when the status quo frustrates.

So far, while her current career choices include baby doctor and veterinarian — and Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, too — Barbie has not branched out into technology or engineering.

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Best line in the whole article.

Usually I don’t blog about these kinds of studies, as they irritate me no end–either they are driven by a need to prove women are “inferior,” or if the study doesn’t pan out in that desirable direction, they are full of inanities delivered in tones of hushed astonishment–“Girls have caught up on test scores, which researchers attribute to more taking higher math classes like calculus.” Wow! What a brilliant and insightful theory that is. Next they’ll be trying to tell me that if I start eating an extra meal every day, I’ll gain weight.

25.07.2008 "Science", For the ladies, Shame on you for being a woman, What would we do without such great advice? 3 Comments

Protest Pregnancy Day ’08: Pregnancy Kills Women!

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

What I care about is human life, and the ending of it that could be prevented, no matter how great or small that chance of the life ending might be. Lives, lives that would otherwise be in no danger at all, are being lost to pregnancy!

Like these folks, I am totally unconcerned about other people’s ideas that they have some right to “privacy” that trumps my right to stop them from entering into a situation where a human death might occur. I mean, really, what kind of moral leg do you have to stand on acting like “privacy” means you’re free to do things that might result in a living human being kicking the bucket?

You know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I am so in awe of the brilliance of this good organization that I am going to borrow their elegant and succinct “Talking Points” and make them my own, to promote my own worthy cause. With just the simple substitution of “pregnancy” for “the pill” and “women” for “unborn babies,” it seems to scan in almost seamlessly for this great endeavor! I’m sure they’re overjoyed to share with me here because, given their level of concern about deaths that might occur without you even knowing, their concern for deaths that are really obvious that you could not fail to notice occurring must be at least as great! (Any other attitude would be quite, quite illogical and even borderline psychotic, wouldn’t it?)

Let’s get started saving some lives!

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03.06.2008 "Science", A million ways to mortgage the future, Bodily Autonomy, Brilliant Ideas, Contraception, FUCKING IDIOTS, Health, Human Rights, Reproductive Rights, Rights? What rights?, What would we do without such great advice? 20 Comments

Your role in her big day is to pretend being coupled is inherently superior to being single. Help her let the smug smother the panic.

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

How fortuitous! I’m sitting here, single and waiting for my roommate to return my car so I can go get my hair done for my sister’s wedding, when MSN posts this helpful screed on working a wedding while single. Since my sister and mother let it be known before the wedding that my bringing a date was probably the 147th most important thing of the day (more important than the bridesmaid’s manicures, less important than teaching me how to walk so I don’t lurch down the aisle like a zombie bridesmaid) obviously I’m very concerned about how it will look to the rest of the wedding guests if I turn up single.

This is because weddings are all about the guests. Specifically the crazy ones.

As awkward as it is to attend a wedding with someone you’ve only just started seeing — there’s nothing like accidentally catching a bouquet to accelerate the normal relationship timetable by, say, two or three years — going to a reception all by your lonesome self is even worse.

That is not a reasonable statement in any language or situation. What the hell is wrong with MSN lifestyle contributors?

This prospect is so daunting, in fact, that most singles fall back on one of three strategies: a) taking along a brother or sister (or a platonic friend of the opposite sex) and hoping no one asks any questions; b) sadly nursing a triple scotch in the lounge while all the happy couples are out on the floor slow-dancing; or c) invoking the “family emergency” rule and not showing up at all.

or d) take along a foreign friend who wants to see what American weddings are like. Continue with original plan of hanging out with cousins and friends you haven’t seen in forever, you know, like a sane person.

So how does a single person get through a wedding reception solo without invoking pity or amusement from guests fortunate enough to belong to Club Wed? By beginning the creepy weeks in advance, that’s how.

Perhaps because the occasion evokes so much dread, most single wedding-goers show up at the reception without doing any homework. That’s a mistake, says Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone: “You don’t have to wait for the wedding day to make contact with the other guests. In fact, it might lessen your nerves if you reach out a couple weeks in advance.

And once you get there, introduce yourself to all your new friends and remind them that you’re desperate and they’re only good to you if they know lots of eligible guys:

“A wedding provides a smorgasbord of people to meet. Even if The One isn’t there, every new person you meet has a network of 200 other people they know. Say hello to everyone, and subtly let them know you’re available.”

