Actual posting at my work

The company I work for has an electronic bulletin board where people can sell stuff, advertise fundraisers, etc. One of today's postings:

My wife is sewing disabled and needs a pair of pants hemmed for my son . Willing to pay. Any help from someone would be greatly appreciated.

WTF!!! His wife is sewing disabled and his wife needs a pair of pants hemmed for his son. Is he sewing disabled also? Would he like his son's pants to get hemmed? I guess it doesn't matter here, since clearly clothing his son is the responsibility of his wife.

This post isn't even that offensive, it just shows how gender roles get reinforced by the everyday little jokes that occur.

New Brunswick Abortion Rights

Fortunately, I haven't had to make the decision about whether abortion would be the right option for me. I have thought about abortion enough to know that every person should have the right to choose whether to carry a child inside their body or not. I believe this is a private, personal, medical issue. I don't believe the embryo is a life. It has the potential for life, but please don't make me talk about how sex is not always for procreation (What happens to the potential for life in the case of a blowjob?)

In Canada, necessary medical procedures are paid for by medicare. So my taxes pay for medical procedures of all types for all people and I don't get to decide if those people are worthy of those procedures, or what procedures should be covered. What makes people think abortion is the exception to this? Get your face out of others private, personal, medical decisions!

Here's how abortion is handled in New Brunswick. The following is excerpted from CBC [bolds mine]:

A law professor at the University of New Brunswick says it's almost impossible for women in the province to receive a medicare-funded abortion under current legislation, and that could be easily changed.

Jula Hughes, who participated in the Silent No More: Speak Out For Choice panel discussion at UNB Fredericton Wednesday evening, said the process New Brunswick women must go through to get an abortion takes too long.
...
Right now, the New Brunswick government doesn't pay for abortions past the 12th week of pregnancy. Hughes said meeting the criteria to qualify, and then getting an appointment, usually takes several weeks.
...
Abortion is the only medical procedure in New Brunswick that requires a second opinion before it can be performed, she said.
...
Because there are only two doctors in the province who perform abortions, women who get the two approvals wait another four to six weeks for the actual operation, said Hughes, who noted a lot of women don't discover their unwanted pregnancies until around the sixth week.

Hughes said changes could easily be made to a provincial regulation to reduce wait times for women.

"Specifically, we need to get rid of the schedule that makes abortions non-funded except in those very limited circumstances," she said, referring to Schedule 2(a.1) of Regulation 84-20 of the Medical Services Payment Act.

The two-doctor certification and the limitation on where government-funded abortions can be performed are stipulated in the schedule.

Hughes said the changes to the act could be made through caucus, without going through the legislature.

"It could be done by next Thursday, if the politicians were so inclined."

So, this medical procedure is only available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, most people don't know they're pregnant until the 6th week, then they have to get 2 doctor's approvals (can you say waiting times? It can take 4 weeks to get in and see the doctor, if you even have one. If you don't have a doctor, and you don't have an emergency, you're screwed) and then wait for 1 of the 2 doctor's who can perform the procedure to have time to fit you in. I don't see how it's possible to get it done before 12 weeks! Talk about setting up the system for failure.

There is another option - "Women can also go to a private abortion clinic in Fredericton and pay up to $750 for the procedure." There's a good chance most people don't have this kind of money sitting around under the mattress. Of course, this also brings up the two-tier health-care system, where rich people pay for health-care and poor people die waiting, but that's not the topic of this post. The point is that the people who need this procedure are most likely unable to access it, and unable to change the system. Who is looking out for the teenagers, the abused, the homeless, the students who are the future generation? It is up to the middle-class people with the fairly cushy jobs to ensure that the system works for everyone. I don't want my rights to be slowly eroded, starting with the people who aren't heard. I want my society to look after our children, our disabled and our sick.

When I read this, I thought "here's a way I can make a difference. I'm going to call someone." Next I thought "Who do I call?" This brings to light that I really don't know much about how our provincial government works. Caucus and legislature? Huh??? So, you can start looking forward to elementary school level overviews of our government system.


Note: I used the words people and person throughout this post instead of women and woman on purpose. It was a little weird at first but guess what! Women are people!

The High Cost of Laziness

Here's a post from Echidne that really makes me mad:

Do you remember the big fuss the media made over the 1999 study by Kawachi and others which found that greater gender equality appeared to be correlated with better health for both sexes in the United States? How about the even bigger media fuss caused by the 2005 study by Chen and others which found that gender equality appeared to be correlated with better mental health for women? And surely you remember the excitement in the media last year when we all learned about the Swedish study which showed that both men and women have better health when roles are shared more equally at home?

You don't recall? Neither do I, because there was no such fuss at all. Studies with those findings are not mentioned in the popular media at all or only fleetingly. But when a Swedish study in 2007 suggests that greater gender equality leads to less health for both sexes, what happens? You guessed it. The media is on the study right away:

Warning: feminism is bad for your health

By Roger Dobson Published: 25 March 2007

I am, in fact, quite lazy. I want my information spoon fed to me. Nice succinct headlines are nice. The problem is that when I rely on headlines and news media I am not getting all the information. I am getting whatever they feel like spoon feeding me that day. I am willingly letting them have a major say in any of my decisions and thoughts, because I base my decisions and thoughts on the info available to me.

If we are interested in knowledge and truthiness, we must make an effort to dig for all the relevant information. I know this sounds like hard work. Perhaps, when we make the effort to feed ourselves, we can choose to eat something other than baby-food.

What do fashion ads tell us?

