Or on the phone, or sleeping, or eating, or...

Exactly.

And dude, we objectify men here! A lot! Sometimes. Ok, a lot.

The thing is, as men we don't have millennia of history of people trying to diminish us via objectification. While expectations of providerhood and living up to some manly ideal are their own ball of wax, pretty much all we've had to face of a similar nature are a few decades of being portrayed as hapless overgrown children in commercials and sitcoms, and even that loses some of its sting when we can turn off the TV and return to a real life that's overly biased in our favor. I think objectification issues hit a lot harder when directed toward women, and there's much greater potential for underlying nastiness due to cultural baggage.

But another thing is, I'm pretty sure that most of the women here are capable of/not shy about saying if/when something bothers them without men stepping in to say it for us.

(this is said with huge love for Karl and Matt)

::hugs Karl and Matt (with their permission, of course). instructs P-C on tea-making::

There's a whole thing on the tea ceremony and its symbolism that...ah, I won't go into here. Just that the tea-maker is subject to the tea-reciever. As it were.

Um. Pedant alert. The car window that was smashed belonged to a junker sitting beside the Impala, with maneuvering room between the two cars, and with the hood pointed the opposite direction. Check your dvds, or the overhead caps that are available of that scene. Just...FYI. And apologies. End pedant alert.

But another thing is, I'm pretty sure that most of the women here are capable of/not shy about saying if/when something bothers them without men stepping in to say it for us.

Yeah, this.

When I'm around people I know and am comfortable with, I'm a foul-mouthed, dirty-minded, wise-cracking SOB. And if something someone says pings me, I'll open a can of feminist and/or anti-racist whoopass on 'em. (Side note, Nice Guy as anything but concept pre-dates Marcotte, seeing as I remember it from before she was out of short pants, but then, original work has never been her thing, now has it. Sorry. Sorry. Reflexive twitch from the anti-racist part of my brain [link] Her name, it causes The Growling. There. Out of my system (WTF, hands? Why'd you type sister?). Let us speak of her no more.)

Anyhow, my point, and I did have one, is that for me (and for a lot of peeps here), this is a place of that level of comfortable. And honestly, I thought it was groan-worthy, but exactly the kind of joke my male friends and I make all the time. I dunno. I'm not entirely comfortable with a feminism that doesn't seem to allow for off-color jokes between members of the opposite gender, when an appropriate level of comfort has been established.

junker sitting beside the Impala, with maneuvering room between the two cars, and with the hood pointed the opposite direction

ahh, I didn't notice. I was too busy objectifying what with the t-shirt, and the arms...wait I said all that. Yeah. I didn't notice.

But another thing is, I'm pretty sure that most of the women here are capable of/not shy

I love that the sentence can end right here too. We are steel magnolias. All pretty on the outside, but whooboy watch out on the inside.

You folks are eminently more capable of defending your own space than I will ever be.

And between PMM's link and the Wikipedia page itself, I have some new reading material, and some stuff to seriously think about. So thank you for that.

Sunil (and anyone else I may have perturbed/offended), I apologise. My sensibilities are obviously in need of a tune-up. I'll let the post stand as evidence of my mistake, so that it may remind me not to make similar ones in the future.

(Hugs Karl)

On a much lighter note, an SPN advent calendar

Best Advent Calendar Ever