Your daily dose of sexism #2

I said it would be daily, didn't I?
So, today we have Nompliments, not really compliments.
In my parents' garden, the little one stood on the wall, holding the cloth-line pole, jumping up and down and singing "Jingle Bells".
Yeah, I know it's July.
So an elderly relative commented at the side of this happy and energetic child: She should have better been a boy!
Yeah, if those are compliments I don't want to see the insults...

Your daily dose of Sexism #1

Welcome to a new and hopefully (sadly) permanent installment on this blog.
Just for those people who think it's not that bad.
And for the rest of us to vent and rant.

Today, at the place where our caravan is parked.
I get out of the car to greet the landlady and tell her that we're going to park the caravan again.
As Mr. drives to our slot and I walk, I hear her calling her husband:
"Husband, Mr MyLastName's son in law is here!"
Yeah. I'm invisible.

Sports!

Did you know that feminism (the radical notion that women are people) is just like sports?
No really.
BJ Kramer, who took part in an extremely ugly discussion about harassment policies actually claimed that:

More generally, nearly everyone I’ve encountered over the last two years with whom I’ve been having this discussion treats it more like sports or politics. You pick a team, and you defend it right or wrong.

And later Wendell Henry, who actually did pretty well in that trainwreck added:

For the record my intention was certainly not to have panel discussion with anything brilliant to say on this issue. I for one lack the expertise or insight or experience to be present for such a debate. I was coming at it from 2.1 directions. 1) A person’s whose views I very much liked (although his style does not work for many) had said some pretty stupid sounding things and I wanted to understand why. 2) For reasons both worthwhile and not I enjoy/get benefits from/like/derive pleasure from/?? spirited debates such as this one. .1) I had some secret hope that perhaps my undeniably correct logic would be helpful in showing Emery the ‘light’ (LOL well it has never worked the previous 40,000 times I have tried it so logically it will work soon I am sure).
For my purposes the event went reasonably well and accomplished 2 out of my 2.1 goals. I do hope that my silly little video has not widened the chasm and caused everyone to dig in deeper. If so then I sincerely apologize, that was not my intent.

So, obviously, my life, health and safety is sports for them. Because, let's face it, it won't really affect them either way, just like the result of the next football match doesn't really affect them.
Here's one request I have, though:
For those of you who see this as sports, and who have chosen "Team Women are People", could you please muster up the engery, devotion and enthusiasm actual football fans do? Or at least as much as the "TeamWomen are Fuckholes" does.

The day I was not raped

Following long and many dicussions over at Freethoughtblogs (read Pharyngula, Almost Diamonds, Lousy Canuck, The Atheist Experience, The Uncredible Hallq, Butterflies and Wheels, The X-Blog. Each blog usually has more than one post but I think you're famliar with all of them) and Skepchick, I decided to write this down as a testimony.
Many comments revolved about the actual level of harassment/ danger women face, victim blaming, and reporting. So here's my story.

Thankfully, so far in my life every day was a day I was not raped. I'm fortunate, I'm lucky. It's not because I do/ don't do X. One day stands clearly out amongst all those days and it is the day when rape suddenly became something that could have happened.

That day I'd gone to the cinema to watch The Lord of the Rings. Although we started in the afternoon it meant that by the time the movie was over and we'd said goodbye it was kind of late. Not middle of the night late, but between 10/11 pm. I walked back to my car which I'd parked in a Park and Ride a bit outside the city centre.
I walked back the main road and that's when I noticed the guy. Actually I noticed him because he cat-called me while walking in the opposite direction. Now, to get to my car I had to turn right from the main road uphill into a street that isn't "highstreet". About 250 m up that road I had to turn left into the carpark which isn't more than a bit of gravel and two light-bulbs, set back from the road and surrounded by buildings that are mostly used for comercial purposes and mostly uninhabited.
When I crossed the road I noticed that the guy was now walking in my direction. And since he was taller than me he walked faster than me. He was gaining on me, but he was not yet "officially" following me. When I turned left into the car-park he did so, too, still shortening the distance while I was moving further and further away from the main street, from the well lit side-street, from other people. That was what was obviously his intention: To get me as far away from any possible help before he attacked.
Thankfully my brain helped me out. I acted as if I was reaching for a car further back and just made a dash for mine when I was actually there. How I wished for a car with a remote control. But I made it. The distance was still big enough for me to open the lock, get in, close the door and lock it again while he tried to get after me.
I left the car park pretty shaken and upset. I told a female friend about it. Her reaction was to ask whether I was stupid to park my car there, she's so glad nothing happened but I mustn't ever park there again because it would be irresponsible of me.
Of course I did not report that. All this would have meant would have been that a great many more people would have criticised me, blamed me, lectured me while no wannabe rapist would ever be caught or prosecuted. (remember, you must take my story skeptically. Maybe his car was just parked there as well. Maybe he thought that this was his car and I was trying to steal it. Maybe he just wanted to ask me the time and now I'm painting a poor innocent guy as a rapist.)
No, I did not report.
Who would?

