Whitewashing Anti-Feminism in the Housing Crisis

#16 - Privilege of Women's Invisibility

In Short:
When convenient, men can treat women as if they don't exist. Men use this privilege to take credit for women's work. Men claim opportunities and resources for themselves by ignoring competition from women. Men also use "gender blindness" to ignore the oppression of women, and to ensure that womens' deaths remain unsolved and undocumented.

Derived From:
#2 - Ownership of Women's Bodies
#10 - Marriage
#12 - Privilege to Define Women
#14 - Men are the Default Gender
#15 - Privilege of Unquestioned Majority
#17 - Primacy of Men's Comfort
#20 - Privilege to Speak

Exclusive to Men Because:
Men's lives and perspectives define the norms of society. As a class, men cannot be marginalized to the same degree as women. Meanwhile, any woman who attempts to ignore the needs of men will be quickly chastised by society.

Harms:
By marginalizing women and ignoring their ideas, society looses half of its innovative potential.

"Gender blindness" is used as a bulwark against acknowledging the oppression of women: society ignores the abuse of women by saying that no women were present to be abused in the first place.

The global humanitarian crisis of the large-scale systemic rape and killing of women continues with barely any notice, as womens' deaths are purposely left unsolved and undocumented by authorities and governments across the globe.

If You are a Good Guy:
You will recognize the contributions that women have made in your life. You will make it a point to note the contributions of your female colleagues along with your male colleagues, and you will not be terrified of competing against women on a level playing field. Instead of speaking over women and drowning them out, you will speak up when you see women being passed over and ignored.

Most importantly, you will stop ignoring violence against women. Instead, you will use your voice -the only voice that society will listen to- to speak out against the lies that dismiss violence against women. You will not let other people's willful ignorance of violence against women get by you unchallenged.

Part 1 - Whitewashing the Housing Crisis
Part 2 - Reverse Bradley Effect Caused by Ignoring Women

Privilege of Women's Invisibility (Part 1):
Whitewashing Anti-Feminism in the Housing Crisis


"[The Option ARMS home mortgage loan] was first created in 1970. The Emergency Home Finance Act was one answer to the growing social and racial unrest in the nation's cities: hole ownership as a means to stop angry Americans from burning down their neighborhoods."
~Richard Bove on NPR Morning Edition (8/28/2008), carefully overlooking which group was actually displaced by the Act (women).

"One expert noted that option ARMS were first created during the Emergency Home Finance Act in 1970. This act was in part drafted as a response to racial and social unrest in cities. Homes provided edgy people an incentive to mellow out their classist anger."
~Business Pundit, although which "edgy people" actually benefited from the move to the suburbs was not mentioned (the answer is white men)


NPR, in its analysis of yet another the unchecked debacle in the home mortgage crisis, actually managed to work in a little historical whitewashing while they were at it. The story glosses over the Emergency Home Finance Act of 1970 [1], but not without citing the "social and racial unrest" that the act was meant to quell.

Leaving the our country's financial implosion aside for the moment, is NPR suggesting that the aggressive push by the government to get Americans into suburban houses was designed to appease racial unrest?

Do they suggest that the banks, encouraged by the government, started aggressively issuing home loans to help quell the race riots? How can that be? African-American families were historically denied access to the suburbs, they were always denied access to home loans that whites could get (an infamous practice known as redlining), and white people sent death threats to to African-Americans who moved into their suburbs. Anti-discriminatory housing laws weren't even enforced until 1988.

And you don't have to be a policy wonk to cut through NPR's whitewashing; just look at the Census: the percentage of African-Americans owning homes in the US has never risen above 49%, and that 49% peak was due to predation on African-Americans by sub-prime mortgage lenders over the last decade [2] and not from the 1970's Home Finance Act. The Act didn't help African-Americans become homeowners, as NPR would like you to believe. Instead, minorities were blocked from home ownership while the white folks were flying out of Dodge.

