feminist blogs

This is the second in a series examining issues raised by a blog post from Chamber of Commerce Senior Communications Director Brad Peck, where he suggested that women’s interest in closing the gender pay gap amounted to a “fetish for money,” and the subsequent apologies for it by himself and Chamber COO David Chavern. Part 1 and Part 2 at the links.

Seth Godin, a popular marketing author, has written extensively about what he sees as the two key elements of future business success: creatively using the cognitive surplus and participating in a gift economy.

Cognitive surplus refers to the time and mental energy modern workers are supposed to have left over after their regular work that’s represented in volunteer projects like Wikipedia, the online reference site.

Many people have commented on the fact that contributors to projects like Wikipedia are overwhelmingly male. Maybe it has something to do with what the AFL-CIO found in a 2008 survey of working women, that nearly half reported having less than an hour a day to themselves.

If a person has less than an hour of time to themselves per day, it’s the extraordinary individual who has any surplus to give.

Making it worse, household and caring tasks are thoroughly seen as women’s work. So much so, that men who do their own family’s laundry, or cook meals they’re also going to be eating, or spend time with their own children are said to be helping out. Which is to say, helping their female partner do ‘her’ work.

Often, a woman who has a steady, male partner may find that it means having an extra person she’s expected to take care of and clean up after for no pay.

Which brings us to the idea of a gift economy. Godin suggests, and I think he means well, that a gift economy is something like an exchange of acts of great art and generosity without expectation of return. He suggests that it creates a virtuous circle of gift exchange that turns the givers into indispensable people who, in the natural course of things will eventually be rewarded.

What would a gift economy look like? What does it have to do with women’s pay?

In 1995, the United Nations estimated that women around the world generated work for which they were not paid to the tune of $11 trillion, or $15 trillion in 2007 dollars, as Raj Patel notes in his book, “The Value of Nothing.” Patel says that in 1995, “The daily work of rearing children, maintaining a household and engaging in civic work … [was worth] more than half the world’s total output.”

Godin suggests that offering wonderful, useful work as a gift will eventually draw a reward. Yet women’s gifts of necessary work, often microtargeted to the exact needs of a particular family, not only bring little compensation, they’re often barely noticed.

Marilyn Waring, in the 1988 book, “Counting for Nothing,” pointed out that economists made good faith efforts to calculate the economic worth of black market activities men were likely to be involved in, and for which no records existed, in order to estimate the value of their activities and add the approximations to Gross Domestic Product calculations. Yet no similar efforts were being made to figure out what women were contributing to the GDP outside the formal economy.

Thus, Waring said, GDP accounting for national economies had established procedures for estimating how much a man who was a pimp or drug dealer contributed to the economy. But a woman who spent all day turning wild children into productive citizens, or a young girl who spent hours gathering fuel or water for her family and took care of younger siblings, neither of them matter to most economists.

That’s a living example of a gift economy. Women historically, and still, do most of the work of caring for others, cleaning up after them, domesticating toddlers and teenagers for no, or low, pay. And yes, even when that work is done for strangers instead of your own family, it rarely pays a good wage, as noted by economics professor, Nancy Folbre:

… Caring often entails commitments to dependents such as young children, adults with disabilities or the frail elderly who can’t afford to pay directly for the services provided. It doesn’t fit easily into the impersonal logic of fee for service or supply and demand.

Further, caring often creates “outputs” that are not easily captured in market transactions, such as the increases in lifetime capabilities created by excellent kindergarten and preschool teachers.

It’s hard to imagine an explicit contract that could enable a care worker to “capture” the value-added – which extends well beyond increases in lifetime earnings to many less tangible benefits. …

And after all that, when women finally have the gall to ask for the real value of even traditionally paid employment, let alone all the things they do on the cheap with all their surplus energy, work that barely gets acknowledged as work, the Senior Communications Director of the Chamber of Commerce suggests that it’s motivated by something like greed.

I don’t think he knows what that means.

Cross posted from SEIU Early Learning.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Slate’s advice columnist Emily Yoffe who writes under the pseudonym Dear Prudence. The second letter in her column this week reminds me why.

First the letter:

I am a female law student who is employed for the summer (and potentially for the school year) at a small firm that I’m really enjoying. The law office shares a floor of an office building with a bigger law firm, and my cubicle is “on the border.” All of the attorneys at both firms are male, but at the other firm, the men are far from politically correct. I have two issues: First, one of the attorneys, “Jerry,” often makes comments to me about my appearance. These range from annoying but harmless (“Nice tan”) to creepy (“I like that skirt,” in a lecherous tone). I have tried to ignore him or subtly indicate his comments aren’t welcome, but neither approach has worked. I’m tempted to speak to one of my firm’s partners, but I fear it would make me look like a little girl running to a man to fight my battles. I’m also considering documenting all his comments until I have enough for a sexual harassment suit so I can make his firm pay for the legal education I used to nail it. Second, I overhear a lot of conversations I find highly offensive. The men are fond of using homosexuality-based insults, calling one another or opponents “fag” and “homo.” The work environment is becoming so unpleasant that I wonder how long I can stand it. What should I do?

—Livid but Lost Law Student

Well, it certainly sound like the sort of place that might having you looking for employment discrimination as a third year elective and the kind of firm you may want to reject an offer from, but let’s hear from Prudie.

Dear Livid,
I hope you don’t view your law degree as a carte blanche to take to court everyone who makes you uncomfortable. If you tell a judge that getting the compliment “I like that skirt” made you unable to discharge your own legal duties, the conclusion may be that you need to find another line of work, not that the firm of Blowhard, Homophobe & Creep owes you a tuition check. The law firm you’re working for likely won’t be impressed with your enterprising spirit if they find out you’ve filed suit against the guys next door. Let’s deal with Jerry. As you’ve discovered, being subtle isn’t working. I assume your legal education is teaching you to state your position plainly, so do so. Next time Jerry comes over, tell him, “Jerry, I’d appreciate it if you would cease remarking on my appearance. I find your comments disruptive and your tone hostile. I hope you understand what I’m saying and that I won’t have to say it again. Thanks.” Only if he escalates should you take it to one of your partners, explaining that you’ve tried to deal with him yourself. As for the frat boys next door—get a sound-blocking headset if you must. Yes, their comments are repugnant, but you don’t want to be the Carrie Nation of your floor. Let’s hope this is resolved one day when a client of the firm who doesn’t share their sensibilities overhears the office banter.

—Prudie

Where to even begin? One’s law degree isn’t carte blanche to sue everyone who bothers you, but it’s certainly a professional license which entitles you to sue someone who’s violating the law*. A hostile work environment (and let’s be clear here: it’s hostile) is actionable in the U.S. Second, sexual harassment is not a compliment. Jerry’s not leering at her because he’s trying to pay her a compliment: he’s trying to demean her, undercut her, intimidate her, and make himself feel superior. Having someone in your workplace who makes you that uncomfortable could certainly make it very difficult to accomplish your work. Prudie’s response suggests that Livid just needs to suck it up and get thicker skin. There’s no mention of the idea the person whose behavior and reactions need to change is Jerry.

