"I don't wear high heel shoes or pretty dresses or get mani/pedis or shave. I roll out of bed and maybe shower if I smell and brush my teeth. My hair dries itself in the breeze and usually I see putting on makeup as a colossal waste of my time and money, but I still love my jewelry. My fingers are perpetually calloused and my nails are perpetually dirty. I wear sandals with chipped orange and purple polish or black boots and I'll wear the same holey black jeans for a week straight along with some shirt I probably thrifted because I'm poor and also because I refuse to fund an exploitative fashion industry. I carry a giant tattered hippie bag slung over my shoulder and laden with at least one book and my journal and probably some crosswords and my smokes. And when I walk down the street I try not to size up other girls, but I do try to hold my head up high and remind myself that I'm just as good as everyone else."
"And I don't care about how much money you have or your job or your car or your lack of six-pack abs- I care about your personality, your sense of humor, your interests, and your ability to act like a decent human being."
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
HHS Rejects Indiana Law to Defund Planned Parenthood
(via Feminist Majority Foundation: http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=13039)
June 2, 2011
Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified Indiana state officials that an Indiana law prohibiting state agencies from contracting with clinics offering abortions violates federal law. Governor Mitch Daniels (R) signed the law on May 10, and in April, the state Senate and House voted to cut about $2 million in federal money that goes to Planned Parenthood, much of which is for Medicaid services. HHS Medical Administrator Don Berwick clarified, "Medicaid programs may not exclude qualified health care providers from providing services that are funded under the program because of a provider's scope of practice."
Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, stated, "By issuing a letter to the state of Indiana rejecting its proposal to bar Planned Parenthood from providing preventive health care through Medicaid, HHS is sending a clear message that states cannot play politics with women's health and prevent Medicaid patients form choosing their preferred health care providers. The new law in Indiana prevents nearly 10,000 women from accessing preventive health care, such as contraception, cancer screenings, and STD testing and treatment, from Planned Parenthood health centers."
Last week, US Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and twenty-nine other Senate Democrats issued a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting that HHS officials advise Medicaid directors not to implement measures to prevent Medicaid or Title X funding from going to clinics that offer abortion service.
Following the HHS decision to block the Indiana law to defund Planned Parenthood, Senator Blumenthal stated, "This step is a powerful, prompt rebuke to Indiana- and a strong warning to other states considering similar ill-advised and illegal action denying essential health care to women... I hope other state legislatures considering similarly misguided attempts to block women, teens, and families from the health care and family planning services they need and deserve will reconsider these dangerous proposals, and I remain committed to standing up for women's health."
Media Resources: Associated Press 6/1/11; Statement of Richard Blumenthal 6/1/11; Feminist Daily Newswire 5/31/11
June 2, 2011
Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified Indiana state officials that an Indiana law prohibiting state agencies from contracting with clinics offering abortions violates federal law. Governor Mitch Daniels (R) signed the law on May 10, and in April, the state Senate and House voted to cut about $2 million in federal money that goes to Planned Parenthood, much of which is for Medicaid services. HHS Medical Administrator Don Berwick clarified, "Medicaid programs may not exclude qualified health care providers from providing services that are funded under the program because of a provider's scope of practice."
Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, stated, "By issuing a letter to the state of Indiana rejecting its proposal to bar Planned Parenthood from providing preventive health care through Medicaid, HHS is sending a clear message that states cannot play politics with women's health and prevent Medicaid patients form choosing their preferred health care providers. The new law in Indiana prevents nearly 10,000 women from accessing preventive health care, such as contraception, cancer screenings, and STD testing and treatment, from Planned Parenthood health centers."
Last week, US Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and twenty-nine other Senate Democrats issued a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting that HHS officials advise Medicaid directors not to implement measures to prevent Medicaid or Title X funding from going to clinics that offer abortion service.
Following the HHS decision to block the Indiana law to defund Planned Parenthood, Senator Blumenthal stated, "This step is a powerful, prompt rebuke to Indiana- and a strong warning to other states considering similar ill-advised and illegal action denying essential health care to women... I hope other state legislatures considering similarly misguided attempts to block women, teens, and families from the health care and family planning services they need and deserve will reconsider these dangerous proposals, and I remain committed to standing up for women's health."
Media Resources: Associated Press 6/1/11; Statement of Richard Blumenthal 6/1/11; Feminist Daily Newswire 5/31/11
And I Should Know
From: http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/tv/upfronts/2011/roseanne-barr-2011-5/
Roseanne Barr was a sitcom star, a creator and a product, the agitator and the abused, a domestic goddess and a feminist pioneer. That was twenty years ago. But as far as she’s concerned, not much has changed.
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(Photo: Robert Maxwell. Hair by Campbell McAuley/Solo Artists. Makeup by Shannon Hughey.) |
During the recent and overly publicized breakdown of Charlie Sheen, I was repeatedly contacted by the media and asked to comment, as it was assumed that I know a thing or two about starring on a sitcom, fighting with producers, nasty divorces, public meltdowns, and bombing through a live comedytour. I have, however, never smoked crack or taken too many drugs, unless you count alcohol as a drug (I don’t). But I do know what it’s like to be seized by bipolar thoughts that make one spout wise about Tiger Blood and brag about winning when one is actually losing.
It’s hard to tell whether one is winning or, in fact, losing once one starts to think of oneself as a commodity, or a product, or a character, or a voice for the downtrodden. It’s called losing perspective. Fame’s a bitch. It’s hard to handle and drives you nuts. Yes, it’s true that your sense of entitlement grows exponentially with every perk until it becomes too stupendous a weight to walk around under, but it’s a cutthroat business, show, and without the perks, plain ol’ fame and fortune just ain’t worth the trouble.
“Winning” in Hollywood means not just power, money, and complimentary smoked-salmon pizza, but also that everyone around you fails just as you are peaking. When you become No. 1, you might begin to believe, as Cher once said in an interview, that you are “one of God’s favorite children,” one of the few who made it through the gauntlet and survived. The idea that your ego is not ego at all but submission to the will of the Lord starts to dawn on you as you recognize that only by God’s grace did you make it through the raging attack of idea pirates and woman haters, to ascend to the top of Bigshit Showbiz Mountain.
All of that sounds very much like the diagnosis for bipolar disorder, which more and more stars are claiming to have these days. I have it, as well as several other mental illnesses, but then, I’ve always been a trendsetter, even though I’m seldom credited with those kinds of things. And I was not crazy before I created, wrote, and starred in television’s first feminist and working-class-family sitcom (also its last).
I so admire Dave Chappelle. You did right for yourself by walking away, Dave. I did not have the guts to do it, because I knew I would never get another chance to carry so large a message on behalf of the men and women I grew up with, and that mattered most to me.