But wait, if the Home Finance Act and home ownership were being pushed to quell "social unrest", and white people were the ones taking advantage of the loans, who was the government trying to prevent from organizing and rioting?

Women!!!

That's right! The government-backed flight to the suburbs was never meant to squelch the Civil Rights Movement, it was meant to squelch the Women's Rights Movement! The Nixon administration and congress knew exactly who the home loans would go to (white male heads-of-household) and these men knew intimately what Betty Friedan had only just put to words seven years earlier in The Feminine Mystique: that the suburbs served as a "comfortable concentration camp" to intern women, and the federal government got behind that trap as much as possible in order to stop women from contributing to the "social unrest" of the times.

For thousands of years, men have been systemically taking their wives away from their family members, friends, community, jobs, and the neighborhoods they knew and isolating them in their husband's home. Even now, centuries after the mid 1800s (when US women started gaining recognition as sentient human beings and brutalizing "property" laws were starting to be rewritten [3]), women are still expected to perform the mass-exodus of their lives in order to move into their husband's house (or new housing development conveniently located near their husband's job) upon marriage.

So when the ancient ritual of wife-transplanting becomes underwritten by federal housing legislation a few short years after Second Wave feminism arrived on the scene, are we to suddenly believe that suburbanization was only a race issue? Hell no!

This is yet another case of whitewashing history in an effort to deny the systemic oppression of women. The media hides an obvious anti-woman policy through a lame-ass cover story that pretends women never figured into the picture at all. For you see, it is that easy for a patriarchal society to marginalize women from history (NPR just did it without a hint of reaction from listeners) and oppression won't be recognized when women aren't even mentioned. Thus, Patriarchy can maintain the illusion that women are not oppressed, by pretending that oppressed women never existed in the first place.


[Updated by F.M. on 10/22/2008 with additional links and sources]

[1] The Act, signed by Richard Nixon, created the now-tanked Freddie Mac, and ultimately led to a previous housing crisis spurred by speculation and predatory lending that was quite similar to what we are going through now. Oh, and it helped to trap rebelling women in the suburbs, although you will never hear that from the MSM.
[2] In fact, banks actively steered qualified borrowers away from stable loans so that they could screw them with predatory sub-prime loans. And now that their scam has played itself out, African-American home ownership rates are "falling like a rock".
[3] Although in many savage parts of this world, women still endure legalized slavery and abuse under the ludicrous and evil pretext that a human being is no better than a dustbin when born without a penis.


Copyright June 2008 by F*ck M*sculinity

Flying, Television, and Forced Attentiveness

#57 - Women Expected to Please Men

In Short:
Men expect smiles from all women at all times. Men expect women to drop what they are doing and be attentive to men while they are talked at. Women's political views are seen as playthings for men to move around at will.

Derived From:
#6 - Male Gaze
#5 - All Women Are Sexual Prospects
#12 - Privilege to Define Women
#17 - Primacy of Men's Comfort
#21 - Privilege to Speak
#25 - Privilege of Privacy and Personal Space

Exclusive to Men Because:
Women cannot request to be left alone by a man without it being seen as cold or rude. They must be polite and hold some minimal conversation before graciously attempting to extricate themselves from it. Even being occupied (reading a book, doing work, talking to friends, or listening to earphones) will not grant a woman the right to remain alone and uninterrupted.

Harms:
By expecting women to entertain and be attentive to men at all times, men are robbing women of personal space. By treating a woman's views as trivial entertainment, men silence women. By expecting women to smile at all times, men deny women's suffering.

If You are a Good Guy:
You are not beholden to the selfish delusion that all women who are alone in public spaces are lonely, looking to flirt, or enjoy flirting. If you see a woman, by herself or with friends, in any public space that is not a singles bar, and she is not actively flirting with you (or calling for help), then leave her alone. If you're looking to flirt with women, go to places that are explicitly set up for flirting (singles bars, match.com, etc.). If you, honestly, just wish to make women happy, then give them the gift that they are denied much more often than the company of strangers: give them the gift of solitude.

