I hope Imus gets back on air. The market should decide whether he stays or goes, not the PC police! No one has to listen if they don't want to.

Re: the "multitasking" article: puke, puke puke. It deserves a post of its own. One of the women told him "That’s an absolutely insulting question" in response to whether women who start businesses might neglect their families -- but they were ALL insulting questions! "My second question was whether women should try to imitate men’s tough management style." The writer concludes, of course, that "women who emulate the tough-guy management style can be nightmares," and gets a woman to use the dreaded "catty" epithet.

In case you didn't realize Nicole, the market did decide: The market of women and Black people who decided not to tolerate his racist and sexist bullshit.

Wow, so many interesting articles!

*the Promise Keepers scare the hell out of me. My dad was one of the founders of the group in his local church. I thought it was weird, but my mom told me it was good for him so I went along with it. Then I read one of the books where it told men who had working wives to apologize to their wives for forcing them to take on "the man's role" and it was time for the man to take back his job. That part infuriated me so much! And my dad was obviously getting more authoritarian at home...ironically, it was Promise Keepers and the personality change it inspired in my dad that almost led to my parents getting a divorce. God I hope he doesn't start back up, right when he and I are finally repairing our relationship...

*As much as I loved Live Free or Die Hard as an action movie, the woman's character (and she did have a name. "My." That's probably not how it was spelled, but it's what it sounded like. No subtext there!) bothered the hell out of me. OF COURSE she was a martial arts genius - aren't all asian women? And the racist, sexist diatribes that McClane went off on made him instantly less likable. But the explosions were good.

And I want to voice some thoughts in conjunction with the abortion-in-movies article, but I can't without potentially spoiling a major book that was just released. I think I'll do some writing in my own blog and link it in the self-promotion post if anyone's interested, lol.

I just remembered one more interesting link:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1644655,00.html

"...India may have aired Sex and the City on TV and celebrated Cosmo girls on the newsstand, but it remains a distinctly unfriendly place for anyone who wants to live alone, particularly a woman. Single women making their way in the world are frowned upon in India's traditionally conservative society, and landlords often refuse to rent to them..."

"Local small businesses are adopting the "babe chain" approach to selling their services."

BTW, that link pointed to the wrong article.

Meanwhile, from the article on allowing transsexual kids to delay puberty:

"...Some doctors say kids need to experience puberty to truly know if they're misplaced in their bodies, and warn that the long-term side effects of diverting nature's route are still unknown. A few doctors believe medicine should never intervene to change a person's body to match gender identity, no matter the age — what one transwoman doctor dubbed the 'you should be what God made you regardless of how miserable you are' camp. Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist who spearheaded the closure of the sexual reassignment clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1970s, is an appointee to the President's Council on Bioethics. He calls the Lupron treatment 'a modern form of child abuse.'..."

I wonder how many of these idiots, if they could get away with it, would arrange for 12-year-old boys in XX-chromosome bodies to get pregnant instead of just getting periods?

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/111405WB.shtml

"...Mahboubeh was nine when her father, a long-distance lorry driver, caught her in a clinch with one of her girlfriends. He didn't say anything but was convinced that his daughter was turning into a homosexual. In 1986, to 'awaken' Mahboubeh's femininity, her parents forcibly married her to a 30-year-old cousin. She was only 12 but, on the eve of her wedding, a state doctor confirmed that she was an 'adult woman' by establishing that she had breasts and was menstruating. After being raped, she ran away..."

"In case you didn't realize Nicole, the market did decide: The market of women and Black people who decided not to tolerate his racist and sexist bullshit."

Uh..no. If the market decided he would've been taken off for low ratings. If the people truly don't want to hear him he will get taken off the air for low ratings. The listeners never got a chance to speak thanks to Al Sharpton and his lynch mob of PC hypocrites. If the market of black people and women don't want to hear what he has to say they don't have to listen.

"Babe chain" link is fixed now. Thanks, moriath.

"I hope Imus gets back on air. The market should decide whether he stays or goes, not the PC police! No one has to listen if they don't want to."

Agreed. How many women or black people listened to his show in the first place? Maybe I'm on the fringe here, but if someone is saying something I don't like, instead of trying to get that person fired, I just don't listen to them.

I'm not gonna argue with you, Nicole because:

IMUS IS GONE! HURRAY! HURRAY! IMUS IS GONE! HURRAY!

