I just want everyone to know that if you're looking for an "advanced feminist blog," this ain't it.
I say that with no animosity for those blogs who aspire to that name. There's an infinite number of pixels in the universe, and so far, Blogger is free to every customer. Knock yourself out. I'm jus' gonna sit out any battles that involve those kind of distinctions.
I'm off to a school conference today to talk with teachers and administrators about test scores. Scores in my kids' school were (gasp!) down last year, primarily it appears because several teachers were out with flu for several weeks. But test scores are a huge issue, and we all know they shouldn't be. So I'll go off to real life knock my head against that brick wall for a couple hours today. Unlike blog world head-against-wall parties, the school people give me free mediocre pizza.
If they required school sports "scores" to increase every year, like they do with academics, we'd have people flying in 10 years.
ReplyDeleteIt's impossible with sports and academics without cheating or expelling the "unfit".
Ah noes what u mean. ;-)
ReplyDeleteWho'd have thought that a life-long supporter of women's rights--a determined fighter for equality for all since toddlerhood (there are photos, I'm told)--who's approaching her forty-ninth birthday in a few weeks would not be considered an "advanced feminist"?
C'est la vie. We must celebrate our power where we know it lies, refuse to be defined by anyone else's notion of feminism, and, most importantly, direct our energies to making sure the less powerful among us can count on our support.
(I love my word verification: kismsts!)
Pizza? Even mediocre pizza is totally awesome. (Two slices, please!)
ReplyDeletePractically on my first day in grad school, for the PhD in Philosophy of Education, I encountered a memorable statistic, regarding test scores on standardized tests. It is this:
ReplyDeleteApproximately 65 % of ALL variation on between-student scores on such tests is accounted for by one variable: the socio-economic status of the parents.
Schools are becoming adept at one instilling 'skill' in the most useless practice: test-taking. They are NOT "preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow."
Go visit Susan Ohanian's site for lots of data and gazillions of horror stories.
If Obama actually gave a rabid rat's red, reeking ass about education, he wouldn't have appointed a corpoRat lawyer/ceo as his education department chief.
And clearly, despite my strong support for feminism, and having been utterly heartbroken in the 70s (that was before some of the advanced feminists to whom you refer were even born) when the ERA wasn't ratified (and I'm still bitter about it), I rank as a mere elementary feminist at best, or a concern troll.
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ReplyDeleteCan I hang out with you guys?
ReplyDeleteme? soon to be 58 and i've been told i know nothing about being a feminist.
ReplyDeletei do know a lot about whiny spoiled brats with no manners or much of a clue about how to get real things accomplished tho.
ReplyDeleteMy advice: Bring your own scoreboard.
ReplyDeleteDon't let their satchel full of bullshit sway you from your coursework. Don't live or die for their test scores, which due to the asshats who congregate in your town, are the false determinant of their financial misfortunes.
The scores they'll be spewing are so last year and do NOT reflect on the current classroom occupants.
My daughter's class made the next year's class look like geniuses, who in turn made my son's class look like turds, who in turn made the following class look like they'd swallowed a heapin' helping of smart pills.
You can't fix that kind of stupid.
You can actually feel yourself getting dumber when you're in the same room with them for too long.
Hug your kids and share joyously your/their hunger for learning.
Doing shots of self-righteousness with dogmatic-purity chasers makes for a wild Friday night, but you tend to wake up in some weird places on Saturday morning.
ReplyDeleteYeah but shots of self-righteousness is more than a Friday night thing with some people. It's a full-blown addiction to self-righteous outrage. And if you can't find your drug on the street you lick the puddle in the gutter and call it street wine. When you have to go to The Onion to find outrage against sexism? And then that's "advanced feminism." It's so extraordinarily sad; I feel as though somebody I knew once died.
ReplyDelete"It's so extraordinarily sad; I feel as though somebody I knew once died."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what precipitated this post, but I feel for you.A couple of years ago, when Bill O'reilly made his "motherfuckin' ice tea" comment about dining in Harlem, I had Condi Rice ordering a "motherfuckin' ice tea" in one of my comic strips.
Certain "progressives" were outraged, and the cartoon was compared to, specifically, Klan literature, circa 1970s Buffalo. Then they went through the archives looking for more "offensive" work, and they found the outrage they were looking for.
I emailed an "Advanced Feminist" "friend", who used the term "blogwhoring" on a regular basis, for some public support when the outraged progressives objected to my use of the word "whore" (it did not matter if the word "whore" was used to describe a man, they deemed the use of the word itself was enough to be demeaning to women because women were forced into prostitution in some parts of the world. I think if someone is forced into prostittution , it isn't prostitution ,it's slavery, but what do I know. )
I got the cold shoulder from Advanced Feminist, and haven't heard from her since.
We're sitting outside the box this week too. We're actually getting more love from conservative pro-life Catholic parents this week than from feminists, which we find hilarious.
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