Hey guys, have you heard the news? There are a bunch of companies making these new shoes for women that are hard to walk in, and thats the whole point! These shoes are supposed to make walking harder so that you tone your muscles with them. I was alerted to these shoes first via cheap-o infomercial style commercials, and then some big companies caught on. The commercials I see pretty damn often now consist of a woman who is trying to explain (using visual aids) how you burn more calories/stimulate muscle activities with the shoes, and the camera repeatedly zooms in on her ass. She has to try and get the cameradude to pay attention to what she is saying like 3 times, and she then appears to be enjoying that sort of attention towards the end of the commercial. Yeah, really. Whoever wrote this thing should go fuck themselves, I would have cheered if she used her new athletic legs to kick the camera guy in the balls for being such a douchebag. This commercial has so many sexist messages wrapped up in a 30 second spot that its kind of painful to watch. Most of all, these things look fucking weird, like the sole got glued on upside down or something. Truly, this is a reminder of how shoes not designed for efficient walking are a painfully stupid idea until the culture has normalized it (I'm looking at you, high heels).
Also, a pro vaccine piece in Wired written by a woman has seen the usual level of crazy backlash, but with a twist of misogyny tossed in for oomph. The article is good, and has information about how herd immunity is crucial to reducing the spread of disease to everyone in society (vaccinated or not). I was under the impression that the anti vaccine movement was mostly made up of crunchy mom types, but a lot of scary southerner anti government type folks seem to be coming out of the woodwork these days. More of my coworkers than I expected are distrustful of the H1N1 vaccine; I have already written to the company to try and get an educational campaign going but I am not sure how much good it will do.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
CNN hates men
The little nuggets of sexism you can find in the news are depressing, especially when you expect the story to be somewhat uplifting. For instance, this story about RAINN (The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) getting an increased amount of reporting of crimes after Mackenzie Phillips went public about being a survivor of incest. "Oh, that's fantastic!" you think, clicking the link, eagerly reading about how much good it has done, but then CNN informs you that it was kind of her mom's fault for not putting out (or other random women). Yeah, seriously:
Nowhere in the article does it give the impression that this brand of sexual frustration is a problem. It says that sexual frustration may "contribute to inappropriate behavior". They sure give a lot of time to something that only contributes to some deeper problem, even though the sheer sense of entitlement to other peoples bodies seems to be a pretty fucking big problem by itself. This is CNN saying "men will rape their kids, if someone else doesn't put up with their constant need for pronging". Does this sound a bit extreme to you? I guess you haven't read their article about why women have sex. One exceptional aspect of this article is how it manages to go on and on without giving you any actual information. "Some women do x, some do y. Someone wrote a book about it, there might be evolution involved in why women do this stuff. I'll tell you how many women were surveyed but not how many responded any certain way." It was only 1,000 women, and there are some very sad things just nonchalantly inserted into the article without any dissection whatsoever:
Yep, a dudes pronging is so friggin awful that women just put up with it, I guess so that their dudes won't rape the kids as a result of the unbearable medical condition of not having sex exactly when they want to. Sex is done to women, they don't have to really have anything to do with it outside of receiving it. Does it still seem a little extreme to say that? I guess you need to check out their article on Roman Polanski's victim:
Sex, a consensual activity between two adults, is somehow not any different than rape, in this case a person incapable of consent (a child, who was drugged) was raped and it is called "having sex". The two things are apparently indistinguishable. People have talked to me about this as though it is some sort of nit pick, but it isn't. Damn near any activity that occurs with more than one person involved quickly becomes something more sinister when consent is not given. Poking someone with a needle? Its a blood draw, or a shot, unless the person being poked didn't agree to the event. Then it is battery. Same with boxing, it is boxing until consent is gone, then it is assault. The mechanics did not change, but holy shit, the meaning totally did. Sex seems to be the one event where the non consensual and consensual events are interchangeable to many people. It gets so much worse than the old "oops, should have used the non rape apologist thesaurus" mistake, the words "had sex with her" are actually a hyper link to the "sexual offenses" category on CNN.com. Gross.
"It also depends on his other mating opportunities," Lieberman said. "What is the quality of his current relationship with the female's mother? Is she around? What is the ability for the guy to attract other mates?"
The perpetrator, frustrated by the absence of suitable sexual partners, may turn to whomever is around -- even if it's kin.
Nowhere in the article does it give the impression that this brand of sexual frustration is a problem. It says that sexual frustration may "contribute to inappropriate behavior". They sure give a lot of time to something that only contributes to some deeper problem, even though the sheer sense of entitlement to other peoples bodies seems to be a pretty fucking big problem by itself. This is CNN saying "men will rape their kids, if someone else doesn't put up with their constant need for pronging". Does this sound a bit extreme to you? I guess you haven't read their article about why women have sex. One exceptional aspect of this article is how it manages to go on and on without giving you any actual information. "Some women do x, some do y. Someone wrote a book about it, there might be evolution involved in why women do this stuff. I'll tell you how many women were surveyed but not how many responded any certain way." It was only 1,000 women, and there are some very sad things just nonchalantly inserted into the article without any dissection whatsoever:
It turns out that women's reasons for having sex range from love to pure pleasure to a sense of duty to curiosity to curing a headache. Some women just want to please their partners, and others want an ego boost.