I do agree that Livid should put it all on the line once and tell Jerry in no uncertain terms that his commentary is unwelcome, but I suspect his only response is going to be “Why do you have to take this so seriously? It was just a compliment. Can’t you take a compliment?” (Read: Why are you such a uptight bitch who refuses to understand that I am perfectly within my rights to tell you how you should and should not respond to my banality?) Taking it to the partners is definitely the next step, if for no other reason that if Livid wants to sue them successfully, she’ll probably need to demonstrate that she went to her bosses and/or HR and raised a complaint and they failed to act on it or adequately address the issue.

It’s not 100% clear to me, but it seems as though Jerry and the homophobia are coming from the firm with whom Livid shares a floor in an office building, not her own employer. If that’s the case, I think it’s even more important to raise the issue with the partners, one of which has absolutely nothing to do with sexual harassment: client confidentiality. If Livid’s able to hear homophobic banter, I can’t imagine what else she might overhear. This is something the other firm should be aware of, even if their staff is made up of a bunch of people who have no objection to loudly voicing bigoted remarks. And I would think that her own firm would want to be aware of the fact that the other people on the office floor are creating a huge headache (not to mention potentially litigious situation) for them. Assuming Livid likes her own employer, she really ought to give them a shot to resolve this situation. If they won’t, then it’s probably time to head back to the career services office.

And finally, Carrie Nation? Carrie Nation!? Comparing a woman who has a perfectly legitimate gripe about her workplace with a woman who charged around Kansas destroying bars with a hatchet? Seriously? Next time, you might just come right out and call Livid irrational and hysterical.

*To be fair, the likelihood of a successful lawsuit that would enable Livid to finance her higher education is pretty small.

This is a guest post by Heather Corinna.

Last week, this eloquent missive arrived in the Scarleteen general email box:

From: na@aol.com
Subject: [General Contact] Heather Corinna
Date: July 29, 2010 8:50:10 AM PDT

bob sent a message using the contact form at http://www.scarleteen.com/contact.

her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna is a SLUT

I don’t know Bob. I also have never slept with anyone named Bob — I have a near-exclusive partiality to lovers or partners with names that start with the letter J or M, followed by A, C and D. The two lone male B’s I recall have both been Brians. This begs the question of how, exactly, Bob knows I’m a slut in the first place. Bob’s agenda is also a mystery. Maybe he thought I had some kind of supervisor who would see this…actually, I don’t know what on earth Bob’s intent was here. No sense trying to suss it out. All I know is that it came in, I read it, and I said, “Umm, okay. It just might. And?” Perhaps obviously, I cannot ask Bob what sort of actionable response he wanted from this very important piece of news, because he, demonstrating exceptional courage, did not use a real email address.

There’s been a lot of talk about sluthood on the interwebs this week, mostly stemming from Jaclyn Friedman’s fantastic piece here and a couple patronizing, backlashy replies. I hesitate to link to them because I hate to send them traffic, but it’s never fair to call someone’s words idiotic without sharing the evidence you’re basing that judgment on.

When Jaclyn’s piece came out, I read it, thought it was great, so real of her, and clearly something that resonated with a lot of women. Jaclyn and I are friends, so I also had a little more inside scoop on what a big deal putting that out there was for her. While I very much appreciated the piece, it didn’t resonate with me on a personal level all that much. I’m quite certain this is not because it wasn’t a powerfully-written and important piece, because I think it was.

I just got off the phone with Jaclyn, in part because some I wanted to try and figure out WHY it didn’t resonate with me, and make sure that in figuring that out, I wasn’t making any assumptions about Jaclyn and her experiences or thoughts.

(By the way, an etiquette tip it appears some people never learned? When someone puts out something exceptionally personal, no matter who they put it out to or where, if you want to have anything resembling manners, you at least try and engage with them directly before you psychoanalyze them for the whole world, and probably mostly for your own benefit. No, no one HAS to do that, but anyone arguing for “values” or “respect” is going to lose an awful lot of face if they have the social graces of a mosquito.)

Back to that email. I got it, had that reaction to it, which was pretty much no reaction. That was followed with momentary amusement at the idea either I, or my mystery supervisor (oh, if only!), was supposed to have some kind of reaction.

See, to me, a statement like that is about as powerful and about as true as statements like:
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna has a BIG NOSE
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna is SHORT
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna was RAPED
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna ENJOYS HULA-HOOPING
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna likes giving and getting HEAD
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna has a PUG
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna is A BIG QUEERO
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna STUDIES SEXUALITY
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna is IRISH-ITALIAN
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna has been a TEACHER FOR 20 YEARS
• her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna HAS RENT TO PAY

All true, all part of who I am and what life I live and have lived, and likely all part of what influences the advice that I give to others. Etymologically, being a slut means being untidy and/or being someone with a twat who has either bonked a lot of people or, as the awesome Kelly Huegel pointed out, is a female person who has had sex with more people than any one person calling them a slut considers acceptable. One supposes you can add in the frequent implication that being a slut means being someone of “loose” or questionable character or values.

So, am I a slut? Sure, okay. I am untidy. I have had sex with more people than some people consider acceptable, and on the bell curve of what folks report with a lifetime number of partners, I have had more than most. Since I have routinely questioned both my own values and character for myself all my life as a regular practice, and try to keep flexible, I suppose it’s also true to say mine are both questionable and loose. When you tell me or others something that is true about myself, I’m not likely to get my feelings hurt or be offended, particularly when we’re talking about things that have been my choice, like my sex life.

Jaclyn is getting some of the negative reactions she is just because some people are just idiots. But Jaclyn is also probably getting that kind of reaction because some of what she said is exactly what those people want to hear if they read very, very selectively. She’s a solid writer, which makes it easy to take her statements out of context.

In the piece, one thing she voiced was that what she most wants right now is a long-term relationship; that she has been able to have casual sex of late, and that it has been positive, but what she really wants and does not have is an LTR. While she did not voice a causal relationship between the two (quite the opposite), what she said allowed people who are seeking out such things to cling on to that notion, one they desperately want to believe and want others to believe. She also voiced she had feelings about casual sex that were not unilaterally positive, something else they want to hear and spotlight. And because she said what they wanted to hear and because it resonated with some other women, she’s a great sort of poster child for a carnival show where people pretend to be showing others the poor, broken girl who just doesn’t know any better so that they can avoid her same, terrible fate.

She also disclosed she survived sexual trauma. As I’ve said about a million times, if and when any of us do that, while it’s important we do do that, both politically and because being able to be honest about any part of our lives is major, we become very easy marks. Almost anything we do or experience ever-after, anything that is anything less than perfect, will often be attributed not even to our rape, but to us being a person who has been raped. I’ve decided my new comeback to this when I get hit with it, by the way, is going to be “Okay, let’s say everything wrong with me or that I’m unhappy about sexually or interpersonally IS because I was raped. So… what the hell happened to YOU that made YOU so screwed up?”

