Return to Gender 101

[Ari]

The idea that Love and Sex are scarcity resources controlled by women seems mostly presented by men who are so used to getting their way they are sure they have been victims of a secret 'withhold the pussy' cabal when they don't get it. I find it fascinating that the one thing that's guaranteed with any leader/writer of the MRA movement is a pathetic string of relationships and failures.

Polyamory is a great counter example, and not just that people can seriously date multiple people at the same time and not go batshit-staby but that the vast majority of leaders and educators are women and the majority of interest comes from women. Anecdotally women do better in poly and are more likely to stay than men. It's not that they are somehow less monogamous than men (although it's a nice twist on the usual claim/excuse that men are less monogamous) but that the current system is so weighted against them that finding one that's still finding its footing is a breath of fresh air. One of the more popular sex party organizing groups in SF was created by a woman and one of their more popular events is women oriented.

Maybe women don't actually want less sex, they just want less sex with you, Mr MRA.

[Janet]

U.S. women's hockey team cry after losing to Canada in overtime. Twitter, as usual, is horrifically sexist about it.

[Ensign Steve]

Meanwhile, in Canada, the #playlikegirls hashtag is trending like crazy, eh.

[Angakuk]

Sexual Economics 101: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

[ImGod]

I thought it was, "Better to be a call girl than a crack ho." 102 was figuring out how much to charge. Wifey type manipulation of cheating politician/power broker husbands didn't come until grad school.

[Vivisectus]

I am not sure you can use market economics to model behavior such as sexuality and marriage in a meaningful way. The perceived value of getting married is not determined by supply and demand, but by cultural norms.

There is a real risk of trying to shoe-horn ideas into simplified market models when they are not really suitable.

[Janet]

I noticed something for the first time during the City match today. Look where the referee's pocket is.



I know there are very few female refs in the Premier League, but I look at that and am baffled at what they were thinking. It's not like they couldn't put pockets in their shorts.

[Ari]

Adam Savage (Mythbusters) talks about talking to his kids about sex and the internet. It's nerdy and awesome!
Talking To My Kids About Sex In The Internet Age | The Moth

[The Man]

Wingnut Columnist Matt Barber Decides Feminism Means ‘Please Rape Me.’

i think this goes beyond not even wrong straight into fractal wrongness though

[The Man]

Arizona Helping Prostitutes By Arresting Them, Sending Them To Church

Gay-Hating Rape-Loving Maine Legislator ‘Regrets’ He Was Caught Saying All Those Terrible Things

[Janet]

The Metropolitan Police have been found guilty of misconduct in the cases of two victims of a serial rapist. The victims can now sue for compensation. It is now clear that if the police had listened many more victims would have been saved. Sadly, the article is pessimistic that this will actually change anything about how the police treat rape victims.

[LadyShea]

The 'science of dating' and why it should make you angry | Girl on the Net | Science | theguardian.com

This, roughly translated, means that I have never experienced true interest and am therefore probably ugly. No man will ever open doors for me, and I will be stuck forever in my lounge, pawing at the handle in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to leave the room.

What’s more, it matters because all such misinformation matters: it demonstrates to people that you can package waffle as wisdom and make money from it. It teaches us that anecdotal evidence, vague appeals to authority and ad hominem are perfectly valid ways to win an argument. And above all it matters because it paints a skewed and inaccurate picture of reality: in which women want nothing more than a free lunch and an open door, and men must jump through hoops and clap their flippers like performing seals in order to secure a gesture of love.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

The 'science of dating' and why it should make you angry | Girl on the Net | Science | theguardian.com

*dog jumping through hoop* No smilies match your keywords
*performing seal* No smilies match your keywords

*actually having the smilies you really want on *

... It doesn't even work! This makes me angry!

[Crumb]

Who wrote that lousy smiley search function anyways?

[Janet]

I know Buzzfeed gets flack for being click bait and turning everything into lists, but they did something at the Oscars that was objectively awesome. They asked Kevin Spacey the sort of banal, superficial questions that women at the Oscars get asked. Here is the result.

[LadyShea]

This is from last summer, but I just saw it


"Full Figured" Woman Kicked Out of Missouri Swimming Pool For Wearing Bikini

Supposedly she was showing too much skin with her 'tiny' bikini bottom, yet as she pointed out younger girls had nearly identical bottoms on their bottoms. It is apparenlty up to the management's (who seem to be all male) discretion to decide who can wear what at this water park.

The woman was in the swimming pool with her niece and nephew when two park employees allegedly walked up to her and asked her to throw on some shorts. They said her bottoms were too small.

I just felt like I was singled out,” Sheaffer said, “I felt like it was both age and body discrimination and I felt like I could look around me and I could see a handful of other girls half my age, wearing the same size swimming suit and not being singled out and told to put on clothes or leave.”

