anti-feminist women, yesterday and today

woodrup · 2021-11-23T05:22:56+00:00

And yes, those thousands of years of plots were written by men... and the young women still line up for their scripts.

woodrup · 2021-11-05T05:13:09+00:00

It’s not perfect, but the forward tee is really the best way to deal with the difference between male/female yardage discrepancy. I might be able to drive the ball longer off the tee than a female competitor, but also get in more hazard. I may also hit longer from the fairway. Once we’re within 130 yards or so we’re even. I think the shorter tee is a good solution. Not perfect. Babe (Didrikson) Zaharias never used the forward tee against the men, and she generally beat them. (anyone unfamiliar with her should definitely look her up!) Whenever that “who was the greatest athlete ever?” question comes up, its always Babe Didrikson in my book. She was an Olympian track athlete in a number sports, champion golfer, etc, etc...

woodrup · 2021-11-05T04:58:03+00:00

I wish I had read your reply before I posted mine. I think you made such good points.

woodrup · 2021-11-05T04:39:38+00:00

This particular issue seems like a complete non-issue. What’s the big deal about how long the race course should be, or women running the same distance? When I was running cross-country in high school and college (boys, men- 1970s) our practice runs were routinely 12-15 miles comfortably fast pace, 5 or 6 miles uncomfortably fast pace... I assumed that the girls’ schools were following the same regimen. There was no question about all of us being able to cover the distance. We were running five times the race distance in practice. We often ran in the same races, boys and girls, though not scored against each other at race end. (but of course it was the worst shame to be beaten by a girl). I thought 15 miles was a long way to run when I was a fantastically fit teenager...until I started running marathons as I neared 40. The human body, male or female, will do nearly anything required of it, within reason. ...And (!!!!) some of the very best ultra runners (over 50 miles, over 100 miles) are women runners. The longer the race, the closer women get to male accomplishments.

woodrup · 2021-08-06T16:34:47+00:00

My state requires you to watch and affirm a long video, ostensibly to prevent workplace sex discrimination/ harassment in order to maintain employment. (In a privately held company!, not a State job.) Of course it’s heavy with trans nonsense that you have to agree with.

woodrup · 2021-08-06T01:38:38+00:00

I have to correct my earlier post. It’s not that nobody calls bullshit... It’s that those who do get canceled, bullied, fired, lose tenure, alienate loved ones, etc, etc. And the rest of us sign obsequious hostage videos to keep our jobs...

God help irascible old shopkeepers that can speak their minds...

woodrup · 2021-07-11T04:15:29+00:00

Then again, some of us here nearly got sent to Viet Nam... Well, some of us male readers anyway. I very rarely post my thoughts here, because I see it primarily as a space for women to share their views, and I’m satisfied to be an audience member. But here goes...

The nakedly political tenor of this comment reminds me of nothing more than the crazy-quilt of intersectional feminism that states that you aren’t a real feminist unless you’re an anti-zionist reparations supporter liberal democrat pronoun waver and also support men in women’s sports and showers (and those are just starting points!). I thought that’s what GC old-school feminists were trying to fight back against. There will certainly be myriad viewpoints on the State of Israel, on human rights abuses in Africa, on the sensibility of WoLF getting in bed with the right wing... etc, etc,. But it’s a little off-putting to get lectured at by someone who’s so mature and experienced that nobody else can keep up with her. Some readers here are well into their sixties, read several newspapers every day, are old lefty hippies who have never voted for a republican,... and still may not agree with you on a number of issues. I’m sticking with simple biology and the 70s feminism I was brought up around on this front.

woodrup · 2021-04-26T10:32:12+00:00

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-cheerleader-first-amendment/2021/04/25/9d2ac1e2-9eb7-11eb-b7a8-014b14aeb9e4_story.html

woodrup · 2021-03-18T09:33:04+00:00

I’m actually a little afraid that he will become like the guy that stood in front of the tank, sort of. From most reports I’ve read, that young (Chinese protester) man died in custody not long after he was arrested. (I’d be really happy to hear otherwise.) TikTok boy can probably look forward to being hounded throughout whatever career he chooses, forever passed over for safer choices by schools, employers, etc... It already happens to talented famous people...

woodrup · 2021-03-18T07:44:13+00:00

When I read the “bad day” quote from that police official I had to shake my head. It was something out of Talladega Nights (literally!). (“There’s good days and bad days in racing. Ricky Bobby just had himself a bad day”) I’m sure at this point the officer wishes he had used some other words, but that’s really how some people think about actions they witness.

