Happy Wednesday!

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These are Not What Feminists Look Like

On October 2nd, the Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute will unveil it’s 2010 Great American Conservative Women Calendar. Oh yes, you can now have women like Carrie Prejean, Phyllis Schlafly, and Ann Coulter staring at you from your wall every month. And if that isn’t enough, you can watch a behind the scenes photo-shoot here.

Just a little background:

• The Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute “has been a strong voice for modern American women who want fair treatment and equal opportunities, but are offended by the radical liberal agenda.”
• Phyllis Schlafly has made statements such as: “I submit to you that the feminist movement is the most dangerous, destructive force in our society today. […] My analysis is that the gays are about 5% of the attack on marriage in this country, and the feminists are about 95%. […] I’m talking about drugs, sex, illegitimacy, drop outs, poor grades, run away, suicide, you name it, every social ill comes out of the fatherless home.” (via Jezebel)

Buy one now (or if you’re a student, order one for free!), and every month, you’ll have a new reason to continue fighting for women’s rights and justice.

copyright Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute

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Last post about creepy dolls, I swear

So my friend sent me this article today – published in the NY Times a few months ago – about Japanese men who have relationships, not with dolls, but with 2-D pillowcases that are illustrated with anime characters. The worst part about it is that these anime characters are all illustrated to look like young teenagers posed in sexual positions. I’m sorry, but how is this different than child pornography?

Some of these men bring these pillows with them everywhere:

He treats her the way any decent man would treat a girlfriend — he takes her out on the weekends to sing karaoke or takepurikura, photo-booth pictures imprinted on a sheet of tiny stickers. In the few hours we spent together, I watched him position her gently in the restaurant booth and later in the back seat of his car, making sure to keep her upright and not to touch her private parts.

I just don’t understand how someone actually thinks that it’s okay to have a meaningful relationship with a 2-D cartoon character. The article suggests that it is especially hard in Japan for young people to navigate a meaningful love life, and that this fact might contribute to the rise of these 2-D relationships. I find this hard to believe. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have trouble finding dating successfully, and yet they do not turn to dolls or 2-D cartoon characters to fill that void in their lives. I think that these doll phenomenons speak to a culture of men who want to be able to objectify women in a way that they cannot, so they turn to inanimate objects who will not resist.

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What’s in a Name

For whatever reason, Jezebel has dedicated a post entirely to the name Emily.

Here’s their description:

On the surface, Emily is a cute name, a little name. Like Molly, it has that -ly ending that makes it sound sweet, childlike, pixieish. And when I picture an Emily, she is cute. She wears the aforementioned pigtails — she may even be able to pull them off past the age of 18. She’s got freckles, and she probably owns a pair of Mary Janes. But beneath her adorable exterior lurks evil. It’s not a bitchy, mean-girl type of evil, though. It’s an evil that can be kind of awesome — as long as you’re not on the wrong side of it.

I think I kind of like this description. Sweet with a hint of evil.

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Only 13% of Wikipedia Contributers are Women, Time Reports

Only 13 % of Wikipedia contributors are women, according to Time Magazine (and via feministing). This strikes me as incredibly problematic, since Wikipedia is such a major source of information these days. If it is mainly men that are contributing to Wikipedia, it means that we are mainly getting a male perspective on everything that is on there. The ladies at Feministing make a good argument that some of this gender disparity might be due to lack of access. Even if this isn’t the case, and women just aren’t interested in posting on Wikipedia as much as men, I think this statistic at least suggests that we should be wary of the perspective we are getting by relying on Wikipedia for our information. Furthermore, Time Magazine suggests that Wikipedia contributors are also likely to be someone who has had the benefit of higher education, which means that Wikipedia is also giving us a privileged, upper-middle class view of the world. I think that we, as a society, need more strategies to promote those from underrepresented groups to contribute more to the dominant narratives of culture and history.

