Feminism | Posted by Emma on 12/21/2011

Pride and Prejudice: A Firsthand Account of Literary Sexism

Books: not for guys, apparently

Flashback: It is the first week of 11th Grade. Having gone to the same school since kindergarten, I have no need for first day back-jitters or thinking what to wear to impress my peers. I wear what I like and that usually ends up being some lurid mod dress I bought at a thrift store because I enjoy wearing happy clothes when I seem endlessly angsty.

There is a new kid in our grade. Let’s call him Andrew. I do not make any effort to talk to him because, honestly, I generally don’t talk to people outside of the small set of friends that I already have. Perhaps this is due to my aspirations as a fashion journalist or the fact that growing up an only child…

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Feminism | Posted by Alec A on 03/9/2011

From the Paris of the Middle East to Bacha Posh

Mehran Rafaat (in white) is a bacha posh

Afghanistan has had a rough time in recent history. The sudden transformation from fashionable escape for the West to war-torn warlord-ruled landscape to complete Taliban control (and now it seems that the whole place is more or less up for grabs as the current government’s complicity with the Taliban has been revealed) has been something shocking to look at independently of any time period before or after a given moment, or in a historical panorama of the past century.

Kabul was once named the “Paris of the Middle East.” The high society women were very well integrated into European society and many took on French as a second language in an aristocratic gesture to their high-brow city’s namesake.

But the times have changed considerably since…

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Feminism | Posted by Alec A on 02/10/2011

The Future West Point Cadet and Military Axe Grinding

what does it mean to be a soldier

Not a single female was to be found in my first semester history course.

Our class discussed this curious state of affairs extensively, and it was decided after much deliberation that another history course offered during the same block – Gender, Culture, and Power – had absorbed any females interested in learning about current affairs in the Middle East and Central Asia course. Do women find hardcore politics unappealing? I think that would be a gross generalization, but the better question is: Do men find gender studies emasculating?

In any case, one morning, my favorite history teacher who taught the class, started a conversation about the military. As was her style, she often began the day with some relaxing banter before pulling out the academic big-guns.…

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Pop-Culture | Posted by Steph on 10/19/2010

Gender Policing and Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber: What his masculinity means about our society's views of femininity

“What is Justin Bieber doing out of the Kitchen?”
“It is an offence that we need to share the same gender as Justin Bieber”
“If Justin Bieber was a woman…oh wait, never mind”
“Leave Justin Bieber alone, stop making fun of HER!”

There’s more like this. Whether or not you like Justin Bieber’s music, you have to agree that there’s something wrong with the above facebook groups. Every single group that I listed at the start of this article has over five hundred members. That’s five hundred people who, if they don’t actively believe that, say, Justin Bieber should ‘stay in the kitchen’, felt that it was at least funny enough to become a fan of it on facebook.

What does it say that…

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Pop-Culture | Posted by Alec A on 10/13/2010

Being A Gay Teen at Homecoming

because raves aren't always appropriate…

I was at homecoming this past weekend and, given my miraculously heightened sense of male gender roles, I made a few interesting observations that I would like to share with the wild internet west. Alright, I have taken a sip of coffee, so here we go.

There is no such thing as a male dance move. I noticed this as I was trying to dance to various rap and pop songs. I would sort of try and get into it and then I would grudgingly realize that I really had no dance repertoire to draw on for that selection. I had two options: either dance like a heterosexual douchebag or dance like a flaming homosexual.

Let us look at the dance routine of the douchebag. Put yourself in the scene.…

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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 01/13/2010

Wear The Pants

Docker's "Wear The Pants" Ad Campaign

Transcript: Once upon a time, men wore the pants, and wore them well. Women rarely had to open doors and little old ladies never crossed the street alone. Men took charge because that’s what they did. But somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men. Disco by disco, latte by foamy non-fat latte, men were stripped of their khakis and left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny. But today, there are questions our genderless society has no answers for. The world sits idly by as cities crumble, children misbehave and those little old ladies remain on one side of the street. For the first time since bad guys, we need heroes. We need grown-ups. We need men to put…

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