The Demise of the Soap Opera

The genre of the soap opera is facing an inevitable death. Soap operas that have run for decades are being cancelled. ABC recently announced the cancellation of All My Children and One Life to Live. Guiding Light, my favorite soap opera, was slashed in 2009. (Notice the date, it's important.) As the World Turns was killed by CBS last Fall. There are rumors that even General Hospital is about to be replaced with a Katie Couric show.

If you look at the time-frame of these massive cancellations of soap operas, you will see that they are very obviously linked to the economic crisis that hit this country in 2008. The crisis hit industries that have traditionally been dominated by men the hardest. As a result, men who can afford a full-time housewife have become few and far between. I blogged before about the fact that, paradoxically, this crisis might end up being a positive development in terms of women's rights. Historically, the greatest pushes towards women's liberation came during moments of crisis. World War I brought women into the workplace and led them to demand the right to vote even more insistently than before. The turbulent sixties in the US inspired the women's liberation movement to fight against the patriarchy and finally defeat it an many important aspects. The collapse of the Soviet Union made Soviet women discover the word feminism and generate an interest towards it.

As the demise of the soap genre demonstrates, women who can be sure of always being at home in the afternoon with little enough to do but watch soaps are disappearing. More and more women are finally getting outside of their kitchens and into the workforce. While one might want to dismiss the cancellation of the soaps as a trivial event, it is evidence of profound transformations that are taking place in our society. Žižek loves quoting Mao Zedong's words: "There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is excellent." As traumatic as this crisis have been, it has done a lot to push women towards freedom.

Another Inanity From a Male Feminist

Ever since Hugo Schwyzer came to this blog to inform me that he's had it with me daring to have my own opinions about his writings, I tried hard to abstain from commenting on his articles. It's difficult, though, because he often writes things that make me think that I'd rather have no male feminists at all than ones who write this kind of stuff. See, for example, a recent post from somebody who, let me remind you, teaches about body image on a college level:

When I ask my female students, as I do every semester, “How many of you would say it’s easier to get along with guys than with girls”, invariably over half the young women in the class raise their hands. The reasons they give are always the same: “girls are so competitive”, “boys just have less drama”, “guys aren’t as critical.” Of course, not every woman feels this way – but plenty do. So it may surprise you to know that the research on eating disorders shows that critical comments from boys are much more likely to lead young women to start to diet or purge. In a major 2008 study called Family, Peer and Media Predictors of Becoming Eating Disordered researchers found that the hurtful remarks of male peers were more damaging to girls’ self-esteem than comments made by other women of any age, including peers and female relatives. Only the media had a comparable impact on young women’s self-esteem.

Leaving  aside the fact of how annoying it must be to shell out a huge sum for a college education only to end up in a classroom where you get your time wasted on condescending kindergarten-level questions, it is mind-boggling that anybody would honestly believe something as silly as this. Self-esteem is something that is created on the basis of one's very early childhood experiences. After that, nothing short of extensive therapy can influence one's self-esteem in any significant way.

A person with a high self-esteem can watch media images of skinny women and ripped men all day and every day for decades and remain completely unaffected. A person with a low self-esteem can go into a major bout of depression because s/he thinks that somebody might have looked at them in a critical way. If your self-esteem is high and you know for a fact that you are stunningly gorgeous, nobody will even try to insult you with nasty remarks about your appearance. Let's say you want to annoy, offend or bug a person for whatever reason. Will you come up to them and say, "You have three heads"? I don't think you will because something that is so patently untrue is not likely to offend.

When I was little, I was always surrounded by a group of adoring adults who would exclaim, "Here comes our beauty!" in unison whenever I would enter the room. Today, 30 years and many pounds and wrinkles later, I still hear this admiring chorus whenever I appear in public. I just took a walk around the block and tried to remember a single instance when "a girl or a guy" made a nasty comment about my appearance. I came up with nothing. So if you have little kids - or are planning to have them - just make sure they know that they are beautiful. If you do that for them, neither the scary media nor condescending male feminists will scare them. 

