Category: Gender studies

Closing out Pride Month in Florida

by philg

The density of front lawn signs in our corner of Florida has been less than 1/100th of what it was in Maskachusetts. In fact, it seemed fair to say that an N95 mask is far more popular in Florida than expressing one’s political and social justice beliefs via lawn signs or bumper stickers.

It turns out, however, that our neighbors do celebrate Pride Month in June and signs have appeared on 1 out of 20 front lawns and house facades. Here’s one neighbor, for example:

For the other houses that we regularly pass by, however, the pride signs have all been related to a child graduating from middle school, high school, or college. Examples:

(We were fortunate to meet Ellie, a hard-working young lady who has completed Jupiter High School (run by Palm Beach County) and will soon be a student at Florida State. She did not say anything about identifying as 2SLGBTQQIA+)

Here is a house where Henry and Sean are celebrated for finishing an arts magnet middle school and being admitted to the arts magnet high school, funded by a former MIT board member.

Speaking of Pride, “Miami teen accepted into all 8 Ivy League universities” (Good Morning America):

First-generation Nigerian American Ashley Adirika became one of few prospective students to be accepted into all eight Ivy League universities.

“The tears just started to come out. Like they started to flow out,” she said of her reaction to finding out. “My siblings and I were just really excited, like screaming, jumping around. It was crazy,” she said.

From being a teacher to sitting in the Oval Office, Adirika’s dreams have changed over time, but now she is focused on empowering young women of marginalized identities with her organization, Our Story, Our Worth, which she started as a high school sophomore.

She said she looks forward to learning more about herself, her place in the world and how to “maximize the impact” she has in empowering communities when she starts at Harvard University in the fall.

The recent Miami Beach Senior High School graduate and student government president also credits her time on speech and debate teams with building the confidence to make her voice heard.

She did not attend one of the killer magnet schools in the Miami area, but just a regular neighborhood high school, thus proving American Pravda correct once again: “Surprise: Florida and Texas Excel in Math and Reading Scores” (NYT, 2015).

Readers: What are you doing to complete your celebration of Pride Month?

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Who is going to a Pride march today?

by philg

Attending mass gatherings is the best way to avoid viral infection, according to Science. See “Pride parades should go on despite monkeypox concerns: WHO” (The Hill, May 30):

A World Health Organization (WHO) adviser said on Monday that people should not change their plans to attend pride parades next month amid the increased circulation of monkeypox.

“It’s important that people who want to go out and celebrate gay pride, LGBTQ+ pride, to continue to go and plan to do so,” said Andy Seale, a strategies adviser in the WHO Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes.

WHO experts have pointed to sex at two recent raves in Europe as the leading theory for the spread of the virus, which is endemic in areas of Africa. The agency has said several cases have been reported among men who have sex with men, but cautioned it may be a reflection of “positive health seeking behavior” in that demographic, given that the cases were identified at sexual health clinics.

Seale said at Monday’s public briefing that the organization has linked cases to a number of “social events” in European countries.

Monkeypox and variant SARS-CoV-2 will presumably be celebrating at today’s NYC Pride March. From Wikipedia:

New York City Pride March is an event celebrating the LGBTQ community; it is one of the largest annual Pride marches in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.

Readers: Who is going to a Pride event today? Below, Science explains why Pride events are typically in March rather than June here in Florida:

Related:

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Uber characterizes Mohamed as gay

by philg

To celebrate Pride Month, Uber uses a rainbow icon to show the driver’s vehicle. Here’s an example where Uber’s white saviors suggest that “Mohamed” is a follower of Rainbow Flagism:

The good news is that, after a ride in the back of a Tesla 3, the Prius seemed luxurious!

Of course it is brave of Uber to celebrate everything 2SLGBTQQIA+ in the U.S., where the repercussions could be severe, but do the rainbow cars appear for Uber users in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Bahrain, Pakistan, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates?

