Tag: women’s rights

Tits Up: notes on women’s liberation

In 1998, the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA) was passed in the United States.

This federal law mandated that most group health plans covering mastectomies must also cover breast reconstruction surgery and related benefits, including prostheses. No such protections have come, for example, to public breastfeeding.

In this way, American women got the right to fake tits but not a fundamental human act.

That’s from “Tits Up: The Top Half of Women’s Liberation”, a new book from sociologist Sarah Thornton. Using an array of settings where women’s breasts are on display (from a strip club to milk banks to a plastic surgeon), the writer gives an approachable journey through the cultural invention of the “erotic breast” and the especially American complex relationship with women’s breasts: We love them but must control them.

It’s the patriarchy’s fault, she argues, but mistakes have been made too. As she wrote: “American feminism has foregrounded the right not to have children, rather than the rights of women once they’ve had them.”

Below I share my notes for future reference.

Continue reading Tits Up: notes on women’s liberation

Who’s afraid of gender?

It’s not that gender doesn’t matter. It does. The point is that people experience gender differently than others, and that recognition is next in a long journey of social progress.

Intellectuals, academics and activists in gender theory are not of uniform opinion but many discuss “co-construction” today, in which gender is a product of both culture and biological sex. The language is nuanced, and the politics are heated. That’s no reason to not push forward.

That’s from the new book “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” from Judith Butler, the feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar. As an undergrad, I read “Gender Trouble,” the 1990 book Butler wrote when they were just 34 years old, and which popularized many concepts developing within gender studies. This book is about gender generally, though trans identity is a focus.

Continue reading Who’s afraid of gender?

What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Whatever you need to do with it

Consuming a piece of art is the collision of two biographies: the artist who can shape the viewing and the consumer who views. This makes evaluating art created by people who have done heinous things in their personal lives especially subjective.

Hemingway and Picasso, both of whom were especially cruel and vicious to the women in their lives, are the 20th century icons of this tricky question. Hemingway’s third wife Martha Gellhorn wrote that the great artist needn’t be a monster but rather monsters can only hide behind art: “A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.”

In the end, which art we set aside, and which we can still enjoy is up to the viewer, and the time period. (Chuck Klosterman writes about how art is reinterpreted by each new generation). Admittedly, if you have the choice of hiring or elevating a creative today who is cruel, you might choose differently. But in terms of consumption, well, that’s up to you.

“The way you consume art doesn’t make you a bad person, or a good one. You’ll have to find some other way to accomplish that.” Or so argues culture critic and essayist Claire Dederer in her book from this spring called Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.

I first came across Claire and her writing in her 2017 essay “What do we do with the art of monstrous men?” It seems to me one of the defining questions of the last few years, so I appreciate the effort she put into shaping mine and other’s perspectives. I recommend it. Below I share my notes from the book for future reference.

Continue reading What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Whatever you need to do with it