Media Minutia

When Memoir is No Longer Funny: My Review of When You Are Engulfed in Flames

2009-03-20T20:56:00.001-07:00

I bought David Sedaris’ new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, after hearing him talk about it on NPR. I generally like Sedaris’ work and while I was unimpressed with my last purchase of his work, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, I was excited to hear him talk about the new book and he named it after his time living in Tokyo so I thought that stories about his time there would make up the majority of the book.

I was wrong. The book does include a decent essay on his experiences in Japan at the end, but the majority of the book is his typical ramblings about his life and they seem to be getting progressively darker. I don’t know if it his age or mine, but I enjoy Sedaris’ musings on life less than I used to. He seems to be more crotchety in this new book and this is a person who was crotchety from birth. He just doesn’t seem to see good or fun in the world the way he used to and it makes the essays more laborious to read.

I would say that his take on Japan is worth getting the book from the library, but just read the end. Although I found his section on Japan intriguing it was still lacking the depth and carefully thoughtful observation that was present in his earlier work. There is simply nothing memorable about these stories. I can still visualize parts of his book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, but Engulfed in Flames doesn’t have the graphically funny descriptions of events that really stay with a reader. When I was finished with the book it was simply put down. I felt no loss of beloved characters or remaining chuckles as was my experience of his previous work.

Maybe it was the advent of Alison Bechdel’s amazingly humorous and engaging memoir, Fun Home, that has me seeing memoir differently or maybe it’s just me, but I have talked with friends who agree that Sedaris has lost his touch, for this book at least. It seems like the loss of a friend when an author becomes less necessary, less of a required read. I will miss the idea of Sedaris’ work, but for now, that is all I will miss.

Barbie vs. Bratz

2008-06-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

I find it absolutely hilarious that the makers of Barbie are suing the makers of Bratz. Apparently it is all about when the Bratz designer did what, but it brings to my mind some sort of surreal showdown where the doll with the shortest skirt and the tightest clothes wins. Barbie has been losing out to Bratz in the toy market for some time. I am certain it is due to the clear need for little girls to have dolls that look like they should be out clubbing. I mean what other doll will give them the close link to Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears.

Don’t Blame Feminism for Bad Parenting

2008-06-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Alice Walker’s daughter, Rebecca Walker, has written a memoir and an article for the Daily Mail about what it is like to be the daughter of this famous feminist. The article is a diatribe against feminism instead of what it should be, a work about poor parenting. Rebecca Walker blames all of her mother’s ill parenting on feminism and that isn’t where it belongs.

I can understand how terrible it must have been for Rebecca Walker to grow up as the daughter of Alice. I am close to Rebecca’s age and I also grew up in California with a divorced mother, so I can relate, to some extent, to where she is coming from.

However, she makes a huge mistake laying the fault of her childhood at the feet of feminism. It is understandable that Alice Walker couched her decisions within a feminist framework, it is her life’s work, it is her devotion, it is how she sees the world. There is no other way for Alice Walker, world famous feminist, to explain things to her daughter, she was enrobed in feminism. The problem is that Rebecca Walker is blaming feminism for her mother’s faults. Narcissism is not the fault of feminism. Poor parenting skills are not feminism’s legacy. My guess is that as the eighth child of share croppers, Alice Walker did not get the kind of parenting that she wanted as a child. She probably gave her daughter a better childhood than she had, but that would seem poor indeed compared to other parents of the 1970s.

I have found that most people feel that there were major flaws in their childhoods. These flaws have a dramatic range, but they are felt by each one of us. Most parents try to correct those flaws that they felt most dramatically for their children. So it makes sense that Rebecca Walker would create a traditional family structure for her son. Most children of divorce feel that the divorce was the seminal event in their lives and they work to create a more traditional family structure than they had.

This is still not feminism’s legacy. The legacy of divorce may be a result of the work that feminists did to help women see that they could leave dangerous or soul-sucking marriages, but if Rebecca Walker had spoken to people whose parents stayed together for the sake of the children only to fight constantly and tear each other to pieces in front of that child, she might think that divorce is not as bad as she thought.

Feminism gave women the ability to have more choices than they had ever had before. This means that they had the ability to be crappy moms as well, but there were also feminist who were wonderful mothers. To blame feminism in such a public way for bad parenting is irresponsible and short-sighted.

And to blame feminism for the choices women make to advance their careers before they consider motherhood is ridiculous. The only thing that feminism can be blamed for on that score is that women have the ability to have high-powered careers and can even make that choice. Things were not better when women were forced into marriages and motherhood to stave off impoverishment that would result from being a single woman in a world where all the jobs were for men.

Women who decide to start their families early and enter the work force later are no better off than women who chose the other route. They have the same amount of limited choices and their career options become far less appealing the longer women stay at home.

Feminism may not be perfect, but it has dramatically advanced the choices and options available to women. Feminism is not at the root of a distraught childhood and should not be held responsible. Mothers always make choices that their children would rather they didn’t. We are not perfect people. But our poor choices are each of our responsibilities and not the fault of a social movement.

The Institution of Education

2008-05-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

My children’s school is closing. I was really disappointed to hear this news, since it is the only school in my city that actually really fits my kids. I just moved them to this school this year and it has come as a real shock to have it go away.

This got me thinking about education as an institution. And what I hope my children gain from their elementary education.

The reality is that we don’t really teach kids all that much stuff during the first six years they are in school. They learn how to read and write. They need to understand what they read and synthesize the information. Math is important for them to know as a concept and they need to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. They also need to have a basic understanding of science, geography, and history.

There is a lot of socialization that happens the first years at school and in many ways school is a way for children to learn how to function within an institutional setting. They learn to follow rules and basically stay within the box of whichever school system they are in.

With the closing of my children’s school I have been thinking about the institutions that I have to choose from and I don’t like my choices. I live in Texas, so the schools that have religion as their institutional basis are the main component of the options for private schools. We have no religious practice that fits within the existing structure and I feel that having my children educated in a system that is working on their own religious agenda is not acceptable to me. My children started in the public school system and they both ended their experience much worse off then they were in the beginning, so that is not really an option.

I am wondering what people think about the way their children are socialized as part of an educational institution. I think that most parents want our children to fit into society. In many ways the public school system is a way that parents can help their children to transitional easily through the system. With a grounding in the public school system children can understand the working of many college systems.

