Photo by John Oxton on Flickr

Did you ever say something like this to yourself about feminism: “I don’t really see what the problem is?”  I did.  I mean, that’s how I felt for most of my life, especially once I became an adult and got a job.  Because I was making pretty good money, and no one was harassing me in my day to day life.  I bought right in to the angry feminist narrative.  The one that paints a picture of feminists as angry, unnecessarily nit-picky people on the fringes of society who make mountains out of molehills.

More recently, I’ve reassessed the facts, because I learned something fantastically important: culture shapes people’s perspective in ways that we don’t pay any attention to.  And boy I really learned it.  I didn’t just hear it.  Many people hear it during their undergraduate liberal arts education without learning it.  But nosiree, I finally began to truly understand it and incorporate it into my worldview.  Let me be clear about what I mean, here.  We think of certain things as “just the way it is,” when in fact there is no such way.  The way things are is a choice, albeit an unconscious choice for many people.  Many factors go into the way things are, but there is nothing inherent or irrevocable about it.

This simple little fact is so controversial that people fight wars over it, and spend a lot of time denying it in many ways.  Then again, some people realize it well before I did in their life path.  Many people that are reading this blog right now already know it and are wondering why I’m prattling on about it!  I know this because blog readers are, on average, more educated than the rest of the population.  Sociology students, for example, take this idea for granted.  Anyone who’s ever studied feminism seriously knows it forward and backward.

Nowadays, when I think of feminists, I understand the anger and I do not think it’s unfounded or even exaggerated.  And I count myself as one, though I’m still trying to sort out the boundaries of my views.  This is a result, as I’ve explained, in a shift in my perspective that is due in large part to my becoming more educated in a particular way.  Now I can look at my life differently.  For example, I was making good money when I worked in technology.  But every single man I worked with made a little more.  I didn’t feel harassed on a day to day basis, but I certainly had experiences where male coworkers sat around talking about their female conquests, other female employees, and generally behaving in that casually demeaning way that many women accept as being “just the way it is.”

I’m thinking about all this today because I’ve just read the following statistic in an article:

Of the women veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have walked into a VA facility, 15 percent have screened positive for military sexual trauma, The Associated Press has learned. That means they indicated that while on active duty they were sexually assaulted, raped, or were sexually harassed, receiving repeated unsolicited verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature. [MSNBC via Austinist]

I imagined myself reading that same article in say 2001, and I realized a few things.  First off, I may not have even read the article.  If I had, I would wonder why women would ever join the military and, for those deviant women who did, what did they expect?  Men are going to behave that way, because that’s just the way they are.  Now I realize: no, no, no.  I am embarrassed to have ever thought that way.  That was the lemming inside of me, wanting to follow the path of least resistence.  That is the part of me, the very human part of me, that could look at something so plainly wrong and make up excuses for it just so I wouldn’t rock the boat.

Well, I have gone from someone with a deeply ingrained desire to keep the boat as steady as possible to something like a teenager who thinks its funny to rock the boat as hard as possible, splashing and making everyone uncomfortable.  Are you with me?  Cool.  Here’s a little exercise to get you warmed up.  Think of all your favorite movies, and then apply the Bechdel Rule:

The rule is that movies should have 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.  [via Bitch PhD, where there's more analysis of the reasoning behind it]

That one really bent my brain and left me feeling pretty disappointed.

Michael found this the other day. I almost forgot about it! It’s awesome.

Nice.

[via Eliz.s]

[Via Cectic]

Me: I hear the new Batman movie is really good.

Husband: It’s got a dead guy in it.  Of course everyone’s saying it’s good.  The best superhero movie ever.  There’s a “dead guy shift” you have to take into account.

I still think it’s going to be really good, but he’s got a point there.

So, how do people feel about the first episode?  I’m all kinds of meh.  It had its moments, but I can only get so into something that’s good because of how bad it is.

