A View from A Broad

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

Book
I know some people have said they'll send checks but just to be sure, I want you guys to check in here. Better for me to look like an idiot than get it wrong and screw somebody. Keep in mind if there's enough interest, there'll be a simpler, plainer, second edition. I deliberately picked these so they're Moleskine size, because frankly, I just adore small books and these will be the size you can almost put in your pocket.

I'm going to say, too, that I frankly have the best flist in the world, what with people putting up extra to pay for shipping shortages and stuff like that. Keep that in mind. You guys all look out for one another, and it makes it awfully hard for me to be cynical some days.

So, remember, I have a count of all the paypal people, I just want to make sure I'm clear on who's going the snail mail route. Check in here if you are.

Sloppy daycare study threatening moms once again
Or at least that's what it seems like, seeing as how Yahoo News and

evil_fizz reported that the concept of daycare provider was defined as: In the study, child care was defined as care by anyone other than the child's mother who was regularly scheduled for at least 10 hours per week.

So, yeah, there you go. Fathers are just day care providers, not actual parents. Please note: I am pissed off that women are being defined as children's sole caretakers so as to heap more abuse on their not-staying-at-home asses, not that fathers once again get a free ride. If fathers en masse really cared that much about actual kids, they'd lobby so they'd get paternity leave and parent-friendly policies at work. They don't. That's womens' work. Besides, if you take womens' side, you're pussy whipped.

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

But the finding held up regardless of the child’s sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than two million American preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.

So....the effect was slight and within the normal range. What does that mean? It means I have to wonder how they measured it and why, when 'parents' guidance' and 'genes' had the biggest effect they're nevertheless blaming it on....daycare? Also, seeing as how the parent doing all the drudgery is the female one, how come they're going with parents, plural---and gender neutral? That amounts to deceiving the public about the parameters of the study.

Ask questions, people. This is why you don't accept one damned thing any MRA says without verifying the source. However, half the time they don't even have to worry; the studies are doing their sexist work for them.

Guys, I'm temporarily not taking any more first edition book orders. If you've already spoken to me or made arrangements, you're safe, but I just want to make sure. I believe I'll have to wait till people get home from work to get a clearer picture of just who wants to send in checks, and I'm not taking any chances.

Anger is a sex change
I just had a troll call me a man and say I probably had a big dick. On a two-year-old post. Because there's no other reason to explain a woman getting angry with the sort of guy who says shit like this: Oh, WOW! You're just too good to be true. I bet if we were to yank up that skirt of yours... nine pounds of swingin' meat.

Yep, it's a dude.

Nine pounds?! Something tells me this dude has serious adequacy issues if he's so certain than an angry woman is really a male in disguise. Not only that, but a male with what appears to be elephantisis of the testicles. Which is supposed to be a compliment, I guess, because men of course get so honorably angry, while women just whine and manipulate and nag and be shrewish. There's a whole vocabulary of words that just never get used to apply to men unless some other guy is trying to feminize them because, you know, being female is bad and disgusting. Men want justice; women want revenge and payback and vigilante justice. Women are lying creatures who just want to entrap men. (This last surely falls under the 'unintentional endorsements that sexism is pervasive' because it acknowledges just how little power women have in the world---or at least, good traditional women who don't believe in honestly seizing power.)

Anger is one issue that reveals just how shallow peoples' attitudes are toward women, how retrograde their actual instincts are about women. A guy can say he believes in 'equal pay for equal work' all he wants but that doesn't take care of all the situations where women have been denied equal jobs in the first place. Angry women are always portrayed as getting revenge, not justice, and their motivations are never taken seriously. The trend got its most explicit example in Fatal Attraction, the perfect conservative male fantasy of being able to bitch slap a....bitch. Alex got used and dumped by family man Michael Douglas---who later played an extremely improbable victim of sexual harassment by a woman-----and finally executed by the Good Woman in the movie, the devoted wife. For all the rah rah rah yay family motif of the movie, Alex's pregnancy was ignored in the urge to get her character killed in the name of male retribution for every pregnancy scare. In fact, the pregnancy itself was another threat against innocent family man Michael Douglas, who after just innocently wanted to boink some slut while his wife was out of town or something. Alex herself acted like nothing so much as OJ Simpson, typical wife beater and wife-stalker, except her suicide attempt apparently was genuine. Let a woman get angry enough, goes the subtext, and she'll start acting like a man and making you into a bitch.

It was all her fault, anyway. She tempted him, dammit. She asked for it. She should have know she would just get dumped; after all, that's what happens to sluts. How dare a slut try and lay a claim on a guy who just wanted to boink? Didn't she know that her status and value was determined by MD's perceptions? Her anger at her treatment got the classic movie treatment womens' anger always gets; it gets viewed through mens' perceptions of womens' value, so that ultimately no woman has a right to get angry. Hubby cheats on you? You let yourself go. Hubbie beats you? You must have asked for it. Got raped? Asked for it. Got pregnant? Slut. Or gold digger. Womens' perceptions are completely silenced so that when they've finally had enough and get angery, their anger often explodes in the quiet vacuum created by mens' self-satisfaction.

This view lies behind the choice 4 men debate, which isn't so much a debate as it is a con job. With the viewpoint steadily pressured to represent only the male's, even issues of womens' lives become matters of bugging men or not. Somehow, while a woman having sex is considered to have consented to pregnancy and childbirth, a man who has sex is not likewise consenting to fatherhood and child support. Womens' anger at the male perception that they're the owners and shapers of women is never given voice, never reocgnized, and never acknowledged----at least not until some moron comes along, bristling with the bravery of anonymity, and accuses an angry woman of being a man. Unwittingly, he's just said you're usurping the male right to consider things only as they benefit yourself. He's threatened by it. If he can be judged by a woman, then where will it end?