Once a parent chooses to take their children out of the public school system, or a religious school system, both of which work to help students understand the rules and structures of mainstream society parents are really left to their own designs, and that is freeing and scary at the same time.

I have had to realize that my children do not fit into the normal structures. It was difficult to come to that understanding, but now that I do it is my job as their parent to find the institution that best serves my children. I have learned that finding the ideal or perfect school for my kids is not a reasonable goal, but I need them to be academically challenged and emotionally supported, so they can get what they need out of the institution to which they belong.

I now see that what I want for my children is to see themselves as citizens of the world. I want them to feel comfortable with technology and I don’t want my daughter to decide that math and science are not cool for girls. I don’t really want them to be part of any institution. I want them to have a setting to explore where they can feel like they have a safe base from which to operate and teachers who will push their intellect.

I don’t know what I will get, however. Now that I know what I want I will have to sit patiently and see what happens. But I think that it is important to understand how the institution of education shapes the lives it touches.

Conference Land

2008-04-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have had a bit of a break from blogging here because I have had the amazing ability to speak at and attend several conferences in Austin these past few weeks.

I was really privileged to be the keynote speaker at the 15th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women's and Gender Studies Conference at UT. I spoke about the ways that the video game industry create barriers to entry for women and girls and the ways that the video game industry is perceived by academia as being a male centered domain affects the quality of research done on games. Although I do see some real progress being made with the introduction of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii system.

I also attended the Gender and Technology Conference at UT and the Texas Girls Collaborative Project Kick-Off Conference. Both of these events were wonderful and they reminded me of why I do this work. The Texas Girls Collaborative Project was created to help universities, instructors, and organizations that work to help girls succeed in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) come together and create even more successful programs. It has long been a problem that we are losing too many girls from these areas and I am happy to be a part of such a necessary project.

I Feel Like Abigail Adams

2008-04-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the second US president and there are letters from her to John while he was away at the Constitutional Congress asking him to "remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation."

Of course, he and the rest of the men did forget the women. I am sure they wondered what the fuss was about when they came back home and told their wives who had fought for independence as well.

That is what I feel like when I write about the video game industry. I keep shouting that they shouldn't forget the women and when they do they wonder what all my shouting is about.

It's frustrating.

Academics and Games

2008-04-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

There is a problem in the academic study of video games. The girls are invisible. For some reason many of the researchers who study video games are completely comfortable taking the game industry's party line for granted - girls don't really play games. The industry is totally comfortable with the idea that girls play casual games, or even the DS, but when it comes to what the game industry considers the "hard core" games, the girls and women just are not visible. And it doesn't seem to matter how hard women work to become visible, the industry just works that much harder to make them go away.

The new book, Grand Theft Childhood is one example of how invisible girls and women are and how damaging that is. This is a good book that does not demonize the game industry and take out the woes of the world on this new technology. However, it is an entire book on games where the interviews were only done with boys. So to rephrase....they only talked to boys...no girls. They did some surveys for the statistical part of the study and found that 30% of the girls play GTA, but they did not go back to include girls.

The researchers just listened to the games industry party line about how girls don't play "hard core games" and they just never considered them.

What this means is that when people read this book...a book whose title implies it covers both genders because they use childhood, not boys...they are only reading about boys experiences.

People in the games industry are reading this book, other researchers are reading this book. Decisions will be made because of this book...where the girls are absolutely silent.

This is just one example of how the absence of girls...the silencing of girls...has a negative impact on not just what we play, but how others see what we play.

Of Prostitutes and Photography

2008-04-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

I read a really nice article about prostitutes today and I don’t say that often. I was drawn into a story in the LA Times about a woman who took photos of prostitutes in Las Vegas.

Jonnie Anderson went to Yale to get a Master’s in photography only to return to Las Vegas where she embarked on a project to take photos of prostitutes where they could feel beautiful. She and her roommate would give these women makeovers and they would get to chose clothes Jonnie provided so that they could have their photograph taken, which Jonnie has turned in to a book.

What I loved about this article was the absolute respect Jonnie has for the prostitutes and the respect of the author of the article for these women as well. There was no biting commentary on the lives these women live, no analysis, just a desire to document these women in a way that would not degrade them.

It is often easy to deride choices others make or have thrust upon them , without truly understanding their lives or perspectives. I appreciate the work both Jonnie and the journalist have done.

Awesome Comic

2008-04-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

I just love this comic by VG Cats. The reality is that too many of the games geared toward girls and women highlight the girlier side of life. Since I do most of the cooking, I really have a hard time understanding the facination with Cooking Mama. It would be like my husband wanting Laundry Man for his relaxation time when that is something he does too much of in real life.

Miss Bimbo...Again

2008-04-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

I realize that this game probably doesn't deserve as much press as it's getting, but I have heard the argument that Miss Bimbo is not that bad because if shooting games don't make the players killers, then how can playing Miss Bimbo make girls think less of their bodies. And I must refute it.

Well, just for the record, that is a ludicrous argument. If we were handing out guns to children and then showing them all the great ways they would feel if they would just go out and kill someone already, then we would probably have a direct correlation. However, when girls are inundated with images and messages about how their bodies suck and how no grown woman with any sense likes her body. Then they are given a game that allows the characters to take diet pills and get plastic surgery and then be judged on their bodies, well that is a direct correlation and that in deed does lead to the players feeling bad about their bodies.

It is all about how things are portrayed across various forms of media. We are generally told that killing is bad. It's against the law, even. However we are told across all forms of media that big boobs are good and fat is ugly, well then it doesn't take much to draw the obvious conclusions.

Leeches. Yuck!

2008-03-27T19:33:00.001-07:00

As if Miss Bimbo wasn't enough of a sign of the coming apocalypse brought to us by unrealistic standards of things that humans should do to their body, I just read an article on the BBC website about Demi Moore and leeches. The blood sucking kind. She says that she had some leech treatments at a woman's house in Austria and it was great.

Now I try not to take any medical or health advice from celebrities who seem to live away from my world, but I just have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of leeches. No matter how delusional the person using the leeches may be.

Miss Bimbo

2008-03-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Miss Bimbo game has been all over the blogosphere, and I can’t help but jump into the fray. This game is a virtual world where players get a virtual bimbo and they can get her plastic surgery and control her eating so that she looks like a perfect bimbo and wins the Mss Bimbo contest.

There is a lot of discussion about whether this game is bad or just funny. The game is targeted toward 9 to 16 year-old girls.

