Picking My Battles

Published retroactively

Generally, I avoid Alternet's comments. The commenters are, by and large, complete idiots - conservative, sexist, and hateful trolls. But, for some reason, I wanted to read the comments for Inside Fox's Latest Anti-Feminist Reality Show. The show is obviously a stupid ploy, a sexist, patronizing view of a completely made-up world. No one should watch it, and I hope that the participants feel much the same way the cast of Manos: The Hands of Fate did after its release.

But first, there were only three comments, all incredibly stupid. Then later, I checked and saw 11 comments. A couple were intelligent, pointing out that this reactionary television crap was a diatribe against Hillary Clinton, and one was the epitomy of idiocy. Some brainless twit argued that feminists think that men are sub-human and that we blame 99% of problems on men. Sigh - the first part doesn't even need commentary, as for the second part..... A. it is more "the patriarchy" and B. uh, who has been calling the shots for the past several milleniums? What a dumbass. I wish someone would reply to that comment to say, "you're a complete idiot". Why don't I?

Why don't I? Is it because I don't want to get caught in the idiocy of the Alternet comment trolls? Yes. Would it even matter? Inaction bothers me, but so does too much action in inappropriate places. I was tempted to take the t-shirt pricing post down because I didn't want to seem like I was putting so much importance on what is one small part of the battle. That is why I made a seperate post about apathy rather than just updating the t-shirt post. And what action is appropriate? I have no desire for any of the t-shirts on sale for that comic, yet, so writing a letter seems premature. I won't be linking to the comic, but since I've hidden my site from the robots, that won't make a large influence. I could link the comic and advise my (few) readers to not purchase shirts, but I think in the end, I'd rather write a letter and speak to the proprieter individually.

Pay Women Less, Charge Us More, Then Claim We Don't Contribute to the Economy

Why are women's sizes more expensive?

Now, I like White Ninja, I'm just getting back into that comic after a long time away. But I went to check out the merchandise and was appalled that women's sizes, which typically run smaller [less fabric], are more expensive than men's sizes. One could argue that the square cuts for men are cheaper, but this is the kind of crap that pisses me off. I have a hard time going to the dry cleaner because I'm afraid that I'll end up paying more and not be able to do anything about it. Dry cleaners used to claim that "women's smaller neck sizes" blah blah blah, bullshit, bulshit, bullshit.

Back in college, the Women's Center (or just a Feminist Org, I can't remember) decided to sell cookies, as a fundraiser, at 76 cents to women and $1 to men as a demonstration on inequal pay. Some sexists decided to argue with them about this. The thing was that the women didn't HAVE to sell the cookies, and the men didn't HAVE to buy them. Unlike, say, dry cleaning and clothing, haircuts and razors, and all kinds of other things that are priced higher for women.

Women in Poverty

I remember some anti-feminist article that dared to actually say that feminists in America don't care about women's rights in the Middle East [and central Asia]. The article called us "vagina warriors". Well, this vagina warrior has known about the Taliban since early 2001, when she was 19. She learned from the then more educated vagina warriors at the Women's Center of her college (the local "Vagina Fortress"). I'll probably get into the terrible state of women's [and human] rights in Iraq since the 2003 invasion some time later.

But this post is about women in poverty in the richest state in the richest country in the world. I must admit that I'm still reeling from the reality of my former employee right now and his idiotic notion that women don't act rationally. The women in this post are stronger and better than he will ever be. But I digress.

Here is an excerpt from a blog post from one of the managing editors of Alternet. The majority of people in poverty in the world are women and children, and our society, in part based on underpaying women for their work, will begin - perhaps already is beginning - to see the disasterous effects of neglecting our own future.

Here's a story from Vivian Hain who is part of POOR Magazine, welfareQUEENS, Low Income Families Empowerment through Education, and hunger advocacy for Alameda County Food Bank.

Vivian Hain: I have not seen a cost of living adjustment since 2004. Before there was a freeze for two years. It was $679 for a family of four. In 2004 I fought for adjustments to go up to $723/month. Now in 2007 that is what I get to live on in Berkeley with my three kids.