How To Be a Feminist Man

Here is a brilliant statement on the subject from Jonathan's blog:

Don't.  

Ok, that's a little too simplistic. What I mean is that feminism doesn't really need you if your main aim is to prove how feminist you are, to make a spectacle of your guilt or rectitude, or to make women like you or want to sleep with you. Feminists (the female type) don't really like having to placate or take care of the feelings of men who want to be feminists. (Or so I've been told.)  

Don't tell women how to be feminists, or that they are too feminist, or not feminists enough. Don't be condescending or dominating. Don't be a "concern troll," rolling out your alleged feminist bona fides in order to then make anti-feminist points. Don't speak for women and treat your contribution as special. Women, especially feminist women, really know how to speak for themselves exceptionally well.  

Don't write for other men telling them how to check out women without being too obnoxious. Don't go around trying to prove that there are "good men." Women (surprise!) already know this. 

Read the rest of the post here.

Age Disparity in Romantic Relationships

There is this not-so-recent trend in feminist circles that consists of condemning all relationships where the male partner is significantly older (20+ years) as abusive and wrong but at the same time celebrating as feminist, empowering and wonderful the relationships where the female partner is significantly older. 

Of course, all people are different and all relationships are different. It is more than possible that a much older partner will get taken advantage of or abused by the younger partner. There is also a possibility that nobody will end up being abused or manipulated. Relationships that have such a significant age disparity are, however, often problematic. I, for example, would never be tempted to have a relationship with someone 20 years younger. For one, because it would make me a pedophile. I wouldn't even consider being with somebody 15 years younger either. I have a tendency to be pushy, overbearing and intimidating, so I have absolutely no doubt that it would take me just a few short days to bully any guy of that age into complete submission. 

As we grow older, we accumulate romantic and sexual experience, financial and professional resources, interpersonal skills, etc. As a result, it is often (not always, by any means, but often) very easy to manipulate a younger person to serve our needs. This possibility, however, is not gender-specific in any way. People who claim that only older male partners can be manipulative and abusive while older female partners are completely innocuous are proceeding on the basis of the patriarchal stereotype that denies women any agency. In their worldview, a woman is not really human. She is incapable of being a bully, a manipulator or a victimizer by virtue of her gender. I, for one, fail to see how having a vagina can inoculate one from all these qualities.

I wish my fellow feminists stopped treating women as if we were constant and eternal victims in absolutely every situation under the sun.

Women and Self-Respect, Cont'd

I am still traumatized by the utter lack of self-respect demonstrated by a female academic that I discussed in my previous post. 

We cannot expect others to bear a greater responsibility for our comfort than we do ourselves. If I choose to sit there and giggle at anti-Semitic comments that insult me as a Jew, I have no right to complain in the privacy of my anonymous blog about the anti-Semitism of others. If I tolerate anti-women comments from my male colleagues, I am not entitled to criticize them for those comments behind their backs. If I put up with being treated like crap, it means that I have consented to such treatment. 

We can talk ad nauseam about how male chauvinists, racists, xenophobes, homophobes and anti-Semites should know which of their comments are wrong and unacceptable. However, we cannot hold others to a higher standard of accountability than the one to which we hold ourselves. Unless you call bigots on their bigotry in no uncertain terms whenever they express it, you are just as much to blame for the existence of hatred, discrimination and inequality as they are. 

As academics, we also have a responsibility to our female students. Female Science Professor must know very well how hostile academia is to female students in the sciences. The male colleague who insulted her is, without a doubt, very likely to act in a condescending, disparaging way towards his female students. Students are powerless in their relationship with a professor, while female scholars are not. A female academic who allows herself to be spit on by male colleagues betrays her female students who will receive a much worse treatment at the hands of a chauvinistic jerk they have for a professor.