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Career opportunities for women circa 1922

by philg

“U.S. Soccer and Top Players Agree to Guarantee Equal Pay” (NYT, May 18):

That reality arrived Wednesday in landmark contracts with the U.S. Soccer Federation that will guarantee, for the first time, that soccer players representing the United States men’s and women’s national teams will receive the same pay when competing in international matches and competitions.

In addition to equal rates of pay for individual matches, the deals include a provision, believed to be the first of its kind, through which the teams will pool the unequal prize money payments U.S. Soccer receives from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, for their participation in the quadrennial World Cup. Starting with the 2022 men’s tournament and the 2023 Women’s World Cup, that money will be shared equally among the members of both teams.

It sounds as though those who identify as “women” are better players than “men”:

The difference in compensation for men and women has been one of the most contentious issues in soccer in recent years, particularly after the American women won consecutive World Cup championships, in 2015 and 2019, and the men failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament. Over the years, the women’s team, which includes some of the world’s most recognizable athletes, had escalated and amplified its fight in court filings, news media interviews and on the sport’s grandest stages.

The men are literal failures while the women are winners. But the NYT doesn’t mention that this national team of winners (not failures like the men) has been beaten by a city team of 14-year-olds who identify as “boys”. “THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT World Cup-winning US Women’s team suffer shock 5-2 defeat to FC Dallas’ U-15 boys academy side” (The Sun, 2017):

THEY are currently the best women’s football team in the world.

But not even the likes of legendary midfielder Carli Lloyd could prevent the US women’s national team from crashing to a shock defeat against the FC Dallas U-15 boys academy side on Sunday.

What happens when different gender IDs compete off the soccer pitch? From H.L. Mencken’s 1922 book, In Defense of Women (Ketanji’s panel of biologists was not required back then to define the term “women”):

One seldom, if ever, hears of [women] succeeding in the occupations which bring out such expertness most lavishly—for example, tuning pianos, repairing clocks, practising law, (ie., matching petty tricks with some other lawyer), painting portraits, keeping books, or managing factories—despite the circumstance that the great majority of such occupations are well within their physical powers, and that few of them offer any very formidable social barriers to female entrance. There is no external reason why women shouldn’t succeed as operative surgeons; the way is wide open, the rewards are large, and there is a special demand for them on grounds of modesty. Nevertheless, not many women graduates in medicine undertake surgery and it is rare for one of them to make a success of it. There is, again, no external reason why women should not prosper at the bar, or as editors of newspapers, or as managers of the lesser sort of factories, or in the wholesale trade, or as hotel-keepers. The taboos that stand in the way are of very small force; various adventurous women have defied them with impunity; once the door is entered there remains no special handicap within. But, as every one knows, the number of women actually practising these trades and professions is very small, and few of them have attained to any distinction in competition with men.

And the employer’s perspective:

The economic and social advantage that women thus seek in marriage—and the seeking is visible no less in the kitchen wench who aspires to the heart of a policeman than in the fashionable flapper who looks for a husband with a Rolls-Royce—is, by a curious twist of fate, one of the underlying causes of their precarious economic condition before marriage rescues them. In a civilization which lays its greatest stress upon an uninspired and almost automatic expertness, and offers its highest rewards to the more intricate forms thereof, they suffer the disadvantage of being less capable of it than men. Part of this disadvantage, as we have seen, is congenital; their very intellectual enterprise makes it difficult for them to become the efficient machines that men are. But part of it is also due to the fact that, with marriage always before them, coloring their every vision of the future, and holding out a steady promise of swift and complete relief, they are under no such implacable pressure as men are to acquire the sordid arts they revolt against. The time is too short and the incentive too feeble. Before the woman employee of twenty-one can master a tenth of the idiotic “knowledge” in the head of the male clerk of thirty, or even convince herself that it is worth mastering, she has married the head of the establishment or maybe the clerk himself, and so abandons the business. It is, indeed, not until a woman has definitely put away the hope of marriage, or, at all events, admitted the possibility that she, may have to do so soon or late, that she buckles down in earnest to whatever craft she practises, and makes a genuine effort to develop competence. No sane man, seeking a woman for a post requiring laborious training and unremitting diligence, would select a woman still definitely young and marriageable. To the contrary, he would choose either a woman so unattractive sexually as to be palpably incapable of snaring a man, or one so embittered by some catastrophe of amour as to be pathologically emptied of the normal aspirations of her sex.

