Blatant Misogyny: A Hot Trend for 2008?

Argh. Really, is there a reason for this year's rampant outbreak of misogynistic vitriol? First the LA Times tells us that rape doesn't happen to nice girls (wow, that one still makes me mad), then the Washington Post asserts that we're all too stupid and frivolous to participate in the democratic process. Now Mark of Denialism introduces us to two new woman-hating turds, Vox Day of the World Net Daily and Mike Adams of Townhall. Both have recently published hysterical rants against those nefarious women brazen enough to openly exercise their intellect. According to Day, "a genuine threat to...science today...comes from the same force that is the primary threat to the survival of Western civilization: female equalitarianism." Adams reports that:

when they aren't attending masturbation workshops and orgasm awareness festivals on unc campuses, our feminist "scholars" are usually thinking of new words to ban in order to make womyn feel more comfortable in the workplace.

Charming blokes, these two. Mark H. puts it susinctly when he writes, "Women make great scientists, and I'm tired of these creationist idiots lecturing us on what is needed in the field they don't even believe in."

Really, though, what is at the bottom of all this hate speech? Could it be that having a serious female contender for the presidency is sparking fears that this might be the beginning of the end for white male privilege? Is misogyny just an easy way to establish one's conservative street cred?

Movie Review: Persepolis

The Academy made a mistake when it awarded the "Best Animated Film" Oscar to Ratatouille. While Pixar's film about a Parisian rat with an enthusiasm for fine dining is charming enough, it is simply a children's cartoon. The film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, however, is art.


Persepolis is author and animator Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical account of her girlhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, of her exile to Austria, and of her return to an Iran which proves to be as foreign to her as the European society she has just left. Yet, those who have read the books and already know the story well will not be bored. There is new material in the movie adaptation, and the story and images borrowed from the books are so beautifully rendered on film that they strike with a new impact. The narrative is funny, compelling, and occasionally devastating - I sobbed as I watched young Marjane turning back for a last glance of her parents before boarding the plane to Austria. Most importantly, the narrative is humanizing, as we identify so intimately with a girl whose society seems so different from our own.

The one criticism of Persepolis I've heard was voiced by my friend Stephan, who complained that too much time was dedicated to Marjane's time in Austria- where she falls in love, smokes her first joint, and has her heart broken. "Everyone I know has done those things," he complained, "so more time should have been spent describing life in Iran, which is more interesting." As much as I respect Stephan, his criticism is misplaced. It is by focusing on the details that have actually been important in Satrapi's life, things with which most human beings can relate, rather than ignoring all elements that will fail to strike a western audience as exotic, that Persepolis avoids falling back on the voyeuristic appeal of orientalism and manages to create a sense of what life is like for everyday people living in a society in crisis.


Persepolis is one of those rare films that expands its audience's humanity. It is a film that will increase your knowledge of the world, and your compassion for the other beings in it. If Persepolis is showing in your town, you should see it. If not, watch the trailer read the books until the film comes to a DVD player near you.

Tomorrow is International Women's Day

I couldn't resist posting this beautiful photograph:


As the BBC explains, the image depicts "...a traditional Punjabi dance as part of celebrations in Delhi ahead of International Women's Day on Saturday."

How will you be celebrating International Women's Day? My plan is to attend a goodbye party for a friend who will be returning to Mexico after completing her post-doc at Emory, and then we will be attending an (ever-controversial) Atlanta Roller Derby bout. If I get any good pictures, I'll post them. If anyone else has some quality photographs appropriate to International Women's Day, send them along and we'll have a photo competition!

Iraqi Women Facing Crisis

The BBC reports that life has become significantly grimmer for Iraqi women since the start of the U.S. led invasion. A survey of 1,500 Iraqi women published by the group Women for Women International indicates that women now face a greater threat of violence and have fewer opportunities:

...63.9% or those questioned said violence against women was increasing. "When asked why, respondents most commonly said that there is less respect for women's rights than before, that women are thought of as possessions, and that the economy has gotten worse," [the study] said.

Some 76.2% said girls in their families were forbidden from attending school, while 68.3% described the availability of jobs for women as "bad".

More than 40% of did not think that the circumstances of women were being considered by those making decisions about Iraq's future.

As Women for Women International notes, fears that women's needs are not being considered are well-founded since, in its present form, the Iraqi constitution "... states that no law that contradicts Islam will be established. However, the interpretation of the text and laws at the local level can lead to further corrosion of women’s rights." You can learn more about the challenges facing Iraqi women and make a donation at the WFWI site.

Jump Around, Jump Around

The Center for Disease Control has published a study that directly contradicts the "girls just need to move around less" theory promoted by some gender-based education advocates, most recently in the New York Times. According to a recent report by the CDC:

Using public data, researchers tracked the reading and math skills of more than 5,000 students between kindergarten and fifth grade as shown on a series of standardized tests. They discovered that girls who received the highest levels of physical education, or 70 to 300 minutes a week, scored consistently higher on the tests than those who spent less than 35 minutes a week.

