Meet Lammily

Have you guys heard the buzz about the new Lammily doll?

The Lammily doll is a new doll created by artist Nicholay Lamm, that he designed to have the average body proportions of an American 19 year-old.

When I first heard about this new doll, I think I rolled my eyes, as a lot of the press was talking about the doll as 'the modern Barbie' or some such comparison.  But then I actually looked at the images of the doll, and the Lammily doll looks awesome!

The Male vs. Female Brain

The Essential Difference- The Truth about the Male and Female Brain by Simon Baron-Cohen

Recently, I read through a book by Simon Baron-Cohen, a prominent UK psychologist and cousin of Sasha Baron-Cohen, regarding his theory of the male and female brain.  He is most known for his research into empathy and developmental disorders (i.e. autism) which have brought him around to this more over-arching theory.

Concept:
The female brain has evolved to be better structured for empathy whereas the male brain is structured for understanding and building systems.  This leads to three types of brains: Empathy (E), Systematizing (S) or Balanced (B) brain.
He does point out that males can have female brains and visa versa, but on average females score high on empathy than males and males score higher on the systematizing tasks than women.

Behavior:
Dr. Baron-Cohen spends much of the book analyzing the behavior of children and their interactions to support his claim.  Boys, for example, choose to play with mechanical toys (trucks, cars) and enjoy ordering and analyzing facts like baseball or soccer scores.  Girls, however, tend to play with dolls and adopt a more social style of play.  They exhibit more cooperative and pretend play which greatly involves interacting and reading the actions of another person or playmate.

Secondly, he reviews the method of developing social stratus or hierarchy.  Boys, he says, quickly establish social dominance, often squashing the weakest for the greater reward of power.

Happy International Women's Day!

I read this post yesterday and thought it was so spot on that I had to share:
Why feminism still matters in 2014

More Work for Mother: Part 4

I thought I would use this final post in the More Work for Mother series to explore our current circumstances.  For those who missed Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (links?), this series of posts is based on Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.

By the end of her book, Cowan concludes that technological developments over the last century haven’t reduced housework for women.  Instead, they have leveled the playing field, allowing families across all social classes have achieved the same basic standard in food preparation, house cleaning, and personal hygiene.  Today, nearly everyone in the U.S., not just the wealthy, bathes regularly, wears laundered clothes, and receives basic nutrition.  Nevertheless, housework still takes time and most of it is still done by women.

Are we stuck with this dynamic for the foreseeable future?  Or is society shifting towards a more balanced division of household labor?  I don’t think we have an answer, but I’d like to bring up two recent phenomena.

New Domesticity: I don’t know a huge amount about this and would like to read more.  If anyone has suggestions please comment!  By “new domesticity” I mean the recent growth in home-based activities like canning, pickling, jam making, knitting, etc.  In More Work for Mother, Cowan mentions the appeal of traditional self-sufficiency in our society and calls these activities a “backward search for femininity.”  I wonder if the trend is somewhat more complicated.  While people have many reasons to participate in traditional home cooking and crafting activities, might the trend reflect reactions to the frantic rat-race in modern business? Or the recent backlash against processed food?  We’re stressed at work and don’t trust our food.  Why not fall back to traditional tasks we can trust?  Maybe so, but I wonder if society has just rationalized increases in women's labors as a default alternative to addressing the underlying issues.  Surely this is a fertile topic for broader feminist discussions.

Stay-at-Home Dads: But! I hear you say.  What about the rise of stay-at-home dads?  Many popular media outlets have highlighted stay-at-home dads and more equal balances in housework generally.  Again, I am not an expert here and would welcome hard data on this topic.  Are stay-at-home dads just an artifact of this most recent economic downturn? Or do they represent a substantial shift in the way families approach the household and its labors? Hopefully they reflect a societal shift in gender roles, but Cowan would not be hopeful.  Apparently such talk pops up once a decade.

Educate me about feminism

I read this pretty great post last week about trying to talk to someone about feminism and it basically summed up the types of responses men and even some women give in regard to feminism today. It can be so incredibly frustrating to try to explain feminism to someone who refuses to listen and offers awful contrary opinions to your own (although you can basically say this about any argument). Yet with feminism, because the movement has been in flux for years (arguably starting with the women's suffragette movement) many people have actually commented to me that feminism is "over," a sentiment reflected in this post's generic "man" response. So, how do you talk to someone who believes that women are doing just fine?

Then I came across another article that argues that feminists are not responsible for educating men. This was really interesting to read and I would love to hear some responses from our other bloggers and readers on the subject.

Do we owe it to ourselves and our daughters and future daughters to educate men about feminism? Or do we rely on the men who question and derail our progress to figure it out on their own? Personally I tend to argue my point of view as long as my audience is willing to listen. When it comes to contrary opinions (for any argument) it is obviously difficult, but in civil discourse, I'd rather not shirk away from my beliefs. Yet, the idea that men rely on women to educate them about feminism is new territory for me and unlike any other confrontation. I found the end of the article to be the most poignant, the writer argues:

Spending time and energy nurturing men through their journey of self-discovery is not only incredibly dull, it actually serves to reinforce existing power dynamics and keeps us from collectivizing as women and enacting real change.

My advice to men who genuinely wish to learn about feminism is this: read and listen to the voices of women when they explain what misogyny feels like and how it operates. Never ask women to find resources for you; seriously, get a library card. Or the internet. Don’t interrupt to disagree or derail by using individual examples of women in positions of power or instances of what you see as “reverse sexism” (here’s a hot tip: “misandry” isn’t a real thing.) 

To paraphrase Audre Lorde:

When people of colour are expected to educate white people as to their humanity, when women are expected to educate men, lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world, the oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions.

So what do you think? Are we responsible for educating others about feminism? Or is that actually counteractive?