When people protest the use of prejudicial humour, they’re often told to lighten up. This is, after all, just a joke. Everyone knows it’s meant to be funny. In some cases, they’re told that the whole point of the joke is to make fun of people who think that way; no one really thinks Jewish …
Tag Archives: sexism
A Hostile Climate: Women and the Environmental Movement
While the domination of social justice movements by old white men is nothing new, one place where it doesn’t get a lot of examination is within the environmental movement. While women in the movement express frustration with the state of affairs and work on programs intended to increase participation by women and promote the development …
Can We Criticise Books Without Bashing Their Readers?
Literary criticism is as old as books themselves; the first thing many people want to do when they finish a book is to start talking about it with other people who’ve read it. They want to pick it apart to see what worked and what didn’t, they want to discuss the narrative, they want to …
Talk Back to Sexism
I was probably around eight or nine at the time, and my father had some people over for dinner; our house was often filled with people eating and having vivid, complex conversations and I was never driven away from the table as too young to participate. Consequently, I was used to engaging with adults as …
Hysterical, Oversensitive Harpies
To be a woman in our society is to be caught in a constant double bind; for every action you take, there will be someone there to condemn you, and if you take the opposite action, another set of people will be lined up to tell you you’re doing it wrong. Everything you do is …
Not Getting It: Men, Women, and ‘Stalk Your Friends’ Apps
In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of location-based services on mobile devices. From those that allow you to update with your location, to those dependent on location, to those that quietly log location data, they’re everywhere. If you use a smartphone, information about your location is readily accessible to a number of applications that …
Hey, Dudes: Stop Sitting Still For Sexism
Every few months, a brand-new round of ‘where are all the women’ goes around as people profess shock and amazement that there are fewer women than they expect, or want, in spaces like conferences, radio shows, social clubs, and what-have-you. Everyone handwrings over where the women are and wonders why there aren’t more of them …
Words Matter in Reproductive Rights Discussions
Considerable attention is paid to the heated debate over words, and dogwhistles, used in reproductive rights conversations. Abortion opponents, for example, are fond of referring to fetuses as babies, and reproductive health care providers as abortionists. Meanwhile, pro-choice campaigners are careful to use medically correct terminology, and to reject terms that are inaccurate or misleading. …
‘It’s all in your head’
Women who identify and resist sexism are challenged and silenced in a number of ways. One of the most insidious is the casual dismissal of ‘it’s all in your head.’ ‘I don’t really see what the big deal is.’ ‘I think you’re reading something that isn’t really there.’ ‘You’re just making it up.’ It’s a …
Small Battles and Giving Up
A few months ago, I had a problem with my car. It was a fairly straightforward, basic problem, but it wasn’t the kind of problem I can take to my mechanic because he doesn’t handle those sorts of problems. It was the sort of thing that required the attentions of a specialist who specifically handles …
