a small tirade

So, what's the deal with daytime shows being less prestigious and fought over than nighttime shows? The only reason I want to pick a bone here is because daytime shows market almost exclusively to women (well, and unemployed people of both genders) that are stay at home moms. Why is the programming for women less prestigious than the programming that is marketed to both men and women, if not just men? Why are all the talk show hosts in the evening white males? Seems like the fight for equality in late night TV as opposed to daytime TV is seriously losing the battle.

Can feminism coexist with Christianity?

This article worries me. It posits a negative definition of feminism, along the lines of "feminaziism". The author seems to think that feminism, in demanding equality with men, somehow is demanding more than men have or is pushing women to be arrogant, aggressive and against God's law. As a Christian, I fully believe that we need to be servants to God and work His good will on the world. However, as a feminist I believe that both women and men should so subserviate themselves to God's will, not just women. And that our roles in following God's word are similar, even identical.

This article is much more to my liking. I especially liked the quote: "Even disabled men, she argued, have a chance to recover, 'but womanhood is an infirmity from which women rarely, if ever, recover.'" However, I find that its thesis that the Bible is anti-feminist to not be compeltely true, if one goes back to the text itself.

Looking in the Bible, one finds that there is a mirror image of woman's duties to man in man's duties to women. For instance, "The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife." (1 Corinthians 7:3-4)

These words, of course, do not come from the Word of Christ, who is considered God by Christians. Instead, the words come from merely a believer of Christ, writing down his own interpretation of Christianity so as to aid his fellow believers in their practice of the new religion. Thus, even the very few passages that Paul writes where he indicates that women should be subservient to men should be taken with a grain of salt. Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus himself ever say that women should subserviate themselves to their husbands. All that is guiding in the Bible about marriage is found in Paul's writings in the New Testament, save perhaps for a passage where Jesus condemns divorce. Mark 10:11.

Therefore, although realizing that a blog post this short can barely scratch the surface of the issue, I conclude that Christianity and feminism can, indeed, coexist. There is much textual support in the Bible as well as in sermons and religious teachings of the ages for this.

Exploring Ecofeminist Principles - A Move Toward Animal Advocacy?

While animal rights and feminism seem at the outset to embody different principles, goals, and objectives, a structural analysis demonstrates these two sets of ideas may not be so different. In discussing solution and problem-solving strategies regarding our gender-based goals, it seems we often come back to the same underlying structural deficiencies: patriarchy, hierarchy, entrenched status quo. The agreement many of us come to about these problems is that developing an approach with any real chance of success requires an extreme overhaul of our societal framework, including the way we build and view relationships with others.

Where do nonhuman animals fit into this model? The patriarchal attitudes of dominance, ownership, and hierarchy create a very similar relationship structure between humans and animals that also often characterizes male-female treatment and relationships. A real problem develops when we fail to recognize the similarities, in that it leads to perpetuation of these attitudes.

One of the most powerful demonstrations of this phenomenon can be found in our everyday language. Using the assumption that humans are “above” animals as a baseline, how does that affect the treatment of women when they are referred to as “chicks”, “foxes”, and “bitches”? Accepting even playful terms that dehumanize women does exactly that. Separating women from “human” to equate them with “animal” removes them from a level of linguistic equality to one “below” human.

Acknowledging intersectionality is also an important pillar of feminist theory. Failure to recognize intersectionality leads to an incomplete look at the individualized feminist “picture”. The separation of animal from women’s rights is understandable in certain respects, but can also lead to an unnecessary divide. For example, animal rights activists People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) regularly use sexist and exploitive imagery in their advertising. They have justified the advertising on, essentially, the tired assumption that “sex sells”. By placing the rights of animals on a separate and elevated plane, the group damages the fight for gender equity by glorifying the stereotypes feminist groups seek to eliminate.

