Salon.com > Gender politics

I’ll tell you what’s funny

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Humor is a complicated phenomenon, and highly dependent on context, as Seth MacFarlane recently learned. The Oscar host’s much-discussed performance – and in particular his quasi-ironic opening musical number, “We Saw Your Boobs” – has inadvertently launched a cultural debate about several interlocking subjects, including sex and gender in Hollywood, whether p.c. attitudes are destroying humor, and the role of Twitter and other social media during major cultural events. That’s without even getting into the unresolvable and inherently subjective question of what’s funny and what’s not.

A rape a minute, a thousand corpses a year

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:18:00 +0000

Here in the United States, where there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime, the rape and gruesome murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi on December 16th was treated as an exceptional incident. The story of the alleged rape of an unconscious teenager by members of the Steubenville High School football team was still unfolding, and gang rapes aren’t that unusual here either. Take your pick: some of the 20 men who gang-raped an 11-year-old in Cleveland, Texas, were sentenced in November, while the instigator of the gang rape of a 16-year-old in Richmond, California, was sentenced in October, and four men who gang-raped a 15-year-old near New Orleans were sentenced in April, though the six men who gang-raped a 14-year-old in Chicago last fall are still at large. Not that I actually went out looking for incidents: they’re everywhere in the news, though no one adds them up and indicates that there might actually be a pattern.

Meet a 9-year-old girl quarterback who loves beating the boys

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Why does Sam Gordon make us so damned happy?

The 9-year-old girl quarterback is a viral video champion. On Nov. 5, her father posted a video surveying the highlights of her performance in the 2012 season. Days later she became national news. Her father's video shows her breaking away from tackles and making them, taking hits, gaining yards and making touchdown after touchdown. Mostly, we see her being chased down the field, eluding the outstretched hands of the boys trying to bring her to the ground. Her first-ever season as a football player concluded with her landing the cover of a Wheaties cereal box.

She's been on ESPN's "Sports Center," "Monday Night Countdown" and ABC's "Good Morning America." But her best media appearance was on NFL's "GameDay." Instead of entertaining the curiosity of television hosts, she hung out with pro football players. Like a lot of athletes, she is much more relaxed in the company of her tribe.

Is there a war on men?

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:44:00 +0000

I’d like to thank Fox News contributor Suzanne Venker for having the balls to write about the War on Men this weekend. It was an important story and I want to share my important opinion about it.

Suzanne Venker was right about what’s got me — the American Male — down. Three words: Increased competition. And feminism. Since this crazy feminism stuff really started getting popular (thanks, Mom) and ladies have started acting (and smelling) like dudes, I’ve been withdrawing from higher education, from family, even from some parts of the labor force. (I want to make it very clear that I’m withdrawing, not quitting; quitting sounds way too harsh.)

But can you blame me for withdrawing? I’m so tired and angry about feminism and the increased level of competition I have to deal with at school, at home and in the workplace that it’s just easier to not even bother competing at all. Instead, I spend my mornings pulling bong rips on the couch while catching up on reruns of "Boy Meets World." But then I catch one of the later episodes where Topanga clearly asserts her dominance over a neutered Cory and I’m back where I started before I decided to get stoned and not leave the house.

Must men be patronizing?

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:38:00 +0000

I still don't know why Sallie and I bothered to go to that party in the forest slope above Aspen. The people were all older than us and dull in a distinguished way, old enough that we, at forty-ish, passed as the occasion's young ladies. The house was great -- if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets -- a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave, when our host said, "No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you." He was an imposing man who'd made a lot of money.

He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, "So? I hear you've written a couple of books."

I replied, "Several, actually."

He said, in the way you encourage your friend's 7-year-old to describe flute practice, "And what are they about?"

They were actually about quite a few different things, the six or seven out by then, but I began to speak only of the most recent on that summer day in 2003, "River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West," my book on the annihilation of time and space and the industrialization of everyday life.