have to come back and comment on this later because I literally saw red when I read this shit.  Brb, recuperating from the mind fuck.

 
131 comments|post comment

Official [info]anti_feminism chat room. [13 Jul 2008|09:09pm]

njyoder
For those who don't know, we have had an official community chat room for months now. I'm making this post both to inform those who aren't aware of it and to tell those who are aware, that in order to keep the chat room active, you should just leave your chat window open, even when you're not using it.

REMEMBER TO PLAY NICE KIDS! It's ok to continue discussion in chat, but it's mostly for shooting the shit and random discussion.

Just Leave the Chat Window Open

This means just opening it whenever you're on the computer. Psychologically, most people will just leave if there aren't enough people in the chat room, even if you tell them that it tends to be more active during certain times of the day. Seeing that so many people care about the chat room, even if they are currently idle, encourages more users to join.

Instructions to Join

You can use any AIM client to join such as: the official AIM client, iChat (OS X), Trillian (Windows), miniaim (Windows; no install required), Adium (OS X; free/open source), pidgin formerly known as "gaim" (all major OSes; free/open source), and there are more listed on Wikipedia.

These are instructions from the user info page:

The official chat room can be found on AIM under the name "antifem." Either invite yourself or have someone invite you to the "antifem" chat room.

You can invite yourself by adding yourself to your own screen name list and inviting like you would with anyone else. If you are having trouble doing this, IM someone else, asking them to do it (e.g. IM "njyoder" for help, but don't ask on LJ). Sometimes AIM acts weird and won't let anyone in and/or kicks them out, so you just have to wait until it works again.

Keep in mind that the amount of people in it can vary from none to around a dozen, depending on the time of day and day of week. People are more likely to be on in the evening and night Eastern Standard Time. Just keep your window open instead of just leaving right away, so others are encouraged to stay when they join later.
35 comments|post comment

Dispelling the Welfare Queen Myth [11 Jul 2008|02:49pm]

massashaun
Our usual suspects have actually been behaving pretty well lately, and I imagine they are probably about ready to explode. So as a public service to everyone's favorite antagonists, I present these truly excellent examples of people who abuse the welfare system.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16814554&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=shameless--name_page.html

http://archive.thenorthernecho.co.uk/2005/8/12/203540.html

http://www.derbygripe.co.uk/scrounge.htm


Seriously...these peoples' sense of entitlement astounds me. I am at a lack of words.
174 comments|post comment

[11 Jul 2008|09:57am]

pachakuti
But let's be clear: these issues - equal pay, work/family balance, childcare - these are by no means just women's issues. When a job doesn't offer family leave, that also hurts men who want to help care for a new baby or an ailing parent. When there's no affordable childcare or afterschool programs, that hurts children who wind up in second rate care, or spending afternoons alone in front of the TV. When women still make just 77 cents for every dollar men make - black and Latina women even less - that doesn't just hurt women, it hurts families who find themselves with less income, and have to work even harder just to get by.

So you'd think solving these problems would be one of our highest national priorities. But while some politicians in Washington make a lot of noise about family values, when it comes to what people actually need to support their families, and care for their families, and spend time with their families - they get awfully quiet, don't they? And year after year, it just gets harder for working parents - especially working women - to make a living while raising their kids.

We take it for granted that women are the backbone of our families, but we too often ignore the fact that women are also the backbone of our middle class. And we won't truly have an economy that puts the needs of the middle class first until we ensure that when it comes to pay and benefits at work, women are treated like the equal partners they are.

--Barack Obama, quoted from a recent speech of his dealing with women and work



One of the things that has always kind of bugged me is the fact that in these speeches, these problems have to be shown to "hurt men too" to make anyone sit up and pay attention. I know what he is trying to do. Obama has made a few missteps when it comes to dealing with reproductive rights and choice in his speeches, and he is trying to make up some of that ground. But I deeply distrust turning a gender-based problem into "EVERYBODY HURTS, U GUYZ." Because that smacks of the idea that it is harder to believe the reality of a discriminatory problem.

Of course, reading many of the arguments here should help me understand why speeches like the above are made. Because often, if it's considered a "woman's problem" (the pay gap, for instance)... it is devalued, disbelieved, talked-down, ignored. The same happens, often to even greater extremes, to much of the racism that is constantly cycling ni this country.

