France remained on the cutting edge of determining what women should look like as President Sarkozy supported a country-wide dress code for its ladies. Switzerland decided Roman Polanksi was doing just fine where he was, thank you very much. It remained unverified whether Geneva native J-J Rousseau was rolling around in his fucking grave over of the decision. Argentina joined the Netherlands, Sweden, and Portugal in legalizing gay marriage. But the USA is definitely still the land of the free, home of the brave. Yeah.
An enterprising coder made a webpage to show people who they write like; it was found that everyone writes like a white, male author. Tavi Gevinson, a fourteen-year-old blogger, called out Seventeen Magazine for an inane, dangerous headline.
Montreal did not want you to see that Pamela Anderson is just another piece of meat. Dutch scientists found that brain activity in at least twenty-four women changed when the women saw a celebrity endorse footwear; Sarah Jessica Parker’s agent gave a not insignificant jump for joy. The Vatican placed ordained women in the same category as sexually-abusive priests.
Forbes offered helpful advice to lady business leaders showing them how to be “powerful, credible, and confident,” which could be boiled down to a timeless dictum: Act like a man. The New York Times crafted an interactive map that shows women how much less pay they’re likely earning compared to their male counterparts.
Mary Elizabeth Williams asks whether Mel Gibson is too talented to boycott? Not asked: Are sexism, racism, domestic violence, murder, peeing on fourteen-year-old girls, child abuse, drug dealing, and rape more important or less important than maintaining a consistently high level of being entertained? Pitchfork was found to maybe not like middle-aged women as much as everyone else. When hypothetically asked for comment, a Pitchfork representative hypothetically said, “[That sort of music] reminds me of my mom yelling at me to pick up my socks.” Gizmodo called on its readers to stalk sexy black women on Twitter. Really.
Maureen Ryan cited a study by the San Diego State University that showed the television industry may be more sexist than Wal*Mart. Selina Scott, who had already won an age discrimination settlement from Channel Five, compiled a what she calls “revolutionary” dossier of institutional ageism and sexism at the BBC, object of much love by American liberals. The story recalls some other story from weeks past… What was it? Something about institutional sexism in some media outfit much loved by American liberals. I don’t remember.
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I’d like to point out that in that writer’s app J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood and Stephanie Meyer are almost definitely included.
I got the fabulous Margaret Atwood with a text that included a flurry of emoticons, rock on!
Pitchfork is pretty minimally interested in countering aesthetic norms, so I can’t say I’m terribly surprised to see that. They’re pretty fucking narrow in what they advocate for, and it’s inevitably something hyper-polished and damn corporatized. Ariel Pink went from something like a 4.0 to a 9.0 once he got slicker production. You could say that’s strictly a matter of aesthetics, but it’s not completely shocking that there might turn out to be a correspondence between aesthetic and political conservatism. They were also grotesquely ableist in their reviews of Daniel Johnston. I check them occasionally because I am old and so, especially now living in a small Southern town, underexposed. But that’s in the past tense after that bit of commentary from them. Fine, leave your fucking socks on the goddamned floor.
I love the additional statement from the Vatican saying that the same category doesn’t necessarily mean the same level of crime.
And then you read the punishments and find that, yes, in fact the woman wishing to spread the word of God is *much* more heavily punished than the rapist.
So… the Church doesn’t have a problem with ordaining women anymore?
And just when I’d given up on them making any progress on anything ever, too.
Why would Rousseau be upset about Polanski? Rousseau was a complete pig to the women in his life, and was deeply misogynist in his writing.
Here’s what Rousseau had to say: “The education of women should always be relative to that of men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, to take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable; these are the duties of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy.”
Interesting as always, thanks. Your link about the French veil-ban is from last year, though: the thing that happened this week is that the lower house of the legislature approved the ban. (Warning: the link in the previous sentence is to the possibly-more-evil-than-we-thought BBC.)
@JMS No I know that people living a few hundred years ago generally wrote very explicitly repugnant things about women. I just meant that as someone who laid the foundation for our idea of modern government and liberty, and also wrote more lastingly on liberty, and as someone from Switzerland, that he’d possibly be upset.
I’m totally willing to believe Pitchfork is prejudiced against middle-aged women. I’d even assume it. But Flavorwire’s approach doesn’t actually show it.
I’d be interested to see whether the Pitchfork/Metacritic ratio holds up when applied to, say, older men, younger women, even just albums in general. But not interested enough to actually do the work.