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I just had a comment deleted from a Metafilter thread - that is, my comment and a few others were deleted, and then the whole thread was deleted.
It was about a tremendously tasteless Sarah Palin T-shirt which had the governer's face photoshopped onto the body of a lingerie-clad woman bending over, and a caption something like "This is a woman I can get behind."
Someone said that it was demeaning to Sarah Palin specifically, not to women as a class; I disagreed. It made me feel vaguely sick to look at it. It was saying, it doesn't matter if you are a mayor, it doesn't matter if you are a governer, it doesn't matter if you are running for vice-president - this is what you can be reduced to, if you are a woman. This is what you are valuable for.
The mods said they didn't want the thread to get derailed into a fight about sexism, and I can understand their reasoning, but when you're talking about a T-shirt like that -- it's an elephant in the room. More and more I'm understanding why some of the more prominent feminists on MeFi have abandoned it.
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And my kidlit listserv is having a flamewar about "Daddy's Roommate" in the context of the whole book-banning-in-Wasilla thing. (Last week there was a bogus list circulating of books Sarah Palin supposedly tried to remove from the Wasilla library - but it looks like "Daddy's Roommate" was legit.)
Really, you're going to criticize a picture book published by a small press almost 20 years ago for being too earnest and message-y? A book that is owned by a lot of libraries despite that clunkiness because until recently we didn't have picture books like And Tango Makes Three or Uncle Bobby's Wedding - books with beautiful illustrations and subtler stories, put out by major presses, dealing with children (or penguins, or guinea pigs) who have gay parents or other relatives? One is forced to wonder if "earnest and preachy" is really code for "OMG there are gay people in it."
It was about a tremendously tasteless Sarah Palin T-shirt which had the governer's face photoshopped onto the body of a lingerie-clad woman bending over, and a caption something like "This is a woman I can get behind."
Someone said that it was demeaning to Sarah Palin specifically, not to women as a class; I disagreed. It made me feel vaguely sick to look at it. It was saying, it doesn't matter if you are a mayor, it doesn't matter if you are a governer, it doesn't matter if you are running for vice-president - this is what you can be reduced to, if you are a woman. This is what you are valuable for.
The mods said they didn't want the thread to get derailed into a fight about sexism, and I can understand their reasoning, but when you're talking about a T-shirt like that -- it's an elephant in the room. More and more I'm understanding why some of the more prominent feminists on MeFi have abandoned it.
-
And my kidlit listserv is having a flamewar about "Daddy's Roommate" in the context of the whole book-banning-in-Wasilla thing. (Last week there was a bogus list circulating of books Sarah Palin supposedly tried to remove from the Wasilla library - but it looks like "Daddy's Roommate" was legit.)
Really, you're going to criticize a picture book published by a small press almost 20 years ago for being too earnest and message-y? A book that is owned by a lot of libraries despite that clunkiness because until recently we didn't have picture books like And Tango Makes Three or Uncle Bobby's Wedding - books with beautiful illustrations and subtler stories, put out by major presses, dealing with children (or penguins, or guinea pigs) who have gay parents or other relatives? One is forced to wonder if "earnest and preachy" is really code for "OMG there are gay people in it."