How does someone else’s success hurt you? (It doesn’t)

Also – stop hating on women

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WTF is up with the Taylor Swift hate?

I get the incel hate – they’re a bunch of envious losers, but from regular people?

I see things like the quotations below and all I can think is “really?” What did Taylor (and Britney) ever do to you?

I think it would be fair to have a conversation about Black female artists vs white female artists, but that’s not what’s happening here.

Honest question. I’m not a Taylor swift fan but accept that she’s widely lived and probably even a good person. I even sort if like a song or two. As Time magazine said in announcing her as person of the year, she brings joy. I won’t argue any of that. But I don’t think she’s a good singer. A good vocalist. I admire many singers whose music I don’t care for. Am I missing something with Tay?

Same with Britney Spears. America loves its mediocre pretty white women.
(From a blog I read)

Why are female accomplishments questioned in a way that male accomplishments are not?

This comparison of Swift vs Bob Dylan on reddit probably would not stand up to a P value analysis, but it’s good enough for our purposes. That is, I think most people would agree that Bob Dylan’s voice is not all that, yet way more people hate Swift than hate Dylan.

Dylan haters: 100+

Swift haters: 390+

Although to be fair, this isn’t necessarily misogyny (although I think misogyny is at the root).

Mr T’s father, Sly, was just a small, envious man. He remarked once about Paul McCartney, “If only he could sing.”

He couldn’t stand it that Mr T’s mom, Doris, was a better singer than he was. (They met, of all places, singing in a church choir. That’s where Sly decided his first wife was awful and he had to leave her for Doris.)

He couldn’t stand it that Mr T inherited his musical talent. The week of our wedding, when Sly and Doris stayed in our house for a week (again if you take away nothing else from my story, take this: DO NOT LET YOUR IN-LAWS STAY IN YOUR HOUSE THE WEEK OF YOUR WEDDING THEY CAN PAY FOR A DAMN HOTEL), we took them to the American Legion for karaoke night so they could hear Mr T sing.

They had never heard Mr T sing before.

They were both singers.

Mr T and I thought that they might like to hear their son sing.

Ha.

Mr T starts to sing as Sly is returning from the men’s room.

Sly gets to the table, then scowls and says that it’s too loud and he’s leaving.

I slam my fist on the table and tell Sly he *will* listen to Mr T sing.

(I had been taking vicodin all day because of the D&C I had had that morning so my boundaries were blurred.)

Doris pleads with Sly to listen to Mr T – THEIR CHILD – sing.

Sly storms out, refusing to listen.

Y’all, that is some deep petty shit.

Sly was an equal-opportunity hater I will give him that.

But the Swift hate – the women hate – is its own thing. Yes, there is the petty envy, but there is this thread of misogyny that men do not face. It’s like women are not allowed to accomplish things on their own. That the only way they succeed is through some sort of trickery – their looks – “mediocre pretty white women – or by sleeping their way to the top. (Which, honestly? If that’s the only route to power available, then I say use it.)

Except the women (Kamala) they accuse of sleeping their way to the top also happen to be super talented and qualified and in the end, it’s just petty envy and Patriarchy and a desire to keep women in their place.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why some men hate accomplished women so much.

Because women who can take care of themselves don’t have to stay in bad relationships just so they have a place to sleep.

Which means unaccomplished men have fewer options. And they don’t have anyone to look down on anymore (Although – cue racism!)

It’s always The Patriarchy, isn’t it?

(Speaking of The Patriarchy – are you registered to vote? Think about voting in the Republican primary to keep that man out of the race.)

Stranger danger

What did your parents teach you?

Remember when you were a kid and your parents repeatedly told you DO NOT GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGER?

And then Lyft came out in 2012 and their entire business model was GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGER?

Do you think there were any women on that product development team? Or anywhere – ANYWHERE – in the design and approval process?

Oh wait.

No.

They were all on the Apple Watch development team, which is why the Apple Watch, which came out in 2015, has had a period tracker on it from the very beginning.

HAHAHAHAHA!

I joke.

The Apple Watch didn’t get a period tracker until 2019.

