The Gender Equality Checkpoint
As most of you know I have a strong interest in sexism and gender roles - how they arise, how they shift, and the current contours of our gendered culture.
Often I read an article, or series of articles, which set out, or highlight current areas of gender inequality, or more optimistically, of the closing of that gap in some way, and I think to post them in here. I never know quite where to put them - and if i started a thread for every article - or even every little cluster of related articles - I'd flood the Cellar :p
Sexism - however it manifests - like racism needs to be discussed and understood.
The world is changing. And our concepts of gender are changing. These shifts - sometimes seeming to move towards greater parity and sometimes seeming to shift back - have been a part of the human experience for as long as we can reasonably trace back through our history, and most likely for as long as we have had the human capacity for complex thought and self-awareness. It does feel, though - looking at the past few hundred years in western culture - that we are broadly moving towards greater parity and towards a less stark division of labour and a less polarised understanding of gender roles. (though - some would argue we are returning to greater parity)
Looking specifically at the now, however, it's clear that movement is a stuttering one. We take steps forward - we take steps back. There are areas of broad consensus and areas of deep struggle.
Well - that's enough of a rambling introduction from me. This thread is for all those little snippets of news or current studies that speak to the shape of gender in our culture, that show how far we have come or how far we still have to go - and whether we even all agree on the journey.
As a final note: from my perspective sexism, and in particular gender inequality, is usually something I associate with the female experience. But these divisions are not clean cut - and this thread is intended as a space for other perspectives as well. The ways in which men become trapped or coralled into particular roles, and the ways in which those expected roles can then disadvantage men in some areas of life (such as child custody, and rights to parental leave) are part of the same social system that disadvantages women in other areas of life. Add in the range of LGBT experiences and the intersections of race and gender, and the different perspectives multiply far beyond the binary division of male and female.
I'll come back later and post a few snippets that caught my attention over the last couple of weeks - but for now a bit of positive news:
The University of Oxford is to appoint its first female vice-chancellor since its records began nearly 800 years ago, after Prof Louise Richardson was nominated for the university’s most senior office.
Richardson, currently the principal and vice-chancellor of St Andrews University, is an expert on the growth of terrorist movements. She held a succession of high-profile positions at Harvard until she was appointed to lead St Andrews in 2009.
Students and staff hailed the nomination as a momentous event in Oxford’s history. Richardson, 56, told the Guardian she hoped her nomination would inspire current and potential female undergraduates.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/may/28/oxford-university-to-appoint-first-female-vice-chancellor
And a funny vid (though for a serious cause)
'If men had periods - manpons'
[youtube]zOMPS2zkE1M[/youtube]
I've got a lot of conflicting thoughts about feminism.
I grew up as a strong feminist. I was exposed to it as a child. For example, my mom served a term as president of the League of Women Voters for Maine back in the 70s when that group was reaching the height of its activity. I believed there were pretty big injustices for women then and something had to be done.
In college, I wasn't active in feminist issues, but I supported them.
I still do support feminism, but I define it more in terms of equal rights and protections for all. Not in terms of lifting only women up or tearing men down. I've been in the professional working world for a quarter of a century, and for that entire time, my bosses have all been women. For over half that time, their bosses have been women. Maybe my personal experiences don't match others, and maybe it's because I'm in a field with a lot of women in it (paralegals) but from where I'm standing, I don't see a need to help women to gain more power over men.
One thing that bothers me is the idea of driving wedges between people. Doesn't matter if it's man/woman, black/white, gay/straight, citizen/immigrant. Whenever I hear people talking about feminism, all I see is a big fucking wedge.
But I support equal opportunities, treatment, and protections for all.
A bit of a tangent...
