gender & feminism

Bloggers gone wild! (with Clinton) alleged by idiots

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Before reading this article, open this link to this picture and guess what has got conservative bloggers all up in arms about a blatant sexual display for the benefit of Bill Clinton. Can’t see anything obvious? Join the reality-based club.

Background: A group of liberal polibloggers were invited to meet with ex-President Bill Clinton for lunch and a low-key brainstorm on policy and blogging. When first reports and photos were released, a few people noticed there weren’t any bloggers of colour there, and the impression this gave and the reasons why it happened without being corrected were starting to be debated.

Enter Ann Althouse, an “ex-liberal” law professor and blogger, who looked at a picture of the smiling group at the lunch meeting, noticed that a young woman with long dark hair was standing in front of Clinton, and made a sniggering allusion which didn’t actually mention Monica Lewinsky, as she knew damn well that her commentors would pick it up.

A visiting FRA

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Father’s Rights Activist, that is. He’s commenting over at the old place, in a post from a few months ago where I referenced another blogger’s longer commentary:

Kevin T. Keith at Sufficient Scruples examines how fathers’ rights organisations attract pseudoscientists making up mental illnesses that their harpy ex-wives must be suffering from that both explain why they’re being difficult about visiting rights and why the courts should just

Courtesy and the Cultural Cringe

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Germaine Greer has done her shit-stirring act again with her piece about the death of Steve Irwin, and the usual furore has broken loose, wherein Greer is presented as standing in for all us feminist harridans who hate manly men.
UPDATE: Tracee Hutchison’s piece in today’s Age is an excellent analysis of the essential misogyny driving a lot of the reaction to Greer’s piece – would the outrage have been such a howling uproar if Clive James had written it instead?

How to not irritate feminists

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A great post over at Unfogged, which lists “guidelines for avoiding actively irritating women who are discussing feminist concerns” including every feminist’s unfavourite:

6) Don’t say, “Men have problems too! Women are always doing mean things to men! [stamps foot] And we don’t complain about it as much!”

Feminists love to talk about the ways men are ill-served by the current arrangement. But if you’re one of the guys who

Will you do me the honour?

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There was a long thread (200+ comments) over at Pandagon last week about the pressures on both men and women regarding marriage expectations, which was quite fascinating. Amanda was reading a book about proposal angst and was worried that people might think she was reading “bridal p*rn” because of the picture of a woman in a wedding dress on the cover, and that they would then conclude that she was one of those who’d bought into the hype of needing to be married, the fear of being “left on the shelf”.

The post concentrated particularly on the romantic and dramatic expectations regarding the proposal itself:

But what would they sing?

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Grooms for life: Denise Noe has a plan to reduce abortions by recruiting godly single men to marry knocked-up whores who will thereupon resile from their baby-murd’rin’ ways and fawn upon the godbothering grooms in gratitude thereafter ’til death do… Read More ›

Moronic twits and clap-trap

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Daily Telegraph columnist Anita Quigley is shrill in her Saturday column about a Sydney pre-school which has introduced a curriculum which is friendly to non-traditional homosexual and transgender families. She’s “a strong advocate for a factual and concise sex curriculum… Read More ›