After my 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, I was wooed by producers in Hollywood, who told me they wanted to turn my act into a sitcom. When Marcy Carsey—who co-owned Carsey-Werner with her production partner, Tom Werner (producers of The Cosby Show)—asked me to sign, I was impressed. I considered The Cosby Show to be some of the greatest and most revolutionary TV ever.
Marcy presented herself as a sister in arms. I was a cutting-edge comic, and she said she got that I wanted to do a realistic show about a strong mother who was not a victim of Patriarchal Consumerist Bullshit—in other words, the persona I had carefully crafted over eight previous years in dive clubs and biker bars: a fierce working-class Domestic Goddess. It was 1987, and it seemed people were primed and ready to watch a sitcom that didn’t have anything like the rosy glow of middle-class confidence and comfort, and didn’t try to fake it. ABC seemed to agree. They picked up Roseanne in 1988.
It didn’t take long for me to get a taste of the staggering sexism and class bigotry that would make the first season of Roseanne god-awful. It was at the premiere party when I learned that my stories and ideas—and the ideas of my sister and my first husband, Bill—had been stolen. The pilot was screened, and I saw the opening credits for the first time, which included this: CREATED BY MATT WILLIAMS. I was devastated and felt so betrayed that I stood up and left the party. Not one person noticed.
I confronted Marcy under the bleachers on the sound stage when we were shooting the next episode. I asked her how I could continue working for a woman who had let a man take credit for my work—who wouldn’t even share credit with me—after talking to me about sisterhood and all that bullshit. She started crying and said, “I guess I’m going to have to tell Brandon [Stoddard, then president of ABC Entertainment] that I can’t deliver this show.” I said, “Cry all you want to, but you figure out a way to put my name on the show I created, or kiss my ass good-bye.”
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Season one, 1988: From top, Sarah Gilbert (Darlene), Lecy Goranson (Becky), Laurie Metcalf (Jackie), Goodman, Barr, and Michael Fishman (D.J.). (Photo: ABC/Neal Peters Collection) |
I went to complain to Brandon, thinking he could set things straight, as having a robbed star might be counterproductive to his network. He told me, “You were over 21 when you signed that contract.” He looked at me as if I were an arrogant waitress run amok.
I went to my agent and asked him why he never told me that I would not be getting the “created by” credit. He halfheartedly admitted that he had “a lot going on at the time” and was “sorry.” I also learned that it was too late to lodge a complaint with the Writers Guild. I immediately left that agency and went to the William Morris Agency. I figured out that Carsey and Werner had bullshitted Matt Williams into believing that it was his show and I was his “star” as effectively as they had bullshitted me into thinking that it was my show and Matt Williams was my “scribe.” I contacted Bernie Brillstein and a young talent manager in his office, Brad Grey, and asked them to help me. They suggested that I walk away and start over, but I was too afraid I would never get another show.
It was pretty clear that no one really cared about the show except me, and that Matt and Marcy and ABC had nothing but contempt for me—someone who didn’t show deference, didn’t keep her mouth shut, didn’t do what she was told. Marcy acted as if I were anti-feminist by resisting her attempt to steal my whole life out from under me. I made the mistake of thinking Marcy was a powerful woman in her own right. I’ve come to learn that there are none in TV. There aren’t powerful men, for that matter, either—unless they work for an ad company or a market-study group. Those are the people who decide what gets on the air and what doesn’t.
Complaining about the “created by” credit made an enemy of Matt. He wasted no time bullying and undermining me, going so far as to ask my co-star, John Goodman, who played Roseanne Conner’s husband, Dan, if he would do the show without me. (Goodman said no.) That caused my first nervous breakdown.
“I so admire Dave Chappelle. I did not have the guts to walk away.”
To survive the truly hostile environment on set, I started to pray nonstop to my God, as working-class women often do, and to listen nonstop to Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power.” I read The Art of War and kept the idea “He that cares the most, wins” upmost in my mind. I knew I cared the most, since I had the most to lose. I made a chart of names and hung them on my dressing-room door; it listed every person who worked on the show, and I put a check next to those I intended to fire when Roseanne became No. 1, which I knew it would.
My breakdown deepened around the fourth episode, when I confronted the wardrobe master about the Sears, Roebuck outfits that made me look like a show pony rather than a working-class mom. I wanted vintage plaid shirts, T-shirts, and jeans, not purple stretch pants with green-and-blue smocks. She bought everything but what I requested, so I wore my own clothes to work, thinking she was just absent-minded. I was still clueless about the extent of the subterfuge.
Eventually she told me that she had been told by one of Matt’s producers—his chief mouthpiece—“not to listen to what Roseanne wants to wear.” This producer was a woman, a type I became acquainted with at the beginning of my stand-up career in Denver. I cared little for them: blondes in high heels who were so anxious to reach the professional level of the men they worshipped, fawned over, served, built up, and flattered that they would stab other women in the back. They are the ultimate weapon used by men against actual feminists who try to work in media, and they are never friends to other women, you can trust me on that.
I grabbed a pair of wardrobe scissors and ran up to the big house to confront the producer. (The “big house” was what I called the writers’ building. I rarely went there, since it was disgusting. Within minutes, one of the writers would crack a stinky-pussy joke that would make me want to murder them. Male writers have zero interest in being nice to women, including their own assistants, few of whom are ever promoted to the rank of “writer,” even though they do all the work while the guys sit on their asses taking the credit. Those are the women who deserve the utmost respect.) I walked into this woman’s office, held the scissors up to show her I meant business, and said, “Bitch, do you want me to cut you?” We stood there for a second or two, just so I could make sure she was receptive to my POV. I asked why she had told the wardrobe master to not listen to me, and she said, “Because we do not like the way you choose to portray this character.” I said, “This is no fucking character! This is my show, and I created it—not Matt, and not Carsey-Werner, and not ABC. You watch me. I will win this battle if I have to kill every last white bitch in high heels around here.”
