Hello everyone!
Do you love my new header image? It’s me! At my whiniest and evilest! I am so proud of it. My husband said it would make this blog look like I have a daughter who is a dick (I’m paraphrasing here. I think he said, “It makes your blog look like it’s about a five-year-old asshole.”). Regardless, I love it. Oh, tiny Sarah in your kindergarten Thanksgiving garb – I feel you. My face looks just like that right now, because I just can’t with this:
As a woman who is completing a Masters in anthropology, the very discipline of science from which FOX is bastardizing theories, I cannot believe the raging stupidity in that clip.
Before I begin, let me just state for the record that I find it completely disgusting for any person who gives zero craps about improving public education or maternal or infant health care in the United States to trot out abortion statistics or OMG THE CHILDREN!!! in attempts to terrify the masses. You know what’s bad for children? Not having insurance or access to acceptable schooling.
I’ve decided to leave behind how vomitously sexist it is to say that working women are the downfall of American society, because I don’t want to throw up all over myself. Instead, let’s consider for a moment the irony that these FOX anchors have built their argument on the fundamental assumption that human beings have strict sex roles, which are similar to all the comparable sex roles in all other species – roles that are standard in the “animal kingdom” and have been in place for a very long time due to biological differences in male and female skill sets. This is sounding a lot like an evolutionary theory, my friends. Which is pretty incredible, considering much of their fan base doesn’t “believe in” evolution in the first place.
As a student of anthropology generally and evolutionary theory more specifically, it always chaps my ass to hear people use the theoretical framework to justify an adherence to the way things were. That’s upsetting on the surface level because to make an anti-progress argument like that is to completely ignore the fact that it is EVOLUTION, you dummies. The definition of evolution is the moving forward of a species or a society or, dare I say, a conservative blowhard worldview. It’s upsetting on a deeper level because you cannot pick and choose the things from the past with which you can cling to with your white, white, white male knuckles.
It’s true that in the last fifty years, women have upended the “natural order” of things by taking jobs outside the home and choosing not to be fully submissive to the whims of their husbands. Sound the alarm, people! Things for chicks are not how they used to be (read: pretty effing terrible)! However, here is a short list of other things that are also not the way they used to be:
1) Communication: No one experiencing explosive verbal diarrhea on a television show cluttered with as much extraneous graphic design as those jerks can argue that there has been no change in communication. I don’t hear any of those creeps crying over the poor, abandoned rotary phone. OMG, YOU GUYS. WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OPERATORS?!?!? (Oh, wait. Most of the operators were women, right? Who gives a shit. Amiright???)
2) Food: Unless you’re really into scavenging for meat from the corpses of large animals on a savannah somewhere, you should probably thank your lucky stars that we’re not eating the way we did when biological sex roles were super important to ultimate survival.
3) Travel: At the zoo on Sunday, I saw a woman who could walk riding around on a Rascal. The end.
4) Clothing: You’re of the party that endorses putting real clothing on fake statues. Enjoy your 21st clothing options.
5) Sexual Relations: Preeeetttty sure there were no little blue miracle pills in yesteryear for all of you. Although, to be fair, back then, you would have all been dead by 30, so it wouldn’t have mattered.
One hundred thousand years ago sounds like it was a total blast.
whiny baby 