Cold Spaghetti

Paul’s progress…

Camilla Paglia and Ann Coulter, watch out — here’s another anti-feminist “feminist” set to steal your air time. via Feministing…

Charlotte Allen – a professional woman-hating hack from the Independent Women’s Forum who has also oh-so-bravely attacked transgender rights, said that the answer to women’s potential financial woes is marriage, and suggested that Hurricane Katrina might have been “the best thing” to happen to New Orleans which is full of “whiners…chisel[ing] us taxpayers” out of money – has outdone herself in an article that is all about what dumb f@&!s women are.

I’m sickened that the Washington Post is publishing this ridiculous nonsense.

Newsflash: women aren’t men. Equality doesn’t mean that we act like men. We’re different, our bodies do different things, and our needs our different. This does not make us weaker (actually, we survive childbirth and infancy in greater numbers and we live longer). Thinking that women must act like men in order to be employed, gain respect, and enjoy careers is what creates unimaginable situations like this.

What is really galling is that the sort of misogynist garbage Allen puts out is equally damaging to men: you can’t narrowly define the expression of one gender without narrowly defining the other (in her case, she’s arguing a sex difference, but she’s defining those differences according to tired, old gendered rubbish). Labeling women as emotional basket cases assumes the opposite in men. If women are emotional, men are stoic, and showing any inclination towards the other brings gender conflict: you’re open for attack from the masses. Meaning that if a man shows emotion, he is feminized… and our society has a real problem with men who show any hint of femininity. By labeling women in one extreme, you put men in the other — it is equally offensive and damaging to both. Not to mention that it ignores the fluidity of sex, gender, and their expression, which is better described on a continuum than in binary.

How I am going to raise both a boy and a girl through adolescence within all of this nonsense??

I am surprised and impressed that now, in my moment of weakness, neither of you seem willing to make the final blow and do me in. If you had done it after this week, no one would have blamed you. With your illness(es), days off from school, living back and forth from freezing house to city apartment, bags and bags of laundry dragged around searching for a washer, terrible meals on the fly, us working crazy hours, and finally, Mom coming down with a bad cold. You’ve been troopers this week, and I couldn’t be prouder.

After hair cuts first thing in the morning, I took you both to the Zoo. Will: you were a champion helper. Running after Kate, making sure she didn’t go too far from us, listening to my requests. I was sweaty, clammy, and miserable, but focused on getting through the day. I managed to take a few pictures of you and your monkey-kin…

Shutter speed: 1/15s. Kate speed: Warp Factor 5.2.

Can’t think of something to get for the boss-from-hell’s baby shower?

Boingboing says, ” think of the incredible mental scars you could leave on your child by hanging this over her crib!”