Objectify This

Images of the “third world” have long been distorted before they are displayed to the American public.

Most people don’t even know that “third world” refers to the Cold War and should have died along with “red scare” and those bomb drills where schoolchildren were put under desks.

American ignorance abounds when it comes to Africa. It’s easier to find Americans who are unfamiliar with the Rwandan Genocide is than it is to find hay in your average haystack, yet it’s estimated that up to a million people, or 20% of the population was massacred in 100 days in 1994. It sounds pretty memorable.

Yet around here, in 1994, people were mostly talking about It’s not difficult to argue that the U.S. media is racist, by which I mean that our news has a geographic, cultural and racial bias. It is, however, difficult to understand what’s going on without acknowledging that bias. Read more »

The case Redding vs. Safford Unified School District #1 was decided by the Supreme Court this week.  The 8-to-1 decision was awarded to Savana Redding, who as 13-year old girl, was strip-searched by school officials when she was suspected of carrying prescription-strength ibuprofen to school, each of which would have had the strength of two advils. No drugs were found.

A recent New York Times article reports, “The case also revealed a gender fault line at the court. In an unusual interview about a pending case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told USA Today in the spring that judging from their Read more »

This photograph is by Francesca Woodman, a fantastic feminist photographer who killed herself in her twenties several decades ago. Her work is haunting, because she treats the female form and the objectifying gaze of the camera and manages to make it beautiful.

From Johannesburg, the story of Dumisani Rebombo, one rapist repenting, asking his victim’s forgiveness, and suggesting that we all learn to talk about our feelings and respect women.

From China, the story of Deng Yujiao, a woman who killed a government official when he tried to assault her, and then became a Read more »

According to Micheal Magee, “Poems are, like, total bullshit unless they are/squid or popsicles or
deer piled/on elk in the trunk of David Hasselhoff’s/cutlass Sierra.”

That’s pretty much the spirit of the first poetry movement of the 21st century: semi-dadist riffing with Googleian specifics.

It’s an interesting metaphor for modern consciousness– globalization has brought the information age, and with it zillions of esoteric facts and tabloid-worthy memes of celebrity gossip and pornographic images and pure bullshit. It’s all designed to compete for our attention– so why not poetry?

Poetry has so long been about “mak[ing] it new”, at least according to Ezra Pound. If this is true, the flarf movement is a logical consequence of the reaction between the aftereffects of modernism and the short attention Read more »

IV. Inflexibility of Gender/Pay Relationship

Transgender pay differences reflect gender pay differences. Last October, Andrew Sullivan pointed to research that “found that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more. The study was just published in the Berkeley Electronic Press’ peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.”

What explains the pay difference between the transgender groups? Certainly, transgendered women face more kinds of discrimination than other women do. But why is there so much more financial loss around a male-to-female transition than around a female-to-male transition? I’d argue that it’s because a male-to- Read more »

So you’ve probably heard about Ghostnet, the mysterious online spying network. But have you considered the degree to which your online activity is monitored by big business?

I don’t just mean those ads on the side of your Gmail account that spontaneously advertise garden gnomes when you talk about your short hippie friend.

I mean when companies collect your medical information under the pretense of gauging your health and then lob you ads for medicine you may not need. . . because drug companies are paying them to do so.

That’s what’s up with the RealAge test. For the full story, check out the Read more »

Recently I was listening to this episode of This American Life (Act Two, to be precise) and realized that the American Muslim community is experiencing a frightening witch hunt.

In short, Masan Azbahi  was an Obama campaign liaison to Chicago’s Muslim community until he was accused of being a terrorist.

Why? Because he had once served on the board of an investment fund with Jamal Said, an imam who was later named, along with the rest Read more »

According to the New York Times,  a federal judge ruled yesterday that Plan B (levonorgestrel), will be made available over the counter to women who are seventeen or older.

The judge, Edward R. Korman, a Reagan-appointee, stated that there had been “political considerations, delays and implausible justifications” on the part of the F.D.A.

