Wondering

OH WAIT! I’m not wondering anymore.

I have learned all my lessons.  As well as not leaving the house looking like a slut, I shouldn’t act like one, or I’ll never get to get married and have loads of babies.

I was all ready to work myself up into a rant about this, but I can’t really be bothered.  (Emma’s thread – and Hadyn’s too – have sucked all the feminist anger out of me.) So instead, a Wanda Harlandesque bullet point list.

“Women, he says, spend too many years being “hurt” and “used” by men and should try to settle into marriage earlier.”

• Yes.  Because women NEVER make any decisions of their own.  They are always being used by men, and are, in fact, never active participants in relationships.

“He recommends couples should rather get married earlier – between 20 and 28 – so they confront hurdles together.”

• Because at twenty, people are soooo mature, and ready to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.  They are like that at 28 too (just in time for a second marriage!).

“the present trend of couples working on their careers and buying a house before finally getting hitched may not be the best plan.”

• Yep.  Because all anyone cares about is getting married and having babies. That’s it.  Not careers, financial security, travelling, having a life, nothing.  Just getting hitched and then knocked up.

“He advises women not to let themselves be played; not do too much for blokes; make them “work to get them”; and not to take them to the bedroom too quickly – “if you’re easy you will pay a big price”.”

• Ah, this is a doozy.  Don’t be a slut or ‘you’ll pay a big price’.  God forbid women have desires or act on them, or NO ONE WILL WANT YOU.  Be a good girl, sit down and shut up and someone, somewhere will love you enough to want to marry you.  Meanwhile, men should feel free to go on “playing” women.  Presumably men can sleep around?  That’s still ok, right?

Once Again, OH FFS.

Dear the Southland Times,

Oh Hai.  Is it 1930 in Southland?  Cos that is about the only excuse I can find for this headline.

Meet Charlotte Harrison, NZ’s latest hockey hottie

Nice alliteration, I’ll give you that.  It’s just a shame you had to be horribly sexist to use it.  Oh, but it doesn’t end there, does it?

“Charlotte Harrison has all the ingredients to be New Zealand hockey’s next Mandy Smith.

She’s a quick, agile, blonde bombshell with a thunderous strike that sends shivers up the spine of opposition goalies.”

What does the colour of her hair have to do with anything? She’s an athlete, she’s fucking talented by the looks of it, she’s generally pretty awesome.  Could we stick to reporting that please? You’re profiling her, and you have that she made the national side at 16 and the fact that she has, at 19, 62 international caps, after the blond bombshell line?  Not to mention the fact she’s been playing in Belgium for the past year?

And then there’s the photo.  I know she’s in the middle of a trap, but your photographer didn’t have one photo of her without her legs spread and her skirt riding up?

How about this?  Here’s this young woman in our national hockey side. She’s a supremely talented athlete. She’s awesome.  People who care about sport will still read that article.  Anyone who is reading it because of the headline is just a perve.

Thanks,

Wegan

(Thanks to @wellyjulz for pointing out the article)

Feeling stabby.

I’ve written about advertising, and how it seems to be becoming increasingly misogynist recently, but there are two more I’d like to add to the list of things that make me scream at the TV.

I’m not going to spend half my day hunting down videos – if you’ve seen them, you’ll know what I am talking about, if you haven’t I am not going to give them any more publicity that I have to.

The first is a Burger King ad, in which a man encourages people to buy a big burger for “your man” but look after yourself, and buy a “lighter option” or some such bullshit.  The implication being your man deserves the best of everything, and if you ‘let yourself go’, he won’t love you any more.  Cos no one likes fat chicks (or gay men). Oh, and also you should wait on him hand and foot. Cos he won’t love you then, either.

