Dualism And You. As I finish writing my dissertation on gender and the body in Western European fairy tales, I’m reminded of why I’m doing this research in the first place: yeah, fairy tales are fun to study and all, but they’re also really important in Western culture.
Kids are exposed to fairy tales in the form of films, toys, coloring books, theme park experiences, various forms of literature, plays, art, and so on. The gender roles espoused in fairy tales are often quite restrictive, and these messages matter. Dualism And You: Part Two. In a recent post, Dualism And You, I discussed what dualism means and how it impacts contemporary Western ideas about sex and gender.
I’m sure nobody will be surprised that I have more to say on this topic, specifically about sexuality. In that last post, I touched on ideas like mind-body dualism (which is super-inflected by gender) and the slut/stud dichotomy, which describes women’s and men’s sexual behavior in diametrically opposed terms. Yet there’s another huge way in which dualism impacts our ideas about sexuality: the very notion of heterosexuality vs. homosexuality. Think about it. Mainstream Western culture operates on the assumption that everyone is straight. Whether it's online or offline dating, why is it such a taboo for women to say "No"? Is It The End of Courtship? Or The End Of Unequal, Unhealthy, And Unfulfilling Relationships? The New York Times wants us to believe the End of Courtship is a disaster for young people, especially women.
But new types of relationships—in which men and women are equal partners—inevitably require new ways of seeking them out, says Abigail Collazo. The bizarre plethora of articles that has been published lately regarding young, single “millennials” and our dating/sex lives is mind-boggling. The Atlantic (not surprisingly) tops it out I think with recent pieces such as “A Million First Dates,” “Forget Online Dating: Here’s Something That Might Really Hurt Monogamy,” and “The High Price of Being Single in America.”
Bloomberg presented us with “‘Intellectual Meat Market’ Makes Washington Long Odds for Single Women.” The Wall Street Journal recently published “Hacking the Hyperlinked Heart.” Marriage Will Never Set Us Free - Organizing Upgrade. In recent years, lots of progressive people have been celebrating marriage -- when various states have passed laws recognizing same-sex marriage, when courts have made decisions affirming the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, when politicians have spoken in favor of it.
NussbaumO. PEA Soup: Celebrating 125 years of Ethics at PEA Soup. When anger is all I have and why anger is my feminist stand. I thought I would write about the myth of choice.
Some Notes On Rape Culture. I happened to catch a tweet from Karnythia yesterday that turned my blood cold.
#rapeculture hurts everyone. New Bill Would Require Registry of Military Sex Offenders. Even when rapists in the military are convicted and sentenced, a loophole in the criminal justice system can leave them free to attack again.
(Shutterstock) Victims of sexual assault in the military have well-documented difficulty with getting justice after their attacks. But even when rapists in the military are convicted and sentenced, a loophole in the criminal justice system can leave them free to attack again. The Military Track, Register and Alert Communities Act of 2015 (Military TRAC Act), introduced in Congress on Thursday by Reps. One Woman's Quest to Fix the Process of Reporting Sexual Assault - Pacific Standard. Jessica Ladd sat alone in a room while campus security called the cops.
The Night That's Haunted Me for 20 Years. Seven years after a Goldschläger-wielding football player claimed my virginity, I wrote a law school term paper that ended with a plea: Victims of date rape should work together to alter their public perception and effect change.
Then I lived my life and waited for someone else to do it. Twelve years later, my call was answered when countless victims made their voices heard. I felt the weight of the Columbia student's mattress as she dragged it to class in protest, and Lena Dunham's rage when her partner removed his condom and flung it into a tree. I felt confusion and panic alongside the women who said they sipped a drink with Bill Cosby and awoke with no memory of what followed. Yet I also felt safe, shielded from their trauma by the distance between us, the comfortable gap between writer and reader, anchor and audience.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "Can you educate me? " But I didn't want to join the conversation or help him understand. Gradient Lair. Ignorance.
Bigotry. Hatred. Violence. These things shape the type of questions and comments that I receive in my Ask FM box on the topic of asexuality. To be clear, all sorts of abusive and violent questions and statements get posted there, including actual threats. However, the comments regarding asexuality really stood out to me because they seem so extra personal and especially violent. Below are screenshots of some examples of the questions/statements that came to my Ask FM box regarding me being asexual. The Geek Social Fallacies of Sex.
This is a guest post by Holly Pervocracy. Holly Pervocracy is a kinky, geeky feminist sexblogger. She writes essays on her experiences as a member of the BDSM and polyamory communities, editorials from a sex-positive feminist perspective, advice on sexuality and kink, and humorous critiques of sexism online and in the media. This post originally appeared at Holly Pervocracy’s blog. Note from the GF mods: links from this post may lead to sexually explicit writing or images. Rescripting sex. Life has scripts. Little socially-agreed plays that we enact rather than trying to figure out all our interactions from scratch every time. Many of them are very simple. There's the script you follow when you're checking out at a store ("have a nice day"), the script for talking to someone who's sad ("I'm so sorry"), and of course the script for talking to a dog ("WHOOZAGOODBOY").
And there's scripts for sex. The Rise of Ripley: Gender and ‘Alien,’ Part 1. Ellen Ripley was a man. No, not throughout the Alien series (though David Fincher and James Cameron tried to make her one) but in the original script of the film, then titled Star Beast. In the original script, the character that would later become one of the most enduring icons of female empowerment was gendered male, only to be changed later.
Beginning with a simple act of gender swapping, director Ridley Scott and his team converted a formulaic story of Space Age horror into a rich condemnation of preexisting gender politics, marking it as one of the most politically progressive films ever made. Freelance Feminist — I'm lonely. I have Asperger's. I could never have been Elliot Rodger. Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements. Bomb Threats, Rap Lyrics, and Teen Chatrooms: When Is Online Speech a 'True Threat'? In the age of GamerGate, targeted online abuse of women of color, and increased attempts by the conservative right to weaponize the First Amendment to their advantage, the Elonis case currently before the Supreme Court perfectly captures the limits of our legal system.
Namely, we must adapt the law to our rapidly changing digital communications landscape while avoiding the criminalization of speech or privileging some speakers over others. 'Fat as a Feminist Issue: A History'