In this situation, I despise the female academic who puts up meekly with a disrespectful treatment a lot more than I do her male colleagues. They, at least, defend their own interests consistently. She sells out herself and every other female academic at her institution because she is not woman enough to stand up to jerks.

Stopping the discrimination of women is not the task of men, people. It falls to us, the women, to stop being eternal and consenting victims of every kind of abuse. You, my female reader, have to shut up the jerks who denigrate and dismiss you to your face. Nobody else will do it for you. 

Women and Self-Respect

Instances when even highly-educated, powerful women allow themselves to be treated with a complete lack of respect annoy me to the point where I just get extremely angry. Female Science Professor describes on her blog the following situation that took place during a meeting with a group of male colleagues:

TWICE during the first half hour of the meeting, somewhat out of context, and completely gratuitously, one of The Guys mentioned that I was only part of this group because "they had to have a woman". He hastened to say that he was totally on board with this because he recognized the realities of the world today. Diversity has been deemed to be important -- although he noted that he has seen no evidence of the discrimination that some women in our field claim to experience -- so our group should be diverse.

So what do you think this scholar did in response?  Told this jerk and the group of losers who just sat there quietly in the meanwhile exactly how far they could stick their group and their diversity into their assholes? Not even close.

What did I do when my esteemed colleague made his "FSP is a token" comments? I calmly changed the subject to one more relevant to the meeting, made a point that no one else had thought of, got complimented (by someone else) for having noticed something that had long been overlooked by other members of the group, and basically just moved on with the tasks at hand. I am a useful member of this committee, and I will continue to contribute for as long as it is worthwhile for me to do so.

She gets insulted by some creepazoid and her response is to try to prove that she is useful. When I first read this, I thought it was some kind of joke. This is taking place in a civilized country in the twenty-first century, and a woman whose professional qualifications have been dismissed in such an offensive manner meekly and submissively strives to demonstrate her usefulness and celebrates that one of the jerks in the group complimented her. Has the world suddenly gone insane? I wonder, if she thanked the kind sir and master for acknowledging her usefulness with a compliment.

If something like that ever happened to me, I would immediately and very vocally inform the losers of the group that I despise them and will not find myself in their company until every single one of them issued a public apology to me. Then, I would inform the entire university community exactly of what happened. And finally, I would publish the story on my blog with names and, if possible, pictures of every jerk in that group. 

Women who put up with this treatment signal to the offenders that it is perfectly fine to insult and dismiss their female colleagues in such a way. If the FSP wonders where such jerks come from, I can tell her: they are encouraged daily by meek, weak and sad women like herself. We, the women, form half of the population of this planet. Together with men who are our allies in the belief that women are valid human beings, we are a huge power. We do not have to put up with crap. Let's stop sitting there like silent little robots, smiling and trying to prove our usefulness. Let us finally start telling the jerks that it is not OK to treat us like crap. Let's form our own groups and decide whom we accept based on their usefulness to us. 

Virginity Tests in Egypt as a Form of Torture

A colleague and a reader of this blog just left a link to the following horrible piece of news from Egypt:

Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.  After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges. ‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced. "Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women," said Amnesty International. "All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called 'tests'."

Obligatory gynecological exams aimed at shaming women for being sexually active and forcing them to hate the fact of having been born female are something that, unfortunately, I know very well firsthand. In the Soviet Union, we were subjected to forced gynecological exams since the age of 11 or twelve. Often, people conducting such tests on pre-teen girls were young male students of med schools. You can imagine how traumatic it is to be pawed and ogled by twenty-year-old men when you are at that age.

Later on, if one was getting a college education while being female, one was forced to undergo gynecological exams in order to be allowed to continue as a student. Such exams were extremely invasive and often resulted in women being shamed for being sexually active. Sometimes, spurious medical diagnoses were invented and women were obligated to go through painful and completely unnecessary medical procedures to get "cured" from illnesses they never had.