This flies in the face of claims like those made by David Chadwell in the Times:

For boys, he said: “You need to get them up and moving. That’s based on the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, that’s based upon volume and the use of volume with the boys.”...For the girls, Chadwell prescribes a focus on “the connections girls have (a) with the content, (b) with each other and (c) with the teacher.

Perhaps, just perhaps, both genders would do best to have movement and connections with the content, each other, and the teacher. Clearly, though, the "girls can (and should) just keep still, but boys should be allowed to squirm and move" theory is bunk.

UPDATE: To be fair, it is possible that the data from the CDC study is correlative, but not causative. Since "specials" like music, art, and gym are cut from students' schedules in under-preforming elementary schools, girls attending schools with the most time for gym and recess are most likely attending high-preforming schools. Still, though, I think that girls should be encouraged to get exercise during the day.

(Image via Victor Friedman Photography)

Obama to Evangelicals: You Aren't Reading Your Bibles

Apparently Obama already knows a thing or two about fighting Biblical verses with Biblical verses, asking questions like these:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

I wish he'd gone a bit farther in his defense of gay rights, but I'm glad that he's not being cowed.

Fighting Fire (and Brimstone) with Fire (and Brimstone)

Today's Christian Science Monitor tells the story of Wazhma Frogh, an advocate for women's rights in Afghanistan who has learned how to persuade her oppressors with arguments they'll understand - religious arguments. Walking past a mosque in the northeastern Afganistan, for example, Frogh once overheard the local mullah preaching to his congregation that she should be killed, since she was "meddling with their women with her plan to start a literacy program." Rather than fleeing the region or laying-low:

...she marched straight into the mosque. In a flowing black chador that left her face uncovered, she strode past the male worshipers and faced the mullah. Trembling inside, she challenged him.

"Mullah, give me five minutes," she recalls saying. "I will tell you something, and after that if you want to say I am an infidel and I am a threat to you, just kill me."

She then rattled off five Koranic verses – in both Arabic and the local Dari language – that extol the virtues of education, tolerance, and not harming others. She criticized local practices of allowing men to use Islam to justify beating their wives, betrothing young girls, and denying women an education.

The room was silent. All eyes were on Frogh and the mullah. Then the mullah rested his hand on her head.

"God bless you, my daughter," he said.

With that, Frogh won permission to start the literacy program that later helped women from Badakhshan Province participate in local government and run for the national assembly.

Of course, the above story shows her willingness to force others into publicly owning the consequences of the ideas they preach, as well as her theological knowledge. Yet, according to Frogh, the only way to convince religious men in power is through religious arguments. She knows she puts herself at risk through her boldness, but asserts, "...I may lose my life during this process, but if I am able to open a door for rights for one woman, then it is worth it."

If Frogh is right when she asserts her power lies in the ability to combat misogyny couched in religious terms with arguments for compassion and equality from the same source, then I should learn some Bible verses to defend women's rights from their religious attackers here. Anyone know any good ones?

Jokes and Cleavage

This month's Vanity Fair features an Annie Leibovitz shoot of some of today's top female comedians, like Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Tina Fey (shown above). The photographs are often sexy-silly, while the accompanying article explores, if somewhat superficially, some of the challenges that face women in comedy and the ways in which the playing field has changed for funny women over the last few decades. I guess Vanity Fair feels like it owes us, and it does, for having published that Christopher Hitchens tripe about women not being as funny as men.

Shameless Baby-Blogging

Anyone who has heard me threaten to boycott any political / science / feminist/ issue-based blog that randomly publishes pictures of the blogger's beloved cat can now call me as a hypocrite. Not that I'm going to make you look at a cat - I still don't have one and, quite frankly, don't really get the appeal in most cases. Yet, I will now forgive all issue-bloggers for their "cat I love" posting since I am here to post pictures of:

Ty! The newest - and best looking - member of our little community was born early Monday morning.

If I have any say, he'll be chewing on the edges of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble in no time. I wonder if there is a picture-book edition....

Congratulations Andrea and Keith!

WaPo Tries Some Spin

The Washington Post is publishing some letters which criticize, in very mild terms, Sunday's misogynistic piece "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?" Yet, they are trying to spin the piece as having been about "Barack Obama and the Female Vote." Now to the list of reasons WaPo editors should be fired, we can add that they can't identify the topic of a two-page article - even one which mentions Obama only in the first two paragraphs, but abuses women as being "stupid" in every sentence and ends with the very clear:

So I don't understand why more women don't relax... and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.... Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

Merely expressing displeasure is not going to get us far. Please let the WaPo know, when you write, that you expect some action on their part - oh, and that you'll never click on another of their ads or that you'd like to cancel your subscription.

UPDATE: No, the WaPo still hasn't fired the editors in charge of publishing this garbage, but it has published two articles bashing Allen's - to be found here and here. Don't think I'm appeased, WaPo. My complaint about linking to studies will likely fall on deaf ears, though, since it seem like the Washington Post's ombudsman just discovered the internet last month.

