Porn for Women (SFW, Don't Worry)

Fannie, who is Teh Awesome, made a comment on my last post about something called Porn for Women, which involves pictures of men doing housework.

Of course, I had to look.

The first thing I found doing a google search for "porn for women housework" is this. (see above) It's a book containing pictures of mostly clothed men vacuuming and such.

I think I just rolled my eyes so hard I sprained them.

This is not pornography. I don't even think the most modesty obsessed fundys I stalk would consider that pornography. Unseemly, perhaps, but only in that their wives ought to be doing the housework.

I find this disturbing on two levels.

1. "As soon as I'm done with the laundry, I'll do the grocery shopping and take the kids with me so you can relax" is not erotica. This is erotica*. Honestly rather mild erotica that kinda flirts with kinky. But it's erotica.

"I'm going to do some chores and spend time with my children" should just be normal communication between partners. (Also, I am seriously uncomfortable with mentions of children and erotica in the same place.) That that is eroticized is disturbing. I find it unbelievable that I am so outside normal gender roles and interplay that I am experiencing erotica on a regular basis and not recognizing it.

Seriously, really, honestly, truly this sort of thing is so rare in the average marriage that it counts as erotica? My husband is no great shakes in the participating in the maintaining our property department, and he says something like this to me all the time. (Obviously, not involving kids.)

"Hey, I had some time waiting for the sauce to reduce, so I loaded the dishwasher."

"I noticed you had laundry left in the dryer, so I folded it and brought it upstairs."

"I spilled salt all over the kitchen floor, so I figured I might as well sweep the entire downstairs while I was at it."

Yes, I do thank him. He also compliments me on a job well done every time I clean the kitchen and every time he finds just the t-shirt he wanted, already clean, in his drawer**.

This does not arouse me. I do not fantasize about this. I'm not telling you you shouldn't be aroused by this sort of thing because I don't care what gets you off, but, c'mon, really?

Men want to fuck, women want to . . . sit around eating bon bons? This is a view of male/female relations stuck somewhere in a mythical, TV 1950s, then turned into a joke that isn't funny. Women, they do all the housework and- hahahahaha!- it's housework that turns them on. If men do it.

2. This enforces so many gender stereotypes I don't know where to start. and, it plays them off as a hilarious joke so that I'm just a meany mean feminazi with no sense of humor for complaining about it.

Let's see if I can list all the gender stereotypes at work here:

• housework is women's work. If men do it, it's superspecial.
• childcare is women's work. if men do it, it's superspecial.
• fucking is what men want. women don't really like to fuck. women consent to fucking.
• women consent to fucking in order to please men.
• what women really like to to is get a break from women's work.
• women are not turned on by depictions or descriptions of sex. that is for men.

I probably missed a few. And no, it's not fucking funny. This is not pornography. It's also not a joke. It's just another slap in the face of women as mature adults with actual sexual feelings.




*C'mon, you knew there was Jägererotica, Rule 34 demands it. And if you didn't think I knew where it was, you just don't know me.

**The man is incapable of putting dirty clothes in a hamper, so simply finding his dirty clothes is like Indiana Jones in my house. He should compliment me.

In Which I Come Perilously Close to Dividing by Zero

Today is Secretary's Day*. I know, right? We make sure offices across America actually do something, anything, and we get our own artificial holiday, too? It's a betrayal of capitalism, I tell you.

Seriously, I know I am merely a secretary, to be derided and dismissed, doing "woman's work", without a college degree. I am generally referred to as one of the "girls"**, and any expression of gratitude for all the things I do every day to ensure that my bosses actually have work to bill for is delivered in a joking tone. Mind you, this is from the guy that doesn't know how to turn on a computer in a day and age when almost all filing with all courts is done electronically. Yeah, laugh away, buddy. I'm sure you could learn it all in the 20 days you have to file that brief.

This is a typical day for me:

Print out all emails. There are at least 20 every morning, most of them have Word or Adobe attachments. This takes at least half an hour.

Reply to emails in complete sentences translated from the vague instructions given. "Tell him I'm okay." Sure. I can make a paragraph out of that.

