why do I bother watching the olympics anyway...

Why is it that women cannot be as good as men at sports?  If women even come close to performing as well as men in any given sport, they must be on drugs or they are really a man.

The idea that men's bodies might not ALWAYS be innately superior to women's bodies at EVERY task deemed important by athletics organizers appears to be a threat to every man.

In both of the situations from the previous links, there is also a huge element of racism involved in the accusations... if a "pretty" North American or Western European woman had a score on par with that of men in her field, there is a better chance that it might be seen as being due to athleticism and hard work, as opposed to "doping" and "tricking" us about their "real" gender.

My new olympic cheer... "Go Patriarchy! Yay!"  Now where did I put my pompoms?

Cat calls and comics

A few weeks ago, I went to the social sciences and humanities congress at Wilfred Laurier.  As I was walking from the dorm room to campus, someone honked at me for the first time in a very long time and this particular comic came to mind.

But thank you, whoever you were, for reminding me that as a woman, my body is on display and my worth is somehow tied to how many honks I get while walking down the street. 

Robots with Aspergers

This will be my first real post in several months.  I tell myself I haven't posted because I am too busy... work, finishing my thesis, parenting.  The truth is I am very busy, but that hasn't stopped me from reading books, watching television, browsing other peoples blogs, and it isn't the only reason I haven't posted in my own blog.

 The main reason I haven't posted is because blogspot changed the settings on me a few months ago.  I logged on and all of the buttons were different.  It wasn't so different as to be impossible to navigate my way through the new look, but I really don't like when things change without notice.  It is disorienting and by the time I have sorted out where the "New Post" button is, I have forgotten what it is I want to say. ;At least facebook makes big announcements so I have time to prepare for these changes.

I use my Aspergers diagnosis to explain why I don't like certain changes and it is also why I am writing this particular post.  I have been looking at aspie characters in pop culture and am very annoyed by the limited portrayal of these characters.  Aspie characters are usually male (but then, statistically speaking, males are more likely to be diagnosed with Aspergers than women, so this kind of makes sense).  They are also almost always brilliant in some ways, usually in math and physics.  Think Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and you will have the general idea.  Now, don't get me wrong, I am quite fond of Sheldon (despite my annoyance at some of the ways his particular aspie traits are made to be funny when they actually create serious difficulties in people's lives) but we really need a more diverse portrayal of what Aspergers actually looks like.

I have looked at lists of people in pop culture who have Aspergers or aspie-like traits, which I am using to look at how these characters are depicted and there is one thing in particular that really annoys me about many of these lists.  Robots do not have aspie traits; they are robots.  There is a huge difference, and to write that Data from Star Trek or the robot played by Robin Williams in Bicentennial man has Aspergers is very insulting to those of us with that diagnosis (especially considering that I have been described as somewhat robotic at times).

 I think I know more people with Aspergers who are NOT particularly interested in math and science than people with Aspergers who are.  My "special interest" (if we are going to call it that - I have a lot of interests and am not nearly as one dimensional as most of the depictions I have looked at would have one believe) has to do with tracing out networks of social relations between people to see how their actions and decisions are influenced by broader social structures (I don't usually use the term structure, but I'm not going to get into that here, and structure is a rather easy way to describe it that can be easily understood, so I will keep it for now).  I don't expect the average sitcom to reflect these subtleties, and I haven't exhausted the list of aspie characters in books and film as of yet, but what I have seen and read thus far is quite limited.

Thesis defended!

With my thesis work done, I am hoping to find time to start posting again soon... holding a full-time job along with the thesis work and everything else just really didn't leave enough time for blogging.

My blog photo and white privilege

When we were sitting at the dinner table today, my 9 year old critiqued the image that I use for my blog... the one that reads "my Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard." I have this image on a Tshirt that I was wearing today. She read the shirt and examined it for a few minutes, then asked

"Why do they all have the same skin tone?"

I am embarrassed to say that this had never occurred to me. Not that I thought the image did have a racial analysis, but I didn't realize it was missing. The privilege of having white skin... as much as I try, I don't always notice how invisible whiteness is.

Harper's new anti-terrorism strategy

Harper's new anti-terrorism strategy (ie. his plan to protect corporation's profits based on Canadian oil) is very worrisome. I'm not sure if it is any different from the old strategy, insofar as all of this stuff was in place around the G20 and whatnot, but the boldness with which he is announcing these "anti-terrorist" tactics and the scope of who is considered to be a terrorist is disconcerting.

For example, the Public "Safety" Minister announced that they will not target "not only known terrorist groups, but "vulnerable individuals" who could be drawn into politically inspired violence."

My first question is with regards to this guy's title... which public and whose safety is he concerned about?

Also, they are vigilant against extremism based on causes like "animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism"

As an anti-oppression activist, I love seeing my work thrown in with white supremacists... it seems to be a very common strategy to discredit a movement. For example, I was having a facebook argument the other day, and was told that "to carry a label like feminist, [I] may as well wear the great dragon's cloak from the KKK because its no different.... feminism is associated with anger and hate" It seems as though people think that they can immediately discredit an entire movement comparing it to hateful movements (without knowing what you are talking about, or doing it purposefully to influence people who don't know what feminism or anti-capitalism is about).

In the article, it was said that

Terrorist action occurs when an extremist ideological group plans to carry out a violent attack that reasonably can be expected to kill people or destroy property,” Michael Patton, Mr. Toews’s director of communication, said in an e-mail Friday.

I guess Gandhi was a terrorist.

And why isn't Harper under arrest for terrorism?

We don't need feminism anymore!

I was listening to CBC radio the other day and they were doing a special show on the 40th anniversary of Ms magazine. They interviewed one of the founders of the magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and her daughter, a journalist named Abigail Pogrebin.

At first, I was kind of excited to be listening to a feminist story on the radio while I drove, but I ended up getting more and more irritated with it. It gave the impression that everything is fine right now, thanks to people like the founders of Ms magazine. While I appreciate how much things have improved in a variety of ways, I really get annoyed when people try to make it seem as though we no longer need feminism because men and women are equal now.

Abigail said that she doesn't feel that her life or her daughter's life are constrained by being a woman because we now have choices that weren't available when her mother co-founded the magazine. Then she went on to say that she used to work for 60 minutes, but found a new, less prestigious, job closer to home when she had children because she wasn't able to travel all the time anymore... and that she couldn't travel for work regularly because her husband had a job that required him to travel for work. She also said that he would not consider compromising his job to stay home with the kids. Now, this sounds like one of the reasons we still need feminism... women's choices are constrained in ways that men's choices often are not.

So, she quits a good job to take something closer to home in order to stay home with her children while her husband travels for work, but we don't need feminism anymore. Hurray for choices!

I hate this "I choose my choice" feminism. We do not have choices, in a lot of cases. The decision to participate in the nuclear family, to work in the waged labour force, to make sacrifices in one's career for the sake of raising children, even the decision about what kinds of clothing to wear are constrained by material circumstances, they are not made in a vacuum.