The National Post covers feminism
Tue, 2007-05-29 08:21
#1
The National Post covers feminism
Tue, 2007-05-29 08:21
#2
Yesterday, while waiting for the streetcar, I saw the front page of the Nazi "kinder kuche kirche" Post (oh, suck it up, too fucking bad if you don't like it, it's hyperbole, get over it) with a front page article on how feminists are no longer man-hating, hairy dykes, and how we all want to be called "Miss" or "Mrs." and that "Ms." is only for divorced women, lesbians, or spinsters.
[url=http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=b9542b... now, that great feminist expert, Jonathan Kay, reports on the state of feminism today.[/url]
quote:
Centuries from now, when the definitive history of the feminist movement is written, a small footnote will have been earned by the University of Waterloo. As reported last week, the school's student council voted 38-17 to rename Waterloo's "Womyn's Centre," removing the spurious "y" from "womyn" and replacing it with the more conventional "e." It's just one vowel at one university. But the change symbolizes how radically feminism has evolved since its militant heyday.The term "womyn" was invented in the 1970s by activists who objected to the fairer sex (can I say that?) being etymologically tagged as a mere variant on the default male prototype. Some imagined the term "woman" would fade from common language entirely, like "Negro," "Papist" or "Mohammedan." But the only people who picked up on the new term were the sort of post-grad gender warriors who set the rules at women's centres. For the rest of us, "womyn" joined "phallocentric" and "herstory" in the eyeball-rolling PC lexicon, suitable only for anti-feminist mockery. Now that women's rights have become firmly established in our society (in large part thanks to all those warriors everyone mocks), even campus feminists are shedding their jargon and reverting to the Queen's English.
Words like womyn belong to an angrier age.
...etc. and blah blah blah.
Oh, and in answer to your question, Jonathan, sure you can call us "the fairer sex". And I can call you a dickwad.
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Tue, 2007-05-29 08:33
#3
[url=http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=ff070a30-9cea-4df2..., there we go. Yesterday's article too.[/url] Note the especially charming, "man-hating, hairy, angry queer" in the caption to the picture.
quote:
The word Ms., for example, is being assigned to specific women instead of all women, as feminists had dreamt in the 1970s, according to new research by Donna Lillian, whose studies have shown the title increasingly designates only the gay, unmarried or single older woman.
Bullshit. I've always been a Ms., married, single, separated, and soon to be divorced.
I worked for a place that had a database full of doctors and non-doctors. The choices in that database were "Mr." and "Ms." and "Dr." None of this "Miss" and "Mrs." bullshit, and trying to keep straight who wanted to make sure everyone knew they had a hubby, and who wanted everyone to know they were available. Screw that.
I hardly know anyone who goes by "Miss" or "Mrs." except for people from my parents' generation and older, and a few throwback "I'm not a feminist!" younger women who just need so badly to prove to the world and all their male friends that they're not one of THOSE type of women. Oh no. They're the GOOD women, the kind who don't rock the boat, who don't subscribe to any belief so radical as the idea that they're not defined by their marital status!
Tue, 2007-05-29 09:39
#4
Maysie
I actually find it adorable that the National Post's version of feminism begins and ends in the 1980s and popular culture.
If Jonathan Kay knew what radical feminists of colour were up to he'd really flip out. It's best that he's left to his elitist version of what feminism is.
And how lovely for him that his wife arranges the details with the nanny. Give me a fucking break. [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
As for the Ms. discussion (the word, not the magazine [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img] ), what's most interesting to me is that this is the issue that gets called on by the mainstream, then and now, again and again, as if that's the issue that women were focussed on and it's all we cared about. And it's about terminology that identifies us as heterosexual property of some man.
Never mind issues like public day care, racism, poverty, reproductive rights, sexual harassment and rape.
And yeah, Michelle, you're right, most places just have Mr, Ms and Dr as choices. Sounds like that war's been fought and we won.