Anyway, in thinking about my non-reaction to that email since last week, to my less-than-super-pow reaction to Jaclyn’s post and to the responses to it, positive and negative, I’ve come to some conclusions.

Jaclyn was considered “the good girl” in her family. In mine, that was my sister, not me. Her good girl distinction and my bad girl one were affixed before either of us engaged in any kind of sexual behavior or even thought about it. Mind, my family was not a unified front in this. One of my parents was extraordinarily sex-positive and very strongly and loudly against slut-shaming and against the whole good girl/bad girl epoch, while my other parent — raised in a very religiously-oppressive household where this stuff was a staple — and particularly my stepparent (an abuser, so no surprises there), slut-crowned me pretty much on the basis of having a first kiss and on trying so hard to meet gender presentations that didn’t feel authentic to me, but that they required. It appears I erred on the side of presenting that way too well. Talk about a backfire. Not girly enough? You’re a dyke. Too girly? You’re a slut. It’s a tough game to win, and one I perpetually lost. It’s also why when I was assaulted at 11 and 12, after one attempt to tell my mother, I didn’t tell anyone for years. I knew my stepparent would feel proved right and I knew it would be used against me in his abuse. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving him any more ammo.

That consistent verbal slur or implication was also based in homophobia: I knew about my feelings for girls, or experienced them, anyway, before I knew about my feelings for boys. I didn’t recognize those feelings for what they were very clearly until high school, but in hindsight, it’s obvious my family did. That may be part of why, while the word “slut” doesn’t hold particular power with me, either as a slur or as something to reclaim, the word dyke very much did and has. I think that has to do with my own journey in getting right with other women and with my gender. Mostly, though, I think it’s about been called a dyke and not being far enough in those journeys that I did internalize it as a slur — something I never did with slut because when it was hurled at my in my pre-teens and early teens, I knew it wasn’t true. About feeling bad about something I wished I’d instead felt good about and had had the strength to refuse to internalize as bad.

Jaclyn and I talked about what our differences in some of this might be, and some of what came up was privilege. While we have or have had some similarities (the self-defense, the communication skills, the fact that we’re both white), we’re also a bit different in that arena. The trajectory of our lives and sexualities have been different: with each decade, for instance, my number of sexual partners has declined: in the last ten years, I’ve only been outside LTRs and single with casual partners for around 2. I have had my work or the credibility of my work impacted by my actual or perceived sexual behaviour. But I also tend to experience a weird kind of privilege in often having little privilege. I figure if it isn’t going to be one thing, it’ll be another, so I may as well just be who I am and put who I am on the table. Like Janis sang, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Like Jaclyn, I have had times in my life when I have wanted an ongoing, intimate relationship and have not had one, though with me that’s rarely abstract. When I want one of those, it tends to be about wanting one with someone specific (or, let’s be frank: about wanting relationships where I can get some privilege and be spared some of the judgment we get while in other models). It’s fair to say I’ve usually been far more cautious about getting into romantic relationships than I have been about getting into bed with someone.

The first person I deeply romantically loved and wanted a lifelong relationship with died, and I had a while in my teens and early 20’s where I struggled with the idea that I had my shot with romantic love; I met My One Person and since apparently there was but The One, I had had mine and was shit out of luck because that person was dead. I got over that, but it took a while, and all the bullshit about there being only one big love people shove down everyone’s throat did not help at all. Given the fact that in many ways, the people closest to me growing up turned out to be who I could trust the least, I absolutely have had intimacy issues because getting close has always equaled a fear of not just being hurt, but the fear-via-experience of being abused and seriously neglected. I could go on, but the point is I have a very good idea about the why of that (and have already had and enjoyed the psychoanalysis to help me get there, thanks), and it’s simply What Is: don’t see it as anything broken I need to fix, but the person I am based on the life I’ve lived, a person I like, love and respect.

I’ve had a handful of long-term relationships in my life, most of which I’d class as fruitful and beneficial: I had good experiences in them and got good things from them, so did the other person or people. Sparing the death of my sweetheart in high school, the person who has left or adjusted almost every one of them? That’s usually been me. Why? It depends, really, but more times than not it’s just been because various needs or wants I had weren’t being met in those relationships or the relationship had morphed from something romantic into a different kind of relationship that felt a better fit for everyone. First time at bat with my current partner, I skeedaddled because of PTSD whacking me in the face without warning or preparation and I dealt with it very badly as a result.

However, I’ve also had just as many times when I wanted more casual sex partners or experiences than I had. Like most parts of life and like many people, I’ve had both feast and famine, and have been delighted about the feast and distressed about the famine. In what things or areas there was bounty or drought strikes me as irrelevant. Bounty almost always feels great while drought pretty much always sucks, for everyone, with everything. Rocket science, this ain’t.

I even miss casual sex when I’m not having it. I can’t always say that so plainly when I’m with someone long-term. But blessedly, my partner (who’s known me on and off for 20 years, a relationship that began in 1989 with a three-night-stand) knows with certainty that I very much enjoy the sex that we have as a currently monogamous couple and also understands that while there are plenty of common threads between sex we have in LTRs and casual sex, also groks the differences and is evolved enough and smart enough not to see them as being in a cagematch.

When I miss it, what I miss is the adventure, the uncertainty, the dance of the thing. I miss sudden, often unexpected connectivity. For me, there was always something spiritually very cool in experiencing sex as one of the many ways people who aren’t deeply connected can wind up very deeply connecting quickly, be that with the sex itself or with the conversation before or after. While I’m all for taking the cultural unacceptability out of casual sex for those who still cling to it or are very impacted by it, at the same time, there’s this sort of partners-in-crime thing I’ve sometimes had with casual sex partners, where you’re both doing this thing you know some people think is not okay, which can make it all the more playful.

There’s a kind of abandon that I experience in sex period, but which for me has been particularly strong with casual sex. There’s that thing where it’s really very much up for grabs as to whether or not you’ll have sex that day or night or not that’s a lot tougher to come by with sex in ongoing relationships, long or short-term. There’s a lack of expectation I appreciate. Heck, I miss being able to blog more about the sex I have: that’s a lot more tricky when you’re having it outside casual situations. As well, given some of my history, it’s often been easier for me to say what I want when there are no strings attached than when there are. I can either way, it’s just that doing so with someone who knows me very well is more of a challenge, and feels much more vulnerable to me, so it’s scarier at first than in casual sex.

I clearly prefer ongoing or long-term relationships that start with casual sex. Not that I honestly know much about the alternative, since I’ve almost unilaterally had that thing happen that so many of us are told will NEVER happen with casual sex. Almost all of my ongoing romantic relationships have started with casual sex. Many of my friendships have, too. One of the things I miss when I’m missing casual sex are the friendships that I have found stem from it. Casual sex has rarely meant a lack of love for me. I’ve given and received a lot of love and care in most of my sexual relationships of all sorts; the casual ones have been no exception.

