Author: Rebecca

A quick response to a bad article

Doctor John Dickson wrote today for The Drum, an article titled “Time for some nuance between the gay and the god-fearing“, which is an attempt to justify continued Christian Homophobia with the old, “hate the sin but love the sinner” approach (the comment section of the article – with the exception of a couple of bigots is really good).

Contemporary minds are fixed to think of only two possible camps on the gay issue. Either you are pro-homosexual and therefore open-minded, kind and respectful, or else you are a mean-spirited, homophobic bigot. You are either for me or against me. No space is given to a third group, much larger than the current discourse allows, made up of people who sincerely want an end to discrimination and who show nothing but care and respect toward gay friends but whose deeply held convictions prevent them from endorsing same-sex practice.

Perhaps in the tradition of ‘an eye for an eye’ the church deserves some purgatorial derision. No one could deny that professed Christians have used very condescending and spiteful language toward gay people (and, shamefully, sometimes even resorted to violence). But tit-for-tat won’t help us in the long run. The biblical perspective on sex – that all sexual intimacy outside heterosexual monogamy is contrary to the Creator’s good intentions – is not going anywhere; and nor are our gay neighbours. This realization alone demands that we work out together how to have a respectful, nuanced public conversation.

In particular, we have to ask whether holding a moral view is in itself hateful. Obviously, strong moral codes, whether religious or secular, can promote hateful speech and behaviour, but are the codes inherently hateful? Specifically, I want to ask David Marr: Do you not believe it is possible to profoundly disagree with someone’s lifestyle and sincerely care for them all the same? I am not offering a defence of Christian teaching on homosexuality (which may, of course, be wrong); I am simply affirming that believers ought to be able to hold their view thoughtfully and respectfully without being considered ‘bigots’ and ‘homophobes’.

But there is a third way, based on a different logic. We ought to be able to love even those with whom we profoundly disagree. It must be possible for Christians to question the moral status of sexual intimacy outside heterosexual monogamy while demonstrating respect and care for neighbours who are neither heterosexual nor monogamous. True open-mindedness is not merely accepting as true and valid someone else’s viewpoint; it is the more difficult and noble commitment to honouring people whose viewpoints you reject.

I dispute that the “third group” as mentioned by Dr Dickson is “much larger” as he suggests.  I also dispute that the “hate the sin but love the sinner” is anything other than homophobic bigotry.  If you show “care and respect” towards your LBTIQG family and friends, but not unconditional love, then you’re not following the commandments of Jesus, that man you claim to be a follower of.

As I have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34 (NIV)

If you want to have a “respectful, nuanced and public conversation” with the LBGTIQ community, then there are some things you need to do first.  I’d first suggest a public apology, much like the ones the 100 Revs who march in Mardi Gras have given time and time again to the GLBTIQ community.  I’d also suggest you LISTEN to the grievances the GLBTIQ community has with Christianity and actively ensure that the BLQTIG community feels heard.  Then, before any public conversation takes place, you should go away to a quiet place and learn about Jewish and Christian theology (no, I don’t know what your doctorate is in, and nor do I care), and how that has changed as needs arose over the centuries – things like the outlawing of slavery, increase of status (to human no less) of non-white people, the equality of women, the lack of death penalty for disobeying parents, the creation of rape as a crime against the rapist (and not the victim), tattoos becoming socially acceptable, blaming Jews for the death of Jesus, the abolition of limbo, etc.

If Christianity can change all these things, that are in the bible, then it can change its views on BTQGLI too.  Christianity is well known for picking and choosing which bits of the New and Old Testaments remain valid (women are allowed to speak in places of worship now – something that Paul suggested was a really bad idea), so why not shed the homophobia and accept that difference makes the world a far more interesting place to be in, and that what two (or more) people do in their bedroom is actually NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.

Is holding a moral view hateful?  That depends on the moral view.  If that moral view suggests that a group should be marginalised, stigmatised, and treated negatively for an attribute they possess, then yes, that moral view is hateful.  And what you are suggesting Dr Dickson is the continuation (with sanction) of a hateful moral view because you find the LBGTIQ community threatening to your world view.