(edit here:) I don’t mean to dismiss the officer’s take here. From what I’ve read this is an Elliot Rodger sort of mass murder. Meanwhile, it’s still being spun as a covid anti-asian killing. What’s not being presented is that Asian women get pressed into massage parlor “full release” jobs (legally and illegally), and then someone like this perp goes on a murderous spree against the women who have tempted him into sin. As usual, the man behind the curtain gets ignored throughout.

woodrup · 2021-03-08T20:03:43+00:00

I composed and sent a long letter to Chuck Schumer (my senator) over the weekend explaining that it wasn’t just religious right-wingers that were against the EA, that plenty of us lefty men (me) and women are fiercely opposed to it as it is written as well. But it later occurred to me to wonder how many of those sorts of letters ever reach the senator(s). With all the woke young aides these pols surround themselves with, I don’t doubt most of those letters get tossed out by the first flunky who reads it. How else can they spout all their “equality, respect...” platitudes with no hint of irony, implying that the only push-back is coming from hateful bigots? Are any of these senators even aware of the revolution that’s getting started under the “superstraight” banner? I doubt it. They’re going to keep pushing this nonsense as if it’s the next I Have a Dream speech, while the mainstream comes to its senses. And old hippies like me are going to watch the democratic party get slaughtered in the midterms. I’m going to write another long letter, this time to Senator Manchin. Maybe he’ll even get to read it.

woodrup · 2020-11-19T11:55:26+00:00

Kafkaesque. (I’m posting this now, because maybe there’s still time to edit.) But that (regardless of spelling) is an exactly right description. Time to reread The Trial.

woodrup · 2020-10-19T03:31:52+00:00

Ugh! I’ve always liked that phrase, thinking it came from Voltaire as well. I just googled it, and apparently it’s attributed to a horrible neo-nazi convicted kiddie-porn guy. What a disappointment. I much prefer the Voltaire attribution.

woodrup · 2020-10-16T23:06:52+00:00

Replying to my own post above, It’s just occurred to me that most of the world seems to inhabit the same collective brainpan as my work chums. The choices are: keep your head down and say nothing, adopt the new regime even if you can’t figure it out, or, enthusiastically sign up because someone said you should.

But those are decisions made by me and a bunch of my fellow peons, knowing we could get fired if we stick our neck out... Who’s holding the big stick over the extremely powerful people who have the same scaredy-cat mindset??? Something has gotten completely out of whack.

(I respect that this is a forum for women to discuss among themselves. I won’t make a habit of inserting myself.)

woodrup · 2020-10-16T22:31:59+00:00

I rarely post here, but as the OP practically invites a male opinion I’ll weigh in. I work in construction with a lot of different age, and education background, co-workers (most, but not all men). I think it’s a mistake to view men going along with the current trans religion as evidence of their misogyny, on this subject anyway. I’ve come to notice three particular reactions among co-workers when the subject comes up. (And, it only comes up when I happen to remark on something in the news, etc. Nobody, absolutely nobody wants to talk about this stuff. It’s dangerously radioactive when we’re constantly dunned about creating unsafe work environments by the office folks.) But when in small groups, talking freely while having lunch on a jobsite, there are three basic takes that I see over and over. (As I’m over sixty, I’ll start by age seniority...) Guys my age, or younger married guys with kids, just want to keep their head down and not make waves. One friend confides in me that he finds the issue as insane as I do, but he can’t say a word at home because his wife and two high school daughters are super-woke. 30ish guys all seem to accept the new regime as something they didn’t originally sign on for, but front office is calling the shots, so whatever. Young guys just out of college.... Jesus! They are all primed to parrot back what their girlfriends have just told them, in order to answer questions I sometimes pose. That’s true, they’re just going with whatever their girlfriends are saying.... High school girls in Connecticut trying to compete against other girls... Olympic athletes, same... Incarcerated women dreading newly trans sex-offender cellmates... Rape crisis centers ... Boardrooms breaking the glass ceiling with trans execs... “Well, my girlfriend says...”

All these issues become take-home assignments to be answered by their woke girlfriends.

I know the 1984 comparison gets way too overused these days, but at 62 I can say I’ve re-read that book in every decade since 1974, and it’s never seemed so prescient (and actually being played out!) until the present.

2+2= 3, 4, or 5. or any other sum... and whatever sum (or sums) must be believed fervently (not simply accepted for expedience). I never completely understood that as something one could consider outside the novel, on first reading and studying 1984. I now understand the tragic truth of that logic.