Forced gynecological procedures are one of the most popular methods used by repressive regimes to coerce and terrorize women. It horrifies me that this is now happening to the women of Egypt.

Feminism and Armpits

It's hilarious how for some people being a radical feminist is reduced to the all-important issue* of whether to shave their armpits. Who cares about the assault on reproductive rights, workplace discrimination, countless victims of anti-female violence around the world, female genital mutilation, etc. when we can sit there and feel self-righteous about our armpit hair. Of course, presence or absence of hair in the armpits hasn't had anything to do with gender for quite a while now. Men who first started removing armpit hair on a regular basis have had time to see that hair turn gray. It is also self-evident that shaving one's armpits takes at most thirty seconds, even if you really try to make the process last as long as possible.

Of course, the kind of feminism that concentrates on whether you shave, wear heels, use make-up or visit beauty salons is a very easy and attractive kind of feminism. It gives you a list of things that you shouldn't do, which is always great because not doing something is definitely easier than acting. No intellectual effort is involved in this type of feminism either. 

While such pseudo-feminists are sitting there gazing at their unshaved armpits, the conservatives in this country are stealing the last sad remnants of women's reproductive freedoms. But who cares, as long as they know that we they true, unshaven, unpainted, low-heeled feminists who have never set a foot inside a spa**?

Truly, some people should finally get their heads out of their armpits and take a look at some larger issues.

* Before you follow the link, I have to mention that the post I linked to is very badly written. Don't say I didn't warn you.

** In case anybody is wondering, I've been to a spa once and hated it. But I don't suggest this as proof of my feminism. My dislike of spas proves one thing: that I dislike spas. As tempting as it is to make a soapbox out of this, I've resisted the temptation so far.

Promoting Women's Studies

Since we are on the subject of weird pictures that attempt to promote the idea of feminism, here is one more for you. This is one of a series of posters that our Department of Women's Studies created a while ago to promote itself on campus. As hard as I tried, I failed to get the point of these posters. I vaguely understand that they are based on the "Got milk?" commercial. I don't understand, however, how the image of a woman with a strained smile and a sperm-like substance on her mouth serves the goals of feminism. If this is supposed to be an attempt at humor, once again, it's extremely clumsy and unconvincing.

The very idea of having a department called Women's Studies seems very disturbing to me. The goal of feminism has always been to demonstrate that women are fully human and need to be treated as such. Why should we now create small academic ghettos for women? The existence of such a department seems to suggest that history, politics, literature, programming, geography, mathematics, etc. have nothing to do with women. Is that the message we want to send?

Naming this program "Department of Gender Studies" would make a lot more sense, in my opinion. At least, it wouldn't contribute to confirming the vision of women as the Other.

Clumsy Feminism

I have already discussed my intense disappointment with the feminist group on my campus. It often seems to me that feminist organizations such as ours are dedicated to making feminism as unpalatable to everybody as possible. Look at the following announcement for "Womyn's Herstory Month" that appeared on a billboard in my building:

Not only is all this "herstory" and "womyn" stuff beyond outdated, it also is extremely heavy-handed and graceless. It's nothing but a remnant of the times when feminism did all it could to scare away huge numbers of people. We are located in the Bible Belt, and it's difficult as it is to get students to listen to anything even remotely feminist. Such clumsy efforts at introducing our student body to feminism will only end up making them see it as irrelevant and boring.

Happy Women's Day 2011!

Today is the 100th anniversary of the International Women's Day. If you don't know what this holiday represents, here is some basic information:

When:  Tuesday 8 March 2011

Where: Everywhere

What:   International Women's Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, International Women's Day is a national holiday.

Why:   Suffragettes campaigned for women's right to vote. The word 'Suffragette' is derived from the word "suffrage" meaning the right to vote. International Women's Day honours the work of the Suffragettes, celebrates women's success, and reminds of inequities still to be redressed. The first International Women's Day event was run in 1911. 2011 is the Global Centenary Year.