Calling being gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer (not so much intersex in this statement) a “lifestyle” is INCREDIBLY INSULTING.  A “lifestyle” is something you choose.  You choose to eat X food, you choose to undertake Y activities, these are “lifestyle” choices.  Being BGLTIQ are not “lifestyle” choices they are innate qualities.  To reduce them to a choice is to deny lived experience of these people and science (something which some Christians are quite happy to deny anyway).

Let me state again if it isn’t already abundantly clear – to consider that someone who is GLBQIT is sinful in anyway is bigoted and homophobic.  To judge someone else goes against what is taught by Jesus, the man you claim to follow:

1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

So stop it.  Stop right now and never ever let me catch you doing it again.  I agree that you can love someone you disagree with, even when you disagree with them strongly.  I disagree with my parents about various things, but still love them, I disagree with friends, partners and others and can still love them.  Disagreeing is completely different to TELLING SOMEONE THAT THEY ARE WRONG.  Let me put that another way:

DISAGREEING WITH SOMEONE IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TO TELLING SOMEONE THAT THEY ARE ALL WRONG – THAT EVERY LAST BIT OF THEM IS INHERENTLY WRONG.

It is not possible for Christians to be involved in anyone’s sexual practices – that is rude, invasive, immoral and seriously how could you write that sentence and let it be published?

The final statement I copied and pasted into this post is so full of problems that I’m going to unpack it separately.  On the surface it sounds reasonable, but when you begin to think about it, it’s all really wrong.

True open-mindedness is not merely accepting as true and valid someone else’s viewpoint; it is the more difficult and noble commitment to honouring people whose viewpoints you reject.

First Dr Dickson attempts to define “open-mindedness” as “accepting as true and valid someone else’s viewpoint” (which is all good – but something he’s not subscribing to), but then also as “honouring people whose viewpoints you reject”.  He also claims that this is a more difficult and noble commitment… something which I completely reject.  It’s impossible and potentially dangerous.  I reject the views of racist/homophobic/transphobic/biphobic/sexist/etc bigots and there is NO WAY that I am going to honour them for their views, in fact I’m going to condemn them for their views, for those views are harmful to people.

A true Christian, a Christian that follows the teaching of Jesus would love unconditionally, not judge others for any perceived or imagined transgressions, turn the other cheek if someone insults them, and lives in accordance with the commandments stated by Jesus.  I can’t imagine that Jesus would, if he came back today, condemn any LGBQIT person – afterall, if you believe that we are all god’s creatures, then why would god create gay people except for them to be loved, to love, and seek happiness and fulfillment on earth?

And let’s consider another thing, as a Christian Dr Dickson, and everyone who is Christian and agrees with him, are an incredibly privileged group whining about how a less privileged group is pointing out that the privileged group has treated them badly.  He deeply wants to hold onto the power imbalance that currently exists and is attempting to use his religious privilege to do so.  “But my faith told me so” is not a defence.  It’s time to let go and move with the times.

As I read today on Fat Heffalump:

Equality is extremely threatening to people who have always benefited from the lack thereof.

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The conversation we had to have (apparently)

So tonight my physio told me that I needed to lose weight.  There is a whole lot more context that I’ll share in a moment, but to say I was disappointed is putting it simply.

My physio has returned from an 8 day conference at the AIS where he spoke to a specialist in Gluteus Medius Tendonitis about his (my physio’s) patients (me included).  No doubt there were other discussions with other specialists, but one message seems to have been given to my physio by this specialist… and that is that overweight people with this condition will struggle to resolve/heal it while they remain overweight, as the extra weight will aggravate the condition.