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Season nine, 1997: The last season, with the second Becky, Sarah Chalke. (Photo: ABC/Neal Peters Collection) |
The next battle came when Matt sent down a line for me that I found incredibly insulting—not just to myself but to John, who I was in love with, secretly. The line was a ridiculously sexist interpretation of what a feminist thinks—something to the effect of “You’re my equal in bed, but that’s it.” I could not say it convincingly enough for Matt, and his hand-picked director walked over and gave me a note in front of the entire crew: “Say it like you mean it … That is a direct note from Matt.” What followed went something like this: My lovely acting coach, Roxanne Rogers (a sister of Sam Shepard), piped up and said, “Never give an actor a note in front of the crew. Take her aside and give her the note privately—that is what good directors do.” She made sure to say this in front of the entire crew. Then she suggested that I request a line change. So I did. Matt, who was watching from his office, yelled over the loudspeaker, “Say the line as written!” I said, “No, I don’t like the line. I find it repulsive, and my character would not say it.” Matt said, “Yes, she would say it. She’s hot to trot and to get her husband in bed with her, and give it to her like she wants it.” I replied that this was not what she would say or do: “It’s a castrating line that only an idiot would think to write for a real live woman who loves her husband, you cocksucker.” ABC’s lawyers were called in. They stood around the bed while the cameras filmed me saying, very politely, over and over, “Line change, please.” After four hours of this, I called my then-lawyer, Barry Hirsch, and demanded to be let out of my contract. I couldn’t take it any longer—the abuse, humiliation, theft, and lack of respect for my work, my health, my life. He explained that he had let it go on for hours on purpose and that I had finally won. He had sent a letter to the network and Carsey-Werner that said, “Matt wasted money that he could have saved with a simple line change. He cost you four hours in production budget.” That turned the tide in my favor.
Barry told me Matt would be gone after the thirteenth episode. Which didn’t stop him from making my life hell until then. Some days, I’d just stand in the set’s kitchen weeping loudly. The crew would surround me and encourage me to continue. CJ, one of my favorite cameramen—an African-American married to a white woman—would say, “Come on, Rosie, I need this job. I have five kids, and two of them are white!”
I was constantly thinking about my own kids’ being able to go to college, and I wrote jokes like a machine—jokes that I insisted be included in the scripts (lots of times, the writers would tell me that the pages got lost). But thanks to Barry, my then-manager Arlyne Rothberg, Roxanne, my brave dyke sister Geraldine Barr, the cast of great actors, the crew—who became my drinking buddies—the wardrobe department, and the craft-services folks, I showed up and lived out the first thirteen episodes, after which Matt left. Without all of them, I never would have made it. (Most of the crew now work for Chuck Lorre, who I fired from my show; his sitcoms star some of my co-stars and tackle many of the subjects Roseanne did. Imitation is the sincerest form of show business.)
Matt stayed just long enough to ensure him a lifetime’s worth of residuals. Another head writer was brought on, and at first he actually tried to listen to what I wanted to do. But within a few shows, I realized he wasn’t much more of a team player than Matt. He brought his own writers with him, all male, all old. Most of them had probably never worked with a woman who did not serve them coffee. It must have been a shock to their system to find me in a position to disapprove their jokes.
When the show went to No. 1 in December 1988, ABC sent a chocolate “1” to congratulate me. Guess they figured that would keep the fat lady happy—or maybe they thought I hadn’t heard (along with the world) that male stars with No. 1 shows were given Bentleys and Porsches. So me and George Clooney [who played Roseanne Conner’s boss for the first season] took my chocolate prize outside, where I snapped a picture of him hitting it with a baseball bat. I sent that to ABC.
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(Photo: Robert Maxwell. Hair by Campbell McAuley/Solo Artists. Makeup by Shannon Hughey.) |
Not long after that, I cleaned house. Honestly, I enjoyed firing the people I’d checked on the back of my dressing-room door. The writers packed their bags and went to join Matt on Tim Allen’s new show, Home Improvement, so none of them suffered at all. Tim didn’t get credit either.
But at least everyone began to credit me. I was assumed to be a genius and eccentric instead of a crazy bitch, and for a while it felt pretty nice. I hired comics that I had worked with in clubs, rather than script writers. I promoted several of the female assistants—who had done all the work of assembling the scripts anyway—to full writers. (I did that for one or two members of my crew as well.) I gave Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow their first writing jobs, as well as many other untried writers who went on to great success.
Call me immodest—moi?—but I honestly think Roseanne is even more ahead of its time today, when Americans are, to use a technical term from classical economics, screwed. We had our fun; it was a sitcom. But it also wasn’t The Brady Bunch; the kids were wiseasses, and so were the parents. I and the mostly great writers in charge of crafting the show every week never forgot that we needed to make people laugh, but the struggle to survive, and to break taboos, was equally important. And that was my goal from the beginning.
The end of my addiction to fame happened at the exact moment Roseanne dropped out of the top ten, in the seventh of our nine seasons. It was mysteriously instantaneous! I clearly remember that blackest of days, when I had my office call the Palm restaurant for reservations on a Saturday night, at the last second as per usual. My assistant, Hilary, who is still working for me, said—while clutching the phone to her chest with a look of horror, a look I can recall now as though it were only yesterday: “The Palm said they are full!” Knowing what that really meant sent me over the edge. It was a gut shot with a sawed-off scattershot, buckshot-loaded pellet gun. I made Hil call the Palm back, disguise her voice, and say she was calling from the offices of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Instantly, Hil was given the big 10-4 by the Palm management team. I became enraged, and though she was uncomfortable doing it (Hil is a professional woman), I forced her to call back at 7:55 and cancel the 8:00 reservation, saying that Roseanne—who had joined Tom and Nicole’s party of seven—had persuaded them to join her at Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard.
The feeling of being used all those years just because I was in the top ten—not for my money or even my gluttony—was sobering indeed. I vowed that I would make a complete change top to bottom and rid myself of the desires that had laid me low. (I also stopped eating meat for a year, out of bitterness and mourning for the Palm’s bone-in rib-eye steaks.) As inevitably happens to all stars, I could not look myself in the mirror for one more second. My dependence on empty flattery, without which I feared I would evaporate, masked a deeper addiction to the bizarro world of fame. I had sold my time and company at deflated prices just for the thrill of reserving the best tables at the best restaurants at the very last minute with a phone call to the maître d’—or the owner himself, whose friendship I coddled just to ensure premium access to the aforementioned, unbelievably good smoked-salmon pizza.
I finally found the right lawyer to tell me what scares TV producers worse than anything—too late for me. What scares these guys—who think that the perks of success include humiliating and destroying the star they work for (read Lorre’s personal attacks on Charlie Sheen in his vanity cards at the end of Two and a Half Men)—isn’t getting caught stealing or being made to pay for that; it’s being charged with fostering a “hostile work environment.” If I could do it all over, I’d sue ABC and Carsey-Werner under those provisions. Hollywood hates labor, and hates shows about labor worse than any other thing. And that’s why you won’t be seeing another Roseanne anytime soon. Instead, all over the tube, you will find enterprising, overmedicated, painted-up, capitalist whores claiming to be housewives. But I’m not bitter.
Nothing real or truthful makes its way to TV unless you are smart and know how to sneak it in, and I would tell you how I did it, but then I would have to kill you. Based on Two and a Half Men’s success, it seems viewers now prefer their comedy dumb and sexist. Charlie Sheen was the world’s most famous john, and a sitcom was written around him. That just says it all. Doing tons of drugs, smacking prostitutes around, holding a knife up to the head of your wife—sure, that sounds like a dream come true for so many guys out there, but that doesn’t make it right! People do what they can get away with (or figure they can), and Sheen is, in fact, a product of what we call politely the “culture.” Where I can relate to the Charlie stuff is his undisguised contempt for certain people in his work environment and his unwillingness to play a role that’s expected of him on his own time.