A friend on FB bragged this week about how she got a car salesman fired because he kept hitting on her during a car sale. His behavior sounded horrible and needed to be corrected, but I didn't see how there should be a congratulatory celebration on FB about destroying this guy's livelihood. She had scores of posts from people cheering her on. And maybe it's all appropriate. This guy had bad people skills and didn't understand the proper way to interact with women. Yes, it's OK to convey to a woman that you are interested in her, but not when the only reason she is spending time with you is so she can buy a car. And even if you make a comment or subtle body language in an appropriate situation, if she doesn't pick up on it or respond in kind, she's probably not interested in you, and you should stop making advances. This guy needs to learn both lessons. Maybe getting fired will help him learn that. Or maybe getting fired will cause him to hate women. The only thing good that realistically might come out of this is the car dealership management might increase their training efforts on what constitutes inappropriate behavior. I kinda doubt it though. So it's a FB celebration about fighting sexism by destroying a stranger's livelihood.
I think my thoughts on feminism maybe changed when I was watching Thelma and Louise with a large group of people, and the feminists in the room cheered loudly when the sexist trucker had his truck blown up by Thelma and Louise. His advances on the women were objectifying and crude, and he looked gross, but he didn't deserve to have his entire livelihood destroyed. And to have that cheered.
It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't like wedges that divide us.
The following exchanges made for a delightful morning's read,
particularly since I had just finished reading Dana's new thread.
Let this be my first minor contribution to what may become a outstanding thread...
...
This Is How Much Hillary Clinton’s Pantsuit Costs
Time - David Kaiser - 5/28/15
Maybe if she answered question by the press, they would have something else to write about.
Patience, Grasshopper. Good things come for those who wait.
Nothing good will come from her.
She's a deceitful, power-hungry egomaniac.
This is all about winning and power - nothing to do with really wanting to lead.
Right now she is running like an incumbent.
And this makes her different from every other candidate how?
A friend on FB bragged this week about how she got a car salesman fired because he kept hitting on her during a car sale.
This kind of thing pisses me off. It's one thing to make a complaint to a company about the way you've been treated by a member of their staff - it is quite another thing to revel in destroying someone's career because they acted like a dick.
I've been in the professional working world for a quarter of a century, and for that entire time, my bosses have all been women. For over half that time, their bosses have been women. Maybe my personal experiences don't match others, and maybe it's because I'm in a field with a lot of women in it (paralegals) but from where I'm standing, I don't see a need to help women to gain more power over men.
Unfortunately that is something of an exception. Paralegals began as a mostly female thing - it initially came out of secretarial support for lawyers. There are industries where women make up a reasonable percentage of management - though statistically speaking, even in fields that are female dominated in terms of work force (primary/elementary teaching for example) management still tends to be predominantly male.
This is one of the difficulties, I think, with feminism generally. For some people, their life experience is one of strong women in positions of power - and it can make the inequalities that do exist seem less prominent or relevant. It is also important to bear in mind that whilst statistically women may fare worse in the world of work overall (pay disparity, promotional disparity, and the unconscious biases that affect hiring practices) there are areas in which men fare worse (male teachers of younger children for example face a lot of discrimination in hiring) and their experience of discrimination is just as valid and just as potentially damaging to them as individuals.
An interesting look at gender in the legal profession:
http://www.legaltechnology.com/latest-news/american-legal-it-news/big-data-reveals-big-gender-inequality-in-big-law-infographic/
And a piece by a male paralegal :
http://paralegalhell.com/2010/11/10/guest-post-outnumbered-being-a-male-paralegal/...This guy needs to learn both lessons. Maybe getting fired will help him learn that. Or maybe getting fired will cause him to hate women. The only thing good that realistically might come out of this is the car dealership management might increase their training efforts on what constitutes inappropriate behavior....
I think making an example of some incident goes far beyond the effect on the individual.
This story will have an effect on all the other salespeople at this dealership, and maybe spread to others as well.
But the take home msg I got from your story was something else.
It was the dealership's decision to fire the man, not the woman's.
This woman did not put up with this behavior, and reported it.
