This is cross-posted some places.  Sorry to those who saw it twice.In brief! I got an email saying that I was an awesome singer but needed to lose some weight. I had many opinions about it and decided to put them out there in video form.Feel free to, as my cousin says, “reblog” it if y’like.

When I was 12 years old I was in love with John Lennon.

Can’t say I didn’t have my reasons.

Men Who Explain Things

Excellent op-ed in the LA times about gender, authority, and confidence.

A week or so ago, my boyfriend/bandmate/best friend and I went to meet with a guy who will be recording his album.   For the record, a very nice guy who obviously knows sound and is going to do a great job.

Andrew’s band consists of him (obviously), me (bass/vocals), our friend ChAka on keys, and this awesome girl named Courtney who plays the drums.   The biggest thing we were discussing that day was drums, so Andrew said a lot of sentences like this: “My drummer Courtney __________”, “She will probably want to record with the bass player there,” “I’m not sure if she has ever played on an electric drum kit…”

Our recording friend couldn’t get it through his head that Courtney was a female.  Andrew continuously referred to her with a litany of female pronouns,  and the guy would throw the same sentences and ideas right back at Andrew as if he had never said “she” and they were both talking about a guy.  “Your drummer, does he play with ___?” “He’ll want to ____” etc.

Kind of harmless and amusing, and again, the guy seems like a real good guy.  It was a funny story for Courtney the next time we had practice.

Still, this shows two things:
1.  Certain men have a complete inability  to conceive of females in  what they view as  Male roles, to the point where they actually are unable to process information that is repeatedly given to them.

2.  Certain men are so sure of themselves that they will doggedly pursue their own line of thought even when it’s painfully clear to everyone else in the room that they don’t have all the facts.

I think this is totally a gendered thing.  I think men are brought up to act confident whether or not they’re actually sure of themselves, and women are brought up to be willing to hear others’ points of view, even when we already know we’re right.  I further think that it’s so ingrained in male culture that they’re not even really aware it’s happening (someone needs to write The Masculine Mystique, like whoa).

The lady who wrote the op-ed discusses this all in a much more eloquent fashion than I have here.  Read it.

I have nothing but respect for the gals over at Feministing for having the wherewithal to respond intelligently to Charlotte Allen’s pile of bulls*** Washington Post article. I personally just don’t have it in me. In fact, I went to great lengths to avoid reading it, because I knew from the responses it was getting that it would just make me very upset, and honestly, there’s only so much impotent rage a girl can manage in one week.

But there were so many links being flung at me within my social sphere that, in a moment of weakness, I clicked on one. And I’ll tell ya what: I am NOT linking to it here, much as I’m sure some of you may want to read it. The huge-and-growing number of link-backs to this article is telling the Washington Post “The more articles you publish like this, the more link-backs to your paper there will be.” I will, however, link to its rebuttal: A Dumb Argument

Anyway, like I said: I couldn’t respond to this article directly without getting upset, so here’s my extremely indirect response:

rorie’s Top Ten Reasons to Be A Feminist

1. Women and men are equal and should be treated as such.

2 - 10. Duh.

So, last week I emailed Psychology Today and complained, because their online Advanced Search-for-a-Therapist thing lets you select that you are lesbian, gay, or transgendered–but does not include the word “bisexual” anywhere.

I wrote in and told them that I had worked as a hotline counselor and given out many referrals myself, and knew that it was important when finding a therapist to find one who wouldn’t judge you for your orientation–and that it was just as important for bisexuals, because unfortunately there is prejudice on both sides of the fence.

They wrote me back this week and said thank you, and that they would change it!

Sometimes being impulsively vocal pays off.  It goes to show that you should speak up when  you see something that doesn’t seem right to you — you might make a difference.

Now, if only I could get those Myspace advertisers to respond to my complaints about their sexism…  or find a way to send a complaint email without having to register for “findaman.com”…

No, I don’t want to know why men get physical and then pull away.   Implying that you know some magical secret about all men’s behavior and that my love life can benefit from it is sexist and lame.

No, I do not want to try Raw Minerals FREE and be “better than bare.”  The idea that I can’t even look natural without buying makeup to help me do it better is sexist and lame.

No, my boyfriend does not want to buy me customized lingerie that says “Property of Andrew.” …Everything ABOUT that is sexist and lame.

Are we sensing a theme here?

P.S. Can’t wait to see what flavor of spam comments this particular post gets me.

Quoted reverently from “A Question of Class”…

Everything in our culture—books, television, movies, school, fashion—is presented as if it is being seen by one pair of eyes, shaped by one set of hands, heard by one pair of ears. Even if you know you are not part of that imaginary creature—if you like country music not symphonies, read books cynically, listen to the news unbelievingly, are lesbian not heterosexual, and surround yourself with your own small deviant community—you are still shaped by that hegemony, or your resistance to it. The only way I found to resist that homogenized view of the world was to make myself part of something larger than myself. As a feminist and a radical lesbian organizer, and later as a sex radical (which eventually became the term, along with pro-sex feminist, for those who were not anti-pornography but anti-censorship, those of us aguing for sexual diversity), the need to belong, to feel safe, was just as important for me as for any heterosexual, nonpolitical citizen, and sometimes even more important because the rest of my life was so embattled.

Full Text Here.

from www.xkcd.com