Miscellaneous

Concerned Women For American Prejudges Study About Lesbian Parenting

Posted on June 11, 2010
Even though it's a new rightwing meme that every choice a woman makes is a feminist choice just because it's a woman making it (see, eg, Sarah Palin Feminism), the rightwing movement doesn't generally believe that. Take, for instance, the anti-gay, anti-feminist Concerned Women for American's opposition to gay ladies who raise children, despite a new study showing positive outcomes for children of lesbian parents...

Stop Me If You've Heard This...

Posted on June 10, 2010
So, Rush Limbaugh got married for the fourth time.His new wife is 26 years younger than him and significantly more attractive*, all pretty much proving that patriarchy exists to allow older, unattractive men sexual access to attractive, young women, am I right?[Note 1: The above link should contain a Trigger Warning for a photo of Rush Limbaugh getting kissy-faced with his wife, which, while I appreciate the fact that he seems to be capable of affection, genuinely made me urp in my mouth give that the ugliness that leaves his mouth on a daily basis...

In Which Commenters Make My Case

Posted on June 09, 2010
[Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault; Misogynistic Language]Perhaps some of you have noticed the recent comment in response to this post, about an alleged female serial groin kicker. I wrote many things in that post, the thesis of which was an examination of how gender-based violence against men are framed compared to the much more pervasive gender-based violence against women...

Book Review: A Church of Her Own

Posted on June 08, 2010
As a feminist with a strong interest in how religion and spirituality can perpetuate and counter sexism and misogyny, it was with much interest that I read Sarah Sentilles' A Church of Her Own: What Happens When a Woman Takes the Pulpit. [All quotations from this book unless otherwise noted]For this book, Sentilles interviewed a diverse collection of aspiring and ordained female ministers within various Christian denominations...

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Hey everybody...

Posted on June 07, 2010
Some people get to have wedding rings and some people don't! Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!I suppose we should be thankful for the explicit admission that "marriage defense" is really about shaming and stigmatizing those who do not enter into the Sacred Heterosexual Coitus Parent-Child Bond that is Real Marriage...

Manly Products With Secret Lady Features

Posted on June 04, 2010
From a Time article highlighting how "Chevy [has] tweak[ed] its SUV for the stiletto crowd*":"Nowadays, gender-neutral looks are being paired with woman-friendly modifications so subtle that men may not even notice them...."Here, the implication is that a company should not modify its products unless the changes are so subtle as to go unnoticeable by its regular (that is, male) customers...

On The Western Feminist Task of Saving Muslim Women

Posted on June 02, 2010
Those of you who've been reading Fannie's Room for awhile probably know that it's my favorite when people who ignore feminism and who aren't feminist allies criticize Western Feminists for not doing enough to Save Muslim Women.Although helping Muslim women was apparently a later-added objective of the Iraq War, it was an objective which the most powerful military in the world did not successfully accomplish...

The Christian Way of Opposing Everything Gay

Posted on June 01, 2010
I first saw the following absurd American Family Association quote at shakesville:"So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals...

Contemplating Some Purposes of Patriarchy

Posted on May 28, 2010
So, everyone's heard the old Rush Limbaugh canard that feminism was established "to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."Isn't it awesome when men who are not attractive by their own superficial, "conventional" standards of hotness falsely accuse an entire group of women of being ugly and of, therefore, building a movement around obtaining societal resources that do not hinge on their looks?It's interesting, I suppose, but not surprising when we remember that patriarchs are full of projections and reversals...

From the Center to the Margins

Posted on May 27, 2010
Previously, we read about the experience of Ben Barres, a scientist who transitioned from female to male when he was 50. Barres has compared living as a male scientist with living as a female scientist and, to briefly summarize, he believes that he is taken more seriously as a man in the everyday world and in the scientific community than he was as a woman...

Pulling Away the Mask: Is Extermination the End Goal of Anti-Gay Activism?

Posted on May 26, 2010
[Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Eliminationist rhetoric]There's always that moment, when you're watching a show like Law and Order: SVU. The defendant, an accused rapist, is sitting on the stand in the courtroom looking like a choir boy wearing his clean suit and sheepish smile...

An Exemplary Policy: Commendable, Worthy of Imitation

Posted on May 25, 2010
[Trigger warning: Anti-gay violence and eliminationist rhetoric]From time to time, I take a stroll through Conservapedia, a Wikipedia knockoff that claims to be "A Trustworthy Encyclopedia" but which, in reality, is a rightwing propaganda source. And poorly-written at that...

MacKinnon: On Man as Default

Posted on May 24, 2010
I was first introduced to the ideas of legal scholar and feminist Catherine MacKinnon almost a decade ago during a Feminist Jurisprudence course in law school. Sadly, I don't think I appreciated either MacKinnon or that class as much as I could have back then...

Fun With Facebook Acquaintances' Status Updates

Posted on May 21, 2010
One lady proudly admits: "This fish needs her bicycle."Sadly, it's probably true.(See e.g., Right-Wing Women).

Andrea Dworkin Quote of the Day

Posted on May 20, 2010
Andrea Dworkin reminds us that feminism is related to LGBT rights advocacy:"All of the sexual prohibitions in Leviticus, including the prohibition against male homosexuality, are rules for effectively upholding the dominance of a real patriarch, the senior father in a tribe of fathers and sons...