I'd suggest that may be a big part of the reason for the response on FB.
I think reporting it was the right thing to do. Celebrating the downfall of the salesman was overboard though.
It's a facebook fairy tail. For all we know she tried to use her body to literally fuck him out of his commission, and when he balked she felt it was an insult, so she destroyed his livelihood out of spite. :eyebrow:
I really don't see how that kind of thing helps at all. In the grand scheme of life, a bloke hitting on a woman is not the world's worst sin. is it part of the bigger picture? Yes. Do unwanted advances have the potential to twist into a form of harrassment? Yes. And for some women (I'd suggest many) there is a cumulative effect of catcalls in the street*, unwanted strangers groping on buses/trains/in clubs, getting hit on by men when you are just trying to conduct some business and/or access services etc.
But - each individual incident is often fairly minor. That chap got hit with the anger that comes from the cumulative effect of this stuff.
* catcalling in the street usually starts when a girl hits 11 or 12 (sometimes younger) and intermittently continues til around the age of 30-40.
My first experience of it was as an 11year old being shouted and whistled at (and invited to suck cocks) by grown men. My last experience of it was a couple of years ago when a lad leant out of his car and shouted horrible things.
I've also been hit on by a boss, by a much older, senior work colleague and by a hospital porter (whilst standing in the smoking shelter, dressed in pyjamas and dressing gown). And had my arse slapped by an older colleague when I first became a councillor).
Found another interesting article about men in paralegal profession.
Experts who study the labor market have hypothesized that an unstable job market may lead more males to seek employment in alternative careers. And does that come as a surprise? Women who cross into traditionally male-dominated professions often do so for financial reasons and end up earning bigger paychecks than they would in traditionally female jobs.
Men who do the reverse may not be rewarded with larger salaries, but they may find more job security. Additionally, men are frequently able to advance further and faster in traditionally female jobs than their female counterparts. This is what is sometimes known as the glass-elevator effect.
Howard Lee is a legal assistant at law firm Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen in Richmond, VA. He said that he feels being a man in a traditionally female profession has its benefits.
"I feel [male] paralegals have great chances of securing final interviews and, ultimately, job placement," said Lee. "Many HR departments are trying to get more diversity in the paralegal workforce."
In addition to contributing to gender diversity, male paralegals may be having other effects on the profession. For example, since men are often paid more than women for doing the same jobs, salaries may begin to increase as more men enter the paralegal profession. Also, the presence of men may increase the perceived status of the job because men are often automatically considered more qualified and more serious about their careers.
http://www.lawcrossing.com/article/2860/Male-Paralegals-Is-There-Really-a-Glass-Elevator/
I've never heard the term 'glass elevator' before. This process of jobs gaining status and wage increases when men enter the profession is a fascinating one. There's a fantastic book, called
The Struggle for the Breeches, which looks at male and female working patterns from the middle ages onwards. One of the case studies was the changing status of ale and beer making. Originally, brewing was a female task - something most women undertook as part of their role as homemaker. As brewing processes changed, becoming more complex and 'skilled' and requiring more equipment it moved out o fthe home and became a male profession. Women still made ale at home - but it was a low status occupation. The male brewers, who brewed beers, were considered a much higher status - skilled work. They then prevented women from undertaking such work - through the guild system, which operated as a closed shop disallowing female workers - except in auxillary roles as helpmates for their brewer husbands.
The wholescale entry of men into a field pushes up that field's status - at the same time, the wholescale entry of women into a field pushes down that field's status (teaching being the obvious example).
Obviously, when I say 'field' I am talking in broad terms - but it works for task types within a field too. Spinning or carding versus weaving for example.
One thing that bothers me is the idea of driving wedges between people. Doesn't matter if it's man/woman, black/white, gay/straight, citizen/immigrant. Whenever I hear people talking about feminism, all I see is a big fucking wedge.
But I support equal opportunities, treatment, and protections for all.
