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Don't know where to put this, now I'm putting it here. Feminism vary classic imo.
Just finished Living Dolls - The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter, and highly recommend it.
The first part of the book deals with the sexism of popular, sexualised images of women in contemporary culture and features interviews with, amongst others, "glamour models", editors of "lads' magazines", former lap-dancers, young women who feel excluded from society for distancing themselves from these images. It makes a convincing case that the sexualised representation of women is harmful for gender equality. These are not necessarily controversial points - although some of them may be dismissed by sex-positive feminists - but Walter's journalistic approach makes for an emotionally engaging read.
The second part of the book deals with biological determinism. It's very well argued and feels extremely relevant - basically it debunks a lot of the legitimacy from biology/evolutionary psychology etc. that sustains popular sexist discourse in the media. Walter's approach is again journalistic. After documenting the way biological determinism works in popular media Walter looks up the sources and finds that there is no documentation that testosterone, oxytocin etc. contributes to stereotypical male/female behavior, and that research into male/female cognition has yet to find significant differences between the sexes - points that are supported through interviews with biologists, psychologists, linguists etc. While it may not come as a surprise that biological determinism is bullshit, Walter's book is full of great examples of exactly how these myths arise, how they're supported by popular media etc. Pretty handy to know the scientific fallacies in studies about female/male spatial cognition next time someone suggests that women can't read maps bcz that's just in the genes lulz.
Anyway, I'd like to reread and memorize a lot of the points - but instead I'll look up some of the interesting books recommended by Walter throughout Living Dolls: Brain Gender by Melissa Hines, The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron and Myths of Gender by Anne Fausto-Sterling.
― niels, Thursday, 22 January 2015 11:08 (nine years ago) link
nine months pass...
The only context to discuss anything from Margaret Wente is to understand that she in Canada's leading anti-science, anti-environment, populist troll.
― everything, Tuesday, 27 October 2015 17:57 (eight years ago) link
Wente's been caught plagiarising others so frequently that now she just repeats herself. Trots out a column lecturing us about hook-up culture etc every couple of months. Usually name-checks Gloria Steinmen then asks what went wrong with feminism, then explains why young people are so unhappy. We got this last when Trainwreck came out. This old lunatic needs to retire.
― everything, Tuesday, 27 October 2015 18:08 (eight years ago) link
i need to know what the nutcases are talking about. you know, keep your friends closer, enemies closer type of thing.
peggy is out of control, though. was wondering if what she was talking about was even a dialogue feminists were having these days, but she seems out of the loop.
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Wednesday, 28 October 2015 00:03 (eight years ago) link
Dumb article, but I have to admit I had a similar reaction at least to the opening of the NYMag piece in question -- wasted sex is more likely than not to be bad and perhaps an anecdote about it is not the best setup for an article about how gender power imbalance results in bad consensual sex.
― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, 28 October 2015 18:22 (eight years ago) link
seven months pass...
What is the origin of all these "No, Women Can't Have it All" pieces that pop up ad infinitum? Was there once a piece that said "Women Can Have it All?" The first time I remember this coming up at all was in the context of some mainstream news magazine cover asking "Can Women Have it All?" already kind of challenging the idea, and I want to say it was at least 15-18 years ago that I remember seeing that.
― a man a plan alive (man alive), Tuesday, 31 May 2016 20:06 (eight years ago) link