Dear friends,

If you share my belief that the traditional gender roles, gender stereotypes and the expectations of gendered society have blighted your life and the lives of countless other people, please heed the following suggestion: stop promoting the narrative of how members of your gender have been oppressed by members of the other gender.

“Gender wars” are the best friend and the most dedicated ally of traditional and rigid gender systems. Every time you promote the narrative of a 100% oppressive and 100% victimized gender, you add one more brick into the wall that separates us all from the beautiful era when none of us will be defined by the shape of the genitals we were born with.

If the following is true, then the Eurozone is doomed:

President Hollande’s proposal would restore the retirement age to 60 for individuals who have contributed to the pension system for 41 years.  Mothers with three or more children would also be able to retire at 60, as would the elderly unemployed.  Proposals to lower the pension age for other categories of workers are said to be under consideration.  The first step alone will cost E1.1 billion in 2013, rising to E3 billion a year by 2017.

The government proposes to cover the expense by raising payroll taxes for employers and employees.

This is completely ridiculous. There is no way France’s economy will withstand something like this.

As it is, I find the idea of a payroll tax to be incomprehensible (I mean the one that is paid by the employer, not the pay-as-you-earn witholdings from salaries.) My sister, for example, has her own business. She is employing several people. In a difficult economy, she keeps creating new jobs for people. And for some completely incomprehensible reason, she has to give a significant portion of her profit as payment for providing this important social service and letting people earn their livings*. Is this meant to be a discouragement for job creation or what? I honestly have no idea how this makes sense. I’m all in favor of paying taxes on what I earn. But why do employers pay twice, both from their profit and for each employee, is a mystery. Is the goal to ensure that the employers saddle their existing employees with more and more work to avoid hiring new people? Is it an incentive to outsource jobs? At least, small businesses should get some relief here, don’t you think?

I’m also bothered by “mothers with three or more children”, if that’s what the proposal actually says, as opposed to “people with three or more children.” What about single fathers? How are they less entitled to the same consideration? Besides, it would seem to me like people with children really need help when the children are small or in college, not when they are 60. Wouldn’t abundant and free daycare facilities and free college education be more helpful to such people?

The entire proposal looks like a populist gesture with no meaning.

* My sister also will be deprived of her right to a maternity leave that all Quebecois women who are not small business owners enjoy. In spite of getting her profits taxed so heavily, she isn’t entitled to getting something back in exchange because she creates jobs. The only people that the government of Quebec hates more than small business owners are professional, successful women.

. . . that even the serial killer and rapist Karla Homolka found a guy willing to marry her fifteen seconds after being released from jail.

Why she was released from jail after serving only 12 years in extremely comfortable conditions when any male serial killer who committed the same crimes would rot in prison forever is a different question.

My sister just made sure that my bout of insomnia will continue tonight, too, by telling me about the most recent serial killer from Montreal who has recently been captured. I have no idea how I managed to miss this horrifying story.

The only positive thing about this tragedy is that, nowadays, it is much easier to catch such serial killers. Just a 100 years ago, he’d kill a multitude people and would probably only be stopped by old age or death. And in our times, the entire world starts to collaborate at apprehending the killer.

I’m now completely traumatized by this story.

My blogroll is inundated by posts discussing the story of a woman who considers not having a college education as a deal-breaker in her romantic relationships. Simply put, she doesn’t want a serious relationship with a man who doesn’t have a college degree and doesn’t share her intellectual interests. Some bloggers say she is classist and seem to suggest that being aware that social classes exist is a huge sin. Others point out how anti-feminist and obnoxious is this discourse of picky women who need to lower their expectations and settle because otherwise they might fail to fulfill the only goal a woman has in life and snag a husband.

Since everybody is interested in this story, I wanted to share my approach when I was dating. This isn’t in any way a suggestion that anybody should see life in the exact same way. The post is not prescriptive. I’m just sharing.

I developed a very detailed description of the only kind of man that I would consider living with. The list of qualities I needed to see in him was from here to the Moon. I believe that knowing exactly what I wanted in a relationship allowed me to find one that is absolutely perfect for me, so I’m really happy I had my list.

One of the top requirements on that list was that my potential partner’s education (I’m only talking about a partner for a very serious relationship that involves living together, not casual partners.) Not only would I not even attempt anything serious with a man with no college degree, I would not go lower than a Master’s degree and even that, I felt, would be far from perfect. I knew I needed a partner with a PhD. I needed somebody who could understand my research and discuss it with me, as well as share his own. Somebody who doesn’t require an explanation why I absolutely need to take 6 heavy volumes plus two kindles on a beach vacation because he is carrying his own, as well. Somebody who wants to stay up all night debating nationalism and ideology. Somebody who has his own reading of great works of literature. Somebody who’d rather die than use a calculator to figure out the tip at a restaurant.