So tonight, the first time I’ve seen my physio in 3 weeks (as I started a clinical pilates thing that I’d been doing on my own), he suggests to me that I should lose weight.  In his favour, he was genuinely uncomfortable about saying everything he did, the fact that I didn’t look impressed to be told this most likely added to his discomfort (which I’m so not sorry for).  He did say that being overweight leads to death (well cancers and heart attacks apparently – and why yes my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine and I don’t have a family history of cancer), very, very quickly, before moving onto the fact that extra weight puts extra stress on my tendons and so we can perform maintenance on my tendonitis, and it may heal but it will take significantly longer.  He then recommended (in his favour again) that I see a dietician and discuss with them what I do and don’t eat (tonight’s dinner – stir fried vegetables and chilli marinated tofu, with satay sauce, served with rice), and perhaps have a meal plan developed – utilising my GP to get a referral so that it will be partly covered by Medicare.  And that he’d be happy to talk to me more about it if I wanted him to.

He finished the whole thing off with, “There I’ve said it”.

I spent the next 5 minutes (while he was poking at my back – where a lot of the conversation had also occurred), wondering if I was going to quit this physio and given I have a basic understanding of what I need to do to deal with my back and my tendinitis and whether I should take that elsewhere and maintain myself.  Then I thought about Greta Christina’s weightloss (problematic framing aside) and how she decided to lose weight to stop her knee(s?) from hurting so that she could continue the activities that she wanted to do.  I then thought of another friend of mine whose medication induced weight gain has resulted in a nerve being pinched (I think) in her thigh so it waivers between almost numb tingling and painful tingling, and her medical professionals who have told her that the only solution is for her to lose weight (which is resulting in fun medication adjustments).

So I can sleep without waking up in pain (several times a night), so I can sit cross-legged on the floor/bed/couch, so I can do yoga and Body Balance properly (I can’t do any hip flexion exercises), so I don’t stand up stiff and limping until I’ve walked it out, so I can have sex without paying for it for a few days afterwards, and so I don’t sit in a chair feeling my hip/s ache, do I attempt to lose weight to possibly speed up the process of healing my hips and taking the pressure off them so I am not aggravating the condition or do I just keep doing the exercises hoping that it will get better on it’s own? (nice complex sentence, sorry).

My partners will support me in any decision I make – which is lovely of them, and they tell me that I’m gorgeous, sexy, wonderful, beautiful and lovely now (not in some potential future state).  I could attempt to lose the 10kgs that being on steroids last year (briefly but oh how the weight stuck around) put on, and see where I go from there – whether the pain is less and my ability to move improves.  It won’t be easy (in fact it will suck immensely), but is it the best thing for my body right now?

I currently feel a bit let down by my body, which isn’t fair on it I know.  It does a lot for me, and puts up with all the things I want it to do.  I spent the weekend being depressed about clothes shopping being too goddamn hard because fat people are hard to make clothes for, including spending bits of Sunday in tears because it all sucked so much.  Hearing today that being fat is also aggravating a painful condition that I want treated and healed was not the news I was after.

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Dear clothing retailers

You suck.

You suck in so many ways it’s difficult to quantify how much you suck and the amount of despair you put me through whenever I go shopping for clothes.  In an ideal world you’d all have the clothing sizes you carry listed on the outside of your store, that way I wouldn’t bother setting foot inside your store looking for something to wear because I know you don’t cater to me.  This would also require clothing sizes to be standard, something that would also make me happy. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to not quite fit into the size 18 for “thin” people, but for the size 18 for “fat” people to be too big?  Does this even make sense?  And why is the clothing for “fat” people so limited in variety and fashion?  I walk in, look at what you have on offer and turn around and walk out again – it’s boring, uninteresting, and certainly not flattering.  It’d be nice if you offer clothing for “thin” people and “fat” people that the sizes just continue up the scale – and that you sell the same type of stuff.

And those stores which do sell clothes that fit me – why is everything made from such heavy synthetic material?  I prefer to wear cotton or cotton blends, I like my clothes to breathe so I don’t overheat.  Also, don’t suggest that I “enjoy my curves” by completing covering them all up – that doesn’t make sense.

And if we “fat” people are to exercise to lose weight – why on earth do you not sell exercise clothing for people above a “thin” size 18 – yes I am specifically looking at you Target…. and in fact most sports stores.  It’s a catch 22 situation if we’re told to exercise because we’re too fat, but can’t buy clothes to exercise in.

