Look at it this way. Suppose you have a young daughter, or niece, or friend’s daughter whom you’re close to. Suppose you’re at a gathering with her and a bunch of people. Suppose she just won a math prize, or a scholarship, or a literary prize. Suppose she’s bubbling over with excitement about her future educational plans, and one of the guests tells her, “You’re so pretty – you should go into modeling!”

Would you find that insulting? I certainly would. Why? Well first of all it’s a diversion from what she’s talking about and planning – but it’s more than that. Why?

But maybe you wouldn’t find it insulting. Maybe you would suggest it yourself. If so, why?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

ProPublica reports on a terrifying prosecution in Mississippi.

Rennie Gibbs’s daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant’s most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

But within days of Samiya’s delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya’s blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by “cocaine toxicity.”

In early 2007, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Gibbs, a 16-year-old black teen, for “depraved heart murder” — defined under Mississippi law as an act “eminently dangerous to others…regardless of human life.” By smoking crack during her pregnancy, the indictment said, Gibbs had “unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously” caused the death of her baby. The maximum sentence: life in prison.

Seven years and much legal wrangling later, Gibbs could finally go on trial this spring — part of a wave of “fetal harm” cases across the country in recent years that pit the rights of the mother against what lawmakers, health care workers, prosecutors, judges, jurors, and others view as the rights of the unborn child.

Sometimes the level of hatred for women just scares me into silence.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Yes but does gender stereotyping actually matter? Isn’t it just some trivial thing that floats past like dandelion fluff but doesn’t actually do anything? A couple of researchers decided to ask the question.

A duo of researchers at Oregon State University hypothesized that playing with sexualized dolls not only hurts self-esteem, it influences the way young girls think about their adult lives.

Past research in the U.K. has shown that nearly a third of female teenagers want to be models, while only 4 percent wanted to be engineers. Adolescent girls, it seems, are drawn to careers based on appearance, not knowledge.

That’s a pretty shocking finding, if it’s true. Models? Nearly a third? One of the most brainless and passive lines of “work” it’s possible to think of, and also one of the most useless…and that’s a big career goal. Ugh.

For the study, published in the journal Sex Roles, 37 girls between the ages of 4 and 7 were randomly assigned to play with one of three dolls: a typical Barbie doll wearing a fancy party dress; a “career” Barbie, decked in her career-ready lab coat, stethoscope, and “low-heeled shoes” (look out world!); or a Mrs. Potato Head doll, who comes adorned with chunky high heels and hot-pink purse, but otherwise has the countenance of a tuber, like her husband.

…

The children played with their respective toys for five minutes. Then they were presented with photos of 11 male- and female-dominated professions, so appointed according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The female dominated occupations were teacher, librarian, day care worker, flight attendant, and nurse. The male dominated occupations included construction worker, firefighter, pilot, doctor, and police officer. The neutral occupation was a server in a restaurant.

The girls were then asked, “Could you do this job when you grow up?” and “Could a boy do this job when he grows up?”

Depressingly, all of the girls thought a boy would more likely be able to do more of both the male- and female jobs…

…but the potato head girls thought they could do more of both kinds of jobs than the girls who played with either kind of Barbie.

It’s a small study and a small effect but WHAT ARE WE DOING TO GIRLS AROUND HERE? In a decade or two will all women actually resemble the Martian-world Real Housewives?

Women have been shown to perform worse on math tests when they wear swimsuits rather than sweaters. Barbie, then, might act like a perpetual swimsuit for the brain.

“Barbie may be one way that ideas about a girls’ place in the world is communicated to the girl,” Sherman said.

Ya think?

There are other things too; Barbie dolls aren’t the only cultural artifact girls ever see or play with…but there is a hell of a lot of this gender-policing pink bubble-gum girls-are-airheads stuff around, one way and another. It’s not good enough.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Tories look out for the little people, don’t let anyone tell you different.

Grant Shapps MP @grantshapps

#budget2014 cuts bingo & beer tax helping hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy. RT to spread the word pic.twitter.com/5vbL7RDAg5

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, eh?

Update: This makes a nice commentary. H/t Maureen.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s conventional wisdom. It’s common sense. It’s what everyone knows. It’s for sure. It’s obvious. It’s dangerous for women to walk around alone, especially after dark or especially in places like parks where there aren’t a lot of people around. Imagine how dangerous it is to go into a park where there aren’t a lot of people around after dark!

It’s common sense, and it’s bullshit.

I’ve been treating it like bullshit my whole life, and I’ve been right to do so.

Think about it. Do rapists and thieves hang around in parks hoping someone will fall into their trap? Are parks after dark crawling with hopeful rapists and thieves, wasting their time while all the victims stay away?

Of course they’re not.