Type dictation. The boss who dictates is a nice guy, but I deeply suspect English is not his first language. (This is not unreasonable. His mother emigrated from France as an adult- after spending two years in a concentration camp. Oddly, he's the only partner who isn't Jewish.) In conversation he is fine, but as soon as he starts dictating, he entirely drops "a" and "the", subject-verb agreement, any understanding of singular and plural, all understanding of verb tense and, quite frequently, any remembrance that sentences require subjects and verbs. I have to translate that on the fly, for at least two hours every day.

Retype handwritten materials for the man who writes entirely in code. Technophobe boss handwrites his materials, which wouldn't be so bad, except that he abbreviates everything. That sentence, as written by this man, would be: Tnp bs hadwri h matls, w wn't be so bd exc tt he abb evyt. Wtf am I supposed to do with that?

Perform corrections to typed materials. Dictating boss can't spell. Really can't spell. And he has the handwriting of an otter on meth.

Answer constantly interrupting phone calls from complete idiots who don't listen to a word I say and who seem to think that I'm involved in some vast conspiracy to keep them from talking to their lawyer, who is standing right next to me and would love to take their phone call, if only I would let him. Oh, and they think they're funny.

Find files. In a file room larger than my house with no filing system whatsoever.

Make copies. Sometimes of entire files, sometimes of one page, because the person with the juris doctorate is too fucking good to put a sheet of paper on a copier and press start. It is beneath them.

Translate my boss for billing. My boss has me open files under a name he will never refer to the file by again. Which would be fine if he'd put the file number on the billing sheet. He doesn't. Which means that I spend a portion of each day trying to figure out which file he means to have billed for 2.5 hours of work.

Find [person]. Last week, in the driving rain, I spent my lunch hour wandering around downtown looking for an associate attorney. My boss needed to ask her a three word question that could not possibly have been that important to anyone, ever, in any alternate universe, not even the one where dividing by zero is possible and always results in purple.

That is a regular day for me, guys. That's not an extraordinary day where I get to type a 35 page brief in 2 hours or anything. Just a regular day.

For that, on Secretary's Day, I get . . . nothing. In years past, we all got huge baskets. "Hey, thanks for not greeting Mondays with a flamethrower, here's a gross of bagels!" Not this year. This year I get jack shit.

Here's a lesson in capitalism: my boss may as well have handed me a memo that said, "Please be as annoying and nonhelpful as you possibly can without getting fired. Seriously, have at it," because that's exactly what I'll be doing.

*Hilariously, there is a Boss' Day, but as I've said to my boss, every day is boss' day.

**I once inquired about child labor laws, but it sailed right over the attorneys' heads.

Was That Really Necessary?

[trigger warning: weight in general, fat shaming. please enjoy this utterly trigger-free otter instead.]

Look, I love a good adjective. (I love a good adverb even more. Actually.) Language would be boring and grey without them. However, there is a point at which you need to put down the thesaurus and think about what you're saying, how you're saying it and whom your saying it to.

Given the First Lady's campaign against childhood obesity, this could have been an interesting article about how parents need to be educated, considering that parents are apparently unable to objectively view their childrens' weight. (Hardly surprising, but important to the discussion.)

Instead, the article becomes an interesting view of someone's thesaurus.

Let me preface this by saying that we have fairly nonjudgmental words for what is being discussed here: overweight, meaning "having a a BMI of 25.0 to 29.9", and obese, meaning "having a BMI of 30 or higher". Those are medical terms, people. We should strive to use them when appropriate.

What we should not strive to use are:

82 percent of the mammoth mommies underestimated their weight when looking at the silhouettes; 42.5 percent of overweight women did the same. About 13 percent of normal-weight women thought of themselves as thinner than they were.

• 86 percent of the corpulent kiddies underestimated their weight, compared with 15 percent of normal-weight kids.

"Mammoth mommies"? "Corpulent kiddies"? I understand it's alliterative, but really? That was fucking necessary? You asshat.

• 47.5 percents of moms with fat kids thought their children were at a healthy weight.

• 41 percent of the children thought their moms could lay off the donuts and lose weight.

"Fat kids"? Was "obese" taken? "Lay off the donuts"? Really, that's how it was phrased in the survey?