Some designer has chosen 12 year old Dakota Fanning to model his latest women's line. A few people have blogged about it, some here, here and here. They have done a god job of covering the whole 'sexualization of a child thing' so I'll just excerpt Reverse Paranoia:

...while society doesn’t condone pedophilia in practice, media mavens the world around would nevertheless like the idea of fucking a child to get the Masturbation Pedestal Treatment. Specifically, a girl child, since I haven’t seen anyone try to sell women on the idea of rubbing one out to the vapid image of a pre-pubescent boy in tailor-made Versace pants.
...
But conflating the womanly ideal of beauty with actual childhood is something else. Ads are meant to evoke desire: desire to be, or to be with, depending on the viewer. The object of desire, in this case, is a little girl.
...
Thumbsucking, after all, is only 4,764 steps removed from cocksucking. Which is what us women girls do best.

Strong words. I wanted to see the pic's for myself before forming an opinion, and found them here. Yeah, they're bit weird. What I can't figure out is why I would want to buy some clothes that I see on a 12-year-old.

In the bigger picture, what is the purpose of models? Cat Lady from Reverse Paranoia says "to evoke the desire to be". I agree, but in my mind I phrase it as "I will look like and be like that person if I buy this product." So models should be people we want to look like or be like. I like Dakota. I think she's a good actress. But I do not want to look like a 12-year-old, or be like a 12-year-old. I am a bit upset about being 31, but I would settle for 27 :)

When I look in fashion magazines lately (it doesn't happen too often), I see creepy starving girls, with sunken eyes. What the hell is with heroin chic? I understand goth, but I don't want to be starving, or drug addicted. I'm not sure how these ads are supposed to inspire me to buy the clothes they are selling.

Maybe if I'm skinny with a drug addiction I won't need to worry about paying the bills, or going to work, or what to feed the kids for supper, or how to lose 30 pounds. I guess that sounds attractive. If I'm hopeless and helpless and skinny, I can find some man to take care of me (and own me and use me up and throw me out.)

No, I'm pretty sure I want to buy clothes that will look good on my 31-year-old body.

We Still Have Work To Do

Just in case there is anyone out there who thinks we shouldn't be working for change for the equality of women:

In Canada, "women represent almost half the labour force, own 800,000 companies that contribute more than $18 billion to the economy. Women are responsible for 80% of all household consumption decisions, they contribute more than 50% of tax revenues, retirement savings plans and a variety of mutual funds, they make up half of all the graduates in law, administration, and accounting. More than twice as many women as men are in university. We have the most women entrepreneurs per capita in the industrialized world
(Financial Women's Association of Quebec)."

What proportion of women sit in the House of Commons where important decisions are made directly impacting the quality of life for women and their families? The answer is 20.8%.

Is this what equality looks like?

The above was taken from Equal Voice, a website "devoted to the still-bold idea that more women must be elected to every level of government in Canada." I would also recommend reading their talking points.

I'm not suggesting we all need to run out and sign up to run for office, although I do believe more women should be thinking about it. I would like it if we could all agree (men and women) that gender inequality exists, and that we should all (men and women) be working to change it.

When I talk about change, I think everyone can do something. It doesn't have to be a large change. For me, I'll be starting by calling people on it when they say something sexist. Sexism is so ingrained in our society, and so taken for granted, that we often don't recognise it. We all need to be on our toes about our personal comments and actions. And when someone says something that is obviously sexist, even when it's the status quo, I'll be questioning them. "Do you really feel that way?" I don't intend to be bitchy about it. It's possible they haven't really thought about the implications of what they are saying. It's very easy to just let these comments pass, because I don't like arguing with people, but from now on, nobody gets a free pass.

In what other small ways can we combat gender inequality? or medium or large :)

Smile - You're on Candid Camera

Amanda at Pandagon writes about a study about how smiling may indicate social status and women smile more then men and are expected to be smiling all the time.

Specifically, lower status individuals appear to smile more than higher status individuals.

This is an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me before. I smile alot. I thought I was just being friendly.

I am always smiling at customer service people in an attempt to get better service (some bank tellers can be so uppity), following the old "You get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar". Of course I'm not trying to attract flies but anyhoo. What peeves me is that I have to smile to get pleasant service, or to accomplish what I need to do.

Another example of this is at work. I am in Application Development (IT, programming, whatever you want to call it). In the company I work for, the application developers rely on other technical teams for stuff like test environments, database administration, networking, storage etc etc. My female coworkers have discussed how much easier it is to get services from those teams if you bring cookies, or some other treat, in order to get the work you need done. I have to bring these guys (almost all of them men) presents and make nice for 15 minutes before carefully convincing them my request is valid. I'm wondering if my male collegues need to go to these lengths to get their requests completed. I doubt it. I can't see them bringing treats to other men.

To be fair, I have to consider that technical service teams are notorious for having a 'god-complex' becaue they have the secret passwords to control the hardware, and I have seen that attitude towards male developers as well.

She also writes:

In recent years, I’ve discovered that if I stifle the urge to smile all the time at people, I get more respect. I highly suggest to women experimenting with this themselves.

I am definitely going to try this out. Also consider how you react to people who are smiling vs. with neutral expressions.

Housework Divided

Check out this post from zuzu at feministe about splitting up the housework.

Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet writes about a BBC report of a study showing that single women who live alone clean less than women who live with a male partner — and that men who live with a female partner clean less than they did when they lived alone.

I believe I have a partner who does more housework then I observe in other relationships and tv,etc. But there are still "discussions" about whether the division of work is equal. It's difficult since I think you also have to take into account the traditionally male tasks such as mowing the lawn, taking the trash out, and painting the deck (of course women are doing these tasks too).

In my case I know for sure the following applies:

I was much neater, at least in common areas, when I had a roommate,

When Ramble is away for weeks at a time I definitely let things pile up, and do a mad cleanup before he comes home.