Rabbits, Blinkity

Pippa Mann just wrote a great article about the glass ceiling in race car driving, and her new role mentoring young women.

But according to this fine gentleman, Pippa Mann should just realize she's an obvious failure and go make him a sandwich. And yes, there are lots of comments telling him to be more civil, and that he's probably a sexist jerk, and other remarks defending her driving record, and the usual chorus of "me too" all around. It's mostly all noise, though.

The truth of the matter is that sexism is still alive and well, and definitely affecting Mann's ability to get rides and sponsorship, and she has a right to talk about this and help other women without people running their mouthes about it.

But just for fun, let's say the critic is right. Say she's personally gotten a bit of an unfair advantage because she's a woman. Hell, say his favorite driver (who we're all just sure is so much more talented) didn't get a chance because she got her grand total of three Indycar rides last year.

Big. Fucking. Deal.
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Update: Here's the best thing you'll read all day on this subject

There's a trans theory concept called the "Cotton Ceiling." (Basically, it tries to explain why some, especially lesbian, women don't really see trans women as real women), Rad-fems don't like it, as one might expect. I'm not going to try and discuss the contents of that article, or the comments on it; I might do so later, but it's tricky and I'm only marginally qualified to talk about this.

I will link to someone who thinks it's all a big miscommunication. Others might suggest that the real issue is unsolvable: rad-fems will refuse to see trans women as women (or even, arguably, as people) regardless, while simultaneously refusing to really see trans men as men (which they're okay with, since women are generally beyond reproach). I don't really know the answer.

But I would like to make an observation. It's been made before, but it bears repeating: our culture is obsessed with penises, and this needs to stop.
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The third world, it seems, is losing their best doctors to the United States (via NYT magazine)

So I want to offer up this suggestion: health care in this country is, as a whole, good enough. Our life spans are long, our recovery rates for all kinds of previously fatal conditions is excellent, and our technology is astounding. So let's not worry so much about making it better. Let's focus on fixing our broken system of paying, and on allowing everyone access instead.

Now, I'm not saying give up on improving medicine completely—research can potentially help people all over the world. I'm just saying, we need to take a step back, and say look, we've got it pretty damn good. Let's not worry so much about quality in the practical side of our health care system. We've got enough doctors. We've got enough hospitals.

If nothing else, don't go to the doctor unless it's really necessary. Don't go for the most expensive procedures unless it will make a significant difference. And so on. If we decrease demand, we'll need less supply, and give more negotiating power to others. Remember, in the third world, overworked doctors are performing surgery using Bosch power tools. If they're lucky.

There's been a lot of complaining about lottery winners getting food stamps. This makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose, but you've got to wonder how big of a deal this really is. So I thought I'd find out. Lottery winners over a certain amount times $200 per month food stamps times 12 months.

As it turns out, figuring out the number of lottery winners isn't easy. But according to this, there are about ten 1 million+ winners in California per year. There are similar numbers on the Oregon lottery website. So let's assume 40 "big" winners per year for each state. That's 2080 winners. Multiply it out, this is about 5 million dollars in wasted food stamps. For the whole country. Assuming every single lottery winner collects food stamps.

71.8 billion dollars in food stamps were given out last year, so the lottery winners are potentially ripping us off for a grand total of... 0.006%. Clearly, they must be stopped!

So. A lottery winner collecting food stamps may be a nasty thing to do, and perhaps states should pass regulations to prevent it. But at the same time, I'm quite sure that there are much bigger corruption concerns in the food stamp distribution business. Can we stop running our mouths about it already?

So here's the thing about reproductive rights: if you're man-bodied, it doesn't really matter what you think. Not in the general sense. The reason it doesn't matter is because it doesn't affect you directly. You'll never carry a child. You don't have to worry about all the various risks surrounding pregnancy, birth-control, and so on. In short: you don't have female reproductive organs, so you don't know what it's like to have them either.