The other is an ad for Marmite.  (Eeeew, Marmite.) Basically a girl is irritatingly discussing a soap opera in a ridiculous voice until her boyfriend feeds her marmite on toast.  Then she’s all, ‘proper’ kiwi accent, why aren’t we watching the rugby?  With the tagline, ‘what makes kiwis, kiwis,’ or something equally stupid. Subtext?  Girls are annoying, and if you don’t like rugby, you’re not a real New Zealander.   Shit, sorry to those guys I talk about rugby with all the time. I’d no idea I’m so irritating. But at least I’m patriotic.

Come on ad companies?  Why the hate for teh wimmin?

I clearly watch too much TV

I am by no means the only person in the world to have ever been annoyed by advertising.  But is it just me, or does there seem to have been a rash of particularly misogynist ads recently?

Aside from all the ads telling women their hair is too dull/grey/lifeless/frizzy, or their skin is too old/wrinkly/pale/blemished/ or they are too fat, too skinny, and simply not just good enough, there’s now the Coke Zero ads.

Stargazer at the Hand Mirror has explained and deconstructed one, but in the one I saw, a weedy looking guy is in a convenience store, as his girlfriend is breaking up with him. As he opens his Coke Zero (because plain diet coke is clearly not manly enough) a buxom beauty walks into the store and drapes herself over him before he is airlifted off somewhere, leaving the girlfriend looking forlorn.

I can’t find it online anywhere but the basic tenor of it – men should have lives of ease and excitement and not boring nagging girls and their chores – is the same as this

Charming.  But in all fairness, Diet Coke ads, with the ladies enjoying diet coke while ogling some kind of hot, sweaty, manual labour have never been paragons of not-sexism.

But then, I don’t know how you can explain this (which is not in in New Zealand, but is all over the internet):

So ladies, if you are blue, it’s time for some “personal grooming”.  And remember, if you are hairy, anywhere, but particularly near your genitals, you are unwomanly and disgusting.  But it is ok for Schick to tell you that as long as they use bright colours, lots of pink and infantile rhyme.

This one is more subtle, but slightly more creepy:

I understand the product, and think it is probably really useful.  But couldn’t they just say that.

And then, there’s (again, not on in NZ, but it’s the same as a lot of BK ads) this.  Ack.

UPDATE: I found the ad.  Claire points out that the girl is taunting him with her new (hotter) boyfriend, and that’s why he goes off with the hot girl.  But the tag line is “life as it should be”, not “life as it is in real life” where he clearly hasn’t moved on. I still think the point the ad is making, that men should live lives of adventure and excitement and fun, filled with hot women and no boring girls, is pretty horrible.  And I probably didn’t articulate this very well originally, but it’s not just the one ad, it is the campaign as a whole I have a problem with.

Oh, but yeah, it’s meant to be a joke.  I forgot.

So proud

I love Jezebel.  I read it every day.  Sure it can be crass, over the top, and obnoxious, but then, so can I.  I especially love it when they mention New Zealand.  So you can imagine how proud I am today.

Snap to it

So you’ve heard of Snapper, right? The Wellington bus card payment thingee?  That’s meant to be smarter, faster, cheaper, easier?

Yeah, not so much.

Two weeks ago, while i was on the bus, my snapper stopped working.  I tagged on, it was fine, I went to tag off, nothing.  Waved it in front of the reader, and the one at the front of the bus, nothing.  No beep, no “please try card again”, nothing.

I didn’t think too much of it, except for ruing the extra $1.50 I’d get charged.  Then the next morning, I jumped on the bus, and Lo! It didn’t work again.  So I paid my money, and went off to work.  Here’s where my problems really begin.

I called the 0800 number, and said my card wasn’t working.  After explaining that actually, i did know how to hold it in front of the reader, and yes, there was money on it, the call centre person decided it was “locked”, but that I’d be able to “unlock” it at any outlet.

Yeah, tried that.  At 3 places.  The staff had no idea what I was talking about. So, i rang the 0800 number again.  “Oh” they said “No, that was the wrong information.  What you need to do is take it to the railway station.  They’ll unlock it, and then you might need to send it back to us.”