We come to a place where a problem that disproportionately affects women must be turned into something that affects men. Even though it should be simple to understand that anything that affects one half of the population will by definition affect the other half. But it still has to be spelled out.

Because otherwise people will simply brush it off as complaints, as "this can't be true, I know it because my mom TOTALLY could make money therefore women are making the pay gap up". It turns into "it's because women CHOOSE less well-paid jobs" without even looking into the reasons why those kinds of choices are made and often all but forced.

Argh.
92 comments|post comment

Mannies - a new trend in childcare? [09 Jul 2008|11:36pm]

mintogrubb
Quite apart from the fear of a middle aged husband taking a liking to the childrens nanny, many middle class women are turning to young men to provide 'suitable' male role models for their children, it seems.

and thus men are getting into what was traditionally a woman's role. male nannies ( or 'mannies', as the media likes to call them , are becoming popular on both sides of the Atlantic.

a step forwards for real equality, or just a passing fad ?

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=19282&in_page_id=2

http://www.bounty.com/%22Mannies%22-over-nannies.news/17586729
175 comments|post comment

... an all-out assault on feminism? [07 Jul 2008|08:48pm]

dubhouse
Kira Cochrane wrote a great article on the current state of the feminist movement here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/01/gender.women?gusrc=rss&feed=society

We've seen scrutiny of women reach unprecedented levels. In gossip magazines, women's bodies are pored over - a pound gained provoking headlines that they're fat, a pound lost leading to headlines that they're too thin. Circles are drawn around a spot on their ankle where they've failed to apply fake tan, around a bitten nail or a tiny, incipient wrinkle beside their eye - which could just be a stray lash. What is implicit but unsaid is that there is no objective standard of beauty, no level of perfection that a woman could reach at which her body would be perceived as acceptable and in control… The constant message is that women's bodies are not our own. They belong to everyone but us, and are there to be picked apart.

Do you believe that the movement has 'lost ground' in the past year? Why or why not?
412 comments|post comment

Introducing the Vagina Spa [07 Jul 2008|09:36pm]

niki4jm
A Spa for Those Women Concerned About ‘Pelvic Fitness’

THESE are the generations of cosmetic medicine:
First came the “medical spa,” or medi spa, offering dermatology services in a retail setting. The medi spa begat the dental spa, bringing tooth bleaching to storefronts nationwide. The dental spa begat the podiatry spa.

And now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area. Phit — short for pelvic health integrated techniques — is to open this month on East 58th Street.

Dr. Lauri Romanzi, a gynecologist who performs pelvic reconstruction surgery, said she came up with the idea for the spa one day while walking by an outlet of BriteSmile, the tooth-whitening chain. She liked that the stores cater to people with healthy teeth.

So Dr. Romanzi developed her own concept of “pelvic fitness” for healthy women. She said that Phit (www.theperfectphit.com) will help women get “in shape from the inside out.”

( Read more... )
148 comments|post comment

[05 Jul 2008|12:13pm]
lost_kite
Alright, [info]anti_feminism, here's a discussion which I don't think has been had here before (confirmed by LJseek?)

I was reading over the latest featured ED article when I ran across the term "curebie", which is apparently a (derisive?) word used by autistic individuals to refer to those who would like to be able to "cure" autism. Maybe some of you have seen the In My Language video where a woman argues that autism isn't a disorder, it just lends itself to a different way of experiencing the world.

Another community that I'm familiar with which has expressed similar concerns is the deaf community. Some deaf individuals feel that their lack of hearing is not something which should be seen as a problem. A minor uproar was created when a deaf couple wanted to screen embryos to ensure that they could have a deaf baby.

What do you think? What constitutes a "legitimate" disorder that should be treated? As most of us know, it was until very recently that homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Are the deaf and autistic simply the victims of an analogous bigotry? In so far as these things have genetic markers, would you support parents being able to select against them when it comes to producing offspring? This can all be taken in light of recent discussions on voluntary eugenics.

Play nice.
104 comments|post comment

what my wife and i have. [02 Jul 2008|11:21pm]

hortensio
This one is for [info]hollowpointslug, as well as (partly) for our favourite social reformer Minto Grubb.

There is a fucking fantastic article in last week's NY Times magazine about the low birthrates in Europe and around the world. As you may know, fertility rates in Europe are far below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman -- Bulgaria is at 1.37; Italy, Spain, and Greece at 1.3; and even the places with "high" fertility rates -- in Scandinavia -- stand at a worrying 1.8. The world record, as it happens, is in Korea, where the fertility rate is 1.1 births per woman. Japan is thereabouts as well. Even taking the rest of the world into account, global fertility rates have plummeted from 6.0 in 1972 to 2.9 today.