The NYT article mentions that “Susan F. Wood, a former F.D.A. director of women’s health who resigned in 2005 to protest the agency’s handling of Plan B, said Monday that the judge’s decision to send the drug back for F.D.A. reconsideration signaled hope of the agency’s ability to act independently under a new administration.

“There is a new chance to “restore the scientific integrity of the F.D.A.” said Read more »

Are women’s magazines bad for women?

It might seem like a stupid question. But when, as the New York Times reports, a University of Missouri study “found that looking at women’s magazines for 1-3 minutes had a negative impact on women’s self esteem. So imagine what happens if we’re bombarded by these images every day.”

This suggests that women (and probably men, too, although the data just indicate women) compare themselves to airbrushed images.

Its not just inference that leads me to believe that these harmful messages also affect men - the alarming op-ed also states, “According to a 2002 New York Times article about body-conscious athletes, boys as young as 10 are “bulking up with Read more »

Recently my girl Ashley pointed me to a post at Jack and Jill Politics. In my browsing there, I came upon yesterday’s post, “The Field Negro Smacks Down Shelby Steele’s Self-Hating BS.”

While the post makes important points about the natural alignment of the black power movement and liberal politics’ focus on the government’s commitment to equality, it fails to convince me that it really means equality for everyone.

Why? Because it ends the post like this: “Dr. Steele, stop lying. Stop being disingenuous with this discussion because you know damned well why the GOP will NEVER, EVER win with [People of Color], so quite trying to dress it up in academia because that only makes it look like a ‘ho at the Southern Cotillion trying to pass as a debutante at her coming out party when everyone knows that ‘ho has Read more »

III. The Myth of the Broken Glass Ceiling in the Sciences

In 2005, Larry Summers  suggested that women might not enter scientific fields as often as men because of “innate differences,” according to this article from the Boston Globe.

This infuriated the female scientific community, because scientific studies indicate that women don’t enter male-dominated fields because they have to be literally twice as qualified as a male counterpart to succeed.

The Wikipedia article on gender equality notes that “one study of credit in the sciences, published in Nature, looked at productivity (measured in terms of publications in scientific journals, how many times a person was a “lead author” of an article, and how often the articles were cited in scientific journals) and sex.”

The article continues, “These factors were then compared to how an actual scientific review panel measured Read more »

Are spicy things sexy?

Well, it’s hard to say, really. Not here in America Latina, por lo menos. There are separate words for hot (caliente) and spicy (picante) and while caliente has overt sexual overtones, picante generally does not. . . at least in the places where I’ve lived.

Then again, Colombia and Costa Rica are both places that are generally anathema to spicy foods, so maybe in other places lo picante is sexualized more. I have eaten “erotic” ceviche in Peru that was mindblowingly spicy, but it was also in a restaurant that catered to tourists.

Science comes down on the milder side, with the Colombians: capsaicin, the spicy chemical in chili peppers, is currently in testing against cancers, type 1 diabetes, and as a drug use deterrent. It’s also the active ingredient in pepper spray– Read more »

II. The Myth of  the Feminine Mystique

Conservative economists like Chapman argue that women generally have chosen to enter fields that pay less, but that’s another way of saying that we don’t regard female-dominated fields such as teaching, nursing, psychology, and social work as professional domains worthy of significant compensation.

These fields are often dismissed because they involve intangible, interpersonal skills. In our world, what cannot be quantified is suspect, as Chapman’s dismissive reading of the Association of American University Women’s recent report on gender in the workforce Read more »

The New York Times recently published an item about economic gender inequality that’s quite appalling.

The report states that “nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job.”

It continues, “Economists cite a few reasons: discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors, and part of the gap can be attributed to men having more years of experience and logging more hours.”

Check out the interactive graphic at the NYT webpage for a more specific breakdown of the gap by industry. If discrimination is occurring in “nearly every occupation,” why is there so little outcry? I’ll debunk some myths Read more »

United we lolcatz? Ah well.