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File Under: Dolls that are Way Creepier than Barbie

So right around the time the movie “Lars and the Real Girl” came out, I went through a period of fascination with Real Dolls  (website NSFW)- dolls that are customizable and made to look like real women. Men spend thousands of dollars on these dolls and many treat them as if they are real women. Watch this documentary for a creepy, yet fascinating look into the lives of these men.

If this is not creepy enough, check out this post on The Frisky which describes the advent of a doll along the same line as Real Dolls, but it is meant to be a sex doll and has a heavy breathing function and a G-Spot. The company, First Androids (beware the website is in German and hard to navigate), has received 4 MILLION orders for these dolls, which cost $3820.

And I thought a movie about Barbie was bad.

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Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: Barbie in the Flesh

Barbie is a copyright of Mattel.

No joke. Mattel and Universal have reached an agreement to create a live-action Barbie, feature length film. No casting or plot details have been released.

Why can’t Barbie just disappear? As the writers at The Frisky point out, how can you create a live-action character of a doll who would not be able to stand upright because of her proportions? And what on earth is the plot going to consist of? Did she ever actually have a story beyond being a blonde, beach loving bimbo? I’m sorry, but my idea of creating a larger market of movies for women and girls does not involved contrived movies based on a totally regressive, sexist doll. Oh, and not surprisingly, everyone involved so far is a man.

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Worth a thousand words…

(via Huffington Post)

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More on Tucker Max

Great post on Jezebel about Tucker Max. A few of my favorite quotes:

It really is refreshing that someone has the courage to call a girl a “slut” for once in this repressive climate where women’s sexual behavior goes un-judged and un-commented upon. And that someone’s finally speaking up for all the silenced frat boys of the world.

…

Frankly, if Max is able to make money by putting misogyny on film as well on his blog, it’ll be about as surprising as dudes drinking beer out of both bottles and cans.

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Safe Schools?

My love for the NY Times magazine just seems to grow with time. This weekend’s issue includes a story by Benoit Denizet-Lewis (who wrote a fabulous piece last year about young, gay married couples) called “Coming Out in Middle School.” The article documents the struggles as well as the triumphs that young gay adolescents have experienced as they try to navigate their way through the terrifying world of middle school.

 

What is clear is that for many gay youth, middle school is more survival than learning — one parent of a gay teenager I spent time with likened her child’s middle school to a “war zone.” In a 2007 survey of 626 gay, bisexual and transgender middle-schoolers from across the country by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educators Network (Glsen), 81 percent reported being regularly harassed on campus because of their sexual orientation. Another 39 percent reported physical assaults. Of the students who told teachers or administrators about the bullying, only 29 percent said it resulted in effective intervention.

I think this article does a great job in describing both the progress that has been made in schools (formation and protection of Gay Straight Alliances) while also explaining how far we have to go before gay adolescents truly feel safe coming out to all of their peers and teachers rather than just a handful of close friends.

What always shocks me the most about accounts of discrimination and harassment of gay adolescents is how frequently their teachers ignore the discrimination and even participate in it. It’s one thing for schools to put anti-bullying measures in place that prevent bullying among students, but I personally would like to see more towns and states taking action to prevent teachers from being complicit in the discrimination and harassment. Every student, whether gay or straight, should be able to view his or her teachers as role models and people that he or she can trust – I know I wouldn’t have made it through high school without the support of a few fabulous teachers. For schools to not take action against teachers who are not providing this kind of support is appalling.

This article is also lacking a discussion of transgender adolescents and the different kinds of discrimination and harassment they face at school. These children are often misunderstood, and their gender identity is not taken seriously. Any school that seeks to address LGBT discrimination must make sure that it is specifically addressing the “T” in addition to the “LGB.”

It gives me some hope when articles like this are published in the NY Times (although I do realize that it has quite a liberal reader base), because I like to think that it will make readers more aware of these issues than they have been before and incite some people to action.

For further research and reading here are some organizations with great information about LGBT Youth:

• National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)
• Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
• Lambda Legal
• ACLU LGBT Rights Project
• National Center for Transgender Equality
• Transgender Law Center (TLC)

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