[Janet]

We have a speaker coming in for a series of African and African Diaspora Artists named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was working on the Facebook page for the program today and she's starting to sound pretty awesome. I'm actually on vacation the day of her speech but I may come in anyway. At least I get to post cool 'you go, girl' images like this one on our Facebook page.

[lisarea]

NJ court ruling blocking newborn's dad from delivery room is first in nation | NJ.com

The detailed article seems to be behind a paywall, so I dunno what the guy actually asked for or what the details are. But the media are picking up on the ruling that the patients have the right to decide who is in the delivery room while they give birth. OBVS, RIGHT? I mean, this is super-basic HIPAA stuff I thought.

But check out the comments. There are MR(S)As up in there who think this is unreasonable. Dumb fuckers are all about the biotruths as long as they're silly speculative narratives they made up about their prescribed gender roles. But when it comes to the actual, real life biotruth that to date, gestation and childbirth is the sole domain of biologically female animals, all of a sudden, they're demanding ridiculous, intrusive "privileges" at the expense of others because they think it's not fair.

[The Man]

Horrible Girl-Shaming 'Princeton Mom' Susan Patton Is Never Ever Ever Ever Going Away - Happy Nice Time People

"If you are too drunk to speak, then you may be incapable of saying no or warding off unwanted advances. And then it's all on you. Please spare me your "Blaming the Victim" outrage."

maybe one of these days i'll stop being surprised when women turn out to be rape apologists

[Watser?]

Huh, so as soon as you're unconscious, you are fair game, Princeton Mom? Don't sit next to any rapists on a plane, because it'll be all on you.

[lisarea]

Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism And Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit | TechCrunch

It looks like they're doing something now that she's gone public:

Update on Julie Horvath's Departure · GitHub

[viscousmemories]

Damn, scooped by pea again!

I must say that when I first read the TechCrunch article (my first and only exposure (phrasing!) to Horvath and the topic) I wondered how much of her accusations was hyperbole. The fact that GitHub responded as they did and learning (from this article) that similar accusations have been leveled in the past helped. All that being said, I'd like to see more evidence that the root of the problem is sexist discrimination and not psycho-wife of compliant founder.

ETA: To clarify I don't doubt her claims--in particular about psycho-wife and psycho-spurned-coworker--there just wasn't much evidence of broad discrimination presented beyond her claim that the men never really took her work seriously and that they gawked at some women coworkers who were hula-hooping in the office (which come'on who wouldn't, man or woman?)

[lisarea]

Most workplace discrimination isn't really that explicit, though, is the thing. It's not like (most of the time!) the C levels get together and say explicitly that they don't like women or minorities or whatever. It's often a bunch of subtle little things that add up. It's a sort of collaborative effort, and it is often just built into the culture.

The thing about the wife, too, falls into this phenomenon where men in'traditional marriages'* often have strange, essentialist type of attitudes about gender. Which manifests as things like assuming that your female employees would relate better to your wife than to their coworkers or other normal humans. It also leads to some very very inappropriate workplace behaviors, as socially conservative dudes are walking around treating their female coworkers and employees like they treat their wives, or at least in this case, outsourcing relations (or gender based harassment) with your female employees to your wife.

And the code pulling is also inappropriate and very hostile in any case. If this dude was regularly doing that, it should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago, regardless of his motivations. That is not at all a normal thing to do anywhere I've ever worked or even heard of. It's a last resort emergency thing that you might do if something is actively breaking things AND the person who wrote it is stranded on a desert island and you can't reach them. It's not something you do casually, regularly, or without a clear explanation why.

It sounds to me like a pretty textbook example of a hostile workplace, and the fact that they're "taking it seriously" now that it's public but not a moment before suggests to me that they know that and have probably known it for a while.

* While not necessarily a traditional-traditional marriage, the fact that his wife has all that time to hang around his office, and that she runs some sort of charitable organization that's very closely tied into his work still fits into a sort of coattails/helpmeet kind of role.

[JoeP]

Can one of you ladies explain what lisapea's saying?

[BrotherMan]

Some fun ridiculousness for everborty.

If Women's Roles In Ads Were Played By Men -...

When I was reading the article, the header had a still picture of the Hardee's commercial up. My initial thought was that particular commercial made more sense with a man eating on the beach than a woman. (I don't know why I thought that. It just seems a less silly picture for a man to be eating a fish samwich with fries and a soda at the beach.) But I'd forgotten that in the commercial they had the woman pose and gyrate languorously while stuffing her face, and the side-by-side is almost just as weird to watch. One of the comments had this to say:

For the Hardee's one, they should've gone all out and gotten the model a European-style bathing suit

This person is very smart and I agree with everything he says.

And in answer to Joep: Ladies be trippin'.