A 26-year-old heterosexual woman wrote, "When I was single, I had sex for my own personal pleasure. Now that I am married, I have sex to please my husband. My own pleasure doesn't seem as important as his. I believe he feels the same way."
Yep, a dudes pronging is so friggin awful that women just put up with it, I guess so that their dudes won't rape the kids as a result of the unbearable medical condition of not having sex exactly when they want to. Sex is done to women, they don't have to really have anything to do with it outside of receiving it. Does it still seem a little extreme to say that? I guess you need to check out their article on Roman Polanski's victim:
They spent the afternoon shooting and, as the light began to fade, made their way to the hot tub at actor Jack Nicholson's house on Mulholland Drive. There, she told investigators, Polanski gave her champagne and part of a Quaalude and had sex with her.
Sex, a consensual activity between two adults, is somehow not any different than rape, in this case a person incapable of consent (a child, who was drugged) was raped and it is called "having sex". The two things are apparently indistinguishable. People have talked to me about this as though it is some sort of nit pick, but it isn't. Damn near any activity that occurs with more than one person involved quickly becomes something more sinister when consent is not given. Poking someone with a needle? Its a blood draw, or a shot, unless the person being poked didn't agree to the event. Then it is battery. Same with boxing, it is boxing until consent is gone, then it is assault. The mechanics did not change, but holy shit, the meaning totally did. Sex seems to be the one event where the non consensual and consensual events are interchangeable to many people. It gets so much worse than the old "oops, should have used the non rape apologist thesaurus" mistake, the words "had sex with her" are actually a hyper link to the "sexual offenses" category on CNN.com. Gross.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
adventures in shopping!
How the crap do people stand shopping so much? I went to two stores today and it was severely depressing.
A Halloween store was the first stop. The usual problem of crap variety for women was there, along with the reproduction of all of those with an 'adult' version available. There were too many varieties of witch/sexy witch costumes to count. This was to be expected. This store was the place to be if you planned on dressing up like a hispanic stereotype. Yep. What you see pictured at the top are costumes called "Spanish Lady" or "Tequila Shooter" (I checked; it does not come with Fritos). Being hispanic is like a fun vacation for all the white people who buy the costume, they get to be sexy exotic or crude comic relief for a night. gross. Real hispanics can't take off a costume and be treated with respect, people stereotype them all the time.
But wait, there's more!
The Zombama mask was there, you know, the one with Obama as a zombie? They had all the living presidents+nixon, but obama was the only zombified politician available in that utah store. also, a "Blind Referee" costume.
Next up was Toys R us. Did you know that the only isles that aren't gendered are for preschool kids? Great walls of pink on one side, great walls of blue and green toys on the other. Ambiguous items went in the boy's section. There was a whole isle of fake ovens and kitchen appliances for girls. The absolute worst shit was three items clumped together, two were 'virtual makeover kits' that girls hook into their computers, and then they can alter their appearances in various ways (hairstyles, make up) and compare it to how they look now.. Check out the description:
Now you can see who you can be on your PC. Using the built-in digital camera, give yourself a new makeover by changing your hairstyle, adding accessories and applying make-up. Print or email your new looks to friends and family! Built-In digital camera Touchpad vanity with lights.
Outsource your self esteem with this convenient software! whoever decides the layouts of the toys r us store has it down, because the box that said "shape up!" was right under the makeover kits, with some kind of pretend fun exercise contraption. What were unisex toys are now gendered, like pinkened telescopes, ouiji boards, life, monopoly, etc. I don't know what the purpose behind this is, except to drive home the message that boys and girls are so different that they can't even play with the same toys without being defective somehow. What bullshit. Maybe they sell more if two sets need to be bought, to assure that the boy children don't contract the gay from pinkified board games.
We can put this in the 'not trying to get offended' category too. Who knew attempting to shop was so difficult?
Monday, August 31, 2009
vaccine craziness-long post!
Something exciting has happened in the world of teenage skankery, Gardisil. Everyone is wondering, will it turn teenage girls into skanks? Parents are refusing to give the vaccine to their daughters because they fear it will cause sexual activity (curiously, that is not listed as a side effect).
Oh SHIT! That isn't the news! That was the news when gardisil was only for girls. Now that it is being proposed for boys the questions have shifted to how effective and safe the vaccine is. There are some rarer cancers men can avoid if they stay hpv free, and it will reduce the transmission of HPV to have more of the population vaccinated.
