Category: gender

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The Problem of Digby

Many of you have asked about whether I won the “Top Ten Female Bloggers” contest over at WVWV, and in fact I did not. Digby did. and Digby should have; she’s a damn good blogger.

But what’s interesting to me is that she was not known to be female when she started blogging in 2003. Nor in 2004, 2005, & 2006. The many years she was being linked to by the likes of Kos, no one knew she was female.

No, it was when she won an award she accepted in person, in the summer of 2007, that everyone found out she is a woman. If you read some of those comments, the surprise was a little more than “Oh, Digby’s a woman, huh” but people were a little more upset than that by the revelation, which is interesting since she never said she wasn’t a woman; her readers did the assuming, & we all know what assuming means, thanks to that classic moment in The Odd Couple.

As a gendery-y sort, & especially as a writer of a gender-y sort, I find that interesting. I don’t want to admit that maybe George Eliot’s method still works better than being known as a woman, that hiding your gender, if you’re female, lends you more credibility than not.

But I fear that is true, & that Digby’s win perhaps underlines that point. Still & all, she is a fantastic political blogger. I am not in anyway trying to say she isn’t. What I am trying to say is that I’m not sure she would have been recognized if she had been known as female from the outset.

Either way, I think it was damned smart of her, since the likeliness is high that people will diminish or ignore the political opinions of women.

Which is sad in itself, of course, but still true.

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Shocker. Not.

Not only don’t men do housework, they create 7 hours more of it for their wives.

Based on 2005 data, which have been compared to those from national time diaries, the research shows women, of all ages with no children, on average do 10 hours of housework a week before marriage and 17 hours of housework a week after marriage. Men of all ages with no children, on the other hand, do eight hours before marriage and seven hours afterwards.

“The situation gets worse for women when they have children,” says Stafford.

Married women with more than three kids recorded an average of about 28 hours of housework a week, while married men with more than three kids logged only about 10 hours of housework a week.

Not that any woman living with a man will be surprised.

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29 of 53

Those poor young women of that Eldorado sect – more than half of them are pregnant or are mothers.

This case made me think of two things – the argument than trans women are the same as women raised female – which is obviously not true. That doesn’t mean that a gender variant kid wouldn’t have been treated worse by this sect – but a young MTF couldn’t have been used as a breeder, either. That doesn’t mean trans women are “less than.” Just that all kinds of women – trans & otherwise – face oppressions and discrimination specific to the type of women they are. Blurring difference doesn’t help us address these kinds of problems, imho.

The second thing it made me think of is an ongoing argument about Danica Patrick that’s been happening on the MHB Boards. The debate is about whether or not it’s messed up that a winning racecar driver – the 1st to win a significant race, from what I understand – isn’t somehow degrading herself by also posing suggestively on car hoods. (I think it is.) These young women of Eldorado remind me of that argument because it’s been thousands of years where women’s bodies have been used – to bear children, to bring pleasure (both physical & visual), to men with power. So the assertion that Danica Patrick is somehow blazing some new trail of “feminine empowerment” by taking her clothes off is like – um. yeah. no. Women have always done that to curry favor with the kind of assholes like the guys down in Eldorado, kings, senators, and drug lords, boyfriend and bubbas. And I just don’t see a woman doing that today as any different than it ever was.

(But I’m sure someone can jump up & tell me those women in Eldorado are somehow empowered by getting pregnant with the children of those fucknuts, too.)

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My Husband Jackie

A NY Times article about Jackie Warner – and the myriad housewives who have crushes on her – leaves out one explanation for what’s going on: women are starting to see good “husband material” in other women. Warner is the perfect case in point: she is physically strong, financially independent, able to hold her own in the business world and manage her own company… which all adds up to her being what my aunts would have called “a good catch.” The only caveat is that she’s a woman.

To me it’s a weird intersection of eras and values: a generation of women who still believe in “the good catch” but who are open-minded enough to begin to view a woman in the way that women traditionally only ever saw men.

Honestly, I think women are now only beginning to glimpse what equality might actually be like. If we continue to de-gender things like physical power, financial power, caretaking, family leadership, ambition and confidence, the whole heterosexual paradigm might find itself on its head, which is a very heady idea indeed.

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Constructing Your “Woman”

Lena Dahlstrom posted a video on the mHB message boards made by the Feminist Majority Foundation called “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” and the women in it reminded me, once again, that I don’t feel femme-y enough in either style or presentation and reminded me as well that I’m offended by this PR campaign to convince people that feminists aren’t awful, ugly, fat, hairy women. So when another partner commented about being the resident “big hairy dyke” I thought, “me too.”

I’m aware that others see me as smaller than I see myself, or at least tell me they do, and of course I wax or hide most of my hairiness. Most people wouldn’t think of me as a dyke but I have for a while now, even if I’m still cautious about adopting a lesbian identity out of respect for those who are lesbian-identified and who might see me as something of an interloper. But dyke is an identity I’ve become comfortable with since I think it suits me (no pun intended) & in a lot of ways frees me. (I use ‘het dyke’, too, when it seems right.)

You all know the joke about what women would be like in a world without men, right?

Answer: Fat, hairy, and happy. Continue reading “Constructing Your “Woman””

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Gender Studies 101

For your amusement, or edification, I’ve been putting together a list of terms & concepts students of my Intro to Gender Studies class are required to know – for exams & that sort of thing. I thought some of you might want to ‘check in’ to see how many you could define or explain (extra points if you can name the author/article we were teaching the concepts with!): Continue reading “Gender Studies 101”