There I was, sitting at the kitchen table, not fully awake but trying to read the Sunday paper before all two year old hell broke loose in my house and sipping some coffee when I saw it. By it, I mean, the front page article in The Washington Post's Outlook section, 'We Scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Get?', by Charlotte Allen.Ugh.Read it now. Get back to me.Are you angry? Or do you just feel "dim" as Allen puts it and you don't quite understand all the fuss?Why is an article such as this the one that gets the front page? Why an article about how women will always lag behind men, are the worst drivers, love romance novels and are only smart enough to remember where the berries are, the type of piece that ends up on the front page?Reading Allen's piece I not only got angry but I started … [Read more...]
I’m Suzy Homemaker?
I had a thought last night as I was drifting off to sleep. OK it was more like a series of thoughts that built up and whirled around in my brain with me alternately writing a post in my head and then falling asleep mid-sentence and forgetting the verbage for this morning, but nonetheless it was a pertinent thought.My friend once told her husband that he needed to understand that while he goes to work each day and then leaves his boss when he comes home she as a stay at home mother never does. Her boss wakes her up each morning, blows through her "office" all day leaving a wake of destruction in her path, and continuously yells at her for reasons that we don't always understand. Would he like it if his boss did that to him? No. So some understanding needed to happen on his part.Can I … [Read more...]
For Goodness Sake think of Alice Paul
Cross-posted from Moms Speak Up-Less than 100 years ago women fought for the right to vote. They fought long and hard battles staging protests and strikes in front of the White House. These women were the first people to protest in front of the White House ever. For women like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, often described as militants, the decision to fight for the women’s right to vote was especially strong. These women endured prison time in the Occoquan Work House right here in Virginia only ten minutes from where I now live. They went on hunger strikes and the prison guards force fed them through tubes. Imprisoned three times Alice Paul would not back down. Nothing was more important to her than the women’s suffrage movement. Through her and other women’s actions, the demonstrations, … [Read more...]
Sneakers are for Your Feet. Not Your Head.
Am I right? If you started wearing gloves on your nose or putting your retainer in your ear it wouldn't work out so well and people would deem you not so bright, so why are some places such as Facebook continuing to encourage the despicably twisted yet pervasive thought- breasts for feeding is bad. Breasts to be augmented and oggled is good. Riiiiiight. Except that not only does this Facebook episode, the MYSpace one or the Harvard Medical School incident (see NY TIMES) not only demean women further it sets us back. David Wescott, a blogger, made his point well on this topic:Facebook has come down on both sides of a “free speech issue” here - once clamping down, once letting speech and organizing go - and in each case it’s come down in a way that arguably sets women back.Breasts. Yes, they … [Read more...]