I've even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi.

"If I may get on the soapbox for a second, you know, there is nothing in the world so self-serving and cynical as sexism, and this is coming from a human being who is nothing if not self-serving and cynical, so I know what I'm talking about.

"Take the animal kingdom. The division of labor between male and female, the way it seems to me, is sometimes almost arbitrary. But I'm not a zoologist.

"In the early Suffragette movement, a group of hecklers at a rally were trying to shout down speakers who were attempting to make the radical assertion that women were as capable as men in most occupations; said hecklers apparently felt that women were simply too delicate for man's work. The great Sojourner Truth, a former slave, mounted the stage and pointed out to these men that in her youth she had worked from sunup to sundown performing the most backbreaking labor imaginable with nothing else to sustain her save a pot of gruel, a slab of hardtack and some cornbread, with nothing to look forward to (at least, thankfully, until the Civil War) save the fact that she might die someday, and she had done all this even with what the heckling gentlemen claimed was an inescapable defect in performing manual labor, the fact that she was a woman. No one had anything witty to reply to the assertions of Sojourner Truth.

"We knew at the end of World War II that women were as perfectly capable as men in the heavy machinery industries - they built our bombers, tanks, ships, and artillery. But when the men came home, back in the kitchen they went, and once again were fenced behind the comfortable delusion that such things were "a man's job" and women were too delicate for that sort of thing.

"The same thing here! Women clearly demonstrate computing and mathematical ability on a par with men, but once the computing occupation was taken over by machines, suddenly, somehow, mathematics was once again beyond the female ken. "Dizzy dames" didn't do math, they collected recipes or some such thing.

So despite the fact that knowing women are as capable as men in all these professions, still, these myths are perpetuated and these stereotypes reinforced because somebody felt it was somehow in the best interests of society to do so, and the gullible hoi-polloi - and a certain segment of the male gender who were only too willing to play along - swallowed it hook, line and sinker."

Don't get knocked up in South Dakota.

If I see one more person say "RAPE IS NOT ABOUT SEX" I'm going to shove a glass cock up their ass.

1) If a single professional woman wants her "house kept", she hires a housekeeper. If a single professional man does, he gets married.*

2) I was raised to believe that my intelligence would be quite useful in tracking the household finances and also to help my children with their homework.

3) Modern housekeeping (sans children under five) takes about four hours a day.

4) The power struggle that comes up when the man makes money and the woman doesn't is not appealing to me in any way.

5) Urban living being what it is, it's not really feasible. edit: i mean financially unless the guy is in the upper-10% bracket.

6) Accidents happen; people fall out of love, have affairs, whatever. And then you're fucked.

* observation stolen from a female lawyer

baldghoti: infidelity

Infidelity and the resulting breach of trust and betrayal is inevitable in today's monogamy-obsessed culture. First of all, before the age of 30 sexual desire is so intense that it can only be slaked by having lots of sex. Because people get tired of each other's sexual techniques, they have to have sex with other people. Getting married before 25 pretty much guarantees infidelity.

The other problem is that once you are in a monogamous relationship, you aren't allowed to have sexual desire for anyone else remotely attainable. This repression leads to rotting and festering and an all-consuming lust that then of course leads to fucking your secretary on the back of her desk.

To avoid these problems, don't commit while you still think about sex constantly, and if you do think about sex with someone other than your partner, tell them so you can have help with the seduction. If they aren't cool with that, then why fucking waste your time with them? Save the monogamy for when you aren't sexually viable anymore.

emily_swank: Commercials for feminine products

Commercials in general are stupid, but feminine products are even moreso. First of all, it's impossible to understand what they are really trying to advertise unless you're already in on the secret. Second of all, if you know you need a pad or deodorant spray or whatever, there's no need to find out WHICH BRAND IS BETTER by watching a commercial. Finally, everyone in the goddamn menstraul commercials is too fucking happy. Why don't they show someone lying in bed crying with a heating pad on, munching on chocolate and watching Pride and Prejudice? Who needs a pad or tampon that'll let them be active when they're fucking prostrate from cramps?

I mean, let's face it ladies, the only activity you can even come close to contemplating when it's Flow Time is sex, but there's no freakin' way any commercial would ever come close to admitting this. I mean, that's the best part about pads, you don't have to go to the bathroom before sex, but is this ever alluded to in commercials? Hell no. And who the fuck wears white pants ever, let alone during their period?

"There's simply an irreconcilable contradiction between feminism and femininity, two largely incompatible strategies women have adopted over the years to try to level the playing field with men...Heterosexuality always was the Achilles heel of feminism because the asymmetries involved usually took the form of adequacy for one sex, inadequacy for the other."

where to begin?

taken from bethr:

Copy here the 5th line of your 23rd LJ post.:

touching ANOTHER women's privates would be anathema

(5/14/2001)

On that note:

bush admin. dismantling women's rights

I haven't bothered to pick up Backlash again for a month or two, but the more things change apparently...

item one. Backlash. Still reading it, sort of. It's awfully depressing, though. I mean the 80s are gone forever but gah. Although I'm perversely delighted reading about the neocon women who are shocked and surprised that the environment they helped create is *gasp* unfriendly to women! Kind of like the gay Republicans, I guess. Anyway I've put it on hold till my life improves.

item two Angel. I just watched "I Will Remember You", which is the episode in which Angel turns human and then he and Buffy are happy till they realize they can't, of course, and anyway it's so awfully sad, not depressing though. Difference. And I'm sappified enough that I almost didn't puke during the scenes of the two of them eating ice cream in bed.

item three Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom. Listening to this album again today and I just died. So fucking gorgeous. I almost want to do that. Well, of course I have no ability whatsoever but, I could try, right?