Blog Archives
Your Pain: A Small Price for My Pleasure
Police in Salinas, California conducted a home welfare check after three children, ages 8, 5, and 3, didn’t arrive for an unspecified appointment. What they found was gruesome. The isolated children, who were ostensibly being homeschooled, were malnourished and bruised.
But the eight-year-old girl seems to have gotten it worse than her brothers. She was periodically locked in a closet or chained to a wall, 4 feet off the ground. She was sometimes shackled by the ankle, and other times by a collar around her small neck. And starving, she resembled a concentration camp victim. Read the rest of this entry
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Grandma and Susan B Anthony
Queen of the Platform by Laura Madeline Wiseman
Imagine having a great-great-great-grandmother who fought for “votes for women” alongside Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Poet, Laura Madeline Wiseman’s great-great-great-grandmother, Matilda Fletcher Wiseman did just that.
Collected letters and newspaper clippings inspired a book of poetry that Ms. Wiseman calls, Queen of the Platform.
What prompted Matilda Fletcher Wiseman to join the lecture circuit? Luck, opportunity, the death of her only child, and a need for income. Talent and hope for the future, too.
It’s interesting to see the portrait Matilda Fletcher Wiseman paints of Susan B Anthony in her up-close-and-personal brushes with the icon:
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How I Overcame My Misogyny
By Laura Wolff
I was a pre-teen bitch.
I wasn’t exceptionally mean or catty — in fact, I was an anti-bullying advocate. But my deeply internalized sexism led me to disdain anything and everything considered “girly,” from “Twilight” to dresses to teenybopper Disney stars. And the girls who enjoyed them. Read the rest of this entry
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Why Don’t Women Like To Be Ogled?
Why do women dress sexy so people will look at and desire them but get mad when people look at and desire them? And then they call men who look at them “creeps” or “perverts” for looking at the skin and other body parts they are showing?
A lot of men, like him, are confused. Women dress sexy, go out and strut their stuff, and then act insulted when they get a compliment?
What’s up with that? Read the rest of this entry
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Who You Calling a B–?
By Paola Hernandez
I think every woman has heard it at least once in her life. “Bitch!” Whether or not we were “acting like one.” Men say it. Women say it. I’ve said it more than once.
It starts early.
The first time I heard it was on the school playground, waiting my turn at the monkey bars. A girl cut me in line, so I told her I was next. She called me a “bitch” and walked away.
I was surprised. I knew it was a “bad word” but I didn’t know what I had done wrong or “bitchy.” I would come to wonder, many more times, why I was called that name.
Usually, it was when I stood up for myself. Sometimes it targeted my reproductive system: “Why are you being such a bitch? Are you on your period?” Because I can’t be angry or upset unless it’s that, right? Other times the word ridiculed me just for being female. Maybe that’s why our reproductive system seems especially “bitchy” — it defines us as women. Read the rest of this entry
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Downton Abby Ends in Feminist Dystopia of GIRLS?
Downton Abbey and HBO’s Girls seem to be talking to each other, says Anand Giridharadas in a New York Times piece.
The early 20th Century world of Downton’s British aristocracy knew “there is a way to do everything, from cleaning spoons to dressing for dinner.”
But then World War I unleashes its chaos, confusing notions about who is independent and where one stands. Thus,
The family driver, believing in equality and marrying for love, runs away with the family daughter; thus the men wear black tie instead of white to dinner one night; thus a new generation of servants is less servile, more willing to question.
HBO’s Girls yields the fruits of that push a century later — and it isn’t pretty, he says — as four young women navigate the stresses and opportunities of New York City: a world that “says you can be anything but does not show you how.” Read the rest of this entry
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Objectifying Men’s Bodies for Profit
![magic mike movie rip off cloths[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/magic-mike-movie-rip-off-cloths1.jpg)
by Lisa Wade, PhD @ Sociological Images
I always love a good behind-the-scenes marketing story and last month NPR reported that Proctor & Gamble is facing falling men’s razor sales as beards have become more fashionable. Their response? To put more pressure on men to shave other parts of their bodies.
Always a glutton for punishment, I set out to discover just how they were going to try to convince men to do this… and I was not disappointed. See video below: Read the rest of this entry
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How Not To Get Raped
“How not to get raped” is a satirical video by Cat Del Buono. It’s inspired by college website pointers like these:
- Wear clothing that’s hard to remove. (Jumpsuits? Overalls?)
- Wear a hairstyle that’s hard to grab. (So cut off your hair?)
- Wear footwear that can help you get away. (Sneakers?)
After all that, women could end up looking not so attractive. Yet they’re also told that they’re supposed to be attractive. So it’s confusing.
And then there’s this: Read the rest of this entry
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Sex with Men Hoping to Feel Beautiful
By Anonymous
Imagery is powerful. I remember my mother watching Marilyn Monroe movies and looking at her pictures in magazines. She bleached her hair and styled it like Marilyn’s. Mom dressed in high heeled boots and miniskirts and wore the style of make-up that graced magazine covers. My father loved it. I saw the attention men gave her, especially at parties. Looking back I see how the ideal of the perfect woman had a huge impact on the psychology of my mother. And me.
Although beautiful, mom lacked self-confidence and self-esteem. She gave up on her dreams to pursue the love of a man through beautifying herself. She became a submissive woman at the beck and call of the men in her life. No surprise, she married eight times before age thirty.
I watched men walk all over my mother, treating her like a trophy wife in front of their friends. But behind closed doors they demeaned and objectified her. I grew to dislike men, yet followed in her footsteps. It began in elementary school.
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Do Men Want Women To Ask Them Out?
Some guys wonder why women don’t ask men out. Some women wonder how men would feel if they did. So I asked guys in my women’s studies class for their thoughts.
Out of a class of 46 I’ve just got nine men (this is women’s studies, after all) — and only seven of them showed up in time to take the survey, so this is a very small sampling. And between a willingness to take that class and living in the Bay Area, they may be more liberal than most.
Here’s what I asked them:
Has a woman ever asked you out? If yes, what did you think and why? If no, would you like a woman to ask you out, or would it make you feel uncomfortable? Should it be socially acceptable for women to ask men out?
And here’s what they said: Read the rest of this entry
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