Sigh

(Now crossposted at Feministe – I’m guest-blogging there this week. Thanks, Jill!)

10 points to Indian journalist Saira Kurup for debunking the myth of bra-burning feminists as part of a column about the history of the bra.

-100 points for not getting the larger point, although Kurup is far from the only one who missed out on a crucial word in the history of the 1968 protests outside the Miss America beauty pageant.

The 1940s and ’50s embraced the new curves. But with the 1960s came consciousness about the way women are portrayed and “sexualised”. Feminist thinking was breaking new ground. Radicals like Germaine Greer raised a storm by saying that the “willingly suffered discomfort of the sixties’ bra was a hideous symbol of male oppression”, though not all feminists agreed.

Around the same time, a London School of Economics male professor said the bra’s achievement was in “converting the primitive droop into a civilised thrust”. Quite a provocative statement. In 1968, some activists demonstrated against the Miss America beauty pageant and threw objects of “female oppression” — bras, high-heeled shoes, girdles, curlers — into a trash can. They were arguing about liberation — there was never any bra-burning — but the myth of the feminist as a bra-burner was created by the western media. The image of the braless, man-hating women’s libbers was hard to shake off. (emphasis mine)

You’re not kidding about the image being hard to shake off.

Filed under: Media, myth/legend, urban legends

Friday Fun – “Museum” edition

aka When is a museum actually a theme park?

Here it is: the Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” post that Hoyden had to have, made much easier by the recent spate of LOLCreationists online.

Image Credit: Dancing Spring

PZ Myers put together a Creation Museum roundup of poor media coverage and the best blogging detailing not only the theme park’s scientific deficiencies but also the theological fallacies. (My favourite post title: Ken Ham’s Petting Zoo Opens to Shut Minds.)

As an interesting side note, Ham has recently got greedy about his publishing empire and shafted his longtime Australian sister-organisation partner Carl Wieland. Astonishing how the sniff of money corrupts faith leaders like Ham, who seems to have never seen a Bible verse he didn’t want to take literally except for the verses in the New Testament that rail against the acquisition and deceitfulness of riches. I bet he doesn’t intend to honour the Leviticus 25 edicts about Jubilee Years [link1][link2] either.

Filed under: Science, creationists/ID, ethics, myth/legend

Previously Unknown Phenomenon

This is the container of leftover sausages I put away in the frig last night.

This morning when I woke up and went to the frig for milk, not a single one of those sausages had been eaten.

What can have happened to the Phantom Sausage Snaffler?

Sydney, 25/5/2007

Police hold grave fears for the safety of the Phantom Sausage Eater after a plate of sausages remained intact overnight in the Sydney Suburb of Togsville. A source who claimed to be close to the Phantom told us that the Phantom may have been distracted by an especially satisfying evening meal and the unexpected appearance of raisin toast at breakfast. A Police spokesman revealed that the sausages are to be left unattended again tonight in the hope that the Phantom will strike again and allay public concern for his safety.

APP Reooters

The Phantom has been a friendly ectoplasmic cohabitant in the tigtog household since mr tog and I first met. I find his disapparation inexplicable and most alarming. And who else is going to eat all those sausages?

Filed under: food/drink, myth/legend

Karen PWN!S! TEH n00bs

Karen Healey of Girls Read Comics and They’re Pissed riffed off Lauredhel’s Anti-Feminist Bingo Card and created an Anti-Comics-Feminist Bingo Card. Apparently some fanboyz have been having a whinge at her about it, so she has called forth the mighty power of Clue.

I assume that since you have an internet connection, you’re not sitting in a tree eating a raw rat and grunting suspiciously at interlopers. I mean, I could be wrong. These are big internets, and there’s probably at least one person into that. But if you aren’t that person, and you make this argument, I feel bound to remind you that fully functional humans are totally capable of overcoming biological imperatives in favour of ethical standards and social justice and have been for hundreds of years. If you can’t be bothered to make the effort, then I’m not convinced I should consider you a modern human being at all.

That’s some mighty fine righteous fulminating going on there. (There’ll be costumes and explosions any second, I betcha.)

Anyway, if you liked Lauredhel’s Bingo Card, do go read this.

Filed under: myth/legend

Wotcher, orright?

Which God or Goddess are you like? Your Result: God Zeus   You are Zeus. You are fierce and stong, and you like to throw lightning bolts at people who deserve it. You are fearless when it comes to fear, and harmless to nothing. You have the guts to take on anything and never look back. Congratulations!! You are God!!
Goddess Sekhemet
You are your own God or Goddess
Satan
Budha
Goddess Bast
Jesus
The Christian God
Which God or Goddess are you like? Make Your Own Quiz

Seethe with envy, PZ Myers!

Filed under: fun, myth/legend

xkcd pwns teh internets

I don’t know why any of us are even bothering to pretend that xkcd is not our new insect overlord (except for Cory Doctorow, who escaped in that bloody balloon).

Excuse me. I have to go and save that map, open it up in Photoshop and expand it so that I can read all the labels.

I want an anthropomorphic dragon.

Filed under: blogging, fun, interblog, myth/legend

Weekend Wibbling: From Peri to Fraggles

Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been contemplating fairy mythology in kidlit and TV, specifically fairy proxies like The Fraggles and The Borrowers. This idea – that there is a whole world of tiny, wise and/or mischievous creatures, that are perhaps difficult for grown-ups to see or believe in – seems to be a resonant one.

I know next to nothing about cross-cultural children’s literature and mythology. Most of the webstuff I can find seems to be about Euro fairy stories – gnomes, and elves, and Sidhe, and such. Mythopoetica says that the word might be Persian in origin, from “Peri”. How cross-cultural are fairy tales? Does anyone know about fairy stories in Eastern, subcontinental, African, or (indigenous) American or Australian cultures?

What’s your favourite contemporary tale of Little People?

Filed under: myth/legend