A lot of the same people against childhood vaccines are jumping on the anti gardisil bandwagon, saying it is unsafe. Once again, the people fueling fears are completely unqualified journalists. Ann sent me a bunch of materials to see what I could find out about gardisil ingredients. The headline to this first bit is predictably sensationalized: Gardasil Vaccine Ingredients - Roach Killer, Aluminum, and Polysorbate 80. After the writer of this hinted towards Gardisil sterilizing a whole generation of girls without having any real reason to do so, he gave out this list of ingredients:
As I know from digging through so many crappy science articles, the people who write them often get the most basic details of the story completely wrong. SO I went over to the gardisil website, and found that this portion of the article was accurate. Now onto the claims of individual chemicals being harmful- This dude, armed with teh google and the knowledge of what an MSDS is (and little else from what I can tell), went on the hunt for scary information about each ingredient instead of trying to research where the info came from. First of all, his claims about polysorbate 80.
Anaphylactic shock is a severe allergic reaction. You know, the kind you hear about peanuts causing. Damn near anything can be shown to cause that. That portion is true, but not very scary. There are a lot of mistakes with the other claims made.
One thing the author has neglected to mention is that polysorbate 80 is prescribed for injections for conditions other than not wanting to get HPV, and that seems to be where he got a lot of his scary side effect info from. People with severe anemia due to kidney disorders or some kinds of cancers or cancer treatments may be injected with polysorbate 80 solution in order to cause their red blood cell production to increase. I did find information about the dangers the author listed like having a link to being a carcinogen and causing bloodclots in connection with this usage. There is a SEVERE difference in concentration between the two products. Polysorbate 80 is a common ingredient in vaccinations of all sorts, and the preferred concentration is .01% in various vaccines, and the gardisil vaccine is only half a mL in volume. .01% of .5 mL (less than 1/5 of an ounce) is a really really small amount of chemical, and it is not given through veins like the anemia treatment. The anemia treatment is given weekly and consists of a much higher dose, which is calculated depending on the bodyweight of the patient. We are in the realm of micrograms when it comes to human usage of this ingredient. This is very much like studying the side effects of swallowing an entire bottle of Tylenol and claiming that one pill will cause the same side effects. I also found the rodent study he referenced, and holy shit, those mice with the huge genitals/sterility/mutations were given more than the anemia people usually would be, and the mice are much much smaller than us. The solutions were 1%, 5%, or 10% solutions (water and polysorbate 80) injected into mice shortly after their birth. The smallest amount of polysorbate 80 given in that study is much much higher in both concentration per kg than what humans are normally exposed to. From what I can tell, injecting an adult mouse (these were new borns, and may have weighed less, but anyway) with a tenth of an mL is around one percent to half a percent of it's total body weight. There isn't any reason to think it will cause a generation of girls to become sterile, and it was really irresponsible to imply it. This ingredient is in multiple vaccines in the same concentration/roughly the same volume. I can accept a possibility of a side effect not being discovered during the years long period of time a company must prove the product is safe for use, but for multiple vaccines to have such an effect would have to be readily apparent in fertility rates. It just hasn't been an issue and is unlikely to become one.
The next ingredient on the list is sodium chloride. That is salt. The chemical name is given to make it seem scary, I assume.
Next one is amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate, and there aren't any real specific claims made in the article about that at all. Pubmed has shown that again, this is a common vaccine ingredient. Outside of every vaccine having to go through clinical trials before being released to the public, there are six decades of populations with lots of usage and no real pattern of widespread vaccine damage due to injections containing these ingredients. The ingredients greatly enhance the effect of many vaccines, and is added for that purpose.
Lastly, sodium borate. Using the description "roach killer" here is evidence of someone trying to mislead readers; after all, I could put "slug killer" after "beer", but it wouldn't make beer severely toxic. The author claims that it isn't commonly used in medical preparations anymore, and I curiously found the exact same sentence on the how stuff works article about sodium borate poisoning:
So it took someone using it on open wounds over and over again to cause poisoning. I know it is used in the preparation of urine cultures as well, a little cake of sodium borate is contained in the tubes that urine is deposited into for culture preparation; I am not so sure it counts as 'medical preparation', but there is a lot of ambiguity in the article about how that is or is not important because they do not really address that at all. Indeed, I found other evidence of it being really hard to poison someone with this ingredient. I found a (somewhat disturbing) study titled The Effect of Large Intravenous Doses of Sodium Borate on the Human Myocardium as Reflected in the Electrocardiogram . It seemed to make a difference in the EKG's of patients to be given a massive does of this substance. An injection of gardisil is once again, half of a milliliter (one teaspoon is equal to five mL).
In my search for this information, I found two other articles that were really good about showing the fallacious nature of most anti-vaccine arguments. I highly recommend reading all of it, their science is far more advanced than mine. The denialism blog is especially helpful for finding info about things like 'toxins' in vaccines. Everyone seems to come to the same conclusion; vaccines do result in injury or reaction for a very small percentage of people, but vaccines have been shown to be very good for the vast majority of people. Many of us know of grandparents or other elderly people who have polio injuries, and now polio is extremely rare in countries with vaccines for it. I remember specifically researching the inventor of the polio vaccine as a kid in elementary school for a report, and learning about the horrors that polio caused before vaccines were available and treatments were not very good. Many parents remember having mumps or measles, and again it is now very rare. So much has changed for the better because of this amazing technology. The only reason so many parents can afford not to vaccinate their children now is because of the herd immunity that exists from the majority who do vaccinate. If there was an outbreak of the diseases we can vaccinate against the argument would seem extremely silly in the face of real, observable death for children.