Full text at Project Gutenberg.

Related:

  • From 2013, “Women with elite education opting out of full-time careers” (Vanderbilt)
  • “This Woman’s Viral Argument For Marriage As A Career Has The Internet All Riled Up” (HuffPost): As for tips on how to find an employer-husband, the Kansas housewife suggests women actually work for the “high value” men they want to pursue: “You want a lawyer, right? So then you should be a paralegal. Or if you want a dentist, then you should be a dental hygienist.” … [the author] took issue with women who criticize other women who marry their bosses: “Women will bully the woman who’s the secretary who married the doctor, but who has the last laugh?” she asked on camera. “Her in her McMansion with her husband and her baby.” … “The message I try to get across to women is there’s a third economic option outside of serving in the military or receiving an education: You can marry an established man,” Drummond told us via email. “Once you are married, his wealth is your wealth, if he succeeds, you succeed.”
  • Speaking of serving in the military (above), folks of all gender IDs can join the US Air Force:
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Love Wins at the Florida Walmart

by philg

Happy Pride Month again!

(Only the LGBTQ Marines are recognized and honored? Why not the 2SLGBTQQIA+ Marines?)

For folks who are dismayed that the dictatorship of Ron DeSantis has stamped out the word “gay” from the vocabulary of Floridians, some photos from May 7, 2022 taken at the Walmart in Jupiter, Florida:

Related:

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King George III and the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community

by philg

Happy Pride Month! Let’s look back at an early champion of Pride.

The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (Andrew Roberts):

In September 1772, John Wilkes joined other important City figures in criticizing the King’s commutation of capital punishment for Captain Robert Jones, who had been sentenced to hang for sodomizing a thirteen-year-old boy (although surprisingly the victim’s age did not seem to have played a part in Jones’ conviction). Friends of Jones – a fireworks expert who had also popularized the sport of figure skating – produced female prostitutes who attested to his bisexuality, as though that would alleviate the seriousness of the crime. Jones (who was in fact an artillery lieutenant) was due to hang until, on the day of the execution, George commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, and then a month later allowed him to go into lifelong exile in the South of France.

Nor was it the only time that George defied the vicious prejudices of the day against homosexuality and bisexuality. In June 1766, as a favour to his theatre-loving brother Prince Edward, the King signed a document making the Little Theatre in Haymarket into the Theatre Royal, which stated that it was ‘Our will and pleasure’ that Samuel Foote, the flamboyant impresario, should have ‘a company of comedians’ act there every summer, and authorized him to charge the sums necessary to offset ‘the great expense of scenes, music and new decorations’.

A footnote showing how much we’ve been enriched by the work of Gender Studies faculty:

These labels of sexual identity were not recognized in the eighteenth century, when people thought and spoke in terms of actual sexual practices, such as sodomy, onanism and so on.

Imagine if elementary school kids, instead of being taught 2SLGBTQQIA+ vocabulary, received an education regarding “actual sexual practices”!

Related:

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NYT: It is now women who become pregnant

by philg

From the May 11, 2022 NYT, “Don’t Be Fooled. It’s All About Women and Sex”:

When I was back in high school — a Catholic girls’ school in Cincinnati at the beginning of the sexual revolution — our religion class covered the abortion issue in approximately 45 seconds.

“Abortion is murder,” said the priest who was giving the lesson, before moving on to more controversial topics, like necking and heavy petting.

On Wednesday the Senate failed to pass a Democratic bill supporting women’s right to choose in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision going in the other direction.

The many, many activists who have focused their political careers on constraining women’s sexual activity aren’t going to just declare victory and go home.

All this is basically about punishing women who want to have sex for pleasure.

No mention of pregnant men and their right to choose.

From 2018, same newspaper, “A Family in Transition”:

Two fathers and the baby girl they never expected.