Seeing Nathan Fillion in this role sort of reminded me of seeing him in Waitress (which I watched so that I could stare at Nathan Fillion, to be honest).  I’m looking for a good analogy.  Wait, I’ve got it.  It’s like meeting some extremely attractive, outgoing, mysterious dude at a bar one night (Firefly), and then later seeing him give a corporate presentation on the finer points of the brand of [boring corporate product] he’s trying to sell you (Waitress, Dr. Horrible).  Not only does it show a side of the guy that’s not very attractive, but it kind of sullies the memory of first meeting him.

Take me with a grain of salt, though.  For me, entertainment is not very entertaining if I can’t get into the characters.  Something that’s all campy and silly and funny feels to me like a distraction from the real point of story-telling.  So I am a huge stick-in-the-mud when it comes to a certain type of comedy.  Reno 911 is another good example of something that holds absolutely no appeal for me.

I did really enjoy Firefly, though, so I’m trying really hard to whithold judgment on this peice until it’s done.

I took a political com class last semester, and we ended up talking a lot about the  “tabloidification” of the news.  There is an interesting little effect going on here which speaks to Dave H’s point in the comments of my last rant about the media being powerless.  They’re not exactly powerless, it’s just that no matter how much we complain about the news, ratings (viewership) goes up as sensationalization (how’s that for a made up word) increases.  Though some Americans claim to want more reasoned, balance reporting, such behavior on the part of the networks reduces their popularity thus reducing their ability to sell ads*.

The most perfect example of this is CSPAN.  Who the hell watches CSPAN?  No one, that’s who.  Not even intellectuals who snub CNN/FOX etc.  And yet is exactly what the loudest complainers, myself among them, claim to want.

In reality I think what I want is just less news.  I don’t need to know the personal stories behind every tragedy that occurs the world over as it happens.  There is no value to that.  It’s not information, it’s entertainment disguised as news.  If I want to be made sad by my entertainment, I should go rent fricken Terms of Endearment.  If I want to understand the tragedies and injustices of the world, I should consult the latest data on crime, hunger, poverty and human rights violations.

I’m not saying  there’s no room for newscasters.  I’m just saying there’s no use for reporting the news twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

*I am citing research that I recall without looking it up because I do not have time to hunt for it right now.  There is ample talk of tabloidization in the com literature if you’re interested, though.

Not everyone has as well developed a sense of irony as you.  Probably not a good idea to fan those particular flames.

I am glad I saw this on the internet instead of in my mailbox.  I would have been really annoyed if we still subscribed.

by sigurdas on flickr

M and I have been volunteering at our local homeless shelter once a month for a while now.  Yesterday, one of our fellow volunteers brought his teenage son who had been arrested for drinking or some such innocuous crime and needed to do community service hours.  We were expecting the kid, but not his girlfriend who came along as well.  She also had community service hours to complete (for truancy).  These kids seemed pretty great in a number of ways and it was a pleasure to spend the afternoon serving dinner to the homeless with them.  Anyway, the following conversation took place between us, and it tickled me.  I will call the girl “E” and the boy “M.”  They are both 17.

E (to me): Why aren’t there any women [in the shelter]?

Me: Maybe because it would be dangerous to have men and women mixed in an overnight program like this.  I imagine it would be a whole new level of management.

M (to E): Yeah that’s why I didn’t want you going out there [from the kitchen area into the dining area where the homeless people were eating].

E (to M): I stayed in the kitchen because I wanted to, not because you wouldn’t let me.

Even though I think M meant it in a sweet and protective way, I very much enjoyed that her primary reaction was to assert her independence.

While I was busy not being productive at all and surfing the internet instead of getting sleep before my big morning buying a new iPhone (ahem), I found this great website about two of my favorite things: technology and writing.  The blog’s author pre-wrote “several dozen” posts before putting the it out there in order to make sure he could manage the blog with the rest of his committments.  I’m impressed!  He’s an anthro professor and a contributor over at Lifehack.  Anyway, check it.