Obama Wins!

LOL

Wait!

KNOCK WOOD!

whew, that was close!

[You]Tu[b]esday

NEW HARRY POTTER TRAILER!



And, because of the upcoming election, and me getting all worked up about how Prop 8 needs to get voted down in the lovely state of California, say hello to Wanda Sykes.



Hey, remember a year ago when Dumbledore was outed?



We should totally celebrate the anniversary of his outing by making gay marriage legal.

*Wizard Pride*

In which I say, "Fuck Off."

There's an interesting article over at the Guardian that points out the disparity between "big think" books as written by men vs women. Namely, that men seem to have written more or all of the popular ones, and women have not.

Now, this is actually worth pointing out. I think it's an interesting point, and one worth reflecting on.

But then the article goes on to discuss the why of it.

Julia Cheiffetz, [writes] "It is hard to know whether women are better at telling stories than propagating ideas (I'm thinking of Susan Orlean, Mary Roach, Karen Abbott), or whether the intellectual audacity required to sell our hypotheses about the world simply isn't in our genetic makeup."

Emphasis added. And oh yeah, fuck off.

But! I tell myself, that is just a quote within the article. One the author, Alison Flood, will look at and then dissect and disregard.

But I've still got the nagging feeling that there's something to this, that men are more likely than women to want to pin their ideas down, to package them neatly within the confines of a paperback with a catchy title. Or maybe that's just my feminine intuition.

*headanddeskBFFs4evar*

What's terrible about that is that she admits in the paragraph before that

only a fifth of UK economists are female, and only 7% have made professor. You don't need to be an economist to work out that this kind of disparity will lead to fewer female economists writing books. And it's not just economics, recent figures suggest that across the whole of academia only 17.5% of professors are women.

See. And here's the thing. I don't think that has ANYTHING to do with women just "not being wired" towards educating themselves or expressing themselves.

I think things like this, this and this might have something to with it.

Maybe it has something to do with stories like Rosalind Elsie's, where you can discover the double-fucking-helix and then someone else gets the Nobel prize.

Maybe it's like Liss pointed out here.

this country is seriously fucked to the everloving hilt with misogyny when you can be a woman eminently qualified for the most important, most respected, most difficult job in the entire nation, and one of the most important, most respected, most difficult jobs in the entire world, and still be reduced to a "white bitch" by some wanker on CNN without anyone batting an eye—because, ya know, some women are "named that" for a reason.

Or maybe it has something to do with making 1/3 less pay for the same amount of work.

Maybe it's not that women are wired to just sit back and tell stories and let the men folk deal with all the "big thinking" type books.

Maybe it's that women are first taught not to be big thinkers, and the ones who make it past that and actually become big thinkers anyway? Are steadfastly ignored, ridiculed, regarded as "uppity", or their ideas swiped aside as "cute" and then copied and reprinted garnering lots of respect for someone else who happens to be more penisy.

Maybe it's just institutionalized sexism.

Or maybe women just aren't big thinkers.

I mean it's not like I read any big ideas from women on a daily basis or anything like that.

[You]Tu[b]esday

A Little Dream I Have

I grew up Mormon. If I hadn't stopped being Mormon two years ago, this would have put an end to it pretty quick.

I'm ashamed of my former religion (though very proud of the members who are campaigning for what is right).

I would also be lying if I didn't mention that I'm a little resentful of the way I was brought up because of that religion.

I saw a post made by my sister-in-law in her family blog about her campaigning for Proposition 8, and it made me unbelievably sad.

Then, when coming home from grocery shopping, some friends and I passed the LDS Church Institute off of our local campus.

And I said, "I wanna go get a bunch of 'No on 8' posters and banners and stuff, and just completely cover that place with them. So many that the whole thing will be covered in 'em! And it would take a forever to take them all down! And then I'll be like 'Take THAT repressed childhood!'"

And my friends said, "Good luck with that."

Here's the thing, I know it wouldn't do any good. Immature tactics like that aren't going to impress anyone or change minds. I wouldn't be helping my cause.

But that wouldn't stop it from being immensely satisfying.

The Very First Romance Film

Being in film school I am, of course, required to study a lot of film theory and history, which is kind of fun, even if a lot of the old movies we watch have to come with the disclaimer "By the way, this is historically significant, and technically well made, but also notably racist/sexist/et al".

So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw one particular film.

Okay, so some history. In 1872 Leland Stanford, who was wealthy and also probably bored, made a sort of "bet" taking the position that during a gallop all four of a horses hooves did temporarily leave the ground all at the same time. A lot of people thought this was impossible, so Stanford hired Eadward Muybridge who, with the help of John D. Isaacs, developed a system for taking several pictures in rapid succession with several cameras lined up facing a track. When the pictures came out if was found that you could sort of "flip" through them, and they appeared to be moving, and you could watch the horse gallop.

It was this that inspired the eventual invention of the Edison Kinetoscope, which wasn't actually invented by Edison, but he hired the guy who invented it to invent it (guy by the name of Dickson), so he got his name on it. Anyway. Getting from the Muybridge Experiment to commercial Kinetoscope use took a good 20 years, so now it's 1896, and there are these Kinetoscopes. You put money into them, put your face up to them, rotate a little handle and watch a short little movie. It was all the rage.

And in 1896, there was one particular actuary (that's what they called the little clips) that was the most popualar that year. Call it the 19th century blockbuster.

It was called "The Kiss"

And it looked like this.



Notice anything? Anything at all?

That woman is May Irwin.

And if you hadn't noticed, she is fat.

She was also very successful. A noted singer, actor, and comedian of the time. She was a popular and beloved performer. She died an old lady (well, 76, which is a decently long life) who was very rich.




As Wikipedia puts it,

"May Irwin's buxom figure was much in vogue at the time and combined with her charming personality, for more than thirty years she was one of America's most beloved performers."

Just another bit of history you can reference whenever someone tries to tell you that our current beauty standards are natural, inherent to everyone, instinct, an immovable part of history, or some sort of fact.

BLARG SEXISM

I do not like Sarah Palin. I despise Sarah Palin's politics. I loathe her politcal stances. I hate her anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environmental ideas. I am astonished that anyone thinks she could even begin to be qualified for VP.

Which is why I hate having to stick up for her.

But this?



Let's get this out in the open. This is sexist. It's possible it was meant to be ironic and intended to point out the ridiculousness and the sexism in people's refusing to question Palin's obviously poor judgment because they'd like to fuck her, but if so it was done very poorly. And somehow I don't think that's actually what they were going for. This is sexist. Whether it was intended to be ironic or not, intentions don't mean much when you're final product comes out like that.

Valuing or dismissing women based on their appearance and supposed fuckability is one of the oldest and nastiest tricks in the book. Responding with "LOLOL but you're ugly!" or "LOLOL pretty girls R dumb!" is so classic that women come to expect it. Diminishing women until all that is left is their appearance is a classic and foul tactic of the patriarchy. Saying, "Haha, you're just a fuckhole to me!" is the same threat and the same treatment that women fight off every single day and they strive be seen as human beings.

So I don't appreciate anyone thinking that the way to go after Palin is to say, "Haha, she's just a fuckhole to me!"

No matter how much I don't like her.

Because that doesn't just affect her. It affects every woman who attempts to achieve in anything. The argument goes both ways and can be used on both sides. Validating that agrument keeps it alive to use against everyone.

We can be better than that. We don't need to resort to putting women in their place to win a campaign.