I know a lot of people are very scared of STIs with casual sex, but this is one of those areas where I know too much. Coming of age with a parent working in some of the earliest AIDS care meant I got and saw facts, not fictions. My personal life and those around me have reflected the reality that it’s lack of barrier use and lack of sexual healthcare most responsible for STIs, not what kind of sex we have. Having more partners certainly increases the risks, but only having one or two and not using barriers and having everyone regularly tested presents even larger ones. If I didn’t know this before I went into working in sexual health, including in clinical work, I sure know it now. Someone can tell me all they want STIs are about casual sex, but they’re usually not people working in these fields because we know better. When I hear someone say “she’s risking her life for casual sex!” I tend to wish I could require compulsory volunteering in domestic/intimate partner violence.

I’m aware, especially after going on 13 years of sex and relationships being my full-time work, that there is NO human interaction in which we cannot get hurt; NO one way of having sex or sexual relationships that removes the risk of heartbreak or abuse. There are some bare basics — consent, communication, self-awareness — and then each of us doing our best to make choices and interrelate in the ways that feel a best fit for us and anyone else involved at any given time of our lives.

I know that for people like the two I linked to shredding Jaclyn, of course, there’s also a gender script pretty much running the show. However, it’s not even worth addressing here because it’s absolutely meaningless and irrelevant for those of us who are queer and who aren’t gendernormative. (You also can’t make it meaningful by trying to change the facts of someone’s orientation and partnerships, calling them all male or hetero when they haven’t been. Just a tip.) I’d posit that even for those who are, much of the time it’s only relevant because they’re so susceptible to those messages, not because there’s some sort of biological or sociological essentialism that rule all.

With both casual and non-casual sex I have not had radically different dynamics when it comes to my partners and their/our gender. In fact, some of the most pervasive messages about gender in the hetero scripts about casual sex sound like science fiction through the lens of my own experiences. For example, in my own sex life, it’s not usually been men who were hardest to hold onto when holding on is what I wanted, but women. It’s not been women who have expressed feelings hurt by casual sex the few times that’s happened, but men. Whoever these “all men” are that fuck and run? I’m not sure I’ve slept with any of them, and if I have, I must have just run through the finish line myself before I saw them start their own sprint.

There’s another difference Jaclyn and I talked about this morning, which is that being slut-shamed is new for her, whereas it’s something I grew up with and which has been pervasive for me for a long time.

I think it’s safe to say I haven’t ever been hurt by my own actual sluttery, per what that word actually means and per how it’s most often colloquially defined. Even being called one when I was young mostly hurt within the context of every name I got called and every way I was intentionally isolated and abused. There’s even a flip side to that, though, which is that being called a slut also gave me permission to go and be one: after all, if you’re going to get called something that involves doing things you may enjoy, it feels silly not to do those things. Maybe if I hadn’t gotten called one, it would have been harder for me to explore that part of my nature, which has involved some of the best parts of my whole life.

The personal disrespect to me in slut-shaming isn’t really what has stung, since it’s generally been clear people who throw that word at others don’t have much respect for anyone, not just me. They also most often seem to be most strongly reacting to women having sex outside the system of sex-for-goods, be those goods marriage, shelter, children, social status, hat have you. That’s a big reality for many women in the world I acknowledge and understand, for sure, and also acknowledge and understand is inescapable for some, but I also feel is nothing close to ideal. I’m lucky to have been able to live outside that system for most of my life with only a few brief exceptions. This is usually also clearly why so many of the folks so attached to that way of codifying sex are so anti-prostitution: it’s critically important their sexual exchanges be seen as radically different, even though I don’t see the big diff myself.

The few times I have felt deeply hurt by being a “slut,” wasn’t in any of the sex (or untidiness) I was having or had, but in the way people who call me or other people sluts; in the way “being a slut” is presented, something Jaclyn spoke so aptly about. It was the verbal abuse — like any verbal abuse — that hurt, not my own sexual life used as a vehicle for that abuse. That’s probably a big duh for those past the 101 of abusive dynamics, interpersonal relationships and sexuality. But for some strange reason, it escapes people’s minds who think that they can say the issue isn’t THEIR chosen words or actions, but what WE did to CAUSE their words and actions to burst forward from their mouths and fingers, which they apparently have no control over because of how our own lives, of which they often have been no part. It’s amazing that the same people who tell women they should just shut their legs don’t seem to have the same standards for their own mouths.

The times I’ve been attacked and nonconsensually deconstructed per what a slut/whore/insert-your-fave-sexual-chick-shame-here I am and it has hurt, the hurt was centrally about something different than I think the folks doling out that epithet imagine it to be. It’s not been about my feeling ashamed of myself or my choices. It’s instead been about profound disappointment and weariness that we still, at this point in history, can’t all be real about who we are in our sex lives and have our divergence simply recognized as the diversity human sexuality and life is, with the understanding that none of our lives is everyone’s right answer. That so many people still just cannot get that because they put themselves and their lives out there as prescriptions doesn’t mean we all do. When those attacks are about you having casual sex and about how much that sex shows how little self-respect you have or how little respect you’re getting, the ironic icing on that cake is that I’ve been very respected and cared for, as have my partners, in most of the sex — casual and not — that I have had. Where I’m not getting that respect isn’t from the people everyone says didn’t or won’t respect me, but from the people presenting themselves as experts on respect who clearly know nothing about it at all.

As someone who has worked many years and long hours to try and repair some of this stuff culturally, it’s particularly frustrating and tiresome and makes me feel like Don Quixote all too often. Which is really no fun at all without a Sancho Panza to have witty, existential banter with or without getting your very own musical.

There’s also a subtext to all of this that has to do with who is perceived as redeemable and who isn’t. If YOU, yourself, are seen as potentially redeemable, you get talked to one way: often with what is presented as gentleness, but tends to feel an awful lot like being patronized. If you are NOT seen as redeemable, the language tends to be more angry and rough. If who might be influenced by you or what you voice is seen as redeemable and YOU also are, you all get talked to like you’re stupid little lambs. If you are NOT seen as redeemeable, but who hears or sees you is, you’re really in the shit. And if you get so lucky, you and anyone you might influence are all seen as unredeemable, because that usually nets you a complete and blissful silence where you can just support one another and enjoy your private lives in peace.

I was accused by Walsh yesterday of having “many young women drinking my Kool-aid” who “were unhappy about it.” I’m not sure who these young women are or what my Kool-Aid is exactly. I asked, I got silence. Thus far, in the work I do, I have yet to see reports about how upset someone is that they did something Heather Corinna told them to do, sparing a few people I’ve told to get a GYN exam or a test for something and who got poor care from healthcare providers when doing so. Since I don’t tell anyone to have this kind of sex or relationship that kind of sex or relationship — quite the contrary — I’m not sure what that was all about.

