On misogyny

I participated in a Facebook conversation today about Hillary Clinton and the possibility that she might run for president in 2016.

Some people loved the idea. Some hated it.

Some of Clinton’s detractors voiced legitimate concerns; a few offered bizarre conspiracy theories; and a couple revealed themselves to be practitioners of a particularly noxious species of misogyny that seems to be all the rage in some circles.

Criticizing Clinton’s performance in Benghazi or her voting record on the Iraq War is legitimate. Criticizing her for her husband’s behavior is questionable but possibly legitimate, depending on the behavior under discussion. (“I didn’t like the administration’s position on X or Y and am afraid she would bring that back” is legitimate; “She couldn’t control her husband” is sexist nonsense.)

Criticizing Clinton because you consider her physically unattractive is — pardon my blunt language — inexcusable, misogynistic bullshit. We are not talking about whether she is qualified to be a Hooters waitress. We are talking about whether she is qualified to be the leader of the free world.

When you take cheap shots at a powerful, accomplished woman based on your opinion of her appearance, what you are really saying is that you are an immature, small-minded buffoon who views all women as sex objects, and if you do not regard a woman as a potential sex partner, she has no value to you — regardless of her talent, intelligence, education, experience or professional skills.

That doesn’t tell me anything about Clinton, but it tells me everything I could ever need or want to know about you.

Emily

How to reduce your stress levels

The other day, I found myself entangled in yet another Facebook conversation with a low-information voter who gets all his ideas from talk radio and direct-mail propaganda and thinks that changing the subject is a valid debate strategy.

You know the type: He starts a debate over something like whether ordinary civilians should have military-style assault rifles with high-capacity clips, and as soon as you start asking questions he can’t answer, he starts citing statistics about handgun bans. Nobody was talking about banning handguns, but he thinks he’s the second coming of Stephen Douglas because he’s managed to prove a point, and never mind that the point has absolutely nothing to do with the subject actually being debated.

Talking to one of these people is like trying to have an intelligent conversation with the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It gets tiresome after a while, and if you unfriend him, you only reinforce his bad behavior by making him think he scared you away with his Mad Debate Skillz.™ (“Come back here, you pansy! I’ll bite your legs off!”)

I solved the problem by announcing that from here on in, every time I saw a conservative blathering about guns, gays, abortion, President Obama, or Hillary Clinton on Facebook, I was going to donate a dollar to Hillary’s presidential campaign. (If she doesn’t run, the money goes to the Democrat of my choosing.)

My Facebook acquaintances now have three options:

1. Shut up.
2. Help pour money into the enemy’s war chest.
3. Unfriend me.

I don’t particularly care which option they choose. If they choose 1 or 3, I don’t have to listen to them. If they choose 2 … well, after watching her destroy a mansplainer the other day, I’m willing to make some sacrifices for mah-girl. I put two bucks in her jar this afternoon, and I’ve never been happier to see obnoxious political spam crawling across my feed.

Emily

What did you just call me?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

I’m not sure why, but at some point in the last 10 years or so, Madison Avenue apparently handed down a decree that all marketing directed toward women should henceforth include the word diva.

Sporting-goods stores pitch athletic bras with “diva night” specials. Main Street programs host “diva” shopping events. Hardware stores sell “diva”-themed tools with pastel handles. Minor-league ballclubs offer “diva” packages involving pink T-shirts and pregame wine-tasting events. Christian bookstores sell “diva” Bible covers. (I swear I am not making this up.) And premenopausal female environmentalists are encouraged to swap their biodegradable organic cotton tampons for reusable “Diva Cups.”

To see all that, you’d never guess that “diva” is a derogatory term.

Originally, the word diva — Italian for “goddess” — simply referred to an exceptionally talented female opera singer. Over time, the term picked up a negative connotation, as divas developed a (probably undeserved) reputation for being unreasonably demanding and difficult to please.

While “diva” can still refer to an unusually gifted performer, it has crept into everyday usage as a pejorative term for women who are talented but so spoiled, rude and unpleasant that they are generally considered more trouble than they are worth. This fact ought to make the term “diva” absolutely verboten in marketing circles — but for some reason, it hasn’t.

Try this: Look back at that list of items above, insert the phrase “high-maintenance bitch” everywhere you see the word “diva,” and tell me how likely you would be to purchase a product with such a name.

Unless I have just blown you off the stage with a two-and-a-half-octave cadenza, I’m going to assume that when you say “diva,” you are saying that I am a pain in the arse, not complimenting my awesome coloratura.

If you’re going to call me a difficult bitch, why would I want to do business with you? Why would I want a derogatory, arguably misogynistic term emblazoned across my chest or printed on my purse, screwdriver, or Bible cover? What do I gain by reinforcing a stereotype that says female prodigies are more trouble than they’re worth?