Tue, 2007-05-29 11:16
#5
trasie
The "Ms." thing reared its head for me last year, when one of my sisters got married. She had me listed in the program as "Miss", even though I was 34, had been with my current partner for 14 years, and had a child. When I politely requested that she list me as Ms., she flipped because, in her world of weddings, Ms. was only for divorced or widowed women. I told her that the last time someone had referred to me as "Miss" I had been in grade school.
This year, the other sister is getting married. I got the invite yesterday and she's listed me as Ms. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
Tue, 2007-05-29 11:23
#6
How bout Ma'am?
Tue, 2007-05-29 11:50
#7
Polly B
Bleck. Ma'am sucks.
Tue, 2007-05-29 11:52
#8
Just out of curiousity, though, sexist writers and papers aside, what do we all think of the U of Waterloo's Women's Centre changing the "y" to "e" in their name?
Yes, I know it isn't an earthshattering feminist issue or anything, but I think it IS interesting. Perhaps the end of a certain kind of feminist era?
I have never really bought into the alternate spellings of woman or women. But I do buy into gender-neutral terms. I, for instance, don't see what the big deal is about changing "chairman" to "chair", or changing "policeman" to "police officer", or "fireman" to "firefighter", or "fisherman" to "fisher".
Seriously - what's the big deal? Why is that so threatening to people who otherwise might not really mind having women enter these professions? I know a lot of guys who are enlightened enough to be fine with female firefighters and police officers and chairs - but they get bent out of shape at the changing of the word.
My question is - why? Why should they care? "Fireman" and "chairman" is so obviously NOT an accurate title for a position which can be held by a man or a woman. So why the ridicule and resistance? "Fireman" and "Chairman" and other gender specific terms were fine for the time when it was always men who did those things. But now that women do them too, the terms are just inaccurate. What is so threatening about words?
Their excuse is, "Oh, stupid feminists, what's the big deal about using policeman and fireman?" My question has always been, if it's not a big deal what you call them, then why such resistance to change to a more accurate term? Why so threatened?
Tue, 2007-05-29 12:09
#9
Maybe its part of the natural resistance to change, or part of the ongoing campaign to paint political correctness as one of the ills in society by entrenched male dominated mainstream viewpoints. They'll get over it eventually, and if they don't, who cares about the wacky utterings of the self marginalized.
Tue, 2007-05-29 13:55
#10
Michelle,
In France they didn't bother to change any of the words as far as I know (i.e. Madame le ministre), and women are often doing better than here.
Changing language is window dressing to the political issue, and a bastardization of the language. I just find the whole concept of changing language kind of offensive. As harvard linguist steven pinker notes, toilets become bathrooms become washrooms (slowly) become lavatories, but nothing's changed, not even attitudes.
In Quebec (different from France), it gives politicians an opportunity to pretend to be modern by saying every descriptive noun in masculine and feminine, i.e. les quebecois et les quebecoise. It's cumbersome, misleading, and hideous.
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
Tue, 2007-05-29 14:33
#11
Normally I wouldn't post in this forum, but this is an issue I feel strongly about, so I'm prepared to chance it - results be damnned.
I was raised in a time when spelling mattered. Grammar mattered. Correct masculine and feminine verb form mattered. Everything else was slang. To use this sort of language in the context of describing what someone else said, or after having too much to drink was one thing. To use it in daily speech was another. And the sort of people who did so were to be dismissed, not emulated.
I'm broad-minded. Slang, contractions and being a little loose with the old verb form doesn't bother me. But bad spelling still does. Especially when it's mine. When I see words spelled incorrectly on purpose it drives me up the wall. I don't say anything because I understand the context in which it's done. But I find it very hard to read, and even harder not to dismiss.
