The White Male Oppressor Speaks

Here’s one from the “Wait, What?” folder. I read a response on Salon.com Where one of their contributors seems to be praising Tampax and their, in her words, “a long and noble line of feminine protection-as-empowerment advertising.” Yes that is right apparently now Tampons are a tool of empowerment but don’t tell that to an office building janitor because to them they are something completely different, and yes I speak from experience on that one.

The Salon.com piece which by the third paragraph I was almost wetting myself from laughing at and seeing the look of “what the hell” on my wife’s face (which made it all the better). Anyway this article was referencing a story in the New York Times that was speaking to the new run of print ads by Tampax where Serena Williams is pelting mother nature with tennis balls I could go down a very dark path here but, I will not. Oh screw it here we go…

I find it kind of amusing that Ms. Williams would be advertising for Tampax especially after her outburst at the US Open that smacked of PMS. Whose next to sponsor her Pamprin? Why not make the cycle complete. So that is how it works for female athletes now. Have an outburst that looks like PMS rage and then get sponsored by the products that deal with PMS. To me that is kind of like those  male enhancement products sponsoring Chip n Dales. It just fits, no tampon pun intended but by all means taken that way it’s funny.

I was thinking about what the lady from Salon.com was saying with feminine protection-as-empowerment, just that notion alone brings to mind some rather amusing images. These new empowerment commercials I think need to bring in some of the old tampon commercials and add a line of humor because the old ones were funny. Like this one from Playtex tampons because as we all know this is a common conversation when women are just sitting around right? I mean really do women really try to convince each other to use these specific brands, let’s see shall we?

Of all the things that I never thought that I would be writing about, that would roughly be feminine hygiene products. I mean as a married man I have had my share of store runs for the things and find it really disconcerting when I am standing in the isle of the store with an empty box looking through all the options to make the best decision on which one to buy, and then of course that can’t be the only thing on the shopping list. One time I had to pick up tampons and hot dog buns. Yeah that wasn’t awkward. Try to explain your dinner plans when you walk up with that I dare you.

Which leads me to the amazing number of brands and types. I, the first time I had to put my masculinity aside and purchase these things, walked into the isle and was instantly lost. I mean if you don’t use them it truly is amazing all the different sizes and usages and God help you if you bring a woman with PMS the wrong ones. They have every kind from light which are little twig plugs to the fence post model that on the box says something like “Super Duper Maximum Strength Feminine Dams”.

As a man even if your wife or girlfriend orders a you to pick up a box of the fence post model you are almost afraid to because lets face it a woman with PMS can be like Sybil on a roller coaster with a butcher knife so you are afraid she will take the sheer size of those damned things as an insult. I mean for God’s sake there are men out there that would be threatened by the size of these tampons they are so huge.

Anyway I found both the Salon.com article and the New York Times Article amusing. And yes there really are some articles from feminist blogs that I think are funny and don’t have anything bad to say about.

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We as Americans are stuck with continued taxation without representation and our non-representing representatives for what ever reason refuse to listen to the will of the people that they are beholden to for their jobs. Never forget one important thing that they seem to have forgotten, we the electorate hold the power over them. They do not hold the power over us. With just one check-mark you, me and the rest of America can end their careers, and that is exactly what we must do.

Let us look at some of the things that they have done to insulate themselves from us. Congressional members do not have to pay into social security but expect you and me to contribute to a fund that is supposed to take care of us in our old age that they say has sufficient funding in their speeches, and while it may be well enough funded, it is in reality bankrupt due to the fact that Congress seems to think that the IOU’s that are placed in the accounts that hold the SSI money count as funding while they rob those accounts to pay for their pet projects and all the pork they slide into bills.

After only 1 term, which is two years if they loose the next election, they receive their entire salary for the rest of their lives, talk about a retirement plan. Can any of you say that if you worked for your current company for only two years they would pay you your salary for the rest of your life? I don’t think so. So why are we paying them theirs for the rest of their lives. All we are doing is letting both the Democrats and Republicans run rough shod all over us.

Congress is working on a bill right now that would force everyone to purchase a health care plan whether or not they can afford one. If you do not have one you are subject to fines of up to $32oo on your income taxes, and if you don’t pay up you are subject to a fine of over $10,000 and subject to a year in jail. So in essence they are using the IRS as an enforcement agency for their new health care tax while they sit with gold star health insurance on plans that they create from a list of services with no co-pay and no out of pocket expense for them but we pay for their ivory tower privileges while they throw us the scraps of a system that we will have to pay for twice. Yes that’s right we pay twice, once in income tax to fund health care for the lazy who refuse to contribute to society and then we pay again for our own health care which would account for nothing more than a stripped down version of Medicaid.