Maybe the women were at FitBit, which was released in 2009 and added their period tracker in 2018?

You could track your potassium levels before that.

Because it’s way more important to know what your potassium levels are than to track your periods.

How did that meeting go, I wonder?

Male developer 1: I know I know I know! Let’s track POTASSIUM LEVELS!

Male developer 2: That’s a great idea! Yes let’s do it!

MD 3: Thirded!

MD 1: Is there anything important we are leaving out? Anything that would attract a huge market? Like half the world? A way for us to offer something that would be more useful than potassium tracking?

Female developer: What about a period tracker? You know – menstruation, which affects women, who are half the world’s population?

MD1: Did you hear something?

MD2: No.

MD3: Nope.

Narrator: And indeed the male developers were correct. They had heard nothing. Because actually, there were no women on the development team.

Back to Lyft. Which has been running for over a decade on a business model that continues to baffle me – convince women to get into cars with total strangers, which goes against everything we were taught as children.

And I am baffled not only that there are women who do this but also that it seemingly had never occurred to Lyft that this might be a problem.

In 2021, Lyft revealed it had received over 4,000 reports of sexual assault from its users between 2017 and 2019. That report also showed that instances of sexual assault increased year after year, and included 360 total reports of non-consensual sexual penetration and 2,300 reports of “non-consensual touching of a sexual body part.”
NPR

Except they were told it was a problem.

They knew.

In 2007, Pink Taxi, a taxi company with only female drivers that accepts only female passengers, was launched in Dubai.

In 2009, a company in Mexico did the same thing.

The new fleet of 35 cabs in Mexico’s colonial city of Puebla are driven exclusively by women and don’t stop for men. The cabs cater especially to those tired of leering male drivers.

“Some of the woman who have been on board tell us how male taxi drivers cross the line and try to flirt with them and make inappropriate propositions,” said taxi driver Aida Santos….
NBC News

It’s almost like women have been saying they don’t want to get into a car with a strange man for years. Years before Lyft was a twinkle in someone’s eye.

So Lyft finally – in September 2023 – introduced a feature where passengers can request a female driver.

And they’re positioning it as a way for women to make money.

“Women+ Connect is all about providing more women and nonbinary people the opportunity to earn money on their terms and giving riders more choice,” said Lyft CEO David Risher. “We hope this gives millions of drivers and riders another reason to choose Lyft.”

….more women can access flexible earning opportunities — whether they’re driving to build a business, support their family, or simply to enjoy earning good money while meeting great people….
Lyft

In the press release quoted above, the words “rape,” “assault,” “danger,” “safe,” and “fear” do not appear.

Now, if I were their comms person, I would have sent anything I wrote to Legal first. As much as I would have wanted to use the words rape, assault, danger, safe, and fear in a press release, I would not have, because I would have known that Legal wouldn’t have allowed it.

But I still would have figured out a way to get the message out. And that message is not “Women can make more money!”

Et tu, Art Institute of Chicago?

The devil does not need more advocates and the Art Institute of Chicago does not need to buy art from sexist jerk men especially when there are female artists asking the same Big Questions

These images are from pieces on display at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC).

Both are from men who basically say they are *just asking questions.*

Both are from men who have detached themselves morally from the issue, held their hands in the air, backed away, and said they are just asking questions. They’re not creating or perpetuating the problem! They’re just ASKING QUESTIONS!

About the faceless woman in the tub, the artist says, “There’s a snorkel and somebody is doing something to her under the water because she’s grabbing her breasts for protection. But the viewer also wants to victimize her.”

Dude.

Who is victimizing whom? You don’t think you have victimized her by creating this? And not only by creating this sculpture but also by refusing to give her a face or a name?

And the topless woman by the motorcycle. Guess what it’s called?

“Untitled (Girlfriend), 1993″

She at least gets a face but she also does not get a name. Instead, she is defined only by her relationship to a man.

Oh. And to make it even better?

The man didn’t even take the photo.

He stole it from a magazine where men used to send in photos of their girlfriends topless.

