Sunday Feminist Links

Here's some feminist stuff that I've been looking at online lately

Pet Peeve: Dads Who “Babysit” Their Kids

- The title says it all, but as a dude who doesn't think much of leaving the wife at home and taking his kid with him to a rugby game all day or having his wife go out of town for a conference for a couple of days (although that hasn't happened for a couple of years now) I definitely feel the sentiment of this post. I'm not fucking "babysitting" I'm parenting my child, having a dick doesn't render me incompetent in the child care department.

This one comes from the womyn at The Pursuit of Harpyness, a feminist website. For the most part the authors and denizens of the site are a little too hardcore for me but they link to, as well as write, some cool and interesting shit so I continue to check them out.

What do I mean by "too hardcore?" Well, I got ripped into for having the temerity to say that I'm a reluctant feminist. They seem to not realize that that kind of shit is a big part of why feminism has such an image problem. I appreciate and respect their blood & thunder, take no prisoners approach; they're Malcolm to Ms. magazine's Martin; but at the same time it doesn't do much to bring people into the fold that aren't aligned with them and their world view.

Is It "Perilous" To Be A Female Blogger?

- Rather than a rant about how tough it is for women bloggers, it's a jumping off point for discussion. The author talks about some of the ridiculous comments they get on Jezebel and cites an article from the Washington Post (that I read when first published) about women bloggers who have been threatened with violence, but doesn't extrapolate that out to the entire internet. The comments that I saw were pretty reasonable and some bordered on thought provoking.

The nonsense about the threats was disappointing but not surprising to me, especially when you think about who's blogging and commenting on blogs. I usually imagine a pasty, overweight, thirty-something loser, who's still living in the basement of his parent's house, or maybe a socially inept but professionally successful tech guy, or 19 year olds showing off for each other in the dorms. None of these guys are doing very well with the ladies and they're all clueless as to why. They're not getting laid, so it has to be 'cause those stuck up bitches are dykes or they just don't want to be with a "real man" like them, right? No surprise that group of Casanovas is using the anonymity of the internet to work out their anger towards women.

That's Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny

- I guess I found this via a Tweet from the Reverse Cowgirl earlier today. The title link just takes you to a panel description at SXSW, this link right here was posted by one of the panelists and has a ton of links to hot shit.

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Reluctant Feminist

I would label myself as a reluctant feminist. It's not so much that I disagree with the basic principles of feminism as I understand them, but rather how they are sometimes applied or interpreted.

Having a wife that's a fairly prominent feminist scholar, I often forget that some basic facts about gender and sexism are still in question by some men. I would have thought that by the year 2008 we would no longer have guys talking about women who "deserved" to be raped. When I read this post from the Sexist and I was floored. Even more dismaying to me personally, was that this was a young brother talking this absolute insanity. Perhaps even more shocking than the actual blog post itself, was that there were dudes co-signing on what the first jerkoff was saying.


I'm the Father to a wonderful little girl that I want to have every opportunity there is, athletic and otherwise. Unfortunately, there are still too many men out there who think that every increased opportunity for women and girls comes at the expense of men and boys. This frustrates me because equality between men and women isn't (or at least shouldn't be) a zero-sum equation. Providing the chance for my daughter to play soccer or participate in an after-school science program doesn't mean that I want to take those things away from someone else's little boy.

When I was finishing my degree, I did quite a bit of research on Title IX and I find myself in favor of the legislation. Much of the objection to Title IX comes from various misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the law. This bit from Glenn Sacks (a men's and fathers issues newspaper columnist) illustrates the most common misconception about Title IX:

Time and again the Federal Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has investigated schools and allowed them only two options to meet Title IX--create new women's teams for which there often are neither funds nor interested female athletes, or cut men's teams.

Fortunately this isn't true. Mr. Sacks is looking at a 30 year old policy interpretation that has long since been updated.

[Update] I received an e-mail from Mr. Sacks pointing out that the quote of his that I use is from 2001, four years before the 2005 OCR clarification. My gratitude goes out to Mr. Sacks for taking the time to write and allowing me the opportunity to set the record straight.[\Update]

In 2005 the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights offered additional clarification of the three-prong test of compliance. In this clarification, the OCR provides chapter and verse on how an institution can show they are complying with Title IX without cutting men's sports programs. In fact, the number of men's programs at a school and how much they spend are in no way a part of this test of compliance.

Without a doubt creating surveys discussed in the OCR clarification, sending them out, ensuring adequate participation, and compiling accurate results takes resources. Perhaps resources that are hard to come by in a small, underfunded athletic department.

There are ways to deal with the challenges raised by creating athletic participation surveys; graduate students in the social sciences are a potential untapped resource. Rather than fighting with feminists about Title IX, athletic departments should enlist their help by inviting feminist scholars to create and administer their compliance surveys. Grad students get a real project to work on, the athletic department works pro-actively to comply with Title IX, and the institution finds out if it's truly serving all its stakeholders. Everyone wins.

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