On another note, the research for this blog post was a pain in the ass. The anti-vaccine people spammed this guys article EVERYWHERE, so searches had to be modified over and over to avoid seeing the same article reposted on a thousand different websites. One weird example was a website that linked to the original, but claimed that it said polysorbate 80 was dangerous when applied to skin or eaten, despite the article claiming the exact opposite. These knobs clog up any legitimate attempt to research the issue by serially re-posting the same shit to 90,000 different websites with lightning speed.
Charlie Brooker has some excellent videos about the nature of television, and more recently started to focus on television news. The nightmarish power of the media to manufacture stories and effect the world is showcased in this video about exactly how the story of MMR/autism began to get covered (starts around 3:00). Watching everything he has ever made isn't a bad idea either actually, very entertaining.
Oh SHIT! That isn't the news! That was the news when gardisil was only for girls. Now that it is being proposed for boys the questions have shifted to how effective and safe the vaccine is. There are some rarer cancers men can avoid if they stay hpv free, and it will reduce the transmission of HPV to have more of the population vaccinated.
A lot of the same people against childhood vaccines are jumping on the anti gardisil bandwagon, saying it is unsafe. Once again, the people fueling fears are completely unqualified journalists. Ann sent me a bunch of materials to see what I could find out about gardisil ingredients. The headline to this first bit is predictably sensationalized: Gardasil Vaccine Ingredients - Roach Killer, Aluminum, and Polysorbate 80. After the writer of this hinted towards Gardisil sterilizing a whole generation of girls without having any real reason to do so, he gave out this list of ingredients:
Gardasil vaccine ingredients include amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate, sodium chloride, L-histidine, polysorbate 80, sodium borate, (roach killer), and water for injection.
As I know from digging through so many crappy science articles, the people who write them often get the most basic details of the story completely wrong. SO I went over to the gardisil website, and found that this portion of the article was accurate. Now onto the claims of individual chemicals being harmful- This dude, armed with teh google and the knowledge of what an MSDS is (and little else from what I can tell), went on the hunt for scary information about each ingredient instead of trying to research where the info came from. First of all, his claims about polysorbate 80.
Polysorbate 80: Although Polysorbate 80 is a food additive that enables solubility of flavoring oils with water, injection is quite different. Polysorbate 80 injected into prepubescent rats caused a rapid growth of reproductive organs, but growth was abnormal and the rats were sterile, unable to have children. When used intravenously with vitamins it has been known to cause anaphylactic shock. According to the Polysorbate 80 MSDS, it may be a carcinogenic, (cause cancer), as well as a mutagenic, (birth defects).
Anaphylactic shock is a severe allergic reaction. You know, the kind you hear about peanuts causing. Damn near anything can be shown to cause that. That portion is true, but not very scary. There are a lot of mistakes with the other claims made.
One thing the author has neglected to mention is that polysorbate 80 is prescribed for injections for conditions other than not wanting to get HPV, and that seems to be where he got a lot of his scary side effect info from. People with severe anemia due to kidney disorders or some kinds of cancers or cancer treatments may be injected with polysorbate 80 solution in order to cause their red blood cell production to increase. I did find information about the dangers the author listed like having a link to being a carcinogen and causing bloodclots in connection with this usage. There is a SEVERE difference in concentration between the two products. Polysorbate 80 is a common ingredient in vaccinations of all sorts, and the preferred concentration is .01% in various vaccines, and the gardisil vaccine is only half a mL in volume. .01% of .5 mL (less than 1/5 of an ounce) is a really really small amount of chemical, and it is not given through veins like the anemia treatment. The anemia treatment is given weekly and consists of a much higher dose, which is calculated depending on the bodyweight of the patient. We are in the realm of micrograms when it comes to human usage of this ingredient. This is very much like studying the side effects of swallowing an entire bottle of Tylenol and claiming that one pill will cause the same side effects. I also found the rodent study he referenced, and holy shit, those mice with the huge genitals/sterility/mutations were given more than the anemia people usually would be, and the mice are much much smaller than us. The solutions were 1%, 5%, or 10% solutions (water and polysorbate 80) injected into mice shortly after their birth. The smallest amount of polysorbate 80 given in that study is much much higher in both concentration per kg than what humans are normally exposed to. From what I can tell, injecting an adult mouse (these were new borns, and may have weighed less, but anyway) with a tenth of an mL is around one percent to half a percent of it's total body weight. There isn't any reason to think it will cause a generation of girls to become sterile, and it was really irresponsible to imply it. This ingredient is in multiple vaccines in the same concentration/roughly the same volume. I can accept a possibility of a side effect not being discovered during the years long period of time a company must prove the product is safe for use, but for multiple vaccines to have such an effect would have to be readily apparent in fertility rates. It just hasn't been an issue and is unlikely to become one.
