A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Even her advisers acknowledge the awkwardness of a woman with double Harvard degrees, dual stock riches (from Facebook and Google, where she also worked), a 9,000-square-foot house and a small army of household help urging less fortunate women to look inward and work harder. Will more earthbound women, struggling with cash flow and child care, embrace the advice of a Silicon Valley executive whose book acknowledgments include thanks to her wealth adviser and Oprah Winfrey?

[…]

Ms. Sandberg wants to take women through a collective self-awareness exercise. In her book, she urges them to absorb the social science showing they are judged more harshly and paid less than men; resist slowing down in mere anticipation of having children; insist that their husbands split housework equally; draft short- and long-term career plans; and join a “Lean In Circle,” which is half business school and half book club.

These bourgie white feminists…it’s like they think their words are precious and meaningful without realizing how problematic the ideas they’re touting are. 

Re: kink and BDSM-shaming

On one hand, I get it. The physical abuse, even with consent, is fucked up. The mimic of the cycle of abusive relationships is also fucked up.

But on the other hand…why is sex positivity a bad thing when it involves consenting adults? If part of them problem is that the patriarchy keeps defining the boundaries of proper and appropriate sex (see: abortions being legal in situations of rape and incest, friend zone, prude/whore dichotomy), especially for women, then what are we doing by kink and BDSM-shaming? And when we tell women that they shouldn’t enjoy kink and BDSM, are we not shaming them for their choices? To me, that sounds a lot like slut-shaming. 

Life is about context and not categories. Thoughts?

theatlantic: Killing Sexy Halloween: The Ethical and Practical Complications Sexy referee.Sexy tiger.Sexy hamburger. Every year, Halloween costume companies offer women a host of skimpy outfits to wear on October 31st. And every year, a lot of people—concerned parents, writers at the New York Times and CNN, cable talking heads—try to convince women, especially young women, not to buy them. “There’s always the mommy bloggers who get really angry, and then there’s people like me who get really angry,” says Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes and an expert on adolescent sexuality and self-esteem. But, Wiseman admits, the complaining about sexy Halloween ends with “limited success.” Young women keep buying, and wearing, suggestive costumes. That’s probably because most of the anxiety about the sexualization of Halloween comes from adults—the very people teenagers are inclined to ignore. If sexy Halloween is going to die, girls themselves will have to kill it. Read more. [Image: AP] Uhh…slut-shaming and pearl-clutching much?
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theatlantic:

Killing Sexy Halloween: The Ethical and Practical Complications

Sexy referee.Sexy tiger.Sexy hamburger. Every year, Halloween costume companies offer women a host of skimpy outfits to wear on October 31st. And every year, a lot of people—concerned parents, writers at the New York Times and CNN, cable talking heads—try to convince women, especially young women, not to buy them.

“There’s always the mommy bloggers who get really angry, and then there’s people like me who get really angry,” says Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes and an expert on adolescent sexuality and self-esteem. But, Wiseman admits, the complaining about sexy Halloween ends with “limited success.” Young women keep buying, and wearing, suggestive costumes.

That’s probably because most of the anxiety about the sexualization of Halloween comes from adults—the very people teenagers are inclined to ignore. If sexy Halloween is going to die, girls themselves will have to kill it.

Read more. [Image: AP]

Uhh…slut-shaming and pearl-clutching much?

When American feminists tell me about the importance of protecting reproductive rights, do they believe that Black, Latino, undocumented, Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani women have reproductive rights, too? Or is that one of those areas where we just can’t expect the Dems to protect “my fondest dreams”? Do we have obligations to hold the Dems accountable for active harms to women around the world?

Emily Hauser’s Disgusting Indifference to Women of Color - Falguni Sheth.

When Emily Hauser tells me that about POTUS and the Dems’ aggressive attempts to “protect” the bodily autonomy of women—in the face of facts that dispute it, such as increased incarceration rates, poverty, unemployment, mortgage foreclosures for Black and Latina women, and increased every-other-kind-of-targeting for well-being of the brown (most often Muslim) women, I have to wonder what she thinks about the following:

Does the imprisonment/solitary confinement/indefinite incarceration of men–who are Muslim, black, Latino, Asian–count as a “gender issue”?

Does the economic and political detriment to women from having their sons, spouses, brothers, fathers entrapped and arrested–count as “a feminist issue”? By economic and political detriment, I mean the social ostracization, the material effect of the loss of income, the political vulnerability of having a male who is potentially the head of a household.

Does the deportation of hundreds of thousands of men AND women—and the separation of U.S. citizen/children from their parents annually count as an issue that “affects” women? By “affect,” I mean the the psychic, material, social vulnerability to survive, to thrive, to live free of fear and harm. Does the legal adoption of those children to U.S. citizen parents and the subsequent break-up of families count as a “woman’s” issue?

[continued]

Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web

This article is great on many levels:

1. It focuses as much space on the man himself as it does on the system that perpetuates and upholds hate and conscious violence on others.

2. It sheds light on many people’s warped sense of “freedom of speech.” Freedom of speech does not mean you get to post whatever you want, dumbasses.

3. It sheds light on the privilege of anonymity and the Reddit community’s attempts at invoking that privilege.

It bothers me, however, that so many commentators are focusing on Brutsch’s actions and how now, he is reaping what he sowed. Such focus feeds into the notion that crimes, specifically hate crimes, are only enacted by individuals; that systems and society have no part in creating, perpetuating, and defending the ideology necessary for people to enact violence on others. And that is problematic. 

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