You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Culture’ category.
Nope. No extra barriers, playing field even, no systemic problems to see here…
‘Of course she would have to avoid stereotypical female behavior, and so she could never cry. She would work long hours and hide her pregnancies and her preschooler’s art. One of my co-workers even hid being married. When confronted, she practically swore never to reproduce, and she never did.
I did not mention my first maternity leave, from which I returned to find a curly-haired stranger sitting at my desk, his feet propped on a cardboard box with my client account list packed inside. I had to re-earn the contents of that box, starting that morning. I also didn’t mention the “moo” sounds that traders made when I headed to the nurse’s office with a breast pump, or the colleague who on a dare drank a shot of the breast milk I had stored in the office fridge. I thought of the guy known for dropping Band-Aids on women’s desks when the trading floor was cold because he didn’t “want to be distracted,” and the many times I had heard a women share an idea at a meeting, only to see later that same idea credited to a man.
But I didn’t bring up any of that. Women like me were “team players,” and I was often complimented on my thick skin. Like members of a dysfunctional family, we kept our secrets to ourselves.
Instead, I kept the conversation light. I shared a funny story about my first day on Wall Street, when I opened up a pizza box to find condoms instead of pepperoni slices. Unwrapped. I was “the new girl,” and the guys just wanted to see me blush. I did blush, and I lived.
“It’s not that bad anymore,” I said with a laugh.
She was horrified. “How could you stand that?”
“Stand what?” I thought to myself. I remembered one guy telling me that we should hire only “women who have brothers.” I asked if she had any brothers. The pizza incident was nothing compared with everything else she was about to experience. I truly thought we were offering her the job of a lifetime if only she could let the bad stuff slide.
At that time, women on Wall Street were earning 55 to 62 cents to every dollar a man in the same position earned. Afterward, Bear Stearns imploded in the mortgage market, and while I stayed close to the markets and the people who worked for them, I left. Children gave me perspective about the price of money. The women labeled stellar successes were giving up more than I was willing to part with. With the benefit of some perspective, I began to think more deeply about what I and my female colleagues had experienced.”
Extra ‘bonus’ features of not being the default normal in society. So when you see women achieve you know that, most likely, they know their shit because they’ve had to work twice as hard as a dude to get similar results.
‘When women display the necessary confidence in their skills and comfort with power, they run the risk of being regarded as “competent but cold”: the bitch, the ice queen, the iron maiden, the ballbuster, the battle axe, the dragon lady… The sheer numbers of synonyms is telling. Put bluntly, we don’t like the look of self-promotion and power on a woman. In experimental studies, women who behave in an agentic fashion experience backlash: they are rated less socially skilled, and thus less hirable for jobs that require people skills as well as competence than are men who behave in an identical fashion. And yet if women don’t show confidence, ambition, and competitiveness then evaluators may use gender stereotypes to fill in the gaps, and assume that these are important qualities she lacks. Thus, the alternative to being competent but cold is to be regarded as “nice but incompetent.” This catch-22 positions women who seek leadership roles on a “tightrope of impression management.’
— Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
Casting a wide net on the internet is fraught with peril. I’m going to leave the links in long form because really,the embedded info is introduction enough for this post.
—–
How a husband can enjoy sex that is grudgingly given by his wife
——
This would be ROPJ material (see the RPOJ on Christian Patriarchy), but someone has already beaten me to the punch. I was almost out of time and just saved the post to a wordpress draft. The author pretty much nails all the lowlights.
“Everything from their website seems like it’s The Onion (I saw another one called “How To Discipline Your Wife”) but I’m pretty sure it’s the real deal. Nauseating stuff.
Oh. it’s all the real deal. Never doubt religious shits to do their worst. Some choice quotes from the article:
“You also need to realize that whether your wife knows it or not she needs to have sex too,” he opined. “If you don’t have sex with your wife at regular intervals, even sometimes when she is not in the mood but consents anyway, you will open yourself to temptation.”
“Focus your eyes on her body, not her face. Focus on the visual pleasure you receive from looking at her body and physical pleasure you receive from being inside your wife,” Solomon recommended. “You want to connect with her physically AND emotionally during sex. But your wife is the one refusing to connect with you emotionally, so you have to concentrate 100% on the physical side.”
