Domestice violence: Blame the victim, as usual

Friday a local woman was stabbed to death by her abusive ex-boyfriend. 26-year-old Jill Ulmer was attacked by her ex-boyfriend, 41-year-old Ricky Ray Anderson. She called 911; when the police arrived, they saw Anderson stabbing her and shot at him (but missed). They were able to arrest him but not after Ulmer suffered multiple fatal stab wounds.

It appears to be a fairly common scenario: women who try to leave abusive relationships are at the highest risk of being hurt. According to the Morning News, Ulmer had called the police before out of fear of Anderson; she recently had the locks changed on her apartment. She had a protective order against him, which he had violated just months before this attack.

As a child who witnessed domestic violence, and the nightmare of trying to escape it, I can understand Ulmer’s situation. She was doing her best, in fear of her life, to simply walk away and live her life without being abused.

Yet judging from the comments section of this story, the old “blame-the-victim” mentality is still alive and well. Many commenters stated that Ulmer is somehow to blame for making such a “poor choice” in dating the much older, black, married felon. OK, I agree – dating a felon is pretty dumb, and dating a married man isn’t exactly the path to happiness, but to imply that she deserved to be beaten and stabbed to death is ignorant, sexist, or both. She was trying to escape. She was playing by the rules. And all it got her was a violent death and condemnation for her “poor choices.”

Edit: Another local blogger and old friend, Richard S. Drake, has suggested creating a Domestic Abuser Registry. Read more here.

Equal Pay Day

Today is Equal Pay Day, which marks the day in 2009 when the average woman’s wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average man in 2008.

You can get lots of info about the gender wage gap at the National Women’s Law Center site – including a state-by-state comparison of men’s & women’s wages.

You can see lots of other posts about Equal Pay Day here. I just want to leave you with a quote from Frank & Ernest artist Bob Thaves I think is especially appropriate:

“Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”

And probably for half the money.

Adios, Mexico

Sorry for the long delay in blogging. I’ve been so busy with work and life I’ve barely had time to consume any media, let alone comment on it!

The story that’s upsetting me the most is this new swine flu outbreak coming out of Mexico. So far, according to NPR, there haven’t been any deaths in the US, but there have been an estimated 2,000 deaths due to swine flu in Mexico. The CDC is recommending people do not travel to Mexico and a British airline suspended its flights into the country.

With the recent drug-war violence taking place along the border, travel to Mexico is being strongly discouraged. This breaks my  heart – Mexico is my “first love,” so to speak. It was the first foreign country I ever visited, and I’ve returned twice since that first magical visit in 1997. Every year, I long to return – there is still so much of the country that I want to see. I find myself craving the taste of fresh juices, the sounds of street musicians and honking traffic, the drag-queen colors of the houses and shops, and even the smell of diesel fuel.

I know I probably won’t be able to afford to return this winter, but the fact that I cannot go, or should not go, doesn’t compute. I will continue to hold out hope that these recent events will be temporary, and my beloved Mexico will once again welcome visitors with open arms.

Up yours, Amy Alkon

I’ve had it up to here with advice columnist Amy Alkon, a.k.a. “the advice goddess.” She’s syndicated in (according to her Web site) over 100 papers across the U.S., including, unfortunately, my local weekly.

Apparently her only training came from giving advice on street corners – she appears to have no psychological training or even any sort of grasp of basic gender theory, yet she gets paid to mouth off dating advice that hasn’t been realistic since sometime before the invention of color TV.

Her columns frequently make reference to tired old gender stereotypes and pass them off as “scientific” or “evolutionary” fact: that all men desire thin, young women – and lots of them; and of course, all women desire rich men and monogamy. Men don’t like women who make the first move; women don’t like men who are “too sensitive.” I haven’t taken an anthropology course in over a decade, and even I know that’s just sexist propaganda. But don’t take my word for it – read Natalie Angier’s “Woman: An Intimate Geography.”

Her latest column, “Donut Seem Unfair?” really takes the cake. In it, a frustrated husband (”Weighed Down”) is upset that his wife has gained 20 pounds and now he isn’t attracted to her. What’s worse, the wife says she’s happy with her weight! She’s not even dieting, for god’s sake! The horrors!

True to form, Alkon tows the patriarchal line. She agrees with Weighed Down, likening the wife’s gaining weight to the husband suddenly deciding to quit his job – like natural bodily changes are some sort of defiance against reasonable expectations of responsibility. She repeats the tired old line about how men’s libidos are primarily visual – with the assumption that wives are supposed to cater to said libidos.

