Sexism in the Sandbox

Environmental Groups vs. Rona Ambrose

I understand the cause, I understand the passion, and I understand the desire to use language that is going to catch people's attention, but this is unacceptable. What are the chances that the same comments would have been made about a male in her position, regardless of how lovely his hair was?

It amazes me

how indignant some drivers can be, when they're actually in the wrong.

Case in point. I'm coming up 17th street tonight (which of course means nothing to the non-Valley people, but whatever), and I have a green light. I start to proceed through the intersection. The driver across the intersection who is waiting to turn left starts to go as soon as her light goes green (solid green, not a flashing green arrow), and then slams on her brakes and her horn simultaneously and shakes her fist at me. Now, I quite clearly had the right-of-way. What I'm really curious to know is if she realized her mistake and now feels like an idiot, or if she's off posting at her own blog about the crazy lady who ran the red light (as she must have presumed I was doing in order for her to have the right-of-way) and almost drove into her. I didn't notice if she had anyone else in the car, so whether there was an unbiased third party to point out to her what she had done wrong is unclear.

Interesting to ponder.

Waiting on the World to Change

The title of this post is the title of a John Mayer song that is getting massive airtime right now. Here's the lyrics:

Waiting On The World To Change

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance
so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

that's why we're waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's not that we don't care,
we just know that the fight ain't fair
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

and we're still waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
one day our generation
is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

Now, I immediately found myself liking this song the first time I heard it. It's catchy, it touches on the media control of the right wing, and it talks about the strength of our generation's conviction that things need to change. But then I listened to the song a few more times... and a few more times... (It seems to be on on Sirius Hits 1 every time I'm in the car, which is impressive considering I spend at most 30-40 minutes total in my car out of every 24 hours). The more I listen to it, the stronger the message becomes that our generation shouldn't fight for change, because we're not going to win. That we have to sit on our laurels and wait for all the old codgers in power to die off before our voices can be heard. Not only is it an extremely defeatist attitude, but I just don't think it's accurate!

Do you?

An Official Request

I would like to request that the phrase "over-reacted" be struck from common use.

Guys, nothing good can ever come from telling your wife/girlfriend that she over-reacted.

Particularly when you follow that up with "just like you over-react to everything".

That is all.

Baby shower at my house today for a friend, so I won't be posting again until much later today, if at all.

Along the same lines as my last post...

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Cosmo Radio on Sirius (I know, I shouldn't subject myself to that sort of crap, but there was nothing else decent on). They were doing a bit where they were inviting men to call in and talk about what they find attractive in a woman. There was the usual string of "I like great breasts" and "I like a nice firm butt" and even a few "I like a girl with a great set of eyes".

Then this guy called in and was talking about the size of girl that he's into. He starts off okay, saying that he likes a girl who is trim and firm and obviously works out, which I can't say anything negative about, because everybody has their own preferences and that's okay. But then he goes on to say that "it's okay if a girl has a little bit of extra weight, you know, some curves. A girl could weigh even as much as 120 or even 130, and that'd still be okay."

I was flabbergasted. 120 or 130 lbs is 'extra weight'? Seriously? I'm average height, and at 120lbs I look practically skeletal. Anything under 120lbs is considered underweight for my height and frame. How have we gotten to a point where someone being in their healthy range is considered 'extra weight'?

Photoshopping, that's how. It's both amazing and scary how processed the images in our media are. I wish I still had the address to this site I saw a couple of months ago that was before and after retouching pics of celebrities taken for magazine spreads. The amount of 'extra' flesh that was edited out of these photos for the sake of 'beauty' was astounding.

Edited to add: Nevermind. I found the site I was thinking about, but the 'artist' has since taken the befores out of his portfolio. I have to wonder if it was because the celebs were less than impressed with the public being able to see the unretouched versions, if maybe he got a whack of feedback from people telling him how 'wrong' his work is, or some other reason. Much to ponder...

Edited again: But I found an article that has links to several other retouching sites with good examples of what I'm talking about.

These videos hit a cord as a mother of a young girl, but also as a female and simply as a human being. We have very far to go to turn this around.

Wow. Just. Wow

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

FYI

So, I was reading one of my favorite blogs tonight (for the first time in months... damn my short attention span!), and I found something will probably leave me shaking my head for days.

It was a post full of hate mail the author has received from her readers. Many of them resorting to the same lines: "blah, blah, blah" "your blog is crap" "get off the internet" "you're boring".

Now, I have to wonder what kind of wierdo goes to the trouble of e-mailing a blogger to tell them that they don't enjoy the blog. Why bother? Why not just move on? It's not like there aren't another billion blogs out there!

So here's the FYI point: If my blog ever bores you, don't waste your time and mine telling me so. Just stop coming. If you think I've got nothing notable to say - don't read it. It's really that simple.

Now, if anything on my blog excites you or incites you, I wanna hear about it. But don't come crying to me if what I have to say just doesn't interest you.

Added: It came to me as I was falling asleep last night that there was one more thing I wanted to say. It's free. So STFU. ;)

In the defense of feminism?

I didn't intend to start out this blog by discussing anything deep, but a thread on Sybermoms incited what has been a several hour trek through the blogosphere, and I felt the desire to bring my own spin to it.

This thread linked to this article on Salon that summarizes a debate currently raging regarding this
photo of a popular feminist blogger posing with a group of other popular left-wing bloggers and former President Bill Clinton.

Some are criticizing Jessica for even attending the luncheon - they question why someone who describes herself as a feminist would choose to meet with a "sexual harrasser". Many of these people feel that the Lewinsky scandal trumps all of President Clinton's extensive work in promoting women's equality. Of course, whether you hold this view has much to do with whether you feel that what happened with Bill and Monica was between two consenting adults and thus is none of our business, or if you feel that he abused his position of dominance and thus was engaged in harassing behaviour.

Worse than that criticism though, are the folks that are chiming in regarding Jessica's physical attributes. I won't go into detail regarding the comments, as you'll read them yourself if you follow the links, but I was disgusted to read some of the cattiness coming from other women - most of them purporting to be feminists themselves. Particularly Ann Althouse, the one that started it all. Her comments are downright abusive and she should be ashamed of herself.

I must say that this morning's reading has inspired me to dig deeper into the finding out what the feminist movement is all about, both in terms of the political movement and philosophical theories of feminism. If anyone has any particular sources they'd recommend for reading, let me know in the comments.

I have more to say, but I'm tired and my brain is slightly jumbled from too much coffee and not enough food, so I'll continue later.

Added: Wow, I just read a comment on another blog that says what I've been trying to say in a much clearer way, so I'm just going to link you straight to it: comment by geoduck2