talkingwomen

I’ve been watching a bit of Richard Dawkins lately.

I found a site called Atheist Nation which had an extensive collection of videos of Dawkins’ documentary films. Dawkins is of course an Atheist, a very vocal Atheist at that. I’m an Atheist too, but that’s not what I find compelling about the man. What I like is his thirst for knowledge and his ability to think. He is the ultimate scientist and I really admire his passion.

I found myself wondering if Dawkins would be as intense in private as he is in public debates and interviews. Would such a person be married or would his whole life be his work? Well Richard Dawkins is married, and of course to a beautiful English actress Lalla Ward. She is fair-haired and petite, meeting Dawkins through her work with Douglas Adams on Dr Who. Dawkins and Ward wed relatively late in life (1992), well after he had risen to prominance as a scientific genius. Was I a bit envious?

The man is like a hundred years old (well 67) and he looks just like every other socially awkward techy nerd. He has no outstanding physical attributes, other than the brain in his head. I think it is the idea of engaging in conversation with him that seems attractive. Imagine all the things you would learn just though general conversation.

What did you do at work today honey?

I discovered behavioural traits in chimps prove that morals and altruism are not exclusive to humans.

Wouldnt you just fall off your chair if your partner was such an active contibutor to human knowledge? Im sure significant discoveries are not made every day. Im sure plenty of time is spent writing books and scientific papers, and interviewing Creationists for documentary film, or preparing for university lectures and debates . . . oh what a life!

Maybe I have brain envy?

I can’t quite decide if I would rather have his brain, or being regularly in a close enough proximity to pick his brain.

Don’t worry, its not just wrinkly old Dawkins I have an intellectual crush on. Over on YouTube theres a Creationist debunker called Thunderf00t with a very droll voice and sense of irony, ive never seen his face but he’s addictive. And this isnt just a Evolution vs. Creation brain envy. I lust after the smarts of creative directors like Gus Van Sant, Danny Boyle, and Charlie Kaufman. The comedic smarts of Eddie Izzard, the eloquence of President Obama, or the sharp social commentary of Jon Stewart.

If I was in a TV show I’d like to be sitting at a coffe shop with Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, Niles Crane from Frasier, and Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds.

Enough with the tough guys and beefcake and washboard abs and suave James Bond pick-up lines . . .

Give me more nerds!

If you spend enough time on the internet you will inevitably see the same tired old arguments being dragged out about the supposed “battle of the sexes”. Some men (and plenty of women) perceive the Feminist movement to be based on either castrating and marginalising men, and/or making women into men.

I regularly see statements like “Feminist do not accept that men and women are different, they want the sexes to be equal and the same, but how can men and women be equal when men ar physically stronger?”

I just think these people have missed the point. The point is you should not judge or exclude an individual woman based on the averages of the female group. So maybe 9 out of 10 women could not lift a refrigerator, this does not mean that if any individual woman wishing to become a removalist should be turned away without having her skills tested. There are elite sports-women and weight-lifters out there who may be able to lift twice as much as the average Joe-Blow - she just wants to be assessed on her merits. Same with passing a physical for the defence-force, or the police, or any physically demanding role.

Another statement you see floating around is “women are too emotional, men are logical”

This of course is designed to imply that women, as a gender, are biologically ill-suited to positions of power or leadership because they are “prone” to irrational decision making. Once again i say, dont base the fate of one woman on the averages of the group. If you conducted a poll of men and women to see who was more likely to cry in a tragic movie it might be the women. But that is just a statistic. I know plenty of women that dont cry at romantic mush. Conversely, i know plenty of emotional men.

I recently saw a blog putting forth the following young lady as representative of a typical female reaction:

I dont believe this excited young lady represents me or the way i would react to this film (or any film) just because we happen to share the same anatomy.

I did not take long at all to find a comparably emotional man on YouTube:

The difference here of course is that the man’s emotional response was more of uncontrollable anger rather than uncontrollable glee.

Ive been reading a book by the actor Rupert Everett where he describes Catholic boarding school as a young boy.

“You felt as if you belonged to somethingbig; your spine tingled with an Arthurian sense of destiny; and the plan was that you left Ampleforth a raunchy eighteen-year-old boy bursting with testosterone, a fully formed Empire builder with the added twist of a Catholic agenda. After ten years of prep and public school you were part of the gang; and if you weren’t, then you were a freak or a fairy. Luckily for me, I was both.”

Rupert Everett is openly gay now, but as a boy he was run through the man-making machine of corporal punishment, bullying, and parental abandonment. This little quote makes me feel like we sent a spy in to be a fly on the wall. A little snippet of explanation as the the lives boys live and how conditioning can skew emotional responses.

Take any one man and any one woman and their emotional responses will be unpredictable and varied.

Boys are no longer ushered off to Catholic boarding schools to be leaders while girls stay-home with the cross-stitch.