But, again, I’m not bitter. I’m really not. The fact that my fans have thanked and encouraged me for doing what I used to get in trouble for doing (shooting my big mouth off) has been very healing. And somewhere along the way, I realized that TV and our culture had changed because of a woman named Roseanne Conner, whom I am honored to have written jokes for.
Barr now lives in Hawaii, where she farms macadamia nuts. She has a new book, Roseannearchy (Gallery; $26), and will return to TV in Roseanne’s Nuts, a Lifetime reality show.
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This is why I love Roseanne. (And aren't those photos beautiful?)
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Coochies and va jay jays... a rant about a major pet peeve
These are words I really hate:
snatch
cooch
cooter
hoo-ha
beaver
cha-cha
and especially VA JAY JAY
It drives me insane when women have to use some cutesy non-word to describe a part of their anatomy because somehow there is something wrong and offensive about using the correct terms to describe our bodies. And while we're on the subject...
Nobody shaves their vagina. Hair does not grow on your vagina. The vagina is "the genital canal in the female, leading from the opening of the vulva to the cervix of the uterus"*.
A vulva is "the external genital organs of the female, including the labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, and vestibule of the vagina"*.
Now I know men have plenty of names for their parts both medically correct and otherwise:
cock, dick, balls, etc, but they are not cutesy baby words made up because men are afraid of the words "penis" and "testicles".
These are words I do not hate:
pussy
cunt
These words are also used as insults. Pussy denotes cowardice. Cunt is a term used for a woman who is perceived as hostile, strong-willed, opinionated, moody, angry, etc...
No one calls a man a cunt. Calling a man a pussy is highly insulting. These words attempt to link the female anatomy to characteristics and behaviors that are usually undesirable in our society. To be a pussy is to be something less than acceptable. Used in a derogatory manner these words associate "negative" aspects of personality with femaleness, ie: to be cowardly is to be female and conversely, to be female is to be cowardly. These words used as insults even go so far as to create a subconscious legislation of what is "socially correct" female and male behavior.
I call bullshit.
Pussy and cunt are powerful words and using these powerful words in a positive manner
to describe vulvas/vaginas can be one way to strip the negative connotations of such words while giving them a new power and a positive association- one that females can claim as ours and ours alone.
I like the word pussy partly because I like kitties. The pussy between my legs is warm and covered with soft downy hair. I purr when it is petted the right way.
Cunt is strong and powerful. Cunts have thunderous wonderful spasmodic orgasms. Cunts bleed in lunar cycles. Cunts give birth. Life comes from cunts. The epitome of creation comes from cunts.
I have a vagina. I have a vulva. I also have arms, legs, fingers, toes, a nose, lips, ears. I am not embarrassed to say these words, but maybe I should start referring to my nose as my "sniffy" or my "noo-noo"... that would make about as much sense as "hoo-ha" or va jay jay, now wouldn't it?
Definitions from The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Accessed via http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/
snatch
cooch
cooter
hoo-ha
beaver
cha-cha
and especially VA JAY JAY
It drives me insane when women have to use some cutesy non-word to describe a part of their anatomy because somehow there is something wrong and offensive about using the correct terms to describe our bodies. And while we're on the subject...
Nobody shaves their vagina. Hair does not grow on your vagina. The vagina is "the genital canal in the female, leading from the opening of the vulva to the cervix of the uterus"*.
A vulva is "the external genital organs of the female, including the labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, and vestibule of the vagina"*.
Now I know men have plenty of names for their parts both medically correct and otherwise:
cock, dick, balls, etc, but they are not cutesy baby words made up because men are afraid of the words "penis" and "testicles".
These are words I do not hate:
pussy
cunt
These words are also used as insults. Pussy denotes cowardice. Cunt is a term used for a woman who is perceived as hostile, strong-willed, opinionated, moody, angry, etc...
No one calls a man a cunt. Calling a man a pussy is highly insulting. These words attempt to link the female anatomy to characteristics and behaviors that are usually undesirable in our society. To be a pussy is to be something less than acceptable. Used in a derogatory manner these words associate "negative" aspects of personality with femaleness, ie: to be cowardly is to be female and conversely, to be female is to be cowardly. These words used as insults even go so far as to create a subconscious legislation of what is "socially correct" female and male behavior.
I call bullshit.
Pussy and cunt are powerful words and using these powerful words in a positive manner
to describe vulvas/vaginas can be one way to strip the negative connotations of such words while giving them a new power and a positive association- one that females can claim as ours and ours alone.
I like the word pussy partly because I like kitties. The pussy between my legs is warm and covered with soft downy hair. I purr when it is petted the right way.
Cunt is strong and powerful. Cunts have thunderous wonderful spasmodic orgasms. Cunts bleed in lunar cycles. Cunts give birth. Life comes from cunts. The epitome of creation comes from cunts.
I have a vagina. I have a vulva. I also have arms, legs, fingers, toes, a nose, lips, ears. I am not embarrassed to say these words, but maybe I should start referring to my nose as my "sniffy" or my "noo-noo"... that would make about as much sense as "hoo-ha" or va jay jay, now wouldn't it?
Definitions from The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Accessed via http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/
Monday, May 23, 2011
Queens Lawmaker Proposes "Panic Button" for Hotel Housekeepers
Monday, May 23, 2011 | Updated 10:43 AM EDT
A New York assemblyman says he wants the state to require hotels to provide their housekeepers with an emergency "panic button" that would help protect them from sexual assaults on the job.
Assemblyman Rory Lancman, a Democrat from Queens, said he will introduce the bill Monday. The move comes a week after former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid.
"We send hotel workers, housekeepers into rooms by themselves without any other staff, without any other security," Lancman said at a news conference Sunday outside the Sofitel Hotel, the site of Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid last week.
Lancman said attacks on hotel housekeepers are common, and though the incidents "may not be as brutal or as sensational" as the allegations in the Strauss-Kahn case, housekeepers are often inappropriately groped or propositioned.
Lancman referred to a New York Times article on Saturday highlighting the sexual affronts hotel housekeepers have long had to face.
he proposed legislation calls for hotels to provide a small device for housekeepers that would, at the touch of a button, trigger an audible alarm or alert hotel security.
He estimated a cost of $20 to $40 per device, though he said it would cost "significantly less" for hotels to buy in bulk.
The Associated Press said a review of court documents and news reports found at least 10 other hotel housekeepers who say they've been attacked in the U.S. in the last three years.