Here’s where it gets really stupid: She defines marriage as a business partnership, one where “each partner has their end of the bargain to hold up, including not becoming substantially different from the person the other person married.” Wow. What a stunning lack of understanding of human nature.

Aside from the inner growth that most humans experience throughout their lives, what about the simple reality of aging? I mean, despite all the diets and gym time, eventually shit will sag. Hair will turn grey. Wrinkles will appear. On both men and women. If a woman writes to complain that her husband of 20 years is going bald, will she give the same advice to her? After all, in Amy Alkon world, we’re not supposed to change! We’re obligated by the marriage contract to stay the same!

Shit, even the Christians know this is unrealistic. That’s why their wedding vows include “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.” In other words, loving your partner through all the changes and trials and bad haircuts. That’s what a real partnership means.

And to Weighed Down’s wife: you go girl. Leave that shallow asshole and find a man who appreciates a big, beautiful, confident woman.

Welcome to the new blog!

And the winner is….

OverMediated.

I like it because it looks like “overmedicated,” which is a condition very similar to the one created by watching too much TV, particularly Fox News.

Thanks to everyone for helping me choose a new name for this beast. This URL will remain in place, but I’ve purchased www.overmediated.info and pointed it  here as well.

Help me re-name this blog!

To my two loyal readers, and the few that dropped in to read and comment on the previous post, I need your help.
It seems the name “Logophile” just isn’t cutting it. It means “love of words,” but this blog isn’t just about words. It’s about looking at the media and pop culture from a progressive, feminist perspective. “Logophile” doesn’t express that. Adding to the confusion, the address (scryberwitch.wordpress.com) doesn’t match the name of the blog.
So we must create a new name for this blog. My ideas so far are:
Nerdy Girl
Overmediated
4 Eyes Forward
Untamed Shrew
or, give me your own suggestions. I can’t say that the choice with the most votes wins; if someone makes a really cool suggestion, that may trump the contest. Hey, it’s my blog; I can change the rules if I want!

Classism + sexism = biased jury for Caylee Anthony’s mom

Last night Casey Anthony, the mother of a toddler missing since June, 2008, was back on the news. This time, it was pictures of her apparently being “wild” and partying. The pictures were taken long before her daughter went missing; I don’t understand why they have any news value at all. They only value they have is shock value – “look at this trashy ho!” But it’s not just harmless fun at Anthony’s expense. It puts the double smack-down of sexism and classism on Anthony, and it pisses me off.
Normally I’m not interested in these sorts of lurid stories of missing babies and suspicious parents (Anthony didn’t report her daughter missing for almost a month and was charged with child neglect, making false statements and obstructing the investigation into her daughter’s disappearance). And far be it from me to defend anyone who may have harmed a child.
But the hypothetical jury is still out on this woman’s guilt. She has not had her day in court yet, and in the U.S., people are to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
What do these pictures prove? Only that a grown woman partied and drank with her friends. Last time I checked, that was still legal. The only people who are getting upset by these pictures are those who are all too eager to judge someone as “trash.” Either because “moms shouldn’t drink and have a good time or they’re bad mothers,” or because “this proves she’s white trash.”
Mothers have just as much a right – hell, a need – to cut loose and have fun like an adult once in a while. And last time I looked, middle-class and upper-class people drink, too.
All these pictures are doing is reinforcing these sexist, classist assumptions and ensuring Anthony will never get a fair, unbiased trial.

Book Reviews: “American Nerd” & “The Decline of Men”

“American Nerd: A Story of My People” by Benjamin Nugent explores the whole phenomenon of The Nerd. The book, while sometimes funny, was often a dry read. Big surprise. In true nerdy fashion, he chronicles the history of the nerd stereotype – he of the high-water slacks, thick glasses, pocket protectors and obsessional attention to details.  He even sends up the pop culture fad of “nerd hipsters” -  those “too cool to care about fashion” young creatives who embrace the look and ethos of nerdiness.

This last part was scary to me. Am I merely a nerd  hipster, with my thick glasses and obsession with adult animation? As a kid who came of age in the dark ages known as the ’80s, the worst thing I could think of to be called is a poser. As a former junior-high nerd who never quite grew out of it, I remain out and proud. But is my “geek cred” for real? I’ve gotten in fights over minutiae in Futurama episodes. I wear thick (really thick) glasses because I need them to see. When I see a sign proclaiming, “Jesus Saves,” I instantly complete the sentence: “and takes half damage.”