Do not do the selfish/lazy thing of treating the entire world as your singles bar. And do not assume that all women that you are interested in are automatically checking you out. You will know when a woman is actually flirting with you; the signs will be too clear to miss. And please respect the "Do Not Disturb" cues: reading a book, doing work, talking to friends, or listening to earphones.

And if a woman is interested in listening to you, do not use it as an opportunity launch into a personal diatribe. Get interested in her life instead. Ask questions that you actually want to know the answers to. Be willing to question your own views while considering her opinions on subjects, and actively respond to her answers instead of just taking more about yourself. Men who don't see women as equal human beings become more interested in themselves than the women they are talking to .

Part 1 - Flying, Television, and Forced Attentiveness

Women Expected to Please Men (Part 1):
Flying, Television, and Forced Attentiveness

"But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
~Shakespeare's Sonnets - XCIII


There is a healthy segment of TV shows in the world that are obsessed with flying. And by "flying", I really mean crashing. Dateline loves plane crashes, and so do the "educational" channels (the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, the History Channel, and other such oxymorons), and of course the 24-hour news fire hoses. When they're not covering the latest "CRISIS in the AIR" (which usually turns out to be some numbnut with a pair of nail clippers who either smoked in the lavatory or refused to wear their seat belt) they're airing a gory docudrama on the hideous flaming demise of Flight Somethingorother from ten years ago. The shows feature firefighters in HAZMAT suits picking guts off of burning wreckage while some grey-streaked, square-jawed news anchor looks sternly into the camera and ponders what the last few hellish minutes of that doomed flight might have been like, before cutting to a 3D computer-animated rendition of the crash in glorious High Definition.

And now, in a weird reciprocation, Jet Blue has put a seat back TV on every one of their flights. This is apparently a Big Deal, but I turn mine off since you're more than likely to run into one of those graphic 3D docudramas on the flaming demise of Flight Somethingorother. Besides, if you are in a window seat, and have a choice between looking at this:


Or this:


What would you pick?

(By the way, thank you so much, TV, for keeping my best interests at heart.)

Then again, maybe I feel this way because I don't fly much and haven't gotten bored of clouds yet. Or maybe it's because I'm the only person on my flight who has figured out how to turn the TVs off. For you see, there is no OFF button for the seat back TVs. You can only change the volume and flip channels (Telescreens anyone?). If you want to turn the damn thing off, you have to tone down the Brightness until the screen goes blank, real intuitive.) Even if you do manage to turn your TV off, I DARE you to try and ignore the horrific-yet-strangely-compelling TV viewing habits of your seatmate! [1]

But my latest Jet Blue flight was even more enlightening than seat back TV. I was on a red-eye flight, and so I decided to tone down the brightness on my TV and get some rest. Sleep would not come, however, due to the stomach-dropping turbulence and my overactive imagination sprinting through every computer-enhanced investigative report on plane crashes that I had seen for the last twelve years.

Thank you, TV. Thank you again for caring.

And sitting next to me at 30,000 (+/- 2,000) feet, at this ungodly hour, was a 30-something man and woman. Neither of the 30-somethings knew each other. They were both obviously part of the business jet set. He was unshaven, and had obviously slept in his tan suit the night before. She was wearing the mandatory uniform for women in the business world: low-cut blouse, high-cut skirt, and dyed-blond hair. Of course, within 15 seconds of sitting down, the dude had started a flirtatious conversation with the woman.

And by "flirtatious" I mean that he asked her three questions about herself with a goofy grin on his face, asked whether she had kids, and then proceeded to launch himself into his personal life story for the next four hours. And I have to say, he had an incredible lung capacity! He talked nonstop. He only took two breaths during the entire flight (and one of those was to down a Diet Coke). The only replies from the woman for the entire four hours were, "Yes. Uh-huh. Huh. Absolutely. Indeed. Oh, really!" I feared that she might give herself a repetitive strain injury from such prolonged and vigorous head nodding.