On the one hand I totally agree. It isn't helpful to divide ourselves from each other. Unfortunately - racism and sexism (as well as bigotry against LGBT people etc) is already operating to divide us. In order to tackle that it has to be recognised. Equality for all is the goal - but it is amorphous and unfocused to simply call for equality - first the inequality has to be identified.
A quick word about 'patriarchy':
That staple of feminist theory is often misunderstood and mischaracterised. But - as a way of understanding power structures it has some value. It is important, though, to take on board the negative impact of such power structures on female and male lives. Patriarchy isn't something men impose on women - it is something we, as a society, impose on ourselves, and whilst in some regards that system of power structures benefits men at the expense of women, it doesn't benefit all men - nor are all women disadvantaged.
Patriarchy at its heart disadvantages most of us, and shores up the power of the few.
Here's the answer to your dreams.
Let it well up, fall around your shoulders, and ooze between your whatever.
Wow, is that some sick shit or what. :facepalm:
I suppose it's like Scientology, or The Power of Positive Thinking, if you believe, anything good happens it gets credit and anything bad is your failure.
Here's another one.
People not only making money reinforcing insecurities, but convincing women... and men, that women must be painted hussies.
Both great finds, Bruce :)
But - each individual incident is often fairly minor. That chap got hit with the anger that comes from the cumulative effect of this stuff.
Speaking of not knowing the whole story, and of cumulative effects, did she get him fired all by herself, or was her complaint the final straw?
Not sure if this is a good place to put this but...
A 2010 checkpoint: "To be made to penetrate" - Female on male forced sexual intercourse - was counted in the US for the first time as a catagory of rape...
Within the confines of a study, not legislation, in which it is still not quite considered rape yet. But it's progress.
OK, that didn't quite spark the debate I thought it would...
Although male rape is an under reported problem, I leave my door unlocked every night in hopes of gathering evidence, so is false claims of rape. But the intention of Dana's thread, as I understand it, is more the institutional rather than physical.
Bruce is right about the institutional focus. But culturally, the issue of male rape by a female perpetrator and how we as a society define and respond to that, is part of that bigger picture.
It presupposes agency for the male victim, in a way that implies a corresponding lack of agency for their female counterparts. It suggests that rape is a male act - because it assumes that sex is a male act - something men do to women. At the same time, rape is a way to physically impose, it is an act of power - something we do not, as a culture associate with women.
Rape of a woman is a heinous act - and society condemns it (though with a high degree of victim blaming thrown in for good measure) - but rape of a man subverts the entire gender system in which we currently live. It threatens our understanding of what it is to be a man or a woman at a fundamental level. Our culture therefore finds it very difficult to accept and understand the reality of those victims' experiences.
Although male rape is an under reported problem, I leave my door unlocked every night in hopes of gathering evidence, so is false claims of rape. But the intention of Dana's thread, as I understand it, is more the institutional rather than physical.
The problem is that it is not that "female on male rape" it is an under reported crime, it's that it's not a crime to report. At least in the US, If you say "I was raped by a woman" , since rape legally requires the actual penetration of a penis, there's no such thing unless she at some point in her life had a penis. The closest report you can make is for sexual assault.
The issue in question isn't merely a cultural one of an unreported crime, it's an institutional one of what doesn't legally count as a crime.
Bruce is right about the institutional focus. But culturally, the issue of male rape by a female perpetrator and how we as a society define and respond to that, is part of that bigger picture.
Bingo - what I was going for :cool:
Although male rape is an under reported problem, I leave my door unlocked every night in hopes of gathering evidence, so is false claims of rape. But the intention of Dana's thread, as I understand it, is more the institutional rather than physical.
[SIZE="1"]nevermind[/SIZE]
The problem is that it is not that "female on male rape" it is an under reported crime, it's that it's not a crime to report. At least in the US, If you say "I was raped by a woman" , since rape legally requires the actual penetration of a penis, there's no such thing unless she at some point in her life had a penis. The closest report you can make is for sexual assault.
