I seem to have a talent for coming across steaming piles of gender-essentialist fail. Three tidbits of this, in the semi-recent past: First off, today, Nature published a turd of a fiction article, “Womanspace”. I found this via a Google+ feed full of lady scientists who were like “say WHAT?”, but this is one of [...]
Holding on to the good: in praise of masculinity, femininity, and everything “normal”
August 15, 2011 By 8 Comments
As people interested in gender equality, we (justifiably!) spend a lot of time criticizing The Way Things Are. Which is great! Part of the way things are undeniably sucks, and could be better. However, in doing all this, we can end up giving the impression that it all sucks, that there’s nothing redeemable about it, [...]
Gendered Drinks and the Multiple Layers of “Privilege”
August 13, 2011 By 32 Comments
I really enjoyed this article on judging people’s alcoholic drink preferences. It points out some pointless gendered bullshit, which is great, but it also provides a nice little representative sample of one area of privilege. On the one hand, the “embarrassing” drinks are also coded as “feminine”. Masculine drinks are favored, an example of the [...]
And There Was Much Rejoicing
July 22, 2011 By 5 Comments
Moving Beyond Privilege
July 21, 2011 By 45 Comments
There’s this theory I’ve had for a while now, and it’s only crystallized over the past couple days as I’ve looked at a few different gender-related “privilege checklists”. So here goes: There exists a set of memes about men and women, describing the platonic ideal of each gender. As you get closer to this ideal, [...]
Semi-Open Thread II: Consent
July 19, 2011 By 162 Comments
Trigger warning for discussion of rape. Commenters on my previous post requested a consent thread in which they could be on topic, so here it is. The discussion was about affirmative consent — is it practical? Should it be codified in law? In what ways? I’ll try to move comments over, but in the meantime, [...]
Wait, how can the missionary position be forceful?
July 18, 2011 By 57 Comments
TW here for graphic description of (consensual) violent sex. Relatedly, this post is not exactly SFW. So, on the Julian Assange case. I keep seeing people on the internet scoffing at the idea that he’s accused of using force on someone, when all he did was have standard, boring missionary-position sex. “I do that all [...]
And Also My Planned Parenthood
July 7, 2011 By 5 Comments
Trigger warning for brief mention of abuse. I like how Planned Parenthood doesn’t assume a lot of things the broader culture does. They don’t assume you’re straight. They don’t assume your gender is the binary one you were assigned at birth. They don’t assume you’re in a safe relationship, they ask — and if you [...]
Semi-Open Thread: Gettin’ Laid
July 5, 2011 By 451 Comments
Sluts, Studs, and Creeps
June 20, 2011 By 48 Comments
To continue the general recent thread of talking about male sexuality, I would like to highly recommend Clarisse Thorn’s article entitled “Men Don’t Deserve the Word ‘Creep’“. It addresses the ways in which male sexuality is often made out to be innately predatory. Sometimes it’s feminists saying this (anyone who goes with “all het sex [...]
Axiomatically Speaking
We’re all familiar with the phenomenon. You’re arguing with some jerk in the comments section of a blog, and judging by responses, all your carefully crafted, brilliantly logical arguments seem like they’re coming out in the twilight zone, where they get mangled into terrible straw man constructions that should never be. “What the hell is [...]