This is how you do social justice

One of the criticisms often lobbed at men’s rights activists is that we don’t actually do any advocacy work. Notwithstanding the fact that advocacy work takes a fuckton of money, that is simply not true. Carnell Smith, for example, won his own paternity fraud case in the Supreme Court and writes model law that has changed the legislation surrounding paternity fraud in ten states and counting. Smith has been featured as a guest expert on Dr Phil, Fox Business News, CBS Early Show, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN news and many other syndicated talk shows.

 

 

From suicide prevention to domestic violence counselling, intactivism to educational reform, MRAs around the world are gathering, agitating and building the war chest we will need to challenge sexist laws that discriminate against men. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a budget of $40 MILLION dollars, most of which is paid out in salaries and very little actual work is accomplished, so we have a ways to go before we can challenge the Supreme Court and pass an Equal Rights Amendment. The war chest at SPLC stands at $245 MILLION – we are up against some well funded competitors.

 

Social justice warriors are just as frequently accused of doing nothing more than pissing and moaning on social media about perceived oppression, and today I want to take a moment to shine a spotlight on a man who is not just talking about social justice, he’s doing it.

 

 

His name is Dr. Matt Woosley and he is an anesthesiologist. In 2012 he went to Haiti, intending to stay for one year and serve in Port-au-Prince, but once he got to Haiti, he saw a desperate need, decided to do something about it.

 

What the people in Port-au-Prince needed was work. Work that paid a living wage. Work that made it possible for them to eat, educate their children, create safe neighborhoods. Dr. Woosley came up with an idea: could the people in Port-au-Prince be trained to make industrial grade medical scrubs and compete for business on a global scale?

 

Using his own money, Dr. Woosley purchased industrial sewing machines and began training people in the neighborhood, and the Little Haitian Factory was born.

 

We pay our workers 5x the daily average. We share all of our profits directly with our employees. It is our intention for them to receive a living wage and escape poverty.

We are not a charity. We are financed from my personal savings.  Our success has depended solely on the quality of our products and our ability to empower customers to purchase. The better we do in selling our products, the more secure is the future of our factory.

 

 

The factory is up and running and now all Dr. Woosley needs is more customers. He has a GoFundMe campaign under way, requesting $50K to hire a professional sales team to begin marketing the factory’s products to hospitals and healthcare facilities in the US.

 

Dr. Woosley is a man making a difference in the world. I met him when he sent me an email totally unrelated to his factory, and I have encouraged him wholeheartedly to crowdfund to meet his needs. He had his trepidations, as being self-sufficient and a fully functioning for profit enterprise is incredibly important to him. Little Haitian Factory is not a charity. Dr. Woosley is not interested in peddling the “poor victims in Haiti” narrative.

 

He doesn’t want to give the people he watches over a fish. He wants to teach them how to fish. And he’s doing a fantastic job of it.

 

Please consider donating to the Little Haitian Factory at GoFundMe, and if that is not within your means to do, please share this as far and wide and as you can.

 

Let’s help Dr. Woosley change the world.

 

Lots of love,

 

JB

 

Dr.JudgyBitch and a million of her closest friends head back to school

After blogging for a little over ten months, yesterday judgybitch.com hit the one million page views milestone!

Yay! We started off with quite a few haters who spent oodles of time crafting lengthy screeds explaining why I am a complete idiot and detailing how I should be raped and then murdered, invariably with appalling grammar and sentence structure.

Ah, there is nothing quite like the pleasure of hitting “delete” on a 5000 word hate comment. The cyber equivalent of “fuck off”.

Owing to diligent moderation and pretty much zero tolerance for trolls, we now have a core group of readers who are either interested in learning about our ideas, or interested in contributing their own experiences and observations, and I must say, this blog gives me more pleasure than I ever would have anticipated.

So thank you, dear readers. Both Pixie and I are humbled and gratified by your presence, thoughts and support.

Now, having said that, life is about to undergo a very large change that I am just beginning to grasp the ramifications of. My PhD is officially underway, and I have taken the first baby steps towards organizing my lit review, which I expect will take up the better part of the next six months.

A lit review involves reading all of the published research surrounding a particular topic so that A) I understand the topic; and B) I can spot the gaps in both knowledge and theory that need to be filled in.

My topic is Entrepreneurship and Innovation, with a sub-focus that crosses both strategy and finance. In order to earn a doctorate, I am required to conduct research that addresses an actual, real world problem, AND I am required to contribute in some way to the theory that informs my subject matter. Most doctorates go off the rails because they do one thing and not the other, and both requirements must be satisfied in order to be awarded the degree.

