patriarchy and other links

Good article on straight privilege and homophobia at work. I am truly lucky, that my work space is very supportive and I can be out. I even came out to my students and it was taken fine, with just an advice from my boss to guard my privacy - but not not to speak about my queerness.

When I need time for my family, no chance; yet no-one ever questions my straight colleague's anniversaries, in-laws weddings/milestones (after all, Sparky will cover for them). And when I complain about this, I get a snarky comment about not needing that much time for my "sex life." Because sex is the ONLY reason I could possibly want to spend time with Beloved, right?
And part of it stems from that eternal fallacy that to be a homophobe/racist/misogynist/insert-ist here you have to be as extreme as possible. That anything short of being raging hateful bigots with torches and pitchforks is not REAL -ism, -ist etc.

New York Times writes about racial disparity in school suspensions. Unfortunatelly, no surprises here:

In many of the nation’s middle schools, black boys were nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, according to a new study, which also found that black girls were suspended at four times the rate of white girls.

School authorities also suspended Hispanic and American Indian middle school students at higher rates than white students, though not at such disproportionate rates as for black children, the study found. Asian students were less likely to be suspended than whites.

Another great one is a checkup list on male privilege, based on the famous article and list made by Peggy McIntosh on white privilege.

Pointing out that men are privileged in no way denies that bad things happen to men. Being privileged does not mean men are given everything in life for free; being privileged does not mean that men do not work hard, do not suffer. In many cases – from a boy being bullied in school, to a soldier dying in war – the sexist society that maintains male privilege also does great harm to boys and men.

In the end, however, it is men and not women who make the most money; men and not women who dominate the government and the corporate boards; men and not women who dominate virtually all of the most powerful positions of society. And it is women and not men who suffer the most from intimate violence and rape; who are the most likely to be poor; who are, on the whole, given the short end of patriarchy’s stick.