Fuck you. That was unnecessary, unkind and unprofessional.

As America gets fatter, people could get a warped attitude toward their fattitude, lead researcher Nicole Dumas, an internal medicine resident at Columbia, tells USA Today.

Fattitude? FattiFUCKINGtude?

Maybe next, Tom Henderson* can do an article on why he's so stupid, because 100% of me agrees he should be dropped in a box with 1,000 irritated scorpions- and a bird spider.

*When I went to add the Tom Henderson tag, I found I already had one. For good reason. He's the idjit who thought 9 year old girls might be having consensual sex with adults.

You Don't Know Me!

I really hate the Angry Pharmacist. The Angry Pharmacist hates his customers. Just hates them. It's really obvious. Which is why this piece of advice to doctors scares me:

Want to know the scoop on a patient? Ask us! Patients will tell you what you want to hear so you’ll give them an Rx. However we see when they are getting their refills, who they go to, and how they act. The patient that complains of a 10/10 low back pain to you may waltz into the pharmacy like nothing is wrong. You may not see how your patients act outside of your office, but we do. We usually see your patients enough to get a good gut feeling if something fishy is going on with them. If we don’t know, then their insurance company computers can tell us if they have been naughty or nice (like Santa!).

[emphasis added]

Sure, during the 1 minute and 30 seconds a month we spend together, you can tell more about me than the doctor that's been treating me for years. And he should totally listen to your reporting of my pain over mine, because I'm a junkie whore and you have an Rph after your name, which apparently grants you psychic powers.

If you are dependent on painkillers to live your life, and I don't mean addicted to painkillers, I mean your pain is so intense that you need powerful narcotics to walk across a room (assuming you can still pull off walking), you know why this scares me. (Hi, denelian!) As bad as my days are, they'd be a whole lot worse without vicodin. I know because I wake up that way and it sucks. I sometimes end up crawling to the bathroom to pee first thing. Now imagine that being all day long because some angry, self-absorbed, megalomaniacal asshole decided they know me better than anyone because they saw me walk 30' without screaming in agony.

First of all, showing pain and discussing pain are verboten in American society. It is unseemly to display pain. It is rude to talk about it. Don't make a scene. Stop bothering me, jeez. So, no, I'm not exactly inclined to humiliate myself by displaying my pain for all the world to see, and that includes you, Pharmacy Asshole.

Secondly, I rarely limp, it's true. I rarely limp because a physical therapist once spent some time explaining that any gait change is very bad for your body and that limping to relieve the pain in my hip would lead to pain in other places (and wouldn't really do anything for my hip anyway). The last thing I need is more pain, so I suck it up and walk straight. It's painful, it's pure force of will, I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up, but it's not waltzing. Fuck off.

Thirdly, the 10 point pain scale is bullshit. It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. Ask any chronic pain patient about the 10 point pain scale and you're likely to be dealing with frothing at the mouth within 3 seconds. It's that fucking stupid. I know 10 is supposed to be "worst pain you can imagine", but I can imagine being on fire and how likely is that to come up? (Plus, just guessing here, I don't think I would be asked to quantify my pain were I to see a doctor while actively on fire.) So when I am asked to quantify my pain, what I say is "my pain is for real. It's affecting my mood, my outlook on life, my ability to do the things I need to do and I need you to do something about it, because that is your job." Then the doctor looks at me funny and I say, "9.5. 8 on a good day."

I really hate this shit. I hate going to the pharmacy to pick up a legally prescribed, valid prescription for a real medical condition and knowing that the people behind the counter are judging me based on that alone- and maybe they'll make a phone call that will leave me unable to live my life. So I try not to sound eager, but not too fakely disinterested, nice, but detached because too nice is a junkie's trick, educated, calm, etc. It's ridiculous. It's a prescription, give it to me and stop fucking judging me.

I'm In Ur Feminism Settin' Straw Men on Fire

By popular request (if we are defining Jason as popular, and why not?) I am snarking on . . . ha! A writer for Mad Men. We're taking on the big dogs today in hell, yes we are.