After enduring this for about 10 minutes (and I had it easy compared to the business woman!), I had learned quite a lot from this exclusive screening of the Dude's oral memoir:

It just so happens that, I kind you not, this guy produced television shows for women! He had apparently worked on several shows for multiple networks, including WE and the E! Style network. If you haven't heard of WE or E! Style before, you're doing something right with your life. They're basically moving picture versions of Cosmo, only with more marriages and self-loathing.

Well, Mr. Producer Dude went on for quite some time about his industry [2] before proceeding to talk about his cubicle. He said that his office had, "such a great atmosphere," which meant that his cubicle farm was decorated like a college frat house. They had tons of movie posters up, "classic" pin-ups, and even a Transformers movie poster! "You know, from the 80s cartoon show?" he said. From her vigorous head-nodding, I can only guess that she was familiar with the TV habits of of 80's cartoon fanboys.

He then went on to talk about the time that he and a bunch of his coworkers went cruising around Las Vegas in a stretched hummer with the CEO of his company. He made vague references to "Vegas women" and the "crazy" time he had there; I shudder to think what he meant.

For those of you who thought that TV networks for women were less dude-centric than the rest of Hollywood, I'm afraid there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. And worse, it seems that a number of these networks are chock-full of honkin' frat boys who have never left that misogynistic paddles-n-pussy world. It's no wonder why most of programming geared towards women center around making women look good for men. If the most memorable experiences that women's TV show producers have with women are of the heavily-altered bodies that they purchased through traditional slave agreements [see #2 - Ownership of Women's Bodies and #3- Prostitution], then they will have more sympathy for the plastic surgeons than the lives of the people whom their shows are supposedly about. These guys are more likely to have gotten a lap dance than to have gotten a clue about real women, and considering how they go on (and on, and on, and on) about themselves when talking to women, they won't learn anything in the foreseeable future.

All this was going through my head (along with turbulence, and visions of aged white men nodding grimly over footage of smoking hunks of fuselage) when a beautiful insight came to me like a bolt from the blue: If anything horrible ever happened to my flight, then in the last few moments of my life, I would get an exclusive, all-access pass to witness the painful demise of one of the men responsible for bringing to the world, Bulging Brides: The Perfect Day is Still Pounds Away!

With that wonderful thought on my mind, and in a state of near-enlightenment to the totality of my life at that moment, I leaned my head to one side, and had the most peaceful sleep that I have ever had on an aircraft.

And yes, unfortunately, the Dude lived. He was still going strong when we landed on the west coast.

The woman was obviously made of iron.




[1] According to Tyra Banks, there is a group of obese women who are paid $300/hour to sit on fat-horny men! Who knew the Patriarchy would be so accommodating to every last sexual fantasy of men? But that's another post entirely. [Thanks to the person sitting in seat 13A for that one!]
[2] Quote of the flight from Mr. Producer Dude: "It was quite a relief for us when the writers from Americas Next Top Model weren't able to unionize."

Copyright June 2008 by F*ck M*sculinity

Counting Women out of US Politics

#12 - Privilege to Define Women

In Short:
Men can define or scapegoat women however they like. From hysteria to insecurity, men can project their own worst behaviors onto women and blame women for their own oppression. Men also selectively define women, choosing which women are exceptions to their stereotypes as is convenient to them. Men's stereotypes about women are never questioned, no matter how ridiculous they show themselves to be in real life.

Derived From:
#11 - Privilege to Define Everything
#3 - Ownership of Women's Bodies
#6 - Male Gaze
#8 - Privilege to Make the Rules
#20 - Privilege to Speak

Exclusive to Men Because:
Men get to analyze, define, and judge women's lives without resistance. Women, on the other hand, have to constantly defend their views if they fail to conform to men's views. When women explain the motivations for their own actions, they are ignored. Instead, their motivations are "deduced" by other men. Any discussion about women from a woman's perspective is seen as unorthodox.