When I first heard about this game I was convinced it was a fake site created to piss off all of the women of the world. The reality that it is a real site with 200,000 players makes me very, very sad. Have we come so far from the days of Reviving Ophelia?

I don't think this game is ironic or clever, I think this game is bad for girls. Nine-year olds might be sophisticated in some ways, but numerous studies have shown that girls are directly affected by discussions of diets and body types. That is why The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty exists.

The media affects the way that girls feel about their bodies:

· 9% of 9 year old have vomited to lose weight

· 81% of 10 year old are afraid of being fat

· 53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies

· 78% of 18 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies

· The #1 wish of girls 11-17 years old is to lose weight

Source: Body Wars: Making Peace with Women’s Bodies,
by Margo Maine, Ph.D., Gürze Books, 2000

As if we didn’t have enough problems with stereotypes and body image now girls can actually cut bits off of their characters.

I just wish that people paid more attention to the fact that what their child sees effects their views of themselves.

I would like to see this game die a slow death.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is Worth Your While

2008-03-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

Are you looking forward to the release of Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm? Well, neither am I.

However, if you are looking for a game to play I highly recommend Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It is the best game that I have played in a long time. (Other than Rock Band, of course!) This is a puzzle mystery where you follow Professor Layton and his young sidekick to a strange village in order to help a family find their inheritance that was hidden by the crazy Baron before he died.

There are many reasons this game is fun. So I thought I would list them out:

The puzzles are varied and you can skip them.

This means that you are not stuck on one type of puzzle that you would never ever be able to solve without the help of a cheat before you can advance. There are so many different types of puzzles that if you hate one kind you can mostly just skip it and still win the game, yeah!

The puzzles make sense.

Most games that I have played have puzzles integrated into the story that make no sense to me. Why do I want to have a falcon catch a ring or feed a monkey a banana? Maybe I just think the monkey should be able to walk a few feet and get its own banana. In Professor Layton the puzzles are either to help someone out with a problem they have or they are puzzles that villagers ask you to solve that they have created.

The characters are developed and interesting.

You don’t get to know all the back story on Professor Layton and Luke, his sidekick, but you get to know enough that you care. I wanted to help all the people in the game solve their problems. The writing was key, which is why game writers deserve more credit.

It takes less than 10 hours to solve.

Unlike some games that take forever to solve and seem to think that repetition of the same puzzles over and over again is the way to my heart, Professor Layton is solvable in less than ten hours. If you are like me and you like to look around and see the sights it can take thirteen, but that can be fun too.

It is for the Nintendo DS.

If you don’t have one, you should. The Nintendo Dual Screen (DS) is the best portable game system out there. It is good on planes, trains, in cars, and sitting in the living room. The technology is awesome and easy to navigate. No taking forever for the load screen, no having to turn on the game system and the TV and wait for the whole thing to boot. You just open it up and go.

So there you have it. So go buy it already.

What A Wonderful World

2008-03-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

I was really happy to see the article in the Guardian about the old people's home in Berlin. It is the first in Europe to cater exclusively to gay and lesbian old folks. There are plans to build a nursing home for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elders in Massachusetts.

What I really liked about the article, besides the topic, was the way it was written. There was no stigma attached to being gay from the author’s perspective, just that elders who are gay or lesbian might want a place to live where they don't have to explain anything. It was written with a sweetness that lets me know that with all of the crap and discrimination and violence that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people may experience. Progress is being made. And I like progress.

In an Unlikely Place - An Interesting Commentary on Hillary Clinton

2008-03-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

As I was trolling The Guardian I noticed that the Fashion section has Agony Aunt and I love advice columnists, so I turned my wandering eye in her direction. I was completely surprised to find a really interesting commentary about Hillary Clinton made on the basis of her clothes. It isn't superficial and trite, it is thoughtful and complex. Give it a read!

Penny Arcade

2008-03-07T11:02:00.000-08:00

I used to read Penny Arcade. I liked that the comic was about games and it was generally funny. Then they posted a strip that made me realize that I was not their audience. I went a year or so without reading it, and then I decided to give it another try. I love webcomics and I know that a few bad posts don’t make a theme, so I decided to start reading again. A few weeks into this new adventure and they decided to post this.

When judging wet t-shirt contests and beer bongs is celebrated in a comic with an image of a woman in a wet t-shirt I am yet again, informed ever-so-gently by the creators that this is not a club for girls, so again I will remove Penny Arcade from my list of must-reads. I don’t think I will go back again.

This is just the way of the game industry in miniature. Many women who game will read the strip because they are used to looking past the sexist crap. The men usually don’t even notice. It is the women like me who they miss and they figure they are doing just fine without expanding their base, why are we needed. I think that blindly insulting a group of people to set clear “boys-only” barriers is short sighted.

Unless you make a product that only one sex can use, like after shave, it is short-sighted for a company or an industry to intentionally insult a possible market segment. This was discovered by the makers of TVs when they realized that women have an equal, if not dominant voice in the decisions on household purchases.

With the dominance of women in the casual games space I think it is ludicrous for the games industry in general to continue to assume that their audience is all male. And with their strong ties to the games industry I am putting Penny Arcade in the same boat.

Great Technology Resources

2008-03-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

These are great sites for anyone interested in women and gaming. The sites are grouped together by type. Send me a link if you have a site that I should add.

Organizations
These sites sole purpose is to increase the number of women who work in the game industry and help the game industry better understand women gamers.

Women in Games
http://womeningames.com/

Women in Games International
http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/

For Women and Girls Who Play
These sites have articles, game reviews and information about scholarships for girls in gaming and game development.

Women Gamers
http://www.womengamers.com/

Gaming Angels
http://www.gamingangels.com/

Killer Betties
http://www.killerbetties.com/

Competitive Women
These sites feature women who are professional video game players. PMS Clan is a supportive network for women who compete in video game tournaments and The Frag Dolls is a group supported and run by a game company (Ubisoft). The Frag Dolls only compete on Ubisoft games. All of these women compete in First Person Shooter games and they are some of the best players in the world. Both groups also compete in some tournaments where the women work together as a team. The women in both of these organizations are extremely accessible and are happy to answer questions and support girls who have an interest in what they do.

PMS Clan
http://www.pmsclan.com/index.php

Frag Dolls
http://www.fragdolls.com/

Game Sites
These are sites where girls can play games for free.

