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Our Canadian media is taking a beating as of late. Neil Macdonald opines:
“Consider Postmedia, the biggest newspaper chain in the country.
It is largely owned by an American hedge fund, which regularly drains the member newspapers’ dwindling profits at a handsome interest rate as their newsrooms are merged and hollowed out to cut costs, and editorial direction is dictated from corporate headquarters.
No one knows where it will end, but end-stage asset stripping is probably a safe bet.”
My very own Edmonton Journal has been gutted in the latest round of cuts to the editorial board. Where do people think ‘news’ comes from? Primary sources – professional journalists – are the ones reporting and writing the stories that provide the grist for the mill for carrion feeders (bloggers like myself and the rest of the internet) possible. We should be very concerned that our eyes and ears to the world are slowly being hacked to death by corporations that prioritize everything but the actual process of Journalism.
“Baron, now executive editor of the Washington Post, acknowledged the economic forces ripping the business to shreds.
It is so on target that I’m going to quote its most salient passage:
“The greatest danger to a vigorous press today,” he begins, “comes from ourselves.
“The press is routinely belittled, badgered, harassed, disparaged, demonized, and subjected to acts of intimidation from all corners — including boycotts, threats of cancellations (or defunding, in the case of public broadcasting) …
“Our independence — simply posing legitimate questions — is seen as an obstacle to what our critics consider a righteous moral, ideological, political, or business agenda.
“In this environment, too many news organizations are holding back, out of fear — fear that we will be saddled with an uncomfortable political label, fear that we will be accused of bias, fear that we will be portrayed as negative, fear that we will lose customers, fear that advertisers will run from us, fear that we will be assailed as anti-this or anti-that, fear that we will offend someone, anyone.
“Fear, in short, that our weakened financial condition will be made weaker because we did something strong and right, because we simply told the truth and told it straight.”
Yeah. The facts of matter might be offensive, but they still are the facts of the matter. We seem to have lost sight of this salient feature in much of society. The problem, of course, is that our press depends on advertising and therefore behest to many sorts of of influences that detracts from the reporting of the facts.
I hope we as a society get back on track and start supporting our journalists and the crucial role they play in society. Being able to comment and critique in a contextually appropriator manner is founded on having access to the facts of any particular situation.
“But the original information, before it is aggregated and re-aggregated a thousand times, has to come from someone with the experience, brains and training to uncover it in the first place.
That is usually the work of credentialed journalism. It’s what Baron did in Boston. The alternative is usually just spin and corporatist fantasy, and let us all hope the latter does not overwhelm the former.”
The neat things you find on tumblr.
Ways men opt out of housework and childcare by “helping out”
- take on weekly or monthly tasks, and think it’s equal to their wives daily tasks (even when wives also have weekly and monthly tasks)
- take on tasks that require very little time or hard labor, like mowing the lawn.
- take on a “project” that could be fixed by a professional, and work on it little by little but never really finish
- create chores for their children, i.e. delegate rather than doing
- do housework only in tandem, i.e. never on their own or without help.
- volunteer on their own for some disliked task. For example, cleaning the toilets without asking. unfortunately, this tends to be seen as very loving and exceptional. Often it will be used as an excuse not to do anything else
- enthusiastically volunteer to do things often, then conveniently “forget”, “make plans”, or have some sort of weird parameter to get started. When wife or child does it instead, claim they were going to do it, really!
- pick a jurisdiction they already enjoy, like “take care of dog” or “the yard”
- do something really badly, so that someone else has to do it for them anyway afterwards
- “tidy up” a mess they made
- pick up or organize clutter, however the often stressful, emotional, and time consuming task of de-cluttering is left undone or for someone else
- meticulous keep clean a space that is only theirs, i.e. their study, their garage.
- create tasks that aren’t needed, like “organize the toolbox” or “rearrange the bookshelf”
- do tasks that require prep work that their wives will do for them (i.e. grilling the food, but not planning, purchasing, seasoning or preparing the sides)
- take control of “finances” but do very little, perhaps the taxes. this is also used as a way to control their wives often
- use their time with their children to play or dole out discipline/lessons, but very little time on feeding/bathing/dressing or organizing their lives. this is also away men can create a “fun parent/mean parent” dynamic
- make lists of what needs to get done, discuss what needs to get done with their wives, act very invested in the housework, take on a “manager” role in the housework, but do very little of it
- tell wives that what little is done in the house, by either of them, is “enough” and that he “doesn’t care” what the house looks like (this is a l i e). i.e. doing little and then making an emotional appeal that it’s fine, co-opting the emotional labor his wife does for him, but actually it’s very manipulative
- getting involved with children’s after school activities, i.e. being a coach, organizing a concert, etc. often a thing he already enjoys. often does very little of the organizing/plan making. often makes little effort to create time for his wife’s personal interests
pay attention to your fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, boyfriends, husbands actions. you’ll start to see these constantly
Insight time folks. Many thanks to Alicen Gray for this.