Make sure you congratulate the women in your life (I'm congratulating my mother, my sister and my niece today. I'd congratulate female coworkers were we not on spring break.) 

Happy Women's Day, everybody!

Does the Defense of Women Always Have to be Prissy?

Everybody is being super enthusiastic about Anna Holmes's article "The Disposable Woman" in The New York Times. Everybody, except me, that is. I only discovered who Charlie Sheen is last week, so I'm a very poor judge of whether Holmes's criticisms of this trashy TV actor are correct. The following passage, however, has made me doubt whether this article has any value at all:

On reality television, gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality are not only entertainment but a means to an end. These enthusiastically documented humiliations are positioned as necessities in the service of some final prize or larger benefit — a marriage proposal, a modeling contract, $1 million. But they also make assault and abasement seem commonplace, acceptable behavior, tolerated by women and encouraged in men.

American feminism can always be recognized through an excessive amount of priggishness in its defense of the rights of women. Violence against women is horrible and needs to be condemned publicly and vocally. I am quite shocked, however, to see that Holmes places violence and sexuality together, as if there were anything in common between them. If the moment you write the word "violence" you feel like putting the word "sexuality" right after it, then there is something very wrong with the way you view both. Later on in the quoted paragraph, Holmes talks about assault and abasement, which seem to mirror her reference to "gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality." I have no idea where she sees all that "explicit sexuality" on the prissy and super sanitized American television but Holmes is not alone in her pseudo-feminist concern over the excessive presence of sex on TV.

I have written before about the American feminists' unhealthy dread of sexuality (see, for example, Part I, Part II and Part III of my review of Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs.) Instead of recognizing that there is no true freedom that does not include the freedom to be sexual in a way one wants and as much as one wants, these pseudo-feminists insist that sex is debasing and humiliating for women. They cannot accept that it is possible for women to be sexual (and explicitly so) not for the purpose of placating or pleasuring men but simply because these women enjoy sex for its own sake. In her article, Holmes seems to be wondering where the unhealthy attitudes to women as objects come from. She fails to notice how her own positioning of a woman as a perennially debased object of any sexual act is contributing to this state of affairs.

Being a Ukrainian Woman

Being a Ukrainian woman often blows. On the one hand, people perceive us as stupid whores. I can't tell you how many times people have asked me whether I was a mail-order bride or a prostitute immediately after I mentioned that I was from Ukraine. On the other hand, we make every effort to ensure that people keep perceiving us as stupid whores. Here is the most recent story that illustrates my point perfectly.

A radio station in New Zealand ran a contest titled "Win a Wife":

The Rock FM radio station ran the competition called Win a Wife, offering a 12-night trip - along with $2000 spending money - to Ukraine organised by a bride agency, Endless Love Agency, which says on its website it offers "beautiful genuine Ukraine ladies looking for love and marriage with Kiwi men". A winemaker named Greg was the winner and he is due in the Ukraine mining town of Donetsk later this month before also visiting another town called Zaporizhia. The prize does not include travel for the Ukraine woman to come to New Zealand.

Ukrainian feminists protesting
the objectification of women

Appalling, offensive, horrible. So, obviously, Ukrainian feminists decided to protest. Their way of protesting the objectification of women was to come out into the streets . . . naked. In winter. Which, in Ukraine, is a very cold season.  


That's Ukrainian feminism for you. It's doing wonders for the image of Ukrainian women all over the world.