Oh, and since you love bashing Sharpton so much:

"Sharpton Wouldn't Object to an Imus Return"

Ah well. Rev. Al never spoke for me, anyway.

White guys and their sycophants = the market.
Everyone else = PC Police.

Thanks for clearing that up. Do we get cute shiny badges with rainbow motifs?

after reading the first 2 links, I have decided I will be throwing up the rest of the day.
Cheers, ladies (and everyone else)

Hey! I'm from Ghana! (altho I haven't been back since the age of 7) but I'm glad to see the women in my mother country are standing up for their rights (even when chiefs tell them to shut up)!

The abortion in movies article was interesting; it bothers me as well that its so rare in the media. I enjoyed Waitress, but it was realllllly dumb that she didn't even consider abortion, considering she was trapped in a bad relationship.

Jolie as the a black comic books characer- wasn't she also just in a movie as Pearl's wife, who is also a black woman? Though... I thought Jolie was a quarter black. I might have made that up, though, or maybe I am confusing her with Mariah Carey.

Re: Trans kids delaying puberty- fascinating, but I have no idea what to feel about that, because it doesn't seem healthy, on the other hand, childhood can be hellish for anyone different.

"I'm not gonna argue with you, Nicole because:

IMUS IS GONE! HURRAY! HURRAY! IMUS IS GONE! HURRAY!
"

It's kind of sickening to see someone delight in the suppression of opposing viewpoints. Maybe I should try to get Air America taken off the air. Oh yea, no one listens to them anyway! I guess only hosts with large followings don't have the right to speak their opinions or offend anyone.

"Maybe I should try to get Air America taken off the air. Oh yea, no one listens to them anyway! I guess only hosts with large followings don't have the right to speak their opinions or offend anyone."

Didn't Imus have a small following too?

I heard that's why the uproar over his insulting the Rutgers womens basketball team didn't start right after he spoke his opinions on the radio but started after someone else mentioned it on the web

I'd totally wear a PC Police badge. Although, that probably would greatly increase the instance of people saying horrible things to me like "reverse racism" and "race baiting." *Shudder*

Don't you have somewhere else to troll, Nicole? Surely you could find a group of entirely black women to insult? Just because there are some other white people here doesn't mean that you're going to find any sympathy from us.

Okay. Done with the troll. Cross my heart.

Thanks for including the link to my blog, Ann! First Samhita, now you. I feel so popular this week!

"I hope Imus gets back on air. The market should decide whether he stays or goes, not the PC police! No one has to listen if they don't want to."

OK, so you don't like political correctness...

"Don't you have somewhere else to troll, Nicole?"

Hold on a secnd. You called her "Nicole" and suggested that she do something.

Since she doesn't like political correctness, and calling someone by the name she uses for herself is more politically correct than calling her a fucking cunt, then maybe you should have called her a fucking cunt in order to increase the odds of her following your suggestion instead of ignoring you?

"Since she doesn't like political correctness, and calling someone by the name she uses for herself is more politically correct than calling her a fucking cunt, then maybe you should have called her a fucking cunt in order to increase the odds of her following your suggestion instead of ignoring you?"

That is the difference between sensible individuals and PC nut jobs. I don't care if anyone calls me a cunt. That is your opinion, and you have a right to it, although I think it applies more to other members here. Stating false information is different, but everyone has a right to state their opinion no matter who it offends. Calling me a troll is just a sign you have no better response. Just because I don't agree with a lot of the people here doesn't make me a troll. Debate is fun. I could go to a libertarian message board, but why would I want to chat with everyone I agree with? That would be boring!

...and Don Imus had a much larger following than anyone on Air America. He was on the air for decades.

his lynch mob of PC hypocrites.

Did you just compare feminist and anti-racist groups who applied organized social and economic pressure to punish an unreconstructed bigot to groups of white racist terrorists who made torture and murder into a public, family outing?

Yeah, clearly your assessments of how to hand racism and misogyny are worth paying attention to.

I resent the term "politically correct" I would rather it be called, "civilized human", because those who spout hate in any form, whether it is against women, racist, homophobic, etc, are not civilized humans.

Regarding the "babe chain" article.

What happens when the weather gets cold? Do these women qualify for unemployment checks?

Tiger Time Lawn Care seems like a great company to ensure that women continue making 75 cents for every dollar their pimps make, oops, I mean bosses.