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: The Wizard of Socialism ]
Tue, 2007-05-29 14:44
#12
quote:
Originally posted by The Wizard of Socialism:
[b]Normally I wouldn't post in this forum, but this is an issue I feel strongly about, so I'm prepared to chance it - results be damnned.I was raised in a time when spelling mattered. Grammar mattered. Correct masculine and feminine verb form mattered. [/b]
ChumbaWamba? I thought that music mattered. But does it? Bollocks! Not compared to how people matter.
Tue, 2007-05-29 15:14
#13
Wiz, I can maybe sort of see where you're coming from, but I kind of like the fact that language changes and grows. I'm a big fan of slang, cuss words (and combinations of those two), appropriations of legit words to non-legit usage, etc. Strangely enough, though, I have completely arbitrary dislikes in that manner too. Like stupid business jargon, or verbing nouns. For me, it depends on how the coining came about. If it came about as slang, that's awesome. If it came about as smarmy business speak, not so awesome.
500_Apples, I've always wondered about feminists who speak languages where all nouns are gendered, whether there is ever any kind of move to rebel against that.
Interestingly, Persian is a language where they don't even have masculine and feminine pronouns. They just have "Oo" which means s/he. You figure out what they mean by the context.
I've always thought that was neat. And that it would be handy when admiring a baby whose gender you can't tell (and of course, it's generally impossible to tell, unless the parent really goes out of their way to dress them one way or the other). "Oh look at how sweet s/he is! S/he's adorable!"
Tue, 2007-05-29 15:24
#14
Sven
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]...verbing nouns...[/b]
Gawd, I hate that. "Where are you 'officing'"? Just ask me where my fucking office is!!!
Tue, 2007-05-29 15:40
#15
Hahaha! I haven't heard "officing" yet.
But did you notice, I snuck one in that very phrase? "Verbing"? [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] What do you call it when the word is itself an example of what the word describes?
Tue, 2007-05-29 15:58
#16
Sven
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]But did you notice, I snuck one in that very phrase? "Verbing"? [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] What do you call it when the word is itself an example of what the word describes?[/b]
No, I didn't notice that!! Great play on the word!! [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
I, too, hate business jargon. And, academic jargon ("The structure of the bricolage conforms in many ways to the phenomenological analysis of the work of art as a privileged locus of disclosure of the horizontal structure of human experience"). See also the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair]Sokal Affair[/url].
Tue, 2007-05-29 16:15
#17
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
[b] Interestingly, Persian is a language where they don't even have masculine and feminine pronouns. They just have "Oo" which means s/he. You figure out what they mean by the context. [/b]
That's why Ms. Slumberjack often mistakenly refers to a 'him' as she and a 'her' as he. The pronouns don't exist in Farsi so she still as difficulty with it in English. It's entertaining in social gatherings, but then again, my newfie accent has enough English miscues of its own to rival hers.
Tue, 2007-05-29 16:20
#18
More irksome corporate terminology; segway, tangent, rationalize, downsize, offshore, human resources.
Tue, 2007-05-29 17:11
#19
laine lowe
I don't remember the last time (if ever) I saw someone refer to herself as Miss. I think there are a few older generations that go by Mrs. and maybe women who adopt their husband's surname continue to do so. For me, Ms. was the equivalent of Mr. -- didn't matter one freaking iota what your marital status was. Why anyone would question the brilliance of such a simple change is beyond me.
And I still don't get why some women still feel the need to change their names through marriage. I won't bother to explain it as a partriarchal throwback since we all know that are "maiden" names are often enough our fathers. But just the point of sheer identity. Why should the female partner want to change their identity in light of the fact the the male partner rarely does. I have known of only one man who hyphenated his name along with his partner. But in general, I believe it's only the women and maybe their children who use the hyphenated last name.