Labor groups said other cases are kept quiet because the victims are illegal immigrants or because hotels are wary of scaring off guests.
Source: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Queens-Lawmaker-Proposes-Panic-Button-for-Hotel-Housekeepers-122419684.html
Wouldn't this be a great idea? Not just for hotel housekeepers but for any worker who enters residences/hotel rooms alone... like one of those life alert necklaces... maybe even with a GPS that can be activated for emergency services... In the past I've noticed that several hotel housekeepers may work a floor at once... I don't know if this is common practice, but a call button could be really good additional measure to ensure safety.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Parents keep child's gender secret
May 21, 2011
Jayme Poisson
STAFF REPORTER
Each week the woman asks the same question about the baby with the squishy cheeks and feathery blond hair.
Witterick smiles, opens her arms wide, comments on the sunny spring day, and keeps walking.
She’s used to it. The neighbours know Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising a genderless baby. But they don’t pretend to understand it.
While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.
The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day.
“When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’” says Witterick, bouncing Storm, dressed in a red-fleece jumper, on her lap at the kitchen table.
“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.
When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: “We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...).”
Their announcement was met with stony silence. Then the deluge of criticisms began. Not just about Storm, but about how they were parenting their other two children.
The grandparents were supportive, but resented explaining the gender-free baby to friends and co-workers. They worried the children would be ridiculed. Friends said they were imposing their political and ideological values on a newborn. Most of all, people said they were setting their kids up for a life of bullying in a world that can be cruel to outsiders.
Witterick and Stocker believe they are giving their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females. Some say their choice is alienating.
In an age where helicopter parents hover nervously over their kids micromanaging their lives, and tiger moms ferociously push their progeny to get into Harvard, Stocker, 39, and Witterick, 38, believe kids can make meaningful decisions for themselves from a very early age.
“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” says Stocker.
Jazz and Kio have picked out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores since they were 18 months old. Just this week, Jazz unearthed a pink dress at Value Village, which he loves because it “really poofs out at the bottom. It feels so nice.” The boys decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.
Like all mothers and fathers, Witterick and Stocker struggle with parenting decisions. The boys are encouraged to challenge how they’re expected to look and act based on their sex.
“We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick.
They don’t want to isolate their kids from the world, but, when it’s meaningful, talk about gender.
This past winter, the family took a vacation to Cuba with Witterick’s parents. Since they weren’t fluent in Spanish, they flipped a coin at the airport to decide what to tell people. It landed on heads, so for the next week, everyone who asked was told Storm was a boy. The language changed immediately. “What a big, strong boy,” people said.
The moment a child’s sex is announced, so begins the parade of pink and barrage of blue. Tutus and toy trucks aren’t far behind. The couple says it only intensifies with age.
“In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” Witterick writes in an email.
**
Stocker teaches at City View Alternative, a tiny school west of Dufferin Grove Park, with four teachers and about 60 Grade 7 and 8 students whose lessons are framed by social-justice issues around class, race and gender.
When Kio was a baby, the family travelled through the mountains of Mexico, speaking with the Zapatistas, a revolutionary group who shun mainstream politics as corrupt and demand greater indigenous rights. In 1994, about 150 people died in violent clashes with the Mexican military, but the leftist movement has been largely peaceful since.
Last year, they spent two weeks in Cuba, living with local families and learning about the revolution. Witterick has worked in violence prevention, giving workshops to teachers. These days, she volunteers, offering breastfeeding support. At the moment, she is a full-time mom.
Both come from liberal families. Stocker grew up listening to Free to Be ... You and Me, a 1972 record with a central message of gender neutrality. Witterick remembers her brother mucking around with gender as a teen in the ’80s, wearing lipstick and carrying handbags like David Bowie and Mick Jagger.
The family lives in a cream-coloured two-storey brick home in the city’s Junction Triangle neighbourhood. Their front porch is crammed with bicycles, including Kio’s pink and purple tricycle. Inside, it’s organized clutter. The children's arts and crafts projects are stacked in the bookcases, maps hang on the walls and furniture is well-used and of a certain vintage.
Upstairs they co-sleep curled up on two mattresses pushed together on the floor of the master bedroom, under a heap of mismatched pillows and blankets. During the day, the kids build forts with the pillows and pretend to walk a tightrope between the mattresses.
On a recent Tuesday, the boys finish making paper animal puppets and a handmade sign to celebrate their dad’s birthday. “I love to do laundry with dad,” reads one message. They nuzzle Storm, splayed out on the floor. The baby squeals with delight.
Witterick practices unschooling, an offshoot of home-schooling centred on the belief that learning should be driven by a child’s curiosity. There are no report cards, no textbooks and no tests. For unschoolers, learning is about exploring and asking questions, “not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else,” says Witterick. The fringe movement is growing. An unschooling conference in Toronto drew dozens of families last fall.
The kids have a lot of say in how their day unfolds. They decide if they want to squish through the mud, chase garter snakes in the park or bake cupcakes.
**
Jazz — soft-spoken, with a slight frame and curious brown eyes — keeps his hair long, preferring to wear it in three braids, two in the front and one in the back, even though both his parents have close-cropped hair. His favourite colour is pink, although his parents don’t own a piece of pink clothing between them. He loves to paint his fingernails and wears a sparkly pink stud in one ear, despite the fact his parents wear no nail polish or jewelry.
Kio keeps his curly blond hair just below his chin. The 2-year-old loves purple, although he’s happiest in any kind of pyjama pants.
“As a result, Jazz and now Kio are almost exclusively assumed to be girls,” says Stocker, adding he and Witterick don’t out them. It’s the boys’ choice whether they want to offer a correction.
On a recent trip to High Park, Jazz, wearing pink shorts, patterned pink socks and brightly coloured elastics on his braids, runs and skips across the street.
“That’s a princess!” says a smiling crossing guard, ushering the little boy along. “And that’s a princess, too,” she says again, pointing at Kio with her big red sign.
Jazz doesn’t mind. One of his favourite books is 10,000 Dresses, the story of a boy who loves to dress up. But he doesn’t like being called a girl. Recently, he asked his mom to write a note on his application to the High Park Nature Centre because he likes the group leaders and wants them to know he’s a boy.
Jazz was old enough for school last September, but chose to stay home. “When we would go and visit programs, people — children and adults — would immediately react with Jazz over his gender,” says Witterick, adding the conversation would gravitate to his choice of pink or his hairstyle.
That’s mostly why he doesn’t want to go to school. When asked if it upsets him, he nods, but doesn’t say more.
Instead he grabs a handmade portfolio filled with his drawings and poems. In its pages is a booklet written under his pseudonym, the “Gender Explorer.” In purple and pink lettering, adorned with butterflies, it reads: “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are!”
