So, this is going to be a mix

[conuly]

The Texas House approved a budget provision late Friday requiring state colleges and universities, if they use state funds to support "a gender and sexuality center," to spend an equal amount on a center promoting "family and traditional values."

Never mind that, you know, society promotes "traditional family values", to say nothing of the tax laws. How about MY traditional family values - educate yourself, accept others the way they are, and pay attention to your own family instead of other people's? Is that what they're talking about, the sort of family values that go "I don't care how they do it in Sarah's family, in THIS family we don't use that sort of language"? Or are they talking about the sort that cares very much how other people run their families?

However, at the same time, the California Senate approved a bill requiring that schools teach gay history.

Apparently, there's this big thing also about pink nail polish and a boy and an ad...? I only heard about it through a single post telling folks to stop talking about it already, so... yeah, there we go.

And marginally related is this article on when girls started wearing pink (and boys never never never)

Here's an inaccurate comic about "literally", which is funny because of the gayroller at the end. Hee! But seriously, the word "literally", let's look it up, is not any more tied to its origins than really or very. See, look, literally can basically be an intensifier. And it's been used like that for a really long time. (Really in the literal sense.) Of course, you might ask why we need more than one intensifier, but that's beside the point.

Also, gayroller!

Brazil Stadium Turns Pink After Homophobic Chants Shock Community

I edited that title slightly, and the article basically is what you expect. : )

Comments

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

The article about pink and blue clothing for babies was interesting. One thing I thought of is that it's pretty clear that clothing choices aren't necessarily connected to the status of women, at least not in the direct way that feminism often seems to assume it is. I mean, when FDR was a kid and all children wore long hair and white dresses until the age of six, it's not like things were so great for women in that time. Women have a lot more options today, even with the pink and blue clothing and the gender rigidity of childhood.

I've always thought that the anxiety so many people seem to have over not knowing someone's gender is really interesting as well. Why does it make people anxious to not know someone's gender? I mean, I have a bit of it too, and it bugs me because I think it's fundamentally irrational. I mean, on think on an evo-psych[1] level gender is about us having to know who we're supposed to fuck and make babies with, but that's kind of obsolete now what with gay and trans rights and everything. And I think that's a good thing. I like gay and trans rights.

[1] I'm not a fan of the conclusions of evo-psych; that is, I don't agree with the idea that 1950s gender roles are innate to human nature and that men should be allowed to get away with all the bad behavior that they want to, because it's "natural." The basic premise that human behavior is at least partly the result of evolution though is something for which there is no doubt, in my mind. It's just irritatingly difficult to study empirically without peoples' biases and ideological agendas fuzzying the issue.

[conuly]

I mean, when FDR was a kid and all children wore long hair and white dresses until the age of six, it's not like things were so great for women in that time.

When FDR was a kid, wearing dresses until six was already a little unusual. Three was more typical, I think. And wearing dresses is good for diaper changing and potty training.

But really, think about it. You had one style of clothing for women and small children and another for big boys and grown men. No wonder people wanted to switch so women could wear men's clothes, but didn't bother about the other way around! Women dressed more similarly* to small children than middling boys did!

Why does it make people anxious to not know someone's gender?

Because we don't have a gender-neutral pronoun, and don't know how to refer to them using pronouns and feel weird asking. This makes perfect sense, though that doesn't mean it's not still very silly.

*Inasmuch as we're lumping all dresses together as one style.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have a picture of my father in which he totally looks like a blonde girl. I love that picture and find it hilarious. He turned into a dark haired person for a good portion of his adulthood and then grey haired/little haired. So, it's particularly funny to me seeing him when he is very little and looks like a blonde girl. I pull it out now and then and say, "Guess which of the people I am descended from this is?" and people generally guess things like my grandmother (since it's so clearly a photo from long ago, but then my father was about to turn 48 when I was born). On a side note, I've been told that long, long ago, I think it was the Victorian period that people routinely called all babies and very young children by the pronoun "it" unless they happened to know a gender, but it wasn't viewed as offensive. Since that was simply what was done, "it" wasn't viewed as overly dehumanizing. Nowadays people get insulted if you refer to a baby as an it.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I keep unthinkingly correcting my boyfriend when he calls our nephew "it" instead of "he". In German babies are, linguistically, gender-neutral thus they're just it, not he or she. And he struggles in English to remember that "it" is considered totally inappropriate for a baby.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oh, Texas Lege. Must you continue to embarrass us? I wonder what would happen if they passed a law saying that colleges have to devote equal funds to support a White Students Center, just as they do a Center for Minority Students?