Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

Sybil Vane at Bitch Ph.D. mentioned this:

I was going to embed a video of the President of the L.A. chapter of N.O.W. introducing and personally endorsing Sarah Palin at a CA rally, having the audacity to end her introduction with the phrase "This is what a feminist looks like."

I figured she was joking, that not even N.O.W. leadership was that stupid.

I was wrong.

Labels: feminism, John McCain, Republicans, Utter Stupidity

by Ken Houghton

The penultimate list included a Nebula winner (Scarborough), a work that received an embarassment of awards in and out of genre (The Sparrow), a John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner (Slonczewski), and enough works that are very recent and well-known (Kushner x 2, Bull, Valente, Huff, etc.) that my friend Constance (who edited a work that is appropriate for the list and knows the history of the field) could legitimately note:

Very few of these are anything close to obscure. I still don’t get this.

Though, I am really pleased to find Katharine Kerr’s Polar City Blues on this list. Yet, it wasn’t published by a small, no-name press either.

How do you figure writers like Tanya Huff etc. are obscure and unknown? When their books are all on the shelves of all the chains still in operation?

Most of the clear gaffes are gone, and it's good to see God Stalk on the final list. But this is a list of "books I read when I was younger," not "books that have been forgotten."

If this is Feminist SF - The Blog's idea of "obscure" works, then I promise to pay attention to them again when I stop yawning.

Labels: feminism, fiction, sf

by Anonymous

From the archives of "news articles that should be in The Onion, but aren't," here's a gem from the Montreal Gazette.

Labels: Fake News, feminism

by Anonymous

Here are the answers to last Thursday's Girls of Summer quiz. If you want to take the quiz before you see the answers, stop reading here! (Sorry, I don't know how to do the "below the fold" thing.)

Sources: my main source is the Exploratorium's exhibit on the science of baseball, which includes a section on the girls of summer. Other sources include the AAGPBL site and the Baseball Almanac.

1) How many years did women play professional baseball in the US?
Answer: b, 60-65 years. Women first played professional ball in 1875 -- before they could vote or own property in their own names after marriage. The Bloomer Girls teams, many of which were integrated by sex, played until 1934.

Wrigley founded the All-American Girls Softball League in 1943. League play morphed into baseball some time around 1953 or 1954, depending on which criterion you use to define real baseball. The Colorado Silver Bullets, a women's professional team, operated from 1994-1997 until Coors pulled the plug.

2) Who was the first woman to play baseball under a contract in the men's minor leagues?
Answer: a, Lizzie Arlington. She pitched one game for Reading against Allentown in 1898. She was later hired to play in exhibition games in the Atlantic league.

3) Which female pitcher struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig, back-to-back, in an exhibition game in her rookie year?
Answer: a (corrected thanks to Ken), Jackie Mitchell, who at age 17 played for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a farm team for the Yankees. She had one pitch, a sinker. In her rookie season in 1931, the Yankees came to town on their way back from spring training. She faced three batters: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Tony Lazzeri. Babe Ruth got caught looking; Lou Gehrig swung at three sinkers in a row. She then walked Tony Lazzeri, and the manager pulled her from the game.

Neither the Babe nor Gerhig were terribly pleased at being struck out by a girl. A few days later, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided Mitchell's contract. Mitchell later signed on with a men's barnstorming team, but didn't like the circus elements of the trade (e.g., riding a donkey through an inning).

4) In which decade was a woman first paid to umpire a pro or semi-pro baseball game?
Answer: b, 1900s. Amanda Clement umpired semi-pro games in the Midwest between 1904-1910. She used her earnings ($15-25 a game) to pay for college.

5) In what year did a male player argue that women shouldn't be in baseball because God created women to be feminine and submissive to men.
Answer: Perry nailed this one. Bob Knepper of the Astros purportedly had this to say after pitching a game that Pam Postema umped:

I just don’t think a woman should be an umpire. There are certain things a woman shouldn’t be and an umpire is one of them. It’s a physical thing. God created women to be feminine. I don’t think they should be competing with men. It has nothing to do with her ability. I don’t think women should be in any position of leadership. I don’t think they should be presidents or politicians. I think women were created not in an inferior position, but in a role of submission to men. You can be a woman umpire if you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. You can be a homosexual if you want, but that doesn’t mean that’s right either.