*
Storm was named after whipped winds and dark rain clouds, because they are beautiful and transformative.
“When I was pregnant, it was really this intense time around Jazz having experiences with gender and I was feeling like I needed some good parenting skills to support him through that,” says Witterick.
It began as a offhand remark. “Hey, what if we just didn’t tell?” And then Stocker found a book in his school library called X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould. The book, published in 1978, is about raising not a boy or a girl, but X. There’s a happy ending here. Little X — who loved to play football and weave baskets — faces the taunting head on, proving that X is the most well-adjusted child ever examined by “an impartial team of Xperts.”
“It became so compelling it was almost like, How could we not?” says Witterick.
There are days when their decisions are tiring, shackling even. “We spend more time than we should providing explanations for why we do things this way,” says Witterick. “I regret that (Jazz) has to discuss his gender before people ask him meaningful questions about what he does and sees in this world, but I don't think I am responsible for that — the culture that narrowly defines what he should do, wear and look like is.”
Longtime friend Ayal Dinner, 35, a father two young boys, was surprised to hear the couple’s announcement when Storm was born, but is supportive.
“I think it’s amazing that they’re willing to take on challenging people in this way,” says Dinner. “While they are political and ideological about these things, they’re also really thinking about what it means and struggling with it as they go along.”
Dinner understands why people may find it extreme. “Although I can see the criticism of ‘This is going to be hard on my kid,’ it’s great to say, ‘I love my kid for whoever they are.’”
On a recent trip to Hamilton, Jazz was out of earshot when family friend Denise Hansen overheard two little girls at the park say they didn’t want to play with a “girl-boy.” Then, there was the time a saleswoman at a second-hand shop refused to sell him a pink feather boa. “Surely you won't buy it for him — he's a boy!” said the woman. Shocked, and not wanting to upset Jazz, Witterick left the store.
Parents talk about the moment they realize they would throw themselves in front of a speeding truck to save their child from harm, yet battle the instinct to overprotect. They want to encourage independence. They hope people won’t be mean. They pray they aren’t bullied. No parent would ever wish that for their child.
On a night after she watched her husband of 11 years and the boys play with sparklers after dark, Witterick, in a reflective mood, writes to say we are all mocked at some point for the way we look, the way we dress and the way we think.
“When faced with inevitable judgment by others, which child stands tall (and sticks up for others) — the one facing teasing despite desperately trying to fit in, or the one with a strong sense of self and at least two 'go-to' adults who love them unconditionally? Well, I guess you know which one we choose.”
*
Diane Ehrensaft is a California-based psychologist and mother of Jesse, a “girlyboy” who turned his trucks into cradles and preferred porcelain dolls over soldiers when he was a child. Her newly published book, Gender Born, Gender Made, is a guide for parents of nonconforming kids.
She believes parents should support gender-creative children, which includes the transgendered, who feel born in the wrong bodies, and gender hybrids, who feel they are part girl and part boy. Then there are gender “smoothies,” who have a blended sense of gender that is purely “them.”
Ehrensaft believes there is something innate about gender, and points to the ’70s, when parents experimented by giving dolls to boys and trucks to girls.
“It only worked up to a certain extent. Some girls never played with the trucks, some boys weren’t interested in ballet ... It was a humbling experiment for us because we learned we don’t have the control that we thought we did.”
But she worries by not divulging Storm’s sex, the parents are denying the child a way to position himself or herself in a world where you are either male, female or in between. In effect they have created another category: Other than other. And that could marginalize the child.
“I believe that it puts restrictions on this particular baby so that in this culture this baby will be a singular person who is not being given an opportunity to find their true gender self, based on also what’s inside them.”
Ehrensaft gets the “What the heck?!” reaction people may have when they hear about Storm. “I think it probably makes people feel played with to have that information withheld from them.”
While she accepts and supports Jazz’s freedom “to be who he is,” she’s concerned about asking two small boys to keep a secret about the baby of the family. “For very young children, just in their brains, they’re not ready to do the kind of sophisticated discernment we do about when a secret is necessary.”
Jazz says it’s not difficult. He usually just calls the baby Storm.
Dr. Ken Zucker, considered a world expert on gender identity and head of the gender identity service for children at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, calls this a “social experiment of nurture.” The broader question, he says, is how much influence parents have on their kids. If Ehrensaft leans toward nature, Zucker puts more emphasis on nurture. Even when parents don’t make a choice, that’s still a choice, and one that can impact the children.
When asked what psychological harm, if any, could come from keeping the sex of a child secret, Zucker said: “One will find out.”
The couple plan to keep Storm’s sex a secret as long as Storm, Kio and Jazz are comfortable with it. In the meantime, philosophy and reality continue to collide.
Out with the kids all day, Witterick doesn’t have the time or the will to hide in a closet every time she changes Storm’s diaper. “If (people) want to peek, that’s their journey,” she says.
There are questions about which bathroom Storm will use, but that is a couple of years off. Then there is the “tyranny of pronouns,” as they call it. They considered referring to Storm as “Z”. Witterick now calls the baby she, imagining the “s” in brackets.
For the moment, it feels right.
“Everyone keeps asking us, ‘When will this end?’” says Witterick. “And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?”
Random Essays: Dressing Up
Original article: http://nancibeanification.com/tag/nora-ephron/
2 Nov
I remember as a little kid sitting around reading National Geographic magazine and being fascinated by all them foreign people and their interesting customs. There were women with dozens of rings elongating their necks, men in loin cloths with sticks piercing their ears and noses, Chinese girls with feet tightly bound, children running naked and unabashed through the streets of dusty villages, grandmothers gnawing on chicken feet.
I always thought these people were weird, strange, odd, or crazy because their customs and traditions were so completely different from the ones I grew up with. It didn’t occur to me until I was much older that if a photographer from a tribe in Ghana or a villager in the mountains of Peru had visited the United States to photograph the natives, they might have had their own bizarre pictures to share.
Raise your hand if you think hairy armpits on women are gross.
(Did you raise your hand? Now take a sniff. If you think body odor smells bad and wearing deodorant is normal, keep your hand up. If not, put your hand down. You stink.)
I’m pretty sure that most American men and women believe that hairy armpits on a woman are gross. Now of course there are a few naturalists who love to rub their noses in their lover’s locks, but these people also tend to be stoners and stoners think everything is awesome, even stinky pits. But the rest of us are put off by underarm hair, aren’t we?
Why does pit hair bother us so much? Does it spread disease or make us ill or put us at risk for weird sports injuries? Nope. There is no medical or hygienic reason for the adoption of shaving – somebody in the early 1900s simply thought a chick looked better in a sleeveless dress without the little Bob Marleys poking out from underneath her wings. Women have only been shaving in earnest since the 1920s and the practice didn’t become mainstream until after World War II.
