Full text is here, because I do NOT want it archived on my lj.

The basic thrust of it is this: hymen reconstructions are becoming ever more prevalent in France, so that Muslim women can receive certificates of virginity to show their future husbands and in-laws. Of course, all of this is abetted by the greedy, immoral surgeons who make it possible.

I mean, oh wait. These medical "providers" really do have the patients' best interests at heart.

Those who perform the procedure say they are empowering patients by giving them a viable future and preventing them from being abused — or even killed — by their fathers or brothers.

“Who am I to judge?” asked Dr. Marc Abecassis, who restored the Montpellier student’s hymen. “I have colleagues in the United States whose patients do this as a Valentine’s present to their husbands. What I do is different. This is not for amusement. My patients don’t have a choice if they want to find serenity — and husbands.”

Oh, really. So you're doing it out of the good of your heart, to save lives.

Then why fuck are you charging $2,900 to the women whose lives you're "saving?" I mean, since your motivation is compassion in the face of this life-and-death scenario, and not anything base like personal profit.

I rest my case.

That will be all.

tags: asshattery, gender

...The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled today that it is perfectly legal to take pictures up women's skirts in public places without their consent. Yeah, you read that right.

The defendant in the case was all of 16 years old. Above and beyond the revulsion any reasonable human should feel upon hearing the court's decision, the ruling also begs the question: why was this guy not tried for creating child pornography?

That will be all.

tags: asshattery, gender

...in which crypto-misogynist Caitlin Flanagan once again ( proves her suck. )

music: meat katie & elite force - fabulous mint 400 tags: asshattery, gender

Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test

That will be all.

tags: gender, memeage

...in high level company positions that doesn't reference the "opt-out revolution" or being "naturally family-oriented." ( Archived here, mainly for my reference. )

That will be all.

tags: archive, gender

...it's good to know we aren't that different after all. Take a look at these two videos, for instance. The similarities between their respective messages are startling.

Islam

The West

Seriously. What an awesome opportunity for comparison.

That will be all.

tags: asshattery, funneh, gender

...I have heard of in a long time. Linked from Alternet because The Nation's URL might change.

But seriously: women your job is to pump out kids and even Vatican Roulette is cheating?

That is creepy.

That will be all.

tags: asshattery, gender

...to immediately dislike Abe Shinzo:

Another [of Abe's cabinet appointments] was the education adviser, Eriko Yamatani, 56, a critic of sex education and the teaching of “excessive” equality of the sexes in schools.

The new state minister in charge of sex equality, Sanae Takaichi, 45, has opposed allowing women to have different legal family names from their husbands, a freedom women sued to win in the late 1980’s.

I believe one of the BIG reasons why Japan remains in the dark ages of gender equality is the fact that the intelligent, educated women who realise what a horrid deal they're getting either: ]
a) don't marry/have children
b) choose to live abroad in more enlightened countries
c) choose to marry (usually Western) men from more enlightened countries, or most commonly, a combinations of any of the above.

That will be all.

tags: asshattery, gender, japan, politics

C&P from In These Times on celebrity culture and gender roles, archived for my own edification.
( Read more... )

That will be all.

location: anguk, south korea tags: gender

I was going to post this last night. amasugiru beat me to it.

So how do you ( summarise The Tale of Genji, anyway? )

She then sent me this link. I countered with this.

That will be all.

tags: books, gender, japan

...claiming once again that it's biology - this time a woman's estrogen level - that makes a woman attractive, as opposed to sense of humor, liveliness, the interesting things she says, etc. etc. Oh god do I hate these sort of studies.

First, let's take a look at methodology: the '14 men and 15 women' of the (presumably) all-Scottish beauty raters does not a sample make, as any student of Statistics 101 should know. Small sample sizes do not give representative results, ever. I can draw five random cards from a deck and use that 'sample' to show that even numbered playing cards don't exist. Only when sample size begins to approach the population size do representative results emerge.

And for god's sake, why are these studies not conducted on men? I have yet to see a single research project specifically dealing with masculine beauty, let alone one where men are asked to rate one another's attractiveness.

But of course, what if this is just me not wanting to face the truth about such things. After all, while the study itself doesn't touch upon the ways in which personality affects perceptions of beauty, it is true that people's first impressions of attractiveness are based solely on the physical. What if the conception of physical beauty was more fixed than I'd like to believe? I headed over to the New Science blurb on the study and looked at the two composite faces - one created from the women while at the height of their estrogen cycle, the other at the trough.

I had to admit that one of the women was clearly more attractive than the other. It seemed I just didn't want to face the truth.

Until I scrolled down to the bottom of the page to discover that the face I thought was by far the more attractive was the one of the woman at the lowest point in her cycle.

Which just proves what kind of bullshit these 'studies' are.

That will be all.

tags: gender

Oh dear. ( The NYT is writing about gender again. )

That will be all.

tags: gender

I got disgusted a few months ago with a well-known feminist blogger who was all too eager to believe someone's proclamation that Japanese women are frequently raped in the streets, despite the fact that neither she nor the OP (who'd read about her statement in a crime novel) had ever once set foot in the country. This sort of willingness to believe the absolute worst is one of the unfortunate habits of a lot of feminists, and counterproductive when trying to assess and solve the real problems.

Sexism exists in Japan, but it isn't women being dragged into alleys by roving gangs and raped (that sort of thing tends to happen where the bush administration has control over an area). ( It's much more insidious. )

That will be all.

tags: gender, japan

English, guys. Or more specifically, teaching English. It's a wonderful language for description, but the almost limitless ability of English to create shades of meaning and connotation is a bona fide nightmare when you're teaching it, as I learned at ( my eikaiwa yesterday. )

At which point I had to laugh, because really, what else can you do?

That will be all.

mood: amused music: love mode tags: gender, japan