In fairness, it is also impossible to impregnate a man, so the acts--while both depraved and horrific--are fundamentally different in my opinion.
If a man anally rapes another man, is that legally considered "rape" or "sexual assault?" I'm okay with the idea of the word "rape" only applying to women, as long as a woman forcing herself on a man is called the same thing as a man forcing himself on a man.
If a man anally rapes another man, is that legally considered "rape" or "sexual assault?"
It is now considered rape, though even that was a rather recent update, until a couple of decades ago the definition was exclusive to when the victim was a woman.
While we are on case distinctions: While legally women can't commit rape - since the lack of consent isn't enough to define it as such under current laws, they can commit statutory rape - which is defined as rape because of the inability to give viable consent :eyebrow:
In fairness, it is also impossible to impregnate a man, so the acts--while both depraved and horrific--are fundamentally different in my opinion.
Are you saying rape should be redefined as "attempt to impregnate"? Would it then not count as rape if the rapists used protection, if the woman was too old to conceive or not count as statutory rape if she was too young?
That also brings up an interesting side note, since there are quite a few cases where men are paying child support for children born out of sex they didn't consent to have in the first place.
I'm okay with the idea of the word "rape" only applying to women, as long as a woman forcing herself on a man is called the same thing as a man forcing himself on a man.
Interesting. Why? Why would a transgression (Non consensual sex) need a special sub category with it's own unique loaded word for female victims?
Non sexual forms of physical violence can also have different consequences to members of either gender simply by virtue of impacting a different set of organs - if we redefine rape for women because they might get pregnant should we redefine physical assault on women because they might already be pregnant and abort the baby in the process? And why not anything else? Is murder for men fundamentally different because it can result in stopping the blood flow to a penis?
Interesting. Why? Why would a transgression (Non consensual sex) need a special sub category with it's own unique loaded word for female victims?
I'm not saying it needs it. You're saying it
has it, and I'm saying I don't necessarily object to that as long as it's consistent.
if we redefine rape for women because they might get pregnant should we redefine physical assault on women because they might already be pregnant and abort the baby in the process?
We already do--if you punch a pregnant woman in the stomach, it's physical assault on her but it is also legally the murder of the baby.
Would it then not count as rape if the rapists used protection, if the woman was too old to conceive or not count as statutory rape if she was too young?
It's not that it would "not count," it's that it has the potential to be called something else. I'm certainly not suggesting that raping is fine as long as there is a condom involved, I'm just saying nuance is better than lack of nuance, when trying to define involuntary punishments that are to be handed down by the state.
There could just as easily be a new term for women forcing themselves on men for the express purpose of impregnating themselves--seed theft, for example, which might earn a punishment equivalent to those currently given for rape, or not, but the point is that calling everything by one term almost never improves things.
I don't necessarily object to that as long as it's consistent.
If it's simple semantic consistent you are seeking then it already is, even without having the same term for women raping men as that of men raping men, simply by virtue of having a specified weapon instead (Penis).
I'm just saying nuance is better than lack of nuance, when trying to define involuntary punishments that are to be handed down by the state.
There could just as easily be a new term for women forcing themselves on men for the express purpose of impregnating themselves--seed theft, for example, which might earn a punishment equivalent to those currently given for rape, or not, but the point is that calling everything by one term almost never improves things.
Narrower and more selective categorization often result in more ignorance then more understanding:
When it comes to social & legal policy it's more often then not used as a means to excuse unequal treatments, such as a corporate alliance lobbying for a nuanced exceptions in the tax code, making a nuanced distinction between how you punish drugs popular in black culture and how you punish drugs popular in white culture, or let's say... Gender treatment [insert pretty much an topic that would be relevant to this thread].