“I often catch men in public checking me out with eyes full of lust, until they see the hair on my legs – at which point, they resort to a theatrical display of disgust. I’ve eavesdropped on groups of college-age guys talking about how they won’t perform oral sex on a woman if her labia are too prominent. One man who had been pursuing sex with me for three years, suddenly changed his mind when I revealed that I do not, and will not, shave off my pubic hair. In other words, many men stop being attracted to me when reminded that I am a woman, and not a young girl. Surely all of these men, who have a “preference” for the aforementioned qualities in women, aren’t pedophiles by the strict definition of the word. But it seems that a high number of men, likely as a result of deep cultural conditioning, find many of the same things attractive in a woman that a pedophile would find attractive in a girlchild. Small labia, tight vaginas, intact hymens, baby-soft skin, hairless limbs and vulvas, eternal youthfulness, tiny frail bodies …”
-Alicen Gray writing at the Feminist Current.
A concise guide to the levels of Science in popular science fiction:
Star Trek: This is science-fiction, but we want our science to at least sound plausible. Therefore, most of the time, our scientific explanations will be rooted in scientific fact or at the very least solid, generally accepted theory.
Stargate: We’re about half and half. We try to make it plausible sometimes, but usually you just have to technobabble your way through it.
Star Wars: This man has a laser sword. Why does he have a laser sword? Because laser swords are cool. This is all the explanation you need.
Cultural analysis at its finest.
“Cultural mythology is often used in this way to distort what goes on between subordinate and dominant groups. It enables dominant groups to avoid seeing how much they depend on others to perform disagreeable labor in return for the low wages that help make privilege possible. Members of the upper class, for example, typically are portrayed as ‘wealth producers,’ the ones who build buildings, bridges, and empires, even though most of the work is performed by others, by ‘little people’ who pay taxes and often live lives of chronic anxiety about making ends meet. Donald Trump, we are told, ‘built’ Trump Tower, just as turn-of-the-century robber barons ‘built’ the railroads and steel mills that made vast personal fortunes possible. Entire nations also indulge in this kind of magical thinking. In the United States, for example, we rarely realize how much third world poverty subsidizes our own standard of living. We like to believe that our affordable abundance is solely our own doing, unaware of how much it has always depended on a steady supply of cheap labor and raw materials provided by countries in which much of the world’s population lives in poverty.”
— Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy
Here is a just a snapshot of what it’s like…
“What’s on my mind, Facebook? Glad you asked.
I am angry.
I’m angry because before I moved to the UK, I worked at a bar where the manager proposed a new uniform where the men wore waistcoats and button up shirts, while the women wore corsets. And no one saw the problem with that.
I’m angry because when I told him that if I wanted to wear that I’d be a stripper and earn ten times more, my coworkers were embarrassed and looked away.
I’m angry because even though he eventually admitted that my objections were valid, this incident (“Corsetgate,” I like to call it) is not remembered as the time I defended myself and my female coworkers from being objectified at work, but rather as the time that I “totally flipped out.”I’m angry because when I threw a customer out of the bar for grabbing me (twice, once after I explicitly told him it was unacceptable), I was asked repeatedly where exactly he grabbed me. As if there is some ranking system as to what must happen before I am allowed to feel violated by a stranger’s hands on me.
I am angry because the (female) bouncer told me afterward that his behavior was a compliment to me. I’m angry because she believes that. Because misogyny is so much a part of our society that women really believe that their bodies aren’t their own.
I’m angry because last night, out at some random club in London, a man walked up behind me and thrusted against me. And when I told him to get the hell away
from me, he moved on to another woman who was too drunk to say the same thing.
I’m angry because when I asked the bouncer to throw him out, he told me I was overreacting. I’m angry that when I decided to stand up for myself, my friends told me I was overreacting.I’m angry because my reaction, my refusal to allow myself to be treated as a subhuman slab of meat, is perceived as an overreaction.
I’m angry because men have a monopoly on anger. Because when I, a woman, am angry, it’s either “cute” or it’s “crazy.” It is never acknowledged that I could be a sensible, intelligent, educated person with a justifiable concern. Of course not. I’m a woman. (And a blonde at that. Strike two!)
If my boyfriend had punched Pelvic Thrust Guy out, he would have been applauded. Whereas my impulse to simply inform PTG that I was displeased with his behavior was met with a chorus of “Just let it go!” “We just don’t want to see you so upset!” “It’s not worth it!”
I’m angry because I was made to feel like I was being unreasonable for expecting to be treated with basic human decency. And PTG just strolled out of that bar without consequence. I cried all night, and he probably spent the rest of the night gleefully groping women who were too afraid or too brainwashed to speak up.
I’m angry because this (and much, MUCH worse) happens every day. And it happens everywhere, from small towns in West Virginia to great cities like London. To me, and to every other woman on the planet. And we’re still not allowed to be angry.
I am angry. And you should be too.”
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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