Apt. 11D

Domestic Violence

I'm catching up on my RSS feed and am rather shocked by these posts by Penelope Trunk. I have zero personal experience in this area (thank you, Lord), so I'm not quite sure what to say. Comments? 

UPDATE: 

I read PT, because there's enough interesting mixed in with the crazy. For example, I never really thought about the victim's responsibility in domestic violence. Not sure that I buy it, but it was interesting.

The problem with reading PT and other train wreck blogs is that I fear the Kitty Genovese affect. What if she's really getting pummeled and I do nothing? I don't know if she is or she isn't, because she put a picture of her goddamn ass on the Internet. Credibility issues. A few months back, she sounded very suicidal, so I e-mailed her to see if she was really going to put a gun to her head. What if she killed herself and I made no effort to stop it? Other bloggers have written that they want to kill themselves on the Internet. It puts me in a really bad spot.

The Sybil Myth

Via Andrew Sullivan, it appears the Multiple Personality Disorder or Disassociative Identity Disorder may not actually be a psychiatric ailment. It became popularized at a time when society wanted a way to repress women who were beginning to show independence. 

 

Feminism and the Hunger Games

I'm ignoring the firestorm of snark and outrage on my Twitter feed about OWS. Sorry, but I just don't give a shit any more. 

What I do care about is the new trailer for the Hunger Games. 

Noah Berlatsky writes that grown ups like me, who wrestle with their teens for these books, love them, because Katniss is embodiment of Second-Wave feminism.

And then there's Katniss: an extremely competent, tomboyish young woman who is athletic, focused, responsible, and able to take care of herself. She's not especially interested in boys and doesn't have sex, or even really think about sex for almost the entire series. She's also politically engaged, especially as the story moves on. She is, in other words, the ideal second-wave feminist daughter; smart, fierce, independent, and sexually restrained.

Laura Miller of Salon thinks that Katniss is actually a very weak character, who pretends that she is not interested in power and ambition. 

Underlying Katniss’ unacknowledged mixed feelings is the trilogy’s own profound ambivalence about desire and power. In some ways, Katniss is more passive than Bella, allowed to have all kinds of goodies but only if she demonstrates her virtue by not really wanting them in the first place. 

I never read the Twight series, so I can't weigh in on the comparisons between the two characters. I am thrilled that a popular book series features a strong, kick-ass-and-take-names female character. I am thrilled that boys are reading a book where the main protagonist is a woman.

In era of Kim Kardashian and the bimbos of the Bachelorette, I think that there's a hunger for strong, athletic women who would rather run through the forest, than spend two hours flat ironing their hair. 

Why We Need More Women in Politics

I loved the research that was cited in the Week in Review article about why women don't get caught in sex scandals:

• Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.
• Women are less likely to run for office; it is more difficult to recruit them, even when they have the same professional and educational qualifications as men. 
• Men who run for office tend to look at people already elected and say, "I’m as good as that." Women hold themselves up to this hypothetical standard no candidate has ever achieved.
• women currently hold 16.6 percent of the 535 seats in Congress and 23.5 percent of the seats in state legislatures. There are 6 female governors; of the 100 big-city mayors, 8 are women.
•  Her studies of the House show that women introduce more bills, participate more vigorously in key legislative debates and give more of the one-minute speeches that open each daily session. In 2005 and 2006, women averaged 14.9 one-minute speeches; men averaged 6.5.

Italy and Its Man Problem

Ariel Levy's article on Berlusconi in the New Yorker is a must read. She starts off giving the particulars of Berlusconi's excesses, including his habit of putting his former girlfriends in positions of power. But then she explains that Berlusconi's behavior has been excused for so long, because women are still second class citizens in Italy.

Ninety-five per cent of Italian men have never operated a washing machine. Until 1981, a “crime of honor”—killing your wife for being unfaithful or your sister for having premarital sex—could be treated as a lesser offense than other murders; as late as 2007, a man in Palermo was sentenced to just two days in jail for murdering his wife after their children testified that she had been disrespectful to him. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2010 Global Gender Gap Report, Italy ranks seventy-fourth in women’s rights, between the Dominican Republic and Gambia. Women constitute a smaller percentage of the workforce in Italy than in any other country in the European Union, apart from Malta, and those who work make barely half as much as their male counterparts. Emma Bonino, a Radical Party leader, told me, “When I was Minister of European Affairs, in 2007, I had to prepare a report on the status of women in Italy. The data came in, and I remember that I rejected it twice, saying to my staff, ‘That’s impossible: it cannot be so bad.’ ”

There is growing dissatisfaction with the status of women in Italy. In 2009, in response to rising sexual-assault statistics, Berlusconi said, “We don’t have enough soldiers to stop rape because our women are so beautiful.” Several months later, fifteen thousand people signed a petition to the wives of G8 leaders, asking them to urge their husbands to show support for Italian women by boycotting a summit with Berlusconi.