Gloria Steinem once busted the myth that women are inherantly more moral than men:

ONE FINAL myth that women are more moral than men. We are not more moral; we are only uncorrupted by power. But until the old generation of male chauvinists is out of office women in positions of power can increase our chances of peace a great deal.

I think it has been environmental conditions that led to the great divide of how women and men express their emotions. The stereotype of the man punching the wall while the woman sobs quietly in the corner is slowly washing away and blurring. It is insulting to men to say they have no capacity for emotion, and it is insulting to women to say they have no ability to control theirs.

I did two things today that I very rarely do, and I suddenly felt like a female sterotype!

Not that theres anything wrong with that . . .

It’s just not me!

Firstly I got really stressed and went shopping for shoes.

Secondly I nearly blew up my car by not replacing the radiator cap firmly.

When you say two things like that together you think of Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, or Jessica Simpson in everyday life. But unfortunately I can not avoid making “dumb” mistakes or purchasing footwear not matter how much I want to distance myself from the stereotype.

Ive always looked after my own car, im not a mechanic and know little about the complex workings of the machine, but i like to think of myself as having basic maintenance skills, common sense, and the good judgement to know when to take the car to a mechanic.

There has been a hairline crack in the gasket head with a very slow leak which ive been keeping an eye on, the mechanic suggested a bottle of seal repair fluid which I put in, but I continued to check the coolant level in the radiator just to be on the safe side. I had just washed the car and lifted the bonnet to check the radiator and dont even know what I did . . . put it down to being limp-wristed or distracted . . . I just failed to screw the cap back on firmly!

I drove the car down to the local shops and by the time I got home and pulled into the garage there was steam billowing out everywhere and a trail of water up the driveway. I could have blown up my car!

This is something I expect to see on The Simple Life, not something I expect to be doing!

Similarly with the shoes, when I walk out of a store with a bag of shoes I just feel like a bimbo!

It doesnt matter that the shoes were only $30 each, or that my old shoes have holes in them, I just dont want people to see me with a big bag of kitten heels and ballet flats! Its irrational I know, I am actually a woman but I act like Ive been caught cross-dressing! I just am not comfotable with reinforcing the stereotype of the “stupid girl”!

I dont want to be a blonde joke about the girl who called roadside assistance because her car wouldnt start - it turns out she left the car in “Drive”.

I dont want to be the trophy wife or diva who gets “retail therapy” by stocking up her shoe closet.

I once had a housemate who pointed out my aversion to domestic chores most likely stems from me not wanting to participate in “womens work”.

I wonder how many other women are actively concerned about becoming a cliche?

If you have browsed any internet blogging sites in the last few months you will have surely observed (with increasing frequency) the outrageous claims that Sen. Barack Obama is a baby killer, a mass murderer of infants. I am finding it increasingly offensive the more widespread and blatant it becomes!

An example of the typical claim may look like this: 

“you can’t hide the fact that Obama voted for, and believes if the abortion fails, there should be nothing done to save the infant, he would rather it lay there and die for lack of medical help, Obama supports infanticide it is well documented just look up the facts “

Well I have looked up the facts, and the facts dont support the claim!

Generally if you want to know the motivations behind someones actions you should just ask them. Nowhere is Obama recorded as saying he wants infants to die.

Obama didnt vote to approve the that particular bill that was proposed in Illinois because:

a) it was redundant, there were already laws in place stating care should be given, as well as the hypocratic oath all doctors take

b) the particular wording of the bill was designed to acknowledge a fetus as a “person” which would undermine Roe vs Wade

Even the Federal Born-Alive bill had to be re-worded when it was first proposed before it was accepted.

The Illinois bill that was proposed tried to declare a pre-viable fetus as a person, which it is not.

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this section.”

 Obama has said he would have supported the Federal bill with its ammendment

In September 2008 Bitch Magazine put out the following statement appealing for funds to allow them to continue publishing

“First the bad news: The print publishing industry as a whole is staring into a void. Across the board, newsstand magazine sales are in a slump, subscriber numbers are down, and paper and postal costs continue to rise. But it’s not magazines like US Weekly or Vogue that you’ll see disappearing from the newsstands—they have the parent companies and the resources to weather industry ill winds. It’s the small, independent magazines like Bitch that will disappear, because the odds are already stacked high against us. And simply put: We need to raise $40,000 by October 15th in order to print the next issue of Bitch.”

So October 15th has been and gone - did they come up with the money?

YES!

And by an overwhelming amount!

Winnie the wiener dog hit $46,000 in the first 3 days and is currently displaying a figure of over $70,000.

Bitch Magazine is an American independant, nonprofit, quarterly publication dedicated to providing a Feminist response to popular culture.