Enough.

Ownership of a functional uterus does not make me a diva. It merely makes me female — and if you want my business, you’ll acknowledge that and stop treating me like a 5-year-old who hasn’t yet outgrown her “princess” phase.

Emily

More bee drama

Remember last summer, when we shucked out $800 and pretty much went through hell and back trying to move our hives all over the yard to get the city off our backs after some jerk called to gripe about our bees?

Remember when I said that I really hoped the guy behind me was responsible for the visit from the city inspector, because the changes we were required to make pretty much ensured that his backyard was going to look like O’Hare International Airport, what with all the hives now facing his property and the big ugly privacy fence guiding them over there?

The guy outed himself today by taping a little handwritten nastygram to my front door, telling me what a horrible neighbor I am because my honeybees are drinking all the nectar out of his hummingbird feeders and scaring his dog away from its water bowl.

I would like the record to show that the letter I am sending back to him does NOT say, “Baaaaaaahahahahahahaha!”

But really:

Baaaaaaahahahahahahaha!

Emily

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Women

NOTE: This entry was inspired by my increasing frustration with the tendency of many young women to embrace and pander to the kinds of stereotypes that ensure they will never be taken as seriously, paid as much, or treated as well as their male colleagues. Many of my former students will be starting their careers in the next few years, and I don’t want to see them fail. This riff is for them. I hope they will find it useful.

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Women

 

Habit 1: Baby-talking around men. I realize we can’t all sound like Lauren Bacall, but when you deliberately talk from your soft palate instead of your larynx, you are sending the message that you are small, immature, and vulnerable. This could attract a knight in shining armor, but it’s more likely to attract a predator looking for a weak-willed woman he can control easily. If a guy finds your fake baby voice sexy, RUN, because you do NOT want him living under your roof when the FBI raids his computer.

Habit 2: Playing stupid around men. Every time I need a man to take me seriously, I have to start by proving I am not the idiot you pretend to be. Stop it. Real men are not intimidated by bright women. Behaving like an intelligent, responsible adult will not keep you from finding Mr. Right — but it might keep you from wasting time on Mr. Condescending, Mr. Insecure, and Mr. Insufferable.

Habit 3: Inappropriate attire. I started to write a long riff about this, but the bottom line is: Quit dressing like a hooker, and quit doing stupid crap like wearing stiletto heels to the ballpark. It doesn’t make you look hot. It makes you look like Snooki.

Habit 4: Duck face. JUST STOP IT. If you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough to know that you look like a conceited bimbo when you purse your lips and leer into the camera. Your future employer is going to Google you. Do you really want this to be the hiring manager’s first impression of you?

Habit 5: Passive-aggressive behavior. If you have a problem with somebody, confront that person directly. If the problem isn’t important enough to merit a confrontation, it isn’t important. Period. There is no situation in which passive-aggressive behavior is acceptable. It is always immature, self-serving, dishonest, and cowardly — which is precisely how you will be perceived if you do it. Don’t.

Habit 6: Gossip and backstabbing. Ownership of a uterus does not obligate you to make up crap about your enemies, complain about your colleagues, or revel in other people’s misfortunes behind their back. You can damage an enemy’s reputation with gossip — but in the process, you reveal something about yourself, and it’s probably not something you want people to know.

Habit 7: Whining. If you are being asked to do something immoral or illegal, report it. If you are being asked to do something unpleasant or inconvenient, either suck it up or look for a new job. Either way, don’t whine. Whining doesn’t help. It just irritates potential allies and makes you look unprofessional.

– Emily

Lacking evidence

Somehow I have absolutely no pictures of any of the things I wanted to report today.

There’s one teensy spring beauty blooming in the front yard. I took a picture, but the macro setting on my PowerShot didn’t want to cooperate, so I didn’t get anything usable.

One of the hyacinths is coming up in the front flowerbed. The PowerShot didn’t like it, either.

I dashed over to Brews and Bytes right before they closed to install the Roman shade I made for the bathroom. It looks good and works like it’s supposed to, which of course delights me to no end. I wanted to take a picture with my PowerShot, but I accidentally left it on the table at home. I got out my cell phone, but the battery was dead. I borrowed Mike’s iPhone and took pictures, but when he tried to text them to me, they vanished into cyberspace.

I had a good day, but I have absolutely no visual evidence to show for it.

Poop. :/

Emily

Folk Tuesday: Time to Get a Gun

I’m sure it’s purely coincidence that this song has been running through my head ever since I found a notice hanging on my front door, telling me I was being cited for “illegal beekeeping” because my back fence is too short and my beehives are too close to our property line.

