Tag Archives: Sexism

Jennifer Love-Hewitt is Fat and Clinton won’t be President

Posted on by Ann

The current cover of People features a bikini-clad television actress with the protesting title “I am not Fat!” And she isn’t, not by even the most twisted standards of beauty that have infiltrated our society and handed it new weapons with which to re-enslave women. Ms. Love-Hewitt is a size two, and I mention this only because I know someone will dispute her claim of a healthy weight (and me) and ask. It’s sad really that 40 some odd years into (or after depending on your point of view) the women’s movement, women in the United States are still objects. Which is why Clinton won’t win the Iowa Democratic caucuses or be president. Because she is a woman and women in this country – like most of the rest of the world – are still just the sum of their pretty, or not so parts. Intelligence. Experience. Ability. None of this matters when the easiest way to put a woman back in her place, or at least remind her she is out of it, is to criticize her femininity via her appearance, martial status or commitment to her children.

While it is true that we are allowed to be as naked as we wanna be in the visual self-expression of how far we have come baby, answer me this – how is the fact that we are judged by our appearance and size and “femininity” any different than the Islamic obsession with covering women up? Or the French and Russian governments extolling their female citizens to patriotism via their birth canals? It’s two sides of the same coin, and the coin of the realm is keeping women in their place as second-class and objectified-  with our complicity at times it seems because we don’t help ourselves at all by playing into whatever the status quo may be. In western cultures women parrot the line that we are free because we can be blatantly sexual and can control our bodies, and chose to marry or not, parent or play working girl – all the while starving ourselves and fueling a beauty industry out of control, and reading Cosmo for man-snaring tips. Our pop culture thrives on female parts – in music and films that depict females and their sexuality as dirty and disposable. Beauty magazines that sell self-improvement in the form of diets and exercise programs. Fashion that is designed to accentuate beauty and expose those who are not.

In places like say, Saudi Arabia, women will tell you they don’t mind being seond-tier, covering up and not being able to drive is fine because they appreciate being protected by their males and the society these males have created for them. The China and the India are dangerously unbalancing their gender ratios by scanning their unborn fetuses and aborting girls because sons are better for a family – at least until they are of marriageable age and their are no daughters for them to marry. French women are bearing children in the name of nationalism and unaware of that the racist sentiments that are slowly tearing at the seams of their country is the likely cause their governments are praising them for their efforts. But telling yourself you are in charge of your choices is not the same as being in charge. When there are no options to chose from but the ones carefully pre-selected and laid in front of you by others – how free are you?

So, what does this have to do with Hillary Clinton, you ask most patiently. Just that she represents what women are not supposed to know about or think about becoming. She is educated and articulate and didn’t get where she is by conforming to the rules as they are written for women. She may have chosen the well-beaten path here and there, who doesn’t? For example, remember her changing hairstyles back in the early days of her husband’s presidency when her looks were being constantly criticized in the press – which by the way is one of the ways the media works for the system that wants all women to know that love and respect are reserved for the pretty and the closed-mouthed. Sen. Clinton plays politics the way the boys do and she isn’t supposed to even want to play in the first place. John Irving called this being “sexually suspect” in his novel, The World According to Garp. Women who live their lives against the current. The current fashions. The current standards of beauty as dictated to us. The current standards of womanhood. 
The Register endorsed Sen. Clinton. It’s unlikely to do her any more good than Ms. Love-Hewitt revealing her dress size. A woman is not likely to be the president of this country. Our sexism is embedded in our genes so deep that we don’t even recognize it. We built our country upon the idea that all men, not women too, were created equal and never changed our minds. And don’t think that our founding fathers didn’t know what they were saying. John Adams wife Abigail railed at him for excluding women. Just as they knew they were in the wrong about slavery (Jefferson referred to it as “holding a wolf by the ears”), they knew what they were doing when they wrote “men”.

I am not a Clinton supporter. I haven’t even begun to make up my mind about the presidential field. It’s a little early in the race and future presidents should be put to the test and made to show their stuff and stamina. Nobody has done that yet. But, the Catholic school girl in me can’t abide those who will use the belittling tactics of the old parish priests when confronted with women who won’t sit down, or shut up or just go away. It may be a man’s world, but as someone pointed out to me recently they aren’t the majority. We are. And perhaps it’s time we decide where are places should be.

Egg Shitter

Posted on by Ann

The book is called NO KIDS: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children and was written by a French author named Corrine Maier. In it this psychiatrist, and mother of two, attempts to dissuade young childless French women from succumbing to the baby fever which is currently sweeping their country. Unlike most other countries in the EU where birthrates have fallen well below population replacement levels and young children are swiftly becoming an anomaly, the French are experiencing a renaissance of motherhood thanks in no small part to government sponsored maternity leaves where mothers are paid full wages for up to sixteen weeks, receive “bonus checks” for having more than one child and enjoy a creche, or childcare, system that is unequaled anywhere. Ms. Maier feels that these programs are part of a larger plan to imprison women in the traditional, and largely unfulfilling, role of “mom”. The phrase she coined for women who buy into the myth that motherhood is the ultimate goal for a women is merdeuf which a French speaker would recognize as the contraction of mère de famille, which is the traditional phrase for a full-time mother or a housewife and someone who makes the act of mothering her career. The contraction of this term, however, sounds like a combination of merde, which any first year French student can tell you means “shit” and oeuf, which means “egg”. Combined these two sounds seem to imply that these xeno-phobes disguised as patriots and uber-mommies are in fact little more than “egg-shitters.”

