thoughtfulAlso, my most recent round of attempting to get my head round feminism led to getting myself banned by
ginmar (ok, it was probably inevitable sooner or later, and I precipitated it by succumbing to the temptation to snark). And getting labelled an anti-feminist on a fairly high-profile blog. I almost want to see it as a badge of honour (certainly it's good for generating traffic), except that I'm not all that comfortable with anti-feminist; I'm more indifferent than anti, I think. Anyway. All this would imply that my opinions on the subject are not all that much worth listening to. So I'm going to link to other people having thought-provoking discussions instead:
james_nicoll talks about SF marketing slanted towards a male audience, and generates lots of interesting discussion. In this context, I must mention papersky's old cold girly steel post and the discussion on that. leora has a manifesto on gender in the dating arena. Again, very thought-provoking and generates some fascinating discussion. All right, a stray thought of my own pertaining to gender relations in the context of Jewish community life. I've spent most of my life in an entirely egalitarian context, Jewishly. So I expect to participate fully in most aspects of public ritual. I don't really think twice about this, and it surprises me just as much to be praised for taking a feminist stand (!) as to be criticized for doing stuff that's supposed to be men only.
Anyway, in my entirely egalitarian community the other day, I was watching various people participating in the ritual of showing honour to the Torah. And I noticed that, in general, men handle Torah scrolls as if they were carrying very precious (and incidentally rather heavy) objects, whereas women handle Torah scrolls as if they were carrying children. (Not babies, because most scrolls are at least as big as a medium sized toddler.)