Girls Inc.
https://www.girlsinc-online.org/members/Welcome.html

Pop Cap Games
http://www.popcap.com/

Shockwave Games
http://www.shockwave.com/home.jsp

Sites Supportive of Girls in the Sciences

Engineer Girl
http://www.engineergirl.org/?referrer=Google&gclid=CMC_tpmv4JECFR3JOAodvCchgg

Girls Inc.
https://www.girlsinc-online.org/members/Welcome.html

Girls Go Tech by the Girl Scouts
http://www.girlsgotech.org/girls_go_tech.html

Sally Ride Science
http://www.sallyridescience.com/

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

2008-03-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

Every year as part of Engineering Week in the US various universities sponsor a Girls Engineering Day. This is an amazing way to introduce the many aspects of engineering to young girls. I have been to the event at the University of Texas for the past two years and it rocks!

Girls get to see presentations involving cool stuff like liquid nitrogen and work on experiments that can go awry. Boys can attend as well, but this is all part of an effort to bring up the numbers of girls involved in the sciences.

The ages range for these events, but at UT girls can attend who are in 1^st through 8^th grade. I think it is crucial that girls are given the exposure to both the science of engineering and the university campus at such a young age. As has been repeatedly studied, many girls lose interest in the sciences in middle school and I think that it is key to expose them to how fun science and college can be at an early age.

The university also has retention programs in place to help women who choose to study engineering stick to their choice and not get overwhelmed when it feels like they are the only women in a class of 200.

I spoke with Tricia Berry, the Director of the Women in Engineering Program at UT and a chemical engineer herself and she told me about the PALS program at UT where a freshman woman is teamed up with another woman in her major who is a sophomore to senior level. Ms. Berry also told me about a networking reception the university held for women in engineering. The women who attended were floored that there were so many women actually in their major. When sitting in a lecture hall of 200 it is difficult to pick out the other 10 or 20 women there and it’s great for their egos to see that they are part of a much larger group.

I like the idea of introducing girls to the idea of engineering and then supporting them when they make the decision to pursue that field as a career. Since engineering is about solving problems it seems to me that the more diverse a workforce that is in place to solve any given problem the better.

A Heroic Woman

2008-02-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

I truly enjoy stories of women who have done heroic deeds. The stories the media tell imbue our lives so much and I would much rather hear about women who parachuted into occupied France during WWII than some celebrity gossip.

Pearl Cornioley died on February 23^rd and her obituary is in the Telegraph. The amazing story about her life is well written and focuses on her bravery. The article ends with a telling of how the British government tried to correct their prejudice and awarded her the appropriate governmental awards later in life. I hope you enjoy the read.

How Journalism Goes Bad

2008-02-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

So there is this article in my local paper about how a woman who survived hellacious breast cancer has now lost the weight she gained as a result of having her thyroid removed due to the cancer.

I started to write about how cranky I was that the newspaper chose to focus on her weight loss, but then I realized that this woman is probably happy to have her body to focus on in a way that she has control. I can only imagine that after having the cancer run riot over her body she would be glad to have a way to get her body to work with her ideas instead of against them. I mean who the hell am I to say how she should want to view her body given the almost hysterical cultural focus on outward appearance and fear of being labeled fat even if she did survive a horrible ordeal.

My problem is with the media and that this article could have been spun lots of ways, but since we have this crazed focus on weight, this was the focus of the article. Not her ability to reinterpret and view her body as in some way good or benign. This article is then not about the strength of this woman to fight for her life, win and then reinvent herself. It is about how wonderful it is that she now fits into standard beauty norms.

I see this kind of focus as dangerous. Women have other, more important issues to be discussing. These small details redirect our conversations in ways that could be more useful.

Interestingly enough as I went to post this I found that the headline in the paper “Breast Cancer Survivor Shares the Secrets of Making Weight Loss Stick” is different than the on-line version “Weight-loss tips from a true survivor: Donna Nelson beat cancer, got fit and is now featured in a new book from Weight Watchers.”

Ever Changing Gender Roles

2008-02-06T14:12:00.000-08:00

Ok, so Rosie Boycott, who started a feminist magazine in the UK in the 1970’s, wrote an article in the Daily Mail about how terribly treated men are now that feminism has taken hold and how much nicer things were before women got all uppity and went and got jobs. Seriously.

I think that her point is that we need to have a larger societal shift to go with the progress that women have made, but instead of making that clear she seems to hearken back to yesteryear when men knew who they were because they were the wage earners.

What she blatantly ignores is that women have always worked outside the home. Women have worked in factories and at newspapers and as teachers for many years now. What has changed is not just an expectation that the man, the father might want to have an equal responsibility in taking care of the home and the children, but also a desire by the men to have an equal responsibility.

She refers to a recent survey that says that men are unhappy because they feel they have to live by women’s rules, but she never references the survey, so we don’t know if it is a survey done on 4 men outside a pub who were drunk or what the other findings were.

I agree that we need to have a societal shift that accommodates the way families are now structured, but I have no illusions that men or women were happier when the men were just in charge of going to work and the women were home. There is definitely more negotiation now, but I think it is all for the good.

I am also more optimistic about the future than Ms. Boycott. I think that this may be a rough patch and require more negotiation between men and women in marriages, but I also know that our children are growing up with women in a wide variety of roles and while men may not have an equal share of household responsibility, they have more than before. Our children will be better able to negotiate these roles, because for them they won’t be new.

I do think it is important to pay attention to how societal changes affect those of us living in the society. However, I think that the answer has more to do with all of us advocating for changes like national child care, or health care that will help everyone adjust rather than just giving up on the progress because it has become too difficult for some, or not. I still can’t find the study.

I'm Depressed

2008-01-31T10:40:00.000-08:00

I am starting to get a migraine as I read the latest wage survey. According to surveys by Dice.com, a career placement site for technology professionals, and Computerworld the wage gap is growing between men and women in the technology sector. This means that women are making even less than men at the same job than last year. I could spit nails.

According to Dice.com the gap widened from 9.7% in 2006 to 11.9% in 2007. The wage gap varies depending on the type of job, but at every level the wage gap is still significant, according to this survey. Computerworld found similar gaps with the gap narrowing significantly in upper management, but not disappearing.

The fact that in 2007, almost 100 years after we were granted the right to vote, after all the work women have done to highlight this gap as a problem, the fact that a gap exists let alone grows, makes me very angry. No matter who you are you should be paid the same for the same job. It is not simply unfair, it is unreasonable.