Lest dumb assumptions be made, the reason this is not at Scarleteen isn’t because I feel ashamed of myself or my friends or that I think my sex life is de facto inappropriate. It’s because as much as possible, especially when the young people there don’t ask me for it, I limit what I share anecdotally and about my personal sex life. I have these funny things we call boundaries. I’d do the same even if I had only had one partner, married them and was with them for 25 years exclusively. The young people I provide sexuality education to usually know precious little about my sex life, because they come wanting to talk about theirs, and because my own sex life often has little to do with them or what they’re asking. How my sexual history would be pertinent to how to use their birth control method, where their own clitoris is or how to figure out what, if any, kind of sex or relationships they want is beyond me. Adults who assume I sit and talk turkey about what’s going on in my bedroom with young people usually do because that’s what they do, not because it’s what I do. Young people also tend to voice to me that older people’s anecdotes about their sexual experiences can feel like pressure, no matter WHAT those anecdotes are. Just a few weeks ago, a few of them were talking about how they feel pressured by a lot of abstinence-messaging TO have intercourse because it presents it as the only REAL sex. Go figure.

Some of the reaction to Jaclyn’s piece, or this business about my Kool-Aid clearly was about the poor, vulnerable young women we are perceived as having corrupted or may corrupt. Often evidence for this is stated in that wild, crazy “hookup culture” all the cool kids are purportedly part of. Beyond the fact that I’m not sure how people like myself or Jaclyn can be held responsible for any casual sex young women may be having now, I also want to make clear that I feel quite certain a lot of the hookup-culture assignments are pretty much exactly what happened to me when I was young. It’s calling people sluts who often haven’t even engaged in any sexual behaviour, or if they have, haven’t been doing anything different than what generations before them have.

Sparing a few limited populations, as far as I can tell and based on what young people talk about in droves in my work, this “hookup culture” where they’re apparently having ALL this sex or ALL this casual sex is mostly adultist sex panic. (The funny thing is, the only interaction I had with Walsh before this was on a panel where if I recall correctly, Logan Levkoff and I were calling her and another panelist out on exactly that issue.) From what I can tell, they’re more sexually conservative than my generation and a lot of my parent’s generation was, and are having around the same or fewer sexual partners than we were as a whole generation, not more. Which also makes them a lot more vulnerable to messaging about sluts, whether they’re going to do the name-calling or are going to get name-called; whether they are or are not sluts at all.

In fact, it’s entirely possible Bob is a 15 year-old kid who sees me as a slut simply because I’m a woman who is talking about sex, which he has been told, in umpteen different places, means I must be a slut and means he must try to shame me accordingly. Hopefully, Bob will grow up, which is more than I can say for many adults talking this way.

P.S. Some other entries have come up today around some of the fracas I wanted to point out:
• From Amanda Marcotte: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/no_laughing_no_screwing_no_l…
• From The Sexademic: http://sexademic.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/girl-fight-sluts-vs-prudes/ (who also wrote about Oxytocin, oddly enough, as I’m trying to finish a piece on it I keep putting off)
• From Jessica Valenti: http://jessicavalenti.com/?p=592

40-50% of All Indian Women have been Sterilized. Evidence of massive sterilization of American Indians has been revealed by the (GAO) General Accounting Office in a study for ex-Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota in 1976. Most of these women were sterilized without their informed consent. The Same GOA Report also revealed that Indian Children are being used as "human guinea pigs," by the Federal Government in 56 different medical experiments (in most cases without parental consent). The Abourezk Report found that approximately 3,406 Indian Women had been sterilized in a three year period between 1973 and 1976, in only four states. Lehman L. Brightman, President of United Native Americans,Inc. estimates that between 60,000 and 70,000 Indian Women have been sterilized in the last twelve years. Most of the Indian Women were sterilized "unknowingly" and without their informed consent, and in many cases by outright intimidation. In many cases women were told they were going to die if they had more children, that they had cysts on their ovaries, or that the operation was reversible. Voluntary sterilization among the general population of the U.S. of some 200 million people isn't going to wipe out the country, but in smaller groups like the American Indians, it could wipe them out forever, as an example: If Every white woman in the state of California was sterilized, the white race in North America would not be in danger, but if every California Indian Women was sterilized, the Genocide of California Indians would be Permanent. President Carter has Refused on 3 different occasions to stop the sterilization and to remove Dr. Emery Johnson, the Director of the Indian Health Service. . .The man most responsible for Indian Sterilization.

40th Anniversary Commemorating the Takeover of Mount Rushmore

40-50% of All Indian Women have been Sterilized. Evidence of massive sterilization of American Indians has been revealed by the (GAO) General Accounting Office in a study for ex-Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota in 1976. Most of these women were sterilized without their informed consent. The Same GOA Report also revealed that Indian Children are being used as "human guinea pigs," by the Federal Government in 56 different medical experiments (in most cases without parental consent). The Abourezk Report found that approximately 3,406 Indian Women had been sterilized in a three year period between 1973 and 1976, in only four states. Lehman L. Brightman, President of United Native Americans,Inc. estimates that between 60,000 and 70,000 Indian Women have been sterilized in the last twelve years. Most of the Indian Women were sterilized "unknowingly" and without their informed consent, and in many cases by outright intimidation. In many cases women were told they were going to die if they had more children, that they had cysts on their ovaries, or that the operation was reversible. Voluntary sterilization among the general population of the U.S. of some 200 million people isn't going to wipe out the country, but in smaller groups like the American Indians, it could wipe them out forever, as an example: If Every white woman in the state of California was sterilized, the white race in North America would not be in danger, but if every California Indian Women was sterilized, the Genocide of California Indians would be Permanent. President Carter has Refused on 3 different occasions to stop the sterilization and to remove Dr. Emery Johnson, the Director of the Indian Health Service. . .The man most responsible for Indian Sterilization.

40th Anniversary Commemorating the Takeover of Mount Rushmore

You make me so sad with this:

The 39-year-old actor also weighed in on the brand of sexism depicted on ‘Mad Men’ versus the plight in modern times: “There’s a cordialness that men had when dealing with the opposite sex [in the 1960s], even when they were being blatantly sexist. It’s a weird conundrum. But that’s been replaced with men treating women like absolute garbage and not even being polite about it, which is too bad.”

Yeah… too bad…

Last summer, I suffered the breakup of a relationship that I had thought would be permanent. Now, I’ve been through my share of break-ups, even of quite serious relationships, but nothing ever broke me like this one.

Since then, I’ve had sexual interactions of the orgasmic kind with 9 different people, none of which I was at any time in a committed relationship with.

I’m not telling you this to shock (though I am specifying the number because we all need to get over the whole “OMG! Be ashamed of your NUMBER! It’s either too big or too small!” thing). I’m telling you this because of something else that’s also true about me: I’d really like to be in a long-term, probably monogamous relationship. That’s right, folks, I’m a slut who craves a stable, loving, committed relationship. File me under “Lookin’ fer luv: ur doin it wrong.”