You could do some retail therapy, guys and girls alike. Nothing, apparently, lifts a guy out of the woe-is-single-me doldrums like a snappy new cummerbund.

Splurge a little and pamper yourself with a few spa treatments, or buy a new dress and a new pair of shoes. Guys can get new cummerbunds. The result will be an instant mood lift.

That’s right, they regendered the shopping therapy line. And it’s ridiculous, which means that retail therapy advice aimed at women is also ridiculous. I do in fact have a new dress and shoes for this event, and there is exactly 0.0% chance that it will end up on the floor of the guy I want to fuck-he won’t even be there, plus so far my crush in unrequited – and my frippery is wasted on the eyes of a bunch of married guys and my sister’s friends. This to me is more depressing than wearing an outfit I already know and love.

“I only go to weddings alone if I know there will be lots of kids there,” says Carol from New York. “Then I have my playmates, and the other adults appreciate the attention their children are getting.”

Um, Ok. Ever try talking to adults? Some of them have jobs and travel, just like you and me. They won’t all want to spend the whole reception berating you for being unlovable. Only your inner monologue cares about you that much.
And if all else fails, remember, those bastards only want you to find love so that you can end up fat, disillusioned, and unhappy, just like them.

Take it from me: When you’re absorbed in a single, dismal, self-pitying frame of mind, it’s easy to lose sight of the icy stares, forced laughter, and under-the-breath bickering that transpire for many ostensibly “happy” couples during a deluxe evening. My own dateless wedding strategy is to pal it up as much as I can with the folks at my table. Then, when I’m in danger of feeling blue, I replay all those overheard insidious comments as I lean back in my chair, nurse my triple scotch and watch the slow dance. It may not be very nice, but it sure does work!

When you think of it like that, who wouldn’t envy the happy couple? Oh, god, why won’t one of these selfish bastards introduce me to someone so I can join the fun?

Aight, I got to go put this satin dress in a bag and make sure all of my formal underwear is ready to go. Later, all.

24.05.2008 Wedding-big mistake or bad idea?, What would we do without such great advice? 16 Comments

Miss Manners! NOOOOOO!

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008


Miss Manners (left) after becoming a pod person.

Miss Manners is the greatest. I wanna be Miss Manners…except that I don’t see myself getting less lazy as the years go by and her advice always seems to require that one exerts extra effort and boy howdy, dealing with people daily already whups my butt. Seriously. However, I adore the ascerbity, justice and wit of her replies to her many Gentle Readers.

Therefore, I was horrified when I spied this headline on msn.com.

Miss Manners: She’s Not ‘Wasting’ Her Education By Staying Home With Her Daughter

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21.05.2008 Family, What would we do without such great advice? 16 Comments

Let’s be big meanies and pick on Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog again for no good reason

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

A few days ago we all piled on ACB for, among other things, being kind of silly. In response, they closed comments on many posts, deleted unfavorable comments, and otherwise completely ignored us. Their blog, like the rest of the site, remains almost breathtakingly underwhelming. For example, if you become an AC member, do you know what you can get? An email! Weekly! But that’s not all…they’ll also send you a certificate! To paraphrase Cat and Girl, that’s exactly zero dollars worth of goods for free! A near-unbeatable value.

Did you know that as an affiliate, you receive weekly e-mail updates with all the latest information regarding the abstinence community and a certificate of affiliation? You could also receive a gift certificate to the Sex, Love & Relationship Store; a link on our Website; and complimentary registrations to our upcoming conference.

On second thought, it’s possible that they should send you a check with that certificate to at least partially compensate for the pain and shame of being formally affiliated with such ineptitude. For I know they read my post, and while I expected most of my critique to be soundly ignored, there was one piece of advice that I thought they’d pounce on and that was achieving an air of legitimacy by adding hotlinks wherever they claimed to assert a fact. Really, as Ann Coulter knows, the references don’t have to go anywhere relevant or back up your point, but they should be there, reassuringly underlined, providing the subliminal cue that maybe the person writing the post read and thought about their words for a few seconds.

But at ACB, there are few, if any, links. They are conspicuous in their absence. They draw attention to the fact that ACBloggers are just spewing synapse goo randomly; that they’re so filled with anti-choice, anti-sex propaganda they don’t even need to pretend to refer to outside authority, or even inside authority. Their facts all so obviously true to them why would they need to justify them?

