this isn't going to work, is it? sigh.

Nope.

(The shorter version of this commercial begins, "I'm a typical teenage girl.")

Actually, Allstate, teenage girls aren't idiots who drive pink cars? P.S. In reality, teenage boys' accident rates and insurance premiums are higher than any other group's.

Wow, I don't even know where to begin. This is all wrong.

Borders, Ann Arbor, MI

Women like the Sartorialist a lot better when he photographs women with great style

as opposed to stereotyped advertising images of women as homemakers/sexual objects.

They also prefer their dissenting comments to show up as opposed to being censored....ahem.

They're also pretty sure that he should stop getting the majority of his advertising revenue from this guy.

The Internet, World.

46 things

So I'm rereading McIntosh's 1988 article "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" for class, and loving every minute of it. In it, she lists 46 privileges she is granted as a white person that her African-American colleages are denied. This sort of defeats the purpose of trying to gain consciousness about one's own privileges, but I'm going to do a little exercise now, in which I revise her list, deleting ones that don't apply and altering those that do to reflect gender rather than race (it would be interesting to do another list based on class)(actually, attempting to classify and separate privilege based on race/class/gender is probably counterproductive to understanding their interconnectivity and thus pervasiveness, but oh well, it's fun). These are based on my experiences as a white woman, though, so I had to change the format to "can't" statements, and many that would have applied to a woman of color do not now apply to me. Finally, please note that we could add about a billion things to this list. For a copy of the original list, click here.

2. I can't avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me...particularly not in public places, late at night. I cannot take a walk alone at night in the city, or even with other female friends.

4. I can't be pretty sure that my neighbors in the neighborhood where I choose to live will be neutral or pleasant to me.

6. I would argue that I can't turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my gender widely and positively represented.

(But at least to a certain extent, I can choose to read and choose to watch alternative sources of information and news.)

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am not shown that people of my gender made it what it is.

(Although alternative histories have been written, and I have access to them.)

8. I can't be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their gender.

10. I can't always be sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my gender.

(I'll bring a microphone everywhere- I'll put stickers on everything, including these other group members' faces.)

11. I potentially can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which he is the only member of his gender, but this is not likely to matter.

14. I'm not sure that anyone can arrange to protect their children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I have to educate my children to be aware of systemic sexism for their own daily physical, or at least mental and psychological, protection.

16. My chief worries about my future children often concern others' attitudes toward their gender.

17. It's likely that if I talk with my mouth full, people will put this down to a lacking in my feminine education.

18. I can't swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or tastelessness of a woman not properly educated on how to behave as a woman.

19. I can't speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my gender on trial.

20. In many situations, I can't do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my gender. (I would also add that it is usually assumed that I am incompetent when I refuse to participate in a competitively male-centric environment--that I lack the ability or the fortitude to successfully compete.)

21. I am sometimes asked to speak for all the people of my gender.

22. The language and customs of male people who constitute the world's majority help determine how I see the world and how I see myself.

(Although I can and do fight against this.)

24. In most professions, I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of the opposite gender.

26. I can't easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring non-stereotyped or demeaning images of my gender.

(But I can make my own.)

27. I can't be sure of going home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

(But I can quit these organizations or lead a revolt.)

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of my gender (and little incentive to consider them).

(But subcultures within my culture do.)

33. I am made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my gender.

(But whatevs.)

35. I can't take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my gender.

(depending on the profession)

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I probably need to ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had sexist overtones.

38. Sometimes when thinking over my options-- social, political, imaginative or professional-- I must ask whether a person of my gender would be accepted to do what I want to do.

40. I can't choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my gender will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can't be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my gender will not work against me.

(It also works for me.)

42. I can't arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my gender.

(Unless I become a hermit a la Salinger.)

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can't be sure that my gender is not the problem.

44. I can't easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my gender.

(But I often have the freedom and the flexibility to bring more attention than the curriculum calls for to people of my gender.)

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify primarily to the experiences of the opposite gender.

(TRUE. THAT.)

sigh. Wicker Park, Chicago, IL

Grand Rapids, MI.

Women are wary of the literary establishment.

Receiving a grade based upon the extent to which you were able to stomach and occasionally even half-heartedly contribute to a semester of three-hour almost wholly masturbatory intellectual bunking and debunking sessions between socially inept men- covering, yes, even the subject of women's desires and experiences- is absolutely horrendous to most women. Absurdly horrendous enough to, at one point, induce unstoppable subversive laughter. Enough, in this woman's case, to leave for good.


Women find it incredibly ironic to read Middlemarch in such courses.

Women continue to roll their eyes at the theorizing of writing and at the writing of history.

UK sexism submitted by Heath!

I have heard about these candy bars. They are dumb. That is all. (Thanks, Heath!)

“If repetition is bound to persist as the mechanism of the cultural reproduction of identities, then the crucial question emerges:

What kind of subversive repetition might call into question the regulatory practice of identity itself?”

I guess I should have drawn a mustache on the green m&m. I'd rather just be able to eat m&m's in peace. (If you can't tell, in the background is a yellow, male m&m falling out of the tree along with his binoculars. She is his desire for her.)

How about a commitment to accurate representation and fair practice?

All six of these brochures feature white males, but just to be clear, women made up 6.1% of the Marines in 2004, and people of color made up 34%, according to this demographic powerpoint of the Army's. Of course, there are many good reasons that women have chosen not to be in the Marines, but it also seems as if women aren't being heavily recruited for this branch of the Armed Forces? Six percent is well, well below women's percentages in the other branches of the military... It is also interesting to note that at least 50% of people viewing this ad outside a movie theatre in Grand Rapids, Michigan will be female, and according to Grand Rapids' demographic data from 2005-2007, probably around 34% will be people of color.

I'm going to have to get bigger stickers.

Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This just in: women trifling with trifles is offensive to women.

Jordan is offensive to women.

Once, while discussing the disparity between male and female directors, Jordan's stance was, "Well, whose fault is that?"/"Women have the same opportunities as men these days."

Hmm... would we say that's true...?

I don't even know what this is; I only know that no one likes it.

this guy

"I...love women," he says, smiling cleverly.

another Radio menu

Menu cover from Radio Maria's in Champaign, IL.

Women being murdered: SO sexy! So good for selling breakfast food!

Mother Theresa: Not at all offensive to women. Empowered hundreds of impoverished women.

Memorialized here, as well as in Ellen Dahlke's high school Mother Theresa + Princess Di scrapbook.

Barnes & Noble, Springfield, IL.

a poster inside Floyd's in Springfield, IL.

JUST THE OPPOSITE, ACTUALLY: the subject & object are mixed around and the verb is not, in fact, bestowed only upon one gender, thanks

and oh, being a man or being a Christian does not make a person "real" or not real, and I sure hope this sign is not implying that submission to God belongs more to one gender than to the other, but IT PROBABLY IS.

duh.

WRONG: Women and ugly shoes have nothing in common. Worst use of Shakespeare ever.

This is offensive to women.

Most women agree that this girl, Jessica Henrichs, is offensive.