Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
DonaQuixote
Published Letters: 262 Editor's Choice: 53
The article refers to a blanket ban on spanking. However, the bill in question would only ban spanking of children under three years of age. I hope readers will agree that there is a difference between spanking your infant and spanking your second-grader. Personally, I'm not a fan of either, but I think it's very misleading not to clarify what the bill is actually targetting.
Excessive use of the word "paradigm" should be sufficient grounds for dismissal from any position that involves writing or public speaking.
Ditto for:
"problematize"
"discourse"
"excavate" (unless you are an archeologist)
"explicate"
and
"hermeneutic"
I can't tell you how many crappy papers I wrote in college that garnered "A"s through the sheer force of my ability to liberally pepper my prose with buzz words.
It is really depressing to see how much the add industry uses predjudice and gender stereotyping to sell us shit (e.g. beer = manly men who have sexual access to young buxom blondes). Watch sports tv, or a home decorating show, or most any other shows for an hour or two and you will undoubtedly see at least half a dozen messages about what it means to be a man, a woman, and a "family" (meaning, in advertopia, a heterosexual). All designed to make you feel like you have to go out and buy something to better fulfill your assigned social role.
I think, regardless of whether we are intended to sympathize with the guys in the Snickers commerecial in question (and more likely we are both supposed to be able to relate to their anxiety while also laughing half-ironically at them in order to be able to still feel above it all and not pay attention to our own homophobia), the thing is anti-gay because it makes an easy and unquestioned equation: gay = feminine, manly = definitely not gay. It is also sexist, since the equation can be extended to gay = feminine = undesirable while hetero = manly = positive.
Isn't this a great example of how terribly arbitrary it all is, though? What does Snickers have to do with sexuality, or manliness? Nothing whatsoever. Then again, on the face of it, neither does beer, or burgers, or cars, or a number of other items that are commonly branded as "manly" (anyone else irritated as hell with that Burger King "I am Man" add?). It takes a new application of the old rules to throw us off a bit and make us see the the game for what it really is.
Preventing her from growing breasts does not innoculate the child against sexual assault. Most sexual assaults have little to do with liking the look of someone's boobs and a lot more to do with power and humiliation. And quite a number of sexual assaults happen to people who do not have breasts (i.e., children).
Brightstar, I share your pain. I also grew up feeling imprisoned by the expectations placed on me by the opposite sex. It feels terrible. In my case, the expectations were that I be demure and unassertive during intellectual discussions, that I value tidiness and surface appearances over substance, that I avoid appearing overly competant at sports or sciences or in the handling of money, and that I place my greatest sense of value on what men thought of me. In the case of my male friends and family, I saw them pressured to repress emotions, classified by definition as sloppy, forced to try to perform in sports, science, and finances, even if they weren't interested in those things, and expected to place their greatest sense of value in their ability to persuade women to do what they wanted. I'm sure I could think of dozens of other things on both sides of this. Either way, for men and women, the result was constricting and very painful for those whose inclinations did not make an easy fit with their prescribed gender roles.
And my prison was a double-bind, because when I did behave in ways that were identified as gender-appropriate, the attention I got for it was almost always negative. If I was emotional, I was "irrational." If I expressed interest in appearances, I was "shallow." If I expressed a preference for humanities rather than sciences, it was because I "didn't have the mind" for Chemistry. etc. I imagine men find themselves in similar double binds, though I am less familiar with the way that dynamic plays out for men than women.
These prisons are built by both sexes for both sexes. Women do as much to enforce repressive roles on other women as do men. Men do as much to enfore repressive roles on other men as do women. None of us escapes unscathed.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