But when we Americans see armpit hair on women, we grow uncomfortable, troubled, disturbed, grossed out. And we’re shocked to learn that this shaving thing, though catching on, is not par for the course around the world. We’re the weird ones when it comes to bald pits.
So why does it bother us? Because it’s different, and we humans seem to be really uncomfortable with different.
Folks seem to forget, or in some cases never realize, that we all start out exactly the same. We’re all born (with the exception of those with birth defects) with faces and hair and genitals and legs and arms and blood and skin. Our bodies in their purest form are what we come into the world with. That’s it.
Everything else is artificial – our languages and religions, what we eat, how we dress, how we adorn our bodies – these are things that our cultures have made up. They aren’t integral to our existence as human beings – they’re just expressions of where, or to whom, we were born.
I think it’s important to have an understanding of how superficial these customs we’ve adopted are because we seem to spend an awful lot of time judging each other based upon them. They don’t define us, really, do they? If I’ve got a pierce nose or a Coach bag or long fingernails that curl and twist around themselves like the limbs of a corkscrew willow, and this is all you see, you don’t really know a thing about me, do you?
Oh, we can make assumptions about each other based on these superficialities. Low-slung pants and a cap turned sideways screams gangsta wannabe. A Coach bag on your arm means you either have lots of money in the bank or not a pot to tinkle in but you’re trying to prove otherwise. A pierced nose means you’re not a committed picker. The problem is that none of these assumptions speaks to the heart of who a person is – just who a person wants to be seen as being.
So much of what we do, so much of what we use to identify ourselves culturally, is nothing more than fashion. And yet we base so many of our opinions about other cultures based on these fashions. A woman who wears a head scarf must be oppressed. A man in a loin cloth must long for Levis. We are so convinced that our way is the right way, that we fail to imagine that there exist other definitions of “normal.”
Let’s think about some of the things women in our culture do that would seem insane to a “normal” person elsewhere:
The truth is, we’re all just playing dress up. We’re all just taking these perfect blank canvases we were born with and painting them with the colors adopted by our respective cultures. We are no better than anyone else for our superficialities because simply put, if we are stripped of our fashion, we’re all pretty much the same.
Original article: http://nancibeanification.com/tag/nora-ephron/
I always thought these people were weird, strange, odd, or crazy because their customs and traditions were so completely different from the ones I grew up with. It didn’t occur to me until I was much older that if a photographer from a tribe in Ghana or a villager in the mountains of Peru had visited the United States to photograph the natives, they might have had their own bizarre pictures to share.
Raise your hand if you think hairy armpits on women are gross.
(Did you raise your hand? Now take a sniff. If you think body odor smells bad and wearing deodorant is normal, keep your hand up. If not, put your hand down. You stink.)
I’m pretty sure that most American men and women believe that hairy armpits on a woman are gross. Now of course there are a few naturalists who love to rub their noses in their lover’s locks, but these people also tend to be stoners and stoners think everything is awesome, even stinky pits. But the rest of us are put off by underarm hair, aren’t we?Why does pit hair bother us so much? Does it spread disease or make us ill or put us at risk for weird sports injuries? Nope. There is no medical or hygienic reason for the adoption of shaving – somebody in the early 1900s simply thought a chick looked better in a sleeveless dress without the little Bob Marleys poking out from underneath her wings. Women have only been shaving in earnest since the 1920s and the practice didn’t become mainstream until after World War II.
But when we Americans see armpit hair on women, we grow uncomfortable, troubled, disturbed, grossed out. And we’re shocked to learn that this shaving thing, though catching on, is not par for the course around the world. We’re the weird ones when it comes to bald pits.
So why does it bother us? Because it’s different, and we humans seem to be really uncomfortable with different.
Folks seem to forget, or in some cases never realize, that we all start out exactly the same. We’re all born (with the exception of those with birth defects) with faces and hair and genitals and legs and arms and blood and skin. Our bodies in their purest form are what we come into the world with. That’s it.
Everything else is artificial – our languages and religions, what we eat, how we dress, how we adorn our bodies – these are things that our cultures have made up. They aren’t integral to our existence as human beings – they’re just expressions of where, or to whom, we were born.
I think it’s important to have an understanding of how superficial these customs we’ve adopted are because we seem to spend an awful lot of time judging each other based upon them. They don’t define us, really, do they? If I’ve got a pierce nose or a Coach bag or long fingernails that curl and twist around themselves like the limbs of a corkscrew willow, and this is all you see, you don’t really know a thing about me, do you?
Oh, we can make assumptions about each other based on these superficialities. Low-slung pants and a cap turned sideways screams gangsta wannabe. A Coach bag on your arm means you either have lots of money in the bank or not a pot to tinkle in but you’re trying to prove otherwise. A pierced nose means you’re not a committed picker. The problem is that none of these assumptions speaks to the heart of who a person is – just who a person wants to be seen as being.
So much of what we do, so much of what we use to identify ourselves culturally, is nothing more than fashion. And yet we base so many of our opinions about other cultures based on these fashions. A woman who wears a head scarf must be oppressed. A man in a loin cloth must long for Levis. We are so convinced that our way is the right way, that we fail to imagine that there exist other definitions of “normal.”
Let’s think about some of the things women in our culture do that would seem insane to a “normal” person elsewhere:
- Have you worn a pair of high heels lately? Seriously, we think it’s beautiful in this country to squeeze our feet into shoes that move our centers of gravity dangerously high putting us at risk for ankle and knee injury. With repeated use, these shoes cause corns, calluses and other foot defects that will make the simple act of walking difficult in our later years. We are deforming our feet, much like Chinese women used to, in order to be fashionable. The funny thing is, in the 20th century the Chinese finally figured out how crazy foot binding was. In the 21st century, Americans started wearing platform stilettos (because the regular kind weren’t suicidal enough).
- Because shaving isn’t bad enough, many American women go into little rooms in beauty salons, strip down to their natural states, have hot wax slathered on their genitals and muffle their screams as the wax, and their very natural hair, is ripped off. These are, of course, the same women who then hold fundraisers to end genital mutilation in Africa.
- Have you ever worn a bra or a pair of nylons or a jock strap that is actually comfortable? Seriously? Of course you haven’t.
The truth is, we’re all just playing dress up. We’re all just taking these perfect blank canvases we were born with and painting them with the colors adopted by our respective cultures. We are no better than anyone else for our superficialities because simply put, if we are stripped of our fashion, we’re all pretty much the same.