Beware of conventional wisdom. Beware of what you think you know if you’ve never for a second actually thought about it. Check your bromides.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Even Time – never a radical, lefty, groundbreaking, nonconformist magazine – gets it that words do matter, because they say things and people pick up the things and believe them.

So, in an attempt to save you — writers, speakers, humans, journalists — from falling into the gender bias trap unintentionally, we’ve put together this handy guide:

Don’t Call Girls Bossy. Or Grown Women Aggressive.

Seriously, don’t do it. And while you’re at it, don’t call them pushy, angry, brusque, ballbusters, bitchy, careerist, cold, calculating — you get the point. Also: shrill and strident, both of which imply high-pitched and screechy women a la your mother, finger pointed, scolding you to clean your room. Bossy is the subject of the new Sandberg campaign, but it’s something linguists have written about for decades. The reality is that these words are rooted in stereotype, and they are only applied to women. Think about it: girls are bossy, boys have “leadership qualities.” Women are deemed aggressive, while men are simply decisive (or just, um, bosses). From Ruth Bader Ginsburg (called “a bitch” by her law school classmates) to the “ball-busting” Hillary Clinton, historians will tell you: women in power have long been punished for exhibiting qualities of assertiveness, because it veers from the “feminine” mold. And yet, isn’t it precisely those assertive qualities that will help women get ahead?

And aren’t they just a necessary part of many lines of work? Yes, they are, so if women are bullied for demonstrating them, that’s an obstacle that shouldn’t be there. It’s dancing backward in high heels with a pitcher of water on your head.

Please Avoid the ‘Crazy Woman’ Trope. And While We’re At It: She’s Not ‘Moody,’ ‘Hysterical,’ or ‘Emotional’ Either.

Female hysteria was once the catch-all diagnosis for a woman with problems, and it didn’t disappear entirely from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders until 1980. But the trope of the crazy, emotional, moody, hysterical, PMS-ing, crazy woman — or worse, the crazy, emotional, hysterical romantic stalker — remains in full force. Crazy is the catch-all putdown for any woman you don’t like/makes you uncomfortable/doesn’t fit the mold. (Or as Tina Fey said in her book Bossypants, “the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her any more.”) The problem with being a woman is that it’s impossible to avoid this label. So what even is crazy? A woman who expresses opinions? A woman who speaks too loud, or out of turn? Am I crazy if I yell? Am I crazy if I like a guy? Am I crazy if I act like a leader? Whatever it is, it usually doesn’t refer to any kind of real life mental illness. So keep the crazy label in check.

Except when singing the Patsy Cline song.

Leave Looks Out Of It.

That means Hillary Clinton’s cleavage, her cankles, her haircuts, pants suits, or the color of her blouse — all irrelevant to whether she’s going to make a good president! I also don’t need to know about Huma Abedin’s “rich, glowing hair,” Elena Kagan’s “drab D.C. clothes” or that Janet Yellin wore the same outfit twice (she’s the motherfucking head of the Fed). Here’s what the Washington Post’s internal stylebook says about references to personal appearance in print: that they “should generally be omitted unless clearly relevant to the story.” In case that wasn’t clear, a few specifics. TV hosts: Probably a bad idea to comment on how hot a woman is on air. Interviewers: Let’s avoid asking badass ladies in various fields about their looks, diets or favorite fashion designers. (And for more on this topic, check out Lindy West’s great piece over at Jezebel on how to write about female politicians.)

Ok, I’ll do that. Lindy West is going to be at Women in Secularism 3.

Others? Catfight. Shut up about catfights. Skip the stupid “can she have it all” trope.

When in doubt, read this column, from the public editor of the New York Times, published last month amid outrage over a magazine cover titled, “Can Wendy Davis Have It All?” “Despite its well-intentioned efforts,” the Times ombudsman wrote, “this piece managed to trip over a double standard with its detailed examination of Ms. Davis’s biography, including her role in raising her two daughters.” And while we’re at it, let’s stop asking how women manage to “do it all.” Tina Fey declared this “the rudest question you can ask a woman.” Because the answer is simple. She’s doing it the same way a dude would, except that he doesn’t have to answer questions about it.

Well actually no, she’s usually not, because she’s doing both the job and the bulk of the domestic duties. While feeling guilty. Backward and in high heels.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And then, RAINN has

Avoiding Dangerous Situations

which is kind of them, because otherwise women would just keep seeking out dangerous situations, because women are so stupid that way.

• Be aware of your surroundings. Knowing where you are and who is around you may help you to find a way to get out of a bad situation.
• Try to avoid isolated areas. It is more difficult to get help if no one is around.
• Walk with purpose. Even if you don’t know where you are going, act like you do.
• Trust your instincts. If a situation or location feels unsafe or uncomfortable, it probably isn’t the best place to be.
• Try not to load yourself down with packages or bags as this can make you appear more vulnerable.
• Make sure your cell phone is with you and charged and that you have cab money.
• Don’t allow yourself to be isolated with someone you don’t trust or someone you don’t know.
• Avoid putting music headphones in both ears so that you can be more aware of your surroundings, especially if you are walking alone.