When it comes to day to day ethical decisions it usually involves explaining why the time I pickpocket someones jeans is totally different from the time someone pickpockets my khakis.
Are any of those better because they are treated as more distinct categories?
Is manslaughter better defined as murder? Is the consensual, but nonetheless statutory rape of a 17-year-old by her 18-year-old boyfriend indistinguishable from a violent rape in an alleyway at gunpoint?
There is room for loopholes in a nuanced system, it's true. But if the sentencing laws for different drugs are resulting in unfair results, the answer is not to say "all drugs deserve X punishment, end of nuance." The answer is to change the punishments in the places where they are currently inappropriate. Should the punishment for cocaine be harsher? Perhaps. But that will not be achieved by pretending cocaine is crack when it is not. That will be achieved by making the punishment for cocaine harsher.
I would say the pretense is on the other foot: When making an artifical distinction for arbitrary reasons that aren't consequentially meaningful, we are pretending that the same behavior and actions consequences or objects can be treated as distinct and often incomparable because we name them differently.
The words we choose don't particularly have that power, and we do choose them - there isn't a matter of defining something as something it is simply not - it is a matter of defining it in a way that maximizes the understanding of the meaning it carries (Unless you worship the magical sky dictionary, in which case I am sorry and meant no disrespect towards your beliefs).
Digging into why we define things differently provides a more accurate understanding, as more often then not doing so to account for variables that aren't meaningful to the subject matter demonstrate how those variables are meaningful to us elsewhere (Such as defining a loaded term of sexual violence in a distinct way that might illustrate the assumptions that sexual agency is inherit to males or our outlook of gender roles and victimhood).
Just as an aside, I happened to mention to a male friend about recently being offered money to perform a sex act. He was really quite shocked. I had to make a mental adjustment to remember that for a man, this is not the sort of thing they hear on a regular basis.
I have never accepted a straightforward financial transaction in return for sexual favours, although I admit the lines became blurred between me and the Evil Ex, who would summon me over when it suited him, but I would always leave with more than it would cost me to get home.
But I have had the opportunity to be paid for full intercourse, oral sex (that seems to be a favourite, with the lowest offered being £50) and even anal (£200). None of these men were complete strangers either, I hadn't wandered into a red light district and been mistaken for a prostitute. They were men I knew socially, worked with, drank with or bought food from. And in every case my refusal was shrugged off with an attitude of, "Ah well, it was worth a try."
I know I'm not alone in my experience; look what happened with the poor teenage girls groomed by gangs of men. I was just older and had a more secure self-image and home life, so that I didn't get started on that particular slippery slope. But I think men who don't try to get a bit of female flesh for hire don't realise that this goes on. Perhaps even the really fun guy that they crack open a few beers with has tried it on occasion. And then they wonder why women can sometimes be genuinely offended by a pat on the bottom or a catcall in the street.
Anyway, as you were.
By the age of 15, I had been aggressively hit on by two separate men in their 30s--not in a leering sense, but in a genuine "you can trust I would make a very good boyfriend," entitled sort of way--and had one adult man of indeterminate age whom I had never met attempt to engage me in phone sex. And I led a rather protected, upper middle class life, at that.
~ to be fair you do excellent voice work ~
But I think men who don't try to get a bit of female flesh for hire don't realise that this goes on. Perhaps even the really fun guy that they crack open a few beers with has tried it on occasion. And then they wonder why women can sometimes be genuinely offended by a pat on the bottom or a catcall in the street.
Anyway, as you were.
We hear about it the same way women who don't get this kind of attention hear about it - from stories of our friends who do - and it's hard for both men and women to get because, well...
To put it in perspective, while some women get sick and exhausted from beating the horde of potential lovers away with a stick, many women and almost all men can occasionally go through a few years without anyone approaching and saying anything that can remotely be interpreted as complimenting or nice. For women it's because male attention is rather focused on the upper tire, you can see it manifesting in statistics in places like okcupid where very few women receive almost all messages. For men it's because female intentions aren't usually expressed that directly and men don't generally have a culture of complimenting each other. From that position, the implication that someone is finding you attractive is a lot more significant then the implication that your standards are low enough that you'd accept money.