Enter again, HotMamma247-still making waiting hot- with a rare multi-sentence post on Gardasil.

There are now more growing concerns over the dangerous side effects linked to the vaccine for HPV. The vaccine targets four types of Human Papilloma Virus that cause most cervical cancers. The Merck product was fast tracked by the FDA in 2006 and aggressively promoted in an advertising campaign. However, a government watchdog group now says there are very serious problems with Gardasil including paralysis, convulsions and seizures in young girls. This is extremely serious findings and everyone should heed them. There should not be a mandate that school girls across the nation be given this shot!!

Ok, SexiliciousMILF69, let’s do this in list form, shall we? The following statements should DEFINITELY have links:
1. government watchdog group Which one? Why should be give a flying fuck?
2. serious problems A link to study or review article goes here. Less agenda-y, the better. Bonus points for linking to supporting material on the words paralysis, convulsions and/or seizures.
3. A link to some official calling for a mandate to give girls the shot. Or even a PP spokesperson. Since lots of people actually do think every kid should have this shot, this one should be easy to do, which means you could gain bonus points with people who think like you do without bending the truth or distorting the facts at all. This one should have been a no-brainer.

The following statements could have optional links, to give it that extra-internet-scholarly feel:
1. fast-tracked by the FDA
2. aggressively promoted
3. growing concerns

Don’t thank me, I’m just trying to help.

PS to HotMamma: I hope you’re actually hot. Because the internets are a cruel, cruel place, and if you keep doing this and a picture is eventually associated with you (and it will be) and you are not smoking hot, well, I value my shreds of feminist credibility too much to give you a hard time over it, but I can’t do anything about the rest of the interwebs. If you were posting for anything but an anti-sex site that has at least one recent pearl-clutching post about our oversexed culture, it might slide. But you’re not, so consider changing the moniker. Plus, numbers are so 1997. What is that, your aol screenname? Actually, just change the name. There’s no way you’re hot enough to be safe from post-exposure harassment; no one is.

13.05.2008 Edumakashun, HUH!?, Looks like someone needs an intervention, Sex, What would we do without such great advice? 5 Comments

If this is what counts as an “educational organization” in abstinence land, then hell yeah we need to stop giving them money. They’re just not that bright.

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Hi everybody! I’m sorry I haven’t been posting lately, not that y’all have noticed with our fantastic new bloggers filling the void I’d left behind. I took my last final ever today (squee!) and am gearing up to leave the country in a few weeks, so things have been a bit busy. And I was wondering, I should blog, but with my head stuffed full of MEMS manufacturing processes and phase diagrams, I haven’t had a moment to come up with an interesting thought about anything. What could I blog about?

Then Amanda gave me a present: the Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog. A treasure trove of easy target! Huzzah! Let’s check it out!

The Abstinence Clearinghouse is “a privately funded 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan international educational organization.” I hope they know alot about abstinence, because their bloggers don’t know jack squat about making an argument. Let’s start with Annie, author of the two of the first three posts on ACB. I don’t know much about Annie, because none of the bloggers write an introductory post, nor is there a bios page. The subject of Annie’s groundbreaking first post? The epidemic of teens taking nude photos of themselves with camera phones:

So teens are now using cell phones to take nude photos of themselves for general circulation. They have to know that once it’s out there, it’s really out there. That’s not just embarrassing–which it will be, sooner or later–it’s a little creepy when you think about who might be looking…and why.

I’m not sure what I like best about this post; the conversational opening, the lack of a link to anything explaining this phenomena to those of us who have never gotten a clear, much less titillating, picture out of a camera phone, or the scare ellipses. What nefarious reasons could a stranger have for looking at an anonymous picture of your nude body? Annie was just warming up, though. In her second post, “Planned Parenthood seeking 1 Million Opponents to Abstinence” she really shines.

On April 29th, Planned Parenthood sent out an email calling out to its supporters to join them in challenging Presidential candidates to talk about sex…They are asking for 1 Million “strong, caring, fed-up people who aren’t afraid to talk about sex,” to sign onto their letter by November 4th this year.

You see, this is what is wrong with the teens today.