(We’re not even going to talk about that, although I am supposing that at least these women consented to have their topless photos taken. And no, I have no problem with nudity. My problem is when it is nudity specifically for men’s purposes – in this case, to enhance the prestige of the man with the motorcycle and the topless girlfriend. )

There are several of these images at the AIC. Images that this man didn’t even take.

I don’t know if he got consent from the women in the images. I don’t know if he shared any of the money he has gotten selling their images. (At least one print is listed for about $13,000.)

He is known for his use of “appropriated imagery,” which is another way of saying he has stolen someone else’s work, at least for the pieces he creates that are nothing more than photos of photos, like the one below. Yes, I think there is an argument to be made for repurposing an image in an artistic context, but when all you are doing is taking a photo someone else shot and putting it on the wall? That is a little more problematic.

His deceptively simple act in 1977 of rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own ushered in an entirely new, critical approach to art making—one that questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object. Prince’s technique involves appropriation; he pilfers freely from the vast image bank of popular culture to create works that simultaneously embrace and critique a quintessentially American sensibility: the Marlboro Man, muscle cars, biker chicks, off-color jokes, gag cartoons, and pulp fiction.
Guggenheim.org

Appropriation AKA theft aside, let’s talk about the bigger issue here.

That no woman has ever asked questions about art and consent and fear and appropriation.

That no female artist could possibly explore these issues in a valid way.

That those are questions for white male artists to ask.

(I had to google to be sure they were both white men and to nobody’s surprise – do I even need to Ask Questions about it? – they are.)

According to a study published in 2019, only 12% of the artists at the AIC are female.

This does not make AIC unusual – that’s about the level of other major US museums.

Who decides who asks the questions?

If you search on “female artists who explore consent nudity appropriation,” you get several names in just seconds. Here are three of them:

Joan Semmel
Nikki S. Lee
Sophie Calle

Here’s some of their work.

Tell me what sort of questions these pieces are asking.

Oh don’t bother.

We know.

We know what our nude bodies look like and don’t look like.

We know what consent and fear are and how we manage the lack of and the presence of all the time.

We know how the world perceives us.

We know.

We don’t even need to ask.

To its credit, all three of these women are on display at the AIC.

But.

Does the AIC need to show the work of those men to ask those questions?

Are there not other artists – female artists – who could ask the same questions that the men do?

And maybe do it better?

I’m just Asking Questions.

And AIC, you are complicit.

Your New Year’s resolution should be to campaign for pro-choice candidates and yes I know it’s awful to knock on doors but it must be done and if we don’t do it, young women will suffer

Some people are cool with women dying from abortion or pregnancy

I met a woman – Jane – who had had an abortion in the late 60s, before Roe vs Wade.

She had never told anyone until last year, after Roe was overturned.

She was in college. Her boyfriend, Joe, was also in college, preparing for medical school. She had an IUD, something she thought essential after her very Catholic mother had told her not to come home with an illegitimate child.

Despite the IUD, Jane got pregnant.

Joe didn’t want to get married.

Jane remembered what her mother had said and thought, I guess I won’t come home unmarried and pregnant.

Note that the parents never said, “We hope you don’t get pregnant out of wedlock, but if that happens, we will support you.”

I guess I should note that back then, girls and women and their families were horribly shamed for out of wedlock pregnancies. Read the book The Girls Who Went Away.

It’s heartbreaking. Shrouded in secrecy, girls were sent to maternity homes to complete their pregnancies and then were forced to give their babies up for adoption. Many of these women later became suicidal or suffered deep depression.

However. Jane’s mother had told her not to come home with a baby unless she was married.

“I considered suicide,” Jane told me. “Except my religion taught me if I committed suicide, I would go straight to hell.”

“But if you had the abortion,” I said, “you could go to confession after.”

“Exactly,” Jane answered. “Exactly.”

Jane knew what she had to do.

Joe sold his car to pay for the plane ticket and abortion and Jane flew – alone – to Mexico with nothing but a phone number written on a piece of paper.

She called that number when she arrived and was picked up and taken to a place where they did the procedure. She passed out and experienced heavy bleeding and needed medical help when she got home.

A few months after the abortion, Joe changed his mind and suggested that they get married.

Jane said fuck you.