You don’t need to hear me rant on again about uncontrolled Google Ads.

Yesterday, I moved the homepage of the Haredi Women Professionals (aka Supermom) Network to a new hosting site that plants automatic Google ads along one side of the page. In the ten minutes between my setting up the page and paying for a premium service entitling me to remove the Google Ads, the homepage was advertising links to pornography (how obvious, given the word “Women” in the title, right?).

Here’s another example (from a search results page). Not a mis-match of interests, this time, as much as poorly-chosen ad copy:

Need I point out that Orthodox Jewish Women are not for sale?! :.D

“[Sony Ericsson] this week announced a Bluetooth headset with a press release that looked designed to set gender politics back by several decades.

Billed as a ‘must have handbag accessory’, the HBH-PV712 Style Edition (for her) is, apparently, the Bluetooth headset “with the female touch”. Since we’re mired in 70s TV cliche here, that presumably means it wants to know why you’ve been out so late and looks like it’s had one too many home made gins and tonic. So you give a heartless laugh, tell it “You’re a bloody mess, love”, and fix yourself a stiff scotch.

It gets better: “Throughout the design process, women have been thought about, from the considerable amount of talk-time available and the user-friendly technology, to the comfortable swirl ear hook which makes the headset easy to apply.”

So there you go, Sony Ericsson has based this product on the premises that women chatter like monkeys, have trouble operating basic consumer electronics and need Bluetooth headsets that don’t challenge their limited motor skills. Bless ‘em.

[via Telecoms.com]

The whole question of using a married name versus retaining one’s “maiden” name is really interesting. There are so many levels of practical and political and emotional and interpretational meaning to a name that there may be no way to disentangle them from one another. The classic “practical” reason for retaining a maiden name would be career recognition: making yourself easy to find, and building on previous reputation, rather than starting over with a new name.

I’ve noticed that the “practical” reason has widened its net… if you want to be found by old friends on Facebook or any other social networking site (or via a Google search, for that matter), you can’t be found if the searcher doesn’t even know your name. Which provides a new incentive for retaining your maiden name, even if only for your online identity.

Identity, indeed. Quite literally.

It will be interesting to watch and to see if this apolitical influence has greater ramifications or impact than simply seeing two last names in social network profiles. Will there be a change in how women perceive their identities as conjoined or distinct from their husbands’? Will there be an increase or decrease in feminist affiliations? In respect for women and their identities as such?

Or will it be another meaningless blip in electronic evolution, made insignificant by progress in tracking and maintaining contacts and relationships online?

I had occasion yesterday to be in a group comprised of a disproportionate number of very poor women. Not women who think they are poor — most probably don’t think so — but they are.

Notable: lots of very bad teeth. Missing teeth, discolored teeth, teeth headed in all directions.

Why? First, dental coverage is weak in Israel, despite health coverage being all right. So those who haven’t got the money simply don’t have the work done.

That’s the obvious reason. There’s another reason, culturally rooted, and more potent: in haredi culture, people take pride in being non-materialistic. That’s helpful for coping if you’re poor, although it doesn’t incentivize for climbing out of poverty (another story). It also means that in certain haredi circles, women are proud of looking dowdy. Dowdiness implies disdain of trends and fashion, and a focus on more important things than external appearance. This makes spending money on external appearance less compelling than it is in other circles.

Understand that I’m not making any sweeping statements. There are other equally religious haredi circles in which the women’s clothes will make your eyes pop out (”the Europeans”), and others in which the mothers dress down but make up for it on their kids’ wardrobes and decorating their homes. But there is this anti-materialistic group, as well, and seeing it yesterday in a concentrated form (dozens at a time) was striking.

When the secular Israeli media look down on haredi society (and they do), it is generally the stereotype of this anti-materialist segment that they are despising: Bad teeth. Outdated clothes. Shabby “grandmother” shoes on women in their 40s. No makeup. Sagging stockings.

That’s the external appearance.

Internally:

Intense focus on being good, loving mothers — the education of the children comes before everything — including reading books and joining workshops on the subject. Pushing themselves to their physical limits to help neighbors and strangers with a hot meal, babysitting, a listening ear, a relevant referral. Genuine interest in and care for everyone they meet.