I feel confident that I have chosen my topic well, and that I will indeed fulfill both requirements. The real world problem that I am addressing is fairly straightforward: how can investors, especially venture capitalists, accurately value pre-IPO biotechnology companies? Venture capitalists are always looking for opportunities to invest in companies BEFORE they go public or get acquired by a larger organization, because that’s how you reap the big rewards.

But how do they know which companies are the ones that will succeed?

I’m focusing on two variables that affect how companies are valued at the nascent stage: one has to do with whether or not any given company is part of an established cluster. Should companies working outside established clusters automatically disqualify as objects of interest to investors? Minneapolis, for example, has a biotechnology cluster concentrated on cardiovascular technologies and diagnostics. There is no question that working inside a cluster has measurable, quantifiable benefits, but does that mean investors should ignore companies in Wisconsin who are also developing cardiovascular biotechnologies?

Current literature says yes. The risk profile for companies outside clusters is too high.

I’m going to test what impact distance from an established cluster has on biotechnology companies ultimately securing the capital to go public.

That variable contributes to BOTH knowledge and theory, but just to be certain, I’m going one further, and testing out an analytical technique called a proportional hazards regression that uses one variable as a hazard against which all other variables are tested. At the moment, most variables are analyzed using standard logistics regression, but there is a well-known problem with those regressions, which tend to overstate prevalence ratios. That problem disappears when one variable is singled out as a hazard. Of course, the technique will only work when one of the variables CAN be singled out as a hazard, but in entrepreneurship literature it’s common to have an easily identifiable hazard.

I didn’t come up with the technique myself, of course. I have borrowed from the field of epidemiology, which is almost always concerned with some sort of hazard, and thus prefers the proportional hazards regression, also called a Cox regression.

My goal is to have the technique accepted as a standard analytical methodology in business research, too. That’s my real contribution to theory.

It begins with surveying the literature on clusters, the value relevance of non-financial information for pre-IPO companies and the efficacy of the biotechnology sector in attracting venture capital.

Are we all in a coma yet?

The reason I am telling you all this is that my priorities have shifted. Obviously, taking care of my family and home is the first thing on my list, but the blog has now been bumped down to third place after the PhD. What that means, I have yet to fully understand. At the moment, I expect to be able to keep up my posting schedule, but if a few days go by without any new ranting from me, you can safely assume that I have a school related deadline that has occupied my attention.

I’d like to take a few minutes here to tell you the story of how this blog came about.

After Pixie’s son was born with a very serious, life-threatening medical condition five years ago, I took up the habit of writing her regular letters, which kept her company during long hospital vigils, the outcome of which was almost always unknown. I wanted the letters to be a way for her to physically feel how very much I loved her and cared for her and LittleBear and Mr.PPP, and mostly, I wanted to give her something that was light-hearted and uplifting and to offer a respite from the terror of not knowing if her baby was going to survive the latest round of operations.

Pixie and I came to be full time mothers on very different pathways. My choice was deliberate and I never, ever doubted that I would raise my own children with their father in the bonds of marriage. I set up my life to realize that goal, including the eventual transition back to the workforce, which I am now beginning. Pixie had full time motherhood thrust upon her by her son’s medical issues. She gave up a promising career as a visual artist and documentary short film maker (there’s actually lots of money to be made in short films for corporations, schools, organizations, etc) when her son was born. It is pure speculation to think about what she would have done had LittleBear been born perfectly healthy – she may have given up that career anyways, but life offered her no real opportunity to test that commitment.

We both felt the sting of becoming “invisible” and being sneered at by other women for our foolishness in depending upon men and motherhood to validate our lives and provide our incomes. It wasn’t long before our letters evolved from discussions of Jennifer Aniston’s weight to serious critiques of feminism and the expectation that we sacrifice our most cherished desires on the altar of cash flow. And because we both have sons, we took a keen interest in what the future looks like for them.

Over the course of years, we honed our observations and shared our fears and anger with one another, until one day last October, we skyped and Pixie looked as shell-shocked as I have ever seen her.

LittleBear was dying.

Gangrene had set in to an abdominal wound and the medical team had gently suggested that Pixie and her husband prepare for the worst. All they could do was wait. And there is nothing worse than that feeling of utter helplessness, while you cradle your baby and wait.

I desperately wanted to distract Pixie from the waiting.

I know! Let’s write a blog! We’ll call it JudgyBitch!

Sitting beside her son’s bed in the pediatric ICU, Pixie created the website you see and we brainstormed the content. Every day, she sends me articles and suggestions for what to write and even though we don’t agree on everything, we both agree that the perspective JudgyBitch offers is one sorely missing from the cultural conversation.

And one million other people seem to agree.

Pixie may not appear to be hugely involved in the blog, but she very much IS. She is a sounding board, an editor, a confidante, and most importantly, a dearly loved friend whom I respect and admire.