Jolie as the a black comic books characer- wasn't she also just in a movie as Pearl's wife, who is also a black woman? Though... I thought Jolie was a quarter black. I might have made that up, though, or maybe I am confusing her with Mariah Carey.

You're thinking of Mariah, who's actually half-Black like Marian Pearl.

As for Angelina, wasn't there a quote where she said that her Marian Pearl role wasn't an example of how limited roles were for Black women? I wonder how she explains this one??

And pass me a PC badge! =D

Fave quote on PC: “PC? Oh yes, I am always trying to become MORE Polite and Courteous!�

Yeah, clearly your assessments of how to hand racism and misogyny are worth paying attention to.
LoL, seriously, EG. Who gave Phyllis Schlaffly our web address? It's like Nicole lifted every opinion she's ever had from Conservapedia and Ayn Rand. I actually like Ayn's writing, but 85% of her fans have the intellectual development of an emotionally stunted 12 year old boy raised by right-wing lunatics. I guess the Miss Vapid USA pageant got done early.
I'm a Rutgers alumnus and I can't believe what Imus said. It's not like Rutgers has a lot going for it, sportswise. So the one time we do really well, he has to be a total douche. And, writing letters and complaining? Uhm, that is the market responding.

I guess radical feminists don't understand the concept of defending an individual's right to say what they want while disagreeing with it. Of course his statement was offensive. That doesn't mean he should be silenced. If people are offended they don't have listen to him. If no one wants to hear him he will be silenced. I guess this concept might be pretty hard to understand for people who support forcing stations to hire people of certain viewpoint no matter how poor their ratings are. The free market scares ya.

I'm so glad that there seems to be growing support for trans kids.

However, the part of the article that said children wouldn't know for sure if they were trans until they went through puberty made no sense to me! I'm not trans, but I remember puberty as hellish and horrifying. I certainly didn't feel like "yay I'm a woman now!" I felt like my body was betraying me and I was constantly at war with it. While my reaction may have been extreme, I don't think it's abnormal for kids to feel really uncomfortable with their changing bodies during puberty. So how exactly is this going to help a trans teen? By analyzing the degree to which puberty seems foreign and awkward???

*of course, the article was about delaying puberty, I'm commenting on the dissenting opinion they quoted that puberty was necessary to develop gender identity.

Nicole, Imus absolutely has the right to say whatever he wants. Only difference is that now, nobody's paying to hear it. His sponsors decided that they care more about selling their products to black people and women and people with brains then they care about supporting his Constitutional right to offend their customer base. That's the market for you. Certainly you can't expect businesses to pay people to drive their clientele away! Businesses have the right to make money, don't they, Ms. Libertarian?

Don Imus can go stand on an overturned cardboard box on the streetcorner and yell about nappyheaded hos til the cows come home. He can get his own blog. He can pass out pamphlets in the subway station. But GM and Proctor & Gamble and GlaxoSmithKlein ain't paying him to do it anymore.

I'm sure that within a year, Imus will be on Sirius, XM, or internet radio. There's definitely a market for cranky, priviliged, white pillocks that are absolutely threatened by any change in society that doesn't directly benefit them. Nicole is proof of it.
BtW, does anyone else miss Itazura et. al.? He was so much more amusing than Nicole.

Oh, & yes, absolutely, radical feminists are damn terrified of the free market. We're also scared that the sun won't come back after it goes away at night, that we'll walk off the end of the earth, that comets mean that King George will die, and that when men masturbate they kill the homunculus living in their sperm.
Nicole, quick hint before you call people radical feminists--READ A BOOK ABOUT FEMINISM. Most of the people here tend to be moderate. I admit I'm a radical feminist b/c I'm an anarchist and integrate that in with my feminism. But seriously, read something NOT by Camille Paglia (The Queen of Missing the Point) or Kate Roiphe.

For someone who claims to be a libertarian, you don't know shit about how the market works, Nicole.

Though... considering how ignorant most self-described libertarians are, I guess it makes sense.