Americans have long been mocked for being puritanical next to the open-minded European. After this spring of scandal, the Puritans are looking damn good. 

Groped

There was a blog quarrel yesterday between Belle Waring, Kevin Drum, and Megan McArdle yesterday. Life is too short to read all the relevant posts and the comment sections to catch up, so I won't. I just wanted to point out an observation by Waring about being a chick in Manhattan in the 70s and 80s. 

Especially considering that Megan grew up in New York City in the 70s and 80s, which means I am morally certain some dude has flashed her, or masturbated next to her on the subway, or done something equally unwelcome. How not? (I have experienced all these things, and more! Ask me about the time the cops told me the man hassling me was a convicted sex offender who had forcibly raped at least 6 women, and I was “an idiot” because I returned idle pleasantries, in a deflecting way, on the BART. It was apparently my duty to remain silent at all times.) But then, she doesn’t mention it, so perhaps she was weirdly lucky in this regard. Really weirdly lucky.

I spent a good deal of time in the city in high school. I would take the bus at the end of my block into 178th Street and then take the A train down to West 4th to shop or hang out. Sometimes with friends. Sometimes just on my own. After college, I moved into the city.

And all that groping and jerking off and rubbing and flashing and other nasty business happened all the time. Oddly, I never told my parents about it. I never yelled at the guy or made a scene. I just kinda edged away and pretended that it wasn't happening. 

If I had a daughter, I would tell her how to handle that crap. 

Extreme Couponing: The Most Depressing Show on Television

TLC's Extreme Couponing is the absolutely saddest show on TV. It's not supposed to be sad. It's supposed to be uplifting and inspirational. But, really, it's just depressing. 

Extreme Couponing is about people, well mostly women, who are incredibly adept at cutting coupons and are able to turn a $600 grocery bill to $50. The show profiles one or two women who arrive at the supermarket with binders and bins of coupons and print outs of their shopping plans. Some women actually make a profit through their coupon clipping. What's depressing about that? 

Well, the show begins with an explanation of how the person got into extreme couponing. Inevitably, the woman began couponing after her husband, a contractor, lost his job. They have mounting bills and she needs to take desperate meassures to keep their house, while caring for their four children. It's that lovely new economy at work. 

These women are BRILLIANT. They spend sixty hours  a week locating the best coupons. Some surf the web. Some dumpster dive. They learn how to rig the system to get maximum power for their buck. It's too bad that these women couldn't put those organization skills to work at an office, where they could get paid more than their savings on the supermarket shopping. 

And then they go and buy all sorts of shit. Processed food. Canned food. It is piled high on shelves in the garage. You never get coupons for a fresh head of lettuce. 

Extreme Couponing makes me long for the house flipping shows. Remember those? 

 

Best Nike Ads for Girls

Is Cheerleading a Sport?

According to the New York Times, two cheerleading organizations are lobbying the National Collegiate Athletic Association to have cheerleading officially recognized as a sport. 

Let me just settle the matter right now. Cheerleading is not a sport. 

Few cheerleaders actually compete in national competitions. Their primary purpose is to root on the sidelines for male athletes. 

The girls wear make up and use curling irons. 

Sure, they do athletic moves (sometimes), but so do ballet dancers and the Rockettes.

If colleges can count cheerleaders as athletes, then they won't be pressured by the Title IX act to provide real sport activities for girls. 

 

The Brainy Girl and the Political Marriage

From Rachel Vogel: 

It took me a while to acknowledge that I always root for political wives largely because I see so much of myself in them.  They’re an attractive reflection of the brainy girl.  She gets the guy and she gets the Governor’s mansion all while looking fabulous in a pair of Louboutin heels.  As flattering as the image is, I can’t ignore that it’s just a phony façade designed to build power and prominence for the pair.  It has nothing to do with me and my insecurities.  And I won’t indulge it anymore.  Women who marry and tolerate cheating men in exchange for power and fame: from here on out, you’re on your own.  I will not carry your flag as a brave, courageous woman; I will not watch with pride as you manage a stiff-upper-lipped appearance on Oprah; and I sure as hell will not be purchasing your memoirs.  I can’t indulge this bullshit anymore.

(Thanks to Helaine Olen)