Harms:
In selectively defining women, men choose which women "deserve" empathy, consideration of their views, and full human rights.* In order to gain their favor, men demand that women conform to their roles as part of the Sex Class. Thus, women are denied self-determination, and are allowed only the illusion of independent humanity so long as they regurgitate the dominant opinions of men.

Men who grow up in a society that encourages belief in their perceptions of women over the words and experiences of women are incapable of having a genuine intimate relationship with women. Until you believe that it is possible for your mother, wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, female friend, etc. to radically alter any of your deeply held views on life, they are not fully human to you, and will always be unknowable to you on the far side of a gulf of unshared human experience that you refuse to reach across.

If You are a Good Guy:
This one is a no-brainier: if you have a choice between listening to a man comment on a woman's motives, and said woman explaining her own motives, listen to the woman. A woman's word is just as good as a man's, so give women the same benefits of the doubt that you give to your male friends. If a woman tells you something that doesn't match your own beliefs, don't automatically dismiss her. Instead, try questioning both her views and your own opinions. Who knows, you might just learn a thing or two. And if you continue to do this for a few months, your friends may even stop calling you a pompous ass behind your back.

* Thanks to Varnish Eater for nailing this one on the head.

Part 1 - Counting Women out of Politics

Privilege to Define Women (Part 1):
Counting Women out of US Politics

"It was right after Michelle Obama's speech, in which the talented, intimidatingly intelligent Mrs. Obama tried to convince the country that she was as mundane as the rest of us, *laughter* and therefore no threat to us."
~Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, NPR, August 30, 2008 (Emphasis added)


Last week, NOW's Below The Belt column did a wonderful job of calling out the sexism levied both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin by the media. [1] Sexist beliefs, however, weren't confined to the frothing pundits. Behind the obvious misogyny of the mainstream news media was a complementary backdrop of retroactive gender roles placed on female politicians at both national conventions.

Over at the DNC, the two most high-profile examples of obligatory feminine subservience were Michelle Obama, who gave up her high-profile career for her husband's presidential bid [2], and Hillary Clinton, who faced the mountains of resistance to her "contentious" [3] Roll Call vote for the presidential nomination.

For those of you who don't follow the history obscure political convention rituals, let me describe the Roll Call process to you:

Hillary Rhodham Clinton gets her name placed in nomination on the floor by petition, in the same way that runner-up Ted Kennedy had his name placed in nomination along with Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential race. Once the petition is verified, the Roll Call starts. According to party rules, the state delegates are locked into voting the same way as their state voted during the primary election. Starting with Alabama, the state delegates declare their votes to each candidate, matching the votes from the electorate. Election signs for both Clinton and Obama carpet the convention room crowd.

The leader of each state delegation gives a brief speech praising either Obama or Clinton before announcing their already-known vote tallies to the crowd. Many speeches later, and to no one's surprise, Obama -having won more primary states- takes the lead in the delegate count. The superdelegates then vote after the state delegates. Unlike state delegates, the superdelegates can change their vote at any time. Predictably, the majority of superdelegates vote for Obama, and with that Obama receives the number of votes needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

In a piece of planned stagecraft, one superdelegate vote will be left for last. Hillary Clinton, also a superdelegate like Obama, will declare her vote in for Obama. She will then bring a motion to the floor that Barak Obama be selected for nomination by acclamation. Right on cue, the Clinton and Obama Election signs flip around, revealing the word "UNITY!" on the back. Roars of acclamation echo from the crowd.

Only, that's not what happened. That was merely what Clinton's supporters had asked for at the convention.

In contrast, the TV pundits told the world that the roll-call vote was going to be "a bad divorce" [4] played out in gory Springer-esque style on the convention room floor.

