i shuddered when i read this and i'm STILL shuddering

i couldn't believe what i was reading! no wonder women are still being discriminated against. no wonder women are earning less than men. no wonder women are thought to only be breasts and high heels. no wonder women will continue to be downtrodden. why? because of absolute giant flaming assholes clueless people like amy wilson

p.s. good thing we're not in india when it's not unusual for girl children and girl fetus' to be killed

p.p.s. not only is it obviously outrageous for amy giant flaming asshole wilson to be writing this, it's effing outrageous for cnn to EFFING PUBLISH IT

Why I didn't want a girl
By Amy Wilson
In an elevator, in line at the grocery store, waiting for the bus, it always goes like this: Strangers' eyes zero in on my belly first. Then they dart furtively to my face, as if to make sure I'm not a mutant, just visibly pregnant.

After this, they ask, "Is this your first?"

"My third," I answer. "I have two boys at home."

And for the kicker, they unfailingly give me a sideways grin, and say: "Going for your girl?"

"Nooo, just going for a baby," I reply, gritting my teeth a little. "Another boy would be fine with us."

I know these people are just making conversation. But this constant assumption leaves me a little offended. What's wrong with boys? Why wouldn't I want another one? It bothers me that people assume I feel incomplete without a daughter, let alone that it's my motivation for being pregnant with a third child in the first place............

.............I sat there in a daze. This child I was just starting to feel stir inside me was a girl? I waited for the excitement to wash over me. It didn't come. Not only was I not thrilled -- I was disappointed. I'm still not sure whether I was more bummed by how I found out or what I found out. Either way, I was shaken...................

fuck disney

and all of the other tv channels and producers and people responsible for the perception grrrls aren't equal to boys


grrrls are MORE than hannah montana and princesses in pink (don't get me wrong. unlike some women i DO like the color pink but i also like black as well)

boys are more than davey crockett and skateboards as well

if we keep up these separations and stereotypes we're all in for the shite.

children to have minds of their own? to NOT depend upon a prince to save them? oh, it's why can't grrrls AND boys be interested in a science show or a math show or even just a comedy show that BOTH find they like to watch? there is NO reason EXCEPT for the almighty dollar. if we allow this to keep happening our grrrls will turn into addle brained submissive women. don't you want your grrrl children to be equal to your boy children? don't you want your grrrlok for a prince to be in the picture, but NOT as a saviour, as an EQUAL

Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers
By BROOKS BARNES
LOS ANGELES — Kelly Peña, or “the kid whisperer,” as some Hollywood producers call her, was digging through a 12-year-old boy’s dresser drawer here on a recent afternoon. Her undercover mission: to unearth what makes him tick and use the findings to help the Walt Disney Company reassert itself as a cultural force among boys.

Ms. Peña, a Disney researcher with a background in the casino industry, zeroed in on a ratty rock ’n’ roll T-shirt. Black Sabbath?

“Wearing it makes me feel like I’m going to an R-rated movie,” said Dean, a shy redhead whose parents asked that he be identified only by first name.

Jackpot.

Ms. Peña and her team of anthropologists have spent 18 months peering inside the heads of incommunicative boys in search of just that kind of psychological nugget. Disney is relying on her insights to create new entertainment for boys 6 to 14, a group that Disney used to own way back in the days of “Davy Crockett” but that has wandered in the age of more girl-friendly Disney fare like “Hannah Montana.” ......

one would think there would be the SAME concerns

or points to consider if administered to grrrls AND boys. like everything else (take for example women being EXcluded from many different types of medical studies), they are NOT treated equally. we MUST knock down those walls and get RID of the double standard. we MUST for not only our daughters but our sons as well
A Vaccine Debate Once Focused on Sex Shifts as Boys Join the Target Market

By Rob Stein

Washington Post Staff Writer

When a vaccine designed to protect girls against a sexually transmitted virus arrived three years ago, the debate centered on one question: Would the shots make young girls more likely to have sex?

Now the vaccine's maker is trying to get approval to sell the vaccine for boys, and the debate is focusing on something else entirely: Is it worth the money, and is it safe and effective enough?

"We are still more worried about the promiscuity of girls than the promiscuity of boys," said Susan M. Reverby, a professor of women's studies and medical history at Wellesley College. "There's still that double standard."