When I had the option, I chose to live in a neighborhood with a higher proportion of poor families rather than a neighborhood with a higher proportion of “Europeans”. For one thing, it made me feel rich, whereas the other neighborhood likely would have made me feel deprived. But I also relish the intensity, the purity, the focus on the real things in life uncluttered by recreational shopping, ice coffee, and vacations in the Alps.

It’s a different world, and a refreshing one.

It’s a culture that deserves respect and awe, not disdain and discrimination.

The victimised Muslim woman is the lens through which Islam and Muslim society are seen. In medieval times she was cast as an intimidating powerful queen or termagant (like Bramimonde in the Chanson de Roland, or Belacane in Parzival) reflecting an intimidating powerful Muslim civilisation. And when the power balance began to shift in Europe’s favour in the 17th and 18th centuries, she was made to mirror her society’s fallen fortunes. She turned into a harem slave, leading little more than a dumb animal existence, subjugated, inert, abject, powerless, and invisible. She is the quintessential embodiment of a despotic, deformed, and backward Islam. [from Damsels in Distress?,  Soumaya Ghannoushi]

A fascinating assertion. I won’t comment on the overall theme of the blog posting; the issue is complex. Worth reading, though. It will make you think.

From the comments (which are well-worth reading, too): 

There are other aspects to this complex, too. Thus there’s the tendency for societies to use female symbolic figures to represent themselves (Athena, Britannia, Lady Liberty etc). There’s the sentimentalisation embodied in the phrase “motherhood and apple pie”. Among many other things. Religions, of all varieties, being concerned with the regulation of social groups, are particularly interested in women, because of womens’ status as social vectors.

So if a society is reacting against “the west”, that reaction will inevitably take the form of suppressing the freedoms of women, for the simple reason that those freedoms have become associated with westernisation. And this reaction will be justified in religious terms. But equally, western and other interests seeking moral justification for intervention will highlight the situation of women.

…and this…

This argument is OK as far as it goes but may I add a couple of points:
1) Human rights can and do exist outside of an imperialist narrative. In the European context they arose in the struggle against ruling elites that were also involved in colonialism. Hence they are better framed in an anti-imperialist narrative.
2) My first point would of course preclude blowing the **** out of someone in order to liberate them, but not of being concerned with their state of being, or of engaging with them to improve their situation. (R.A.W.A. springs to mind). Your point about ‘the oppressed Muslim woman’ being an imperialist construction, is quite possibly true. However, if you then conceive of a Muslim world that is self-contained and separate from the ‘West’, (or wherever), you are reproducing the same fallacy; namely that Muslim human beings have an essential difference that requires special treatment. […]

…and also this…

What would you say to people like me who abhor Islams treatment of women yet opposed the Iraq war? I’m sorry but tarring everyone who recognises that Islam oppresses women as some kind of racist imperialist is simply false. I’m not impressed at all with the OP, she seems to be trying to brush the abuses of women under Islam under the carpet by pointing out how western governments exploit this abuse as propoganda for their imperialist wars. […]

Seen in a Jerusalem apartment building. It’s very common for Orthodox women, who generally cover their hair after marriage, to wear wigs. This one appears to be left out for pickup (by a hairdresser?). Note that while women generally are discreet about a wig (shaitl in Yiddish; pe’ah in Hebrew), there is no shame in wearing one, which explains why it’s in poor taste but not shameful for this specimen to be outside the front door. I’ll admit that it did give me a surprise as I came up the steps. (In fact, good wigs cost well upward of $1000, are identified by brand name and worn with pride.)

So, I’m hanging around a motorcycle dealership looking for a place to sit while I wait for a meeting. I thought I’d have a cup of coffee and charge up my laptop, but this neighborhood appears to go in for pubs more than coffee shops. Not that a motorcycle dealership is the most elegant backdrop for a nice haredi mother, but it beats a pub.

There’s a lineup of motorcycles in front; I can see their appeal, and that surprises me. Some look almost like cars, and I find that less appealing. I like the cheerfulness of the bright green Kawasakis, but cannot figure out how one reaches the handlegrips! I’ll have to go search for a picture of one in use. I’m short (5′ even), so I’m probably not the right build for the intended drivers, but nonetheless… Pregnant women obviously need not apply. Where does one park a beer-belly on this thing? Surely that must be allowed for in the motorcycle target demographic?!

Best I liked the ones that had an insectoid (entomologically-inspired) lightness to the frame. Not the motorcycles with the cushy seats, but the ones that look as if they could fly, or at least drive straight up a wall.