The limits of imagination

I'm the first to admit that I'm a fantasy-chick.
LotR, His Dark Materials, Pratchett, Harry Potter, I love them.
Imagination, fantasy, they're important to me, they're wonderful, they're creative.
And quite often, they're settled in a mythical past of our own world.
Obviously, when we're talking about pirates, we're not talking about actual pirates, mostly desperate people who led short violent lives always threatened with execution should they be caught. We're talking about Pirates, like adorable "adopt me" Johnny Depp, kick-ass Keira Knightly and eye-candy Orlando Bloom.
And that's what trickles down to our children. They don't play "die slowly of syphillis" or "drown while simultaneously bleeding to death". They play Sea-fight! Major Treassure Found! Ghost-ship Sighted!
But there's a limit to imagination and I'll show you what it is:

The picture below is out of one of my children's books. It's one of these "search and count books" pretty popular with most kids and this is even better because of Pirates!
Everything is better with Pirates, even Ninjas.
Let's see, what can you spot?
Can you see the sea-serpent?
Can you find Aladin?
Can you see dwarves?
Can you see ghosts?
Can you find the lightbulb?
Can you find Matti, the little boy with a wooden sword who's the protagonist of the book?
Can you spot a woman?
Let me guess, you got the first 6 alright because they are actually there. A woman? Tssss, this is Pirates! There are actually women in the book, a total 8 of them.
A mother with her son
A mermaid chatting with a sailor
A barmaid
A damsel in distress
Four prostitutes
Well, I'm pretty sure that children don't notice that those are prostitutes, but they are definetly depicted as "women who make men happy".
But that's the places reduced for women:
Mothers, barmaids, fantasy creatures and pleasure-givers to men.  That's what our children, sons and daughters alike learn about the world: It's much more likely that there be sea-serpents than women making their place in the world.
And that's neither a bad book, nor a single example. I swear there were more known (not to mention the unknown) female pirates in the actual history of piracy than there are in all the children's books and toy-sets combined.

Cinderella ate my Gender Delusions - a double book review

When I was pregnant with our second daughter, I expected many things, first of all, lots more of pink (it's incredible how much pink stuff turned up after the birth of #1, and that was with all close friends and family being well aware of how much I loathe it. But everybody else obviously  thought a pink cute onesie would be such an original present for a baby girl).
The one thing I was not prepared for was pity.
In Germany.
In Twothousandandnine.
Because I was expecting a second girl.
"Oh, but  #3 will sure be a boy"
"Ah, we need them too."
"Ehm, congratulations!"
What the fuck were those people thinking?
Let me make it clear, they were not trying to insult or hurt me. None of them was a devout muslim or christian, No ultra-orthodox jew who thanks god for not having him made a woman.
Just ordinary, not very religious in a happy go lucky way people, quite some of them women.
That wasn't the start of my renewed feminist interests, nor was it the end. It was a snapshot, one of a million.
And on my journeys through debates and debacles two books were recommended to me: Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine and Cinderella Ate my Daughter by Peggy Orenstein.
First of all, both books are well-written and entertaining to read. They both made me laugh out loud, although it was sometimes one of those bitter laughs you give off when somebody relates a gruesome tale in a funny way.
But it is pretty obvious that one of them is written by a scientist (Cordelia Fine) and the other one by a journalist (Peggy Orenstein), so if you have read neither of them and want to read both of them (and I really recommend both of them, especially if you have a little daughter or granddaughter), I suggest going from Fine to Orenstein, because the knowledge of the scientific background will add much more to Orenstein's vivisection of  the girlie-girl culture than the other way round.
So let me start that way, too:

If you're anyway like me, your copy of Delusions of Gender will become littered with post-its. There's the Ha! I knew it (or at least expected it)- notes, there's the Holy shit, that's even worse than I thought -notes, there's the The next idiot to make that argument will get a thrashing with added bibliography -notes. It really isn't only an educating and entertaining book for one's own enjoyment, it's a weapon. There's somebody with the scientific background who did the work for you AND properly sourced her work. Just what you wanted for christmas for being such a man-hating evil feminazi.
What I really liked was how she didn't only present the science, but also the pitfalls of science. There's probably no other area of science where ideology and biases infiltrate the scientific process as much as the area of sex- and gender-studies. She embeds the current scientific discussions in the centuries of Science proving that women just aren't really people or at least not rational ones.
How come that in this one area scientists often go looking for confirmation of a cultural bias and then take any results they get as evidence without actually showing not only that A exists, but also that it leads to B?
Why are they so eager to put all those actual differences they find down to nature as if their subjects were grown in a sterile lab until the very moment they engaged in that particular study?
Well, Cordelia Fine can't answer those questions either (except with, it's patriarchy, duh, remember, that confirmation bias thingy), but it's good to keep an eye on them.
It helps to understand why all that "sciency" stuff  bothered you when you first read and heard about it (like, why on earth men can't seem to find the milk in the fridge. It's because of mamoths, duh*), not so much because of the conclusions (woman, just get off your ass, get over to that fridge and get that milk, the poor guy is genetically hardwired not to see anything smaller than at least a big deer), but because the argument made no sense. I would have thought that a successfull hunter needed skills like being able to spot and read traces on the ground and remember where he put the fucking spear. Let alone to communicate with his fellow hunters about the best strategy.
So, if you need ammunition, this book is for you. After this, you cannot only point out that this scientism is wrong (no, it's not because the conclusions disagree with our "feminist dogma"), but you can also provide a handy reference as to why that is (because their science is crap).
Cordelia Fine demonstrates brilliantly why affirmative action is still needed because especially people who think themselves to be "unbiased" and "rational" will still base their decisions on those very biases they deny having and then rationalize their biased decisions with seemingly sensible arguments.
But I'm not going to spoil your fun reading anymore. Go get it!