That’s the story we get sold, right? That women who sleep around are destroying their chances at True Love. Something to do with bonding hormones getting all used up? Or is it that we have so little self-esteem that no one could love us? Or maybe it’s that we’re all used candy wrappers or dirty masking tape. I can never remember.

Thing is: I’ve done it the other way. Until my mid-30s, I was largely a serial monogamist. Not for any grand ethical or philosophical reasons – it was just what felt comfortable to me. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some wild adventures in college, or never went to bed with someone on a first date – I did on occasion. It’s just that when I did, I’d often wake up the next day in a relationship. Let me tell you: not the best recipe for partnership bliss.

I’m thinking of one particular instance in which I had what was for me a very painful dry spell: a year and a half in which I barely got to kiss anyone, and didn’t get to do anything other than that at all, sexually speaking, with anyone. It… yeah. Didn’t feel too good. Made me feel like I would never be touched or loved again. Made me feel, in a word, desperate. You know what’s not a great emotional state for making important life decisions? Desperation.

To wit: after this year and a half of nothing, I went to bed with a woman I barely knew on our first date. Nothing wrong with that, we had a great time, and seriously, did I mention a year and a half? The problem came the next morning, when it became obvious that she was much more into me emotionally than I was at that point. Did I tell her that? And potentially get exiled back to my affectionless desert? I bet you know the answer. What followed was a two-year relationship in which we were unhappy for about the last year and a half.

Fast forward through a few more relationships to last fall. As I crawled out of the acute grief stage of my breakup and into the Land of Reboundia, I launched myself somewhat full-throttle into dating. It was comforting to me to find that there were other people I found appealing who felt similarly about me. But each person I’d meet, if there was any kind of a click at all, I’d throw myself at them whole-hog, wanting so badly for them to be The One that proved I wouldn’t have to do die alone with a shriveled-up vagina and no cats. (I’m allergic.) And then (sing this with me if you know the tune), when something would inevitably go wrong, however silly or minor, however nascent the connection was, it would feel overwhelming. Like I was dying. Like I was broken all over again.

And then a miracle occurred. Via the unlikeliest source of miracles ever: Craigslist Casual Encounters.

I had never thought of my self as a Casual Encounters kind of girl. I’d read them on occasion, sure, out of fascination, horror, horniness. I’d even, once in a long while, in lonely desperate moments, posted an ad, not with the intention of actually meeting anyone, but because sometimes knowing you have a bunch of bad options that you’re rejecting feels better than feeling like you have no options at all. And it was that exact state I found myself in one Friday night last fall, after having been blown apart yet again by some minor rejection that felt so huge it sent me to my bed. I hadn’t showered or shaved or left the house in days. And so, glass of wine in hand, wearing a robe and dirty sweatpants, I posted an ad just so I could watch the replies come in and feel like I had some kind of choice in the world. That somebody wanted me, even if they were gross and I’d never want them back.

And then B. responded. He was smart and charming. His picture looked cute. He seemed like a grown-up, and not like a psycho. He knew how to banter. He made a funny joke about punctuation. And, after a few emails were exchanged, he wanted to know if I’d like to meet him for a drink. That night. Then. And, to my great shock and terror and excitement, I found that I did. (What writer can resist a good punctuation joke?)

The next hour was a blur of furious grooming, during which I kept up the following internal monologue: I’m going to get axe murdered. I’m going to get axe murdered. You don’t have to do this, you can call it off. No, I want to. I can handle myself, I have good instincts and great training. Oh, god, I’m going to get axe murdered…

I’m telling you this because sluthood is scary. Because we’ve been taught to fear it all our lives, and that training doesn’t just go away because we understand the agenda behind it. And because there are real risks involved. Society likes to punish slutty women. And so do a lot of individual men, some of whom frequent Craigslist Casual Encounters.

I left my roommate a note telling her what I’d done and where I was going and to call me at 11 and if I didn’t answer to call the police. (What they were going to do about the fact that her 30-something roommate had gone on a CE date and wasn’t home after two hours I mercifully didn’t wonder at the time.) And then I went down to the local bar and met him.

You’ve probably already guessed that I didn’t get axe murdered. Instead, we spent a lovely hour chatting over a couple of glasses of wine, he used the phrase “male hegemony” critically in a sentence (entirely unprompted by me), and then he asked me if I wanted to go back to his place, which was nearby. And once again, to my shock and terror and excitement, I found that I did. Though not before asking him for his address, calling my roommate with it in front of him, and letting him know I had extensive self-defense training.

Reader, I fucked him. Three rounds worth that night. And it was awesome.

Driving home late that night, I was overcome with an uneasy feeling. What had I just done? What did it mean? What would my friends think? Was this who I wanted to be? I sat in my parked car, paralyzed, for ten minutes that felt like an hour. And then I climbed upstairs, slid into bed, and fell into a troubled sleep.

So much of what changes us in life is accidental. The split-second decision. The whim indulged or squelched. I woke up the next morning feeling unmoored. Like something inside me had been knocked loose, but I didn’t yet know if it was a part I needed, or something that had been in the way. At brunch with friends that day, I nervously let slip about my little adventure, and exhaled as they cheered and pumped me for details. Emboldened by their lack of judgment, I told a few more friends, found more wicked delight.

I’m telling you this because sluthood requires support. Because any woman who indulges these urges carries with her a lifetime of censure and threat. That’s a loud chorus to overcome. A slut needs a posse who finds her exploits almost as delicious as she finds them herself, who cares about her safety and her stories and her happiness but not one whit about her virtue. A slut alone is a slut in difficulty, possibly in danger.

Slowly, I realized. A picture came in to focus. I had the fierce love of my friends. I now knew how to find a lover. And knowing those, I admitted what everyone around me already knew: I wasn’t ready for a new relationship. I couldn’t handle the vulnerability required. It was hurting me too much, too often. But suddenly, it was OK. Suddenly I saw that I didn’t have to keep trying. There were other options.

Of course, things are never as simple as you want them to be. I went back to the CL well trying to find more men like B. with little success. He was, perhaps, a needle in a haystack that I never thought would contain a needle in the first place. There were bushels of disgusting replies, some other flirty email exchanges, a few dates that didn’t make it past the first cocktail, and a scant handful of sexual encounters, only one of which, aside from B., was worth repeating. And even that one fizzled out after a while.

But it didn’t really matter. Because sluthood isn’t an action, it’s a state of mind.

I’m telling you this because sluthood saved me. Sluthood gave me the time and space to nurse a shattered heart. It gave me a place where I could exist in pieces, some of me craving touch, some of me still too tender to even expose to the light. Sluthood healed the part of me that felt my body and my desires were grotesque after two years in a libido-mismatched partnership. Now I felt hot, wanted, powerful. My desire and enthusiasm was an asset, not an unintended weapon. Even now, with more time passed, now, when I am actually ready for and wanting a more emotional connection, sluthood keeps me centered. It keeps me from confusing desire and affection with something deeper. It means I have another choice besides celibacy and settling. It means I won’t enter another committed relationship just to satisfy my basic need for sex and affection. It gives me more choices, it makes room for relationships to evolve organically, to take the shape they will before anyone defines them.

