Recently in Feminism Category
My husband has an amazing talent for picking up verbal bad habits. What starts as a funny joke once or twice gets stuck in his speech pattern until he's said it 5.2 million times and I WANT TO STRANGLE HIM. Then he starts working to get it under control. About a year later, it's finally extinguished.
The first one that got really out of control pluralization. One of us made a joke out of pluralizing some noun, and then that noun was pluralized all the time, and then other nouns were pluralized in almost every sentence, and then I threatened divorce. Not really. I just complained a lot about hearing him talk as though he had more than one wife, son, and car, when to the best of my knowledge he has but one of each. Ditto for his head, the computer, the kitchen table, and several other frequently discussed objects.
The toaster oven escaped the pluralization episode, only to meet a different fate. I anthropomorphize objects, particularly ones that have been with me for a long time. This toaster oven was purchased when I moved out of a dorm and into an apartment, which was 1993? 1994? Let's just say over a decade. So it's practically an old friend, and I made the mistake of calling it "that guy" one day when I was tired and couldn't think of the word "toaster."
Do you see what's coming?
C-Man thought it was funny, so he started doing it too. First the toaster, and then the heating pad became "the hot guy," which was amusing, and then it spread. It spread and spread and spread until any object at any time could be referred to as "that guy" whether he could think of the actual name for it or not.
Then toys for our son began arriving in the house, and they too fell into the new classification scheme. The only toy that was not called "that guy" was a tomato. (Because it was short and round?)
From the way I'm writing this, you'd think this was all my husband's doing, but I got stuck with it too. One of the most difficult tasks ahead for me in raising my middle-class white son is going to be making him aware that the world should not revolve around rich white boys, but here I was going around saying "that guy" when I meant a diaper, a sock, or a drinking glass.
Feminists get ridiculed for obsessing about things like this. "Why can't they focus on something important?" people complain, "It doesn't mean anything, it's just a word, and 'guy' is practically gender neutral at this point anyway!" I admit, I've have had moments of impatience with women who complain about being part of a group addressed as "you guys." Though I agreed that the person using the phrase "you guys" could have been more courteous, it just didn't seem like a big deal to me as a marker of sexist oppression. (Side note: Why doesn't everyone just use the gender neutral second person plural "y'all"?)
The "guy"-ification of every inanimate object in my home didn't seem like as big of a deal as, say, the pay gap or funding for rape crisis centers, but it started to get creepy. Even C-Man had to admit that it WAS gendered. We were specifically using the word "guy" instead of "thing" or "doohickey" or "whatsit," and we both felt like it was gendered when we said it. Our mental images were becoming gendered. And Boy Detective was spending all his time hearing about how everything in his world was a guy unless proved otherwise.
Yuck.
So we started getting rid of it. Every time I noticed one of us saying "that guy," I would loudly say "that THING." And somehow, despite the record levels of sleep deprivation experienced by parents of a baby who won't sleep through the night, we started remembering the actual names for the objects in our environment. Amazing.
Next on my list in battling everyday sexism... oh, who am I kidding, I'm too tired to make a list.
Last time I took it, I failed.
 | 42 As a 1930s wife, I am |
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time at all, you know that I love BlogHer, and that I am a feminist. You don't have to be a feminist to love BlogHer. You don't have to identify as a liberal or progressive. You don't even have to be a woman.
So when BlogHer created BlogHers Act, a project to harness the power of women online to make the world a better place, was it difficult to find a project that everyone could agree on?
Um, no. There are plenty of ways to help out in the world that everyone can agree on as A Good Thing. BlogHers Act has assembled nine of them.
So, care to join me in saving women's lives by improving maternal health? As BlogHer Denise pointed out this week in her post There's Still More Work To Do, "The women and children and families of Afghanistan, Africa, Burkina Faso, Burma, China, Darfur, and Nepal still need our help."
We're giving part of our "economic stimulus" check to our local food bank to help repair some of the damage done to our local community by national policies (past and present), and some of it will go to this to help repair some of the international damage (again, past and present). Those are our motivations, they don't have to be yours. Not everyone can afford to spare some of that unexpected cash, but if you can, won't you join us?
Peace, everyone.
So what's with the use of "Jane" as a universal signifier for femaleness?
First instance, the "Be Janes" who appeared at BlogHer last year. They were representatives of an online home improvement community on Windows LiveSpaces. Their marketing pitch was a bad match for the conference, and most of the attendees disliked them - but what struck me was the name Jane. The two women are not named Jane in real life. They are named Heidi and Eden. Why do they go around pretending their names are Jane?
Second instance, found through their ad in Gmail: Being Jane. From their About Us page:
Being Jane is an explosive online community dedicated to shattering the preconceived notions of women in society and the evolving roles that women are forced to play. Founded by Kelly Smith in 2004, Being Jane provides access to advice, mentoring, support and a compendium of women-related information that leverages the experiences of women who have achieved non-traditionally female goals by actualizing their authentic beliefs and desires. Being Jane is committed to redefining the idea of feminism to symbolize women coming together to raise the bar, embrace the vitality of being a woman and champion the connection to future generations.
The website menu options include Are You a Jane? and Talk With Other Janes. How do you shatter preconceptions by evoking the epitome of 50's girlhood? And why does a redefined feminism mean we all have the same name?
Third instance, the See Jane program founded by Geena Davis. It's a project to improve gender portrayals in children's media. For this, the Jane name makes more sense due to its origin in children's books.
However, isn't the Jane reference a little... kitschy? And, y'know, white?
Just thinking.
The Princess: I am not commenting on this post.
C-Man: Thank you, I feel so much stupider after having seen that page. I need to go listen to Mozart or some shit to undo the damage done to my brain.
The Princess: I'm just sad that there are no other words in the English language to convey weakness except for words referring to women's genitals. It's such a restriction on talented writers like this fine gentleman.
Diane at Dees Diversion explains:
I am tired of being referred to as a man
I recently went to lunch with a female friend, and after we sat down, the young waiter said "What can I get you guys?"
I told him we weren't guys, and he did that kind of "oh yeah I always say that, huh?" look, smiled, and said "What can I get you ladies?" We smiled back and ordered. He brought us our food, and a while later, came back and asked "How is it, guys...oops...ladies?" We smiled and said it was very good and thanked him.
Later he came back and asked "Can I get you g-...ladies some more tea? And there was a bite in the "ladies" because, you know, who the hell did I think I was, asking to be referred to as a woman and not a man?
This is not something that bothers me, but it bothers a lot of women and I take that seriously.
Luckily, in Texas we have developed a solution to this problem. It is the word "y'all." It is plural and gender neutral. You don't have to pick between such terms as gals, ladies, women, chicks, girls, guys, gentlemen, men, boys, etc., which is good if you are addressing strangers and don't know their preferences among such terms. All the kids are saying it, and I can only hope that in a generation or so we will have solved the problem completely.
My good friend C. had a vision, I had Movable Type skills, IROCK threw together a photo montage for a banner, and shazam! The Texas chapter of the National Organization for Women has launched the new Texas NOW website, and it includes a cool blog chock full of feminism. Do check it out and let us know what you think.
Dear Men of the World, Especially But Not Exclusively Those At Bus Stops,
STOP STARING AT MY BREASTS. It's rude.
Thanks,
The Princess
