(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

I'd express some sort of outrage over Miranda Devine's offering this morning, only I can't actually work out what she's saying. I think she's trying to get across that men are natural born rapists and that women's best bet is to try and appeal to their chivalry, but the piece is such a muddle that I can't really be sure. One paragraph says that men's behaviour is natural and another says that girls learn their attitude to sex from the media. Whatever the hell she's on about, it's all feminism's fault, of course.

Comments

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

[barrington.livejournal.com]

While we're on the subject, can you recommend me some good feminist books? I just finished bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody, and really dug it, even if the book fails in the aims stated in its introduction.

(It's supposed to explain what feminism is really all about to people who only learned about it from media cliché; I suspect it would be too in-depth for most of that audience, and in any case is largely an explanation of how much feminism has gone off track rather than a simple explanation of its goals and philosophy.)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

What to suggest? It depends on whether you're interested more in the philosophical, abstract side of feminism, its tenets and what have you, or in the more practical, historical, concrete side - what feminists have said and done, and are saying and doing now.

[barrington.livejournal.com]

It's the latter that I'm really interested in; I found reading hooks' book that I knew a surprising amount of the history of feminism, and left the book hungry to know more about feminist movement now. Feminism is going to be a major theme in my next play, but I want to know what's going on today.

I'm also interested in books that help you do something; I'm quite up on the theory in general, I see the patriarchy and male domination everywhere, including in myself, and I want to change it, even in just a little way.

By the way, what have you read of bell hooks? I like her a lot, even though Feminism is for Everybody wasn't a total success.

Belatedly...

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

I'd give an eye to be able to write like hooks. Srsly. Ain't I A Woman? is incredible. Also agonising; I'm still trying to finish it.

I reckon you could do a lot worse than peruse essays by Katha Pollit, old and new.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to work out the difference between Miranda Devine (and the other apologists like Bolt, the Footy Show, etc, etc) and Sheikh Hillaly and keep drawing a blank.

Oh wait, Sheikh Hillaly only has a pulpit at the mosque, not a major newspaper.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

He shoots, he scores!

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Um...I hated team sports and managed to avoid them throughout my school career and ever since, and I have no problem at all controlling my violent urges, unlike a number of footballers and other sports personalities who have appeared in the news.

"Appeal to men's better natures?" Her ideal of feminism is "please don't hurt us?" Definite grounds for outrage there, I'd say.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Devine seems to think footballers sexually assault women because they're manly men sloshing in testosterone - not because they're pampered stars who keep getting away with it.

You know, I keep hearing that feminists think men are a bunch of rapist neanderthals, but I've almost never heard that belief espoused by anyone who wasn't bashing feminism at the time. Most men choose not to rape. On that simple fact alone, the "it's only natural" claim collapses.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Well, "it's only natural" for us to crawl around on the carpet drooling with no trousers on. But by the age of 6 most of us manage to grow out of that stage, and only ever revert on Friday nights. =;o}

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Which chimes in with my recent post (http://smallship1.livejournal.com/393803.html) on emotion and reason. Yes, in a sense it does seem to be natural for men to have the impulse to use force to achieve sex, just one of the many reasons why I dislike my technical gender (testosterone: do not exceed the recommended dose)...but as you say, most men exercise reason and choose not to give in to those impulses.

The fact that society chooses to give selected males the impression that ordinary rules don't apply to them is just another symptom of what alien races would call "la maladie humaine." If, you know, they spoke French.

[kitzen-kat.livejournal.com]

I tried to read it but my head went esplodey.

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

I made it through the first part of the article above the cut, but really had no interest in reading more.

Ugh. So insulting on so many levels to both genders, it's hard to pick out any one thing above the others. Just leaves a general bad taste in my mouth.