woodrup · 2020-10-02T01:31:53+00:00

Is it crazy to think about women athletes forming a female-only league (whatever sport we’re talking about)? Men have created alternate leagues on occasions, to protest what they saw as unfair treatment. (Football and golf come to mind...) It’s really expensive, and ultimately fails, but I think the point is always to send a shiver through the establishment that things are effed up. In that, they generally succeed. (money, contracts, etc.) Sports management hates, hates, hates, hates a public row, with schism as a real possibility. I think women could reclaim their various sports by simply saying “no”. “We’re going to start our own league(s).” Greg Norman once shook professional golf to its roots by suggesting golfers get paid for exhibition tournaments that paid $zero to the golfers while making $millions for TV, sponsors, etc. etc. He even tried to create an alternate tour recently. Football has also experienced its “alternate league” attempts. They may not be successful, but the front office would quake in fear at the thought of women trying on the Greg Norman hat. (Yes, a male member mansplaining sports here. I know what it sounds like. But when wealthy men get pissed off at something and feel like they’re in the right, they start breaking things. When have women’s sports been in a better position to do the same?) I can’t stand what’s happening to women’s sports. I was a serious athlete for years (running) and I get really angry about what’s going on. And, in the end I realize women athletes would have a harder time pulling it off because the front office would pull the “woke” card. Sorry, I don’t know what the answer is.

woodrup · 2020-09-28T10:25:48+00:00

I’m copying my favorite nyt comment here. (who knows, it may disappear) This has long been a nyt suspicion of mine, comments being closed because they started to run counter to the approved message. I’m starting to feel like a grey old man just gumming up the works in this brave new world.

@Jzzy55 - Indeed. This is just another way of trying to get women--especially women past their sexual usefulness--to shut up and generally go and hide themselves away. When we weren't burning older women who showed independence and/or who spoke out as witches, we were labeling them as "crazy cat ladies" when they (sensibly, IMO) decided life with an affectionate animal companion of manageable size was preferable to waiting hand-and-foot on a man and generally spending a lifetime in self-sacrificing domestic servitude. Older women now are too independent, too free, and too outspoken for some to be able to tolerate. They must be beaten back down! And therefore the beautiful name many of them hold (a derivative of "Katherine") has been deliberately turned into something ugly. Think of how harmful this is. A name is a central part of a person's identify. Think of the effect on the many hundreds of thousands of older women called Karen. My goodness, they will be afraid to ever open their mouths to speak out, complain, or opine ever again. Ah, but then again, that's the point, isn't it.

woodrup · 2020-09-18T20:37:01+00:00

Many states (Connecticut for example) don’t require any change to the high school athletes’ bodies at all. The two male sprinters in Connecticut, that the ACLU is representing, have done nothing to alter their bodies in any way. Where is the “missing context” when suggesting that girls’ sports is destroyed by this acceptance of boys competing against girls?

woodrup · 2020-09-02T13:41:24+00:00

There’s long been a joke among male golfers having to do with declaring yourself trans so you can play from the forward (“Ladies”) tees. There you have it. So now he can shower with the women and beat a bunch of his male competitors. Win-win.

woodrup · 2020-08-01T19:22:54+00:00

Brilliant!

woodrup · 2020-07-03T11:48:52+00:00

I can answer that one. Because men don’t care if women see them naked. And some may be titillated by it. (creepy but true) And they’re certainly not afraid of being assaulted.

There’s a really old joke about a report coming in over a cop radio: “Car 54, report to Maple and Vine, woman running down the sidewalk naked.... all other cars, REMAIN ON YOUR BEAT” It’s funny (or not) because it’s true. It wouldn’t work the other way.

(I’m a guy posting here, something I never did back on the old site, and I really intend not to post again, but I thought this question could use a male opinion.)

woodrup · 2020-07-01T06:18:00+00:00

I think Jesus said to his apostles, If you’re not accepted in a certain village shake the dust off your sandles and move on.

Maybe not verbatim... but close enough.

woodrup · 2020-07-01T05:41:37+00:00

Thanks, sealions, for your kind words. I’m also in a blue collar field (carpentry) in NYC. Many of us here got into the trades coming from art school (me), or music (my young colleagues), or that general stream. When I first went from art school to tool belt in the early 80s there were numerous young arty types getting into the carpentry field. There was tons of work for everyone, and lots of little pop-up (not a term back then) companies hiring all of us. We were staight, gay, lesbian, tough, femme, butch, ...but really, we were all just a bunch of art nerds. One of our crew (female) could walk up a few flights of stairs with two 94lb bags of cement on her shoulder while a lot of us struggled with just one. We were all over the place on that gender confirmation wheel. We probably should have spent all our time affirming each other’s gender choices, but we were too busy trying to figure out where Mary Boone was going to lead the gallery scene, and how much influence Leo Castelli still had. Sorry for the memory lane, but I can’t imagine a crew like we had back then existing now. Everything, everything seems to now revolve around these gender identity issues. I’ve worked under very strong women who took no shit from anyone, in a very male field, but these days I see strong young women suddenly declare themselves non-binary and adopt bland plural pronouns. I think of those kickass friends and bosses I had back then. I don’t know what would have become of them in this environment.

woodrup · 2020-07-01T04:25:05+00:00

That’s about the worst title for this thread... and I’m the one that wrote it. Sounds like an invitation to spoiling for a fight. Ah well... Just thought I’d share an interesting day.

woodrup