Don't worry, Ann - I've got you covered! You just enjoy the retreat...

OK, kids - step right up and see the best, the worst, and the most bizarre pieces of feminist and anti-feminist writing from this week!

I would like to offer Price Of Admission about the rape that is happening to women as they try to cross the border between the US and Mexico. In a little shameless self promotion I would like to offer The Passive Pussy about the ways in which we construct the woman as a passive body and the male as an active body sexually.

The Burden Of Proof Lies On You, The Pro-Lifer examines whether or not pro-lifers have a responsibility towards women to educate themselves fully about pregnancy and women's issues before making decisions that will effect the lives of women and girls across the nation.

What really struck me as interesting this weekend was the Doris Lessing interview in this weekend's NY Times Magazine. Here's one Q&A that really struck a sour cord with me:

You are best-known for the “The Golden Notebook,” which came out in 1962 and has since been hailed as a feminist classic, a label you seem to reject.
I don’t think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women. I mean, we have produced some monstrous women. What has happened is that given the scope to women to be critical and unpleasant, by God they have taken it, so men are suffering from it.

Read the full Q&A here.

The NYTimes has a blog entry about Beijing Olympic organizers having a gender determination lab ready to test female athletes suspected to be males. Men are not being tested and the tests do not even sound that accurate. If a female athlete fails a test she must have a physiological examination...!

Just finished reading Gloria Naylor's novel "Bailey's Cafe" and started "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present" by Harriet A. Washington. It has an interesting chapter on the eugenics movment and its role in sterilizing Black and Puerto Rican women, and you could read more about that in Dorothy Roberts' "Killing the Black Body".

This is kind of old but I just found it today and thought I'd share it with you. I'm in the process of watching so I don't have any comments/criticisms yet. Watch and judge for yourself.

Canadian reality tv show: The Week the Women Went

Chronicling all of the drama, humour and calamities that unfold, The Week the Women Went finds out what happens when the women of a town are whisked off for a week-long vacation with little to no contact with their families. The men are left to their own devices, juggling school lunches, homework and housework, in addition to jobs, businesses, and running the town.

As the buses pull out of Hardisty with the women on board, some men make a beeline for the golf course. Others party heavily all weekend, and then struggle to get the kids to school. Some have complete confidence in their ability to make it through the week, while others haven’t a clue what to do.

The Week the Women Went combines intimate video diaries with riveting and sometimes surprising footage. What choices do the men make as they manage life on their own - will the dishes pile up, or will they get things done their own way? And what will the women do by themselves, without the pressures of family and work?

http://www.cbc.ca/thewomenwent/

Betsy Prioleau's "Seductress" -" Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love" is pretty great for a summertime read.

The Week the Women Went sounds like a great idea to illustrate the importance of women's labor in the home. In Japan, a women's organization wanted to demonstrate the importance of women's domestic labor, by staging a one day sit in at a public gathering place or municipal office. Outside the planned site, the TV reporter interviewed female passers by if they planned to participate. IIRC, none did. Why not? The classic response was, "I have to cook for my family." Uh, that's the point?

I assume most men suddenly being left in charge of the home would result in least short term chaos or other solutions that the women would definitely not approve of, like eating pizza or fast food every day. A major caveat is that these men either lack the conditioning or practice to do the job as well as a woman who has been conditioned since childhood or have a degree of experience in the home or as a mother. If this show were simply taking the piss out of men, an equivalent would be expecting SAHMs with their own set of skills and life experience, to financially support the family as well as a sole breadwinner for a week doing whatever they can. Would that be considered as funny, or accepted as "proof" that a woman cannot do as well as a man?

I'll self-promote a bit by directing ya'll to my post on beauty privilege :)