So here’s an interesting story: The creator of the popular I Fucking Love Science Facebook page recently got a Twitter account.
Oh, I know that doesn’t sound all that interesting, but here’s the thing: When she got the Twitter account, she revealed to her Facebook fans that she was, in fact, a she.
This apparently shocked and confused a large portion of her readership. A … Woman? But … but … SCIENCE?! But there she was, with a woman’s name — Elise Andrew — and a woman’s face and everything.
Over on Hello Giggles, Julia Gazdag — also rumored to be a woman — reports on the reaction to Elise Andrew’s Big Reveal. Some chick at Reuters also did a piece on it.
(Thanks, Elizabeth, for pointing me to this story.)
Srsly. Though what I’m curious about too is how the hell he thinks he can know this from an OKcupid search. That’s not exactly the sort of thing you share on a first date, let alone put on your profile, specifically because assholes like that guy exist in the world.
@Sid- As someone who posted about radfems earlier in this thread or maybe in another one (?) I think we’re pretty welcome to people from all over the feminism spectrum! Just keep in mind that this is a trans* friendly, kink friendly, sex worker friendly space, and you’ll do great.
What amuses me about the whole thing is that he thinks that “interesting, smart, motivated” women in their late teens/ early twenties have any interest dating a pompous douchecanoe like him. I’m still pretty close to those years, and they were the sort of guys I’d avoid at parties (and still do).
I just found NWOslave in the comment section of a HuffPo article:
“Malala was hired by the BBC to write blogs and such at the request of MI5, mossad and the CIA to incite discontent. The people in Pakistan do get schooling, however, they’re taught a belief in God, to place their families first and other useful skills and traditions that form a healthy society. This is unacceptable to the western powers who insist on teaching feminism, gender studies, humanities, social sciences and other pseudo-nonsense that has been proven to be destructive to society. If the all evil Taliban had indeed tried to kill her she would be dead. She was merely winged by one of the western powers secret service agencies to play martyr for the western press, giving the banking cartel owned UN/US military complex an excuse to invade yet another country. Economic hitmen, agents to incite the riots, weapons dealers, various bombers and such have been in place for well over a decade. Please get your facts straight before printing such nonsense.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/gordon-brown/malala-first-to-sign-new-petition_b_2961380.html?utm_hp_ref=uk#comments
@historophilia- OMFG that is brilliant. Can he please come back so we can bat him around some more? Or did he do something truly unforgivable?
He melted down completely after the elections. It was nothing but a constant stream of hate–directed hate. Any self-control he had to stay within boundaries was gone completely. You can go back and read some of the post-election threads to see how he started escalating.
I think the final straw was in a thread that was already pretty sad. And he was just completely over the line.
@Valerian – belated, sorry, but when you say you have a “baby (15) sister with severe autism” you do mean 15 months old, right? Because a 15-year-old of any neurological structure is not a baby.
Sorry to jump down anyone’s throat, I just see a lot of infantilization of autistics, and for NTs/allistics who don’t know this, we’re getting pretty tired of that, in general. I have literally seen people who blog about their autistic kids or relatives online who use words like this to describe autistic older kids, teens, even sometimes young adults, which is fucked up to the extreme.
@ thenatfantastic – wow, yes. that’s pretty much my view of radical feminism, too. glad i’m not the only one. i debated identifying as a radfem for a little while, but i was really repelled by the transphobia and sex-negativity. all i know right now is that i’m too radical/lefty to be a liberal feminist, but i’m also kinky and i’d like to have sex with a man someday so…?
@Howard- I was settling in at school and wasn’t hanging out here then, so thanks for the info (and really I am not terribly surprised).
LOLLLLL. Oh Owly, how I miss thee.
@Ostara
The same way he “knows” all woman are batshit
@MKlein
While I take your point about non-NT teens being infantilized, IME, it’s also common for people to consider their younger NT siblings as “baby sibling” well into their twenties, and thirties even.
Shadow is correct; I have a baby brother and a baby sister who are 25 and 28, respectively.
There is an unfortunate overlap in there, though, as MKlein pointed out. I’m more sensitive about ‘baby sister’ than ‘baby brother’ these days because my sister tends to get infantalized in more ways than my brother, due to her gender, and what is otherwise just a word that indicates how protective I feel tends to add to that wall.
@MKlein, I don’t want to speak for Valerian, but referring to a younger sibling as a “baby brother/sister” is pretty common regardless of any other factors. I often refer to my adult, neurotypical younger sister as my baby sister or little sister, and it’s not because I think of her as a literal baby in any way (in fact, I think she’s one of the most capable adults I know). To me, it’s a more affectionate term than just calling her my younger sister.
I’m not trying to dismiss your concern at all though, and I agree the infantilizing of people who are not NT is a big problem. I just wanted to point out that, at least in my neck of the woods, it’s a common affectionate term for any younger sibling.
…and I am also way too slow at replying. I didn’t mean to reiterate the point, as MKlein’s posts were the last ones I saw before I started typing. I hope it doesn’t come across as me trying to dogpile or anything. 🙂
It’s okay-0-you said it better than me, I think. 😛
@MKlein – sex-positive feminism? I dunno, that to me has its own problems too. I support everyone’s right to self-determination but I feel that SPFems can sometimes tend to shy away from problematic stuff and sort of handwave it by saying it’s ‘someone’s choice’, and not taking account of the fact that a) choice doesn’t exist in a vacuum and b) not all choices are good choices or immune from criticism. Meh. I’m an anarcha-feminist, we tend to get left alone when it comes to infighting.
If the world of feminism were 80s high-school film characters, this would be the anarcha-feminist.