Woman Plays Baseball: Is Good At It!

Posted on May 19, 2010
The channeling of girls into softball and boys into baseball is another of those arbitrary instances of sports sex segregation that doesn't make much sense. Now, I'm not saying that men and women should necessarily play baseball together. I think it's possible that women could successfully compete with men in the sport, but (a) given that girls don't grow up playing baseball the way that many boys do and (b) baseball has a little steroid problem that exaggerates male strength, it's hard to say...

The Insecurity of Dominance

Posted on May 18, 2010
After recently passing a notorious racial profiling immigration law, Arizona has now banned students from learning about real things that really happened in history.Specifically, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a law making the teaching ethnic studies illegal...

Tales From Gilead

Posted on May 17, 2010
"From father's house to husband's house to a grave that still might not be her own, a woman acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence. She conforms, in order to be as safe as she can be." -Andrea DworkinAs though straight from Serena Joy's journal, I recently read the writings of a conservative woman who wants to restore what she calls "customary discrimination" against women in the workplace...

Lesbians Need Not Apply

Posted on May 14, 2010
Hey everybody, Obama's Supreme Court pick Elena Kagan is NOT GAY. So say her friends.What do I say?So the fuck what if she was. See, I've read Article II of the US Constitution which gives the President the power to make nominations to the Supreme Court and it doesn't say anything about lesbians being banned from the Supreme Court...

Odds 'N Ends: Sports Edition

Posted on May 13, 2010
1) Sex Segregation in SportsOver at The Science of Sport, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas post some points and counterpoints regarding women and men competing together in sports. It's an interesting read, especially since sex segregation in most sports is such an unquestioned given...

Male Studies: Hear Them Bore

Posted on May 12, 2010
On April 7, 2010, a group of academicians convened a conference for purposes of launching a new discipline called Male Studies. Although the discipline of Men's Studies already exists, which is a multi-disciplinary study of men and masculinities, proponents of Male Studies claims that this new discipline is the "multidisciplinary study of the male human being, boys and men...

The Sexual Shame of the Anti-Gay

Posted on May 11, 2010
[Cross-posted at Our Big Gayborhood]Last week, Ed Brayton posted an apt and amusing piece on The Incredible Power of the Gay. In response to "former homosexual" Michael Glatze, who wrote in WorldNetDaily that "The pressure to succumb to homosexual desires is also immense...

Monday Fun!

Posted on May 10, 2010
A request from Leftist Gender Warrior:Quick, name something about your body that you like or are proud of. Bragging and immodesty is highly encouraged.Mine: Despite not looking strong, I have super-strong calves. Like, not even just for a lady. Like for a person.

Experts: Football Causes Anti-social Behavior? Oh well.

Posted on May 07, 2010
[Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault]Previously, I have written about the nihilistic hyper-masculinity that the sport of American football embodies. In it, I referenced a Time magazine article that highlights the mental debilitation that repeated blows in the head have caused in many professional football players...

Catholic Church Investigates Big Problem

Posted on May 06, 2010
As more revelations about the Catholic Church's prioritization of its own image over the safety of children have come to light recently, the Vatican is stepping up its investigative efforts...of nuns and their feminist activism, that is. From KUOW news:"Three Catholic women's communities in Washington state are being investigated by the Vatican...

Book Review: Right-Wing Women, Part II

Posted on May 05, 2010
This post is a continuation of a review of Andrea Dworkin's Right-Wing Women. (Part I can be found here).3) The Left's Woman ProblemDworkin argues that, for good reason, Rightwing women fear the Left. The Left of the sixties was "a dream of sexual transcendence...

Book Review: Right-Wing Women, Part I

Posted on May 04, 2010
"From father's house to husband's house to a grave that still might not be her own, a woman acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence. She conforms, in order to be as safe as she can be."The above quote is a good starting point for Andrea Dworkin's book Right-Wing Women, which is her attempt to explain women's complicity and collaboration in their own oppression in a male-dominated society...

Body Shaming: Facebook Style

Posted on May 03, 2010
Some of my friends have been joining the following group on Facebook:"Real women have curves.... Not the body of a 12 year old boy"Aside from the annoying idea that only women who have a certain body shape are "real women," note the body shaming of thin women that is occurring here...

Odds 'n Ends

Posted on April 30, 2010
[Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault]1) Oklahoma Abortion LawOklahoma has passed an abhorrent law forcing fetal vessels to undergo an ultrasound and listen to description of the fetus prior to having an abortion. From the Times:"Though other states have passed similar measures requiring women to have ultrasounds, Oklahoma?s law goes further, mandating that a doctor or technician set up the monitor so the woman can see it and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus...

More On the Compromised Roethlisberger Investigation

Posted on April 29, 2010
[Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault]Earlier this week, I wrote about Timothy Egan's editorial on Superstar athlete Ben Roethlisberger's most recent charge of sexual assault. In the comments, a reader noted one of Egan's quotes:"Prosecutors said they would not file charges against the quarterback ? in part because of sloppy police work by officers who fawned over the athlete ?" I wanted more details as to how this alleged fawning might have compromised the investigation and case against Roethlisberger...

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