I don’t accept my son, Twirl. Yes you heard me right, I don’t accept my pink loving, princess dress, sassy dancing son. I don’t accept that he might be gay. I don’t accept that he is different. My son is someone I do not accept not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have to.
I celebrate my son. I love and adore him, even the five year old things he does that drive me crazy (anyone else have a kid who won’t eat?!). To accept someone is to imply that something is wrong with them. I accept things like high gas prices, poison ivy and ironing. These are all things that I don’t necessarily like but they are a part of life and I accept them. There is nothing wrong with my son. There is nothing wrong with being gay. There is nothing wrong with being straight and preferring things outside your gender.
Let me talk to you about books.
Specifically, one book. This book.
This book should be a best seller. This book should be required reading for graduating from high school. Before you get that diploma, you read this book.
This book deals with debunking “Neurosexism,” which is a very fancy term for all of that evolutionary psychology bullshit that people spill about those “brain differences” between boys and girls.
This book debunks such myths as:
- Boys are better at math than girls
- Women make crappy lawyers/business CEOs/etc, as their brains are not cut out for aggression.
- Men make crappy counselors/primary school teachers/primary parents/etc, as their brains are not cut out for empathy.
- MEN ARE BUILT FOR GOING OUT AND HUNTING WHILE WOMEN ARE BUILT FOR STAYING HOME AND BABYMAKING IT’S NOT SEXISM IT’S JUST BIOLOGY
- And many other such myths.
Furthermore, this book covers topics such as:
- Neurosexism and gender perceptions in multiple races (as this is not a singularly white experience, just as the western world isn’t a singularly white experience)
- Sex discrimination in the workplace, and how women are (or, more often, are not) allowed to behave
- How science is used (badly) to support many of these claims
- Experiences of trans* people, both through interviews and empirical studies.
AND FINALLY - It is all brilliantly researched, cited, compiled - and it’s easy to read! Cordelia Fine actually manages to be funny while writing this, which I think is important, because it makes all of this information infinitely accessible.
Delusions of Gender has reinforced what Oberlin taught me: The gender binary is stupid and arbitrary, and dangerous. And it is a self-perpetuating bias that needs to be addressed to be overcome.
Has anyone read this one yet?
good:
Women Make Less Than Men at Every Education Level
Among Americans with some form of post-high school education—a vocational, associate’s, bachelor’s, or advanced degree—men make more than $800 above women’s pay every month. And the gap widens as men and women climb educational ranks. In short, education is valuable, but it’s most lucrative if you’re male.
Some people may believe that women just don’t ask for a pay increase, but they do. According to the Washington Post,
“Our recent Catalyst report, The Myth of the Ideal Worker , reveals that women do ask for raises and promotions. They just don’t get as much in return.
The research focused on career paths of high-potential men and women, drawing on thousands of MBA graduates from top schools around the world. Catalyst found that, among those who had moved on from their first post-MBA job, there was no significant difference in the proportion of women and men who asked for increased compensation or a higher position.
Yet the rewards were different.
Women who initiated such conversations and changed jobs post MBA experienced slower compensation growth than the women who stayed put. For men, on the other hand, it paid off to change jobs and negotiate for higher salaries—they earned more than men who stayed did. And we saw that as both men’s and women’s careers progress, the gender gap in level and pay gets even wider.”
Gender /=/ sex.
Sex /=/ gender.
They are not interchangeable terms.
Gender is constructed by society.
Sex is biology.
Don’t be afraid of the word sex, it’s not a bad word!
When former Harvard President Larry Summers suggested there were “issues of intrinsic aptitude” regarding women’s math abilities it caused quite a stir. Now, a new University of Wisconsin study based on data from 84 countries definitively debunks the still widely perceived idea that boys are naturally better than girls at math. “Culture, not biology, is the primary force behind any measurable differences,” Janet Mertz, PhD, one of the study’s coauthors, told Yahoo! Shine.
Mertz and her colleague Jonathan Kane, who is a professor of mathematics and computer science, wanted to “put to rest the idea that there are innate differences between boys and girls in both average and variable performances in mathematics.” Summers had posited that men hold more PhDs in math than women due to the “greater male variability hypothesis” - that is, there are more men at both the low end and the high end of the spectrum.
According to the international data, in many countries, such as the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, girls today in fact perform as well as boys both on average and at high levels. In other countries, such as the United States, the gap has narrowed significantly in recent decades. In the 1970s, the ratio of boys versus girls who are considered gifted in math by the age of 13 was 13:1; today it is 3:1. Any variability was inconsistent country to country, which would not have been the case if there were an underlying biological principle in play. The study also found that worldwide, girls’ achievement in math couldn’t be linked to whether or not they were in a single sex or coeducational school.
Experiment detailed in my sociology textbook to detail the early impression of gender roles. (via emaconly)
Gender is what you make it…
(via stfuhomophobes)
