“A study done at the University of Central Florida found that on average, women’s deodorant costs 30 cents more per ounce than men’s, even when the only difference between the products was the smell. The study’s coauthor, Megan Duesterhaus said, “These companies have us convinced that men and women are so biologically different that we need completely different products, as though we are a different species.”

Please spread the word!

needleg33k:

Hey all

My friend is trying to get signatures for a petition against Judge David Farrell. Recently, he sentenced 2 men to 40 months in prison for raping an 11-year old. Why was the sentence so light? Because she looked older than her ask and was “willing”, despite the fact that she claimed it was rape. Please reblog as far as the eye can see and sign this petition to voice your opinion that this is unacceptable!!

SIGN THE PETITION HERE!

womenaresociety:

Do clothes make the baby? If you’ve shopped for kids’ clothes even once in the past decade, you know that if that’s true, then what clothes make the baby girl, at least, is ready to fit right into her assigned gender category. She’s a Cutie Pie, she’s a Cupcake, she’s a Very Important Princess — and she’s “Pretty Like Mommy” but not, unless you shop for her in the boys’ section (and why not?), “Smart Like Daddy.”

Gymboree’s now infamous onesies (no longer available on the Web site) are the spiritual kin of JC Penney’s misbegotten “I’m Too Pretty to Do Homework So My Brother Has to Do It for Me” T-shirt. Both declare looks to be more important than brains for 51 percent of the population. In both cases, it’s not so much the existence of a few unfortunate shirt slogans that bothered some members of that 51 percent (you can see worse at any shopping mall), but the marketing might that lay behind them. Those are major retailers suggesting we deck our daughters out in clothing that suggests that whatever they do, they’re always going to  be one step behind the boys.

But of course, we know they’re not. By most measures, girls are having more success in the classroom than boys. They go on to college at higher rates, and graduate more often, too. By the time they’re 4, they even think they’re“cleverer … better behaved and try harder at school” than boys. So does it matter what their T-shirts (or, one hopes, the T-shirts no one’s buying) have to say? 

At Cafe Mom’s Stir blog, Sasha Brown-Worsham says not. “If we get hysterical over every perceived slight, we won’t get anywhere,” she says, and writes this one off as a battle she’s not choosing.

But I see it as more than a “perceived” slight, and even while there may be larger issues more worthy of bigger battles, this one is important. Like Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon, I’m capable of being angry at “sartorial sexism” while still having umbrage left over for more compelling issues. And I can’t help noticing that while Ms.  Brown-Worsham worries that moms “aren’t going to get respect by starting letter-writing campaigns to Gymboree,” the onesies are gone, and I’ll bet there are design teams at retailers across the country reviewing their next “collections” with an eye toward what those smart moms with the wallets and the Twitter accounts think. And that’s something I’d like to see happen, because, as Ms. Williams writes of what’s left on the Gymboree Web site:

If you’re a little boy, you can be “Daddy’s Little Buddy.” A “Perfect Little Man.” You can be a “rascal” or “cool,” an “Adventure Seeker” or “Mr. Personality.” You can wear a football and the moniker “Daddy’s MVP.” If you’re a girl, you can be an MVP, too. But for the little ladies, those letters stand for “Most Valuable Princess.” You can also be “Cutie Sweet” or a “Fairy.” You can be “Daddy’s Little Cupcake” or “A Little Bon Bon.” Dream big, baby girls! Boys may be on a course for greatness, but you can be a dessert! Gymboree also has an entire “Smart Little Guy” line  that allows parents to dress their sons in math formulas and “Genius” bodysuits. Girls, meanwhile, are consigned to the “Cozy Cutie” shop.

Saving our outrage for the bigger stuff, like the girls’ high school basketball team that wasn’t allowed to practice in the boys’ fancy gym, or the question of gender bias on the SAT, tells both girls and boys  that we’re O.K. with a lingering institutional sexism that pushes girls in one direction and boys in another. We get that Gymboree didn’t set out to make a statement about smart men and pretty women. And science teachers don’t wake up in the morning and think, “You know, I think boys are just better at this stuff, so I’m going to call on them more.” Kindergarten teachers don’t consciously say, “Girls like to draw and boys like to build, so I’ll have the girls draw the poster while the boys build a giant pyramid for the Egypt fair.” Those things just happen, the way these shirts just happened. We don’t think about them, and we should. Letting the little sexist choices slide suggests that we think the Western world has changed about as far as it’s going to go, and we should be grateful for that, accept the compliment — Moms are Pretty! — and move on. I don’t think so. Do you?

*Thanks to Justine for sending this!

“

Female students, [Buckingham University vice-chancellor Terence Kealy] declares, are a perk of the job for male university lecturers – though they should look, not touch.

In an article for the Times Higher Education magazine on lust, part of a feature on the seven deadly sins of universities, Kealey wrote: “Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?

“Enjoy her! She’s a perk.”

Flashing a few literary allusions, he continued: “She doesn’t yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea, Howard Kirk to her Felicity Phee, and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife.”

Displaying a more surprising familiarity with the etiquette at lapdancing clubs, Kealey added: “As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch.”

”

Are female students ‘a perk of the job’? | The Guardian

Excuse us while we vomit. How DARE a leader in higher education speak about female students like this?

(via sparkamovement)

Sometimes I genuinely think it would be easier to, say, scalp myself with my own bitten-off fingernails than continue dealing with a world that allows for (and creates) this kind of behavior.

(via khaleesi)

“Most guys, we can recite all of The Godfather, we can recite all of Caddyshack, we can do those kinds of things. Women, by and large, can’t. You guys can say “you complete me”, and that’s about it. And I think it’s because in the history of movies, there have been fewer quotable lines spoken by actresses than actors.”

Aaron Sorkin

(via elesheva)

Weelllp. This explains a lot.

(via supcakes, thisisappalling)

homoerotics:

heathyr:

futurisms:

oxbridge:

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blaines-big-gay-summer:

What do Martha Jones, Tara Thornton, Guinevere, and Mercedes Jones have in common?

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