somebody has to say it - v.01



So here's the deal, I've been having a nasty case of writers block. My blog is becoming jumbled and scatter-brained, and I need to bring back a little order. A little inspiration. A little fun, for crying out loud! Thus, welcome to my newest feature. Each Friday I will choose a topic that I feel particularly passionate about, and hopefully you will find it funny or interesting. Please let me know what you think!

The first thing I want to shed some light on in somebody has to say it, is the ridiculousness of the website The Dirty. Have you ever been to this website? If you haven't, let me fill you in: it's run by blogger Nik Richie, who spends countless hours posting and commenting on ''dirt'' that people send in on people. It's broken down into categories, such as city or college, and a picture is submitted along with a pretty intense bashing of the persons promiscuity and overall [lack of] self worth. There's a specific section entitled ''Would You?'' where guys submit pictures of girls that they know and ask Nik if he would or would not sleep with them... usually Nik focuses on their shortcomings and even the seemingly flawless girls are picked apart and ultimately denied for some superficial reason.

I will admit that I have looked on this site and had a laugh or two, but when you start realizing that these are actual people things become less funny. Especially when you read some of the comments. It also gets pretty annoying when you realize how cocky Nik is and his general disrespect for women. The fact that this site is 90% focused on bashing women is equally appauling and says so much about our culture and our values. It's sad really. And somebody really does have to say it... Nik, you are no Hugh Jackman buddy.

But for every chauvinist out there, fear not ladies... a few gems still exist. For example, this article definintly pulls at my feminist heart strings and gives mankind back their dignity. I posted this article on my facebook yesterday after my very awesome friend Denise decided to share the wealth. Some of the comments made me very proud of our male counterparts, especially this one:

{click to enlarge... the photo uploader is being especially irritating today}

My husband is so sexy when he talks comm theory. In case you can't read the blurry mess above, this was his reaction to the article:

''Sean Hooker: Kara, you know you wish you would have been a comm major in college. In one of my sex and gender classes we played the dirty word game. It consisted of yelling all the dirty words we could think of for women and then man. We wrote them on t...he chalkboard and examined the results. There were a lot more derogatory words for females then men. A LOT MORE. Interestingly, many were about sexuality. What does that say about our society and our language?

On the same line of thought, many words in the English language are gender biased in favor of men. Mankind, congressman, businessman, chairman and even the word “woman” is gender biased toward men. It’s as if the very word that defines a “female” (there we go again) is directly based from a man’s perspective. We’ve started to identify this recently and have begun to use gender neutral words, but most of these are still prominent words. I guess that’s where I was going with the media reflects a patriarchal society. I didn’t intend to let the media off the hook by any means.''

So you see ladies... actual men do exist, you just have to know where to look! Have a happy weekend, and be sure to give the good men out there a little pat on the back for being the absolute opposite of pig headed aliens out there like Nik Ritchie :)