The shift in the discussion about Gardasil illustrates the complex interplay of political, economic, scientific, regulatory and social factors that increasingly influence decisions about new types of medical care. For the vaccine, the new dynamic reflects a strategic tack by Gardasil's critics, growing concern about health-care costs, fears about whether medical treatments are being vetted adequately and stubborn biases about gender, experts say............

girls

if they're not being threatened with murder (see a couple of postings ago), they're being beaten and sexually abused and made to work their fingers to the bones. this story is about OTHER countries, but it happens HERE too. it happens to girls AND women. we must make this stop worldwide. we must protect ALL of our children. it seems to me, girls and then women ALWAYS get the worst of everything though.

we are your mothers and daughters and sisters and aunts friends. don't allow this to happen to us

In Togo, a 10-Year-Old's Muted Cry: 'I Couldn't Take Any More'
As the Global Trade in Domestic Workers Surges, Millions of Young Girls Face Exploitation and Abuse
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
LOME, Togo -- Adiza ran scared and crying into the street. Ten years old and 4-foot-9, she fled the house where she had worked for moire than a year, cleaning and sweeping from before dawn until late at night.
She ran to a woman selling food in the street and told her that since the day she had arrived in this capital city from her village in the country, her employer had beaten her almost daily and kept her in slavelike conditions.

"I couldn't take any more," recalled Adiza, a slight girl with close-cropped hair and almond-shaped eyes, who talked in a halting whisper as she described how her employer beat her with her hands and with cooking pots before the November day she ran away. ...........

this story is like many others

but they still must be told. over and over again.

in parts of the world (and american IS indeed one of those parts) grrrls and women are worth WAYYYYYYYYYYYY less than men. their worth is based upon their age, their ability to cook, clean and have babies. that's about it. in some lands grrrl-children DO have it much harder than others.

here is the story of one 15 year old. her brothers can go to school. she cannot. her father takes medicine for high blood pressure. her mother has hypertension also. however, SHE does not take meds because they can only afford pills for ONE of them.

the life of 'the fairer sex' isn't so fair after all

A Woman's World

The Struggle for Equality Around the Globe | Special Report

'This Is the Destiny of Girls'
Across Much of South Asia, a Daughter's Life Is Circumscribed By Tradition and Poverty. But for Some, the Dreams Die Slower.
LITTLE RANN OF KUTCH, India -- In the soft light of dawn, the cracked, dry seabed stretched endlessly in every direction. Jyotsna Patadia was alone -- she is often alone -- in her family's grass hut, a speck of life in the emptiness, cooking potatoes and onions over an open fire.

From October to May, Jyotsna, 15, works here in the desolate salt pans of western India, where her parents earn a living coaxing salt from the ground. The family arrives when the summer monsoons end and the water submerging this vast plain recedes.

Her two younger brothers stay behind in their village, Kharaghoda, a chaotic mix of camels and water buffalo, schools and vegetable sellers, newborn babies and blind old men.

Though the village of 12,000 is a seven-hour walk from Jyotsna's isolated hut on the salt pans, it might as well be England, it feels so different and far away.

"It's easier to be a boy," said Jyotsna, who was forced to drop out of school at 10 to help her parents. "They get to go to school.".......

we are here, we are here, we are HERE!

remember, a person's a person no matter how small (and that INCLUDES girls and women)
please read the entire review by peter sagal. it's at the link below. it's NOT that long
AND it's wonderful

Gender Inequity in 'Whoville'
by Peter Sagal

All Things Considered, April 2, 2008 · I don't know what sins Dr. Seuss committed in his life to be doomed to have Jim Carrey star in movie adaptations of his books. But I came out of Horton Hears a Who, with my wife and my three excited and happy daughters, irritated by something even more annoying than Carrey's tics. In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.
No I won't. What's so irritating about this casual slap at daughters is the sense that the makers of the film didn't really mean it. They seemed mostly interested in riffs on pop culture and jokes about violating bodily integrity. But what writers are told, you see, in Hollywood notes meetings, is that every character has to make a journey, towards something he needs and ultimately gets, and what they decided the Mayor of Whoville needs was a better relationship with his son.....

............And there's this — not only does the movie end with father and son embracing, while the 96 daughters are, I guess, playing in a well, somewhere, but the son earns his father's love by saving the world. Boys get to save the world, and girls get to stand there and say, I knew you could do it. How did they know he could do it? Maybe because they watched every other movie ever made? ..........