Ive noticed in the last few years more mainstream women’s “fashion” magazines are starting to run a better selection of serious and intelligent articles. I can only put this shift down to the emegence of magazines like Bitch. Women are screaming out for some competition and variety in magazine publishing. The industry is starting to realise that 50 tips on achieving an orgasm or snaring a man just doesnt cut it when women all over the world are having their human rights, civil rights, and reproductive rights violated!

I hope Bitch Magazine continues to go strong and attract generous donations.

I also hope the likes of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire etc take a leaf out of Bitch’s book and smarten up their content to appeal to a more diverse cross-section of women - I for one am fed up with the assumption that women wont read substantial and well-researched articles.

Personally I buy magazines for the articles not the pictures!

http://bitchmagazine.org/

If theres one thing I absolutely cant stand it is nit-picking about mundane details.

Since the Biden-Palin Vice Presidential debate in the USA bloggers and political pundits have been combing through the transcript and the telecast to try to out either or both of the candidates as liars. I have no objection to criticising the debate according to political positions and party policy but I found the bar had been set a little too low when I read Anne Coulter griping about Katies restaurant.

“If Sarah Palin had made just one of the wildly inaccurate statements smugly uttered by Sen. Joe Biden in last week’s vice presidential debate, there would have been 3-inch headlines in newspapers across America.”

“It turns out that Katie’s restaurant, where Biden gets his feel for the average American, closed 20 years ago. The only evidence that he spends any time in Home Depot is that it appears that a pipe wrench fell on his head one too many times.”

“Palin would surely have been forced to withdraw from the ticket had she said something like that…”

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28942

And its not just Anne, if you Google “Biden + Katies” thousands of entries come up with angry people claiming that Biden’s supposed lie is indicative of his dishonest nature and dubbing the episode “The Restaurant To Nowhere”. I find it all completely absurd, and I cant believe I cant believe anyone would compare Biden’s off-the-cuff remark about landmarks in his local neighbourhood to the State of Alaska wasting countless millions of dollars on “The Road To Nowhere” and “The Bridge to Nowhere” . . . it is out of proportion and a complete over-reaction!

Let me show you what Joe said:

“Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington and go to Katie’s restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time, and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years.”

Now let me show you where Joe is talking about:

So Union St is the main street and the old Katies site is just off Union - it would be reasonable to presume that many people walk down Union St on their way to the old Katies site - it would be reasonable to say Biden does infact WALK DOWN Union St on his way to Katies. It is generally acceptable to refer to the more major street in a locality rather than the side streets. So whats the big deal? I dont believe he stated an exact address for Katies just a general direction. This is semantics at its most tedious!

In the town where I grew up there was an outlet of a major supermarket chain on the corner of my street and the main street, it was called BiLo, it had been a BiLo probably since before i was born, but when the local residents from my parents generation were kids it was owned by an independant grocer and the store had the name of the man that owned it at the time. Even though the store was renovated and well-established as a BiLo in the 80s all the older people still to this day refer to it by a different name. I cant even remember what the name of the old owner was, but lets pretend it was Katie, even though all the signs said BiLo half the town still referred to it as Katies.

So everyone thinks it is such a scandal that Joe Biden would call Wings To Go (the current name) the historical site name of Katies. Oh it closed 20 years ago! Oh what a sensation! Look how old Joe Biden is! Geez have a bit of common sense people. Imagine how old the local people are that he would socialise with, converse with, and interact with! When the current owners opened a franchise of Wings To Go on the Katies site the locals unofficially called it Wings To Go @ Katies because it was a popular landmark from when they grew up!

Disgruntled blogger Ed Morrissey phoned a nearby restaurant Kosy Corner and grilled the man who works there, Nick Douras the welcoming Greek, about how long Katies had been closed - who cares! What he did uncover is that Joe Biden was a regular customer of Nicks at Kosy Corner. Nick said Joe and his wife go there quite a bit, they are regularly seen walk up and down Union St, and apparently Mrs Biden even used to go for jogs down Union St past the shop front.

Listen to the call:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/03/you-can-find-anything-you-want-except-katies-restaurant/

Yet Ed signs off with: “Epic fail on authenticity, Senator”

Hmmm I dont know what more people want from the man . . . but I know who I think may have been hit on the head with a wrench!

All I can say is that there is a food outlet currently operating on the old Katies site and it is about 30 seconds off the main drag where he is easily identified as a frequent visitor.

I think creating such a storm in a teacup is insulting to the seriousness of the real issues like the economy, health-care, civil rights etc

I recently went to a Body Shop party (think Mary Kay or Avon) and had the opportunity to mingle with some country women of various ages. The common theme quickly became apparent amongst these women: they were all mothers. Some were older empty-nesters and others were young mums who were pregnant or had recently given birth. As the conversation went on I felt less and less included and became less and less involved. I ended up outside in the cold and dark talking to one of my city friends on my phone.