So if being a nerd isn’t so bad, why have we been so excluded and marginalized? Nugent explains that it because of a cultural belief that rationality and emotionality are separate and mutually exclusive. If nerds are super-rational, even machine-like, they must not be able to experience emotions. This is obviously horseshit, but it pervades the context of nerd-dom. And brings me to my next book:

“The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future” by Guy Garcia. I have seen an astonishing number of articles & books about this very topic. Without exception, they have all blamed feminism to some degree. But Garcia’s book took pains to point out that it’s not feminism’s fault, and that it would be unmanly to lay the blame on anyone else.

So, as the mother of a young man, I was interested to see this Guy’s take on the situation. And the situation is not good: over 80 percent of suicides are committed by men, men account for the vast majority of those behind bars, etc., etc.

I will admit now that I only got halfway through this book. It started out admirably enough: it seemed to me that Garcia seems to blame both the media (which actively promotes self-indulgence to  men at the same time they offer no truly mature role models) as well as what he perceives as a cultural neglect of boys. I can agree with him on the first point; it is nearly impossible to find a man on the television that isn’t immature, stupid, or just plain idiotic.

But I’m not so convinced that our culture has neglected boys in favor of girls. While it’s true that most special-ed classes are dominated by boys, and it’s mostly boys at the lower end of the GPA bell curve, I don’t see this as neglect. We are only now coming out of a long era where girls were not encouraged or even offered the opportunities routinely afforded boys in the educational realm. Once girls were given some of the same attention and encouragement, they naturally began making gains. Boys, being petrified of being “beaten by a girl,” simply withdrew from the educational system. This is a profoundly self-destructive behavior – which explains a lot of the other malaise Garcia is writing about. Despite how negative this is, our culture actively promotes this attitude: anything overly intellectual is derided as somehow “unmanly.” Don’t believe me? Just look back at the last eight years.

And let’s not forget that while women may be the majority of those earning B.A.s, it is still men at the top in most of the companies those educated women will work for.

As I said, he has a lot of good points, but not enough to fill 320 pages. About halfway through, it seemed like I was reading the same information, reworded, over and over again. I also take issue with his over-reliance of studies purportedly showing the vast differences between men and women. From his point of view, it’s almost as if we are two completely different species. He never even mentions the bedrock scientific truth: men and women are more alike than we are different. And perhaps that is why men are having such a hard time succeeding in any realm where women exist: that is, everywhere.

An administration where women count

The newest issue of Ms. Magazine is out, and it’s cover has created quite a stir. He’s one of the few men ever to grace its cover – with a Superman-esque pose, revealing a T-shirt proclaiming, “This is what a feminist looks like.”

In fact, according to Eleanor Smeal’s piece, “Visions of Change,” when she and the chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Peg Yorkin, met with Obama, he immediately offered, “I am a feminist.” What a refreshing change – for years, the F word has been so demonized that pundits would hurl it as an insult designed to damage reputations.

While I’m not happy about Pres. Obama selling poor women down the river to get his economic stimulus package passed, I understand that he still has four more years to correct that.

I’m also heartened to see the direction First Lady Michelle Obama is taking a more Hillary-Clinton style of advocacy and leadership. According to Politico, she’s taking up the banner for working women by specifically addressing the issues contributing to the work-family imbalance that plagues working parents. Let’s hope with her strong leadership, we can start seeing some basic rights, like living wages, quality affordable childcare (as eloquently stated in Cornelia Grumman’s piece “Beyond Babysitting”)  and paid sick days, soon.

Musings on the Great Ice Storm of 2009

It has been an intense week. I’m in NW Arkansas, which was one of the many places hit by the epic ice storm Monday. Arkansas has been declared a disaster area – thousands of people are without power and our local schools have been out all week.

Ice storm damage

My street lost power briefly Tuesday, from about 8 a.m. till 1 p.m. Without electricity, I had no heat or ability to cook food, so I stayed with a close friend in a nearby trailer park. While we were in his trailer, we started hearing limbs breaking off all around us. Under the weight of some 1 inch of ice, branches as thick as a man’s leg snapped off. It sounded like gunshots followed by crashing. Several limbs fell on his roof, but luckily, nothing was damaged. His neighbors weren’t so lucky – several people had their cars, roofs and sheds crushed under the heavy limbs. My friend’s elderly neighbor died trying to flee his trailer for fear of being crushed.

Right about the time my power came on, his went out. Since I’m the only one of my friends who has power, my tiny little two-bedroom duplex has become a sort of temporary storm shelter. I have three people staying with me & my son who have been here since Tuesday. I don’t mind taking care of them; I know they’d do the same for me.