Why the fuck can’t men wear pink nail polish? I have never actually been able to get a good answer to this. The conversation along those lines goes something like “because they’ll get laughed at,” and when I ask why they get laughed at they’ll say “because it looks ridiculous,” and when I ask why it looks…
Sunday Social Justice
In order to provide a much-needed dose of warm fuzzies to the blog and combat Gender Warrior On The Internet Does Nothing In Real Life Syndrome, I’ve decided we ought to have a probably-weekly thread about what people have done for gender egalitarianism or social justice this week. This can be anything, no matter how…
New York Legalizes Gay Marriage
For the five of you who live under a rock: New York is officially the sixth state in the union to allow people to be GAY-MARRIED! Just in time for Pride, too. Confetti, glitter and noisemakers will be passed out in the comments section.
The Great Glass Escalator
(Much of the material for this post comes from David J. Maume Jr.’s 1999 work “Glass Ceilings and Glass Escalators,” because that’s the one in my Work Organization textbook. More recent citations gratefully accepted.) According to analysis of the PSID (Panel Study of Income Dynamics), a longitudinal study of a representative sample of American families, between 1989 and 1999,…
Quote of the Day
From a Womanist Musings post on raising a gender non-conforming son: What he is learning by this whole experience is that breaking the gender binary in any way comes with social discipline. He knows that his home is a safe space, and that he can be who he wants to be, but acceptance has limits…
Hegemonic Masculinity
As some of you may be aware, I’m a sociology major. Sociology majors have a bad habit of using words that make sense to other sociology majors, but make the entire rest of the fucking world tilt their heads and say “buh?” or, in extreme cases coughpatriarchycough, think the sociology majors are saying the exact…
Awesome Post by Greta Christina over at Alternet
Alternet, an online leftist news source, has a new post by Greta Christina about male body image issues and the impossibility of reaching male ideals: If the world is telling you that if you work just a little bit harder, you can be strong enough, pretty enough, rich enough, whatever enough… you’ll be a lot…
Quote of the Day
Because when we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood. –Jay Smooth, founder of New York City’s longest-running hip hop radio program, WBAI’s Underground Railroad and video blogger. Found on…
Happy Father’s Day
Today I come to praise fathers and, in particular, I come to praise my father. For ten years, my father woke up every morning at 4 AM so he could be at work by 5. He gave up all chance of promotion or even a particularly large raise and did work he found mind-numbing. That way, he…
Who Cares About Men’s Rights?
Trigger warning for mentions of suicide, domestic abuse, and rape. I do. I care about every boy that was ever called a fag or a pussy or a sissy for being emotional, or sensitive, or unathletic, or just not manly enough. I care about the boys who are afraid they’ll lose their manhood if they admit they…