Though... considering how ignorant most self-described libertarians are, I guess it makes sense.
*Cracks up* Too true. I encountered a great deal of libertarians in college. They were working with the college rethuglicans to eliminate the women's studies, African American studies, and Hispanic stuidies departments at my school (Rutgers-Newark). I have never met a libertarian that wasn't a smug, priviliged ass that never had to work for anything and had everything provided by their wingnut parents. It's so easy to say "Let the market control things" when you have everything and have never seen true poverty. Let them come to where my family has roots--West Virginia and southeast Pennsylvannia. I'm only two generations out of the mines and one generation out of the factories. If you live a life like that, you'll see how well the corporations take care of you.
My favorite libertarian stunt is when this one famous libertarian, I can't remember his name but he was also a gun nut, went to a violence stricken part of NYC & started handing out toy guns & encouraging kids to play with guns. He wasn't a total waste of skin.

I am amazed that the vast majority of people who wanted Don Imus taken off the air and who still want him kept off of the air base their opinions of him from one dumb throwaway comment.

How many of those people actually listened in to his show? I was not a daily listener of his show, but I can appreciate how Don Imus can poke fun at stupid invented categories that humans have used to separate each other.

If you really don't like Don Imus, I have a solution that will please you and everyone involved. If you don't like what he has to say, don't tune in to his show. This issue being blown out of proportion only shows how racist America still manages to be.

/commence crucifixion for presenting a dissenting viewpoint

/commence crucifixion for presenting a dissenting viewpoint
*Commence rolling eyes*

Imus wasn't fired being of the market. The market didn't have time to speak. He was fired because of pressure groups with double standards. Where were they when Al Sharpton made anti-Mormon remarks?

Moxie,
Are you still living in the 1930s because in the time I live people have it pretty good. As someone who's about to graduate from college, I know all the opportunities this country offers. Most people living on assistance dropped out of high school and/or experienced a teen birth(both preventable). I wasn't born rich, but I know I can do whatever I want. I'm not oppressed. It's all a matter of hard work and good choices.

wow ok so i'm not biting with that last paragraph in nicole's most recent comment, although oh is there much to say about it.

what i will bite just enough into to respond is the concept of "if you don't like it, just don't listen."
i GET that, a little. like i don't like everybody loves raymond, for instance, but its existence on TV doesn't make me furious. dudes spewing hatespeak, even if it's within other talk that's inoffensive, yields a reaction. thus, folks spoke up that comments of the sort imus made. and thus the sponsors withdrew their sponsorship.

let's say imus said what he said about your sister, or the basketball team on which you were a player. you don't have to listen, sure, but you still might hear it. and silently changing the channel just somehow isn't that satisfying.

the other side of free speech is that we can speak up when what other people are saying is not ok with us.

Are you still living in the 1930s because in the time I live people have it pretty good.
Actually, the stuff I'm talking about happened to my family through the seventies and is still going on in this country. Actually, due to government and corporate crackdowns on unions, mining conditions are returning to what they were in the early 20th century. Hence, the recent spate of mine tragedies. Incidentally, the corporations that owned those mines were major contributors to rethug causes. It may not affect your privileged self, but it affects people in this country who are no less important than you.
You seem supremely naive and sheltered if you truly believe that everything is up to hard work and good choices. True, they have an effect but in our country, all people are equal but some are more equal than others.
In good news, Nicole, I've found a husband for you. His name is Horatio Alger.
And I strongly suggest that you read a book about welfare. I've studied with one of the preeminent scholars of feminism and government assistance and your "facts" are just talking points from Faux News. I recomend The Constraint of Race: Lgacies of White Skin Privilege in America by Linda Faye Williams & Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal public Policy by Suzanne Mettler. Gender and American Politics, specifically the section on the effects of gender on public policy, and Gender, Families, and State, by Jyl Josephson. I also recomend the articles, "The Intersectionality of Domestic Violence and Welfare in the Lives of Poor Women" and "Promoting Freedom From Poverty: Political Mobilization and the Role of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union," also by Jyl Josephson.
BtW, my mum was on welfare after she left my dad. A good deal of women who are on welfare are divorcees, b/c, contrary to popular belief, women tend to suffer economically during divorces.

Nicole, how much time have you spent with people who live in true poverty? From your statements, I assume it is little to none. Quite honestly, the reasons people live in poverty are complex and as long as privileged people like yourself hold the attitude that they are all just lazy or made poor choices, things aren't likely to improve. Since you are so educated, why not use your superior intelect and pick up a book like Jonathan Kozol's "Shame of the Nation" or Ruby Payne's "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". You might just learn something.