I’m telling you this because, as scary and dangerous as my sluthood is, it’s built on privilege. My paid work will never be in jeopardy because my sluthood is exposed. My work also means I have a lot of practice with direct sexual communication. I’m old enough to be fluent in my own desires and limits, and also old enough that no one expects me to be virginal anyhow, so the risk of stigma is less. I’m cisgender and able-bodied and relatively mentally heathly for now, which makes these assignations a lot easier to mange on multiple levels, I would imagine. I have extensive self-defense training, which assures me I can stay in control of my own safety even in most situations. As a survivor of sexual violence, I’ve been privileged to have access to good long-term therapy and other resources that helped me heal at a deep level. I’m also white, which means that no one expects my behavior to represent my entire race.

I’ve also had some obstacles to overcome. Fat girls don’t have the same pick of partners that smaller women seem to, though I’ve been pleasantly surprised and moved that there are more people out there who are attracted to me than I’d thought. Being a woman who’s “pushing 40” doesn’t exactly expand the pool either. My trauma history means I still have triggers to manage, so I’m a stickler for people who respond respectfully and immediately to direct communication – that rules out many more people than I wish it did, and my instincts on that front are quite good, but not perfect.

In other ways, too, sluthood isn’t always pretty, and I’m not always good at it. Whether from years of habit or something more intrinsic to my personality, my heart seems to want to attach, and after a couple months of playing together casually, and having long, rangey talks naked in bed together between rolls in the hay, it started to with B. Neither of us handled it particularly well. There were tears; there were accusations. But even that was an education: somehow, the conflict that erupted demonstrated so clearly the ways we wouldn’t work together in a more serious arrangement, leaving us free to pick up where we’d left off as lovers. A thread in a needle in a haystack, I suppose.

Meanwhile, via CL and other sources, I’ve had emails and dates and crushes and flings, and one thing that looked like it might get serious and then quite abruptly disappeared. I’ve explored some sexual experiences I’d only fantasized about, and learned which ones are better as fantasies and which ones I want to explore even more. I’ve remembered how much I like pleasure, and how much of it there is in the world. I’ve had to learn how to reject people nicely but clearly, and learn how to appreciate a generous rejection when it’s aimed at me. I’m building my emotional muscles again, and I’m starting to think I could eventually wind up stronger than ever. At the moment, I’ve got another connection simmering over a low flame; not sure yet what it’ll boil down to.

And yes, I still want love. Make that Love. The brass ring. The whole enchilada. A partner in crime, a permanent teammate. A mutual admiration society of two. Someone who feels like home, and who feels the same about me. Someone to catalogue my wrinkles as they form. Whatever you want to call it. When I think about it, it involves monogamy, but who knows. Maybe I’ll find it with someone. Maybe I won’t. I can’t pretend I don’t care. But most days, sluthood helps me be patient. It keeps desperation at bay. It reminds me to enjoy the life I have now, instead of waiting for someone to come start it. It helps me know my heart better, and my libido. It makes me better at communicating about both of them, and much less likely to confuse the two. To my mind, far from ruining me for real love, sluthood is preparing me for it.

I’m not telling you because I think I’ve discovered something new – countless women have certainly known this before me. I’m telling you this because so many people still don’t seem to understand. I’m not telling you this because I think you’re a slut, or should be a slut. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you need, or what you have access to. I’m surely not telling you this out of a desire to expose my private life to the internet. Writing this here means facing the judgment of some members of my family, some colleagues, and other people whose opinion of me matters. It means my ex will probably read this. It means I’ve left this out here for people to find in the future, possibly hurting my life in ways I can’t predict. Surely some of you reading this now will mock me, or criticize me, or give me uninvited advice because you feel like you now know me, or take this as an invitation to hit on me. (Hint: IT’S NOT.)

I’m telling you this because juries still think women who even look like they might possibly be sluts are “asking for it.” I’m telling you this because some people still think it’s OK to drive a teenage girl to suicide because she was probably a slut. I’m telling you this because our policymakers would rather girls get sometimes-fatal diseases than be perceived as condoning sluthood. I’m telling you this because it’s important for everyone to understand: Sluthood isn’t a disease, or a wrong path, or a trend that’s ruining our youth. It isn’t just for detached, unemotional women who “fuck like men,” (as if that actually meant something), consequences be damned. It isn’t ever inevitable that sluthood should inspire violence or shame. Sluthood isn’t just a choice we should let women make because women should be free to make even “bad” choices. It’s a choice we should all have access to because it has the potential to be liberating. Healing. Soul-fulfilling. I’m telling you this because sluthood saved me, in a small but life-altering way, and I want it to be available to you if you ever think it could save you, too. Or if you want it for any other reason at all. And because even if you don’t ever want sluthood for yourself, you’re going to be called upon to support a slut. I’m telling you this because when that happens, I want you to say yes.

(Cross-posted at Yes Means Yes.)

The ongoing quest of the French government to preserve their country’s “secular traditions” came to the fore once again Tuesday when the lower house of France’s parliament voted to ban women from wearing any face-covering veil, such as the infamous burqa or the less “extreme” niqab — a move obviously targeting French Muslim women, of which perhaps 1,900 wear a face-covering veil. France has the highest population of Muslims in Europe, comprising about 5 million of France’s population of 64 million people.

I’m sure you remember the “no hijabs in public schools” ban France passed in 2004 after almost a decade debating it, barring students from wearing a headscarf or any other piece of clothing that would indicate the religion of the student wearing it. To be fair, that does include Jewish yarmulkes and cross necklaces, however, the surrounding debate was particularly focused on the Muslim hijab. It just seems that since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Western countries have been not-so-subtly putting their Islamophobia on display.

Of course, this is not to say that all Muslim women disagree with the banning of the burqa or niqab. Some Muslim feminists have spoken out in favor of the ban. I fully support the right of Muslim women to not be forced to wear face-covering veils. However, I think banning religious clothing at the governmental level is taking the issue in a scary direction. I believe in choices, and banning burqas and niqabs eliminates the ability of women who actually wear the veils of their own volition to continue to make the choice to wear them, however few the women may be that make that choice. The author of the Huffington Post article, Caryl Rivers, makes a lot of good points, but I really do believe that in order to truly gain equal rights for Muslim women in their culture it’s going to have to come from changing Muslim men’s “hearts and minds” and not changing Muslim women’s clothing.