It Really Is In the Details

2008-01-29T14:57:00.000-08:00

When game makers are creating a game the designers want the game to have a certain feel, the artists give it a certain look, and the writers think about the story. What most of these people are looking at is the big picture. They are thinking about things like, how can the player navigate through the game and have fun. They think about the overall feel and tone they give the game. Sometimes the details are ignored.

This is often where the trouble starts. The producer doesn’t have the time to look at all the little nit-picky bits of the game, the designer is thinking about how to translate their idea to reality and then we end up with something weird, like the morphing of Judy Nails into a bar brawling slut with a boob job. Or sometimes we end up with things so small, so minute that to the eye of many gamers they would wonder what I was on about.

I was at a game showcase where games in development were shown so that the developers could get feedback. I went over to play a game that looked like fun, if not similar to older games like Army Men. It was where the player is a toy navigating a teenager’s room. There were lots of objects strewn around the room to give the player the feeling that they were immersed in a true teenage space, things like dirty socks and pizza slices. I was happily navigating the world and playing the game when my character walked past an adult magazine lying on the floor. This sent an immediate signal to me that this game was not intended for me. I had lots of things on the floor of my room as a teenager, but a magazine with a topless woman on the cover was not one of them. It brought me out of the world enough that I paused from play.

Since the creator of the game was sitting next to me I was excited to have the opportunity to ask why he had placed the magazine there. He told me that he wanted to make the game edgy. I asked him if he realized instead of edgy he was signaling that this game was created for boys and men with this one detail. He was truly surprised that such a simple thing would have a big impact.

The thing is, it really does. It is the subtle cues that we read when we walk into a restaurant or store to decide if that is a place we are supposed to be. A strip club may be open to women as customers, but there is a pretty high barrier to entry for a woman to go in. This can be the same for games. The game designer could have put a gun magazine or a skater magazine in, which would also be edgy, but not send a gendered signal. The odds are good that a woman or girl who would want to play that type of game would also be the type of person who plays FPS games or skates.

Gamers are always looking for cues from a game. That is the only way to find the hidden ammo or the good gear. It also keeps us from getting killed. Because a gamer has to pay so much attention to the world, the small subtle cues that women and girls don’t belong are felt even more than in some other context. Skateboarding magazines are full of cues that the readership is male, but those can be skipped past for the cool articles. When I am immersed in a world, the subtle messages are inescapable.

Yet again, it’s one of the many things I like about Rock Band. When playing a solo quick play I don’t know who my band mates will be and I am usually supplied with an equal slit between men and women. I particularly like one of the characters who shows up to play the drums in a hot pink skull and cross bones mini with a big bouffant.

The game industry needs to do a better job of looking at the details of a game. I really dislike being immersed in game play only to run across a cue that I don’t belong. Those cues are often subtle but they can have a huge impact.

The Numbers Are In

2008-01-18T11:50:00.000-08:00

Kotaku has the 2007 console numbers up and, not surprisingly, the winner is Nintendo. The Nintendo DS sold the most, followed by the Wii. Proof positive that when a game company decides to target an audience larger than 18 to 30 year-old guys with limited social skills everyone wins.

Why the Wii Wins

2008-01-17T09:39:00.000-08:00

As I was shopping in my local Best Buy store I noticed a demo station for the Wii and I stopped to take a look. I smiled as I watched a demo directed at both children and families and amazingly enough, both boys and girls. The demo starts with a mother sitting down with the Wii remote and writing a note to someone using the Wii’s internet mode, then the daughter comes in and the mother and daughter start to play a game, they are eventually joined by the father and son and all four family members are playing the Wii. The demo shows the entire family having fun playing the Wii. It also shows a group of girls playing games on the Wii and a girl and a boy playing the Wii together. Here is where the success of the Wii lies. While the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 were getting attention from the game industry insiders that they had faster, better, sleeker game play, Nintendo was quietly doing what would guarantee huge sales. They were making the Wii look like fun for EVERYONE! Not just the hard core gamer who the majority of the industry blindly insists are the REAL gamers.

When the Wii was first discussed within the video game industry Nintendo was considered a bit foolish for not implementing the dramatic upgrades that were being implemented by Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Playstation 3 as Next Generation machines. The trouble with thinking only about the technology is that both Sony and Microsoft forgot that the market could be much broader than the gamers who play the shooters and are driven by technology. They forgot that video games didn’t just need to be better looking and have more bells and whistles, they should also be fun.

When Nintendo designed the Wii they remembered the people who just want the games to be fun, maybe even dorky, but always fun. This was played out by the massive sales numbers for the Wii since its release. And this past Christmas, it was almost magical if one appeared on the shelves, they were flying out the door so fast.

Personally, I wanted a Wii for the same reasons I wanted an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. It looked like a really fun game console that I could play with my family. And it is.

The Women's Land Army

2007-12-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

I found this really interesting article about how women who were part of Women’s Land Army in the UK during WWII are being honored by the government on the BBC news site. These were women who made sure the farms and lumber mills were still working during the war and it seems that they were also responsible for the distribution. This would have been invaluable work during the time when food was rationed and the country was under attack. I don’t really have a comment. I just think it’s interesting and I am glad they are being honored.

How to Ruin a Good Game

2007-12-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

Guitar Hero was a great game because it crossed all sort of boundaries and erased some barriers to entry for people who thought that they would never play a video game. It has a controller that looks and plays similar to a guitar and can allow anyone to feel like a rock star. I even wrote an article about the wonders of Guitar Hero and why it was so seminal.

Guitar Hero was bought by Activision and that was the end. Activision is a company known from the Tony Hawk video game franchise and known by me as the people who quickly eliminated professional female skaters as avatars from that game. They seem to take joy in removing game play aspects that appeal to women who game.

When Activision redesigned the characters for the new game they took hold of the one avatar the vast majority of the female gamers I know play, Judy Nails. Before this new build you just had to mention Judy Nails to a fellow woman gamer and her eyes would light up with joy. Judy was everything I wanted to be. She was super cool with a punk riff and she could totally rock a guitar. While I was standing in my living room barely making it through a song, Judy was on the screen rocking her way into guitar heaven.

Unfortunately, the new version of Judy looks like a meth user whose boob job went horribly wrong. All of the characters have been made to look more cartoonish, but none was slashed as badly as poor Judy. The women gamers on a list-serv I belong to were talking about the death of Judy from the minute the game hit the shelves and I was skeptical. I mean how could they make her look THAT bad? So down I went to Best Buy to try the demo and see for myself and it is! I was having trouble playing because I was absolutely mesmerized by her crazy bouncing breasts. It just looks uncomfortable.