Tue, 2007-05-29 17:22
#20
quote:
Originally posted by laine lowe:
[b] And I still don't get why some women still feel the need to change their names through marriage. I won't bother to explain it as a partriarchal throwback since we all know that are "maiden" names are often enough our fathers. But just the point of sheer identity. Why should the female partner want to change their identity in light of the fact the the male partner rarely does. I have known of only one man who hyphenated his name along with his partner. But in general, I believe it's only the women and maybe their children who use the hyphenated last name.[/b]
I think it's a left over from the bygone era of women being classified as 'non-persons.' For some, its tradition and the expected thing to do, while others have dispensed with it. For some its choice, however it's practice continues to be predominate, so how much choice is there really in an accepted peer social environment where the easiest way is to go with the flow.
Tue, 2007-05-29 17:34
#21
Catchfire
Oh boy. Where do I begin?
Probably with the least contentious: Michelle, the word for words that are an example of what they are is "onomatopoeia." It's commonly taught as words that sound like what they mean, like "buzz," but it also refers to words like "verbing" or "taut" or "articulate."
Second, sorry Wiz, but language changes. Language is a carrier of culture, so as culture changes, language does. And changes matter, sure. Language predates humanity, essentially, because it's already here when we come into this world. It teaches us the ins and outs of our culture, and presents the architecture of human relations before we even learn how to identify them. If you don't believe that language carries culture, talk to the Canadian residential school system that made it a priority to eradicate First Nations languages.
500_Apples mentioned how washroom, toilets and restrooms, etc. change, but the difference between them certainly matters. Think about which cultures use which word, and what that possibly means. What is the implication of American culture trying to mute their scatological impulses by calling the shitter a "restroom"? Isn't it kind of funny that the Brits call a toilet a "water closet"? To say these nuances, and less humourous ones "don't matter" is missing a lot, I'd say.
I'm also somewhat of an amateur grammatician, so I also believe that the ephemeral essence of language shouldn't be embraced at the expense of proper spelling, adherence to grammar basics, proper punctuation and the like. There's a method for shifts in grammar rules, but just insisting that hyphens don't really matter ain't the way.
So, if language is a carrier of culture, then there should be no better target for feminists to undermine if they want to change how people think about gender. If nothing else, "womyn" and "ze" and "herstory" shake up the way people think about language, and that's a forceful start. Obviously, you can't impose a linguistic shift, but their efforts might move towards equality in the English language. Like the French "les canadiens/les canadiennes" (which I don't think is "misguided" at all, nor unsound) it signals an understanding that we need to revisit how we talk about these things. I also predict that "straight/queer" will soon be reconsidered, as people start to figure out that homosexuals aren't really crooked after all.
And don't get me started on the Sokal hoax. If I needed a clueless scientist taking gleeful potshots at my career choice, I'd at least find someone worth their salt.
Tue, 2007-05-29 17:56
#22
remind
quote:
Originally posted by laine lowe:
[b]... I still don't get why some women still feel the need to change their names through marriage. I won't bother to explain it as a partriarchal throwback since we all know that are "maiden" names are often enough our fathers. But just the point of sheer identity. Why should the female partner want to change their identity in light of the fact the the male partner rarely does. I have known of only one man who hyphenated his name along with his partner. But in general, I believe it's only the women and maybe their children who use the hyphenated last name.[/b]
1. When I got married, way back when, and refused to accept my partner's last name, I had to sign a paper waving my rights to have his name under section 32? something, or another, to do so, is this still the same way?
2. You have a very real point there with identity change Laine. Women, in a patriarchial society, are supposed to change their identity when they get married, that is the point of the name change.
3. Language comes after the visual observence not before. As such, visual cues are the MOST important factors for societal change, and then language.
Tue, 2007-05-29 18:19
#23
laine lowe
I will admit that I had a Vegas wedding but I didn't have to sign anything about changing my name or not. I'm sorry you had to go through that remind.
I have to admit that despite trying to re-educate older family members, I still get mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. X. But then again, more than half of my extended inlaws have no idea of how to say my given or surname. I laughed when some misguided acquaintances suggested that I might be relieved to get married just to change my name. As if I hadn't learned to teach people how to pronounce if for the 35+ years I had had it before getting married. Sheesh.
