(no subject)

[jfb]

Some links I've been thinking about this week, many of them from feministblogs.org:

Alley Rat: "Yesterday I had the eerie (and familiar) experience of being invisible."

Feministe, photoshopping: "What am I doing? I asked myself. With all of the writing Jill and I have done on beauty culture, here I was editing my photos before I released them to the world. I show the world my real face every day. Why was I so uptight about showing my face to my digital contacts?"

A popular science article this week described a neurological study on perception of vocal gender, indicating that "women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to, and process information from, than the voices of other men," mostly because we process women's voices with the parts of our brains that are concerned with melodies. A striking theory, but, it turns out, not what the study said at all. Here's what it said.

My old nemesis, the New York Times, published a piece on "girl crushes", apparently taking great pains to make clear that that feeling of breathless anticipation you get when you think about your special friend of the same sex isn't gay.

How beauty norms for women constrain male desire, from an atypical man's perspective, and a daughter's.

Ah, The Onion: First-Time Novelist Constantly Asking Wife What It's Like To Be A Woman. "According to Becky, Kitner asked, 'What type of food would a woman try to eat if she were trapped in a walk-in freezer? How about a piece of liver? Would that be it? If I were a woman, I think that would be just perfect. But I don't know. You tell me, Becky.'"

Sheerly Avni picks Ten Hollywood Movies That Get Women Right. I'm always happy when someone else likes Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, but Fight Club is an odd choice.

How do police know if they should shoot a suspected terrorist in the head? The signs are eerily like autism.

The Pirate vs. The Giant Squid!

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

I don't think you should blame the current crop of young feminists for my editorial choices. I passed up, for example, the fight to defeat the Violence Against Women Act; UNICEF's "state of emergency" for women and children in Afghanistan; and, of course, numerous stories about reproductive choice, most prominently the ongoing shift in the Supreme Court.

I chose some other topics, not because I think they're the most important issues of the day, but because to me they were some things that were interesting to think about this week. I suspect Kameron Hurley, who I linked to on the "girl crush" story, would say the same.

The real issue confronting feminists today, of course, is: Why isn't Jodie Foster in more movies? Since Panic Room, there's only been a bit part in a French movie. We should take to the streets.

[perci.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not blaming them for your editorial choices. It's not nearly that simple. It's that academic wanking is all too typical of large factions of feminists, and in teaching people to see signs of oppression at every turn without considering the considerable differences between academic exercise and life, it seems to me they've facilitated our arrival at a place where you can get some guy fired from his job for offering you a hanky.

I am not even making that up: I know someone who's got to go to a hearing because when a female student burst into tears, he patted her shoulder and offered a tissue. There were witnesses; there's not even any question that those were his exact and only actions. Rather, it's all about trying to hold him responsible for some twisted interpretation of those actions that can make him a sex-seeking, power-hungry bad guy.

I think this may be what we get for teaching so many women to analyze every object, every person, every situation, until they've rooted out the oppression we all know they contain: gender terrorism.

Pardon my sweeping version of my rant; I have to go to the gym or I'll end up like those chicks in the Dove ads and it won't be plausible to fantasize about Jodie anymore.