Do you notice something about all that? Because I do.

It’s basically telling women not to go outside like normal people. It’s telling them to act and feel like a fat juicy sheep strolling around in wolf country.

Excuse me, I like to go outside for walks, and I like to do it freely and without any obsessive worried planning and listchecking and rule-following and behavior-eliminating. I bet other women do too. I don’t want to “walk with purpose” all the time; I like to wander and gaze and be lost in my thoughts. I load myself down with packages and bags all the time, because I don’t have a car.

That list just boils down to telling women to stay inside, or if they must go out, act like a Jew in 1943 Warsaw nipping out for a package of cigarettes.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ah the ever-popular response of busy school administrations to a bullying problem – they tell the person being bullied to stop doing whatever it is the bullies think is bad.

There’s a fundamental mistake being made here. The mistake is taking advice on what’s “bad” from people who think bullying is permissible and suitable.

In this case it’s a nine-year-old boy who wore a “My Little Pony” backpack to school.

Grayson Bruce said other students picked on him and bullied him because the backpack was “girly.” His mother, Noreen Bruce, said her son was punched, pushed down and called names over the fuzzy blue pony bag with ears.

“They’re taking it a little too far with you know, punching me and pushing me down — calling me horrible names. Stuff that really shouldn’t happen,” Grayson  said.

Bruce said Buncombe County Schools officials told her son to leave the backpack at home to “immediately address a situation that had created a disruption in the classroom.”

Nope. Nope nope nope. The thing to do there is to tell the children doing the punching and pushing down and calling horrible names to stop doing that, and enforce it. It’s not to punish Grayson Bruce, or to tell him he did something wrong. It’s not to let the children who did the bullying get their way while Grayson Bruce isn’t allowed to take his chosen backpack to school.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

David Salmanson has a beautiful takedown of Christina Hoff Sommers’s piece in Time bashing feminism and “Free to be You and Me.”

So let’s look at how Sommers misreads the context of Free To Be.  First there is the assertion that Free to Be’s main goal was to create gender-free children.  For evidence, she points to a dialogue between two babies wherein the boy wants to be a cocktail waitress and the girl a fireman.  Except she neglects to mention that the babies are voiced by Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas and the skit is clearly played for laughs.   (Watch it here if you don’t believe me).   She also targets Ladies First, which is not about destroying concepts femininity but about pulling your own weight and acting appropriate in a given context.  And again, played for laughs.  She somehow ignored Carol Channing’s tour de force takedown on housework.  These stories used comedy and exaggeration to challenge stereotypes – not advocate for a genderless world.  Let’s remember what school looked like in 1974. Around 1974, my gym teacher told me girls couldn’t be captains for choosing sides in gym (mom called the principal).  In 1974, most girls had extremely limited opportunities to play sports at all.  In 1971, less than 300,000 girls played sports and comprised less than 1% of varsity athletes.  In 2012-13 over 3 million girls played sports in high school and comprising about 40 percent of high school athletes.   That’s a pretty hefty increase. But hey, that’s just sports, right?  What about the real world?  In 1970, only 10 percent of doctors were women, now it’s a third.  In 1970, only 5 percent of lawyers were women, now it’s a third.  Women, weren’t in those professions in part because of sexism in admissions, but in part because people actively discouraged women from joining those fields.  That’s why we needed Free to Be You and Me.

But but but! Sissy boys! Bossy professional victim girls! Contrarian, maverick, American Enterprise Institute, chances to write hit-pieces in Time.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hmm. I’d seen some comments about finding a bible in the Harlem explosion, and I was going to say something erm challenging about it, but I avoided Fox and the Daily News and chose the CNN version, and…well given the story CNN tells, I really don’t feel like looking down my nose at it.

On the third day of a grueling recovery effort from the three-story pile of rubble, firefighters early Saturday pulled a large waterlogged Bible from the ashes and ruins of the Spanish Christian Church, which occupied the basement and first floor of one of the two destroyed buildings.

“One of our members found a Bible, the original book they tell me of the founders of the church,” Cassano said. “It was singed, but it meant an awful lot to the pastor because at least we have a remnant of the church. It showed the pastor they’ll be rebuilding. This church is resilient.”

When firefighters presented the Spanish-language Bible to the church’s 83-year-old pastor, the Rev. Thomas Perez, the pastor was overcome.

Perez, who has stood vigil with others at the blast site, was participating in a small prayer gathering with religious leaders and experienced chest pains, said the Rev. Vernon Williams, who attended the vigil.

