blue milk
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Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that
Alexandra Carlton has an article in The Age this weekend, “The retro housewife” that proves it is just as possible to build a faux phenomenon in Australia around smart women dropping off the career ladder to become domestic over-achievers as it is to build that case in the United States, though this piece is more [...]
The cost of mockery in Australian politics
Prime Minister Gillard’s looks would be irrelevant except that everything about her, including her appearance, has been represented in the media in such an incredibly hostile manner that you’ll be genuinely taken aback when you meet her. And it’s depressing, as a woman, to see this for yourself – the contrast between the Prime Minister as she appears, in person, and how you think she looks based on her appearance in the media.
Biddulph discovers something that I think we’ve been calling feminism
Parenting expert, Steve Biddulph, who I am not a fan of for various reasons, is best known for his book, Raising Boys. Now Biddulph has begun calling attention to the plight of girls with the launch of his new book, Raising Girls. That’s nice, except man oh man, does this guy do some fabulous mansplaining. [...]
A couple of things to bear in mind with the ‘slacker mum’ movement
Jane Caro has just written a rather charming article, “Over-mothered? No, over mothering” for the Sydney Morning Herald. For birthdays, I bought two packs of 12 lamington fingers and stuck a candle in each one. They served a whole class. I was very bad at any sort of preparation. I only once helped a daughter [...]
The controversy in writing about your children
This article in The Atlantic by Phoebe Maltz Bovy, “The ethical implications of parents writing about their children” is incredibly unforgiving of mother writers and bloggers. She sets the benchmark very low for the test of appropriateness with writing and it’s anything that may embarrass your children when they’re older. My god, I think the [...]
Education is a political issue. This is why.
This, “For many poor students, leap to college ends in a hard fall” is a very well-executed piece in The New York Times. It follows three talented, but terribly disadvantaged, girl students who make it into university but then manage to go no further, and it shows why education doesn’t always lead to social mobility; [...]
The ‘damaged women’ vote
Recently we were being trolled by an Australian economist, Dr Steven Kates about the Obama win in the United States of America. Among his conclusions, that the Obama vote was made up of the medicants (ie. people who need significant medical treatment and can’t afford it, as in, I guess any of us at some [...]
Bananas in Pyjamas teaching you to like ‘bad boys’ and clean up all their mess
File this one under: Don’t let your cranky, feminist mother watch your TV shows. So, my three year old son was watching an episode (‘Super Bear’) of the Australian children’s show, Bananas in Pyjamas the other day and I walked past and caught a scene that began to irritate me. I was so bewildered by [...]
Is Australia more feminist?
The Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s labelling of the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, a “misogynist” has become the focus of intense debate both in Australia and here in the UK. What has been most striking for me is the recent news that Gillard received a huge boost in her Australian approval ratings immediately [...]
Book Review: ‘Why Have Kids?’ by Jessica Valenti
You won’t agree with everything in this book no matter which direction of parenting you’re coming from, Valenti acknowledges that, but it is taking the mainstream conversation about parenting to a meatier level and it’s about time that happened.
Does Keynes still have the secret to happiness? And even for parents?
You must read this wonderful essay in aeon magazine from economist, John Quiggin – “The Golden Age: The 15-hour working week predicted by Keynes may soon be within our grasp – but are we ready for freedom from toil”. Quiggin takes Keynes’ theory and in this essay fixes up some of the old oversights by [...]
Sunday Singalong: Nina Simone
I grew up listening to Nina Simone and I love her music. Whenever I talk about Nina Simone I am obliged to tell you my anecdote because it is the coolest moment of my life and it happened when I was a child. I peaked early. I not only saw Nina Simone perform live in [...]
What a transperson in science academia might tell you about sexism
You have to read this over at The Wall Street Journal: Ben Barres had just finished giving a seminar at the prestigious Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 10 years ago, describing to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and other top institutions his discoveries about nerve cells called glia. As the applause died [...]
Raising daughters to have high self-esteem and the problem with that
So much good analysis in this piece from Jessica Valenti in The Nation – “The Upside of Ugly”: But this is the problem with teaching young women that the key to happiness and success is self-esteem. If our end goal for girls is simply to have them feel “confident”—especially about their looks—then we create a [...]
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