Infantilizing Vaginas

Reader Marina just sent me a link to the following article and asked me to blog about it:

You’ve tried everything to spruce up your lady parts. First, you made sure your garden was neat and tidy. Then, you trimmed up the hedges. (Read Does Bikini Razor Commercial Go Too Far?) Finally, you decided to go for the gold and deforested all of “virginia.” Where does a girl go from here?One sparkly, special word: Vajazzle.
Vajazzling is a burgeoning beauty treatment, popular with celebs and kinky Martha Stewart-ites alike, that involves ladies bedazzling their freshly waxed lady parts just as they would their neato neckerchiefs or fancy fannypacks – with tiny, magical crystals.
So women aren’t just obsessively coiffing their “areas” to look like pre-teen Barbies – they’re now glue-sticking Barbie’s earrings down below, too?
Jennifer Love Hewitt sparked this sparkly trend a few weeks ago when she announced her labia luster on Lopez Tonight. “After a breakup, a friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady," J.Love said, while discussing her new dating book. "It shined like a disco ball, so I have a whole chapter in there on how women should vajazzle their vajayjays."

There is more in the same vein but I realized that I was about to throw up and stopped reading. Lady parts? Precious lady? Vajayjays? Before you follow the link to read the article in full, I have to warn you: there are photos of very very weird people vajazzling or whatever it's called. Don't say I didn't warn you.

For centuries women denounced the patriarchal society for infantilizing them, for trivializing their experiences, for reducing them to perennially childlike toys whose only role was to be consumed by men. Today, nobody forces women in our society to refer to their vaginas as "precious ladies" or to stick Swarovski crystals into them. I know for a fact that a woman can have a very fulfilling personal life without vajazzles, Brazilian waxes, vaginal plastic surgery, or any other atrocity of the same ilk. I even happen to believe that a fulfilling personal life is a direct result of liking one's sexual organs and accepting them the way they are. 

The need to self-infantilize remains so strong because it liberates one from adult responsibilities. A grown woman pretends that she doesn't have a grown vagina but, rather, a little girl's vajayjay. By sticking flashy crystals onto it, she convinces herself that she has managed to escape adulthood for good.

P.S. I just forced myself to look at the pictures of this atrocity and realized that this procedure must make having sex quite uncomfortable, if not painful. In this sense, this must also be some sort of a self-castration practice that helps one avoid confronting one's adult sexuality. 

Cannibalizing a Child's Life

Have you noticed those creepy Facebook pages and Twitter accounts where women use pictures of their children instead of their own as avatars? I've always been completely creeped every time I would see a huge, bald head of a baby sending tweets couched in very adult language. Amanda Marcotte writes very well about this phenomenon:

This generation leaches itself of sexuality by putting the innocent face of a child in the place of an attractive mother. It telegraphs a discomfort with even a minimal level of vanity. Like wearing sneakers every day or forgetting to cut your hair, it is a way of being dowdy and invisible, and it mirrors a certain mommy culture in which its almost a point of pride how little remains of the healthy, worldly, engaged, and preening self.

Amanda believes that this happens as a result of 

this growing pressure for women to compete in the game of self-sacrifice and self-abasement to prove their motherly love.

I have to say that, as much as I like Amanda's article, I'm not sure she is right here. All this self-sacrifice is just for show. In reality, what such mothers do by assuming their children's identities is cannibalize those kids' existences. A child is denied any life of their own outside the all-consuming Mommy. She has appropriated the baby's life and will now live the baby's life instead of him or her. On the popular new show Toddlers and Tiaras we see parents who exorcise the frustrations of their drab existences by decking their poor toddlers in all kind of ridiculous adult clothes, covering them with make up, and exhibiting them to the public like little animated dolls. In the blogosphere, we read breathless accounts of parents who report ecstatically on how well they manage to control their children's every breath. On Dr.Phil, we hear how mothers of teenagers are praised for invading every inch of their children's lives.

Women engage in such cannibalizing efforts more often than men. This happens because women frequently renounce any attempt at having a life of their own. Carving out an identity, finding your place in life, getting people to value your contribution to the world is hard. It requires a daily effort at personal, intellectual, professional, and spiritual growth. Who needs all that trouble if you can simply cannibalize the existence of a small child who has no power to resist you?

