feminist blogs

Via Ann at Feministing, I read a good Susan Faludi op-ed about gender and the campaign for the presidency:

…A Barack Obama versus John McCain match-up still has the makings of an epic American gender showdown.

The reason is a gender ethic that has guided American politics since the age of Andrew Jackson. The sentiment was succinctly expressed in a massive marble statue that stood on the steps of the United States Capitol from 1853 to 1958. Named “The Rescue,” but more commonly known as “Daniel Boone Protects His Family,” the monument featured a gigantic white pioneer in a buckskin coat holding a nearly naked Indian in a death’s grip, while off to the side a frail white woman crouched over her infant.

The question asked by this American Sphinx to all who dared enter the halls of leadership was, “Are you man enough?” This year, Senator Obama has notably refused to give the traditional answer.

I agree with what Ann, Faludi, Hilzoy and Dana said about gender, but what about that statue?

The statue is by Horatio Greenough, who has the unfortunate distinction of being the most embarrassing of America’s great sculptors. He produced two Great Works, and both of them are cringeworthy.

Greenough’s most famous statue depicts a musclebound, toga-clad George Washington (inspired by a famous sculpture of Zeus). From the moment it was installed in the Capitol Rotunda¹, the half-naked Washington was considered a scandal by those who didn’t consider it a joke. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “Did anybody ever see Washington naked! It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine, was born with his clothes on and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.”

According to one theory, Greenough originally designed the statue to be sitting on a chariot being drawn by six horses — the outstretched left hand was to be holding the reigns — but Congress was unwilling to pay for all that. But looking at the statue now, I can see that the pose — which I find very awkward, with its slight backwards lean and the outstretched left foot — would have been better if Washington was leaning back against reigns.

I remember seeing this statue when I was a kid, in the Smithsonian in D.C., and being shushed because I broke out in giggles. But at least I got to see it. Greenough’s other great sculpture, described in Faludi’s op-ed, started life on the steps of the Capitol building. Now it’s hidden away in storage (except for one small piece of it, as we will see), and probably will never see daylight again.

And that’s for the best, because it would be hard to find a more blatant piece of racist, sexist propaganda. Take a look at this thing:

“The Rescue” brings two images from pop culture to my mind:

1) In one of the Harry Potter books, in the Ministry of Magic, there’s an enormous statue of a heroic Wizard, surrounded by lesser beings (witches, elves, giants, etc?), which Harry finds embarrassing to look at, because the self-aggrandizing racism is so transparent. In my mind, that atrocity was sculpted by Horatio Greenough.

2) In the climax of the movie True Lies, the hero, played by monument to unstoppable ambition Arnold Schwarzenegger, winds up facing the Evil Terrorist Mastermind, who is armed only with a knife clenched between his teeth. Arnold is armed with a Harrier Jet. Are we really supposed to find the guy with the frakkin’ Harrier Jet to be the brave one? Similarly, Greenough’s sculpture makes Boone so huge and dominating that the result looks like God wrestling a ten-year-old.

I imagine that when this statue was installed on the Capitol steps, Greenough thought he had achieved immortal fame. But, instead, it apparently became all too embarrassing by 1959, when it was taken down and put into permanent storage. Four decades later, the only part of this statue that wouldn’t make modern viewers cringe — the dog — was sent to Middlebury College to join an exhibit of Greenough’s drawings.

And as far as I can tell, that’s the closest “The Rescue” has come to a public showing in the last half-century.

1. It had to be moved just a few years later, when it was discovered that the twelve-ton marble statue was cracking the Rotunda floor.

Use this thread to post whatever you’d like; self-linking is encouraged. Meanwhile, here’s Annie Ross singing “Twisted”:

Although I love this clip because Ross does such a great job with gesture and expression, I wonder if she had a cold that day; her voice sounds a bit flatter here than in any other old recording of her I’ve heard (for example).

Ross’ singing partners Lambert and Hendricks were also cooler than you, by the way:

Lambert and Hendricks passed on some time ago, I think, [UPDATE: I am informed in comments that Hendricks is alive and well. Sorry, Mr. Hendricks!] but Ross is still performing today.

Curtsy: Shakesville.

Please use this thread to say whatever you’d like to say, or to share any links you’d like to share. Self-linking is encouraged.

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As a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist, Jill Bolte Taylor has always known more about brains than most people. But when a brain hemorrhage triggered her own stroke, she suddenly had a front-row seat on the deterioration of the brain.

Dr. Taylor recounts the details of her stroke and the amazing insights she gained from it in a riveting 18-minute video of her speech at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference in Monterey, Calif., last month. Her fascinating lecture includes a detailed explanation of the differences between the left and right sides of the brain, complete with an incredibly cool prop — a real human brain.