I have not bought my kids news shoes or jackets or anything this year. They are four, six, and 13. I can't even walk into the kid's aisle in stores because I don't want to look at what I can't afford for them. It is demeaning to keep giving hand-me-down clothes and stale shoes -- especially to the youngest who has never had anything new. No parent should have to make that decision.

I used to shop lift when i had two in diapers ... I would fill up the diaper bag full of diapers. And I'd get that hot feeling of what if you got caught stealing and would they take your kids. You shouldn't to decide if your kid is going to have a wet diaper all night or you are going to go to jail.

I'd always try to make the used clothes I got for them look the best they could, though. I am in college. I am going to get my BA in December and might go one more year to get my Masters. I do what I can to support my family. My kids don't know how to play video games or know about newest music. But my daughter, she looks me in the eye and say she understands, she doesn't need that stuff.

It is unacceptable what he [Gov. Schwartzenegger] is doing. He is trying to balance the budge on the backs of poor children ...

It is like they say -- we have no choice but to survive -- we are women. The choices that we have to make because of the situations they put us in is unimaginable. Lower than you can conceptualize. Those in the legislature are making decisions about laws and policy affecting children and they have no idea what it is like.

These children's lives are affected because a parent is being criminizlied for trying to survive with miniscule resources. When they are cutting our money they are telling us we are not worthy of investing it. They are targeting children in CA.

POOR Magazine and the Poor News Network is dedicated to reframing the news, issues and solutions from low and no income communities, as well as providing society with a perspective usually not heard or seen within the mainstream media.

welfareQUEENS is a groups of mother struggling with poverty, welfare, racism, and disability, who are dedicated to creating art with the goal of resisting and reclaiming the racist and classist mythologies that are used to criminalize the poor.

Fromhttp://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/55687/

Who is emotional now

This video clearly demonstrates that the Republican party has been playing on emotions since at least 1984. Oddly enough, this is the party aligned with the ideas of conservatives and anti-feminists - aka sexists. As I read on pandagon, sexists do not believe that women make rational decisions. Well, I knew this tenant of sexism before reading that, but the line really hit me, probably because of the story I'm about to tell.

Back during second wave feminism, consciousness raising groups came together and realized that the anecdotes of ordinary women came together to form real evidence of oppression. So in that spirit, I will offer some anecdotes of my own.

Recently, I had a guy working for me that I found interesting, and we seemed to get along. But oddly - to me - he never seemed to want to communicate with me outside of work. About a month and a half ago, I learned from his co-worker (my other employee), R, that he is a cookie-cutter sexist, except he claims to be liberal. His parents married in the late 1950's and his mother never had an outside job, save a waitressing gig at 16. She also never had a driver's license and raised two boys. One of whom is the 27 year old I employed who has never had a job that paid more than $13 an hour [in Northern California, no less], and has been working on a 2 year degree for the past 7 years. Oh, and he lives at home too. From what I've heard, I seriously I doubt that he has any appreciation for the isolation his mother has endured her whole life out here in the California suburbs.

Apparently, the type of woman he prefers is just like his mother - a woman who wants to devote her whole life to the service of men. One that will take care of him so he doesn't have to take care of himself. Last week, R told me a story he learned about one of this guy's ex's. After they broke up, she began to date his friend. He was very angry with his friend, but not with his ex. When R asked him why he wasn't rightfully mad at his ex, he explained that "women are too emotional" and he couldn't blame her. It is really too bad that nobody stood up to him and told him the truth. She probably realized that he was an asshole and a loser, then dumped his ass to date a more interesting guy - one that might have even thought of her as a person, his friend. His friend is the one that can't be blamed - if anyone can't be blamed for a situation like that. The long and short of it is that this guy doesn't think that women are full people. He even argues that lesbians aren't really attracted to women, they just couldn't get a man. IRONICALLY - R once told me, in an email conversation, about the sexist employee, that "It is difficult working with someone who is so emotional."