The War on Women

The New York Times published an article that condemns the Republican war on women. We have witnessed such egregious assaults on the rights of women recently that even this conservative newspaper can no longer be silent on the issue:

Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning. The budget bill pushed through the House last Saturday included the defunding of Planned Parenthood and myriad other cuts detrimental to women. It’s not likely to pass unchanged, but the urge to compromise may take a toll on these programs. And once the current skirmishing is over, House Republicans are likely to use any legislative vehicle at hand to continue the attack.

Once again, the Republican hypocrisy I wrote about recently is self-evident. On the one hand, legislation aimed at curtailing women's rights to an abortion is being discussed in a variety of states. The Republican majority in Congress states openly that it's main goal at this point is repealing abortion rights. (Jobs? What jobs? Who the hell cares about anything as ridiculously unimportant as that when you can rummage in a woman's uterus instead?). On the other hand, Republicans are trying to make sure that children who have already been born are deprived of health care and nutrition:

Beyond the familiar terrain of abortion or even contraception, House Republicans would inflict harm on low-income women trying to have children or who are already mothers. Their continuing resolution would cut by 10 percent the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers, and infants each month, and has been linked in studies to higher birth weight and lower infant mortality. The G.O.P. bill also slices $50 million from the block grant supporting programs providing prenatal health care to 2.5 million low-income women and health care to 31 million children annually.

After all this, how can anybody be blind enough to believe that the Republican anti-abortion frenzy has anything to do with "saving babies"? How can anybody be inhuman enough to support these cannibalistic measures?

I have always been fascinated - in the same way that one is fascinated with really nasty insects - with people who support Republicans. Anybody who has been graced with an ounce of brain matter can see very easily that this is a party that would rob everybody to benefit the tiny group of the extremely rich. That hates women to the degree of having a near epileptic fit whenever a woman tries to live her own life. That would gladly see children from poor families die out. That has come as near fascism as possible and is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to take the next step. How can anybody keep supporting them and still live with themselves? Isn't it obvious that these are vile creeps whose tenancy on the garbage heap of history has been guaranteed for a long time now?

Come on, people, try to forget about women's uteri for a while and concentrate on how many times the Republicans have lied to you. Weren't you told that their goal was to help you through this devastating economic crisis? Well, they lied as usual. Right now they are not only attempting to kill off poor babies but are also trying to destroy the housing rescue programs instituted by Obama's administration. There will be over 2,000,000 foreclosures this year.

Do you really hate women so much that you would keep voting for a party that is robbing you blind? Really? 

Why Gender Privilege Does Not Exist

I have always said that "privilege" is a meaningless, useless, empty concept which is employed by people with lazy brains whenever they want to avoid any attempt at analysis. Let me use the mythical "gender privilege" to demonstrate that privilege is non-existent.

As a woman, I am routinely underpaid and discriminated in the workplace. In this country, women in all professions are paid less than men for performing the same work. This is disgusting, unfair, and wrong. When you experience it yourself, as I did, it is also very painful. So is that male privilege at work? You could say so if it weren't for one little thing. I could quit my job today and spend the rest of my life painting my nails and snoozing on the couch while my husband would exercise his male privilege to pay all of my bills, bear the financial responsibility for both of us, stress out about the competition in the workplace and the danger of being laid-off, and die several years earlier than I do. 

If I decided to exercise my female privilege never to work for a living again, everybody would applaud this decision. The New York Times routinely celebrates women who "opt out" of the workplace. "Choice feminists" keep screeching that women should have the right to choose to be kept by men their entire lives. If a man chose to stay at home permanently doing his nails and snoozing in front of a soap opera, there would be no similar social acclaim and support for him. He'd be a laughing stock and an object of derision for the rest of his life. 

Feminism got itself into a dead-end when it chose to analyze the workings of patriarchy in terms of gender privilege. Only when we recognize that patriarchy benefits both men and women while at the same time causing great harm to both men and women, will we be able to move ahead. This is a system that has existed for such a long time because it offers huge rewards to people whom it oppresses. It's time we stopped all senseless blabber about privilege and started recognizing that.