My Name Might Just Cause the End of Civilization as We Know It

Evidently 70% of American's think I am a bad wife and 50% think the government should put me in line.

No, really. My most recent post for Mother Jones is about a national study on family and gender issues, the results of which shocked even the researchers.

Frankly, I agree with Jessica at Feministing who originally linked to the article. I think choosing one's name is a personal decision and marriage may or may not be the catalyst for why someone chooses to change it. There might be many reasons a woman chooses to drop the last name she was born with. And people change their name all the time for other reasons. Call yourself Princess Sparklebutt - if that is how you identify, more power to 'ya.

In my case, I am the daughter of a feminist who decided to keep her last name and adopt my dad's. She then passed down the convention to both my sister and I. I think its great. My middle name is pretty damn interesting and unique (at least in this country). So when it came to what I was going to do, it wasn't necessarily an either/or option for me. I didn't necessarily want to adopt my husband's last name, but in the end the decision was pretty easy.

We were sitting on the couch one day before the wedding - not actually talking about anything having to do with the wedding (for once), when he said:

You're not going to change your name are you?

Turns out, in his view, the person he fell in love with was the person I was then, name and all, and that is who he wanted to marry - and that, is one of the many reasons I wanted to marry him.

We toyed around with other options: making a new combo one, or both of us adopting my middle name. But, we eventually decided (after all of ten minutes) to stick with the names were already had. It might just be because I'm lazy, but it seems like that is the easiest decision. Correcting well meaning in-laws and friends a few times is much easier than having to make sure my last name is changed on every sort of official documentation, work correspondence, and online account.

And guess what? The world has not come to an end.

The Sex & Gender Beat

I have a new post up at Mother Jones and it is once again filed under "Sex & Gender." As they say, write what you know.

But it is also part of the continued marketing fails. It is nice of companies to help me decide what NOT to buy.

Seriously, make something just for the ladies and you are probably gonna piss us off.

Hollaback Update

A little while ago, I linked to a post I wrote over at Mother Jones on how to respond to catcallers. Today, Deeply Problematic (one of my new favorite blogs) has a piece on catcalling and "partner privilege."

Its a smart post about the many different privileges she has that make it easier to simply walk down the street. I am privileged in many of the same ways that she is: I am white, heterosexual and not just partnered, but married. I have far fewer catcalls to put up with on a daily basis, not only because I am often with my husband, but because when we are not together I have a giant symbol of my socially-sanctioned relationship on my left hand.

Now, the only time I am the recipient of these utterances is when I am with one or more women. Strangely, even if my husband or another man is with us, if the ratio of women to men is high, we will still hear them (I blame Mystery).

A case in point, was this weekend when a few of my friends and I went out dancing. The club we like to frequent is not a bastion of heteronormativity like other douchey places. In fact, on this night in question there was all kinds of partnering going on. But, the jackasses do seem to be everywhere so you have to stay on your toes.

The first time I went to said club, I came home with sore arms and shoulders. No, not from rockin' out, but from checking (with the help of a friend) all the dudes who thought my friends were there solely for them to grind their crotch into uninvited.

Since then, my husband has come out dancing with us because we like dancing together, especially to 1980's synth pop, 1970's metal, and current hip hop all smashed together (awwww). While we joke that he is our own personal security detail, my arms haven't been tired every night he has gone, because far fewer douches think it appropriate to assault - yes, assault - someone who has a friend that they think could kick their ass (read: male).

All this is to say, it made me sad when we were talking about our most recent dancecapades with a friend who had only gone with us the first time, sans my husband, and was one of the targets of dancefloor douchebaggery. She wanted to go again, but was concerned about feeling safe on the dancefloor, so another friend assured her that it was different when my husband or another man was there.

Sadly, this is true. It is true, even though the friend that offered assurances can probably benchpress more than any hipster jackass and can certainly deliver a roundhouse kick to the face. It is true, even though we live in a bubble of progressiveness and frequent clubs whose patrons come from diverse identities and sexualities. And it is true, that even though I have a Master's degree in dismantling the patriarchy and have trained pre-teen and college girls in personal safety, a night out dancing will be more fun with a male chaperone.

Sit Down and Shut Up

With the end of the Bush administration, I had really hoped the days of just spouting outright lies and nonsensical streams of consciousness were over. I was wrong. The news about mobs for hire at health care Town Halls is everywhere now, but not surprisingly, Rachel Maddow has a really good run down of just what exactly is going on:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The 2000 election was the first presidential election I was able eligible to vote in. I was in college, and by the time my classes were done for the day, the election had already been called, so I dejectedly cast my ballot that would never be counted.

Then, in the 2004 campaign, I worked 17 hour days, seven days a week, for six months hoping that this time we would have an election decided by an informed electorate who had their ballots counted. Again, we did not. And again, it seemed no one really did anything about it.

But, to the point: I thought I was an informed citizen, I worked in electoral politics and in the progressive media, and yet, I never once heard about the mobs for hire that had stopped the Florida recount.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Make sure you watch the section where she identifies every single person in the "mob" as a Republican staffer. Strangely it makes me feel a little better to know that people didn't do that because they were idiots, but because they were paid to be idiotic.