So thank you for making me almost cry in a shopping centre from frustration and shame.  I really appreciated the public humiliation you kindly dished out to me.  Please remember – the harder you make it for me to shop in your store – the less I’m likely to return if I do ever lose weight and fall into your sizing range.

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I get spam

Of course I get spam, I have a blog where comments can be left, but what amuses me is the spam I get.  I (so far) have managed to avoid abusive or unpleasant comments, but I have some amusing comment spammers who leave spam comments, and me scratching my head attempting to figure out what on earth they mean.

I use Akismet and AVH First Defense Against Spam in my blog to trap spam (and it’s VERY successful for me), but I still go through my spam folder to make sure that legitimate comments aren’t trapped as spam, and determine which block IP addresses to block from sites that are spamming me (I also refer to Project Honeypot to determine comment spammers).

I thought I’d share some of the more WTF spam I get for a laugh:

Continue reading

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Mental Health Review

**Trigger warning – this post discusses suicide attempts, police violence, PTSD and rape flashbacks**

I think it’s beyond time to review the Victoria Mental Health Act (1986)*.  The way the system treats those with mental illnesses is horrifying, and the other day this was brought home to me again as I chatted to a woman I know and her very recent experience with the Mental Health Act and the whole medical/police system.  I’m going to summarise her story, and leave out anything that will identify her.  That said, I don’t know every step of her story, I know what she told me the other night, and that in itself is horrifying without knowing all the rest of the story.

Continue reading

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Personal stories

“Where’re you from?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked at least thousand times by at least a thousand different people.  It’s such an Australian question (to me), the curiosity of knowing where someone (and since they’re asking me – usually a fellow white Australian) is from, an opportunity to hear a story, an opportunity to hear something new or some gossip about another area you might have ties to.  It is a very old style question after all.  It harks back to the days when people travelled less, and to meet someone new was an unusual thing, therefore asking where they were from, and for them to fill you in on news from other areas was a novelty and useful.

Continue reading

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I’m fat and am going to die (eventually)

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on being fat and living in Australia recently (given I’m fat and living in Australia) and a recent article in Yahoo! made me squee with delight.  It was a, “Should you tell people that they are fat? Yes/No” article with opposing views put by two different authors (both so full of fail), but I learnt something… because I’m fat, I’m going to die.  It’s a huge relief, because I was worried, that like my thin brothers and sisters, I’d live forever, and that wasn’t ideal.

Michelle Bridges (our very favourite person) was on the “yes, tell them that they’re fat” team because:

If you are obese you can look forward to diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, cancer or even death.

Wow, I’m going to die… eventually… of something… whether I’m fat or not.  Does every fat person get diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, and/or cancer?  Looking at my family history (given I don’t have asthma which my paternal grandmother died from), I’ll live to around 70 and die from a heart attack or the effects of a stroke.  My regular exercising, non-smoking, and fit paternal grandfather died of a heart attack when he was a little over 70.  My maternal grandfather died at about 60 of a heart attack.  My not overly fit, non-smoking, disabled (short-term before she had her stroke) maternal grandmother died at about 80 from a kidney infection some years after having a stroke.  70 years… that’s a good life, and I’m half way through it.  Should I go “woe is mean, I is going to die” and be depressed because of that, or should I continue loving my life and my body and the awesome things it can do?

Michelle continued with:

More than this, though, is the emotional damage, the unhappiness, the depression and poor self-esteem that comes with carrying too much weight.

Now let’s look at that some more.  Why is it that fat people suffer emotional damage, unhappiness, depression and poor self-esteem?  Oh yeah, that’s right because they’re literally shamed, made to second guess themselves and their body, not believed, insulted, belittled and hated by large sections of society.  Fat shaming and fat abuse are all far too common, on the internets, the streets, hospitals, doctor surgeries, the workplace, you name it and fat shaming probably happens there (with the exception of Fat Acceptance and Heath At Every Size blogs where it’s moderated out.  Thank you so much for doing that).