Language Log Linguist Defends Feminists' Honor

David Gelernter of Yale University claims that feminists have killed all that was beautiful in the English language, writing in The Weekly Standard:

Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers. But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state.

Gelernter, a distinguished member of Yale's computer science department, claims that feminists (in cahoots with the "Academic-Industrial Complex") are "style-smashers" and "language rapists."

Yet, Geoffrey K. Pullum of Language Log has come to feminists' defense. Pullum asks (and answers) the obvious question:

What, then, is the terrible thing that the style-smashers have done? The following is (and I stress this) a complete list of all the facts about English usage [Gelernter] cites:

• Some writers now use either he or she, or singular they, or purportedly sex-neutral she, instead of purportedly sex-neutral he, to refer back to generic or quantified human antecedents that are not specifically marked as masculine.
• Some people recommend the words chairperson, humankind, and firefighter over chairman, mankind, and fireman.
• Some try to avoid using the phrases great man when speaking of a great person, or using brotherhood when making reference to fellow-feeling between human beings.

That's it; we're done. That is the totality of the carnage to which he directs our attention, the sum of all his evidence that we have "allowed ideologues to wreck the English language".

Yet, Pullum is not content just to call-out the hysteria. No, indeed. Pullum knows his English Language History, and is well positioned to call BS. For example, he recognizes that Gelernter's claim that feminists are responsible for the singular they that supposedly mars the once beautiful language is hooey:

...ignorance of the history of English literature on this point is breathtaking. It is quite clear that he has no idea Shakespeare used they with singular antecedents (I discussed a couple of examples here).

Gelernter also specifically singles out Austen for praise: "The young Jane Austen is praised by her descendants for having written "pure simple English." He obviously is not aware that Jane Austen is famous for her high frequency of use of of singular-anteceded they (Henry Churchyard has a list of examples here).

Gelernter thinks singular they was invented by post-1970 feminist "ideologues", rather than a use of pronouns having a continuous history going back as far as a thousand years. One might think it remarkable that someone this ignorant of the history and structure of English would nonetheless presume to pontificate, without having checked anything.

What, someone out there is defending us from slanderous falsehoods using logic and facts? Well, it's about time! (Language Log, we love you!)

The Washington Post: Selling Misogyny

What should be the role of op-ed section of a major newspaper like the Washington Post? Should the writers of opinion articles be held to any journalistic standards, or might they publish claims like "...several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true" and that women are "...kind of dim" without any responsibility to substantiate such claims?

Washington Post editor John Pomfret claims that the article which contained the above quotations, published in yesterday's Outlook section, was "tongue-in-cheek." Yet, as Jessica at Feministing points out, it should be clear to any editors worth their salt that writer Charlotte Allen is anything but an honest broker, since "Any quick search of Allen's past writing shows just how seriously she takes her women-hate." Of course she takes it seriously, it pays her bills - thanks to editors like those who put her on the pages of the Washington Post. Past Allen quotations include:

Frankly, even as a woman, I miss the old sexist days, when stewardesses were stewardesses: pretty young things in cute mini-suits and little heels who oozed attention onto everyone -- because who knew? They might end up marrying one of the passengers...

and "Why does feminism have to mean the triumph of the ugly and the surly?"

Allen's article is thinly-veiled hate speech - asserting that women are genetically programed to be stupid, hysterical, shallow, and lazy. So how did this piece make it past the editorial board? Allen cites outdated (1998) statistics about women's driving records, and fails to link to the data she cites so that readers might review the basis for her claims about women's spatial awareness. She uses anecdotal evidence, cherry picks her examples, fails to distinguish correlation from causation, and the evidence that she presents does not support her thesis that women are "dim." To be more succinct, the article is a complete mess and Allen fails every standard to which a journalist should be held. This article should never have been published, even as a fluffy Outlook piece.

That the article is an example of woman-hate is obvious, but it is not Allen who I want punished - sexism is her bread and butter, but she is within her First Amendment rights. Yet, I believe that for the Washington Post to maintain its credibility as a serious publication which maintains journalistic standards in all its sections, a full retraction should be made and the editors responsible for allowing such a fallacious and insulting piece to be published should be fired. If you think that is asking too much, read the article again but replace the word "women" with "blacks" or "Jews." No other disenfranchised community in the United States would allow itself to be so abused, nor should we.

Please write a letter to the editor (letters@washpost.com) or send a complaint to the ombudsman (ombudsman@washpost.com) and tell the WaPo what you think - and don't forget to call for resignations. Please leave a line in the comments section too, letting us know you've contacted them and keeping us posted on any responses you get.

UPDATE: (For more on this, visit: Lawyers, Guns and Money, Broadsheet, Media Matters, Feministe, Feministing - tip of the hat for the ombudsman addy btw, Strollerderby, Jezebel, Shameless and Pandagon.)