It really is about time that we stop letting this crap slide. It is time that we started teaching people how to think rationally, and not allow for this kind of behavior. Not only is it ignorant, it is threatening to the people in attendance and members of Congress. It is time we take people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh an Bill O'Reilly off the air once and for all.

A Crime Against Women

When an awful crime, like the recent shootings in Pennsylvania, occurs I am not one to obsess over coverage. I usually wait for the initial media blitz to pass and then find out more information a day or two later.

So, it was not until I saw this post at Shakesville that I realized that the fitness center shooting was not just a random act of crazed violence, it was a gender-based hate crime.

Even if I had been paying attention to the headlines, I would not have known that it was specifically women that were targeted. Yesterday, all of the headlines were in the similar vein of "Four Dead in Fitness Club Shooting." In fact, when I specifically Googled "women killed in Pennsylvania shooting" I only had two results on the first page that mentioned women in the headline - from Canada and Australia.

But, all one had to do was to read any article to realize that the shooter was the only man that was killed or injured. Three women are dead and nine are injured, but it seemed almost impossible for reports to underscore that this was a gender-based crime, even as they quoted the killer's hate-filled blog. As a commenter at Shakesville noted:

I also noticed that the opening paragraph lists the women as "people", then later mentions that they were all women. It does have the disorienting effect of erasing the misogyny of the killer, doesn't it?

And she is right. Headlines make a difference. They are how we frame events and decipher the onslaught of information surrounding them. Which is why I was relieved to see that just as I started putting two and two together so did all of the smart feminist bloggers.

This morning, this post at Feministing also pointed out that this is not the only gender-based shooting in recent years. And as Jessica pointed out, very few people connected the misogynist dots then, as well.

It is important to note that this is not a new phenomenon. A similar hate-crime was committed in Canada in 1989 at the Ecole Polytechnique - in that case, the shooter was convinced women were stealing his job, in this one they were denying him dates. Which is why I was relieved to read the article Jessica pointed to in The Christian Science Monitor.

Not only does the article identify this horrific act as gender-based violence, it provides a context and history of misogyny:

Misogyny has been around since almost as long as men and women have. The first poem written in Greek that still exists is called "Woman." Its author is anonymous, and it amounts to a harangue against the female sex.

While the gender-equality movement has made strides in the past century when it comes to some of the more blatant forms of societal misogyny, such as banning women from academic and professional settings, misogyny persists in American and other cultures around the world, according to historians.

"This killer fits into a long pattern of males who harbor hatred towards all women, the image of 'woman,' and towards individual real women, and who take out their frustration on a female scapegoat," says David Gilmore, an anthropology professor at Stony Brook University in New York and author of "Misogyny: the Male Malady."

Thankfully, the headlines have changed today. Hopefully they mainstream media will begin to connect the dots between this and other gender-based crimes, as well. One can dream at least.

Lets Talk About Sex, Baby

Yep, in one post I managed to discuss withdrawal, semen and sex without a rubber on an award-winning website.

But, as part of the generation who was educated about sex after the outbreak of AIDS and before the insanity of abstinence-only sex-ed, all this talk of unprotected sex makes me nervous. Particularly, because of the existence of abstinence-only "educators" that will use any excuse to rail about the effectiveness of condoms.

I'm also not a big fan of evolutionary psychology, and using science to argue that there is only one right way to have sex.

(that's right...not one, but two, references to mid-90's lady groups)

Megan Fox , Megan Fox, Megan Fox

Did I ever think I would write a blog post in defense of Megan Fox?

Nope.

But the interwebs are full of a special kind of misogyny today. Thanks to Asylum, AOL's men's lifestyle site - yeah I didn't know they were still around either, or that they needed to expand into "men's lifestyle" - August 4th has been declared A Day Without Megan Fox.

That's right, the very same dudes (and some ladies) that couldn't get enough of her are now saying they have given too many pixels to her. Even Reuters has gotten in on the act. But don't think for a second that they have had an epiphany about media overexposure, exploitation, voyeurism or the invasion of privacy. Nope, they just want to make sure they don't exhaust their page views too soon, "Sure she’s one of the sexiest young female actors, but in order to preserve both her sexiness and her freshness, we need to tone down the over foxposure."

So don't worry. Images of Fox will continue to grace the computer screens, but in the meantime these sites are suggesting nominees for "the next Megan Fox." It is so nice of them to point out how contrived and constructed celebrity is. According to these bastions of intelligent thought, Megan Fox is the poor man's Angelia Jolie and Odette Yustman is the poor man's Megan Fox. So, I get it. Women cannot be just themselves - or even a whole person - unless they are Angelina Jolie. Unfortunately, I'll venture to guess it is not her work with the UN, but rather her embodiment of a video game character, that provides her personhood.

But, does the timing of this "media blackout" seem a bit suspicious to anyone else? It comes on the heels of Fox identifying herself as a feminist and the release of the trailer for Jennifer's Body, a movie in which Fox's character literally eats men and excuses by saying she is not killing people "just boys."

While being aware that as a woman in Hollywood you are "You’re merchandised, you’re a product," is not necessarily a feminist understanding, she is very savvy about Hollywood and how she can capitalize on it. But, who knows, maybe hanging out with Diablo Cody more than Michael Bay will foster her feminist awakening.