As traditional notions of gender shift and blur, parents and children like these are redefining the concept of family.

Paetyn’s father Tanner, 25, is a trans man: He was born female but began transitioning to male in his teens, and takes the male hormone testosterone.

“I was born a man in a female body,” he said.

His partner and Paetyn’s biological father is David, 35, a gay man.

Their daughter, they agree, is the best thing that ever happened to them.
“She’ll grow up in a very diverse home,” David said. “We surround her with people who are different.”

The first time that they saw the fetal heartbeat on ultrasound, they wept.

“Yeah, I’m a pregnant man,” he told friends and acquaintances. “What? I’m pregnant. I’m still a man. You have questions? Come talk to me. You have a problem with it? Don’t be in my life.”

The journalist and editors regard them as legitimate fathers (i.e., men):

As fathers to be, they got some of their most enthusiastic congratulations from the drag world — the regulars at the club where both men perform, dancing and lip-syncing, Tanner as a drag king and David as a sassy, 6-foot-tall drag queen in a tight skirt and size 12-wide high heels.

Apropos the current debate:

And, David said: “I hope she’s a lesbian. Then we won’t have boys coming to the house and we won’t have to worry about her getting pregnant.”

Also recently from the NYT opinion section, “It’s Time to Rage” (by Roxane Gay):

My wife’s stepfather began raping her when she was 11 years old. The abuse went on for years, and as Debbie got older, she was constantly terrified that she was pregnant. She had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.

Her stepfather often threatened to kill her younger brother and her mother if Debbie told anyone, so when the fear of pregnancy became too consuming, she told her mother she was assaulted at school. Her mother took Debbie to a doctor, who said that because of her scar tissue, she was sexually active and must have a boyfriend. It was the early 1970s.

A pregnancy would have, in Debbie’s words, ruined her life. Today, she is 60 years old. She is still dealing with the repercussions of that trauma. It is unfathomable to consider how a forced pregnancy would have further altered the trajectory of her life.

This story is supposed to make readers see how misguided conservatives who oppose abortion are, but couldn’t the article support those who advocate for conservative sexual values? Stepfathers did not exist in significant quantities until the 1970s no-fault (“unilateral”) divorce revolution. The author’s wife was unlikely to have been abused by a stepfather in the (mythical?) white picket fence era to which Republicans yearn to return because there were hardly any divorces that left moms free to bring an unrelated adult male into a girl’s household.

Circling back to the first topic, pregnant men only recently won their own emoji but now the mainstream media pretends that they don’t exist?

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I’ve been using the Pregnant Man Emoji

by philg

“A pregnant man emoji is here and it’s about damn time” (Today’s Parent):

Apple is set to release 37 new emojis, including two that are pregnancy-related. One features a pregnant man and the other features a pregnant person, both created to recognize that not all people who get pregnant are women—some are trans men and non-binary folk.

Others have viewed the new emoji as an important step for trans folks who have been hoping to see themselves represented. “We’ve been crying out for a pregnant man emoji for years so thank you for finally listening!” wrote another Twitter user.

I haven’t had the opportunity to use the emoji to celebrate a male-identifying friend’s pregnancy. This is not because men can’t be pregnant people, of course, but because most of my friends are older than is conventional for becoming a pregnant person.

The emoji, however, turns out to be the perfect response when middle-aged male-identifying friends send food pictures. Two friends recently sent me pictures from a dim sum house, for example. Both guys were sporting their “Lockdown 15” look, so the pregnant man emoji response made sense. One good thing about the Signal messaging app (so thoroughly encrypted that even President Harris won’t be able to incarcerate you for thoughtcrime) is that it allows you to react to a message with any emoji, not just the small handful that Facebook offers. So you don’t even have to respond with this emoji, but can simply use it as a reaction.

And then the emoji’s value was turbocharged last night due to the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion. When people on Facebook or Twitter write about how they believe the decision would affect women, one can respond with “Why is this about “women”? 🫃” (the emoji does not render on my Windows 10 desktop machine; Microsoft is denying Science?)