The Ecofeminist movement explores and works to subvert these intersecting oppressions, particularly as related to women, animals, and nature. It embraces the subjectivity of an individual‘s own definition of feminism, but recognizes the oppressions of women, animals, and nature as part of the same underlying problem. Ecofeminism advocates for the restructuring of the hierarchy by which we define relationships as the one of the only ways to establish real, substantive change. By developing relationships that emphasize a “working with” rather than “power over” model, respect for nature, women, and animals becomes part of our cultural framework, rather than a series of independent movements.

Ecofeminist theory embraces an approach to animal rights and nature that is more comprehensive than any theory we have discussed in class this semester. Obviously this kind of social restructuring demands shifting the attitudes of a large number of individuals. If the underlying necessity for true equality is a major societal overhaul, is a more ecofeminist approach a productive answer? Does bringing animal rights into the feminist movement inhibit the progression of gender equity? Or provide two movements with similar goals a stronger foundation?

Thelma and Louise compared with Monster

(spoiler ahead)

I know I write too much in here about TV shows and movies I've seen, but I want to spend a brief moment on Thelma and Louise. This is a movie where one crime leads to another and, like Monster, the crimes originate with men's abuse of women. First, the women leave home in the first place because of bad relationships. Second, they commit murder because of abuse. Third, even the man they befriend, played by Brad Pitt, steals all their money, shunting them into a life of crime as they rob stores for money. In the end, the women choose suicide over a life in prison and possible death penalty. The characters are strong women, women we sympathize with even after their criminal behavior, partly because of the humor that wends its way through the script. Were their actions justified? Perhaps not. Do we sympathize with them anyway? I think we do. The movie is full of women's fantasies played out... what would happen if we as women fought back? Monster gives us a terrible, horrible answer to that question. But, even though it also ends in death, Thelma and Louise gives us a better, girl power kind of answer to that question.

a softer, gentler type of law

Have women improved the way law works by encouraging non-confrontational systems such as negotiation and arbitration, or have women lost their voices and the backing of the public by allowing their cases to be settled early through ADR? There is a case to be made for both. See, generally, feminism and negotiation and feminism and ADR.

Women in the law have, in general, brought a softer, healing touch to situations in, for example, family law, where men used to proverbially butt heads and accomplish nothing but angering each side. Where conflict used to arise now settlement is achieved, and keeping suits from reaching litigation helps the healing process by not airing dirty laundry in the public arena. However, in cases such as sexual harassment, sometimes it's more helpful to air the laundry, to prevent such acts from taking place again in the future. In those cases, ADR can act as the old boy's club, stifling women's discourse and winning the battle while losing the war. Thus it is useful to notice that ADR can be a feminist's friend or a feminist's enemy, depending on the facts at hand. But I feel strongly that women as a whole have improved the legal system by emphasizing comprimise instead of competition, emphasizing a win-win situation instead of a win-lose. That is the true point of settlement.

Remind me again why, exactly, we don't let women go into combat?

Oh yes, another blogger just did that a few hours ago here.

In any event, I am enjoying the attention, praise and credit that Kimberly Munley is getting today for her courage and skill in bringing down the shooter who killed 13 at the Texas military base yesterday. Munley, 34, is an expert in firearms and a member of Fort Hood's civilian police department, where she is on the S.W.A.T. team.

Munley was off duty when she heard on the police radio about the shooter. As she arrived at the center where the shootings were occurring, Munley spotted the gunman outside the building, where he was chasing a wounded solider. James C. McKinley, Jr., describes what happenened next in his NYT story:

Sergeant Munley bolted from her car and shot at Major Hasan. He turned toward her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and the gunmen went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.

* * *

Sergeant Munley joined the police force on the sprawling base in January 2008 after a career in the Army. Mr. Medley described her as highly trained, and said she had received specific training in a tactic called active shooter protocol, which was intended for the kind of situation she encountered on Thursday.

Munley suffered five gunshot wounds in the encounter, but she is in stable condition. Read the entire NYT story about Munley here.