One small change, the essential elimination of one character and that is it. I won’t buy it and neither will lots of other women who were loyal to the game. The video game makers say that it doesn’t matter, that they are selling more of this version of the game than ever before. But that is just short term thinking. I know play Rock Band and I tell everyone I know about how much better it is. In the long term the loss of a small piece of market share will be big.

Enchanted is Terrible

2007-11-29T06:23:00.000-08:00

I was excited to take my children to see Enchanted, the new Disney film, this past weekend. I had read reviews about what a wonderful movie it was and how it did a great job of skewing the traditional fairy tale.

It turned out that this was not true. Enchanted is a very traditional fairy tale that uses some gimmicks to sell itself as a modern recreation. As I have written before, I am not a fan of the traditional fairy tales. I am only interested in a princess who is able to save herself and perhaps not even want the prince when she’s done. This bit of tripe with a focus on marriage as the ultimate attainment is just disturbing.

The princess, Giselle, is as wide-eyed, dewy and dopey as the best 1930’s creations. I think that she is supposed to be seen as naïve because she is in a strange land, but the beginning sequence sets her up as naïve and incompetent in her own land as well, so I thought that her confusion, once she lands in New York from her animated fairy tale land, just seemed like a continuation of her lack of mental acuity.

SPOILER ALERT!

Of course, Giselle is expecting to be saved from New York by her prince and brought back to the poorly named animated fairy tale land, Andalasia. And, of course, she falls in love with the guy who randomly picks her up and brings her back to his apartment with his six year-old daughter. The only part of the movie that seemed remotely plausible, (even if this is a fairy tale) was when the father had the daughter sleep in his room so that she won’t be left alone in her room while the clearly delusional princess sleeps on the sofa.

There is a small part where Giselle stabs the evil queen after she turns into a dragon and where she saves her love by throwing a sword that sticks him to a post while the dragon falls to her doom, but it was just too gooey for my taste. This bland bit of brain candy isn’t worth the price of the ticket.

SPOILERS END

Not to mention that I am just completely done with the entire Disney Princess franchise. What happened to the idea that princesses would be feisty and diverse, like Belle, Jasmine and Mulan? I want my children to see movies with characters that are willing to stand up for their beliefs and have an interest outside of marriage. As the single mom who took her daughter to see this movie with me said, “How am I supposed to talk to my daughter about this?” The rapt focus on marriage as the ultimate end goal made this movie seem like it was from the 30’s and I wish it would have stayed there.

For the same age child, I would just wait until Nancy Drew comes out on video.

Why Aren't We Talking About Race Anymore?

2007-11-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

I teach a class on critical media theory to students at a private school and we have been focusing on race and discrimination for the past few weeks. I was looking for a quiz they could take on-line that would challenge their assumptions about stereotypes and/or highlight the subtle ways that discrimination can take place. These students are relatively liberal and do not see themselves as being prejudiced and I wanted something that would help them understand the ways they see the world, and how their discrimination may be unnoticeable to them because they live in such a privileged and secluded world.

I was surprised that this type of quiz is much harder to come by than I had initially assumed. I had thought that many quizzes would have been developed and waiting on the amazing internet to help instructors like me. I was wrong. It turned out that I had to use Google.uk to find a quiz that I thought would be helpful. I found two quizzes; one was British, the other Australian. The scarcity of quizzes led me to thinking and then to some research.

From my research, it seems to me that the conversations about race and ethnicity are much more out in the open in the UK and Australia, than they are here. This is not to say that there is not discrimination and prejudice in these other countries, just that they seem to be talking about it a lot more. This got me thinking to the way the television shows are cast. I watch a lot of BBCAmerica and the BBC, in particular, is very careful about the way they cast their shows using a more diverse cast that represents a wide variety of ethnicities. Now, Americans might argue that Keeping Up Appearances, and Time Goes By, two staples of BBC comedies shown on PBS, are not at all diverse. But those are not modern shows. I am thinking of Torchwood, Doctor Who, and Hotel Babylon. These are programs where the cast is diverse and in a really natural way.

The diversity seen on BBC programs makes me think about how segregated our casts have become. There is always a spectrum, and I am not certain why we are swinging in this way. Are we confident that as a country we have overcome racism and discrimination and refuse to see it when it exists, or are we just tired of the battles and are hoping they will go away and things can go back to the way they were? You know, when everything was perfect and money was flowing from the taps and children were always polite, those halcyon days of yesteryear that we all hearken back to as we get older.

The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard is Amazing

2007-11-08T09:35:00.000-08:00

This is not minutia, this is a big thing. If you have not had the chance to experience The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard on PBS' Masterpiece Theater, you need to re-think your viewing choices. This show is AMAZING!

It takes place in the UK and is about a woman who becomes Prime Minister and the head of a new political party partly through her shrewd understanding of people and partly as a result of the professionals that attach themselves to her as the next big thing. I really appreciate the fact that although it is about a woman as Prime Minister, it does not take the line (so far anyway) that she is a stooge or a befuddled mother. She is befuddled often, but only as a result of her lack of experience as a politician. Her entire cabinet is made up of women who are all working with their own motivations and the fact that they are women is simply not discussed. I sort of expected the other political parties represented to belittle the government because they were run by women, and it just has not come up.

So watch it and let me know what you think.

Halloween Recap

2007-11-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

I can only speak to my neighborhood, but I have to say that, as usual, the media misses the details. Of course there was a big brouhaha about the state of the world based on the scantily clad outfits being sold to girls for Halloween. Certainly, no one was commenting on the inappropriate outfits being sold to boys, but back to my point.

The media can finally put down their bells and alarms, the state of the world has not changed dramatically, Halloween outfits this year are standing firm. I witnessed girls dressed as fairies unlicensed by Disney, aliens, fighter pilots, and doctors. There was a large segment of creepy vampires of both genders and the requisite cats, bunnies, various insects and yes Disney princesses. Basically the same outfits children have been wearing for the past ten years.

I am tired of the fear of female sexuality being played out in super creepy and inappropriate ways, such as through a bizarre discussion of slutty Halloween costumes for girls. Lots of things exist in the marketplace every year with the hope that it will sell, but that doesn’t mean that the world has changed and they do sell. These are just the same fears being revisited in different forms. The next thing you know people will be talking about how birth control causes girls to have sex, the boys not so much, but the girls are the ones to watch out for. Very scary indeed.