Cassano said Perez was recovering at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“He was overwhelmed with emotion, for sure,” the fire commissioner said. “It’s a very sacred thing for him.”

After Perez was taken away by ambulance, Williams said, about two dozen people at the vigil prayed for him before carrying the Bible in a procession near the site.

“It was the altar Bible,” Williams said. “There was no sing[e]ing on the Bible at all. It was intact, with a little water damage.”

The small evangelical church and Bethel Gospel Assembly lost five members in the explosion.

The blast victims were identified as Carmen Tanco, 67; Alexis (Jordy) Salas, 22; Griselde Camacho, 44; Rosaura Hernandez, 21; Andreas Panagopoulos, 43; George Ameado, 44; and Rosaura Barrios, 44.

All right…I don’t get from that that oh it’s ok then, because the bible survived. I get more of a clutching at whatever there is.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

If you want to make yourself pissed off – and who doesn’t?? – you could do worse than checking on the Twitter account of Christina Hoff Sommers now and then. Here’s my crop from a quick scroll through just now:

Sexual McCarthyism in military is result of phony study.Sex assault genuine problem;but won’t be solved by fake data.

General Sinclair broke rules by having affair:Bad.But military pursued rape charge it knew not true:Horrifying. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/us/how-a-military-sexual-assault-case-foundered.html

Wow!Pentagon pursued sex assault case even though it knew accuser lying.Sexual McCarthyism no longer just on campus. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/us/judge-in-generals-assault-case-weighs-claim-that-prosecution-was-tainted.html

Wait a minute. I thought women were supposed to be the cooperative sex. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/03/hierarchical-differences/ …

Iraq just legalized spousal rape. American feminists organize to “Ban Bossy.”

Uh-oh! The ultimate male hegemon–Mitt Romney–regularly called “bossy” during campaign.

My advice to Sheryl Sandberg and others who find little word “bossy” threatening: Woman up!

Other male-specific putdowns–loser, creep, putz, bastard — and worse. Male achievement a complete mystery: So many mean words! #banbossy

RTing one Mark J Perry:

Do gender activists advocate perfect gender equality for: prison populations, motorcycle deaths, job-related deaths? http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/03/the-selective-concern-about-gender-imbalances-and-the-selective-application-of-the-goal-of-perfect-gender-parity/

That’s a good enough sample for now.

She used to be a philosopher. Some people should just never go near Twitter.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Remember that schoolteacher who bullied the Buddhist kid for not “correctly” answering the question she asked on a test:

“ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

when the “correct” answer was supposed to be “the Lord”? Remember that?

Well a judge has said that’s a no-no.

6th grade science teacher Rita Roark taught students that the Bible is “100 percent true.” She told them God created the Earth 6,000 years ago and called evolution a “stupid theory made up by stupid people who don’t want to believe in God.” What follows is a test question she gives to students.

“ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The answer Roark looked for was “The Lord.” But “C.C.,” a student in Roark’s class, couldn’t answer the question, nor would he have. That’s because C.C. is a Buddhist, not a Christian. Roark not only violated her student’s First Amendment rights by pushing specific religious beliefs on a classroom assignment, she also ridiculed her non-Christian student. She led her class in laughing at “C.C.” and called his Buddhist faith “stupid.” Roark also told “C.C.” that “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.”

Christian propaganda can be found all around school property. From pictures of Jesus, posters, Bible verses, and official prayers, Negreet High School clearly seeks to indoctrinate students and bully those who don’t practice the Christian faith. When parents confronted Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb about the issue, she told them to either change their faith to fit in with “the Bible Belt” or find a school where “there are more Asians.”

Or get out of God’s country or give up on getting an education or jump off a cliff. One of those, anyway we win and you lose.

District Judge Elizabeth Foote not only ruled against the school, she threw the book at them. In her ruling, Foote agreed that the school district clearly violated the constitutional rights of students by forcing Christian doctrine down their throats. She ordered the school to remove all of the propaganda from the premises. The ruling banned school officials from initiating prayers, using class work to promote religion, sponsoring a religious belief, or holding religious services at the school. Students are still permitted to pray in school and participate in religious clubs. But as the ruling states,

“The District and School Board are permanently enjoined from permitting School Officials at any school within the School District to promote their personal religious beliefs to students in class or during or in conjunction with a School Event… School Officials shall not denigrate any particular faith, or lack thereof, or single out any student for disfavor or criticism because of his or her particular faith or religious belief, or lack thereof.”

In other words they’ve been told to do what they should have been doing all along.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I don’t know what this is, but it’s making me laugh until I have to get up and walk around the room to regain my composure.

Lileks Institute: Knudsen’s, the Very Best.

Excuse me, I have to blow my nose again.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)