LittleBear survived the gangrene, and is now the picture of blooming health. His condition can still erupt into life-threatening at any moment, and he has many more surgeries and procedures ahead of him, but for the moment, the sun is shining and he is safe.

This has been quite an incredible journey for us, and I am so pleased to have been able to share it with so many other people. So many people on the blog feel like friends. People I have known for such a long time.

Thank you.

Here’s to the future! Dr. JudgyBitch and her five million friends!

Five million?

Hell. Why stop there?

We want to speak to everyone in the whole world. Even the ones who hate us. Darth Vader turned from the Dark Side eventually, so there’s hope even for feminists, right?

Hope springs eternal. What other choices are there?

Lots of love,

JB

Ten Rules for Managing Your Vagina

SOME IMAGES ARE A BIT RACY – POSSIBLY NSFW

Following Suzanne Moore’s excellent and very informative article for men on how to manage their penises, published in the Guardian, I thought I would do all the ladies a favor and offer some suggestions on how to manage their vaginas.

This is Suzanne, by the way.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/07/10-rules-managing-penis-sexting-wine-toaster

Let’s recap Suzanne’s article quickly.  The very definition of delightful, no?

How to Manage Your Penis

 

1.            Don’t take pictures of your penis and don’t share them 

2.            Wash your filthy penis, please

3.            Do not use small appliances on your penis

4.            Do not urinate in public.  Gross!

5.            Don’t forget not to rape anybody with your penis

6.            Do not name your penis

7.            Do not share your penis with other men

8.            Do not decorate your penis

9.            Do not attempt to change the natural shape of your penis

10.          Do not mistake your penis for your brain

Excellent advice, Suzanne.  You really have a handle on the psychology of the average male.  The love just shines through!  A rainbow of affection for a dreary day!

How unfair of you to leave the ladies out, though.  Surely, some vagina love is in order, to complement this Ode to LoveRockets?

Let me help you out.  Here are Ten Rules to Manage Your Vagina.

1.            Don’t take pictures of your vagina and don’t share them 

And if you plan to ignore this excellent advice, try to find out whether the recipient of your largess would care to see your vagina in the first place.  Don’t be this girl, sexting members of her high school lacrosse team, who didn’t particularly care to go visually spelunking through the lady cave of their friend, and had her, oops!  Expelled!

http://jezebel.com/girl-sends-sext-gets-kicked-out-of-school-lacrosse-pl-471285308

See?  Bad things can happen if you sext your muffin to guys who have already had lunch, thanks.

Never worry, though.  You have Feminists™ to come to your defence and wonder why the BOYS didn’t get expelled for failing to worship the Kodak Yoni.

Ha ha!  Silly vagina owner.  Not everyone wants to see it.  Keep in it your Calvin Kleins.

Oh, oops. My bad.  She only sent pictures of her boobies.  No naughtybit shots. Well, let’s try this one, then.  Let’s try all of these!

http://jezebel.com/5057511/revenge-porn-hard-to-prosecute-harder-on-the-psyche

You see, ladies, when you take explicit pictures of your naked body and send them to people, they are no longer your private property, and if you happen to go full bore cunt on the lucky recipient, plan on seeing your bits plastered far and wide on the internet.

Oh, boo hoo.  You want to shame, humiliate, mock, deride and snicker at MEN who have made the mistake of sharing their XXX camera roll, but when it happens to YOU, that’s a felony?

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/07/criminalizing_revenge_porn/

Bullshit.

Pot, let me introduce you to kettle.

There is one surefire way for BOTH men and women to ensure they are not publicly exposed by their own selfies – don’t take them.  If you can’t abide that, then accept you are taking a risk.  YOU took the shot!  YOU pressed send.

And you will face whatever consequences there are as a result of YOUR own decisions.  Welcome to being a grown-up.

2.            Wash your filthy vagina, please

Sweaty, bloody, occasionally yeasty, and dripping wet when aroused – ladies, please take some steps to keep your vagina clean.  You know, a daily shower should do it.  A bit of hygiene after a loo run.

You know, Suzanne, this is just gross.  Any attempt to make genitals seem dirty and filthy by the simple act of being genitals reeks of some pretty serious psychological disturbance, to me.  There is even a name for it – a bunch of names, actually.

Phallophobia is the abnormal and persistent fear of a penis, especially if it’s erect.   Those who suffer from this phobia are afraid to look at or touch a penis.  This even includes pictures of penises.  Phallophobia is similar to Medorthophobia, the fear of an erect penis and Ithyphallophobia, the fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis.