You want to get married. It's taken a while to admit it. Saying it out loud -- even in your mind -- feels kind of desperate, kind of unfeminist, kind of definitely not you, or at least not any you that you recognize. Because you're hardly like those girls on TLC saying yes to the dress and you would never compete for a man like those poor actress-wannabes on The Bachelor.

Kind of unfeminist? I'm beginning to understand why I despise Mad Men, though I do love the costuming. Look, feminists get married all the time. In fact, most people get married. It's what we do here in America. Some of us like it so much, we do it more than once. I was unaware the "girls" say yes to dresses, in that girls are not allowed to marry in the US.

Words: they have meanings. Learn them.

You've never dreamt of an aqua-blue ring box.

Who dreams of an aqua-blue ring box? That's a fetish I've never heard of, and I worked at a porn site for a year.

Then, something happened. Another birthday, maybe. A breakup. Your brother's wedding. His wife-elect asked you to be a bridesmaid, and suddenly there you were, wondering how in hell you came to be 36-years-old, walking down the aisle wearing something halfway decent from J. Crew that you could totally repurpose with a cute pair of boots and a jean jacket. You started to hate the bride -- she was so effing happy -- and for the first time ever you began to have feelings about the fact that you're not married. You never really cared that much before. But suddenly (it was so sudden) you found yourself wondering... Deep, deep breath... Why you're not married.

Well, I know why.

Projection, you have a call on line 1. Projection, line 1.

How? It basically comes down to this: I've been married three times. Yes, three. To a very nice MBA at 19; a very nice minister's son at 32 (and pregnant); and at 40, to a very nice liar and cheater who was just like my dad, if my dad had gone to Harvard instead of doing multiple stints in federal prison.

Issues: Tracy McMillan has them. Alternatively, you're not married because Tracy married all the men.

I was, for some reason, born knowing how to get married. Growing up in foster care is a big part of it. The need for security made me look for very specific traits in the men I dated -- traits it turns out lead to marriage a surprisingly high percentage of the time. Without really trying to, I've become a sort of jailhouse lawyer of relationships -- someone who's had to do so much work on her own case that I can now help you with yours.

Okay, I do understand that people get very caught up in the dress and the ceremony and the fab party afterwards, but most people don't just want to get married, they want to stay married. While Tracy can surely tell us how to get married, she clearly has no idea how to stay that way.

But I won't lie. The problem is not men, it's you. Sure, there are lame men out there, but they're not really standing in your way. Because the fact is -- if whatever you're doing right now was going to get you married, you'd already have a ring on it. So without further ado, let's look at the top six reasons why you're not married.

It's never the men! Men are perfect darlings just looking to slip a ring on anyone's finger. If you're not married, it's not because you don't want to be, or haven't found the person you want to wake up to when you're 90, it's because you have problems. Problems that Tracy can solve- three times!

1. You're a Bitch.
Here's what I mean by bitch. I mean you're angry. You probably don't think you're angry. You think you're super smart, or if you've been to a lot of therapy, that you're setting boundaries. But the truth is you're pissed. At your mom. At the military-industrial complex. At Sarah Palin. And it's scaring men off.

The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them. I am the mother of a 13-year-old boy, which is like living with the single-cell protozoa version of a husband. Here's what my son wants out of life: macaroni and cheese, a video game, and Kim Kardashian. Have you ever seen Kim Kardashian angry? I didn't think so. You've seen Kim Kardashian smile, wiggle, and make a sex tape. Female anger terrifies men. I know it seems unfair that you have to work around a man's fear and insecurity in order to get married -- but actually, it's perfect, since working around a man's fear and insecurity is big part of what you'll be doing as a wife.

Pretend to be someone you're not- every day for the next 50 fucking years. Smile, wiggle and sex it up, and never, ever, ever admit that rape culture and patriarchy make you the slightest bit testy. Because the menz, they are askurred!

2. You're Shallow.
When it comes to choosing a husband, only one thing really, truly matters: character. So it stands to reason that a man's character should be at the top of the list of things you are looking for, right? But if you're not married, I already know it isn't. Because if you were looking for a man of character,you would have found one by now. Men of character are, by definition, willing to commit.

Instead, you are looking for someone tall. Or rich. Or someone who knows what an Eames chair is. Unfortunately, this is not the thinking of a wife. This is the thinking of a teenaged girl. And men of character do not want to marry teenaged girls. Because teenage girls are never happy. And they never feel like cooking, either.

