Regular readers know how I feel about the benefits and costs of new media.  As a middle of the road user, I stay connected by way of a limited Facebook profile, but refuse to foray into the twitterverse for previously stated reasons.  And while I like the opportunity to create a virtual bookmark in time, there’s a dark side to so much accessibility: It provides ever more means to pass unfair judgment on others.

A friend recently pointed me to this particularly ridiculous article criticizing moms who post profile photos of their children*.  The author Katie Roiphe goes so far as to suggest feminist Betty Friedan would ‘turn in her grave‘ at such behavior:

The mystery here is that the woman with the baby on her Facebook page has surely read The Feminine Mystique in college, and The Second Sex, and The Beauty Myth. She is no stranger to the smart talk of whatever wave of feminism we are on, and yet this style of effacement, this voluntary loss of self, comes naturally to her. Here is my pretty family, she seems to be saying, I don’t matter anymore.

Huh?  (more…)

I’ve long pondered why more women do not pursue politics. Madeleine Kunin, the first female governor of Vermont, composed an interesting piece on the subject after visiting a Women’s Studies course where female students surprised her by expressing fear of being judged for speaking out. According to Kunin, we may be holding ourselves back by internalizing stereotypes about XX in power and politics:

Many women do not want to venture out into the “opinion world” until they are certain of themselves, the facts, and that they are right. They are afraid of being shot down. The result is often silence.

To be political means to speak out, to risk being called “catty”, or worse. I don’t hear men worrying about whether they may be right or not. They enjoy the fight, whether it is with words or fists. Women still tend to shy away from controversy, to be uncomfortable with competition. Perhaps that is why only 17 percent of the members of Congress are female, and men are still largely running the country.

Read her full thought-provoking article over at HuffPo…