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Christina,
Thank you for your feedback about the Kellogg's® Pop-Tarts® website.
Please know that the intent of this site is not to exclude all interested parties, but to identify the information for the type of audience that might be most interested. We sell our products to a diverse population and we welcome everyone to participate in our websites. The reason it has a link for "moms" is because this website is a club for "moms" and their children.
Christina,
Thank you for your feedback about the Kellogg's® Pop-Tarts® website.
Please know that the intent of this site is not to exclude all interested parties, but to identify the information for the type of audience that might be most interested. We sell our products to a diverse population and we welcome everyone to participate in our websites. The reason it has a link for "moms" is because this website is a club for "moms" and their children.
I'm trying to type this out on low coffee. A blanket "I hope you know what I mean" should be applied to this post. Feel free to poke if you don't.
Last night, my boyfriend Josh and I were nattering about the word "slut", for whatever reason. (I honestly can't recall how it came up.) He was arguing that in his experience, the word is used in a gender-neutral sense. I argued that not so much in mine. (Reclaiming words did come up, but this post is long enough as it is. *wry*)
I eventually found some words for it, explaining that in American culture, it's generally expected that men will have sex, whereas it's expected that women (the "good" women, anyhow) will not, so much. Women are supposed to wait until marriage or love, and aren't generally supposed to be the pursuers. Men are supposed to be the pursuers, to have the sexual experience, and so forth. See also the difference in meaning between a woman being a virgin versus a man being a virgin. So if men are expected to have sex whenever they can get it… how on earth would "slut", the pejorative term ("you have sex a lot and that's bad and you're bad for doing it"), even apply to men? That seemed to get through.
Josh: But I'd really prefer it if it were gender-neutral.
Me: I'd prefer it if the word were meaningless. Because seriously, why the fuck should anyone care about how much sex someone is getting? I sure don't.
Josh: …point.
He made mention, disclaiming first that he didn't want to offend me, that you know… there are better things to get angry about than this. (And yeah, I was getting angry. "Sometimes it's frustrating, arguing for oppressive bullshit to be recognised.") I didn't take offense, because I knew what he meant, and he wasn't trying to tell me not to be angry. I responded with two things:
1) I understand that it doesn't seem to make sense on the outside to care so much about, for example, sexist terms, when there are larger things in the world that need addressing. However, I believe that it is just as important to pay attention to fixing the small things as well as the big things. It's like the difference between massive landscaping and pulling out some weeds. Pulling out the occasional weed might not seem like a lot when compared to landscaping, but it's just as important, goddammit. Teaspoons.
And in the case of sexist terminology, how can it possibly be unimportant to address language, which is not just how we express our thoughts, but how our thoughts are shaped? (Chicken/egg, yay.) Goodness.
1a) Not to mention, grassroots stuff helps me feel useful. I'm one person; I cannot single-handedly stop rape from ever happening again. I barely feel powerful enough to help change laws on even a local scale, for heaven's sake. But I can poke at language and assumptions in those I talk to, and sometimes I'm heard, and sometimes there's change. And that pleases me.
2) Okay really, like I can't both be concerned about sexist terms and work towards fixing the world on a larger scale? C'mon. Him: "Yeah, fair."
Josh: I feel like I just walked into the middle of a Livejournal conversation!
Me: *cracks up*
–
Related to point 1a:
So, Josh and I were sitting outside the bar, and one of the regulars came out to pop across the street for something.
Him: What's up, brothers?
Me: I've got tits.
Him: …what?
Me: I'm not a brother! I'm like right here!
Him: *cracks up* All right!
Later, he saw a couple that he was friendly with, so he went up and said "My brother, my sister, what's up?".
Me, to Josh: Hey, it worked!
Josh: He tends to pick up on things.
Poking at language stuff isn't always "Let us stop the conversation and consider the terms you chose to use". Sometimes, joking does work.
–
And completely random:
Me: I use Spike TV as an example of how feminists couldn't possibly hate men more than men do.
Josh: *snorts*
Me: Sometimes I think that men get all shirty about feminists hating men because we're horning in on their market.
It was some commercial for a show on there, about some stunt guy that basically gets shot, rides his motorcycle at full speed into a wall, and so and so and so forth, before it went back to that one sport where two barefoot guys beat the shit out of each other. Uhhh-huh.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
Two posts have been stuck in my tabs for the past week or so.
1) The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck, at Shakesville, by Melissa McEwan. It's hard to find one good quote out of that essay, as I would end up quoting the entire thing. I suppose one that would kind of summarise the post:
These things, they are not the habits of deliberately, connivingly cruel men. They are, in fact, the habits of the men in this world I love quite a lot.
All of whom have given me reason to mistrust them, to use my distrust as a self-protection mechanism, as an essential tool to get through every day, because I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.
Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?
This is entirely exactly it.
2a) Harriet Jacobs wrote at Fugitivus about making rape jokes, and it is a good post, but one thing stuck out as something that hadn't occurred to me:
Whenever you hear about the epidemic number of women who are raped, bear in mind that there is an equally epidemic number of rapists.
So telling rape jokes isn't just bad because statistically speaking you might be telling this around a rape victim. It's bad because statistically speaking, you might also be telling this around a rapist, or potential rapist. And so you're contributing to the notion that rape jokes are just fine.
I have already nattered about how one can contribute to such things simply by being quiet. I already know that rape jokes are perfectly awful for a myriad of reasons. Just for some reason, that phrasing brought home to me, again, that the only reason why rape happens is that rapists exist, and also that I can't, just by looking, tell who they are.
Right, back under the covers for me.
2b) In that same post, she also wrote about jokes being a way to relieve tension. Quote:
Jewelbeard is extremely liberal. He wants to help people regain their civil rights. He is pro-choice, he is pro-gay, he professes a unremarkable and unverified affinity to anti-racism. But he cannot stop calling his cats filthy sluts, or acting like a fucking asshole in D&D.
[...]
The bear confronted Jewelbeard with his zany douchebag antics, and Jewelbeard offered the excuse he always does: “It’s to relieve tension.” He went on to explain that he totally isn’t sexist — I mean, he’s pro-choice and everything! — and he completely respects women and sexism is wrong like definitely totally, but gaming is his place to cut loose and so that’s why he acts that way when he games.
There is nothing wrong with having a place and a time to relieve built-up tension. But by shifting the argument thataways, Jewelbeard neatly sidestepped the question of why there is a tension build-up in the first place. He is basically admitting that not getting to call women bitches and whores and treat them like he hates them on a daily basis creates an intolerable tension within him, and it must be let out somehow.
More for my "Gah, yes, this!" file. Absolutely.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
As I'm currently entertaining the idea of having a child, I've been collecting feminist parenting blogs.
On the one hand, feminists are more likely to be women, so the prevalence of "mother" over "parent" makes sense. On the other hand, grr. That's for a later post, though.
Anyways.
If you have others, please feel free to share.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