Tue, 2007-05-29 18:53
#24
remind
quote:
Originally posted by laine lowe:
[b]I will admit that I had a Vegas wedding but I didn't have to sign anything about changing my name or not. I'm sorry you had to go through that remind.[/b]
Oh well, it gave me a band box to stand on [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] back then, and I gave the JP the gears and everyone else attending to about right at the moment because it was part of the 'ceremony'. And it has balanced out nowadays,as most often my partner gets called Mr Remind, significantly more than I get called Mrs Beowolf. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
quote:
[b]I have to admit that despite trying to re-educate older family members, I still get mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. X.[/b]
My family sends it addressed to me and him, with my last name for both, [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] his family puts his and "family". Our friends use our first names only, because we both have long names. But then mom Beowolf just shared with me, this morning, how pleased she is the museum debunking evolution is opening in AB soon.
quote:
[b]I laughed when some misguided acquaintances suggested that I might be relieved to get married just to change my name.[/b]
I have never had that problem, both our names are equally difficult for some reason to others, and they probably thought mine was easier. But I did get; "are you one of those 'feminists'?", accompanied by a glance down at my legs to see if they were hairy or not, 100's of times, up until about 1989, or so. If I had pants on, I would pull a leg up and show them no hair. For some reason, that would confuse the questioner and they wouldn't say anything more about it.
Tue, 2007-05-29 19:24
#25
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]
And don't get me started on the Sokal hoax. If I needed a clueless scientist taking gleeful potshots at my career choice, I'd at least find someone worth their salt.[/b]
Take it up with the editorial board of [i]Social Text[/i].
[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img] [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
[img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
I do notice you get very defensive-aggressive sometimes of sociology and its relationship to the sciences and is image among the public.
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
Tue, 2007-05-29 21:24
#26
quote:
And so every male-female discrepancy observed in the labour market was automatically taken as a symptom of employer bigotry. This conceit bequeathed all sorts of bad policy ideas that remain with us -- pay equity, gender quotas, .... but no one really believes the underlying assumption any more. I
Pay equity a bad policy idea ? Pay equity is a widely accepted thing in 2007- how can he dismiss it as a bad policy idea ? same goes mostly for affirmative action.
As for changing one's name for one's husbands , its always seemed to me akin to labelling a jar-ie "this is mine"
I do wonder though what the name change reflects- why the less emphasis on terminology these days ? I finished university 2 years ago, and it wasn't much of an issue, although I admit it wasn't much of an interest ( which I suppose is part of my question)
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: Pride for Red Dolores ]
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: Pride for Red Dolores ]
[ 29 May 2007: Message edited by: Pride for Red Dolores ]
Wed, 2007-05-30 05:36
#27
Catchfire
quote:
[b]Originally posted by 500_Apples:[/b]
Take it up with the editorial board of [i]Social Text[/i].I do notice you get very defensive-aggressive sometimes of sociology and its relationship to the sciences and is image among the public.
All those lovely smilies aside, you've stumbled across the core of the Sokal incident. It was solely an editorial issue, and that's all. What gets my back up is Sokal's gleeful attempts to prove it was something anything more than a lack in editorial rigour.
And why don't you keep your opinions of who's "defensive-aggressive" to yourself. It might be considered an attempt to provoke. Even with the smilies.
Wed, 2007-05-30 05:51
#28
quote:
Originally posted by The Wizard of Socialism:
[b]Slang, contractions and being a little loose with the old verb form doesn't bother me.[/b]
That should be: "... [i]don't[/i] bother me."