From last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine, an article arguing that there are five moral themes, biologically programmed, that all other moralities are built on:

The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. Haidt asks us to consider how much money someone would have to pay us to do hypothetical acts like the following:

Stick a pin into your palm.
Stick a pin into the palm of a child you don’t know. (Harm.)

Accept a wide-screen TV from a friend who received it at no charge because of a computer error.
Accept a wide-screen TV from a friend who received it from a thief who had stolen it from a wealthy family. (Fairness.)

Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe) on a talk-radio show in your nation.
Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe) on a talk-radio show in a foreign nation. (Community.)

Slap a friend in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit.
Slap your minister in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit. (Authority.)

Attend a performance-art piece in which the actors act like idiots for 30 minutes, including flubbing simple problems and falling down on stage.
Attend a performance-art piece in which the actors act like animals for 30 minutes, including crawling around naked and urinating on stage. (Purity.)

In each pair, the second action feels far more repugnant.

Umn… no, not for me.

To be sure, the thought of sticking myself with a pin sounds less repugnant than sticking a child. But keeping the TV stolen from a rich person’s house seems only marginally more repugnant to me.¹

As for the other three, I don’t find the second action at all more repugnant, in any of them. And in the last one, I’d rather see a piece in which actors acted like animals than one in which they acted “like idiots.”

This doesn’t show that the “5 morals” theory is wrong. What it shows is that even if these five moral “ingredients” are universal, the application of them still varies enormously by culture, by subculture, and by individual. Even within as narrow and selected a group as “people who read the New York Times Sunday Magazine,” the writer is mistaken to assume that readers will share a common moral understanding.

Later on, however, the article does say:

In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five.

So perhaps my reaction is just typical of a liberal.

1. I’d have other objections to keeping the TV — for instance, not wanting to encourage housebreaking, which can lead to injury or death if things go wrong — but that’s an intellectual response, not a felt response.

Some interesting language news (hat-tip to blueheron):

Street term ‘Yo’ is being used by kids as a gender-neutral replacement for ‘he’ and ’she’, according to researchers.

Language experts in the US say since at least 2004 students have been saying “yo” as a substitute for gender specific pronouns and the trend is growing.

After previous attempts to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun failed, researchers suggested “yo” could become commonly used.

Experts said the growth of the word’s usage in this way was remarkable as it was a “grass-roots phenomenon”.

The study, published in this week’s New Scientist, found middle-school and high-school students in Baltimore, Maryland, used the word in sentences such as, “Yo put his foot up” and “Yo looks like a freak”.

There have been several attempts to create gender-neutral pronouns from trans activists and from feminists, but none of them has had much success; deliberate attempts to change English usage almost never work (although the example of “Ms.” is pretty inspiring). There might be more hope for “Yo,” because it’s creation seems more grassroots.¹

In the article, “feminist scholar” Brenda Wrigley criticizes “yo” for sounding “crass and disrespectful.” Boo on feminist scholar Brenda Wrigley! As BlueHeron notes,

“crass and disrespectful”, which can clearly be translated as both “I’m not used to people speaking like that” and “kids these days have no respect for language”, both of which are ultimately foolish and useless concerns and do nothing to stop the adoption of new words.

I really hope this use of “yo” spreads and flourishes.

1. ”Grassroots” isn’t really the word I want to use, but I’m not able to think of what word it is I’m looking for.

This is the front of Claire and Dave’s wedding invitation.

Now check out the second page of the invitation…

The award-winning invitation was designed by Chris MaClean. Damn, that’s good.

Along vaguely similar lines, I really like Taiwan’s recycle symbol better than ours¹ :

(I like stuff like this. I’m still impressed by the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo lettering, which took me years to notice.)

1. Even though I suspect it wouldn’t work in the US, because it’s too easy to see a swastika in the design.

Please feel free to use this thread to discuss anything you’d like, or to post any links. Linking to your own stuff is definitely welcome.

My plan is to do almost nothing but image posts until 2008, btw. So for those of you who are sick of image posts from Amp, there is an end in sight.

(Part of Roadshow, by Robert Blanz).

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“The Contortionist,” by Original Ann.

And finally, a truly neat-wow animation; more information from the maker at Hipsters, Inc.

There’s no obsession so unlikely that someone hasn’t made a blog for it.

Felix Lorioux (1872 - 1964) was one of the great children’s book illustrators, but since he was (I think) French he’s not that well known here in the US.

The ASIFA Blog has a great gallery of Lorioux animal drawings — and you can click on them to see really big versions. Yay!