Of course I see. How could I not see that the Planned Parenthood One Million Strong campaign to “elect pro-choice candidates at every level, including a pro-choice president and Senate and House members; pass laws and policies that support women’s health; defeat anti-choice ballot measures; and turn out one million pro-choice voters in November 2008!” is exactly what is wrong with kids these days. ( I assume Annie is talking about the 1 Million Strong campaign, as it is the only thing on PP’s website with that number associated with it. Annie, being a crackerjack debater, didn’t provide any supporting quotes from the email or links or anything crazy like that.) When I think of today’s youth with their hip-hop music, their Hannah Montana and their grassroots political actions for women’s health and reproductive choice, I wish we could return to a simpler time.
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08.05.2008 Punkass!, Edumakashun, HUH!?, Reproductive Rights, Sex, Wankers, What would we do without such great advice? 12 Comments

Boys like, boys like, boys like me!

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Women looking for love on the internet face a most distressing problem – men responding to online personals ads can be so picky! With the number of lonely women far outstripping the number of lonely men using the internet to find companionship, it’s really a buyers market out there. How can a lady increase her chances of catching the discriminating eye of a man who has literally thousands of women available to him with a single mouse click?

She can follow these helpful tips from Kimberly Dawn Neumann and several helpful guys, who probably aren’t just acquaintances of Kimberly at all. Why will he like your profile? Prepare to be shocked:

1. Men like, and I quote, “truth in advertising.” Once, I saw a commercial for Wendy’s Baconator sandwich, and since I love bacon, the glistening, delicious looking bacon orgy on TV seemed like the sandwich for me. Then I bought one, and it was two slabs of beef with a couple pieces of bacon. All that salty bacony goodness was overwhelmed by ordinary beef patty; I had severely decreased the radius of my arteries for nothing. NOTHING!

Ladies, don’t be that sandwich.

For a woman’s profile to work, the picture has to match the profile which has to match reality

“Huh,” you’re saying, “Not lying? That’s so crazy it just might work!”

2. Sound like a real person.

Men are more likely to be intrigued if they can think of you as a real, live human being on the other end of—well, their wireless connection.

This might not be as hard as you think. In my corner of Craigslist, for example, probably about 5% of the posts the scanty Women-Seeking-Men page is men trying to tell the other men that real, local women interested in a date will not post a four-line, picture-less ad that tells you her bust measurements and invites you to find out more by clicking the link. Try peppering your ad with reassuring statements like “I am not posting spam for a porn site!” and “One of the best things about me is that I won’t be charging you by the minute when you call me!”

3. List activities that you enjoy, so that you may attract a man who enjoys the same things. Also, put on your pants first, then your shoes.

4. Don’t sound desperate. For the love of god, do you want this awesome guy trolling the internet for dates to think you’re some kind of loser who has to advertise on the internet for dates?

“Men can sense neediness from miles away,” says Bev Bacon, author of Meet Me, Don’t Delete Me. “If you feel self-esteem and self-confidence are not your strong suit, do something about it!”

Women, on the other hand, couldn’t detect neediness if they had special neediness-detectors and a fresh set of batteries. I say, ladies, if you are so desperate for companionship that you’ve taken to watching Nicholas Sparks movies with a boyfriend pillow draped around your shoulders, I say own that shit and put it in your advertisement. Because somewhere out there on eHarmony is a guy who needs you as much as you need him, and it’s important you attract him before he gets scammed so many times by fake 27-year-olds who just need him to send her a few things before she can come visit that he cancels his accounts.

5. And last but not least, “values.” Dog-whistle that shit up if necessary.

Many women shy away from mentioning family and faith when talking about themselves out of fear that they’ll seem too serious and scare men off. Not so! Many men hold the exact same values and will respond to your mentioning what really matters most to you.

But remember to take alot of time combing through men’s personals ads first to make sure you’re using the right code words, especially if you’re trying to filter people by race or ethnicity, to avoid embarrassing mistakes. For example, and ad that subtly discourages blacks from responding should pay particular attention to class issues – are you the type of person that likes to claim she’s not racist, she just couldn’t date a black man over beers after a day of skeet shooting, or lattes after a trip to the art gallery? As you can see, many times one coded filter is not going to be enough. Frequently, a picture will be worth a thousand words here (see point 1).

13.04.2008 For the ladies, What would we do without such great advice? 19 Comments

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