Original article: http://nancibeanification.com/tag/nora-ephron/
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
A Ten-Year-Old’s Rant To "Boys Around The World"
Irin Carmon Apr 21, 2011 2:48 PM
http://jezebel.com/#!5794445/a-ten+year+olds-rant-to-boys-around-the-world
Reader Becky Sayers writes, "I found this on 10 yr old [daughter] Eliza's bulletin board this morning in her room— when I asked her about it, she said it was an "editorial" she wrote last night after looking at the miniboden children's clothing catalog." With permission from both mother and daughter, we happily share this editorial with you.
http://jezebel.com/#!5794445/a-ten+year+olds-rant-to-boys-around-the-world
Reader Becky Sayers writes, "I found this on 10 yr old [daughter] Eliza's bulletin board this morning in her room— when I asked her about it, she said it was an "editorial" she wrote last night after looking at the miniboden children's clothing catalog." With permission from both mother and daughter, we happily share this editorial with you.
Dear Boys from around the World,
There is just one ting I have to say before I go on. STOP BEING SO STEREOTYPICAL! . The reason I have to let this is out of my system I am yet to tell you. So today I was reading a Mini Boden magazine ( some place in Sweden), and the magazine people asked questions to the kids who were modeling. The one question that ticked me off was this question:
"What is the biggest difference between Boys ( That means you Boys) and Girls?"
Here are some answers that were in this "magazine". Kian, age 6, "Girls Like dolls, and Boys don't". Oh okay I know what you're thinking "Oh he's just six!". Well you better listen to this. Stefano, age 7, "Girls wear pink, and Boys wear blue and green." Okay you're probably thinking the same thing. "Oh he is just 7. Well here is another one. Aiden, 6, "Girls like nail polish; Boys like Soccer Balls.' Yeah I know he is six too. But getting closer to the older ones. Asha, age 8, "Boys are rougher and stronger." Yeah he's eight. Not six, or seven. He's eight. He's got a brain. He's smarter than six and seven yr olds. It's kind of old to me, because I am turning 11 this year. Okay so now that I have listed those Boys' opinions, I am going to list the reasons why I think they are stereotypical.
#1 Hey I'm a Girl, and I HATE dolls! I also hate Barbies, pink, my little ponies, and glitter is okay I guess. But I don't love it like boys think all girls do. But that's just my opinion. Well let me give you a quick lesson. Not all Girls like prissy stuff including me...Give it a ponder.
#2 Like I said I HATE pink. I despise it. HACK See I spat on it. That's how much I hate pink. Hey guess what Stefano, age 7, I wear blue, green, orange, and white about everyday like every other kid in America ( and for this kid in Sweden). I like just about every other color in the rainbow. Except for Pink ( the color not the singer). and purple. So Stefano, I think you have learned an important fact that not all Girls like pink.
#3 For one thing though I do like nail polish, but not just Boys like soccer. For example my friend Heidi is a master soccer player. You mess with her, she kicks you in the shins, or maybe just trips you on the field. Seriously I think you should stay away. For reals.
And finally #4 Okay one thing is that I could beat many boys in a wrestling competition that is up to my grade. Like at lunch today, I was an arm wrestling my friend that happens to be a boy. I beat him. Finally I took my hand off , because I knew he had enough. And also Jillian Michaels, or at least I think it is Jillian Michaels, she's really strong. Probably the strongest woman I've ever heard of. So Asha, 8, give it a ponder.
So really the only reason I wrote this editiorial was to address Boys to stop being so stereotypical and for reading that messy magazine. And the only reason I was reading the magazine was because I was bored. And I must have been really bored to be reading a Swedish magazine about clothes that strangely gets sent to my house.
A Random person in Avon Indiana
Eliza Sayers, age 10
Radical feminism: what it is and why we're afraid of it
Calling the chief prosecutor in the Assange case a 'malicious radical feminist' reflects our misunderstanding of feminism
Alongside the obvious questions of freedom of information and criminal justice, the Julian Assange affair has also made visible a multitude of contemporary anxieties concerning sex and gender. This was brought into sharp relief by claims that Assange's prospects of a fair trial might be compromised by the possibility that Sweden's chief prosecutor Marianne Ny is a "malicious radical feminist" with a "bias against men".
But what exactly is radical feminism? If popular attitudes to feminism are anything to go by, it's clearly something pretty terrifying.
Research suggests that, in the popular imagination, the feminist – and the radical feminist in particular – is seen as full of irrational vitriol towards all men, probably a lesbian and certainly not likely to be found browsing in Claire's Accessories. As an academic working on issues concerning gender and politics, I've had the good fortune of meeting lots of inspiring feminist women – and men – but despite searching I've yet to locate a feminist matching that particular description. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough. A more likely possibility is that the popular insistence that radical feminists – and often by implication feminists in general – are all man-haters reflects wider misunderstandings about the history of feminism and its impact on contemporary gender relations.
So what is radical feminism? Historically, radical feminism was a specific strand of the feminist movement that emerged in Europe and North America in the late 1960s. Distinctive to this strand was its emphasis on the role of male violence against women in the creation and maintenance of gender inequality (as argued by the likes of Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon). And while a minority of radical feminists – most infamously Valerie Solanas – were hostile to men, radical feminism was much more instrumental in generating widespread support for campaigns around issues such as rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment.
However, in Britain at least, radical feminism has never been particularly dominant, partly because – in the eyes of many socialist and postcolonial feminists – it has been insufficiently attentive to the intersections between gender inequality and other categories, such as race and class. So Rod Liddle's peddling of the tiresome rightwing idea that radical feminism has destroyed the family, along with Dominic Raab's assault on "feminist bigotry" and the Vatican's efforts to address "distortions" caused by radical feminism, rest on at least two implausible assumptions. First, they reduce feminism to a horrifying caricature that never really existed and second, they make the frankly bizarre suggestion that radical feminism is the dominant ideology of our times. It would seem that not only do these radical feminists commit the outrage of not wearing makeup, but they use the time this frees up to consolidate their world domination. Or an alternative explanation might be that these are the paranoid anxieties of fearful anti-feminists.
Their fear is not totally misplaced, for radical feminism has undoubtedly had some success. Fortunately for Dominic Raab, world domination is not one of them. Three decades ago, the notion that rape and domestic violence are pressing political issues rather than trivialities, or that men should play an active role in childcare, would have been seen by many as radical and dangerous. Today, thanks to the influence of the insights of diverse strands of feminism (including, but not limited to, radical feminism), these ideas have seeped into the mainstream. Despite this, genuine gender equality can seem distant, but many groups and individuals continue to push in the right direction.
Although the rights and wrongs of the Assange affair are at this stage far from clear, whenever accusations of "man-hating feminism" enter into a debate, our suspicions should be immediately aroused. For more often than not, the temptation to close down debate by tossing around accusations of man-hating radical feminism is caused not by a fear of debate, but by the deeper fear that feminism might actually have something important to say.
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