“I know you love your wife, most men love their wives. But sin is ugly,” the writer remarked. “Your beautiful bride’s face becomes ugly during this sinful time that she is grudgingly giving you sex as she grimaces wanting you to ‘just hurry up and get it over with’.”
“So like the men who could not look at Medusa’s face otherwise they would be killed, realize that if you look on your wife’s face when she is displaying a sinful attitude toward sex it will kill your sexual pleasure and may actually make it much more difficult for you to achieve the physical connection and release that you need,” he concluded. “Sometimes we have to work around the sinful behavior of our wives and this will be one of those times.”
In a column earlier this year, Solomon insisted that there was “no such thing as marital rape.” A wife, he said, could ask her husband to delay sex for a short period of time but the request “must be done humbly and respectfully, and always with the attitude in mind that her body does belong to her husband.”
—–
Rank, hideous victim-blaming, all of it.
If you find yourself giving men the benefit of the doubt, just remember this article! It’ll cure what ails ya!
It makes me so sad that people don’t realize the beauty and pleasure of consensual sex where you are attentive to your partner and listen to their needs… get to know each other’s bodies and really learn how to please each other. Sex can be a very unifying act and you don’t need all this disgusting kinky stuff to orgasm… it’s all so simple, really. And, as far as PIV sex goes, men are going to have a much better time if their partner is wet. @men Basically, what I am getting at, if you wanna enjoy sex, please your partner. Oddly enough this benefits you the most as well. Sex is wonderful and I hate that so many people corrupt it. Sex is in no way a feminist act, but you can certainly make it less feminist by applying biblical logic… by muddying it up with weird BDSM power “women are shit and deserve to be abused” shit. I’m rambling but this shit is so upsetting and counterintuitive.
This isn’t even christian, please don’t mistake it for that. this is men who are acting how they want to and using religion (falsely, might i add) to justify it.
The confluence of religion and patriarchy always ends in rotten deal for women. Consider this case #2389473 of proof positive of that.
Gavin de Becker in his book The Gift of Fear is about how we sometimes short circuit the information we receive from the environment. Here is an excerpt regarding a seeking help in a situation and concluding with how social dynamics really bollocks things up for women.
“A woman alone who needs assistance is actually far better off choosing someone and asking for help, as opposed to waiting for an unsolicited approach. The person you choose is nowhere near as likely to bring you hazard as is the person who chooses you. That’s because the possibility that you’ll inadvertently select a predatory criminal for whom you are the right victim type is very remote. I encourage women to ask other women for help when they need it, and it’s likewise safer to accept an offer from a woman than from a man. (Unfortunately, women rarely make such offers to other women, and I wish more would.)
I want to clarify that many men offer help without any sinister or self-serving intent, with no more in mind than kindness and chivalry, but I have been addressing those times that men refuse to hear the word “No,” and that is not chivalrous—it is dangerous.
When someone ignores that word, ask yourself: Why is this person seeking to control me? What does he want? It is best to get away from the person altogether, but if that’s not practical, the response that serves safety is to dramatically raise your insistence, skipping several levels of politeness. “I said NO!”
When I encounter people hung up on the seeming rudeness of this response (and there are many), I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told No by a woman he has approached:
MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about?
WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.”
Whether or not men can relate to it or believe it or accept it, that is the way it is. Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness. Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don’t experience. Ask some man you know, “When is the last time you were concerned or afraid that another person would harm you?” Many men cannot recall an incident within years. Ask a woman the same question and most will give you a recent example or say, “Last night,” “Today,” or even “Every day.”
Still, women’s concerns about safety are frequently the subject of critical comments from the men in their lives. One woman told me of constant ridicule and sarcasm from her boyfriend whenever she discussed fear or safety. He called her precautions silly and asked, “How can you live like that?” To which she replied, “How could I not?”
I have a message for women who feel forced to defend their safety concerns: tell Mister I-Know-Everything-About-Danger that he has nothing to contribute to the topic of your personal security. Tell him that your survival instinct is a gift from Nature that knows a lot more about your safety than he does. And tell him that nature does not require his approval.
It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different—men and women live in different worlds. I don’t remember where I first heard this simple description of one dramatic contrast between the genders, but it is strikingly accurate: At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”-Gavin de Becker. The Gift of Fear, pp 31 – 32.
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
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…