So now, my assignment supervising people has come to an end, and I'm free to pursue my former subordinates as friends. As a newcomer to this state, and a 20-something myself, I was eager for this moment, and before discovering the vile reality of my employee, I was hoping to really get to know him. In a good twist of events, I managed to actually befriend R. He, unlike the first guy, has an effective career plan and a healthy understanding of women. So I realized, in the end, why the other guy never wanted to talk to me outside of work - I don't have a y-chromosome, rendering me - to his tiny brain - not human. Furthermore, I have no desire to become a subservient housefrau. If he was to actually date me, he would need to grow up and begin taking care of himself. PATHETIC

So there is "women stereotyped as too emotional to make rational decisions", now my anecdote about "rational women stereotyped as heartless bitches"

Oddly enough, when I dumped my own boyfriend just last month, I realized how men developed the stereotype of women as heartless bitches. I made a very rational decision. I didn't do it as well as I could have, admittedly, but I had never done anything so mean before in my life. It was difficult for me to take the rational action I needed to take, especially in the face of my ex's reaction, but in the end, I buckled down and did it.

My mother then told me of an instance when, as a teenager, she kept dating a guy she didn't like just so she could have a date to the Christmas dance. After the dance, she told him that she never wanted to see him again. Her reaction, even 40 years later, was "someone once told me that was a very cruel thing to do." Of course it was cruel, but my mom only told me that she "didn't like" the guy. He could have been a complete asshole, or a total loser and my mom could have just been too busy to bother finding a better guy for just one dance.

But my point is that both of these guys probably think of us as bitches for our rational decisions. My own ex didn't understand what he had done wrong, when the reality was that I realized that we weren't a good match after all. I can't accuse my ex of being a traditional sexist, he wasn't. For the most part, he just didn't want to have political conversations, which included sexism and feminism, even though we completely agreed on nearly everything.

For traditional sexists, women are either blameless animals, driven by emotion, or cold, heartless bitches, completely devoid of emotion. That dichotomy is a lot easier than accepting us as adult human beings, who strive to use our rational and emotional minds to make the best decisions possible.

Then again, rejecting women's humanity is an easy way to reject one's own responsibility and remain a child. My former employee obviously had no handle over his emotions. A traditional sexist begins his life watching his father exploit his mother's labor, and is encouraged to do much the same. After all, he is the posessor of the magical penis, and women "don't have the mind" for anything else. I use quotes because my former employee actually once claimed that women "don't have the mind" for music simply because the wife of a friend of his wasn't as into tooling around in their basement with guitars as they were.

That has to be the most disgusting thing about this whole pile of bullshit. That the people refusing to be responsible think they are "better" than the women with whom they live. Not only that, but their deluded minds make them think that they are better than ALL women, even with their unfinished humanities degree and that 980 on the SAT. Heaven forbid a sexist is actually good at something, then it just gets worse.

But back to the video at the head of this post. I found it very ironic that the party of most sexists - certainly the party of the most vehement anti-feminists - has been manipulating people's emotions for more than 20 years now. Meanwhile, the party of the feminists is the party of rational explanations. Even reading feminist reactions to the gutless sexist comments on a few blogs has shown me that sexists do nothing more than spit out unfounded rhetoric* and feminists respond, attacking every paragraph with logic and evidence.

I'd participate, really, I would, but like my father, I get too passionate about things and I don't have the patience to engage in online arguments with sexists/idiots.

*On Alternet, one actually insinuated that feminists don't realize that men work because they have to - like women just sit on their asses all day too. Thank goodness I grew up in a matriarchal family where the head of the family was a woman who taught us all that hard work was essential to a good life. In the early 1990's, when my uncle was shirking his responsibility to milk the cows, she would trudge up that icy driveway to the barn - even with her osteoporosis and arthritis - to milk the cows herself. Furthermore, we live in a system that has been built around the unpaid labor of women as a given. But I digress - I don't have time to get all the sources for you, so do it yourself. Start with Alternet.org