So, wait, I have to go out of my way to the station, unlock it, and then I’ll STILL have to send it back? (Yes, I was starting to get a bit capslocky by this point).  “Yes, it is quite silly, isn’t it?” they said “would you like to make a complaint?”

You bet I would.  I did, and I left them my phone number.  A woman called, and left me a message.  I returned her call, and left her one.  She never called back.  Excellent customer service.

So, can you see where this is going? On Friday, I finally made it to the train station.  Bear in mind, this means more than a week of paying more for my bus fare than I should, and about an hour of my life talking to call centre people I’ll never get back.  And their hold music is Deep Forest.  Gag.

So, I rocked up to the counter, and said “apparently I can unlock my snapper here”.  And the man said “no, there’s no such thing.  You need to send it back to them. ” And judging by the weary way he said it, I’m not the first person that has been told that.

Cue irate phone call to the 0800 number, which may have included the words “I’m MORE than a little bit PISSED off.”

The man on the phone said “oh, you need to go back where you just came from, and get a self-addressed envelope”.  And send it back to us.  So we can replace it.

Which, ironically, is exactly what it says on their website. Nothing about “unlocking”, “train station” or “grumpy station employee”.

18. What happens if my Snapper is faulty?

If you have money on your Snapper, and you’ve held it still to the Reader as per the instructions, then you may have a rare, faulty Snapper. Call 0800 555 345 or email our info@snapper.co.nz and we’ll load the replacement Snapper with the money which we verify was on the damaged / faulty card and get it to you next business day, if we know before 3pm.

And I said, Yes you WILL do that.  Oh, and it BETTER have some credit on it, for the week’s worth of higher fares I’ve had to pay, because your staff don’t know what they are talking about, and the 2 hours of my life I’ve WASTED trying to deal with this.  And how soon can you get it to me?  Oh, by Monday.

And here it is, 4pm on Monday, and complete shocker, NO SNAPPER.

Anyone want to see what it looks like when my head EXPLODES?

[Update: Someone from Snapper called me at 4:30 pm. Not to deal with either of the two complaints I have made, though. To tell me that she'd "pop [my] new card into the post box on her way home”. So, not couriered like I was told it would be, and LIKE IT SAYS ON YOUR WEBSITE? And, also, it will have the $12 credit my original card had loaded on it.  But, no, no extra credit.  So the man I spoke to on Friday who said he would deal with this?  No follow through.  I’ve just sent a very long email, paraphrasing this post, off to the snapper address, but honestly, I expect nothing to come of it.

It also occured to me last night, that because I was told the card would be couriered, I gave them the courier address for my work, not my postal address, so it’s not going to get to me. AWESOME.]

[Update #2: It arrived.  With $20 credit.  Oh well, I'll take what I can get at this point. No reply to my email though.]

[Update #3: Still no response to my email. Wait, why am i remotely surprised?]

Equality: Ur doing it wrong

Far be it from me to tell the Ministry of Women’s affairs how to do its job, but isn’t something a little awry here?

According to a report released by the ministry this week, women earn 12.1% less than men on median hourly earnings.  A statistician can answer this for me, but if we are talking hourly earnings, doesn’t that take away the whole ‘women earn less cos they take years off to go and have babies’ factor in the debate?

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs Chief Executive Shenagh Gleisner says:

While women have entered many jobs that were once dominated by men, such as law or medicine, many jobs remain dominated by either men or women. For example, 99 percent of builders, electricians, and motor mechanics are men. Women make up over 90 percent of people working as caregivers, registered nurses and secretaries. The fact that men and women continue to do different types of jobs is one of the factors in the gender pay gap.

The story basically says that women, of equal ability in maths and reading are paid significantly less.  But the ministry’s advice?  Go into the trades.