The next ingredient on the list is sodium chloride. That is salt. The chemical name is given to make it seem scary, I assume.
Next one is amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate, and there aren't any real specific claims made in the article about that at all. Pubmed has shown that again, this is a common vaccine ingredient. Outside of every vaccine having to go through clinical trials before being released to the public, there are six decades of populations with lots of usage and no real pattern of widespread vaccine damage due to injections containing these ingredients. The ingredients greatly enhance the effect of many vaccines, and is added for that purpose.
Lastly, sodium borate. Using the description "roach killer" here is evidence of someone trying to mislead readers; after all, I could put "slug killer" after "beer", but it wouldn't make beer severely toxic. The author claims that it isn't commonly used in medical preparations anymore, and I curiously found the exact same sentence on the how stuff works article about sodium borate poisoning:
Poisoning may also occur in those who are repeatedly exposed to sodium borate. In the past, boric acid was used to disinfect and treat wounds. Patients who received such treatment over and over again got sick, and some died. Because boric acid is now known to be a dangerous poison, it is no longer commonly used in medical preparations.
So it took someone using it on open wounds over and over again to cause poisoning. I know it is used in the preparation of urine cultures as well, a little cake of sodium borate is contained in the tubes that urine is deposited into for culture preparation; I am not so sure it counts as 'medical preparation', but there is a lot of ambiguity in the article about how that is or is not important because they do not really address that at all. Indeed, I found other evidence of it being really hard to poison someone with this ingredient. I found a (somewhat disturbing) study titled The Effect of Large Intravenous Doses of Sodium Borate on the Human Myocardium as Reflected in the Electrocardiogram . It seemed to make a difference in the EKG's of patients to be given a massive does of this substance. An injection of gardisil is once again, half of a milliliter (one teaspoon is equal to five mL).
In my search for this information, I found two other articles that were really good about showing the fallacious nature of most anti-vaccine arguments. I highly recommend reading all of it, their science is far more advanced than mine. The denialism blog is especially helpful for finding info about things like 'toxins' in vaccines. Everyone seems to come to the same conclusion; vaccines do result in injury or reaction for a very small percentage of people, but vaccines have been shown to be very good for the vast majority of people. Many of us know of grandparents or other elderly people who have polio injuries, and now polio is extremely rare in countries with vaccines for it. I remember specifically researching the inventor of the polio vaccine as a kid in elementary school for a report, and learning about the horrors that polio caused before vaccines were available and treatments were not very good. Many parents remember having mumps or measles, and again it is now very rare. So much has changed for the better because of this amazing technology. The only reason so many parents can afford not to vaccinate their children now is because of the herd immunity that exists from the majority who do vaccinate. If there was an outbreak of the diseases we can vaccinate against the argument would seem extremely silly in the face of real, observable death for children.
On another note, the research for this blog post was a pain in the ass. The anti-vaccine people spammed this guys article EVERYWHERE, so searches had to be modified over and over to avoid seeing the same article reposted on a thousand different websites. One weird example was a website that linked to the original, but claimed that it said polysorbate 80 was dangerous when applied to skin or eaten, despite the article claiming the exact opposite. These knobs clog up any legitimate attempt to research the issue by serially re-posting the same shit to 90,000 different websites with lightning speed.
Charlie Brooker has some excellent videos about the nature of television, and more recently started to focus on television news. The nightmarish power of the media to manufacture stories and effect the world is showcased in this video about exactly how the story of MMR/autism began to get covered (starts around 3:00). Watching everything he has ever made isn't a bad idea either actually, very entertaining.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Hate crimes and masculinity
I saw an excellent post today on Sociological Images about how the George Sodini murders are not ever referred to as a hate crime in the media. There isn't a real reason for this; the irrational hatred of any other group of people that spawned a mass murder would without question be labeled a hate crime.
For those who are unaware- George Sodini was a man who was extremely unlucky with women and began to hate young conventionally attractive women for not giving him his 'due' sex and affection (I bet this douche was cheering for stuntman mike during Death Proof). It is a pretty disgusting story by itself, but it got worse when he decided to kill a bunch of women in an aerobics class at a local gym before turning the gun on himself. The sociological images post has multiple screenshots of stories where women rejecting him, or not having sex with him, is stated as the reason for the crime or for his woman hatred. The word "misogynist" or "sexist" is absent from most coverage even though it is extremely clear that those words represent the killer very accurately.
The cnn article about how he is a 'classic' mass murderer echoes the stories of many school shooters. Although most stories about school shooters aren't as eager to blame the parents:
How this can be portrayed as a case of a dysfunctional relationship with a mom being taken out on the world when there are so many other obvious factors is beyond me. His relationship with his family didn't exist outside of a social context. I am sure family had as much to do with his life as anyone else, but again I pretty much never see the position of a murderer's parents being directly at fault for their children becoming murderers. I have seen it a few times, but generally it happens when the parent had some direct involvement in the plotting of a murder or the child was not mentally competent in some way.