Readers: What are you doing with this emoji?

Related content from Twitter:

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How Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law could harm children’s mental health

by philg

“How Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law could harm children’s mental health” (The Guardian, today):

LGBTQ+ parents and pediatric psychologists say the law stigmatizes being gay or transgender and could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth.

Stella, 10, attends a private school in Atlanta, Georgia, and explains to friends that she has four moms. Two of them are the lesbian couple that adopted her. The other two are her birth parents, one of whom recently came out as a transgender woman.

“I’m so grateful that [Stella] is somewhere that sees” the family “as what it is: her moms just love her”, said Kelsey Hanley, Stella’s birth mother, who lives in Kissimmee, Florida.

But Hanley, 30, worries that children who have multiple moms or dads or are LGBTQ+ themselves won’t get the same acceptance in Florida.

That’s because the state recently approved legislation that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade and prohibits such lessons for older students unless they are “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate”.

(It is unclear how this anecdote relates to Hate in Florida because a 10-year-old with four moms, six moms, or any other quantity of moms would be in 5th grade and the new Florida law prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity only in grades K-3. Also, young Hanley’s four moms have sent her to a private school and the new law does not apply to private schools.)

What I find fascinating about this story is that, in the context of children’s mental health, it shows mentally healthy children outdoors in the baking Florida sun in rated-low-risk-by-the-CDC Hillsborough County… wearing masks:

Note the range of styles from covering face to under-nose to chin diaper and that none are N95 masks that could provide some protection against the unmasked. How can we be sure that these children are mentally healthy? The new law hasn’t taken effect yet, so these masked-outdoors children are among those whose mental health has presumably been maximized by unfettered public school sexual orientation and gender identity instruction starting in kindergarten.

Related:

  • The happiest children in Spain live with two daddies (“children who lived with their two mothers were extremely unhappy”)
  • One reason that Hillsborough County is “low risk” is that the CDC completely changed its standards in March 2022 (NPR: “Critics of CDC’s new approach say the agency seems to have moved the goalposts to justify the political imperative to let people get back to their normal lives.”)
  • CDC gives us a new canonical example of chutzpah? (after locking down children for a substantial percentage of their lives, the CDC now alerts us to poor mental health among children)
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Women’s History Month at Disney Springs

by philg

Today is the last day of Women’s History Month (does that mean that the other 11 months of the year should be devoted to learning about the historical achievements of people who identify as genders other than “female”?).

Here’s are some photos from Disney Springs:

The “Celebrate Her Story” banners were placed at 30-foot intervals throughout the outdoor shopping mall.

Inside an art store, a person who had a “brief” career in animation, but who nonetheless qualifies for “legend” status:

(I asked a 35-year animation professional if he had heard of Retta Scott, pointing out that she was a “legend” while he was not. He was dimly aware of Mx. Scott, but did not know of any of her legendary achievements.)

Banners remind us that Johanna Pemberton, a pharmacist who identified as “female”, invented Coca Cola:

In other Disney Springs news, House of Blues stays true to its Maskachusetts roots and California headquarters by demanding that Floridians turn over medical records:

Even if you don’t wait in line for an hour to get into the LEGO store, there are LEGO sculptures to see:

The volcano in the background belongs to the Rainforest Cafe, which shows its commitment to the environment by flaring off enough natural gas, every 30 minutes, to power half of Germany:

(apologies for the vertical video, but the primary goal was phone re-play for the kids)

We enjoyed the Cirque du Soleil show (they went bankrupt during coronapanic, but emerged after the shareholders were wiped out in favor of the secured creditors):

Readers: What stories can you share about Women’s History Month now that it is almost over?

Tip for getting food in Disney Springs: the lines are epic almost anywhere near the center of the mall, but the restaurants and counter-serve places on the far west end, near the Cirque du Soleil theater, were comparatively quiet. Another fun to do is book a ride on an Amphicar, wander around for an hour or two, and then come back to take the $125 trip around the lake. Disney owns eight of these German marvels, four that can be scavenged for parts and four in operation.

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