When a person enables the creation of a new helpless yet sentient living being, they should be responsible for taking care of this creature and ensuring its wellbeing. Be it a puppy, a pet rabbit or a human baby. But the question is who exactly ought to be held responsible for children—their biological parents or the society that forces people to give birth against their will? [Read more…]
Each person who is interested in dating and sex could write long lists of various traits that are either deal breakers or make a potential date more attractive. Most people only want to date people who fall within a specific age range. Some people won’t date conservative Christians. Some people won’t date those who are not a conservative Christian. There are people who won’t date a smoker or, vice versa, a person who dislikes tobacco smoke. Some people only date those who are interested in marriage and children. Other people look for casual sex. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. People can have all kinds of quirks about what they find sexy or physically attractive. A person can like big boobs or small boobs or they can strongly dislike breast implants. Or they can like breast implants. A person can have preferences about a potential date’s body weight, muscle mass, height, hairstyle, etc. For example, I find certain voices sexier than others. And if a potential date has beautiful hands, I’ll really like that (yes, I’m an artist; the stereotype that artists pay attention to people’s hands is true about me).
If I asked out some person and they refused with the explanation “you are not my type,” then that would be understandable. Nobody owes sex to anybody else, and people are free to choose whom they want to date. If a person was filling out their profile in a dating website and wrote information about their likes and dislikes, then that would be reasonable.
What is less reasonable are people who feel an irresistible urge to loudly proclaim “I wouldn’t date a person with characteristic X” out of context in situations where this information is utterly irrelevant. [Read more…]
Inclusive language is highly desirable, because its absence can further various forms of discrimination and create false narratives about what is normal in some society. It can erase from conversations and render invisible entire groups of people, entire lifestyles, even entire cultures. [Read more…]
Everyday sexism. The small things in life. When I complain about such “minor” incidents, people tend to accuse me of nitpicking and making a fuss about nothing. But they are frequent, they happen all the time, again and again, day after day, and together they create a deeply sexist environment that enforces upon people outdated patriarchal gender roles. [Read more…]
Thanks to transphobia, public restrooms have become a hot topic and I have started paying attention to how they are labelled in different buildings. Today I saw these somewhat unusual signs for public toilets in a building:
Aren’t they fun? Women, men with babies that need changing diapers, and men in wheelchairs use one restroom. The rest of men use the other restroom. This brings up certain interesting questions. [Read more…]
People who want to be parents are the ones who should be having children. What to do with their reproductive organs and life in general should be each person’s individual choice. Unfortunately, some bigots disagree with these, in my opinion, obvious ideas. [Read more…]
Recently there’s been some talk about periods among Freethoughblogs bloggers. A rather famous TERF wrote some tweets about how women are “people who menstruate.” That’s not correct. It’s wrong to imagine that only women can menstruate (so can trans men and non-binary people). It’s also wrong to say that if you don’t menstruate, you’re not a woman (a lot of women, including cis women, do not have periods for various reasons). Periods are not what defines an individual as a woman. There are various groups of people who have been assigned “female” at birth and identify as women but do not have periods:
–Elderly women.
–Women who have had a hysterectomy.
–Some of the women who have had an endometrial ablation.
–Women who choose to continuously use hormonal birth control.
–Women who are malnourished or very physically active.
–Some women with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome).
–Women with various genetic health conditions.
–Women who were born intersex.
And, yes, of course, there are also trans women who do not have periods either. Welcome to the club! Statistically, trans people are a small minority, thus trans women are only a fraction of all the women who do not have periods. It’s funny how in their attempt to redefine the word “woman” TERFs came up with a definition that excludes so many cis women. Simultaneously defining “women” as “adult AFAB people” and “people who menstruate” is impossible, because both of these groups of people overlap only partially. [Read more…]
How do children (and also people in general) decide what kind of clothes they like? People don’t pick their favorite outfits in a cultural vacuum. They don’t figure out how to clothe themselves from scratch. Instead, they look at what their peers are wearing. Sometimes, they also look at what some role model like, for example, a movie star, is wearing. Never mind advertisements. Fashion companies market specific clothes directly to children, and corporations wouldn’t be spending so much money on marketing to kids if it wasn’t effective. [Read more…]
International Women’s Day is celebrated on the 8th of March every year around the world. According to Wikipedia, “It is a focal point in the movement for women’s rights.” So far so good, I totally support attempts to eliminate patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny. Of course, we need more gender equality and rights for women. [Read more…]
Marketing people have a problem with limited creativity. The moment their target audience are primarily women, they will go for the most pink and over-the-top feminine advertisement design imaginable. Once the audience are men, they will go for macho imagery. Such strongly gendered advertisements with extremely feminine or masculine images are off-putting for some people. Not every person who is anatomically female adores pink. Not every person who is anatomically male likes macho imagery. [Read more…]