The rest of the article discusses how he blamed other people for his failings, and so it seemed like an act of revenge against the world to do this to young athletic women. This is a recurring theme of school shooters and other mass murderers (the revenge aspect I mean), and I am somewhat certain that it is directly related to the traditional definition of masculinity.
The series "tough guise" goes into this in depth, with a look into how the masculine ideal is absolutely not realistic and ends up fueling horrific events like these. Oh my, it is even made by a dude! He is sick and tired of seeing younger dudes exterminate each other in a desperate attempt to assert their heterosexuality, and I can't blame anyone who is ill about that. The various murders of transgender people simply for existing adds some evidence to the macho motivation for some murders.
This particular event seems to splice in elements of the 'deserving nice guy' bullshit that has been a mainstay in popular culture. That meme has several layers of misogyny that could (and probably eventually will) fuel a whole new post.
Masculine ideals sure as fuck seem to trigger violent behavior in dudes against other dudes. The discussion of it is missing every single time some teenage dude kills a bunch of his classmates in what is (to them) an act of revenge against getting what they are owed, while girls seem to turn the blame for personal injustices onto themselves. The discussion of misogyny fueled violence is missing every time a high profile case of domestic violence is in the media, every time a prostitute is killed, every time women and girls are sexually assaulted or killed or both. There is not a good reason for any of this to escape analysis in the media while how he felt about his mom gets enough consideration for people to blame her.
For those who are unaware- George Sodini was a man who was extremely unlucky with women and began to hate young conventionally attractive women for not giving him his 'due' sex and affection (I bet this douche was cheering for stuntman mike during Death Proof). It is a pretty disgusting story by itself, but it got worse when he decided to kill a bunch of women in an aerobics class at a local gym before turning the gun on himself. The sociological images post has multiple screenshots of stories where women rejecting him, or not having sex with him, is stated as the reason for the crime or for his woman hatred. The word "misogynist" or "sexist" is absent from most coverage even though it is extremely clear that those words represent the killer very accurately.
The cnn article about how he is a 'classic' mass murderer echoes the stories of many school shooters. Although most stories about school shooters aren't as eager to blame the parents:
Although Sodini expressed intense hatred for his brother and father, "it also didn't surprise me in this case that he made some derogatory comments about his mother," said Dr. J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. "A lot of times, when there's this level of hatred against women, there's also a very antagonistic relationship with the mother, but it gets shifted onto other women."
How this can be portrayed as a case of a dysfunctional relationship with a mom being taken out on the world when there are so many other obvious factors is beyond me. His relationship with his family didn't exist outside of a social context. I am sure family had as much to do with his life as anyone else, but again I pretty much never see the position of a murderer's parents being directly at fault for their children becoming murderers. I have seen it a few times, but generally it happens when the parent had some direct involvement in the plotting of a murder or the child was not mentally competent in some way.
The rest of the article discusses how he blamed other people for his failings, and so it seemed like an act of revenge against the world to do this to young athletic women. This is a recurring theme of school shooters and other mass murderers (the revenge aspect I mean), and I am somewhat certain that it is directly related to the traditional definition of masculinity.
The series "tough guise" goes into this in depth, with a look into how the masculine ideal is absolutely not realistic and ends up fueling horrific events like these. Oh my, it is even made by a dude! He is sick and tired of seeing younger dudes exterminate each other in a desperate attempt to assert their heterosexuality, and I can't blame anyone who is ill about that. The various murders of transgender people simply for existing adds some evidence to the macho motivation for some murders.
This particular event seems to splice in elements of the 'deserving nice guy' bullshit that has been a mainstay in popular culture. That meme has several layers of misogyny that could (and probably eventually will) fuel a whole new post.
Masculine ideals sure as fuck seem to trigger violent behavior in dudes against other dudes. The discussion of it is missing every single time some teenage dude kills a bunch of his classmates in what is (to them) an act of revenge against getting what they are owed, while girls seem to turn the blame for personal injustices onto themselves. The discussion of misogyny fueled violence is missing every time a high profile case of domestic violence is in the media, every time a prostitute is killed, every time women and girls are sexually assaulted or killed or both. There is not a good reason for any of this to escape analysis in the media while how he felt about his mom gets enough consideration for people to blame her.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Not looking for things to get pissed off about
I have been trying pretty hard to avoid finding day ruining sexism and racsim, but it just isn’t working out. I don’t have as much time these days to go venting my emotions via blogulation, though I hope I will have more next semester. Nothing is more dismissive of the experiences of women and minorities than the accusation that extreme offense only comes out of ‘looking for something to get pissed off about’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is a template for my days:
So, I go to work and stuff like this happens:
*patients aggresively tell me or my coworker “SMILE” because we do not display unending cheer at being in the presence of dudes
*hovering dudes treat their pregnant wives like children and supervise my work, as though they would actually know if I did something incorrectly. They hand the paperwork to me on behalf of their wives and then direct their wives into the lab instead of letting me call them in like normal. Sometimes they shake my hand for not damaging their property. It is a cramped small space so it takes quite an asshole to make it a priority to do this when they are clearly in the way of other people.