Wed, 2007-05-30 05:51
#29
Sven
quote:
Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]All those lovely smilies aside, you've stumbled across the core of the Sokal incident. It was solely an editorial issue, and that's all. What gets my back up is Sokal's gleeful attempts to prove it was something anything more than a lack in editorial rigour.[/b]
Another example of a prank submission ([url=http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2005/04/22/F... Daily[/url]). From the Tufts Daily article:
quote:
[b]According to Lecturer Marcy Brink-Danan, who teaches an Ex College course on language and ideology, the MIT students' prank is not the first of its kind."A physicist at another university [Duke] sent a jargon-esque paper in to a very well-known humanities journal called Social Text," said Brink-Danan, who did language-related research as a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Fellow. "He was making basically a nonsense case, and it was accepted!"
That physicist, Alan Sokal, successfully submitted his paper, called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," in 1996.
Brink-Danan said that pranks like the MIT students' and Sokal's are more scandalous within some segments of the academic community than others.
"For people in the scientific community, there are certain standards for papers: you have a hypothesis, you prove it, you give results," she said. "So if you give a false paper, you're giving falsified information."
"From a humanities and social sciences perspective, it's less scandalous," she added. "Such papers are less about the effort to prove a theory - if a paper or conference talk is able to make us think of something in a new way, then it's a success."[/b]
[ 30 May 2007: Message edited by: Sven ]
Wed, 2007-05-30 06:45
#30
Catchfire
I'm not sure what your point is, but you should also be aware that that particular prank had tried [i]for years[/i] to get a nonsense paper published, and they eventually found a small, non-peered review conference panel that accepted it initially, but eventually turned it down. But even if they lapped it up, what, precisely does this prove? That academia is oversaturated, and the publish-or-perish mentality has fostered a thinning of the talent pool (kind of like the NHL)? Well you'll find no argument here, but it should also be pointed out that bad writing languishes in every discipline, so I'm never quite sure why people love to target the humanities. Go read a few legal documents and then come back and criticize "poststructural epistemological narratives in the pre-Barthesian post-Fordist metropolis."
Wed, 2007-05-30 07:38
#31
quote:
I'm not sure what your point is, but you should also be aware that that particular prank had tried for years to get a nonsense paper published, and they eventually found a small, non-peered review conference panel that accepted it initially, but eventually turned it down. But even if they lapped it up, what, precisely does this prove? That academia is oversaturated, and the publish-or-perish mentality has fostered a thinning of the talent pool (kind of like the NHL)? Well you'll find no argument here, but it should also be pointed out that bad writing languishes in every discipline, so I'm never quite sure why people love to target the humanities. Go read a few legal documents and then come back and criticize "poststructural epistemological narratives in the pre-Barthesian post-Fordist metropolis."
A lot of people feel it's all bullshit.
I don't, though I used to, and could understand why someone else would. There's a lot of bullshit in all fields I'm aware of right now, mathematics ccan be pretty bad. I heard the median paper in graph theory is read by 1 or none non-reviewer.
Curious, which subfield of sociology are you specializing in?
Wed, 2007-05-30 09:01
#32
Sven
Like Catchfire said, if you look at legal documents, they are often full of [b][i]unnecessary[/b][/i] jargon (often, that is simply the result of [b][i]lazy[/b][/i] lawyers using the same language that was used by lawyers a hundred or more years ago).
But, I also think that people use [b][i]unnecessary[/b][/i] jargon in order to make a subject, and the specialists in that subject, appear more sophisticated. In academics, I think it’s about [url=http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/92aust09.html]power and exclusion[/url].
Wed, 2007-05-30 09:06
#33
So anyhow, how about that feminism, huh? [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
Wed, 2007-05-30 10:40
#34
Catchfire
Shit. Sorry Michelle. In conclusion, that article in the National Post is awful.
Wed, 2007-05-30 10:49
#35
No worries, I contributed to the drift. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
BTW, they've called their week-long series on this Humanities conference, "Oh the Humanities!"
I have to admit, that's kind of funny. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
[url=http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=43be68b9-6c93-4631-9b53... article in the series, this one about hairdressers and the "emotional labour" they perform along with their tasks.[/url]
This one is actually not half-bad. I haven't seen anything egregiously sexist in it yet.
[ 30 May 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]