For Feisty Feminists

Book 31 in Cannonball Read 2

John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require is another fake trivia book, similar to The Areas of My Expertise, but exploring new area of made-up knowledge.  Instead of a list of 500 Hobo Names, you get 500 mole-man names.

A new development in More Information Than You Require is Hodgman’s increased focus on himself, and an increase in material that portrays his narcissistic, self-aggrandizing persona. This persona is a smarter, less political, literary expert version of Stephen Colbert’s assumed persona for his tv show. The fake John Hodgman is obsessed with how his newfound fame as a tv personality makes him better than the rest of us, and the real Hodgman knows just how much to use the fake Hodgman in the book. If that makes any sense.

More Information Than You Require is a pleasant and funny diversion, good for browsing and passing the time.

OK, jerks who didn’t tell me about the new Portishead album: I challenge you to take place in the Cannonball Read (more info here and here) and pledge to read 100 books in one year.

Why? well, not the same reason as Prisco:

Frankly, because we’re both disgusted by people who say, “I don’t read.” You are buffoons, who should be taken out back of a woodshed and brutally mauled by a sexually frustrated simpleton armed with leather tanning equipment. Everyone should find time to read a book. Just once or twice a year even. There are lots of them. Some of them are even good.

Ouch. I don’t want anyone to be brutally mauled, but I do agree there are good books out there. I’m doing it because I remember loving to read for years, and then having that love pummeled out of me my school - especially stupid law books. So, I am going to read for pleasure.

First up, John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers and Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father. Both are selections for the book discussion here in this quiet mountain village next week. Next up, probably a lot of Jeeves and Wooster.

The gauntlet has been thrown. Will any of you take the challenge?

The village I am at right now is in the wilderness. I see deer fairly regularly - one afternoon, there were 7 or 8 deer walking along. A few days before that, I saw a deer as I was eating dinner on one of the porches. I pointed it out to the folks I was eating with, and they were unimpressed. They had all been here for one year or more, so seeing a deer is not an event.

I did see a baby black bear the other day. I have not seen the mama bear. The baby walked off the porch of the dining hall, ambled along the back of the lodge, and then disappeared. It is not a good sign that they are coming into the village - it means they are hungry and the food in the wilderness has not been enough. It is bad for the village and for them that they are here; they can do a lot of damage to the village, and they should not be comfortable around humans for their own safety. There is not much we can do, besides keeping everything rewarding (anything with food on it) away from the bears’ reach until they go into hibernation.

That’s my wilderness experience right now; it is very different from the city, and very different from any place I’ve ever lived (always in cities; the closest to wildlife was a house that had mice). I’ll get to see the change from summer to fall to early winter, both in the environment and in the community here.

Latoya, a guestblogger at Feministe, writes about ‘Before I Discovered Feminism…‘ - looking forward to reading more.

I have been mulling over the issues of transphobia, cis-privilege, and radical feminism for awhile. I wanted to write a rebuttal to the idea that “Transwoman is the patriarchy”, but I can’t really get past the stabbing pain behind my eyes. Yes, I’m sure that people who are subjected to high levels of violence, rape, and abuse are just transitioning genders to infiltrate women-only spaces, and to reinforce gender binary. Pfft.

I encourage you to read some posts on this issue; basically, I think it boils down to this:

“Transgenderism” is not an ideology. There are, only, transgendered people, and what is being targeted as an abstract ideology is in fact trans peoples’ rights to be transgendered . . .

That some feminists have chosen to periodically constitute us as a threat to feminism is beyond appalling.

ETA: Femmessay was somehow able to get past the stabbing pain and write a post.

Twisty’s at it again, ripping apart an article about supposed gender difference; first, there’s a discussion of differences in mathematical ability:

I’m so sick of this math thing. Math! Who sits around doing math? Men? Come on. Men sit around looking at porn.

Then, the article pats women on the head by proclaiming that women aren’t completely controlled by hormones. Twisty’s reaction:

No shit? Women aren’t insensate slaves to their primordial ladyparts, tearing through their lives on menses-stained runaway hormone roller coasters?

You’ll have to read the whole thing to get the complete takedown, but a short summary is:

[D]udes sure like it when internet “science” articles “prove” that misogynist bigotry is reasonable.

• This movie was approximately 17-24% too long.
• Heath Ledger really is that good in it.
• Two Face’s makeup was bad, as was the transformation from Harvey Dent to Two Face.
• It’s great to have Maggie Gyllenhaal along, maybe you could give a really talented actress an interesting part, or maybe just a good line or two?

I put the posts on this blog into the Gender Guesser, an online tool that analyzes word choice in to determine the gender of the writer. Here’s what came up.

Fair Pay verdict: Male

“Men we Love” verdict: Male, 68%

You’re Never too Young to Develop an Eating Disorder verdict: Male for informal language, weak male for formal language. There is a note that “weak male” could indicate European.

Riding the Bus, Part II verdict: Informal is weak female, formal is weak male.

The Anti-anti-Clinton Backlash verdict: Weak male on both counts.

How not to be an Asshole, Part II verdict: Male for both formal and informal, informal by 75%.

How not to be an Asshole verdict: Strongly male for informal (over 84%) and weak male for formal.

‘Consent’ verdict: Male by 77.5% for informal, weak male for formal.

Saturday Night at the Drive-in verdict: Male.

“Masculism” verdict: Male for formal, weak male for informal.

Adventures in Research verdict: weak male for informal, male for formal.

Friday Random Thought verdict: Male and weak male.

Success! verdict: the only one that correctly identifies my gender, and then it’s only partly. Apparently, I am informally a male but formally a female.

What’s the point, really? I’m guessing (ha!) to shore up gender norms. Let me try to write more female from now on - maybe something about kittens and rainbows.

Equal Pay. It’s hard to really wrap your head around the concept. There are so many excuses for un-equal pay: women ask for salaries on the lowest end of ranges; they don’t have as much training; they work in fields that just don’t pay as much. Never do the people putting forth these arguments consider that women are systematically taught to devalue and question themselves; that training is not as readily available because of the socio-economic difficulties and social obstacles (i.e. overwhelmingly male-oriented schools, lack of advising and support for women); the hostility and outright misogyny many women face in traditional male-dominated, higher paying fields.

I have come up against these obstacles time and time again. I am privileged as compared to many women, enough that I have been able to get accepted into a pretty good undergraduate institution, and have my choice of the six law schools that accepted me. However, I went into law school with the express purpose of going into public interest law, the lowest-paying sub-field in law. This sub-field also happens to employ many more women than men.

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A half-remembered transcript of a conversation with a friend.

KT: It was so great living in Hawaii!  I miss going to see volcanoes.

Me: Volcanoes? How is that fun?

KT (excited): You can walk right up to the lava!

Me: But it’s right there!

KT (elated): I know!  It’s so close! You can walk right up to it!

Me (fearful): You could fall right into it and die!

KT: I love imminent death!