Of Princess Dreams

2007-11-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

So Annie Leibowitz has a new photography project where she is recreating images from Disney movies with famous actors and athletes. Rachel Weisz is featured in a story in the Daily Mail about the project and discussed how happy she was to be featured at Snow White, because, “it is every little girls dream.”

Really?! I thought that each girl had different dreams uncontrolled by the Disney Corporation. I certainly don’t know many little girls who dream of being rejected by their new step mother based solely on their appearance, clearly ignored by their father and needing to flee to an isolated location to escape certain death at the hands of the stepmother’s henchmen. And while children, including some girls, do enjoy playing in the kitchen I don’t think they often dream of making a move down from princess to cook and housekeeper stuck with a limited social group, none of whom can relate to you only to be put to sleep by a poison apple and then placed in a glass box. All this, just to be awakened by a man you never knew and being unable to go back to your own home, you need to leave with him for his kingdom with the hope that his family will accept you.

Yeah, wow. That just sounds ideal. I mean if I was required to choose a Disney princess to emulate Snow White would not be it. At least Belle has an intellectual life and fights back. My favorite, of course, is Mulan who was a real woman that saved a freaking kingdom. Now there’s a Disney character I would want to be.

The Peephole

2007-10-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

There was a story in my rather horrid daily newspaper about a woman who was beaten and sexually assaulted in her apartment and in the article they discussed how the woman who was assaulted had opened the door without looking through the peephole. As if it was somehow her fault that she was assaulted because of her gross peephole negligence. The reality is that even if she had looked through the peephole, she probably would have opened the door anyway, because she didn’t know the people on the other side of the door were dangerous. It isn’t like looking through a peephole lets you into someone’s brain.

I find it amazing that when a woman is reported as being assaulted it’s still somehow her fault. Like her gross negligence in choosing the perfect attack proof clothing, or not being able to look into someone’s soul as they knock on her door makes her somehow partially responsible for the attack. The reality is that this is never the case with men, especially white men, who are reported as victims out of the sheer wonder of it all. No one would ever write that a white guy was assaulted in his home after neglecting to look through the peephole, now would they?

Video Games are Good

2007-10-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

I am tired of conversations in the media that begin with the idea that video games are bad…for everyone…always.

Video games can be sexist, or stupid, or boring. But they can also be interesting, and intriguing, and fun. The idea that video games are bad because they are a newer form of media that many adults did not grow up playing is just ridiculous.

The biggest problem I have with the idea that video games are bad, is that talk like that ends up keeping girls away from the games. Concerned parents read some study linking video games to some negative attribute and the next thing you know the parents are limiting their son’s video game time and eliminating their daughters. Since the video game industry has done such a good job of creating an image of themselves as a bastion of manliness, parents are more likely to give their sons a slide. The daughters never have a chance.

The Space Station Whip

2007-10-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

How inappropriate would it be for the title of an article to read, male space station commander receives whip to keep female crew in line? Yet there are numerous articles being run in the international media abut the first female commander of the space station to receive a whip. She received a traditional Kazakh whip from a Russian official.

While I understand that the whip was given as a joke, I find it far more interesting that the media chooses to focus on the whip when discussing the launch of US astronaut Peggy Whitson into this historic role. This is just another way to highlight how unusual it is for women to lead and the idea that the men may not be respectful of women in power.

Do men really want to be portrayed as people who have so little respect for a woman who is their commanding officer that she may require force for them to listen to her? I realize that this is logged under the ‘all just a good bit of fun’ category, but it is jokes like this and the pervasive way that they are repeated ad nauseam throughout the media that help to keep women viewed as ‘unusual’ leaders and those who would need help if we were to get there.

The Pernicious Glass Ceiling

2007-10-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

In a fascinating interview with women leaders in the film industry on Salon, the director, Kimberly Peirce, stated that “you can’t get bonded if you’re pregnant.” Translation: you can’t get insured and therefore can’t make a movie if you are pregnant. Seriously! It surprised the heck out of me and some of the other directors on the panel as well.

It surprised me so much in fact, that I chose to track down a company that insures movies to see how they responded to the idea that women are somehow not insurable when they’re pregnant. Well, of course they can, in theory be insured, but it turns out that they need to qualify for secondary insurance without exemptions first. Which I can only assume is more than difficult.

Pregnancy as a state of ill health has been used to keep women out of the workforce for years. In the 1950’s women who were married were often not chosen for jobs over single women, because the married ones were assumed that they would get pregnant and be unable to work.

As a director, if you are unable to work while pregnant, that is a year out of what is likely a young career, since it is less likely that a woman in her 50’s would be getting pregnant, although it is possible. This is while a male director, who can’t get pregnant and is not at all limited by his biology, is able to go right along with his career.

This highlights the tenaciousness of the glass ceiling. The glass ceiling used to be obvious. Women weren’t allowed to do certain jobs, so we knew where the line was drawn. Now the lines are fuzzy. Some female directors feel the need to choose between being a mother and having the career they want. Male directors don’t have to feel the same pressure. They don’t get pregnant. According to the women interviewed, most have found it a huge challenge to be both a mother and a director.

Women haven’t progressed as much as we should have toward equality, but it’s at least positive that women are directors now. That in itself was a long time coming.

The Food Police Are Coming!

2007-10-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Again, the devil is in the details. I was curious when I read on Shapely Prose about the new The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective game by Scholastic and Kaiser Permanente that is supposed to teach kids good health habits and the title makes it sound like a fun game, which it is not.

Being a good detective myself, I decided to play the game and investigate. When I began the game I was surprised that when you click on a child’s card to start the case, all of the children shown have some “bad habit” that is identified on the cards, like “Eats Too Much” or “Gets Tired Too Easily.” This seems like a simple tactic to get the player into the game, but EVERY child has a bad habit. There is no model of what a ‘good, healthy child’ is supposed to look like. This simply encourages the children playing the game to be judgmental about the characters based on surface assessments. Maybe Matthew is really tired all the time because he has severe anemia and Antonia just watches from the sidelines because she suffers from depression. A good detective would probably learn more about the child than the fact that Matthew’s problems will all be solved if he just does jumping jacks at a super human speed.

