Tag Archives: female

January 9, 2019

Misogyny and Bullying

This is a followup to the previous post, Year of the Woman? That one ran long, and there were some things I didn’t get to. There was also, from my point of view, an egregious memory lapse considering the nature of the post: I didn’t mention the new The Doctor. (Maybe because I’m planning a separate post about her, so she didn’t need to be in the more general one.)

There was a key aspect I meant to talk about with regard to sexual harassment, but my note for it was on a different piece of paper than my main notes. I just didn’t see it while writing the first post (it was in another room).

So now a long post gets even longer!

2 Comments | tags: #MeToo, alpha male, bullying, Doctor Who, female, Jodie Whittaker, male, men, misogyny, The Doctor, women | posted in Society

January 8, 2019

2018: Year of the Woman?

By Wyrd Smythe

RIP Penny Marshall

Some called last year the Year of the Woman. There are good justifications for the phrase, the recent election, what’s happened in the #MeToo movement, but Christine Blasey Ford might have an opinion on how far we have to go.

With President Obama, we were confronted with the reality that, despite progress, racism is very much alive in our culture. The past year or two has spotlighted an identical dichotomy with regard to gender. Politically, socially, and personally, we seem to become ever more divided in ever more ways.

As a white male I can speak on the core of sexism or racism only from the outside, but as a member of a group perceived to be a key source of the problems in the first place, raising my voice in support seems crucial.

2 Comments | tags: #MeToo, Al Franken, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Klobuchar, Christine Blasey Ford, female, Geena Davis, Jackie Robinson, Laverne DeFazio, Lori Petty, Madonna, Moses Fleetwood Walker, Penny Marshall, Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell, women | posted in Society

July 21, 2016

Note #3: Gender Differences

By Wyrd Smythe

Nearly (but not quite) identical!

Yet another bit of flotsam washed ashore, this one from the mid-to-late 1980s I’m guessing. Another part of the same note has a file system diagram that, in part based on the “DOS” directory, confirms the era.

Back then I participated a lot in two online groups: Star Trek and Feminism. (Both were topics of avid interest to me!) This note seems to address a topic that sometimes arose as party line in the latter group, but which I thought missed the point.

It’s about examining versus ignoring differences…

4 Comments | tags: differences, female, gender, male, race | posted in Writing

October 19, 2014

Women are Local; Men are Global

By Wyrd Smythe

I was going to write about something completely different. Specifically: religion, spirituality, atheism, morality and ethics, faith and unbelief… that sort of thing. I like one day of the week to be different from the rest — a Sabbath, so to speak. For cultural and personal reasons (and pragmatic reasons — many businesses take today off) Sunday seems an appropriate day. I’ve got Sci-Fi Saturday; I suppose you could call it Sermon Sunday or something.

But when I sat down to write, something else came out. I thought I’d better grab it and stick it onto the blog wall before it ran away and, due to its youth and naiveté, ran afoul of Unpleasant Business. The thing about letting your mind drift is that you can never be sure where it’ll come ashore. In this case, mental notes about a possible future post morphed into… Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.

And, yes, you have to look below the fold — no cheating!

11 Comments | tags: blank verse, candy, female, free verse, global, local, male, men, poetry, Sabbath, Sunday, women | posted in Music, Sunday Sermons, Writing