Virtually the same reasoning was used when Landis voided Mitchell's contract with the Yankees in 1931, and also when George Trautman voided Eleanor Engle's two-day-old contract with a Senator's farm team in 1952 and banned women from the MLB minors.

6) Who replaced Hank Aaron at second base for the Indianapolis Clowns?
Answer: b, Toni Stone, an African American woman, played from 1949-1954. Ineligible for the AAGPBL because of her race, she played on otherwise all-male black teams, mostly in the Negro League. She signed on with the Clowns in 1953 after Aaron left for the Braves. When she left the Clowns, she was replaced by another woman, Connie Morgan.

7) Who holds the record for the most stolen bases in a season in professional ball?
Answer: c, Sophie Kurys, who played for the Racine Belles from 1943-1950. In 1946, she stole 201 bases out of 203 tries. Lou Brock's long-time record was 118 bases; Ricky Henderson's is 130.

8) Who was the first person to play on All-Star teams for both the AL and the NL and in the Negro League?
Answer: a, Lizzie Murphy. Murphy played in the American League All-Star game in 1922 and the National League All-Star game in 1928. This is a bit of a trick question, in that both were before the modern era of inter-league All-Star play.

In 1928, Lizzie Murphy played one game at first base for the Cleveland Colored Giants. During the game, she got a hit off Satchel Paige, much to the latter's embarrassment. (Toni Stone also got a hit off Satchel Paige.)

Murphy's career lasted 17 years. At the peak of her popularity, the Queen of Baseball could make as much as $50 per game selling cards of herself.

Labels: baseball, feminism

by Anonymous

In honor of the impending All Star break, here's a test of your knowledge of baseball. All of the answers could, of course, be googled, but that's between you and your conscience:

1) How many years did women play professional baseball in the US?
a) 5-10 years
b) 60-65 years
c) 80-85 years
d) don't be ridiculous, women are too weak to play professional baseball

2) Who was the first woman to play baseball under a contract in the men's minor leagues?
a) Lizzie Arlington
b) Jackie Mitchell
c) Toni Stone
d) Kim Braatz-Voisard
e) don't be ridiculous, women can't compete against men at that level

3) Which female pitcher struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig, back-to-back, in an exhibition game in her rookie year?
a) Jackie Mitchell
b) Edith Houghton
c) Rose Gacioch
d) don't be ridiculous, women are too weak to pitch against men

4) In which decade was a woman first paid to umpire a pro or semi-pro baseball game?
a) 1870s
b) 1900s
c) 1970s
d) don't be ridiculous, women can't make decisions fast enough to be umpires

5) In what year did a male player argue that women shouldn't be in baseball because God created women to be feminine and submissive to men.
a) 1888
b) 1918
c) 1948
d) 1988
e) all of the above

6) Who replaced Hank Aaron at second base for the Indianapolis Clowns?
a) Rose Gacioch
b) Toni Stone
c) Sophie Kurys
d) Connie Morgan

7) Who holds the record for the most stolen bases in a season in professional ball?
a) Lou Brock
b) Ricky Henderson
c) Sophie Kurys
d) Toni Stone

8) Who was the first person to play on All-Star teams for both the AL and the NL and in the Negro League?
a) Lizzie Murphy
b) Jackie Robinson
c) Hank Thompson
d) Frank Robinson

Labels: baseball, feminism

by Anonymous

Those of you who are searching for that special something for the mother(s) in your life, who are simply fed up with the commercialism of Hallmark holidays, or who are simply looking for a worthy cause to which to send part of your tax refund, check out this website.

On a side note, I found it somewhat intriguing that the organization promoting this (very worthy) cause and video downplays Julia Ward Howe's link to the feminist movement. Neither the front page nor the history page mention the F word at all, and if it's in the video, it's pretty well buried. (Sure, Gloria Steinem is in the video, but gets minimal airtime.) Even the description of Julia Ward Howe's life emphasizes her abolitionist activities as much as her feminist ones, although my understanding is that the latter occupied a far larger chunk of her life.

