Zuska's Outreach Project For D00dly D00ds
thusspakezuska | June 28, 2010Every once in awhile I do manage to get out to a social sort of event. Recently I was at one such thing. And overhead the following:
Female, mid-40s: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I had great SAT scores, high 1400's [out of a then total 1600]. But my high school guidance counselor strongly discouraged me, and told me "those are really more men's kind of jobs." So I gave up thinking about vet school, even though I had the ability.
Male, same age: When I was in high school, I wanted to learn to type. Probably because I just wanted to take what I thought…
thusspakezuska | June 23, 2010First post in this series can be found here.
Second post in this series can be found here.
In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of...gasp!...being too nice!
I believe this is the first time this has ever happened.
rpf quoted me and commented thus:
"If I were a married man with children, I might well be leery of blogging about how I negotiate the home balance with my spouse on my science blog, even if I weren't concerned about privacy or protecting a pseud, because I'd be afraid of pissing off my spouse, and pissing off the feminist…
thusspakezuska | May 10, 2010After my last few posts, and the tons of comments from thegoodman and Queef, I've started thinking seriously about my approach to this blog. Maybe I am just a little too angry for no good reasons, too often just calling childish names and not solving discrimination. Perhaps I can do better. Perhaps I should start with a new profile photo, something more friendly and welcoming to all. My proposed new profile photo can be found after the jump. Let me know what you think.
Thanks to www.cornify.com for super-sparkly picture editing!
thusspakezuska | May 10, 2010Thegoodman really, really wants to know.
If you do not consider yourself a failure, that is great. Why then are you so angry about this situation? If it has worked out well for you, what is driving your passionate hatred for our patriarch society?
Like many gender discussions/arguments, your approach has made me feel guilty for being a man. This doesn't accomplish anything positive since I soon get defensive because I cannot help it that I am a man and I shouldn't feel guilty about just as you shouldn't feel guilty for being a woman.
This is hilarious in so many ways. Let's recap. I…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2010Reader Jason commented on my post about compulsory smiling thusly:
I just wanted to thank everyone for the comments here. They've been enlightening... to be honest I had never heard of anyone being ordered to smile outside of greeter/public relation jobs (chalk it up to youthful naivete, I suppose). With that in mind when I first read the post it struck me as an overreaction to something minor, but it's hard to argue with a few dozen women from all over with the exact same stories and reactions.
I don't know if I've ever been guilty of this behavior in my life (I hope not, though I am a…
thusspakezuska | June 25, 2009Christina Pikas has a nice post about finding information in books.
Sadly, however, she notes the following:
What kinds of things might a book work best for?...not for cutting edge, mostly
What does this imply when you think about our ongoing project to work our way through Allan Johnson's The Gender Knot? Oh crap, we're doing gender equity work, but we're not on the cutting edge?
That's okay, d00dz. Trust me, you so do not want to jump right to the cutting edge of discourse on the patriarchy. Did you walk right into the lab as an undergrad or a fresh grad student and start banging…
thusspakezuska | June 22, 2009Hi all...just wanted to let you know that I am planning to do the first post for Chapter 2 of The Gender Knot sometime next week, probably mid-week. I have the new edition of the book and have been reading but there's a lot of stuff going on with mine and Mr. Z's family this week. I hope to do a few posts on other topics in the meantime, but we will be back with the Gender Knot next week. Meanwhile. there are still some pretty active discussions on the last few posts. Thanks to my readers for such intense conversation.
thusspakezuska | June 16, 2009What does it mean when a woman ogles a man in the patriarchy?
Reader RichB commented:
...men being looked at as sexual objects increases their power, but women being looked at as sexual objects decreases their power.
Reader Hope isn't buying it:
Really? So if I ogle a man, I'm increasing his power? If a man ogles another man, he's increasing that other man's power? Or is it just that I, as a woman, have no power to objectify a man? No power, period?
What's the answer? Can a woman objectify a man, or not?
Yes, she can - under certain conditions. If she's his supervisor or superior in a…
thusspakezuska | June 15, 2009In light of the great discussion you all have been having on the second post on Chapter 1 of The Gender Knot, I thought it would be a good time to direct you to this most excellent Feminism 101 post at Shakesville, "Sexism Is A Matter Of Opinion". The whole thing is pure gold but I'd like to point out in particular this section on intentionality.
Whether something is sexist (be it a word, a consumable item, a practice, or anything else) is neither dependent on how it is intended nor how it is received, but on whether it serves to convey sexism, which itself is determined by its alignment…
thusspakezuska | June 11, 2009Welcome to our discussion of The Gender Knot by Allan Johnson. This is the second post in the discussion series. We will be discussing Chapter 1 "Where Are We?" You can find all posts connected to this discussion here.
As noted before, there is an updated edition of the book now available. In the first post, I was working with the 1997 edition. I now have the new edition and this post is based on that edition. The first chapter is available online here. If you haven't had a chance to read the chapter, maybe you'd like to go now and read the pages covering "Women and Patriarchy" and "…
thusspakezuska | May 28, 2009As has been noted, the recent edition of The Gender Knot has been substantially revised and reorganized, and I have been working off a 1997 edition, which is bound to cause some confusion for those of you reading the new edition. I've decided, therefore, that for the rest of the book, I am just going to have to get the new edition. I will finish out the discussion using my current text but for the remainder of the chapters I will go off the new edition.
This, combined with my upcoming (next week) week-long visit with mom, will delay slightly the discussion of Chapter 2, which I had…
thusspakezuska | May 27, 2009Welcome to our discussion of The Gender Knot by Allan Johnson. This is the first post in the discussion series. We will be discussing Chapter 1 "Where Are We?" You can find all posts connected to this discussion here.
I just noted a potential problem. There is an updated edition of the book now available. Right now I am working with a 1997 edition. I haven't decided if I will purchase the new edition; for now, I am going to keep going with my old one. But, if you are working with a new edition, you may encounter something in the book that I have left out. If so, please feel free to…
thusspakezuska | May 27, 2009I promised you the first post on The Gender Knot today, and I still plan to get it up today if at all possible. My plan had been to work on it Monday and Tuesday but most of those days I was plagued with headache and it was difficult to concentrate on writing. So, it's not done yet.
Please note Chapter 1 is available online here.
In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to listen to fellow Scienceblogger Pal MD's latest Palcast, The Kitchen Edition, which relates to my post On Being A Patient.
Or maybe you'd like to read this post by Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection and just puke, puke…
thusspakezuska | May 15, 2009Well, that's quite a vigorous discussion we've all been having these past few days over proto-feminist d00ds, no? I am grateful to you all for your participation and for the many good suggestions made to help proto-feminist d00ds along the path of growth. In case some of you missed it, Comrade Physioprof offered his own handy-dandy guide for d00dly commenters over at Isis's place.
With all the interest in these two posts, I'm thinking that maybe we need to spend a little more time talking to/with/for the d00dly d00ds. Herewith, I am proposing Zuska's Outreach Project For D00dly D00ds.…