Reproductive rights are a big, confusing, important issue, of course. At the core is a simple question: is aborting (or preventing the creation of) a fetus morally wrong? If so, to what degree? And yes, it's complicated. The hardline Catholic position (sing with me, "every sperm is sacred / every sperm is great...") is pretty obviously insane. The extreme fem-power-whatever position (which I'm not sure actually exists except in the minds of some disturbed people on the internet) that it's okay to kill children after they're born up to a certain age under certain circumstances is pretty obviously insane too. But in between these extremes there are a whole host of complex issues. The most reasonable position, so far as I can see, really is "her body, her choice"—so long as the fetus is part of a woman's body, it's, well, part of her body.

But in the end, it shouldn't really matter what I think. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that abortion is actually equivalent to murder. How are we going to figure…
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The Sport Illustrated swimsuit issue has caught a lot of criticism from feminist circles over the years, and with good reason. It might be the single most exploitive mainstream magazine feature in existence. In fact, I'd argue that it's worse that your run-of-the-mill porn magazine; at least porn is honest about what it is. The swimsuit issue takes a magazine which talks almost exclusively about men, for men, and once a year fills it with highly sexual pictures of women. It's sort of like an all-male country club saying, "okay, we'll allow female members, but only if they wear slinky dresses and serve us cocktails in heels."

By contrast, ESPN The Magazine's The Body Issue was supposed to be something completely different. For one things, it features an equal number of men and women. For another, it only features athletes. No "fashion models wearing swimwear in exotic locales" here (as per the Wikipedia SI swimsuit issue article). But it's not surprising that people are still concerned. After all, it's clearly made to capitalize on the appeal of naked people, and very attractive ones at that. Worse, it's one thing for models to pose for a magazine (who have already "sold out," as it were, to the patriarchy), but it's an entirely different thing for sportswomen—who in many cases are considered icons of female empowerment.

So, then, what is the result? Rather than just discuss the concept abstractly, I'm going to try and actually look at the photos and let them speak for themselves. We'll see what comes of it.
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So thanks to all the backlash, the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided that defunding Planned Parenthood was a bad idea. Good for them.

But as the Feministing article points out, it's quite likely they'll just remove funding at some later date, just more quietly. And in the meantime, a donation to the Komen Foundation mostly goes to buying pink billboards and other questionable "awareness" activities, instead of, y'know, actual research and prevention.* (News flash: people in the United States are pretty damn aware. What we need, ironically enough, is a cure).

If you want to fund cancer screening, cut out the middlewoman and donate to Planned Parenthood or your favorite local screening organization directly. If you want to fund research, try the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. 36.3 million out of 41.5 million - 87% - of their funding goes toward research grants.

There are many, many sensible and efficient cancer prevention organizations in the world. Komen isn't one of them.

* Read their financials here. Out of about 409 million dollars, $75 million (18%) is burned in administration, $181 million (44%) is spent on "public health education" i.e. pink billboards, while the remainder - less than half - is used for screenings/treatment and research ($77 million/19% and $75 million/18% respectively). In other words, they spend as much on administration as they do funding research.

(Update: Amanda Marcotte posits that Tom Matlock's brain has been poisoned by constant criticism from the MRA crowd. This is reasonable. Tom, and all your friends: I don't know you very well, but you need help. Detox from the kyriarchy. Become a feminist. Feminists are really awesome. And they're very smart, reasonable, and support equality for all.)

The Good Men Project just published a pile of crap, entitled "Being a Dude Is a Good Thing," by Tom Matlock. The core of it all is this little gem:

Men know women are different. They think differently, they express emotion differently, they are motivated by different things, they think about sex differently, and they use a very different vocabulary.

Yipperoo, here comes the patriarchy!

Now, I've spent a lot of time - way too much time, actually - trying to come to grips with the various men's rights crowds over the last few months. The Good Men Project is one of the better places to do this, if for no other reason than that the writing is reasonably high quality and comes across as honest and thoughtful. We're human beings, not monsters, it pleads, we just want to be ourselves. So I tried, carefully, to engage in this particular conversation. I asked for clarification about the gender essentialist bullshit that was steaming around. In return, I was told in no uncertain terms that yes, men are totally different then women, they know it because it's obvious, and that frankly, I should know it too and what's wrong with me anyway? Curiously enough, one commenter read me as feminine woman, but glossed over it with nary a stray thought when he found out otherwise. More on him later.

But I think I've got it all sorted. This stuff? It's just the new boss, same as the old. Much, much more after the break.
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