A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Twenty-One

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Secretariat: The Horse and The Housewife

I've got a new film review of Disney's Secretariat up over at the Ms. blog. Here's a snippet:

If you love horse movies, then you’ll probably love Disney’s newest, much-hyped Secretariat, which fits firmly in the genre of other recent triumphant equine epics–Seabiscuit (2003), Hildalgo (2004) and Dreamer (2005)–with one notable exception. Despite the film’s plethora of close-ups of the stallion’s deep, soulful eyes and its re-creation of some of Big Red’s most thrilling races, Secretariat isn’t really about the horse; instead, it’s a thinly-veiled ode to equality, courage and how a housewife becomes a savvy businesswoman in the eyes of her family and a nation.

Don’t get me wrong, Secretariat is still the star of his own movie; after all, he is a racing legend, something that the heavy-handed Biblical comparison which opens and closes the film strains to remind us. But the film’s ultimate goal seems to be to tell us the back-in-the-barn story of Big Red’s legacy, which goes something like this, “Behind every great horse, there’s a great woman.”

Click here to read the rest!

The obligatory Superbowl ad post

This year's Superbowl Ads were pretty 'meh' and most of them were also (unsurprisingly) pretty sexist--but too boring to even get me remotely riled up , and that's saying something. Thankfully, the Focus on the Family ad that caused all the controversy was so short and understated that I barely noticed it before it was over. Of course, considering how many ads CBS aired for its own shows(!) there would certainly have been room for that gay dating site ad they refused to air. All that said, I was unimpressed and unmoved, for the most part.

There was, however, one ad that I absolutely hated:



Man's. Last. Stand. Indeed.

In other words: ARE WE BEING CLEAR ENOUGH FOR YOU WITH OUR BOLD, ALL CAPS FONT THAT THIS CAR WILL REINFORCE YOUR VIRILE MASCULINITY DESPITE THE FACT THAT YOU'RE COMPLETELY DOMINATED BY YOUR OVERBEARING WIFE WHO ASKS TOTALLY UNREASONABLE THINGS OF YOU LIKE SHARING IN THE HOUSEWORK AND CLEANING UP AFTER YOURSELF?

(This lovely message is further supplemented by Dodge's description for its posting of the ad on Youtube: "You've sacrificed a lot, but surely there is a limit to your chivalry. Drive the car you want to drive.")

Besides a lot of duds, there were a few (very few) good ads, some okay ads, and one great ad: Google's funny, thoughtful and understated vehicle for search engine wish fulfillment.



I have to say, though, for once the game was way more interesting than the advertisements.

What were your favorite and least favorite ads this year?

A Question of Nature

(In the as-if-anyone-cares department: Real Life caught up with me & I had to disappear for a while. Sorry. Also, I'm burned out on writing about music for the moment, so I'll try some other things and see what happens!)

A moderate while ago (a few hundred years or so), there was a general consensus that women were rather worthless 'creatures'. They were unsuited for work, any sort of stress was dangerous to their health, they had 'hysterics', and the best treatment for women who were sick was to remain immobile in be, thus rendering them weaker! That was the Nature of Women. (All this was only applied, of course, to white, affluent women... but that's another topic)

Since then, most people (early feminists, especially) noticed that those ideas were so much crap, and revised them to "Women are weaker physically, but equal mentally - and perhaps more 'moral'". Even more recently - having become certain of the mental part and dropping the moral part - a few optimistic statisticians noticed that female athletes were improving much faster then male athletes, and predicted that women would become physically equal to men by the 21st century.

This proved to be a bit too optimistic. It hasn't happened, and the current general consensus among politically correct people is that women are equal to men in every way (and to speak otherwise is anathema) except athletically. With regard to that, of course, we know that men have more testosterone, so they'll always perform at a higher level. That's the natural way. End of discussion, sorry girls!

But somehow, nobody ever seems to ask why.

The title of the linked article above is "Women athletes will one day out-sprint men", according to 'scientists', despite that the article actually favors the opposite. By 'scientists', then, they mean "people who know how to extrapolate data points", not "experts in women's athletic performance"; thus their foregone conclusion.

As someone who knows how to extrapolate, and who also knows when not to, I have a question: So, men have higher testosterone levels; why is that so? Why shouldn't women have high levels and men lower levels? There's even an animal (the Spotted Hyena) for which this is true. Why is the opposite 'natural' for humans?

The answer, on the face of it, is 'evolutionary pressure'. For most of human history (thanks to short lifespans and other pressures in pre-industrial societies) a woman's ability to pass on her genes was mainly determined by her ability to have more children, and to care for them effectively, not by her physical strength. The two, it seems, are not synonymous.

So! I'll admit that men are physically stronger than women. For that matter, it might be true (assuming these have a genetic component) that men are smarter, or more stable emotionally, or any other measure of human superiority you care to name. I'll admit - not without a fight, but admit - it's possible that men are naturally better than women in every aspect other than child-rearing ability. Perhaps the anti-feminists are correct...

Here's the thing: Being natural doesn't make it right!

To reuse a trite example: Let us say that someone cuts in front of me in line. I might feel an urge to bash their head in. That doesn't make it right. Furthermore - I probably feel less of an urge than my ancestor did 2000 years ago, as random, female, head-bashers don't last long in most societies.

In the same way, we know that there's something wrong with inequality, so why not try to stop it in all forms? Who cares about natural?

Now that the pressure for women to select for child bearing ability has been mostly removed, might not things slowly equalize? It will take thousands of years, perhaps, but it seems possible, even probable. For less obviously sex-linked traits, their evolutionary erasure is certain.

I'm not an expert, though - I've been looking for real genetic studies that examine this, and haven't been able to find anything. (If someone is a geneticist, or geneticist adjacent, leave a comment!) So, I could be missing something important. It does seem very sensible...

In the meantime, why do so many continue to fight about the natural, when 'natural' is so uncertain? We must learn to value all people equally, whether masculine women or feminine men, masculine men or feminine women - not to mention all arbitrary-gender-sphereoid-point arbitrary-sex-identities of all sorts.

'Natural', as it turns out, has no useful meaning.

One Awesome Filly

Even though I love horses and ride as often as possible, I don't really follow horse-racing. Still, I couldn't help but feel elated when I heard today that Rachel Alexandra won the Preakness Stakes; she was the first filly to race the Preakness since 1999 and the first filly to win since 1924!



You go girl!

One nation?

I thought that I might try to get away from the Palin debate and revisit the acute adorableness of my favorite gymnast, Shawn Johnson, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance the last night of the DNC, followed by Jennifer Hudson singing the "Star-Spangled Banner":



Unfortunately, even that seems wrought with controversy. Can't we do anything right?