Character is what's important in men, but women should smile, wiggle and sex it up. Mmm-hmmm.

3. You're a Slut.
Hooking up with some guy in a hot tub on a rooftop is fine for the ladies of Jersey Shore -- but they're not trying to get married. You are. Which means, unfortunately, that if you're having sex outside committed relationships, you will have to stop. Why? Because past a certain age, casual sex is like recreational heroin -- it doesn't stay recreational for long.

That's due in part to this thing called oxytocin -- a bonding hormone that is released when a woman a) nurses her baby and b) has an orgasm -- that will totally mess up your casual-sex game. It's why you can be f**k-buddying with some dude who isn't even all that great and the next thing you know, you're totally strung out on him. And you have no idea how it happened. Oxytocin, that's how it happened. And since nature can't discriminate between marriage material and Charlie Sheen, you're going to have to start being way more selective than you are right now.

Women are sluts and men are studs. And made of character. And you need to smile and wiggle and sex it up- but not too much or the science will come and get you.

4. You're a Liar.

I don't need to copy anything but the heading here. I'm supposed to smile, wiggle, sex it up, but not too much, and pretend that I totally don't care what he looks like- and never, ever lie. Yeah, patriarchy is totally fun. Don't get angry, bitch.

5. You're Selfish.
If you're not married, chances are you think a lot about you. You think about your thighs, your outfits, your naso-labial folds. You think about your career, or if you don't have one, you think about doing yoga teacher training. Sometimes you think about how marrying a wealthy guy -- or at least a guy with a really, really good job -- would solve all your problems.

Howevs, a good wife, even a halfway decent one, does not spend most of her day thinking about herself. She has too much s**t to do, especially after having kids. This is why you see a lot of celebrity women getting husbands after they adopt. The kids put the woman on notice: Bitch, hello! It's not all about you anymore! After a year or two of thinking about someone other than herself, suddenly, Brad Pitt or Harrison Ford comes along and decides to significantly other her. Which is also to say -- if what you really want is a baby, go get you one. Your husband will be along shortly. Motherhood has a way of weeding out the lotharios.

My thighs obsess me! Because I am girl, but once I have a baybeez, I will learn to be a better human being- but don't forget to smile, wiggle and sex it up, but not too much. And don't lie!

6. You're Not Good Enough.
Oh, I don't think that. You do. I can tell because you're not looking for a partner who is your equal. No, you want someone better than you are: better looking, better family, better job.

Here is what you need to know: You are enough right this minute. Period. Not understanding this is a major obstacle to getting married, since women who don't know their own worth make terrible wives. Why? You can fake it for a while, but ultimately you won't love your spouse any better than you love yourself. Smart men know this.

Fuck you, Tracy! Which is it? Am I supposed to fake being happy, wiggle and smile, sex it up, but not too much, or am I supposed to be myself? FUCKING PICK ONE! I HATE YOU WITH THE FIERY PASSION OF A THOUSAND SUNS!

Ouch. My chest hurts after that one. I should get hazard pay for that kind of shit.

I'm Fairly Certain "Debate" Is Not a Synonym for "Lie"

I could be wrong.

After all, I dropped out of the debate team in high school after one week*, and Chris Jeub flies all over the country with his (students') debate team. So I guess if debating could best be described as "liar, liar, pants on fire!", he is the expert.

The 25,000 Wisconsin teachers would have my support, perhaps, if they rallied for higher educational standards. But for benefits? Six-figure incomes for classroom teachers? This is what motivates them to rebel against their school district and their families and ultimately the children they teach?

Six figures, Chris? Is there any possible place you could have gotten an implied quarter of a fucking million dollars other than your ass?

Let's check. According to Teacher World, which Chris links to when called out on this on Facebook, the average starting salary for teachers in Wisconsin is $25,000. That's not much more than I make, and that's for people that have Bachelor's degrees, are required to keep up with continuing education and put up with other people's children all day. You would have to multiply that by 4 to get into "six-figure[s]".

