Sentimental Feminist?

I suck.

After last year's Thanksgiving, when I complained about feeling too overworked, I thought there's no way I'm going to put myself in that position again. If anybody wants turkey this year, they're gonna have to make it themselves.

Then, as always, I started getting sentimental. There's apparently something genetically wired into me that frickin loves the smell of turkey as it is baking for hours. Eating Stove Top and Mashed Potato Flakes and basking in the cleverness of substituting these for the time-consuming counterparts my grandma would make. Topping it with gravy that I always think I'm going to screw up and it ends up boiling over and spilling on the whole stove but apparently the boiling-over is the secret ingredient in making it taste awesome to me. That, and a lot of salt and grease.

But the feminist part of me said "No!".

So when Rod suggested tonight bringing home a pre-made turkey meal from a restaurant for Thanksgiving, my brain was at 100% CPU usage for nearly 60 full seconds, not sure how to respond. At first I thought my feelings were hurt, as in "MY HUSBAND DOESN'T LIKE MY COOKING!", and then I thought "Wow, that's so Debra Barone of me. I hate Debra Barone.", and then I thought "No, he's probably just trying to think of a way to make things easier this year."

The sentimental part of my brain started getting sad and accusing the feminist part of my brain of ruining Thanksgiving. The feminist part of my brain told the sentimental part of my brain to grow a pair.

Tradition is important to me. But so is being valued like an equal and getting as much time to relax as the men in my family do. I need to learn how to give something up. Not caring about the emotional value of a meal is probably a good way to start.

Trying to do one post a month

After re-reading some of my posts, I feel like my blog is the definition of trite.

Blah, blah, blah women are capable. Blah blah blah men need to do their fair share around the house if women are going to work full time.

I'm going to try to get away from that and stick to short rants.

I'm taking an online SQL class. So I went to a meeting last night for Tulsa SQL users. It's liberal to call myself a user. And I'm certainly not a DBA. But I showed up to learn and become familiar with terminology even if most of it was way over my head.

There were a few dozen people there. And I was the only woman. Why? Lack of information about the group? Lack of interest? Other priorities?

Link to "And she's cute, too!"

Can't think of anything to add that wasn't mentioned in the article or the comments...I tried to think about how I would react but I don't think anyone other than my husband has called me both capable and cute.

And she's cute, too! - Geek Feminism

Eating with women vs. eating with men

"Women eating in groups of women tend to increase the calorie values of the food they choose," says Meredith E. Young, PhD, a psychologist and an assistant professor in the Centre for Medical Education at McGill University in Montreal, who led the study.

Women who eat in smaller groups of women friends, she found, eat somewhat less, and those who eat a meal with a man eat even less.

For the men, Young found a different story. Neither the number of dining companions nor the group's gender makeup seemed to make a difference in how much the men ate.

Ladies' Night Out: Diet Wrecker? , summarizing a study by McGill University in Montreal

I have seen this in the news in the past few days, and the angle of the story has been more along the lines of "Avoid girls' nights out if you want to lose weight!".

My reaction is WHY do women feel the need to eat less in front of men? I agree with this article that it probably has to deal with a woman's desire to look dainty in front of men.

Does this bother anybody else? That women's behavior is so easily influenced by the outside world while men seem to do their own thing no matter what? I can believe that there are evolutionary implications for changing behaviors based on the outside world. Centuries ago, I suppose it was necessary for women to notice more nuance in their surroundings. "Timmy is having less fun than usual. Maybe he is sick. I need to care for him." A society of socially dense women wouldn't last very long. As long as men were able to hunt, harvest, or whatever, society is fine.

But why do women behave this way around food? Why is it even something that is worth noticing? It seems that a society would survive longer if women were allowed to eat as much as they wanted so that they can bear healthy children. Maybe something changes in a society of abundance versus a society of scarcity. In a scarce society, being healthy is usually correlated with eating as much as possible. In the US today, being healthy is more about showing restraint around food. So, in a way, as much as it irritates me, I can see the evolutionary reason for women to eat less in front of men.

But why the difference in social cues when there are no men around? Women in large groups might feel that there are so many women around that their overindulgence will go unnoticed. But women in a group of 2 or 4 will notice what each of the others is eating and how much. I went out with 2 women for lunch on Friday. I scarfed my quesadillas while the other 2 took at least half of their meals in a box for leftovers. While I didn't change my behavior around the women, I certainly did NOTICE how the other 2 were eating.

My question is - even if the need to appear healthy in front of men for evolutionary reasons is legitimate - why on earth do we care what other women think of us? Are we so catty and jealous that we're afraid that another woman is going to call our husband at work and say "GUESS HOW MUCH YOUR WIFE ATE TODAY SHE IS SUCH AN UNHEALTHY FAT PIG WHO WILL BEAR UNSUITABLE CHILDREN?" It sounds stupid but it's really the only explanation I can think of.

I couldn't find anything in a Google search to see what other similar research has been done before, but it would be interesting to know what other behaviors in women change when men are around without us realizing it? Do we say less intelligent things? How is our sense of humor affected? How is our body language different?

Understanding these subtle behaviors and how they continue to give men control over us will allow us to being figuring out how to change the behavior so that women and men can interact more as equals, especially in the work place.

Fat Wife

Thank you Alina Smith for sharing this.

Original blog post which linked to this video:Sociological Images: Satirizing the Sitcom



The form of feminism that appeals to me is really about gender equality. Men and women are equal. Men and women should both have the choice to make fulfilling decisions with their lives. And men and women should have equal access to all the tools and education to make this possible. So I really feel like I should speak up when men are treated poorly. This clip does the trick nicely.

O Really?

Error message upon entering last name into field to get credit report from Experian: "Your last name should have only letters and spaces".

This offends me both as a software tester and a feminist. Nobody thought of hyphens? Now I have to decide whether they want me to enter Shankle Knowlton, Knowlton, Shankle, or ShankleKnowlton.

I picked wrong so I have to submit a request by mail now.

A new post!

This one is short though.

Emerson's teacher at daycare told me that she had been stealing toys away from the other toddlers in her room.

I know that's not ideal and we'll work with her and continue to set a good example. But right now I'm pretty sure she's not capable of understanding the concept of MINE and YOURS.

But I wonder - and maybe parents of boys can fill me in - would my daughter's teacher have even told me about it if Emerson were a boy? Is it just expected that boys are going to be mean and rough, and it comes across as especially egregious when a girl does something like steal a toy? Just curious.