*people from the other clinics who work with me daily opt to talk to someone who is filling in for the day if they happen to be a bepenised individual.
*people ask my coworker if I am a lesbian, or sometimes they ask her if I am a dude if they only get a quick look at me. I can’t imagine them needing that information unless it would funadmentally change our interaction somehow.
*the women around wont stfu about their diets or their strip cardio class, you know, the one where you dance around the poll to lose weight.
*the breast scar capsules of women who have had their implants go horribly wrong arrive in the lab in a tub of blood and formalin. A pathologist will look into it.
*my boss asks me if I have had any ‘cat fights’ with my coworker, and tells everyone how I didn’t laugh about it and how weird is that.
*a guy who just got promoted to oversee our whole department sends out an email called “why I am afraid to exercise”, the joke is literally nothing but pictures of women who are body builders. I have to fill out some sexual harassment form thingy which is supposed to shield me from retaliation but I am not counting on it.
*I overhear someone noting how it was unlikely that the half black half polynesian guy in the trauma this morning was really beaten up by strangers. Because brown people are criminals I guess.
I am sure there are all kinds of things I am forgetting, especially from my days working in the ER.
So I look into the internet to get my mind off of how sexism invades my work on a weekly basis at a minimum. So I go to cnn.com and see stuff that inspires this whole website. I see a story about how a woman has had her kid taken away because she refused a c-section, another one got 40 lashes for wearing pants. I see stories about how the surgeon general is clearly too fat to be a good doctor, and that any way to include women like ms california or sarah palin in the new is a good idea for the media because the public passtime of ripping into women is a lot more popular than reporting about people who actually make far reaching policies. Those politicians say racist and sexist shit left and right, for example comments about the Sotomayor hearings and about everyone involved in the arrest of the black harvard professor. Even navigating to portions of the internet specifically for feminism more often than not results in widespread knoberry, where dudes cannot resist leaving idiotic comments of both the well meaning and malicious varieties. I cannot find a clip of the rachel maddow show on youtube without mention of her being a lesbian, or someone critiquing her appearance. So I get off the internet.
So I watch some tv instead, and an ad for the ugly truth comes on. It’s a movie where the writers bust out that popular template of a lady, the one with a good career and an empty life because she isn’t impregnanted or married. So, she needs help from someone to change her personality or otherwise decieve a man into loving/impregnating her. A review informs me that this movie was written by three women who have apparently internalized the message that they are worthless when not maintaining pornulational compliance. In this case gerard butler is the misogynist savior, who plays a shock jock who tells her that she needs to take off her clothes and quit having opinions before guys will like her. It works when she does it, and instead of being angry about it she accepts it as the nature of things. She eventually falls for the radio douche, who pets the dog to convince us all he is a good person (the dog in this case is his orphaned nephew, aww). Horrible movies get made all the time, but this kind of shit is akin to the already offensive black cop/white cop comedies ending with the black one realizing that whitey’s advice that he uses his savage jungle nature to scare suspects into compliance really was the right way to do things, and thank goodness he found his place in the world through his oppressor. The awfully racist old style cartoons have for the most part been banned from airing on tv these days, but I can still hear a babysitter go “hehehe, math is hard” on the phone during an episode of tom and jerry. Movies like the ugly truth are being put out constantly, they make it through marketing meetings and production and people buy into it. There are tons of movies every year with outright woman hatred as the main spectacle that people just love, usually between saying that there isn't a need for feminism anymore.
I watch conan, and some nerdy commedian says he quit feminism after trying to go dutch ending up with him not getting a date with some girl. The joke part was him going dutch and angering the girl, not the giving up feminism part.
Books are not quite as friendly either, especially those of the sci-fi variety. I could go on and on. You go about your day and bam, something comes along to remind you that you have a lower status in society. It would take someone with unimaginable hatred for themselves and other women to see stuff like this and not say anything.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Do these comments defy the "misogynist/intellectual" dichotomy?
Skepchick has a pretty feministy post going on, and a lot of people posted comments. The actual post itself is far from radical. It is about the disrespect at TAM for women (and men) by one speaker, reducing all of us to stereotypes and making a joke that seemed to assume that women were not there at all. Also, a blogger who commented on that had a thing or two to say about the women who wore revealing clothing to tam, and how that was a bad thing to do. The last bit was what most people were up in arms about, sparking yet another "brains/beauty dichotomy" discussion, where we find out if women who are beauty 2K compliant are treated like they are dumb and if that is a correct way to react or not. Obviously being intelligent and conventionally beautiful are not mutally exclusive, and people who don't realize this or fail to express a basic level of respect for any human are just knobs who should be alerted of their knoberry. A lot of people seem to believe that showing that some skeptical women can be altered to resemble pornulated representations of women is the best solution (this is the reasoning behind the pin up calendar on the same website). Questioning the problematic beauty norms, examining their cost and their arbitrary nature takes a back seat to showing that we can cram our women into whatever mold the patriarchy says will make their bodies approved for use by dudes. That’ll show those mean sexists. I feel more liberated already!