Only once in my life have I had “Fat Slut” yelled at me, which made me laugh more than anything else at the time, though it upset my husband quite a lot when I told him about it later.  I am generally quite… insulated might be the right word when I am out in public.  I do not listen to words but to tones, so I may have had other comments made about me that my brain has not translated for me.  When I am grocery shopping I wonder what people think of the things I am buying, whether I’m buying fresh fruit and vegetables or supplies for a party.  I wonder when I’m shopping for clothes what people are thinking of me and what I’m buying.  Most of my preferred medical practitioners do not comment on my weight, for which I’m grateful, but again I have this lovely insulation in my head which tends to sometimes refuse to hear certain things (and I honestly don’t know why that is), so things might be said and I just don’t hear them.  I do also spend a lot of time thinking to myself that it is not about me (people talking to each other is not about me for example – unless it specifically is).

Spilt Milk put it beautifully recently, when she wrote, “I am not your cautionary tale“:

Obviously, his piece was about The Biggest Loser, a particular kind of “freakshow”. Me going to the shops to buy my bread and milk? Not so freakshowish, admittedly. But I am still there, I am still visible, I still jiggle, I still have a double chin, I still look fat enough to be a folk devil.

A friend on Twitter, Jennifer Gearing, mentioned this afternoon that Birmingham’s article “reminds me of time stranger told his 5-6yo she didn’t want Maccas or she’d look like me.” That’s right, children, fear and pity that fatty over there, and thank your lucky stars it’s not you.

One thing that can be missed in the debate about how horrible fat people are, and how much emotional damage they’re inviting by being fat (etc), is how much emotional wear and tear is suffered by people who love those who are busy being belittled by society.  How children can be hurt by being told (or having their parent feel) that their parents are worthless because they are fat.  How partners can be hurt by being told that they’re wrong or fetishistic for loving a fat person. The damage spreads beyond individual fat people when society pours hate and scorn on all fat people.

So I’m fat, I’m generally happy with my body, I live, vote, shop, work, exercise, cook, eat, love, fuck, and do all the fun things that I have time and energy for.  The rest of you out there that have a problem with that, including you Michelle Bridges, can fuck off and get educated somewhere else.

Other recommended reading (both by Doctor Samantha Thomas):

Fat Acceptance: What it means to me.

Weight. An emotional issue.

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The 33rd Down Under Feminist Carnival

Is here… wander over to leonine anti-heroine and read the great collection she’s put together of the feminist blog posts written in January.  It features some really awesome posts as well as two of mine (yay!).

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Stairs (first draft)

The leopard stairs are soft and furry
The whiskers tickle your feet as you creep upon them
Softly purring, quietly sleeping
You hope they don’t awake

The spider stairs are sticky and flimsy
You never know if you will make it home
They’re always hidden in the dark corners
Waiting for you to approach

The eagle stairs are loud and hard
Dangerously high and perilous
These stairs soar and glide in the thermals
Before rapidly diving downwards

The shark stairs are sharp and raspy
They wend sinuously through the deep
Hunting, you or something like you
It’s best to not take these stairs

The elephant stairs are long and memorable
The gentle, warm wrinkles or repeated journeys
Slow moving but attentive
These stairs are good to take

The human stairs are regular and boring
Symmetrical and repeating
No fun, nor joy in these stairs
We are stuck with the mundane

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Losing “female” skills

I was quite staggered today to read an incredibly sexist piece by Helen Pow in a News Ltd paper titled, “Generation Y women losing ‘female’ skills such as cooking, ironing and sewing“.  Apparently if you are female and don’t know how to make lamingtons, darn socks, sew hems or iron your clothes, then you’re not a proper woman. *faints*

Research by McCrindle Research, a demographic and generational (and perhaps other things) research company has found that:

Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.

Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations.

Traditional skills outside the kitchen are falling by the wayside with Gen Y women woefully behind their older counterparts, the study by McCrindle Research found. Only 23 per cent can grow a plant from a cutting when 78 per cent of older women say this is a breeze.

Driving manual cars is also on the decline with just 40 per cent of women under 30 possessing this skill compared to 71 per cent of older women.

