Any woman who has spent time in the workforce likely understands what a powerful, defining force gender can be. “We used to have a saying in the women’s movement,” says Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake. “It takes life to make a feminist.” The real divide among women of voting age is between those who have encountered gender-based hurdles and affronts as they pursued their professional ambitions and those who have not: between women in their twenties, still in college or recent graduates, and women who have worked at a job where something (money, prestige, reputation) is at stake. This may in part explain why very young women voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama: The parity on college campuses, where women often outperform men academically, can feel like it must translate into parity in the world. I remember reading Sylvia Plath’s journals in a college seminar titled Biography, Gender, and Suicide—it was straight out of a Woody Allen movie—and finding them overwrought and whiny, a bitter recitation of every domestic duty and slight. Similarly, I wondered what Hélène Cixous and her feminist poststructuralist sisters were howling about. At that point, my only experience with sexism was a high-school debate in which my coach asked me to take my hair out of a bun so that I didn’t look “so severe” for the judges. (I left my hair up—and won.) To my mind, equality was the rule.
-From “The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the fourth wave”
The Sense Of It Held So Lightly: youdontneedfeminism: whoneedsfeminism: Because recently a boy told me...
Because recently a boy told me “it’s not that I don’t believe in women being represented in government, it’s just that men are generally better at…government crap.” Then he proceeded to try to prove it to me by asking the girl next to us if she…
(via thewithywindle)
Source: whoneedsfeminism
From the Delhi police: Why women deserve to be raped
proof that a lot of the work of the women’s movement needs to happen outside the US and Europe…
“One, she is not in a salwar kameez or sari, at all times
Two, if a woman is in a sexual relationship with one man, then she deserves to be raped by him and all his friends.
Three, she keeps the company of drunk men.
Four, a girl deserves to be raped because her mother is a ‘slut.’
Five, a woman deserves to be raped because she belongs to the upper class – or the lower class.”
I find myself making feminist arguments to (conservative) women and being accused of being sexist for doing so
- does that seem right to you?
- From an earlier Facebook conversation:
- "
- me: Romney's spokesperson's tweets about women were sexist http://bit.ly/I3xRgb
- first year law student: but he criticized men as well, even their apperance
- me: in a patriarchical society, the act of criticizing a male public figure and the act of criticizing a female public figure are not equal, because women are severely underrepresented within politics, and besides: he was criticizing the women for being women, but he didn't criticize the men for being men...
- fyls: as a woman, I'm offended that you would say that... you're kind of being sexist...
- me: #facepalm
- "
New Romney Spokesman Used Twitter For Sexist Attacks
misogyny knows no bounds… oh yeah it does: G.O.P.
There are some secrets that the USA’s Secret Service would rather keep .. yanno .. *secret* .. like their recent embarrassing encounter with Colombian ‘ladies of the night’, for example ..
(via phroyd)
This is a recording of what Limbaugh said AFTER calling Sandra Fluke a slut. A friend had the foresight to record the broadcast. He plays a song about abducting women by hauling them off by the hair and chants “GET PREGNANT.” This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever heard in my life…