Anyway.
The original post did a good job for pointing out the humanity of women being of prime importance in regards to this issue, but it did not seem to be as important to people responding. Examining the context, trying to figure out how it even became a problem is what fails to be addressed. There is a wide range of bs answers about what women should do about being treated unfairly, with very few comments saying what men should do to stop treating women unfairly. Most seem to revolve around how we should or should not dress. The poofiest and wordiest response was from a hardcore evolutionary psych person, complaining about how those darned feminists ignore biology and how this is all just natural, without really stating why that makes the behavior acceptable. There were some better than normal comments in the mix as well which made me happy.
The most depressing part of this often repeated debate is how alienating it is to different people. Not only is the value of women brought into question depending on things like appearance, the value of people in general depending on intellect is implied by the language and attitudes displayed towards smarter than average people. The alienating effect on women is obvious and was echoed by many, but the alienation of the not so intellectual is also a very bad thing to do. Elevating skepticism something really brainy people do instead of a valuable life skill that anyone can use is a huge mistake. Skepticism can be a tool for people who simply have a moral interest in the truth or who want to learn about the world. Those people can make valuable contributions to the community by supporting people who are more capable than they are at promoting skepticism and just by being caring people.
Some other nastiness at tam that I witnessed in vegas that weekend falls right in line with all of this stuff. The talent show was a lot of fun until the chat watching it live was put up on the monitor. The person who came up with the concept and worked hard to put it all together had their attractiveness made into an issue, she was rated on fuckability instead of being thanked like the dudes. To work that hard and read "I would give alison’s rack first place. Just sayin." on the screen among other comments of a similar nature must have been awful. The comments about other people seemed to be a lot more respectful in general, outside of people insulting one contestant for being overweight. I had a very good time up until then, it is depressing that jerk ass dudes invade damn near anything women are involved in and make a point of reminding us of our inferior status. There were a lot of other things I heard and saw there that made me feel pretty icky about being a woman and hanging out with the tamites, despite meeting a lot of really good ones. I have not been "looking for things to get pissed off about", as I have been accused of so often when I take issue with sexism. The sexism is inescapable, it is there when I try to read a book or a magazine or have a polite discussion or watch a talent show with people who share interests with me. Its there all the time and it should serve to strengthen the importance of feminism and interrogating privilege in every day life.
Anyway.
The original post did a good job for pointing out the humanity of women being of prime importance in regards to this issue, but it did not seem to be as important to people responding. Examining the context, trying to figure out how it even became a problem is what fails to be addressed. There is a wide range of bs answers about what women should do about being treated unfairly, with very few comments saying what men should do to stop treating women unfairly. Most seem to revolve around how we should or should not dress. The poofiest and wordiest response was from a hardcore evolutionary psych person, complaining about how those darned feminists ignore biology and how this is all just natural, without really stating why that makes the behavior acceptable. There were some better than normal comments in the mix as well which made me happy.
The most depressing part of this often repeated debate is how alienating it is to different people. Not only is the value of women brought into question depending on things like appearance, the value of people in general depending on intellect is implied by the language and attitudes displayed towards smarter than average people. The alienating effect on women is obvious and was echoed by many, but the alienation of the not so intellectual is also a very bad thing to do. Elevating skepticism something really brainy people do instead of a valuable life skill that anyone can use is a huge mistake. Skepticism can be a tool for people who simply have a moral interest in the truth or who want to learn about the world. Those people can make valuable contributions to the community by supporting people who are more capable than they are at promoting skepticism and just by being caring people.
Some other nastiness at tam that I witnessed in vegas that weekend falls right in line with all of this stuff. The talent show was a lot of fun until the chat watching it live was put up on the monitor. The person who came up with the concept and worked hard to put it all together had their attractiveness made into an issue, she was rated on fuckability instead of being thanked like the dudes. To work that hard and read "I would give alison’s rack first place. Just sayin." on the screen among other comments of a similar nature must have been awful. The comments about other people seemed to be a lot more respectful in general, outside of people insulting one contestant for being overweight. I had a very good time up until then, it is depressing that jerk ass dudes invade damn near anything women are involved in and make a point of reminding us of our inferior status. There were a lot of other things I heard and saw there that made me feel pretty icky about being a woman and hanging out with the tamites, despite meeting a lot of really good ones. I have not been "looking for things to get pissed off about", as I have been accused of so often when I take issue with sexism. The sexism is inescapable, it is there when I try to read a book or a magazine or have a polite discussion or watch a talent show with people who share interests with me. Its there all the time and it should serve to strengthen the importance of feminism and interrogating privilege in every day life.
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