Thursday, March 08, 2018

Some Fun On The International Woman's Day


In an alternate reality:




The United States elected a female president in 2016, one Donna Trump (on the left in the above picture), the scioness of a wealthy family.  She has been married three times and often boasts about her extramarital sexual conquests.  When her third husband was having a vasectomy operation in the mid-2000s, president Trump used the opportunity to have a fling with a famous male porn star.  She later had to pay him so that he wouldn't tell about the fling.

President Trump has had children by three different baby daddies, and has a custom of ranking men by their butts and how their front bulges look.  When she used to run the Male Hunk Of The Universe pageants, she would sometimes enter the men's dressing rooms to ogle, because, as she stated, she could do it.

She has also ridiculed physical handicaps in her campaign speeches and advocated physical violence against hecklers present at them.

In that alternate reality, Ms. Trump won 80% of the votes of white Evangelical Protestants. 


***

My apologies for not saving the source for this old newspaper article, which you may already have seen elsewhere:




It's a hilarious example in lots of ways, though clearly times have improved for women who dabble in works of art.  They are taken a little bit more seriously as artists. At least the "wife" job would be entered later in the article.

The International Women's Day, 3/8/2018



Because I'm an ancient blogger, I have written about the International Women's Day far too many times.  Today's posts are therefore not going to be terribly serious, after this one:

The majority of world's women are still born into societies where their births have less value simply because they are daughters and not sons, are still kept away from better jobs and education,  and are still absent from any positions of social and political power.

Most large religions, especially in their traditional branches, as well as most traditional cultures,  openly and explicitly regard women as lower in value than men, dictate their allowable social roles on that basis, and contribute to the inculcation of these beliefs into girls.

Two thirds of the world's adult illiterate are women.

Many girls are still forced into arranged marriages at a young age, many girls are kept out of school, and many girls are made to give birth before their bodies are ready.  Female genital mutilation is still common, though on the decrease.

When you read articles debating flexi-time or child-care in the west, remember the above.  When you hear that our favorite conservative numbskull, Tucker Carlson, argues it's men who really are oppressed in this world, remember this.  When you hear that all need for feminist activism is over, remember that Saudi women might be allowed to drive this year or the next year, though they are still subject to male custodianship in all aspects of their lives.

But we need not become despondent about the state of the world:  All those differences can be changed, and changing them will also provide general benefits for everyone.   For instance, educating girls creates more competent parents and more productive workers, thus raising the general health and wealth of the communities they belong to.


Tuesday, March 06, 2018

I Missed the Saga of Sam Nunberg!


This always happens to me, missing out on fun stuff.  For the last four days I've been deep down in the well of deadlines, scribbling away like a madwoman in the attic.  And yesterday I missed this.

It's a wonderful parable of the leadership we have now, a wonderful parable of the changes in acceptable social interactions Donald Trump's ascent to power has created.  Today almost anything goes, almost anything is presidential, tariffs can be suddenly raised by someone who would have failed Econ101, repeatedly.

And the media just writes it all down!

More popcorn, please.  Now, that does NOT mean that I'm having a good time, but gallows humor is sometimes the only type of humor which helps while we wait for the hangman.