( Quotes and stuff. )

Edit: Fixed the link; sorry about that. My internet cut out before I could edit.
78 comments|post comment

i need a flaming cup of wank. [02 Jul 2008|01:47pm]

hortensio
Fortunately over in [info]feminist somebody has brewed us a delicious pot:
    [I]s [having children] a privilege, as my experiences have led me to believe, or is it a right? And if a right, are there any conditions under which that right should, by a reasoning adult, be put aside?
This is a post-and-run under the rubric of RL Canada Day, so she's not following up in the comments. ( But someone else does... )

Questions, considering only non-adoptive child-having:

1. Is there a right to have children? Does everyone have such a right?

2. If not, or only partially: biology sort of mandates that the brunt of (if not all) restrictions would have to be on the woman actually bearing the child. Is there any way to sidestep that and make it a bit less horribly discriminatory?
548 comments|post comment

cultural accommodation [01 Jul 2008|04:53pm]

hortensio
Early last year Herouxville, a microscopic town in Quebec with no immigrant population whatsoever, published a code of standards of behaviour for immigrants. ( Read more... )

( Questions. )

EDIT: My own thoughts on the matter: some people are responding as if it is likely that the majority of immigrants would have trouble on the gender-mixing front, much like the town of Herouxville assumed. I personally don't find this likely at all, though it's perhaps contingent on some factors:
- whether the immigrants form a community or function as diffuse individuals;
- whether one or multiple communities form, and if there are any immigrant-on-immigrant tensions between different groups;
- the speed with which the community/communities form(s);
- the autonomy any one of them is able to exercise as a community;
the social/economic situation of the host community, and the ease with which members of an immigrant community can integrate into that situation

I find it -possible- that later immigrants could immigrate to Little Saudi Arabia. But a bunch of other factors make it unlikely that this would be the default, or that it would stay that way.

Further: I think that the appropriate time to intervene (if one must intervene) is once some kind of community has begun to form. Individuals immigrating and staying as individuals generally have little choice but to adapt. If a community has started to form and one is paranoid enough to intervene, one should do so through community members -- as they are already (you can bet your life on this) providing information on how to function, how the system works, what not to do, etc.

And at that point one should identify the -real- questions people will have -- there's nothing quite like having your genius Civilization Project backfire because you've been an idiot and inspire people to nothing more than offense and taking you unseriously.
296 comments|post comment

[28 Jun 2008|04:00pm]

korean_guy_01
Why do you think there is such a gender gap between male (prostate) and female (breast) specific cancer?

Link
103 comments|post comment

Aging [28 Jun 2008|11:26am]

pachakuti
[info]feminist had a really interesting set of comments to a post on Wolf's The Beauty Myth. Aging in the book is described as a positive, a map of where the person has been, in part of a critique on the corporate selling of anti-aging products and plastic surgery meant to deny the onward march of time.

A commenter in the post describes aging as a "disease", in that one day she hopes it will be cured. People ask her why she sees this natural process of life as a disease. Cue immediate wank on whether or not death is a good thing in the long-term of existence. The commenter accuses anyone who says aging is not a disease that needs cured and death is not something that needs to be exterminated of wanting to condemn people to early deaths from Alzheimer's, cancer, etc. Wank ensues.

But anti-feminism, what is your take on aging? Yourself and others? Do you see the aging process as welcome or as something to be feared and fought off? Do you think death needs to be "cured" by science? When you see aged people on the street, are you bothered by the wrinkles and visible signs of age there? Does this change for you when it's a woman vs. a man? (edit: to clarify, I mean just seeing older people out and about, every life, etc.)

Myself, I work in a clothing store whose clientele is about 80% over-forty and about 30% over sixty. Before I started working here older people's appearance did somewhat bother me... but having more regular exposure to aging has really changed the way I feel about it.
379 comments|post comment

Total Tools of the Patriarchy? [28 Jun 2008|09:03am]

mintogrubb
I read the stuff about Clinton/ Obama and the arguments for both sides, but I am glad I don't have to vote for either.