Regarding radical feminism, that’s why I just identify as a feminist plain and simple. I also agree with a lot of radical feminism, but not the various -phobias (especially transphobia…that makes me downright angry). I still would be okay with calling myself one as I know there are non-transphobic radical feminists, but since the overwhelming association with most people I’ve spoken to with those terms is with TERFs, I don’t want to be associated with it.* So, I just go with plain ol’ feminist, and people can ask me if they want to know more. 😉
*yes I know that is a horrible sentence. My brain isn’t quite in gear yet this morning and I don’t care to fix it. XD
His comment has been deleted now! 😛
For folks asking, “What’s up, America?”… it’s complicated.
There’s two key factors, though, that do deserve some examination.
1: We’re big. We’re very big. Keep in mind that we have a land-mass greater than Europe-if-you-don’t-count-former-Soviet-states. And that’s before counting Alaska. So for us, the difference between, say, Alabama and Illinois is akin to the difference between Greece and Great Britain. (One author I read noted that if we just put the entire country into a single mega-city with population density similar to that of some of the wealthier suburbs in California, the entire country would fit into Texas, with the rest of the land being a giant farmland/nature preserve.)
Over time, this has led to internal migrations and the formation of close-knit communities with similar ideals. On the upside, this can lead to the strengthening of community bonds. On the downside, you can create an echo-chamber effect where everyone you meet repeats the same set of value-statements, without anyone testing them for validity. This can, in turn, lead to anti-intellectualism (since most education tends to disrupt those values). This is aggravated, in turn, by the second factor:
2: Religion. Sorry to go all capital-A Atheist, here, but organized religion in the U.S. really is at the heart of much of our problems. Within communities like I’ve described above, a common religion’s power to suppress dissent is magnified to an incredible degree, resulting in an environment where even questioning the truth of an easily verified/disproven statement becomes a major–and often unthinkable–breach of etiquette. (See, for instance, the various comments made by rural Republican candidates with regard to rape and abortion during the last election cycle. The notion that a woman’s reproductive system can just shut down if she’s being ‘legitimately’ raped stems directly from various beliefs about God and supernatural control of natural functions.)
There’s also some structural issues in our electoral system. For instance, the GOP holds far more seats in the House of Representatives than they should, because they managed to win the last round of the Gerrymander Wars in several states. (In fairness, when Democrats get the chance, they do the same damned thing.) The gerrymandering allows for disproportionate representation, which in turn undermines efforts at reform that would actually be popular.
Side-note to the side-note: Gerrymandering districts is an art form. In a state where the parties are closely split in the population, most often the effort is to create a handful of super-saturated districts with the opposition party in charge, and then do multiple districts where your own party has a slight-but-safe edge.
Let’s say there’s 10 Districts in the state, and each state has 100 residents. (The math here scales, this keeps the numbers simple.) Overall, the state has 600 Democrats and 400 Republicans. In theory, this should yield a 6/4 balance of seats in the House. However, by carefully arranging the borders of the districts (‘barbell’ districts, where two large areas are connected by a thin strip of land, often one with no residents, such as along a railroad track, are not uncommon) so that there are, say, 90 Democrats in each of 5 Districts (total 450), and the remaining 150 Democrats are divided up fairly evenly in the other 5, the Republicans can ‘steal’ a District, turning a slightly ‘blue’ state into a solid purple one. In fact, if the Republicans can make 2 Districts with 92 Dems, and 2 with 93, then the remaining 6 Districts can be carved up so there’s 40 Dems in each–giving the Republicans a 6/4 advantage, in a state where they are the minority.
@ freemage- I am thoroughly convinced that about 40% of America’s current political woes are caused by gerrymandering (and another 40% by a lack of campaign finance reform).
@thenatfantastic: Late to the party, but that’s awesome about your kid’s book! I don’t really write (more a science geek/reader) but I recently drafted a kid’s book about a little eosinophil who learns what her special role in the body is after other cells tease her. It’s nerdy to the max. XD
@shadow
Good point.
@M Dubz
Yeah, that too. Granted, I’m certain that to him I’m one of those “batshit” women who wasn’t scooped up in her early 20’s because she was bad, horrible, spoiled goods, but even before becoming a feminist I could recognize a certain stink on men who played up the “bitches be crazy” thing. Especially the ones who were all “women are crazy but you’re like, normal”. Yeah… thanks, but no thanks.
On topic, I didn’t even know about the science webpage, but I know I tend to have a really bad habit of assuming people are male if I don’t know their gender. It’s generally not a shock for me, like it seems to be for some people, when I find out that a blogger or poster I presumed to be male identifies as a woman, but I know that my assuming is a huge part of lingering internalized sexism of my own. I’m not always the best at it, but that’s why I do try to use gender neutral pronouns (they, their, hir, zie) to try to retrain my brain into not assuming.
Especially the ones who were all “women are crazy but you’re like, normal”. Yeah… thanks, but no thanks.
Even when I was young, before I knew why that was wrong, I still balked at it. What, my mom, my two little sisters and the majority of my friends are crazy bitches to you? -_-
On feminist sites I tend to the reverse, and assume people are women unless marked otherwise. It’s kind of an interesting unusual default.
THIS. SOUNDS. INCREDIBLE.
MDubz: I’m putting it at about 60% gerrymandering, 30% campaign finance, personally. Even in states where the numbers are done fairly, there’s usually a massive deference to incumbancy, for instance, which creates a natural bias towards conservatism.
My main campaign finance beef is the lack of transparency. Given my druthers, I’d ditch any sort of organizational donations–every check to a campaign would need to be from an actual person, and would get reported to a website that could be looked up for each candidate within 24 hours of the donation being made. (There’s unfortunately other problems that arise from this, but I feel it can be accounted for by better policing.) That way, we’d all at least know which pol was in whose pocket.