I am not big on the Olympics, by any stretch, but Beauty & the Geek isn’t on this week, so Betty & I are catching some of the Women’s Figure Skating, and I have to say that I’m very impressed with these pantsuit/bodystocking outfits. Not because they’re sexy (or not only because they’re sexy) but because I didn’t know that had happened – I thought it was all about the short skirts and booty hang.
I’m pleased to see it. I find them sexier than the dorky skirts – just my opinion – because they really do show off what fantastic, strong, graceful bodies these women have.
Belonging
Donna mentioned recently that she won’t join some organization (I think it was an alumnae association) until they add the T for Transgender as right now the group’s title is the Gay and Lesbian ________.
And it got me thinking that one of the ironies of being someone who writes about trans issues but isn’t trans myself is that I can’t join the LGBT Writers’ Group, or Authors Group, or Alumni Association, or really anything. I’m not, per se, LGBT. And yet obviously I am by association – actually by marriage, which is even more ironic – and maybe even embarassing – in LGBT groups. It occurred to me that there is something odd, & mayhaps political, about this issue, because in some ways it’s not just about social groups, but about interest, and that because membership in groups that discuss LGBT issues are generally only joined by people who are LGBT themselves, there is an assumption that no one who isn’t LGBT would be interested in LGBT issues.
I’m not quite sure what to think of that.
I’ve been asked if men can join feminist organizations, and for the most part, they can (unless the org in question is a radical lesbian or separatist or both type of feminist organization). Because there’s no requirement that you have to be a woman to be a feminist: you simply have to believe that women are equal to men and should be treated so economically, educationally, legally, etc.
Having been to a very multi-culti college, it never occurred to me, at the time, that many people I knew belonged to student associations that had to do with their identity, as the ones I belonged to were based on interest – things like NYPIRG, or the fiction magazine editorial team, and later, PBK. I can’t say I sought hard for a Suburban-but-Working-Class Women Writers of Polish extraction group, or a Youngest Daughters of Large Catholic Families group, or some other group of which I could have been a member because of my identity, and I certainly didn’t start any.
But it is odd, isn’t it? Maybe I should just start a group for Allies of Causes Not Directly Influenced by Said Ally’s Identity, or The Underdog Society, or even a group for Partners of People with Important Minority Identities.
But maybe not. Maybe I should just get one of those I’m not a lesbian but my girlfriend is t-shirts and call it a day.
Bitch Does Feminism
This month’s issue of Bitch magazine, which is celebrating the magazine’s 10th anniversary, has a tidy little article on the history and definitions of feminism. It goes from Suffrage to the “I’m not a feminist, but…” waves of feminism, describing key points, debates, activists/writers and texts. It’s very much worth reading if you’re new to feminism, so you can parse the difference between a radical feminist and a sex radical and a pro-sex feminist.
Do check it out. It looks like this:
Betty Friedan, 1921-2006
Betty Friedan died at her home of congestive heart failure today.
She was the author of the much-heralded The Feminine Mystique.
She was 85. She founded NOW (the National Organization for Women) in 1966.
The Feminine Mystique is still a great book, calling as it did for women to have a life and personality independent of being a wife & mother. Sadly, a lot of what she had to say about women being autonomous is still quite relevant today.
Though there’s a part of me that hopes, somewhere in the universe, Susan B. and Cady Stanton and Wendy Wasserstein and Coretta Scott King and now Betty Friedan are conspiring to get these boys to stop pulling these stupid-ass moves.
Apparently It Is a Secret
Tonight I caught a Secret deodorant commercial and noticed the tag line is now: Strong Enough for a Woman.
I had no idea they’d changed it, but bravo!
Too Much TV
Okay, so I’m watching way too much TV I guess, because I just caught Kirstie Alley’s most recent Jenny Craig commercial: she is walking down a dark street, alone, when a guy’s voice yells out, “Momma, you’re looking good!” (or some approximation thereof). And she says – here’s the red herring that made me pay attention – “Are you talking to me?”
And when he says yes, she doesn’t hollaback, oh no. She starts into a ‘Singing in the Rain’-styled dance number set to the tune of “It’s Raining Men.”
I guess this is the best you can expect from someone who has had bodyguards for so long she doesn’t remember how it feels to walk down any street alone (much less a dark, deserted one) and have some asshole decide that’s a good time to tell you how good you look.
Connecting being thin with “earning” this kind of bullshit, scary compliment loses her a few more status points. All kinds of women get harassed on the street – not just skinny ones.
Blog for Choice
Big shocker here, but this blog is most definitely pro-choice.
So what happens when a woman who is anti-choice gets pregnant and didn’t intend to? Sometimes, she goes an abortion at the very same clinic she was out protesting the day before.
It’s the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Worst of Both Worlds Season
I know I’m not the only football widow, and I know now – since the publication of My Husband Betty – that I’m not the only ‘worst of both worlds’ widow, either. Oh no. I know there’s Heather, who just sent me a lovely email about her own ‘Betty’ watching the game “in stockings, heels, and a nightie.” But I’d forgotten about playoff season, when there’s more football on than episodes of Law & Order. After yesterday’s screams and howls brought on by the Indiana/Pittsburgh game, Betty decided to try on some clothes a friend gave her while watching today’s game.
It’s like genius-level torture, having a skinny woman in my house trying on new clothes while she watches football and I clean the catboxes.
(She does vaccuum when and where I ask her to, though. I’m trying to figure out how to get her to vaccuum without me asking, next.)
Winner of the Extraneous Use of Scantily Clad Women Award
… goes to Cofanifunebri.com, for their 2005 calendar. Scantily clad women demonstrate the beauty of – caskets.
(Thanks to Tristan Taormino for the lead.)
Two Books
I was just reading some of Curve magazine book reviews, and came upon a couple of books I thought people here might be interesting to people here.
Here’s one about this nation’s “founding feminists,” called Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists.
(Note that she uses the correct term, suffragists, and not the derogatory ‘suffragettes’, in her title.)
For you musicheads, there’s one about the rise of queer rock via Homocore called Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock.