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Susannah, thanks for sharing the article about the SXSW fem-blogging panel. When I read your post, I could think only of our former contributor Melinda Henneberger, who back during the early days of this blog, while commenting on a study comparing men with women on something or other, quoted Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. To wit: "Put on your big girl panties and deal with it." (Which is my way of saying I agree with you, 100 percent.)
I've often thought (jokingly) that "Putting on our big girl panties" should be the motto of this blog.
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On the occasion of a zillion geeks descending on Austin for SXSW, the Austin Chronicle considers the so-called "perils of being a female blogger." According to the article, while the blogosphere is rife with chicks everywhere you click, the "professional blogging sphere" raises the question: "Where are all the women?" From the ranks of the purportedly underrepresented, Mediabistro's Rebecca Fox and the Daily Beast's Rachel Sklar step forward to helm a SXSW panel: "Why Is Professional Blogging Bloodsport for Women?"
To wit: "For professional female bloggers, writing online can get painfully personal—and so can the criticism. Oversharing, sex-blogging, fameballs, Tumblettes, Jezebelism—why is it (still) so difficult to be a woman online?" Who's to blame for making lady bloggers online lives so miserable? The patriarchy and Christianity, of course! Or, as Fox puts it, "keeping your mouth shut has long been tantamount to being 'good,' and the virgin/whore complex is alive and well both online and off." In the end, they conclude, it's (gasp) "dangerous to be a female blogger."
Dangerous to blog if you have a vagina? Blogging while female a "bloodsport"? "There are endless examples of female bloggers coming under the knife for being bitches or media whores, while male bloggers' gender is either ignored or heralded," the Chronicle's Sofia Resnick writes. Really? If there was ever an equal opportunity attack forum, the Internet is it. Mostly upper-middle class, well-educated, by-and-large Caucasian women who seek to publish their words on the Web get what everyone else gets online: a free, uncensored platform with a roving pack of readers who have the right to say whatever they want as part of the "conversation." Get over yourselves, and get on with it, ladies.
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My dislike of Gwyneth Paltrow and her utterly inane, completely tone-deaf weekly lifestyle newsletter GOOP is well-documented, but I had to share this week's edition because it is the platonic ideal of a GOOP entry. In it, Gwynnie gives the masses DVD recommendations from five of her famous friends. It has all four elements of Gwyneth's signature brand of dim elitism: celebrity name checks, spelling errors, a perfunctory attempt to connect with the little people, and searing insight. Let me break it down:
Celebrity name checks: Usually Gwyneth mentions her celeb friends in passing (i.e., "Stella McCartney recommended this brand of quinoa ..." sort of thing), but this week's GOOP is filthy with celebrities. The recommendations are from Gwyneth's close buddies Steven Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Jon Favreau, James Gray, and Sophia (sic) Coppola.
Egregious misspellings: Did you get that? Sophia Coppola? They're such good friends that Gwyneth doesn't know her name is spelled Sofia.
Stars! Just like us!: "I’m not one of those film people who can tell you who the cinematographer was on On the Waterfront or who most influenced Truffaut. When it comes to knowledge of film history, I’m semi-rubbish. ... I can do the whole rap at the end of The Revenge of the Nerds and all of Jeff Spicoli's dialogue, but sadly, my expertise ends there." See, she's relatable for the average Jane!
So insightful: On Sophia (sic) Coppola: "I have never worked with her but I thought it would be cool to hear her picks, as she is not only incredibly talented, but a woman as well!" A human can have incredible talent and be a woman! Revelatory!
If she's going to go to the trouble of putting this thing out to the public, she should at least try to make it professional. What do you think XXers? Should I just let Gwyneth do her thing in peace?
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A version of Senate Bill 169, the Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act, was passed by the Georgia Senate today. As an Atlanta resident who had IVF to become pregnant and is currently sitting on six frozen embryos, struggling with what to do next, this struck particularly close to home. From what I’ve been able to piece together (and the language of the bill is incredibly vague), it seems legislators in Georgia want to give embryos the same rights as you and me. What does this mean for my frozen embies? What about stem-cell research? Could they force me to have six more children? Could my embryos take me to court? It gets fuzzy.
I suspect that all of this is backlash to the octomom case, which makes me steaming mad. She was, after all, single—not infertile—and there is a difference. It scares me to think that this one case of an irresponsible doctor and an irresponsible mom could turn me into a criminal.
If the bill had passed in its original form, I simply wouldn’t have my precious twin boys. If this was law, because I’m just a squeak under 40, they would have only been able to attempt to fertilize two eggs. Odds are not in your favor there—just because you attempt to fertilize an egg does not mean it will fertilize. In my experience, we retrieved 19 eggs. Only 13 of those fertilized. I’m not good at math, but that’s certainly far from 100 percent success. And there are more obstacles, too. We implanted two of those 13. Of the remaining 11, only six made it to freeze. This gave me such great hope because if my first two had not taken, we would have had another chance. We could not have afforded to do a fresh IVF cycle again, but a frozen cycle is much less expensive. (It requires no surgery and far fewer drugs.) Also, if only one of our embryos had stuck, this gave us hope for a sibling later on down the line. Under this bill, freezing an embryo might be illegal. Hope would be gone for people like me.
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Domestic violence being an atrocity, I have tried to ignore
the rather disgusting “Crihanna” tit for tat that’s competing for shelf space
beside Michelle Obama on newsstands across the country. But this new study out
from Boston University spun my head:
Nearly
half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star
Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her
boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.
Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal
part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.
The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission
across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local
health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown
accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence.
"I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by
it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start
Strong program.
Maybe. But I have to say I’m not that surprised: In college, I participated in a program called “Community
Health Educators” (the founders have scaled up their model via a national nonprofit
called “Peer Health Educators” that I strongly endorse). The idea is that, because
many local school districts don’t have a budget for health education, kids not too
much older than high school students would travel to local schools—in my case,
an urban setting with a mix of white, black and latino students—bearing
lectures and props and index cards for awkward questions. And that this would
fill the gap. I taught different individual subjects for two years, and in my
senior year I had the chance to participate in a pilot program where I’d see
the same kids every week, teaching the entire curriculum over the course of ten
weeks.
This preamble is by way of saying that I saw the way 17-19
year olds (in a “second chance” high school, where some of the kids had dropped
out or been through the juvenile justice system) absorbed the range of topics
we discussed, from contraception (the wooden penis was a hit), nutrition (“sugar
is not a food group”) to drug and alcohol abuse (one kid asked us, in the
throes of senior spring, if we had ever been drunk). They were on the whole
receptive, if restless and often skeptical of our preachy tone. Learning about
hallucinogens certainly livened up what could have been an afternoon of
trigonometry.
But, far and away, the subject that penetrated the least was our
unit on “relationships and abuse.” This dealt with date rape, molestation by
adults, domestic violence and bullying. It never sunk in. Worse, while the guys
were boorish in the extreme—one male student in one class said if a girl “snitched”
on him for sexual assault, “I’d kill her”—the
girls, I found, were even more likely to say that a male-on-female altercation
involving kicking, punching and hitting was a girl’s fault. (“Why’d she make
him mad?” etc.) Even kids who could rattle off the ins and outs of
contraception without shame (one girl in my class had a toddler already) regressed mightily when it
came to the issue of gender and violence. It was, honestly, chilling. What's that about?
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I've enjoyed Jon Stewart's skewering of Jim Cramer and CNBC. Up until last night, it had been dead on and hilarious. Last night, it was mostly just dead on. That said, I remain unconvinced that Jim Cramer is the guy, and CNBC the institution, that most needs public chastising at this particular juncture. Stewart himself probably agrees with that, but, nonetheless, here's Jim Cramer, a guy who literally wears a costume (those cuffs must have been cutting off his circulation), on the receiving end of the most unrelenting dressing-down we've had the satisfaction of witnessing. I'm sure Stewart vs. Cramer will be more entertaining than whatever painful courtroom proceedings are in store for Bernie Madoff, and, just by virtue of having taken place, will be more cathartic than cutthroat interrogations of, say, Alan Greenspan or Dick Fuld, but none of that changes the fact that Stewart's attack was basically a show trial, and a pretty meaningless show trial at that. (The Times compared it to a Senate hearing). When are some of the more serious culprits going to be forced, harassed, teased into explaining themselves? Or can we be sated with the sacrifice of a clown like Cramer?
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This morning, everyone is talking about Jon Stewart's smackdown of CNBC talking head Jim Cramer. Stewart has been appropriately critical of Cramer and CNBC of late for peddling bum advice to the little guy while lobbing softballs at visiting CEOs. Cramer tries to defend himself in the Daily Show clip below, but Crooks and Liars description of Cramer as a "wounded puppy" is pretty spot-on. If this clip inspires you to play a computer game involving Cramer's disembodied head, click here for The Big Money's answer to your prayers.
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Looks like we've got a new contender for what contributed most to the emancipation of Western women in the 20th century. The Vatican said it was the washing machine; Bonnie countered with the pill. According to a new study, it was more basic than either of those: running water. Emanuela Cardia, an economics professor at the University of Montreal, used census data to study the effect of modern appliances and modern plumbing on women's foray into the workplace in the 20th century. She found that, more than electricity or refrigeration, it was the spread of indoor plumbing that was tied to women entering clerical and sales jobs. Cardia points to previous studies that found that more advanced innovations like the washing machine addressed chores that already may have been the job of hired laborers so had less of a direct impact than running water on the amount of time the woman of the house spent on housework.
In explaining her methods, Cardia writes, "The simplest model of home production assumes that ... men always work and women have one unit of time which they split among market work, housework and leisure." It may be the simplest, but as Emily wrote yesterday, there are a lot of more complicated models being forged now, as laid-off men navigate their new role in the home. I'll bet some of them are feeling pretty liberated by the washing machine these days, too.
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Marjorie, I'm glad you came out against Michael Steele's dorky grasp at urban cred. Sprinkling "off the hook," "friggin' awesome," and "slum love" into his discourse and then prancing around acting like he's started the business of redeeming the Republican Party suggests an insultingly superficial, cynical view of how voters make their choices and why they've chosen Democrats of late—that Americans are no better than magpies, drawn to whatever's flashiest, and that Obama won because he acted cool. It's not just Steele who takes this view, either. It's a widespread idea throughout the GOP that Obama outcooled Republicans, and what the Republicans really need is to double their number of Facebook friends, get hip to Twitter, and start dressing in Baby Phat instead of Brooks Bros.
The afternoon Steele was elected GOP chairman, I stood at the back of the Capital Hilton ballroom with a cluster of young African-American Republicans there to support—unexpectedly—Katon Dawson, the RNC chair candidate notorious for formerly belonging to an all-white country club. This group of Katon junkies argued that yeah, electing the South Carolinian would trigger a brief period of bad PR, but they actually liked him because he was the candidate the least enamored with reanimating the GOP with a superficial makeover. Steele, on the other hand, came in for special derision: He talked the outreach (er, inclusion?) talk but didn't walk the walk. As Steele walked toward the podium to accept his party's nomination after the fifth ballot, one black Republican whispered to me he never could forgive Steele for shamelessly busing in homeless Philadelphians to campaign for him in black neighborhoods during his '06 Maryland Senate campaign.