You Go Girlfriends

The Times Herald-Record today is reporting a sweep for banned backpacks at Tri-Valley High School in Sullivan County last week has caused protest from parents and the student body.

According to the Record, the security guard conducting the sweep was asking female students with purses “Do you have your period?”

Students are only allowed to carry backpacks or purses if they are having their menstrual period.

In response, the Record says: “Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.”

The best part of this form of protest is that it sends another message: stop making young women ashamed of menstruating! I’m so tired of the planning that has to go into a friggin bathroom trip if I’ve got my period. Once you haul your backpack/briefcase/purse to the bathroom, everyone knows you’ve got it. But both they and you have to pretend you don’t, and that’s why you can’t just take a tampon/pad out of your bag and walk through the halls with it. It’s such a stupid, Victorian taboo. And corporations are hard at work enforcing it, or rather, trying to get rid of menstruation altogether.

Of course, regardless of whether the question is embarrassing the women at this high school, it is sexual discrimination. It’s not as if they’re asking boys, “Are you wearing jeans with large pockets because you’re expecting to have a seminal discharge today?” That and the boys aren’t permitted to carry purses, of course. And finally, how the hell does a woman saying she’s got her period verify in any way that she is not carrying a handgun in her Louis Vuitton? Real smart, Sullivan County.

Anyway, have a happy period!

Study Confirms Living In Sin Means Fairer Housework Distribution

Not-so-new news, but I’ve failed to mention it earlier: this 27 August 2007 press release from George Mason University brings to attention a study which confirms the sad truth: married men do less housework than live-in boyfriends.

The study, published in the Journal of Family Issues, looked at over 17,000 people in 28 countries.

The issue at hand isn’t as simple as married men just not doing the work. The problem, this study suggests, is that the institution of marriage changes division of labor. Even if an egalitarian viewpoint is present in a married relationship, those men still reported doing less housework than their wives.

The study of more than 17,000 people in 28 countries found that married men report doing less housework than men who are live-in boyfriends.

According to Davis, the key finding of the study is that it suggests the institution of marriage changes the division of labor. Couples with an egalitarian view on gender—seeing men and women as equal—are more likely to divide the household chores equally. However, in married relationships, even if an egalitarian viewpoint is present, men still report doing less housework than their wives. According to Shannon Davis, one of the co-authors, “Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples—even couples who see men and women as equal.”

The research does leave room for hope, though: the study did not follow cohabitating couples to see if the distribution of housework changed from before to after marriage. It may be that those who are most concerned with traditional ideas of gender may voluntarily choose to forgo marriage due to its role in prescribing roles and duties to the sexes (particularly in modern times).

An Open Letter to the Leerers and Cat-Callers of NYC (And Elsewhere)…

Dear ::ahem:: “Sirs”,

Last Thursday, I was not, as they say, “asking for it” in anyway. That is to say, I was not wearing:

• a tube top
• a tank top
• anything showing an inch of my “breast-eges”
• short shorts
• hot shorts
• shorts with words on the buttocks
• low-ride anything with my thong hanging out
• low ride anything with my absence-of-underwear hanging out
• high-hemlined anything with my panties showing
• high-hemlined anything with my “va-jay-jay” showing
• a shirt that bared my shoulders
• a shirt that bared my elbows or wrists
• a bottom with any skin above the ankle, nay, even up to and including the ankle, showing

To put it simply, unless my wearing a suit with pants that flatter me and a button-down shirt underneath that doesn’t have a button at the collar (yet nonetheless showed almost no skin past my collar bone) is “asking for it”, I strongly believe that I safely skirted this categorization.

However, this did not seem to stop you.

No Nails Were Harmed in the Typing of This Post

Sorry to pull out this bit of very old news to blog about, especially since it is once again from the New York Times (I really need to get a subscription to the Post), but y’ know what? It’s still bothering me. A lot.

I’m a woman who works in and knows mucho about technology. And lately, there are more and more of us invading. We don’t necessarily walk around covered in gadgets (unless the cell phone, the laptop, the camera, and the mp3 player count), but we know a lot about them and we don’t need a manual to use them. So when someone writes an article about how spiffy it is that companies are dumbing down electronics for women, it tends to rub us the wrong way.

The article does make one good point: “Women are busier than men.” This is a sad cultural reflection of the fact that the feminist revolution didn’t rid us of our child-growing and house-cleaning duties. But it’s the truth, and it’s why mom isn’t playing with the new scanner. Unless you make a point of it (and goodness knows that society has discouraged that one), you don’t have time to know your tech specs.

That being said, the solution is to change the situation and shake off the “gadgety girl” taboo, not make electronics that reinforce the stereotypical “computer guy.” But that’s exactly the “revolution” that this article is celebrating:

New York Times: “The Myth, the Math, the Sex”

This blog has been sitting patiently empty for a while now, and I think it’s high time we got this party (or “par-tay”) started here (add “aight?” for snarkiness and irritating suburban attempt at “street cred”). On to the bitching!

So yesterday, with nothing better to do during the empty moments of my work day, I was reading the New York Times online. I saw the title of this article – and probably like many a person before me – said to myself, “Ooh, baby. SEX!” and clicked to see more.

I began to read:

---

Ideas & Trends: The Myth, the Math, the Sex
By GINA KOLATA
Published: August 12, 2007

EVERYONE knows men are promiscuous by nature. It’s part of the genetic strategy that evolved to help men spread their genes far and wide. The strategy is different for a woman, who has to go through so much just to have a baby and then nurture it. She is genetically programmed to want just one man who will stick with her and help raise their children.

---

It was at this point that my angry feminist rage started to build. Once again, I felt I was reading a justification for essentialist sexual politics. However, as I, in my true angry feminist form, feed upon my own rage as fuel and continued to read.Turns out, the article was something I had been waiting for: a piece written in a nationally-distributed, reputable publication, which disputed the ridiculous notion that men somehow just need/want sex from way more partners because nothing says “I’m always horny! Time to spread some seed!” like having chromosome #46 be an amputee.

It seems that mathematical logic disproves that this disparity could actually be accurate, because, well… those female sexual partners have to come from somewhere. It also appears that this fact is not disputed by sex researchers who put out this information. They haven’t figured out a definitive answer for why the difference exists, but it seems to be that while there might be a slight difference, the numbers are exaggerated due to cultural reasons: men are expected to have more sex to basically prove virility, while women are supposed to be chaste and shun the “hoochie-mama” image. Additionally, it was suggested in the article that these surveys may serve as self-fulfilling prophecies, because without disclaimers to state that the data might be flawed, they may serve to perpetuate these ideas about sexuality and gender.

My response to all this?

“What took you guys so long?”