Now to Peggy Orenstein (I'm German, that name is hilarious!). Her book is a very different book, not so much about the science, but about the culture. Not about the whole of women's lives, but about that slice of childhood and adolescence. And it's written not by a scientist, but by a journalist and, of all things, the mother of a little girl. Her writings convey the anger, worries, desperation and helplessness of a mother who, just like me, saw her daughter washed away in a wave of pink princess glitter.
The one feeling I got while reading her book (apart from being thankfull that things are still less extreme here in Europe) was that Cordelia Fine's science somewhat was the easy part, while the parenting is hard.
She deals honestly with the conflicts of a mother who wants to raise her daughter a strong, brave, daring woman, who disapproves of the pink princess-bullshit but who also has to walk the fine line not to disapprove of her daughter as a girl.
Those conflicts aren't easy. How do you teach her that those Disney Princesses are crap and that, you know, those fancy geometrical magnets the boys in kindergarten always play with are actually cool without falling into the old misogynistic trap of painting girl things as inferior and boy things as superior (those magnets ARE cool! I wished I'd had a box of these as a kid)? And on top of all of that, how will that affect your daughter socially if you manage in preserving all the colours of the rainbow instead of limiting it to pink?
I like how she tied it all back to mostly toy manufacturers, Disney and such, how they created that pink princess market that constantly drives a wedge betweens our boys and girls, not out of malice or bad patriarchal inclinations, but just out of the general laws of the greedy, all-devouring market.
It helps remembering Cordelia Fine's chapters about how easily children are manipulated into thinking a toy is for boys/girls (hint, paint it pink/blue), how easily they can be influenced to try out more options and it is incredible how little it is done, falling back on the naturalistic fallacy of Boys/girls are different.
What I found quite enlightening was the fact that up to a certain age children actually think that gender is determined by what you wear/do. It made me wondering if that was partly due to the body-hate we instill into our children from birth on. Sure, first they are wrapped into their diapers, but I remember kids up to school-age running around naked in summer. They don't do anymore, swimming-pools prescribe at least pants. Dolls don't have genitalia and I know that my husband was asked if he was wearing swimming trunks when he takes a bath with the kids.**
So, yes, it makes total sense that children are confused about what makes you male/female apart from haircut and colour codes. It makes sense that they guard the boundaries closely. If we think about how deeply the sense of one's gender is ingrained into us, it must be frightening to believe that you could lose it by accidentially wearing the wrong shirt.
Another part that struck me was that about children and make-up. I mean, sure I would never sign the kids up for a toddler pageant, would I? Or give them lipstick while in kindergarten, right?
Only, thinking about it, the amount of beauty-products they own is frightening. Kiddie soap, bathtub-colour, sparkling purple princess-shampoo, sparkling purple princess spray-on conditioner (disclaimer: that stuff's great, I use it myself), extra-soft kiddie facial cream (OK, I use that, too) and the pink cherry lip-balm (the only way I could get her to use some in winter on cracked, bleeding lips). See, I have good explenations why they have them. And so does the mother who adds a whole cosmetics store for a beauty pageant.
Peggy Orenstein doesn't have the perfect answer. Where draw the line? Was the pink lip-balm too much, setting her onto the path of objectification, making her think that how she looks, her performance are more important than how she feels and what she does?
But she raises your conscience. I'll think twice before buying any "kiddie-cosmetics" again.
She makes you think again. The only advice she can offer is to talk to your daughter, to talk about girls and women in media, about what exactly you dislike about those princesses***. There's a multi-billion dollar industry out there trying to teach your daughter some things, you're absolutely allowed to do so, too.
Having said all this, there's one thing I missed about her book and that was more a matter of style than content. I often had the impression that I was indeed reading a series of newspaper articles. Her red thread, the fact that all those things set out our girls early for a path of self-objectification, alienating them form their own feelings, bodies and sensations, is sometimes getting lost. She wraps it up from time to time, but in between she lost me reading highly entertaining passages about Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears.
So, to sum it up, if you have a (grand)daughter or two especially in the toddler/tween age, go read her book. If you don't, it's still good read. If it doesn't do anything else, at least it will take away your feeling of being the only person on planet earth who hates Cinderella.
My own path? We try to be break up those gender-roles in our own life, although circumstances limit this somewhat. It's become paramount for Mr. to wear yellow, orange, purple T-shirts, the tool box is mummy's toy box and it's important to keep those up when the other one is around. My habit to get into the passenger's seat when Mr. is also at home out of laziness (isn't it nice that he can do the driving sometimes, I have to do it all week so, shared responsibilities it's his job now) made the little one believe that I was only allowed to drive the car when he wasn't around. Which wasn't what was going on in our minds, but in that of our daughter.
*Sigh*
More driving for me then.

P.S. What did I write about this morning? make-up for children? This afternoon they were given sparkly lipgloss. For a 2yo. Seriously. 


*Yes, that's Why men don't listen and women can't read maps.
The very bok that also told me that I am probably lesbian and my husband is gay. At least the ratio of people doing men vs people doing women in our relationship didn't change, so we decided to just stick with each other.
**No, he doesn't. It is one of our principles that there's nothing shamefull about the human body. I want them to know how men and women look, I want them to be comfortable with their bodies and bodies in general and I really, really don't want shame to stop them from telling me if one they the horrible thing of sexual assault should happen to them.
*** Not that easy either, as she notices. How do you explain your preschooler that you think that a doll is inappropriate for her age because she's way too sexualized to be some kind of model for her without explaining "sexualized" in the first place?

Won't somebody think of the fetus!

Or my voyages into the strange land of secular pro-lifers.
Alerted to them by various people on the blogosphere, I decided to go and see for myself what they look like.
If you're curious, go to their blog.
If you want to get the Full Monty for non-sequiturs, read the post on why they think shit about a woman's bodily integrity. But I warn you, you are a troll by default.
So, being interested in what if not baby Jesus can make the fetus a superhuman, I engaged in  discussion. My question was that if I granted the blastocyte/embryo/fetus full personhood and human rights, why on earth should they have more than any other being on this planet. I'm not forced to donate blood, plasma, bone marrow or kidneys, so why should the fetus* have a right to access my bodily resources.
The short answer: because you didn't keep your legs shut, slut!
The commenter, Simon, engaged in a longish exchange about this, trying to give me various analogies as to why I owed the fetus something.

Having said that Anon is wrong you aren't giving the foetus more rights, rather similar 'rights' to other moral agents; and using established moral precepts of moral responsibility and compensation that are already used in society.