When faced with these two antithetical predictions of the Roll Call vote, what was the DNC to do? Do they trust the words uttered by longtime a loyal member of your own party and icon to many Democratic voters? Or do they believe the frantic hyperbole of media outlets that wanted Hillary Clinton out of the race months ago, and who opposed having her at the convention at all? When caught between loyal Clinton democrats and the fickle MSM, you'd figure that the Democratic Party would brush aside the pundits and go on with a normal Roll Call vote.

But no! In deference to the angry, hypersensitive mainstream media, the angry, hypersensitive dudes in the Democratic party (who, now that Clinton has backed out of the race, cling to artificial shows of unity with an almost fascist glee) had the "dangerous" Roll Call vote watered down, and scaled back recognition of Clinton's historic campaign as much as possible. Clinton, doing her part for the party, declined the keynote address slot, freed her state delegates to vote for Obama (even if it meant voting against the will of voters in their respective states) and signed on to a new Roll Call script:

First, many states whose populations voted for Clinton threw their votes in for Obama. New Jersey, which Clinton won on Super Tuesday, gave its votes to Obama unanimously. Soon, Obama led the roll call by 1,000 delegates.

Then the dance started: New Mexico, deferred to Illinois, which deferred to Clinton's home state of New York. At that point Senator Clinton canned her own roll call: "I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules and suspend the future conduct of the roll call vote," and she moved to have Barack Obama nominated by applause.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked for a second to the motion, and then asked for the ayes. The noise was deafening. She then quickly asked for nays, and the nomination was given to Obama.

When did the Democratic National Committee become so Republican-like in their need squelch dissent? Why did they all but dismiss the Roll Call vote? Why are they playing blame-the-victim with Clinton supporters? And why did they force Hillary Rodham Clinton do the hackneyed feminine dance of deference even harder than she was already going to?

Because women are not free to be legitimate candidates in any political arena, Democratic or Republican. A full roll-call vote would have given Clinton's presidential run an added level of historic legitimacy: there would have been an official, final delegate count. There would have been a number -set in stone in front of millions of viewers at the Democratic Convention, and stored on tape for future generations of young women to witness- that undeniably showed just how far women came in 2008. For the first time, women would have had an official score on the presidential scorecard of U.S. history.

Instead, we have a deferential (sorry, "classy") Hillary Clinton refusing recognition of her accomplishment on the convention room floor so that she can dutifully shelve her accomplishments (like Michelle Obama did with her career) to the man heading up the Party's nomination.

But even this show of utter acquiescence by Clinton was not enough for the misogynists, for they fear not just her accomplishments, but her very existence. When misogynists like John Feehery compare Clinton's watered-down Roll Call vote to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Georgia, it's not hyperbole in their minds. These misogynists believe that women should be invisible in the political arena (unless, of course, they are needed to tell endearing stories of their husbands home life).

These are the guys who keep the Lady Macbeth stereotypes alive. Despite Shakespeare's carefulness to NERF Lady Macbeth (by giving her a fragile and unstable personality), she has become an enduring narrative in our culture. [5] Lady Macbeth is the excessively (and I do mean excessively!) cited poster girl for Patriarchal political pundits. She is used by misogynists both as a threat to oppress women and as an excuse to forbid women from all positions of power, no matter how small.

To the supporters of Patriarchy, it doesn't matter how much Clinton's supporters towed the line, what matters is that Hillary Rodham Clinton transitioned from nonthreatening first-wife into a presidential candidate. They fear that change more than any Communist invasion. [6]


And if you think the dudely liberal version of Patriarchy is bad, wait until you see Republican Faux-Feminism! To be continued...