Hold the phone, call the government, something is clearly wrong with the young of Australia, because these essential feminine skills are in decline, the world is going to end… quick, get Wonder Woman in quickly to fix the problem.

Seriously is this a problem or a slow news day article?  I’m not surprised that News Ltd ran with it, hardly the bastion of progressive feminism, and then I did a little digging on Helen Pow, to see what else she’s written.  Turns out that she reports quite a bit on women, so I thought I’d have a quick look at a few of her pieces from January 2010, given they were the easiest to find on Google News.

From 10 January, “Fewer women in management jobs“, providing fact but not much else, about the overall decline of women in management roles, but brought with it this good news bit:

The EOWA report has, however, revealed that the gender pay gap dropped over the year — from 18 percent to about 16.9 percent — and that the proportion of female chief executives had increased slightly, from 10.6 percent to 10.8 percent.

From 30 January, “Firms face scrutiny for gender gap“, another good news story regarding the compulsory reporting for businesses with over 100 staff being identified more actively (by the Tax Office) and then being required to provide hard statistics regarding gender equity.  The article doesn’t actually provide much information about what the companies will be required to report, what has been reported already by companies that are meeting their obligations and what is hoped from the whole experience overall.

THE Australian Taxation Office will hand over previously confidential information to catch out nearly 1500 firms that are shirking their obligation to report on gender equality in the workplace.

Minister for Women Kate Ellis is also overhauling firms’ reporting requirements.

Companies with more than 100 employees are required to report to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) each year on what they are doing to boost the number of women in senior positions and close the gender pay gap in their workplace.

But Ms Ellis said businesses could no longer pay lip service to the rules by providing meaningless dialogue. Hard statistics would be required, she said.

“Businesses can no longer hide behind ineffective programs or policies. Under the new system, businesses will have to report on clear and meaningful outcomes for women in the workplace.”

And again on 30 January, “Women’s folly as a bloke boss“, an article about how female managers shouldn’t act like male managers because that’s bad (for insufficiently defined reasons):

WOMEN who want to get ahead at work should resist acting like a man, researchers are claiming. Instead of behaving aggressively in the workplace, women should display feminine traits such as listening to others and self-monitor more threatening or bossy behaviour.

The study by the British Psychological Society also found female managers who aren’t feminine are less likeable and have a smaller chance of getting promoted – a finding supported by Jasmine Sliger, an organisational psychologist who has advised Macquarie Group, ANZ and AMP.

She said women with an interactional style of leadership would get ahead quicker than women who act in a stereotypical male way.

That advice above is in constant flux in the workplace, act like a man to get ahead and be respected (which usually means act confident, loud, talk yourself up, aggressively pursue opportunities, etc) and then act like a woman to be respected (listen, don’t be loud, play nice, etc).  Clearly no one is talking to anyone else about this, and it’d be nice if it all were a meritocracy (which it isn’t) and that merit based promotion always existed.  My advice, act the way that works best for you in that workplace.

[UPDATE: I woke up this morning remembering my management studies, and thinking how nice it would be if an article covered the best management styles and didn’t gender them.  That way we’d get good female and male managers with the most appreciated management styles.]

Ok, back to the original topic of this post – gender roles.  How about we start at the point that traditional gender roles, for the most part, are a lot shit.  How about instead of saying, “But the wimminz, they isn’t baking/sewing/gardening enoughs”, we talk about all the things that women are now doing, all the traditionally male fields that women are now working in and succeeding.  How about we talk about all the things that men are now doing, all the traditionally female fields that men are now working in and succeeding.  How about we talk about the change in society being a positive thing for everyone, as Gen Y, Gen Z, and even my Gen X, have so much more choice than the Baby Boomers did, and all the awesome things that everyone can now do.  Or, we could talk about how Gen Y being time poor and relatively affluent has resulted in the creation of niche businesses that didn’t exist before because women had time to do all that stuff.  There are so many more positive stories than “But “female” skills are diminishing” and it’d be a lot more interesting to read that.

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