The Early Days
June 8, 2009 § Leave a comment
From what I can tell, this looks like a woman with a tiny head and huge breasts:
It is, according to Economist.com, “probably the oldest human statue yet discovered,” carved from a mammoth tusk.
An interesting discovery, yes. The short blurb ends with this: “[…] this discovery adds to the evidence that human thinking—or male thinking, at least—has hardly changed since the species evolved.” I just glanced over these words and exited the page, but something caught my eye and I backtracked. “Male thinking,” really? Who’s to say that this wasn’t carved by a woman? It may be easy to wrap this statuette in a stereotype, and I know that comment was meant to be light-hearted, but I refuse to be taken in with such an easy joke.
Perform Like A Man
March 28, 2009 § Leave a comment
This is the best thing I’ve learned all semester in Sociology:
The Pokot people in northwest Kenya expect both husband and wife will reach orgasm and if husband fails to please wife he may be punished. If failure to please the wife is thought to be due to adultery (a common event) the wife will enlist the help of women friends to tie the husband up while he is sleeping, then shout obscenities at him, beat him, and slaughter and eat his favorite ox before releasing him.
HAHA. I don’t generally condone violence, but I appreciate the progressive nature of this custom.
In other international news, clerics in Saudi Arabia apparently want to ban women from appearing on television. Um what?
In a letter to new Information Minister Abdul Aziz al-Khoja that appeared on websites this week, the 35 Islamic clerics also condemned the increase of music and dancing on television, as well as images of women in popular newspapers and magazines that they labelled “obscene.”
It added that the ministry had permitted the import of “obscene newspapers and magazines that are filled with deviant thought and pictures of beautiful women on its covers and inside.”
“There should be no Saudi woman on television, in any case,” they said.
“There is no doubt that this is religiously impermissible.”
Since I’ve started to read Jezebel less, I haven’t been as aware of gender issues in the media, but I had to post this. It’s a little extreme, though I don’t fully understand their culture so I’m obviously biased.
Party Of One: Pt. II
February 15, 2009 § 1 Comment
Anyway, things were pretty hunky-dory until I clicked those links on Feministing. While reading Dr. Ty’s tirade against masturbation, I was rather taken aback. I didn’t expect all Christians to agree with what I had discovered, but I wasn’t prepared for such a strong abhorrence of the act.
Dr. Ty vigorously associates masturbation with shame:
Most people who have engaged in masturbation know that the culmination of this sexual act ends in shame. I don’t have to share with you the thousands of emails of the admittance of this shame because you know all too well since you have experienced it yourself. Curled up in a fetal position, crying, because your bed is even more empty and you’re lonelier than you did [sic] before you violated yourself…
Many things, like shame, can be learned through socialization. Although I am not saying that the shame experienced by others is false, it is important to consider that perhaps some feel shame simply because they’re told to, not because of some concrete, innate knowledge that they sinned.
Party Of One
February 14, 2009 § 2 Comments
I didn’t know when I would actually write this, but Feministing posted on the Passion for Christ Movement and after reading all of the links, I just couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Masturbation: is it a sin?
I always had the impression that it was. As a young teenager growing up in a Christian church, anything remotely sexual was automatically deemed as unacceptable for myself in my mind. This didn’t prevent me from surreptitiously looking at porn [although I was first introduced to it by a male family friend…thanks for corrupting me at such a young age you JERK!], among other things.
auradis 