anna spies

“ And this at a time when, I’d argue, we need the levelling power of the dancefloor more than ever. The fact is, we currently live in a society which is far more divided along lines of gender, sexuality, race, wealth and class than most people are willing to admit. We have the whitest, richest, most male-dominated cabinet we’ve had in years. And some large-scale sleight of hand gives comedians license to openly mock weaker members of society from behind a peeling veneer of irony. Somehow, the assumption that prejudice no longer exists, that we live in a near-mythically egalitarian society, has let that very prejudice sneak in through the back door - aided by the comfortable anonymity of online debate.

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“ Gavin de Becker is an author who has written several books about the nature of fear. In his book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence, he noted that the outcome a woman feared most from any romantic encounter was rape and death. I know it must be really hard on you, kiddo. You’re going to go through life fearing that, in a worst-case scenario, you could be sexually assaulted and murdered by a member of the opposite sex. Sure, it’s likely that something that terrible will never come to pass (god forbid! I feel sick even talking about it!), but there are no guarantees. In fact, some men (and presumably some women writing for Gizmodo Australia) will tell you to avoid drinking too much or wearing sexy clothes in order to spare yourself such a dark outcome. Imagine that! Hinting that it’d be your fault. It’s tough being a girl, huh? Now, pumpkin, pretend you’re a man. What’s your greatest fear in a romantic situation? Give up? More than anything, we fear being laughed at and made to feel humiliated by the opposite sex.

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“ Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have big brother government to be your provider,” said Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum and infamous for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

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“ You are the Gender-Liberal. This means that you share qualities with both Liberal Feminists and Gender Abolitionists. Like the Liberal Feminist, you feel political change needs to be done on a small-scale level through legislative change, not necessarily through a massive destruction of class society through the adoption of an extremist socialist stance. You are also very concerned with sexual liberation, and feel that women should be free to do what they please sexually without criticism, just as men should be free to do. However, you differ from the Liberal Feminist culturally, because you see gender as a social construction that needs to be destroyed. Like the Gender Abolitionist, you realize that gender is often perceived as one’s identity, when it should only be perceived as a small, insignificant part of that person. We shouldn’t be able to say “This person IS a woman”. Rather one should say something more akin to “This person HAS the physical traits of a woman”. This way, we wouldn’t be assuming someone’s physical traits are a part of their identity, and we couldn’t use this difference to oppress them or categorize them. In short, you advocate extreme cultural change through the destruction of gender roles, but politically you are less extreme, instead focusing on individual or legislative change as opposed to a massive change of ideology.

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“ Because if smart women who know how smart they are intimidate men (and they do), and beautiful women who know how beautiful they are intimidate men (and they do), there is, logically, nothing more intimidating than a woman who is fully aware that she is both smart and beautiful. I mean, maybe a room full of tigers with machine guns! That could be scarier! Or, a smart and beautiful lady who makes jokes.

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“ It took a special kind of guts to be a fuck-up as a woman, I thought. To say to hell with being a nice girl, the responsible one, the one who makes sure the man takes care of himself and eats properly and doesn’t take too many drugs. To be just as nihilistic and self-destructive as a man, knowing all along that you’ll get crucified for it, because somehow, the world will make everything your fault. He’ll be a martyr, and you’ll be a succubus. He’ll be a genius, and you’ll be a groupie. He’ll be a hero, and you’ll be an ugly fat crack whore who deserves to die.

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“ Whether being single and without children is the cause or the effect of so much hard work is hard to say (though we do know that until recently, the more education a woman had the less likely she was to marry, and it’s still true that never- married women are more likely than married women to outearn men). But regardless of how these formidable women got there — whether it was by default or by design — Kagan, Rice, Reno, et al. all serve as painful reminders that women without families may have an easier time of it, still, when it comes to getting ahead.

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