Classic Quotes, The Atlantic, 2000 "The War Against boys"

“Data from the U.S. Department of Education and from several recent university studies show that far from being shy and demoralized, today's girls outshine boys. They get better grades. They have higher educational aspirations. They follow more-rigorous academic programs and participate in advanced- placement classes at higher rates. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, slightly more girls than boys enroll in high-level math and science courses. Girls, allegedly timorous and lacking in confidence, now outnumber boys in student government, in honor societies, on school newspapers, and in debating clubs. Only in sports are boys ahead, and women's groups are targeting the sports gap with a vengeance. Girls read more books. They outperform boys on tests for artistic and musical ability. More girls than boys study abroad. More join the Peace Corps. At the same time, more boys than girls are suspended from school. More are held back and more drop out. Boys are three times as likely to receive a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. More boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs. Girls attempt suicide more often than boys, but it is boys who more often succeed. In 1997, a typical year, 4,483 young people aged five to twenty-four committed suicide: 701 females and 3,782 males.”

From the latest Businessweek

The rapid pace of change

Female Supremacy at the Airport

While waiting to catch a connecting flight yesterday at the airport i suddenly found myself surrounded by a group of young, attractive Females engaged in vibrant conversation. After listening to them talk for a few minutes i was able to discern that they were a group of medical students on their way to a conference in a larger city. As the minutes passed they were joined by many more of their classmates until from what I could gather from the conversation, virtually the entire class year of their medical school had joined them. What stuck me instantly was that this by now large group was about 2/3’s Female. Looks like all those statistics about Women’s success in higher education were not just some abstract statistical finding. I could see it right in front of me. It also made me think of how some males, feeling threatened by the success of Women, try to pick apart these statistics and claim that in certain specific, academically tough subjects, males still outnumber Females. Funny i always thought of medicine as one of the most difficult areas of study with very high academic performance levels required just to gain entry to the program. my only response when i hear such defensive posturing by pride wounded males is suck it boys. The winds of change are blowing.


Another thing that made me smile was when i overheard a conversation of among some of the Female students. One said “I want to go see some male strippers!”. All of Her friends enthusiastically agreed. The Girls then went into a debate about the different types of male strip shows with one of the Girls saying that Chippendales act was more about the show than about stripping, which all the Girls agreed with.

FemSupreme Music Videos : Bananarama's Venus

This video has to be one of the earliest videos I remember seeing with clear Female Power / Female Supremacist imagery and themes running throughout. I remember seeing it first at about the same time i hit puberty, or about the same time i began to see girls** as G-I-R-L-S. To this day i still remember it pushing all of my submissive buttons. Now of course for me adolescence was the time when i became aware of Girls Mysterious Feminine Powers (but that's a subject for another post) and the images in this video combined with the song lyrics ran over and over in my mind like an audiovisual mantra. The video is broken into several scenes so I'll highlight the ones that touch me most deeply.

• i love the early scene where the beret wearing girl struts down the steps towards a waiting male. She seduces him, pushing him down over the table so he is under Her and under Her spell. She then tosses him aside like the toy he is. Later She is seen dancing with him, then rejecting him once and for all, for which She gives a victory pose and a high kick of Her shoe in his direction.
• In another scene a man, the supposed hero, opens the coffin of a Female vampire in a kind of reverse Snow White scene. She immediately fixes him with Her eyes, he becomes enthralled by Her beauty. She then draws him close...and plants her fangs in his neck. She is then seen dancing ecstatically back towards her coffin. One assumes to lie in wait for Her next male victim.
• Another scene opens with a Female bat like entity opening Her vast wings to reveal a group of (near) naked males cowering under Her. As they awaken they begin to encircle Her in a worshipful dance.
• my absolute favorite scene though has to be the one i call the whip scene. It opens with a flash of light and smoke, revealing (again, i sense a theme here) a group of (near) naked males lying on the ground who are awakened by the presence of a beautiful She-Devil above them. In the opening scene She firmly holds a whip in Her hand! The males begin to reach out for Her, trying desperately to grab onto what, in this version of hell, they crave but can never have. The first time I saw this I thought the imagery beyond cool, the latex Devil suit, the oiled up muscular males glistening in the light wearing just thongs, their bare ass cheeks visible. The males also have straps around their wrists which i always assumed were a substitute for chains but the chains were nixed by the censors. My sense that this video was subject to some censorship is reinforced when we return to this sequence a little later in the video and the whip has mysteriously vanished. I assume the original intention was to have the She-Devil crack the whip on these males. Too bad, that would have been wonderful to see. Nevertheless this scene has to be one of the earliest music videos in which males are presented purely as sex objects. Pretty hot. Their virtual nudity and submissive postures/positions relative to the Female characters leave little doubt about the sexual objectification of these guys. Clearly this seems like a case of the girls getting a little revenge on the guys when you consider how many male 80's acts showed oiled up Women in cages in their videos. Clearly Bananarama were sending a not at all subtle message here. The scene ends with the males finally reaching Her and holding Her aloft like a Queen or Goddess

Needless to say i love this video. It is clearly an early Girl-Power video and Banannarama deserve credit as one of the pioneer groups in the march to pop music domination by Female performers over the next 20+ years.

** i humbly apologize for using a lower case g here. i of course mean Girls. i just wanted to emphasize the dramatic transformation that occurred within me at that time.

Here are the lyrics ;

Goddess on the mountain top
Burning like a silver flame
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name

She's got it
Yeah, baby, she's got it
I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire
Well, I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire

Her weapons were her crystal eyes
Making every man a man
Black as the dark night she was
Got what no one else had
Ow

She's got it
Yeah, baby, she's got it
I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire
Well, I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire

(Venus)
She's got it
Yeah, baby, she's got it
I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire
Well, I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire

Goddess on the mountain top
Burning like a silver flame
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name

She's got it
Yeah, baby, she's got it
I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire
Well, I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire

(Venus was her name)

[Repeat: x8]
Yeah baby she's got it

Highlights 2011 : Teen Girls Sweep Google Science Fair

Pretty amazing though not really surprising. Girls kick ass in school. 

Women CEO's on the Rise as We/we enter 2012

The beginning of 2012 marks a milestone in the continuing rise of Women in business. In October IBM appointed Virginia Rometty as its next CEO, a position She will assume in the coming days.  She will join the ranks of several other well known Fortune 500 companies with a Female CEO. This list now includes Ursula Burns of Xerox, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ellen J. Kullman of DuPont and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard.

Stop for a second and think about this;

• IBM
• Xerox
• DuPont
• PepsiCo
• Hewlett-Packard

That's an impressive list. Now think that just 20 years ago (1992!) this would seem unthinkable. Burns is in fact the second consecutive Female CEO at Xerox.


Remarkable and Wonderful.