Well, that's starting salary. What about average salary? Maybe they get some rockin' pay raises. Nope. Average salary is $46,000. You'd have have to get together 2 teachers and the spleen and liver of another to get into six figures.

Where ever did the Debate King get $100,000 (minimum)? Well, the highest possible starting salary is $68,000- still not six figures- but that's for someone with decades of experience and enough continuing ed credits to qualify for a PhD.

Chris Jeub, you are a liar. I'd recommend not wearing pants anytime soon.

*"Buncha arrogant pricks!" was my reason. And then I got a blog. And sometimes I think, "So . . . how am I different from from the arrogant pricks now? And then the part of my mind that handles self esteem pipes up with "It's totally different!" And I go with that, because life is short and I like blogging.

Sorry, "Stroppy" Is Not an Excuse for "Slut"

(h/t to boganette)

Apparently, you just can't say it enough: calling someone a slut is not okay. I really would not have thought that I would have to say that a school administrator calling a 14 year old a slut is not okay, but there it is.

I hadn’t intended to deal with the story about 14 year old Newlands College student, Amethyst Staladi, being told by dean Angela King to pull her skirt down because she ‘looked like a slut’. That was until I saw her mother, Kahira Marshall, onOne News last night telling the country that she considered Mrs King’s verbal apology a couple of days ago ‘doesn’t go far enough’ and that what she wanted was ‘a letter of apology to go on both Amethyst’s and the dean’s personal file’. At that point my blood began to boil.

Wow, my blood boils, too, though not for the same reason the writer's does.

Think about this incident for more than two seconds. Not only do we have slutshaming of a 14 year old girl, which is just totally out of bounds, but we have a serious power imbalance as well. The slutshamer is an adult and a school administrator. The shamee is 14 and a student at the school.

Suppose I stopped by the school to drop off a forgotten lunch for a neighbor's child and Ms. King told me I looked like a slut. As an adult unrelated to the school, I have options. Using that language in front of children is still unacceptable, but I can leave or read her the riot act. What can a 14 year old do? She can't leave. She can't retort. She is shamed, as Ms. King clearly intended, in front of her peers with no recourse.

I have no problem with her mother demanding a written apology. If I were her mother, I'd be demanding Ms. King's dismissal. Ms. King is a slutshamer, a power abuser and I am very uncomfortable with her remaining in charge of children. A written apology is the least she could do.

But no, sluts deserve slutshaming. Victims deserve blame.

Well, let’s look at the players in this mini-drama: a stroppy 14-year-old girl with behavioural, discipline and attendance issues who’s received previous warnings about breaching the school’s dress code; a highly professional teacher with an impeccable record, supportive of and popular with students, described by her colleagues as someone ‘who helps everyone really’. (The staff had sent her flowers because she was upset.)

I see. So it's totally okay to slutshame a 14 year old girl (cannot be said enough) as long as you are nice and popular and the girl in question is "stroppy". Oh, and I am crying a fucking ocean over Ms. King, Ms. King!, being upset over the incident. Fucking seriously? She called a 14 year old girl a "slut" and she's the one who gets flowers? You know what, I want a written apology from the entire staff after reading that.

So who needs to be taking a good look at themselves here – Mrs King or Amethyst’s parents? Which would be more appropriate – teaching Amethyst a little respect for her teachers and for the rules of the school, or encouraging her to be a smart-arsed little bush lawyer, trumpeting her 14-year-old rights on television.

You know who needs a lesson here? You, you ignorant asshat. Ms. King abused her authority and abused a 14 year old girl. There are few things worse in the world of a 14 year old girl than being called a slut and the one throwing that word around does not deserve my sympathy. Absolutely this 14 year old girl has a right not to be slutshamed by a school administrator and I don't care how "stroppy" or "little bush"* she is.

You know what, Brian Edwards? Fuck you. Seriously, go die in a fire. But don't get upset about that, okay? You totally deserved it, so I'm sure you'll be okay with me telling you to shut your twatting** mouth, you ignorant asshole. ($5 says he's more okay with 14 year old girls accepting abuse than himself accepting abuse.)

*Is it just me, or does all New Zealand slang sound a little sexual?

**I bet that's the wrong use of that word, but it felt right. Oh so right.