smartlikeme

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By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

Bush’s ‘Right of Conscience’ rule is unconscionable

Well, the threatened "right of conscience" regulation was pushed through by President Bush on Thursday as a "midnight regulation ." This regulation would allow anyone to refuse to participate in medical procedures they feel goes against their religious beliefs. "Employees" are defined broadly: from the pharmacist filling a prescription for antibiotics to a cashier refusing to ring out oral contraceptives, to the one who cleans the surgical tools after a procedure involving a blood transfusion. From The Washington Post :

The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable.

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

Commercial Critique: Guitar Hero World Tour

I was originally pretty pleased at the Guitar Hero World Tour commercials. I liked that the first one, at least, showed a group of guys hanging out in comfy, even kinda sexy, clothing, rocking out like dorks. Typically representations of masculinity perform “boundary maintenance” (see “Fraternal Bonding”, which interestingly enough specifically talks about athletes), which is about displaying masculinity through sexism and homophobia; so often in commercials, the “cool guys” are the womanizing-objectifying type (not that the first GH didn’t have at least one of those in there), not the male bonding through semi-sexy fun type. So the initial commercial, at least, thwarted my expectation by not giving into the the sexist-homophobic construction of masculinity typically seen. The first one featured several ...

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

Subtle sexism: analyzing The Witcher

This post is about the PC game The Witcher , which someone I know has just started playing. But this post is less about the game and more about cultural representations and assumptions about gender and sexuality. He and I had a conversation around it today, which got me thinking a lot about female sexuality, male entitlement, and homophobia in our culture. So please bear through my discussion of the game to get the "big picture" analysis.

In browsing around the internets and reading people’s discussions around gender and sexuality in the game, I very often read these reasons for why the game isn’t "that bad" vis-a-vis women and (women’s) sexuality: the sex scenes are well done (they are in fact ...

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

LA Representative wants the poor sterilized, rich to procreate more

I just heard on CNN that Louisiana’s Rep. John LaBruzzo (R) is looking into a plan to pay poor women to have their tubes tied. This is based on his concern that poor people reproduce at a higher rate than more economically privileged people do, who pay more in taxes. Folks, this is his guess–he has no data to this effect. Mark Waller from The Times-Picayune reports on nola.com that "He said he is gathering statistics now."

Hmmm…so instead of looking at the actual range of factors that affect poverty and aiming to solve those, he’s going to racistly assume that it’s because they’re voluntarily having "too many" children "they can’t afford," and if they can’t afford them, we should ...

I just heard on CNN that Louisiana’s Rep. John LaBruzzo (R) is looking into a plan to pay poor women to have their tubes tied. This is based on his concern that poor people reproduce at a ...

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

It appears that women may actually have a right to their bodies in NY

According to Thursday’s New York Times , a woman who was upskirt-photographed in a NY subway station (and was able to capture her assailant’s identity on her camera!) has successfully filed criminal charges against him:

Mr. Olivieri was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday on misdemeanor charges of unlawful surveillance, attempted sexual abuse and harassment, a criminal complaint said.

That he was arraigned is surely excellent news, since in many other jurisdictions, women bodies are public property, with no expectation of personal privacy in public. Even more, it was the taking of photos that brought the criminal charges, not their distributing . In some conversations on this blog around this pet peeve issue of ...

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

Questionable conclusions

The recent article from the New York Times , "As Barriers Disappear, Some Gender Gaps Widen "
discusses a scientific study that I find highly questionable. Apparently, the same-old gendered personalities keep resurfacing in personality tests. Psychologists disagree on the origin of the differences: evolutionary vs. socialization. The article asserts that the latter believes that

personality differences will shrink as women spend less time nurturing children and more time in jobs outside the home.

So the effect of "traditional gender roles" will be eradicated when women are in the workforce more and do child care less? That seems overly optimistic at best, naive and ignorant about the pervasiveness of gender socialization at worst. But that’s not my real critique.

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

Olympics and body politics

So the Olympics have begun, and the games are a great way to observe various gender issues and sport. For one, we see very clearly the hard-to-explain gender difference in beach volleyball attire , men in basketball-like uniforms and women in bathing suits. But in the majority of sports, event attire is similar for women and men, and according to what’s suitable for the athletic activity.

It’s also so nice to be able to watch women’s games reported in a more professional manner (although later this week I’ll try to discuss the gender difference in editorializing the athletes), focusing on their athletic and academic achievements.

But Friday’s "Creep Show" article in the NY Times , while making some valid points, ...

By smartlikeme • 15 years ago

NYT: women bloggers are sooo fashionable!

Yea for The New York Times reporting on BlogHer’s annual conference .

Boo for printing it in the Fashion and Style section , as woman-related stories routinely are .

It’s pretty pathetic that I should be so thrilled that the recent news about gender-parity in math scores was actually reported by the Times in the U.S./Education section . Yes, it’s awfully nice that the Times was actually able to put a story about females in its proper place in their paper. But actually doing their job doesn’t get them any cookies.

So, dear readers, I write letters:

Yea for The New York Times reporting on BlogHer’s annual conference .

Boo for printing it in the Fashion and Style section , as woman-related stories routinely are .

It’s pretty pathetic that I should ...