It is actually similar to the violinist but instead for consented sex it is the violinist being kidnapped and attached to the individual through the casual consent of that individual. Since you have caused existential dependency you owe compensation to keep the individual alive and since the only compensation applicable is the continued use of the body it isn’t unreasonable to make that the payment. It is only in rape the this doesn’t hold.

So much for the human rights of the fetus. It forfeits them for the crimes of the father. It's kind of funny to see pro-lifers try to get around that problem. Or it would be, if it weren't so damn serious.
You will see a pattern emerge here that Simon couldn't get rid of:
Sex is a crime. At least if you are a woman. He is for full social wellfare so fathers don't have to be burdened with child support:

 No I advocate cancelation of all direct child support for everyone male and female because sicne you have cancelled the male’s stake in his offspring you have effectively cancelled his moral responsibility for said action. Moral parity would demand no say no pay.

I mean, hey, woman, you had sex. You owe the fetus, you have moral responsibility!
Hey, man, you don't own the kids anymore, no consequences for you therefore.
But they really don't hate women...

He tries again:

Thinking about it we can still full moral rights to a rape foetus but unless we force everyone to abrogate bodily autonomy to save a life, those full moral rights are trumped by bodily autonomy when no moral responsibility is involved.

Keep. Your. Legs. Shut. If you don't, you owe the fetus. If you didn't actually consent to the sex, the fetus is out. But if you actually had consensual sex, you have forfeited your right to bodily autonomy.

I tried to argue that the established moral precedent is that you owe legal responsibility (also, the creation of the fetus seems to cause harm to the fetus in and on itself) and financial compensation, but you never have to sacrifice your body. Just. Doesn't. Happen.

So, we're talking kidneys now:

...what if -using an argument put forward by a Pro-Choice philiosopher David Boonin- YOU CAUSED an infant to need a organ transplant or they will die and you are the only match?

You could choose to let the infant die and you go to jail -or maybe even executed since you might be in Texas-or you donate the organ?

You caused the harm/dependency you owe compensation.

Again: having sex = crime, or at least reckless, becoming pregnant = harm. Will you be surprised to say that he didn't get when I pointed out that the crime or reprehensible act actually happened before the question of the kidney arose and is a criminal act indipendently of whether I choose to donate or not?

He also totally isn't equating sex with crime, no no:

& no as I see it having sex isn't the crime, nor getting pregnant. It depends on the analogy.

It's all about the analogy. Funny thing is, when I learned about analogies, they were supposed to be likewise or equal scenarios, especially when talking about morally reprehensible/criminal acts.

So, since I didn't like his previous analogies, he tries again:

If you caused a infant to need an organ transplant because you stored toxic waste in their home and you were the only one who was the match; are you saying you shouldn't be punished? But hey you didnt intend for that to happen so you aren't responsible.

Sex = Storing toxic waste
Pregnancy = Punishment

But, you see, the problem is me:

Looks like you cannot understand the analogy, the point of the toxic waste was to show it was an indirect causal event that lead to the harm, he didnt intend to give the kid a disease. Next Boonin points out even when we cause indirect harm we are morally responsible and can owe compensation. It might not have precedent but the underlying principle is still there.

Again, my body seems to be the appropriate compensation.
After all I'm responsible.

Oh, and talking about responsibility...
Question:

Also, do you think that women should be held criminally accountable for damage they caused to the fetus during pregnancy because they smoked, drank, handled a dangerous toxin?
Should a woman who has a traffic accident and consequently suffers a miscarriage be punished like a woman who runs over a 6 year old?

Answer:

Nxt Ano Troll yes I think a woman should be held accountable for such damage and there are in fact laws to that effect in some countries. & yes if she has a accident through negligent driving she should be punished as others in fact are by child destruction laws in my state.

Charming, isn't he?

So, his toxic waste didn't win me over, so he needed something better. This time his analogy contained sex!

So the act of having sex means you are immune to punishment or moral responsibility? Say a partner who knows they has HIV has sex thats ok no punishment because sex is normal?

So, yeah, having sex is just like infecting somebody with a deadly disease on purpose. If you're a woman, of course.

Also:

Ano Troll thanks for demonstrating you are such a douche.

That's me. I'm a bit proud of myself

There was a bit about that fucking "post birth abrtion paper". I knew we'd get that crap rubbed in  our faces. Now we want to kill real babies!
That's because there's actually better eating on them.

*I'm just using fetus from now on, I can trust you to know the differences