[1] This may be a shock to anti-feminists, but as Kim Gandy at NOW logically points out, "A woman slurred, regardless of her party or stances, is a woman slurred...[the media] should defeat anti-women's rights candidates like Sarah Palin based on their merits and their positions, not their gender."
[2] Last time I checked, Bill Clinton did not step down from any of his foundations or initiatives in order to campaign for his wife.
[3] CRCMA - "Contentious" Roll-Call My Ass
[4] A divorce? Really? Not many divorce courts around here are packed with "Unity" signs and acclamations from the crowd. But then again, I'm from Massachusetts, and people tend to be less friendly up here. Perhaps divorce-by-acclamation is a West Coast thing.
[5] We'll see if anyone remembers Darth Vader so vividly in 400 years.
[6] Not that Hillary Clinton is setting any precedent when it comes to ill-placed invasion metaphors. The media reacted the same way to Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. Before Dr. King's speech, Life Magazine said, "the capital had the greatest case of preinvasion jitters since the first Battle of Bull Run."


Copyright June 2008 by F*ck M*sculinity

Compulsory Gender Disclosure for Business School

#38 - Privilege of Scions

In Short:
Heirs to power and property are almost entirely male, and have been for thousands of years. The benefits of inheritance -influence, safety, security, and ability to shape the destiny of one's family- continue to be denied to women to this day.

Derived From:
#50 - Privilege of Ownership
#46 - Privilege of Family Fortunes
#37 - Baby Einsteins
#36 - Privilege of Having Potential
#28 - Privilege to Network
#10 - Marriage

Exclusive to Men Because:
Only 150 years ago, women were not allowed to own or inherit property in the United States. In fact, women were considered property themselves. Even today, years after the laws were finally changed, economically capable women continue to be made into social outcasts, and nearly all heiresses are reviled.

Harms:
Men are pressured with being the sole welfare for their families. Sheltered boys with the perception of a guaranteed futures often fail to launch their lives.

Women with no personal wealth become dependent on their husbands for income, and have little or no recourse against a physically abusive husband, a substance-abusing husband, or even a fiscally irresponsible husband.

Since women cannot traditionally inherit power and money as men can, the lives of female children are undervalued by their parents.

If You are a Good Guy:
If you have a son, you will not be afraid to have him compete with women on a level playing field, and you will make it a point to teach him feminism. If you have a daughter, you will value her future plans as much as your son's, and you will get involved in them. And you will teach the ideals of merit-based advancement to all of your children.

If you are having trouble relating to your daughter's future, try reading A Room of One's Own. When you're done with that, get involved in your daughter's life. Spend just as much time, energy and money on her after-school activities, internships, college prep, and tuition as you do on your son's.

And no, giving a daughter an elaborate wedding is NOT an acceptable alternative to paying for her college education [See: #10 - Privilege of Marriage]. So a good guy will not give the "education or wedding" ultimatum to their daughter. Such an ultimatum goes beyond unfair: it is a Patriarchal non-choice that daughter can make in only one way [See: #54 - Privilege to be Single].

And don't freak out if your successful wife wants a prenup! Realize that the law won't protect her property the same way that it will protect yours in a divorce suit. If you truly love your well-off wife, you will let her marry you in a way that lets her avoid going through a "civil death" to do so!

Part 1 - Gender Disclosure for Business School

Privilege of Scions (Part 1):
Compulsory Gender Disclosure for Business School

"You have neglected to fill in the following required fields: Gender."
~From every business school application you will ever see in your life


Here's some quick trivia questions for you:

Of the 290 Best Business Schools of 2008, how many of the top schools (schools with an average GMAT score above the threshold of illiteracy) are near parity? How many have a near-equal number of men and women on campus?
The answer? None.

How many of the Top Twenty Business Dchools are at least one-third women?
Four: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, U. Penn, and none of them reach 40%.

How many press outlets have covered the gender inequality of business schools?
One, and it ignores the fact that 20% of women MBA students are not leaving business school once they arrive, they are not getting admitted in the first place!

How many web sites covered this inequality?
You're looking at it.


"But FM," you say, "Women aren't in competitive MBA programs because there aren't enough qualified women applying in the first place, right? It can't be due to a systemic denial of women into business school, right?"