One has to wonder if this was a strategic choice in framing, given that feminists rank right up there with atheists in [some] Americans' Pantheon of Evil.

Labels: feminism, Iraq, Mother's Day

by Ken Houghton

In my continuing attempt to move from depressive back to manic—or, perhaps more accurately, catch up on some blog reading while the new system at work runs more slowly as the old one—I finally caught up with this piece from a bird and a bottle* on Caitlin Flanagan, who says:

I’ve never had an abortion, and at this point in the game, I never will. Nor do I have daughters, so this is not an issue that will affect my own life in any immediate way.

Going to the article, we find that

Caitlin Flanagan is the author of To Hell With All That (2006). She is at work on Girl Land, a book about the emotional life of pubescent girls.

I note for the record that Flanagan, per another bio, has twin boys.

However, I do know some things about what she wrote that make this father of two daughters tremble:

1. Her claim that "[a]n ultrasound image taken surprisingly early in pregnancy can stop me in my tracks...a beating heart, a human face, functioning kidneys, two waving hands that seem not too far away from being able to grasp and shake a rattle [emphasis mine]" is dubious.
   
   Kidneys begin functioning in month three, while hands are not well-formed until Month Four. An ultrasound at 14-16 weeks is not really "early" in the pregnancy, and certainly not "surprisingly" so.
   
   
2. Flanagan seems to believe that men have no role in or reaction to the abortion decision.
   
   Let's quote her again:
   

   Nor do I have daughters, so this is not an issue that will affect my own life in any immediate way. [emphasis mine]

   
   As noted above, Flanagan has twin sons. She has just declared that they will never be affected "in any immediate way" by an abortion decision. In Flanagan's world, abortion is a Women-Only Issue. Men have no involvement, and no responsibility.
   
   
3. Flanagan will never adopt, but holds up adoption as a 100% certainty.
   
   Compare
   

   All they are asking, in a societal climate in which out-of-wedlock pregnancy is without stigma, is that pregnant women give the tiny bodies growing inside of them a few months, until the little creatures are large enough to be on their way, to loving homes.

   
   with
   

   Nor do I have daughters, so this is not an issue that will affect my own life in any immediate way.

   
   and see if you can come to any other conclusion than that Caitlin Flanagan, who could certainly afford it, would never consider adopting a daughter, even if it were a way to give one of those "little creatures" a "loving home."
   
   This is Risk Management at its most pernicious: you take the Risk (carry the child to term, be threatened with prosecution if anything goes wrong, and then give it up for adoption) and Flanagan will do the "management" (bemoaning the fact that one more child didn't get a "loving home," while not providing a solution).
   
   
4. Finally, let's look Flanagan's Amanda- (and Bean-) approved punch line:
   

   And a thousand arguments about the beginning of human life will never appeal to me as powerfully as a terrified pregnant girl desperate for a bit of compassion.

   
   Got your back on that one, girl. It's a Noble Sentiment. Just to be clear, that's the compassion that she can't get from her parents or your son or you, as the mother of that son, right??

Flanagan comes across as if she regrets not having been a brood mare. Consider the hinted twinge of "regret" in her declaration that she doesn't have daughters (though, as noted above, she expresses no willingness to adopt one), as if she had "other priorities."

Does Flanagan believe that her life writing "about the conflicts at the very heart of modern life—specifically, modern domestic life as it is lived by professional-class women" is somehow incomplete comnpared to those "discontented mothers and regimented wives"?

Is she someone who thinks that "being unafraid to take on self-indulgence and political correctness" is really "seeing things that a woman ain't supposed to see"?

Are her "witheringly funny observations about the sexes and their discontents" something she compares "subtle whoring that costs too much to be free"?

You know where I'm going with this, don't you, tbogg readers?



*found via Bitch, whose blog, following up to Tom's post below, needs to provide a feed that Google Reader recognizes, from my selfish POV.

Labels: abortion, feminism, other priorities