I’m all for women mechanics and builders, but surely addressing the wage gap is not something you do by simply shifting your focus? Should women have to give up their jobs, that they like and are good at, to moe into more highly paid work?  Isn’t the answer to try and increase the value (and therefore wages) of jobs like nursing, caregiving and teaching?  It has always been astounding to me that jobs as important as teaching and nursing are so undervalued.

Or, what Danielle and Julie said.

But hey, they good news is, even if we get paid less, our drinks are cheaper, and it’s ok!

Poor old Roy Den Hollander

He says the lawsuit’s dismissal was consistent with the discrimination embedded in many of America’s institutions. He calls the judge a feminist.

Must suck to have to pay full price for everything.  Like more expensive haircuts, clothes, cosmetics, tampons….Damn those feminists!

I blame Harry Potter

Do you ever have those days, when you do something so irrevocably stupid, you want to bash yourself over the head repeatedly?

Yesterday, I bought two pairs of shoes.  In a buy one get one half price kind of special.  They were cute.  One was for work, one was for play.  And sometimes for work.  They were more than $100.  I liked them.

And then, when I was waiting for my bus, and reading stupid Harry Potter – which I have gotten into since I borrowed one from the hotel library – and left the bag containing them sitting at the bus stop.

If I wasn’t so annoyed at myself, I’d cry.   I’ve phoned the bus company, the police station, the bank next to the bus stop, I’ve even gone into the shop I bought them from.  No luck.

So, if you happen to see anyone wearing a pair of shoes that doesn’t look like they belong to them, let me know, will you?  I’ll be the one wearing ugly shoes.

[UPDATE: A lovely lady handed them back into the store from which I brought them, so the shoes are returned to their rightful place - my wardrobe.  Hooray - faith in the world restored!]

wondering

Why I’ve had this song…

…In my head for the past two days.

And how to make it GO AWAY.

Taking it seriously.

Every once in a while, I get told not to “take things so seriously”. Or, as I usually read it, “get a sense of humour, even though I am saying something offensive, you hairy-legged, frizzy haired harridan”.

So, you can imagine my disgust, when I read this headline about a brawl in the WNBA:

WNBA brawl has an upside
Tuesday’s WNBA rumble upside: It shows that the players are serious, and all the fuss isn’t a bad thing, either

Wait, what? So…a brawl, something that not too long ago had fans and officials crying foul in the NBA is a good thing in the WNBA? In 2004, there was a brawl in a Pistons-Pacers game, which led to five players, and five fans being charged with assault. It was described as one of the worst incidents of sports violence in America, and led to suspensions, trades, and changes to security.

At the time, NBA commissioner David Stern said

“The line is drawn, and my guess is that won’t happen again — certainly not by anybody who wants to be associated with our league”

But wait, when it happens in a girls’ league, it’s ok, because it gets them some publicity and shows that they are serious? Let’s see just how serious:

Ok, so to my reading, what we have is a player pulling another down, some shoving, a coach pushing a player out of the way, some punches being thrown. It’s pretty disgusting. I’m all for bringing back the biff, I really am, but things shouldn’t escalate like this.

10 players and a coach have been suspended and rightly so. And now, articles full of words like “passion” “toughness” “commitment” “seriousness” “desire” abound. Come on, did anyone really question these women’s seriousness and commitment? You did? You wanna tell that to 6ft4in Lauren Jackson’s face? Actually, do you want to say that to 5ft3in my face?

These women are athletes. Serious athletes. Seriously talented athletes. This brawl is not a coming of age. It’s not a celebration. It’s bad. All it demonstrates is that women, as well as men, are capable of being stupid and violent. As Candace Parker (one of the players right in the middle, and frankly, an awesome player ) said “put people together in sports and there is always the possibility that something like that can happen”. People. Not women or men.

Yeah, all the coverage is good. No news is bad news, right? But for how long will women athletes have to fight this perception that they are somehow less serious, less committed, less passionate, less talented than their male counterparts?

Oh really? You want to say that to my face?