Something that came out of my last OP was the fact that I liked Guns and Roses, an American Rock band. OK, maybe I should say I liked their Music. Then Hex showed me 'One in a Million' - a song that has some rather racist lyrics.

My first reaction was "Whaat???" I mean these guys can't be serious - can they? Well, it turns out they have been on tour. Sometimes they got treated well by the locals , sometimes they didn't.
And it's their negative experiences that produced that song. And the kicker, for me, was that towards the end of this interveiw, Axl Rose is saying that he used the word "nigger" in the song claiming that he doesn't get what is so bad about using the word. " If black people can call each other ' niggers', why can't white guys?"

But Axl Rose is also controversial for other reasons. His use of drugs has also been part of this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axl_Rose

One member of this community said "I am glad that I wasn't enough of a fan to be emotionally invested in them" - or words to that effect.

Say what you like about mme, but I do get why white people can't use "the N word" even though black people use it among themseles.

For me, the fact is that a lot of rock bands smoke cigarrettes, and I don't approve of that. never mind that they also do drugs. i don't idolise them in the sense that I know where they live and what they like for breakfast - but a lot of these guys do write music I happen to like.

I am all for boycotting Nestle in the hope of themceasing to exploit women in the developing world. But boycotting a rock band ?

I think Roses stance is typical of many lower income whites. He just hasn't thought it through.
When I posted an OP recently about attitudes to rape, I was told " everyone gets this already, Minto".

Sad to say, this isn't quite true. It isn't true that we can divide people up into 'good guy ' and 'bad guys'

Some good people do bad things , sometimes, and very few people end up like Josef Stalin or Ted bundy. How feminists should respond to Axl Rose is something I have not really worked outt just yet.
102 comments|post comment

Vagina voting? [27 Jun 2008|07:47pm]
lost_kite
So it was only for the first time during this election cycle that I was made aware of the existence of EMILY's List, an interest group dedicated to supporting pro-choice Democratic women in public elections. Unsurprisingly, this group was heavily invested in the Clinton campaign, and the first time they drew my attention was when the group's leader lashed out at NARAL for its mid-May endorsement of Barack Obama.

It's only today, though, that I read an interesting article about the history and controversies surrounding this organization. Apparently EMILY's List has drawn criticism for not merely supporting pro-choice Democratic women against pro-life Republican men, but for supporting pro-choice Democratic women against pro-choice Democratic men for seemingly no other reason than that they would rather see a female elected than a male:

( Cut for long quote )

Additionally, the group has implied that it might withdraw its endorsements of pro-choice Democratic females who endorsed Obama:

Malcolm went even further. In April, she suggested that her group might not back some of EMILY's List's brightest stars, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who supported Obama during the primary.

"We'll just have to wait and see," Malcolm said when asked whether the senators could lose their seats because they backed Obama, the Associated Press reported on April 18. That quote incensed many in progressive Democratic circles, who viewed it as a threat. "That is a big, big mistake," Fenn said. "Listen, you're trying to expand the tent, not shrink it."


---

It bothers me a fair bit that a group would find it justified to support a female candidate over a male candidate simply because of her sex. When it comes to national electoral politics, I don't perceive there as being much of a glass ceiling, really. And even if there was in the form of a sexist media or voting public, it would strike me as far more productive to invest resources in combating these attitudes rather than to simply try to push candidates despite them. I do think there's an important difference between those who might be inclined to lend some marginal support to a female candidate in order to send a message and those who are derogatorily referred to as "vagina voters" who vote on their sex in a manner that typifies the worst aspects of an interest group. While the former characterization may be somewhat of a strawman, it strikes me that EMILY's List supporters are relatively close to it, and it's really not a commendable thing.

Thoughts/comments/etc. welcome. I guess the broader discussion topic would be about to what extent it's justifiable to vote for someone solely based on their minority status, and whether groups which promote candidates based solely on their minority statuses are really spending their resources wisely if their goal is to ensure institutional equality. EMILY's List is apparently okay with investing substantial resources solely to ensure that Congress has more females, and I tend to view this is a rather dumb sort of single-issue focus... hell, it's not even an issue really, is it?

(x-posted to various places)
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pressing on-topic post. [27 Jun 2008|05:16pm]

hortensio
Is anyone else getting an message saying something about exceeding the 1000 tag limit when they try to edit tags in this comm? Have the tag settings been changed? CAN WE NOT EDIT TAGS ANYMORE?

I give good tag. You don't want any? D:
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