Illegal beekeeping? Really? Colonies are disappearing all over the country, the survival of the human race more or less depends on the survival of our pollinators, and city governments are going to cite people for illegal beekeeping?

Get off my land.

Emily

Weekend

It’s been a pretty productive weekend. Ron and I spent Saturday morning out at the Blue Whale, helping the Fins get ready for the big Blue Tie Affair, which is scheduled for this Thursday evening.

Other highlights:

* Got the first copy of this year’s Oklahoma Route 66 Association Trip Guide in the mail Friday. It looks pretty good, washed-out color on the cover notwithstanding.

* Chased Songdog all over the neighborhood Saturday afternoon after he bolted out the front door (which apparently didn’t latch properly behind Ron) and decided to take himself for a walk.

* Responded to Song’s obnoxious behavior by taking him to the dog park and marching him around the outside of the fence while Riggy went in to play with the other dogs. I made Song work off-leash for 15 or 20 minutes while I subjected him to every kind of distraction and stress I could come up with: walking at heel while I changed directions as erratically as possible; walking at heel over a pile of debris; sitting and staying while I walked around him, stood in his kill zone, stepped over him, etc.; sitting just outside the gate while I went inside without him; and sitting quietly while a much larger dog sniffed him. He really needed the lesson, because he’s terrible about ignoring us and bolting when he’s excited. I think one of my summer projects is going to involve getting both of our dogs ready to take the Canine Good Citizen test.

* Spent part of Sunday afternoon touring the Campbell Hotel on Route 66, which is undergoing renovations and was open to the public this weekend for the Designer Showcase, which is a fundraiser for the Foundation for Tulsa Schools.

Here are some photos from Saturday’s Blue Whale work session:

Properties Plus, a local real-estate company, brought a very large, enthusiastic work crew out to clear brush around the pond. They did a great job.

One of my students and her friend came out and helped pull weeds in an area that will eventually be a flowerbed. They had fun touring the property and climbing around on the whale while they were out there.

Love the cell phone.

Hope your weekend was good, wherever you are.

Emily

Pet peeve

I’ve been hearing a lot of discussions lately about what could be done to make Tulsa a better city.

As this is more or less a local-interest blog, I’d like to put one of my ideas out there and see where it goes.

I think we could make Tulsa a better city if we rounded up all of the insufferable, whiny, self-indulgent hipsters who make a habit out of running down the community where they live and shipped them to New York or L.A. or somewhere else that’s likely to be more patient with their nonsense. (Better yet, ship ‘em to Chicago. I’d love to see what would happen if they started slagging that city to one of its residents.)

Seriously: I am sick to death of this ludicrous notion that Tulsa would suddenly become the Magic Kingdom, with a soaring economy, a zero-percent unemployment rate, and choirs of angels floating above its gold-paved streets, if only we could provide more entertainment for unmarried twentysomethings.

Let me get this straight: The solution to all of Tulsa’s problems lies in attracting people who are either too lazy to bookmark Tasha Does Tulsa, too illiterate to glance at Urban Tulsa Weekly’s calendar of events, or too socially inept to strike up a conversation with a stranger without the assistance of several overpriced cocktails?

Forgive my skepticism.

There’s no question that Tulsa benefits when bright, creative, energetic young professionals move into town. What community doesn’t? But in a vibrant city full of restaurants, nightclubs, museums, coffeehouses, live music venues, professional sports teams, festivals, conventions, parks, college campuses, special-interest clubs, and dazzling Art Deco architecture, a bright, creative, energetic individual ought to be able to find something to do.

Those who can’t probably won’t be missed much.

Emily

 

Welcome to Red Fork.

View from my front porch two days ago. Ron has since excavated the driveway. Roads are passable. Ish. Not good, but we managed to get to Sapulpa to pick up chicken feed this afternoon.

If you are traveling in eastern Oklahoma today, I’d recommend 66 over the turnpike. The state has done a pretty decent job of clearing the interstate, but the condition of the exit ramps ranges from questionable to abysmal — a situation compounded by the number of abandoned vehicles blocking the path so the snowplows can’t get through. The old road is rougher overall, but you don’t have to negotiate an obstacle course to get on and off of it, and the drivers are generally more cautious (although we saw a couple of notable exceptions among people who had lost their nerve and decided to make ill-advised last-minute U-turns).

On a related note: I bet the roads would be a lot safer if 4WD vehicles came with a temperature-sensitive governor that made it impossible to drive them at speeds above 25 mph on icy roads. After all these years, people still haven’t figured out that the laws of physics apply to SUVs. (Interestingly, Jeep Wrangler owners seem to be exempt from this phenomenon. I assume this is because Wrangler drivers are more inclined to go off-roading on weekends and thus have a better understanding of the capacities and limitations of their vehicles.)

Emily