WE THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER

Why should we increase the ranks of the unemployed by 435? Because that is the number of people not serving the interests of this country and her people in congress. I say fire them all, vote against every incumbent whether they be Democrat, Republican or Independent. Vote them all out and send a message to Washington. Proudly state we are Americans and you work for us so start doing a job for us instead of on us or we will can your ass.

Congress has the lowest approval rating in history yet you keep giving 95% of them their job back. For the love of God look at the bigger picture rather than your own districts. Sound off and use the constitution our forfathers gave us. Or continue to sit idally by and watch what your fathers, mothers and grandparents fought and died to create slowly be stripped away. Sit idally by as your liberties and choices are torn from you by people that don’t care what you think or how you feel. Just know that if we do nothing then you deserve what you get. So stand up and be heard, we are all American so lets start acting like it and use our voices to let Congress know that we will be heard.

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Thanks to the wonderful world of Twitter and the feminist groups that follow me on there because of some of my posts. They have really helped my research by putting all the lunacy in an easy to access format and it is from there that I found this gem from Feministing.org entitled “Wikipedia’s Gender Gap” an article by Rose Afriyie.

First as usual before we talk about the article in question lets take a brief look at the author, Ms. Rose Afriyie. From her Feministing.org bio page here is a short description of her qualifications and experience, “Rose is a black feminist who has a B.A. in English Writing and Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh with a certificate in Communications. She has organized and lectured in several states on issues of gender, race, and sexuality. Her articles have been featured on media justice blogs, university publications, TheRoot.com and in the Chicago Tribune. She is currently pursuing a Masters in public policy at the University of Michigan.”

Now on to the meat and potatoes. I have now seen it all at least for this week and it’s only Sunday. I was planning on doing a completely different post but thanks to feminist groups and others following me on Twitter I have a whole database of material to sift through in one easy to manage interface. Ms.  Afriyie is speaking of a Time Magazine article, “Is Wikipedia a victim of its own success?” Now I read the article and it truly amazes me that people really can find ways to play the victim and find issue with things that are not there.

In her article,  she quotes the following “Sue Gardener, Wikimedia Foundation’s E.D. noted: The average Wikipedian is a young man in a wealthy country who is probably a graduate student — somebody who’s smart, literate, engaged in the world of ideas, thinking, learning and writing all the time.”  Then she brazenly states in her article “It should go without saying that if women make up 51 % of the population, 13 % representation at Wikipedia is a DISGRACE!”

If Ms. Afriyie had done any actual research rather than just pointing out the percentage of the population that are women she would have taken into consideration the fact that while yes women do in fact make up 51% of the population,  women accounted for just over 16 % of all network and computer systems administrators in 2006, this is down from 23.4% in 2000. Women accounted for 27.2 % of computer and IS managers in 2006. By contrast, women held 66 % of all social and community service management jobs in 2006. While in 2008 women made up 10.6 % of the Information Technology industry according to Catalyst Metrics.

The point that I am trying to make is that while it is true that women in graduate school out number men,there aren’t a lot of women going into tech fields as compared to other fields where technology doesn’t play as big of a roll. When she says in her article “This means that there is more to the story, possibly more issues — cough, sexism –” which in itself is sexist, but I keep forgetting sexism only goes one way right ladies? She is absolutely correct there is more to the story, like I stated above not as many women are going into fields that are technologically based even though a lot of universities’ computer science departments run activities and functions designed to get women more interested in the technology field. For example Washington State University’s computer science department held a “Nerd Auction” to do just that.

It is sad to me that a young woman with an educational background such as Ms. Afriyie only puts forth the idea that sexism is the only reason for any gap in contributors to Wikipedia, completely neglecting the facts that could point to other reasons for the gender gap between men and women. If I were to use her logic in putting down a company or industry then I would point out that only 5.8% of the total nursing population are men that means that 94.2% of R.N.’s in the united states are female. Then I could cry sexism and play the victim. But the fact of the matter is just as in the case of Information Technology, fewer men then women are entering nursing school. And there is nothing wrong with that. Nursing seems to traditionally be a field that more women seem to enjoy so why complain. The only thing I can say to Ms. Afriyie is try to use the reasoning and logic you paid to get from collage before blaming men for this “Disgrace”.

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