Now, it may seem ironic that someone who has given birth to and is raising children of her own would counsel women who have not yet had children to steer clear of the “profession” of motherhood, but only if you weren’t a mother yourself. Even the most rabidly devoted mother has moments when she wishes she had opted for the power career or the guy with no real potential other than showing her a really great time. Why? Because it would have been easier and finite. There is no end to motherhood. No way to quit or backtrack. Just 15 or 20 years of intensive, sometimes mind-numbing, and certainly unappreciated but for hindsight freakin’ hard work. For nothing. There are no monetary rewards. No company perks. No advancements. If men had been handed this role at the dawn of creation the human race would have began and ended with Adam and Eve. And yes, I know as a mother myself that there are intangible rewards to having and raising children that shouldn’t be compared with the consumer-driven objectified greediness of the material minded, but when you stop to consider that in the vast majority of the world women are little more than breeding cows with nearly identical rights it is hard to argue against Ms. Maier’s attempt to warn off future generations of brood mares.

It could be the poor translation but I think some of Ms. Maier’s reasons are stupid, but a few drive home the point that women are still being forced to choose between having children and having a life, eg. career. Children are limiting for women in a way that they are not for men. You can argue the point as much as you like but the facts are the facts. Mothers, even really crappy ones, are tied to the early development of their off-spring in a much more physical way than fathers are and because of this, they will inevitably lose time. Time for education or building careers or simply to pursue some personally fulfilling dream. We can’t have it all in the same way men can and it’s time this was acknowledged and made generally known to women before they have babies. An uninformed choice is hardly a choice at all.

For Your Own Good

Posted on by Ann

Do you hate it when someone tells you that something that you really don’t want to happen, or to have, is for your own good? So do I. And I will tell you why. Because whenever someone tells you that you can bet the house that the good they are speaking of is their own, and your health and welfare and over all well-being don’t have one blessed thing to do with it. Case in point, the women of Saudi Arabia have launched their first effort since 1990 to try and secure the right to drive an automobile. Saudi Arabia is a patriarchal country that makes my Irish Catholic (wait strike the Irish part because the Irish are notoriously matriarchal) upbringing look profoundly feminist. The Saudis strictly interpret the whole “woman in her place (two steps behind I am told) thing”, and women are forbidden to drive based on this skewed point of view. All women. Muslim or not. A woman is a woman is just a sperm receptacle in Saudi Arabia. Saudi men see this, or so they say, as a safety issue. Women and children are safer being driven by men. However, drivers there, whether they are public taxi drivers or private chauffeurs, tend to be foreigners who are, according to Saudi women, notorious for harassing the women and children they are transporting. Which brings me back to my original point. The “good” part of “for your own good” is not about protecting someone. It’s about maintaining something, usually control, and in the case of Saudi Arabian women it is about maintaining control of them by restricting their movement.

But it’s not just Islamic men. The male gender just about anywhere, sometimes aided and abetted by some of the dumbest females I try my best to avoid, spend a good deal of time and energy coming up with ways to protect women from themselves. In my native country of the United States this kind of paternalism takes the shape of groups who oppose reproductive rights from access to abortions to contraceptives. Even with Roe V. Wade, access to abortion, even in the case of medical emergencies has never been so sparse and the ability to purchase legally prescribed contraception from the birth control pill to emergency day after contraception like Plan B is equally in danger. And it’s for our own good. Adult women in the United States must be protected from the “dangers” of these things. The only danger however is to the status quo. As fewer and fewer women have litters of children and more and more put off having children all sorts of things are occurring that is changing the playing field. Most notably is that more women are on playing fields that traditionally they couldn’t access before. The bottom line is that there is no better way to control women than to deny them the right to regulate their own reproductive systems. Being eternally knocked up is better than foot-binding for keeping women in their place.

But it’s not just whole genders that are kept in line. Governments use the “for our good” line to perpetrate all manner of suppressive acts. The Bush Administration, with the blessing of Republican congressional representatives suspended Habeas Corpus to protect Americans from terrorists even while it allows them to imprison “dissident” citizens without warning, without cause, without trial and seemingly without end. In Canada the government of Quebec is attempting to suppress its Islamic population by forcing its women to unveil before being allowed to vote. This is similar to the recent Indiana law in the U.S. requiring photo I.D. for all voters. It is to prevent fraud but the only fraud is that of governments who hide their true motives behind their concern “for the good of the people”.

In the workplace, this hypocrisy takes the shape of wellness programs for employees. Recently back home the government decided to allow employers to charge higher payroll deductions to employees with high cholesterol, over the limit BMI’s or to people who smoke. It is for the good of the employees they say, but the bottom line of the companies and their shareholders is the primary motivation.

For my own good I have been sold a lot of what I now recognize as self-serving crap over the course of my life. It is a shame that I listened to so much of it and more of a shame that I actually followed some of the advice at different times. We are the arbiters of our own good. Skepticism should always be the approach of choice when someone approaches you, or imposes on you, anything that is supposedly good for you.

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