In the Salon article linked above, Eqyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy states:

I support banning the burqa because I believe it equates piety with the disappearance of women. The closer you are to God, the less I see of you — and I find that idea extremely dangerous. It comes from an ideology that basically wants to hide women away. What really strikes me is that a lot of people say that they support a woman’s right to choose to wear a burqa because it’s her natural right. But I often tell them that what they’re doing is supporting an ideology that does not believe in a woman’s right to do anything. We’re talking about women who cannot travel alone, cannot drive, cannot even go into a hospital without a man with them. And yet there is basically one right that we are fighting for these women to have, and that is the right to cover their faces. To tell you the truth, I’m really outraged that people get into these huge fights and say that as a feminist you must support a women’s right to do this, because it’s basically the only kind of “right” that this ideology wants to give women. Otherwise they get nothing.

I agree with her on basically every point she makes, yet I can’t reconcile my feelings about government-enforced bans on religious clothing. I just don’t think that simply legally preventing women from wearing burqas, niqabs, or hijabs is going to cause transformative change in Islamic culture. This is a crude analogy, but it seems like banning black women from relaxing their hair. Yes, black women would be unable to cowtow to the oppressive beauty standards forced on us by Western culture, but would their minds be freed as well? Would black men suddenly stop desiring women with long, straight hair? With the banning of burqas and niqabs, are sexist, oppressive Muslim men and the governments they run suddenly going to stop treating women like second-class citizens? I don’t see that happening. Western governments using women’s rights as an excuse to ban Muslim religious garments just smells like Islamophobia couched in “progressive” rhetoric. Some leaders in the U.K. have actually voiced their concern over the “growing threat of Islamism“.

So what can we expect this ban on face-covering veils to do for Muslim women’s rights in France? Eltahawy had this to say:

What I hope it will do is that it will create a situation where a woman can say to a man, look, you know that I have to go out and work so that we can continue to live here, and I can’t go out with my face covered, even though you want me to, because that’s what the law says. I hope the law gives women this kind of out. I have no idea if that’s actually going to happen or not.

I can’t get behind legislation like this when the only benefit for women would be that you get to tell your husband that you’re required by law to not wear the veil, and the many benefits for the government and Islamophobic French people include not having to be visually reminded there’s Muslims in their communities and also stopping the spread of “Islamism”. I don’t trust the women’s rights angle at all from Western governments when it comes to Islam. We continue to ally with countries that do much more than just expect women to cover themselves head to toe when in public — we’re in bed with countries that beat and jail women who have been gang raped and impregnated because the rape constituted the woman committing adultery. I personally don’t think her lack of burqa helped at all in that situation.

So I’m not exactly joining the cheerleading squad because France decided its Islamophobia was good for women’s rights. Of course I don’t want Muslim women to be forced to cover themselves head to toe. But I firmly believe true change in the Islamic world will never come via simply outlawing certain types of clothing, and I question the veracity of France’s reasons for doing so. The fact that they’re mentioning things like “defining and protecting French values” sounds eerily familiar and to me, is more of a nationalist concern than a concern for women’s rights.

There needs to be substantive change in Muslim men’s attitudes towards Muslim women rather than superficial change mandated by a government that seeks to erase those parts of immigrant populations they find distasteful.

You may have read this terrible op-ed by Kathleen Parker, a Washington Post opinion columnist, published a couple of days ago. It was burning up my Twitter feed all day. In it, Kathleen Parker argues that Barack Obama is our first female president. Yes, that is what she said. And she proceeds to make a terrible case that can be summed up as such: Obama is a terrible president because he is not manly enough. He is acting like a woman, and losing political points because of it.

I was annoyed enough that I couldn’t even formulate a coherent response for two days. Fortunately, some bloggers I know and love, such as Rachel Sklar and Mary C. Curtis, did a pretty good job of vocalizing why this column was so disgusting.

Now, I will try to add something of my own.

Parker’s case for Obama being “female” is as follows: he has a testosterone shortage, he “displays many tropes of femaleness,” and that he is like all women, who “tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.” She also adds that Obama is “is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan,” and that his speech on the oil spill “featured 13 percent passive-voice constructions.”

I think the reason I didn’t write about this before was just because I didn’t know where to start. I mean: there are so many problems! Kathleen Parker would say that this is because I am a female who is passive and meek and likes to “talk it out” rather than issue a straight-up takedown of someone. So now I will try to list just all the big glaring things she is WRONG about:

1) The overarching message that being a president is a role reserved only for men

2) The notion that there are a strict set of traits that are inherently female and inherently male

3) The idea that stepping out of traditional gender roles always has negative consequences

4) That Kathleen Parker is given a platform from which to broadcast her opinions, something few people are given, and she chooses to use it perpetuating 1950s-style gender stereotypes that we should have done away with by 2010

5) The minor aside that this is a poorly written piece filled with bad metaphors, hollow statements, very little research, broad generalizations, and almost no facts.

7) Her admission of the fact that, yes, women are often faced with sexism when running for political office, and her attitude that women should just man up if they want to make it in politics. Perhaps the only decent sentence in this entire piece is as follows:

Women, inarguably, still are punished for failing to adhere to gender norms by acting “too masculine” or “not feminine enough.”

But Parker then proceeds to ruin it by talking about how the only way to be a good politician is to be more “masculine.”

What mystifies me is that presumably serious publications such as the Washington Post give people like Kathleen Parker a platform from which to voice this kind of terrible crap, and then PEOPLE BELIEVE THEM. I have already seen plenty of white dudes read this and chuckle and scratch their heads as if actually considering it seriously. It is because of stuff like this that women continue to face struggles in being elected to office: at every possible opportunity, people like Kathleen Parker question whether women can make effective political leaders and posit that political leadership requires inherently “masculine” traits. She makes broad generalizations about how all women act, and then claims that these “feminine” traits are negative and are not suited for politics. Those damn females! They talk so much and they use passive voice constructions! Clearly this is why they cannot be president!

As an aside, Parker was recently offered a gig co-hosting a new CNN show with none other than the disgraced criminal and former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. This is where I shake my head and wonder what is going on with our media.

So Mel Gibson ranting about The Jews and calling a cop “sugar tits” was pretty high on the “wow what an asshole” scale. But he definitely just topped himself here by calling his estranged partner, Oksana Grigorieva, [trigger warning!] a series of misogynist names (the usual – whore, cunt, etc etc) and then screaming “You look like a fucking pig in heat and if you get raped by a pack of niggers it will be your fault.”

Very nice, Mel Gibson. You are definitely not a bigot or a misogynist of any kind.

He also tells her that he’s going to “burn the fucking house down … but you will blow me first.” Which is maybe kind of a rape threat?

Oksana says she recorded the conversations because she was afraid for her safety. She previously accused Mel of punching her in the face twice, giving her a concussion and breaking her teeth; he said that they simply had a loud argument. Which is fair. I mean, who among us doesn’t define “loud argument” as “punching someone in the face”?

I’m going to go ahead and say that Mel Gibson is both an asshole and a very scary human being. Not that this is surprising, at this point. But he probably should not be left with Oksana or his children unsupervised, and I hope all of Hollywood has the sense not to cast him or work with him on any more projects. But of course, if his career finally implodes after this, it will surely be the fault of the Jews.