A phobia is a strong, persistent fear of situations, objects, activities or persons.  The main symptom is an excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. Other phobia symptoms include shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and an overall feeling of dread.  Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorders.

http://constantfear.blogspot.ca/2013/06/phallophobia-fear-of-penis.html#.UgOqYdKR-So

Now, spiders I can understand. Spiders are terrible.  Really, really awful.

But penises?

I really think you need to look into whatever is causing you to believe male genitals are dirty, Suzanne.  It’s kind of not very normal.

3.            Do not use small appliances on your vagina

Especially not any of these small appliances!

Holy Joy Nazi!  Welcome to Suzanne’s world.  The Mayor of NoFunsVille herself.  I think Suzanne should begin an immediate program of applying a LOT of small appliances to her vagina. Okay, technically, not her vagina.  But let’s not get fussed.  It’s in the ballpark. She’ll figure it out. She might feel a lot better, too.

4.            Do not urinate in public.  Gross!

Nuff said.

5.            Don’t forget not to rape anybody with your vagina

And while you’re at it, try to remember not to accuse people of raping you with their penis when that isn’t true. It’s a very nasty thing to do. And after you do it, oh, eleven times or so, you might even go to jail.  I guess the message is that ONE or TWO accusations is okay, but don’t get carried away with it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284677/Compulsive-liar-Elizabeth-Jones-cried-rape-11-times-jailed.html

Now, now. Don’t get hysterical. I’m not saying NO false accusations.  Moderation, ladies!  Just a little restraint.

6.            Do not name your vagina

Enough with the “Ladybits” and “Pandora’s Box” and “Honeypot” nonsense.  Vagina.  There is nothing wrong with the word vagina. Needing to name your “Midnight Garden” is just immature and off-putting.

http://jezebel.com/5927490/honeypot-flaps-twat-nicknaming-a-vagina-is-tricky-business

Grow up fellow “Yorkshire Pudding” owners!

7.            Do not share your vagina with other women

Uhm, I don’t even know what to do with this one.  Throw in homophobia as a bit of satire?  For what purpose? To highlight the fact that Suzanne’s entire article is a steaming pile of hateful bile?

Well, okay.  I personally don’t care who you issue entrance passes to, but we can play along.

No dykes!  No sharing your vagina with other women!

8.            Do not decorate your vagina

No grooming! And vajazzling? Forget it.  No piercing, tattooing or accessorizing.

9.            Do not attempt to change the natural shape of your vagina

Obviously, actual mutilation during childhood is utterly forbidden. For vaginas.  Penises we don’t care much about.  Mutilating baby boys is okie-dokie, but once that initial butchery is done, never, ever try any other enhancements.

Ladies, stop doing those Kegels this instant.  Nobody cares about a tight vagina anyways. And no post-birth reconstructive surgeries, either.  No rejuvenations!  Fourth degree tearing during a particularly tough labor?  Too bad!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/25/us-usa-health-gynecology-idUSBRE87O05520120825?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

10.          Do not mistake your vagina for your brain

This will be the tough one.  Stop thinking with your crotches, ladies.  There is more to life than cultivating your LadyGarden.  More to your existence than ploughing the fields and planting seeds.  Of course, if you forgo planting, you will probably starve, but that’s neither here nor there.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2386400/Kate-Spicer-Any-woman-says-shes-happy-childless-liar-fool.html

Ladies, you need to think with your heads, not your ovaries!  Just think where we could be as a human species if more women focused on their education and careers and contributions than on the occupational status of their wombs.

More Barista of Arts, summa cum latte!

http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/whatsitworth-complete.pdf

More secretaries!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/top-job-for-women-secretary-same-as-1950_n_2599560.html

More elderly women alone with no one to care for them!

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/single-childless-and-downright-terrified/?_r=0

More of everything we need, no?

In a way, Suzanne’s article is very instructive. The denigration of men and their filthy, rapey minds and penises used to be rather subtle. A little unpacking was in order.  That is no longer true.  If you look at the comments at the Guardian, even average readers seem to be able to detect the scent of desperation.  The rhetoric against men is escalating because the fog is slowly lifting.

How much longer will the Guardian, and other news sources be able to get away with this campaign?  Yesterday’s discussion was kind of interesting.  Is critiquing Cathy Young fair? Does she have a legitimate complaint that the rhetoric of those who speak out in favor of human rights for everyone is just a bit too aggressive, crass, brash, antagonistic?

Maybe?

Complaining about dirty penises in a national newspaper hardly fits the bill for polite, civil conversation, if you ask me.

Maybe we are a bit crass.  A bit belligerent.  A bit over the top.  So what?

We were told our campaign wasn’t sufficiently slick. We regard that as a compliment.

Margaret Thatcher

Fuck all the slick campaigns.  Dirty fights are dirty.

And there’s nothing wrong with getting a little dirty now and then.

Lots of love,

JB