This is just more of the “you will never be good enough” messages that are spouted by mainstream media. They might as well have included a picture of a “heroine chic” Kate Moss as a role model. The main message is fine –eat right and exercise- it’s the way it is implemented that’s creepy.

Of course, I want my kids to be healthy, but I also don’t want them to have a screwed up fear of food or a strange sense of entitlement that they can tell everyone they see that they know how to make their life better. And on top of all that, it isn’t even a good game!

More Women on the Board of Directors = More Money (Really)

2007-10-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

While it’s important to pay attention to what and how things are said in the media, it is also important to note what is not said. A study was released on October 1^st by Catalyst that states that as companies obtain a higher percentage of women on their Board of Directors their profits increase. Reuters picked up the study for their wires, but I didn't find the study discussed or referenced by any major news service.

This is relevant when compared to a post on Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily that she had heard that Warner Brothers President of Production Jeff Robinov would not do movies with women in the lead. This comment was credited to three producers and was attributed to the result of poor box office performance by the latest Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman movies. I am deeply concerned that Warner Brothers might be judging the popularity of female lead movies based on two poor performing movies. Movies are one way that society mirrors itself, however, given the media’s limited attention span, I find it frustrating that a story with a focus on Hollywood is taking attention over a serious body of work that may help to alleviate the problem of a male studio head deciding that women are not valuable as leads based on two poor performing films.

The idea that we live in a free market economy based on using strategies that make the most money is false. Women are often neglected as buying partners or consumers to the detriment of a variety of industries who choose to take a slanted look at the evidence. Companies instead choose to move their buddies into board positions, those with whom they feel comfortable, this often translates into other men. A male centered world view leads to comments about the value of women as money makers based on random criteria. Whether or not Warner Brothers is choosing their movie strategy based on an incompetent idea is similar to companies refusing the ignore, not just one study but a large number of studies that show that diversity of ideas and people is beneficial for the bottom line.

Why Do We Only Count in October

2007-10-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

With the release of the Imagine series focused on girls who of course want to all be fashion designers or play with babies, I was really irritated by the video game industry and then I saw the announcement for the second Fight Like A Girl Halo Tournament. The problem is that this is a Breast Cancer Awareness Charity event taking place in October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. I am glad that there are tournaments for women and girls who play Halo, but I am troubled that this tournament is taking place in the context of a charity event. It somehow lessens the impact when it is modified by the soft and feminine blanket of a charity event, for Breast Cancer no less.

Of course there are other charity events put on in the gaming community, but there are not that many women’s only gaming events and the supposedly gender neutral events have a very skewed gender representation. I think it is great for there to be a space for women to frag with the best of them, I just wish that space was the general gaming space and not a safer charity events.

My Crush on Ethan Hawke

2007-10-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

I think that the big media images are important, but I think that it is the small media details where the focus really should lie. It’s easy enough to decide that a Budweiser ad is tasteless or that you really like the new style of Benetton, but it’s the words that people use, the way images are displayed, the way people are represented in movies or on TV that really set the tone for what is acceptable in our society. Monday I wrote about the language used by two hosts on Air America radio and how it set an inappropriate tone for the network. Well, I was very surprised when last Thursday I read an interview with Ethan Hawke in my local paper, the Austin American Statesman, to find that his word choices make me swoon.

I am not a follower of celebrities, so I was fairly unclear as to who Ethan Hawke was when I started to read the interview, but when he was discussing his decision to make art that is personal to him his word choices really got me excited. He said, “But the idea that I am a narcissist because I would make personal art, that I would be somehow a deeply flawed, bad human being because I would do such a thing as take things from my life. Because if I am, then so is Emily Dickenson, so is Jane Austin, so is Proust …” I mean WOW we are talking about a male celebrity and the first authors at the top of his tongue are women…intelligent, literate women. If a woman would have mentioned Emily Dickenson and Jane Austin first, it would have passed unnoticed. Women are supposed to think about intelligent women. Men are supposed to think about beer. It is one of the many gender distinctions that the media focus upon.

This is where the nuance is important and why I so swoon over Ethan Hawke after reading this interview. If women artists were on the tip of men’s tongues regularly, this would be a much different world. If when asked questions like, who do you most respect in the world of rock music? men answering those questions were (even with some regularity) to honestly answer with names of women, the barriers would be broken. We would be equal. It is because, oftentimes the work of men is considered better by both men and women that we are still holding steady at second place.

September 25, 2007

2007-10-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

Words are powerful. If I say to someone that they're stupid, that's meaningful. That is a message that they take with them. When I tell someone that they are kind they take that too. While the messages that are directly conveyed to someone are powerful, so are the words used by the women and men in our media. I have recently been aghast at the language used by two different talk show hosts on Air America Radio this past week. Today Ed Schultz was discussing the way he was treated by the UAW and he said that he was "passed around like a French prostitute." He was also discussing how the UAW was engaged in old-thinking and this got me to thinking about how old the thinking is of someone who thinks that he can simply pass off a reference to the degradation of women as a simple inconvenience. Although the gender was not indicated, it is clear that the implied gender of the prostitute is female, because who else would be discussed so casually as being “passed around” than a woman.

This comment by Ed Schultz reminded me of another comment by Lionel on the Lionel Show, also on Air America Radio that happened last week. I can't remember exactly what Lionel was talking about but he commented that “it was like being raped” and then he went on to reference that the reason it felt like that was because it was an hour he would not get back. I continued to listen to the show for a bit to see if he would recognize his error and recant his comment, but apparently references to rape do not need to be reexamined so quickly so on he went.

This casual use of language referring to degradation or violence that is most often perpetrated against women in order to discuss a casual inconvenience on any radio channel is inappropriate and lazy.

Lionel is not the first person to use the act of rape to describe something mundane. I find that the word rape is often bantered about as if it does not matter, as if it can be used to highlight a great inconvenience.

The problem with a thoughtless use of language is that it does matter. The use of words like rape or comments about passing around prostitutes send subtle messages that those things really don’t matter and the fact that these things most often happen to women by men means that the women who they happen to don’t matter as much, because rape is simply an inconvenience and prostitutes don’t deserve any protections anyway.

As a society it is important to be thoughtful with what we say. These messages are conveyed to everyone, including children. Parents need to counteract these messages and be careful with the language that they use around their children. I don’t want my children to think that what happens to other people doesn't matter. It matters deeply.

When we talk about actions against people with thoughtlessness that means that those actions don’t require any thought that they don’t matter, but they do.

Remember, your words are powerful.