One of the products that came around was an “essential oil” that was supposed to aid with relaxation and restful sleep. It had aromas of Jujube date extract, camomile, lavender, and lemon. I had a sniff and it was a strong distinctive pong. The sales rep lady (a mother herself) told us it was designed to be applied to your pillow to help you drift off ans stay asleep. She quickly warned that it may disturb people who are not used to the dreams and nightmares associated with deep sleep. Previous customers had given her feedback that they had to discontinue use because they could not cope with dreaming whilst asleep.

I wondered if this was a common fear? I myself love dreaming, i love deep vivid dreams that i can remember clearly when i wake up. Sometimes i even write them down if they seem particularly insightful. When i think of a life without dreams it seems horrible, empty, souless, joyless . . . who would want that?

Apparently heaps of women!

And why? Because they are mothers and they prefer to sleep lightly so they wake if their children need anything! Some of the older ladies claimed to hate sleeping and confessed to lying in bed looking at the clock waiting for the time to get up!

I couldnt relate at all. It takes me ages to unwind enough to fall asleep but once i do i could stay asleep forever, i hate getting out of bed, i prolong my bed-time as long as possible and enjoy dozing. Its a great escape, and you can literally block the whole world out!

I wonder if the mothers of the world feel guilty if they zone out? Do they feel obliged to be on guard and available at every moment, even if their children have grown and left home? I know my own mother does not sleep much, i wonder how many other mothers cant enjoy dreaming anymore?

Curious about the product i described?

http://www.thebodyshop.com.au/Product.aspx?Id=485

Many people were disappointed with the USA Vice Presidential Debate this week. Sarah Palin is not the most eloquently spoken woman at the best of times, so with the pressure of a formal debate against a well-informed political elder like Joe Biden many people were expecting Ms Palin to “fall flat on her face”, “freeze like a deer in the headlights”, or have some other “train wreck” moment.

There was no massive singular blunder (hence no sensation) but the debate did prove that Ms Palin’s knowledge on matters of government is very thin.

This is the Debate in full from C-SPAN (running time approx 90 minutes)

Full written transcript is available  http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/

The first Sarah Palin non-sense that left me scratching my head was her strange stance on healthcare:

“ … unless you’re pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don’t think that it’s going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds. “

“Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you’re not always the solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper. “

Sarah Palin is saying she doesnt want a universal healthcare program because she doesnt have ANY confidence that a government she (and McCain) would be overseeing would be competant enough to  run the system efficiently . . . it is just mind-boggling to me!

Palin is saying if you vote her in she (and McCain) WON’T be able to manage their government fairly and efficiently. That doesnt exactly instill a sense of confidence in potential voters!

Does she think a creepy wink at the camera can gloss over the fact that she supports further de-regulation of Wall St.

Does repetitively over-using cutie-pie terms like “hockey-mom”, “joe-six-pack”, and “maverick”, suddenly make her so trust-worthy that we would swallow the line about people earning over $250K personal income all being small business owners that would all collapse under the slightest tax increase?

” … you’re forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they’re going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity.”

 That is a lie!

Most businesses that are large enough to earn more than $250K are structured as corporations where the owners pay themselves a salary. If they opt to pay themselves in excess of that figure they should also pay their fair share of tax.

See the lie debunked in further detail here: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_small-business_bunk.html

I actually cringed as Palin claimed that living in Alaska made her more of of an expert on climate change because she can SEE the Arctic from her state. It echoed her most famous silly statement of being an expert in foreign policy because she could SEE Russia from her state. A (relatively) close proximity to things does not actually give one any advantage when it comes to diplomacy and forward-planning.

“Well, as the nation’s only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real.”

Palin had the audacity to perpetrate the myth that terrorists hate Americans because they hate their freedoms, and in doing so she says they hate their respect for womens rights. Highly ironic coming from a Pro-Life, ultra-religious, ultra-conservative mouthpiece. Perhaps the genious plan is the remove the rights of American women so the terrorists wont be jealous of them anymore? It could be a two birds with one stone measure?

Overall Palin knew the details on very little and was obviously coached to drop key words like “reform” and “doing what’s right” to make her seem honest and opposed to corporate greed - its a shame all of her policies promote the wrongful greed and deregulation she is talking about.

Nice try but no cigar!

Welcome to Talking Women by Morgan Bell.

This blog aims to discuss new, events, and issues from the female point of view.

I personally love the way women interact, the way they can tease out the motivations behind any decision and their endless ability to put themselves in other peoples shoes. Of course these are not exclusively female qualities, but when we see men gossiping or speculating we tend to refer to it as “mothers meetings” or “old wives tales”. So if women have to cop the criticism of having the gift of the gab i say we should dominate the grape vine!

I will be presenting stories about famous women and their opinions, but also about current affairs that may affect or interest women!

Cheers ladies!