It wasn’t just the level of education that mattered to me. I knew that I could only live in the same house with a person from my own social class, somebody who is a member of intelligentsia, whether he knows it or not. For an autistic, the choice of a person who will share your living space is absolutely huge. If it isn’t a person who shares my sensibilities, who can communicate and address conflicts non-verbally, who cringes at any tactlessness and is traumatized by unpleasant realities of live, I know I will suffer.

There is also the issue of children. Children of families where parents belong to different social classes can’t belong to both. So they choose one of the classes. As a result, the parent whose social class is not chosen feels left out. The children are saddled with perennial guilt. Just imagine adult sons and their mother talking for hours about post-modernism and the father sitting there all bored and confused. Or imagine sharing your life with somebody who grew up in a rich family and never had to worry about debt, unemployment, bills, etc. How do you explain to them your fears, motivations, experiences? How do you feel when your own children start to mimic the rich parent’s attitudes?

Been there, done that, hated it. A perfect example of such a family is portrayed in The American Senator by Anthony Trollope. The father and his eldest daughter are from one social class while his second wife and younger daughters belong to another. Read the novel and you’ll see how tragic the reality of such a family is.

There are brave people who choose to ignore the class divide and don’t worry that their partner is from a different social class. I admire such people and wish them the best. However, I see nothing wrong in confessing that I would not have chosen to fight this battle. I only have one life and it belongs to me. It is my right to organize my personal life according to any principles that make me happy. I refuse to be apologetic for this extremely crucial and intimate choice.

And the title of the craziest statement of the week goes to:

To put it even more bluntly, men have killed far more women by ejaculating inside of them than they have by any other method. Semen has killed more people than any other body fluid.” (Emphasis isn’t mine.)

And according to this logic, women have killed more men with their uteri than by any other method. I mean, when you give birth to any person, you know they will die eventually. So by giving birth, all those horrid women have condemned every member of humanity to death!

I say we outlaw both penises and uteri as horrible weapons of mass destruction. Is it even normal that people are allowed to carry them (and concealed, too!) all over the place?

Jokes aside, the tragedy is that there are many unintelligent people who will excuse their hatred of gender equality by deciding that this is what feminism is all about and condemning all feminists as unhinged weird people.

Student: It would be great if humanity NEVER came up with the idea of taxation!!!

Me: But in that case our state university would not exist and you wouldn’t have an opportunity to take this informative and fascinating course.

Student: What does our university have to do with taxes?

Believe it or not, this particular student gets federal financial aid to enroll in college.

 

Then think again. I’m celebrating my fifth anniversary with my husband. While I’m at the restaurant, 48 emails from my students with comments, essays and assignments have accumulated in my course mailbox.

This will be a long night.

Is it possible that the recall of the Wisconsin governor Walker failed? After all the protests, organizing, effort? After it became clear that the guy is a crazy maniac?

Can I have a different news feed because this one is not working for me.

Wisconsin, you suck dick. And the saddest part is that it’s the dick of somebody as unattractive as Walker.

P.S. Romney will still lose the election. This is a completely unrelated issue. If you don’t believe that Romney will lose, just imagine him (the most uncharismatic person in the country since John Kerry) in a debate with Obama (the most charismatic person since forever). Seriously, do you know anybody who’d like to go out for a beer with Romney? I hear this is the main reason people vote in this country. So who do you think will make a better drinking buddy, a guy who smoked pot in college or a guy who spent his youth as a religious missionary? You know I’m right. If you still choose Romney, then confess that it isn’t beer that you prefer to drink but something much heavier.

P.P.S. For the especially serious and earnest readers: I’m trying to be facetious here as a way of dealing with the trauma of seeing Walker not getting recalled.

P.P.P.S. And I immediately got an email asking what I have against Walker. Seriously?

A clinic in Wisconsin has ended medication abortions as a result of a law signed by Governor Scott Walker in April, “The Coercive and Web Cam Abortion Prevention Act,” which puts harsh and ambiguous restrictions on the procedure. The law, also called Act 217, requires women seeking non-surgical abortions to visit the same doctor three times before taking the pill. It also makes the doctor responsible for determining that a woman has not been coerced into an abortion. Additionally, it prohibits the use of web cams (used for physician consult) during medication abortions. Last month, Planned Parenthood announced it would no longer offer medication abortions in Wisconsin as a result of the law. Yesterday, Affiliated Medical Services in Wisconsin made the same announcement. According to RH Reality Check, “it is now impossible to receive a medical abortion from a provider in the state.”

Jennifer Armstrong rules:

Transgression is necessary and healthy. Avoid it at your peril.

Is that the most brilliant thing ever, or what? The woman is a genius, people.