Allow me to introduce you to the Scion Form:

You will find the Scion Form at very top of nearly all business school applications, and all Scion Forms look surprisingly similar to this one. They all start with the infamous gender binary question. Gender is always the first question you will receive on the application. In some cases, schools will ask you for your gender even before your home mailing address. And for all schools, the question is presented as a male/female binary, and is mandatory to fill out.

Yes, mandatory! Business school applications are all online these days, and the programmers make it impossible to submit the application without selecting one of the two genders. And while schools are very careful to point out that providing ethnic background is voluntary, and disclosure may even make you eligible for scholarships, so such luxuries are afforded to gender.

Yes, gender is still the gate of opportunity under our Patriarchy. You won't be asked to list how many kids you have (that's anti-family), you won't be asked for your marital status or your sexuality (don't ask, don't tell), you won't be asked for your ethnicity (that's racist), you won't be asked about your health or handicaps (that's ableism), and you won't be asked for your age for programs that are closed-off to minors. But asking for your binary sex assignment is NEVER sexist, as patriarchal institutions have doggedly maintained society's belief in the biological determinism of gender.

And yes, transphobic programmers actually make it a point to limit gender selection so that you can only assign yourself to one gender. (There are no transgender, bigender, intergender, or questioning people in business school!*)

With all this security placed around the choice of gender, one is left wondering: if gender information is collected for statistical purposes only, why wouldn't they make its reporting voluntary in the same way as ethnicity? Why do they care so much if you pick both genders, or neither? It's not like students who tried to game the system by creatively answering this question would be able to affect their chances of admission, right?

But don't worry, the business schools have put all such fears to rest by including "sex" in their nondiscrimination lists, so selecting the female gender button won't hurt your chances of admission into the 36% of class seats normally afforded to your button.

Then again, despite the assurances of nondescrimination, there are fewer women in MBA programs today than a decade ago, even though women earn undergraduate business degrees at near equal rates to those of men. Are we to believe that half of women with baccalaureates in business just give up on their degree mere minutes after successfully pursuing it for four straight years? The answer that business schools give us is a resounding "Yes!", because any other answer might lead to discrimination suits.

This gender inequality is further skewed by the Patriarchal heredity section of the Scion Form [see: #46 - Privilege of Family Fortunes]. Once you've mapped yourself to the proper scion gender (or reluctantly assigned yourself to the gender that is non-participatory in the family fortune) you are given a chance on the Scion Form to show off your legacy chops. All business schools follow the single question about your gender with detailed questions about your family:

"Please provide information on your mother and father. Please include name, address, colleges and degrees, positions and current employers, and whether they are retired or deceased."

"Please list names and class years of parents, grandparents or siblings who have attended our school or other schools. Please distinguish MBA graduates from other graduate programs."

You may be tempted to think that the employment of one's parents is superfluous information that detracts from a business school candidate's own achievements. Your feelings would be justified by the fact that most business school candidates are in their late 20s, do not live in their parent's basement, and no longer rely on their parents to pay the freight. But before you jump to logical conclusions, let me just say that a business school candidate's GMAT score is statistically correlated to the wealth of their parents:

"The extraordinary generosity of our alumni and other contributors to this [fundraising] campaign reflects the importance of the role HBS has played in their lives and the world of business...It also demonstrates their commitment to providing that same opportunity for tomorrow's leaders."
~From Harvard Business School (Emphasis added)

And by "GMAT score", I mean, "future donations to help get their own son through the door in 20 years."



* The one exception that I have found is the Wharton School of Business which, in a display of enlightenment and tolerance rare for business schools, allows you to (optionally) answer yes or no to the following question: "Do you identify as a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered person?" They also you to (optionally) select "partner" as your Marital Status. Of course, these more enlightened options are only offered after you make your (non optional) choice on the dogmatic male/female gender question.

Copyright June 2008 by F*ck M*sculinity