Defne 'attention'.
On catcalling:
This isn't something that happens to the pretty girl, but not the plain girl, the young girl, but not the older girl, the available girl, but not the married girl. This happens to women pretty much randomly. It starts when you're very young - for most girls- and it continues, on and off, until you read the age of invisibility (somewhere around 40 usually).
This idea that we, the ones who get noticed, should be grateful for the attention because, hey - first world problems right? Men find us actractive, boo hoo, right? Feel sorry for the ones who get ignored, right?
Which fundamentally misunderstands both the tenor and impact of that kind of attention.
Walking to the shop, minding my own business, just going about my day - I don't need a total stranger to tell me to smile (is my facial expression not acceptable, Mr Man?), nor do I have any interest in sucking his cock. I don't particularly like the experience of having the entire street's attention directed my way because the two lads hanging their heads out of a second story building are shouting comments about my tits or my willingness to do it doggy style. It is of no interest to me that yet another random stranger feels I'd be prettier with make-up /wearing a skirt, or that I really should get some meat on my bones.
These are not compliments - they are an imposition. They get shouted at women of all shapes, sizes and aesthetic types.
But hey - we should all be fucking grateful right? Because that's what all women really want - attention from men. Got it.
As for propositions - when I was 18 years old my landlord (and a mate from around town) tried to persuade me to let him set me up as a high class prostitute. I laugh about it now - and I always had some affection for Harry (mad old sod) but actually, they were a little too pushy about it for that to be an entirely comfortable memory. They were in their early 40s.
Lost a whole GD post - I hate the library computers sometimes/
I was basically saying that a loving relationship, or acquiring a lover, is nothing like being propositioned for money.
The flip side of that would be taking a woman on a date asking her "for coffee" at the end of it and having her bring out a charge sheet. "What's wrong honey, didn't I use the right font?"
I haven't been in a loving sexual relationship in years. Would I like to be? Probably. Not enough to actively work towards it though. And only partly because I have enough in my messed up life to deal with right now. But the idea that I would equally miss the unwanted, unasked for comments, catcalls, open discussions about my sexual orientation, size of my breasts, shape of my butt on the street just doesn't work. Little boys tend to pull the hair of the girl they fancy, then run away. Grown men don't. This is about power, not attraction.
I'd hate to think that my brother ran the same gauntlet every day with attention from gay men. He doesn't, although I'm sure there are an equal number of manipulative gay men out there who like to throw their weight around. Perhaps they have to be more careful in who they direct their aggression to because there are more men ready to stop them down for the insult.
Running the gauntlet. That's such a good way to put it.
I remember when i was about 11 years old, maybe coming up on 12 - my best mate and I often used to walk up the back street, from my house to a local park. There were several houses in that block which had been converted to bedsits, and mostly housed single men.
Running the gauntlet is exactly how that walk felt. Sometimes we'd shout something back (if we were feeling brave), often we'd just try to ignore them - our cheeks burning (poor Maddie got very embarrassed very easily and it always showed in a full-on red face).
The stuff they shouted to us - Jesus. If I caught a grown man saying stuff like that to one of my nieces I'd have the police involved in three seconds flat. But that was normal - that shit just happened. I look back at how young we both were, and how young we both looked, in our peddle-pushers and bright t-shirts - and it makes me feel a little queasy.
Likewise, walking down the street as school girls of 13 in our uniforms was like we'd flicked a red light on over our heads. You knew, as a girl that age, that the blokes on the building site on the way to school would make lewd comments or whistle. Cars would occasionally slow down so that men, not boys, men could comment and leer.
I'm not saying it happened constantly - but often enough for it to form a part of our understanding of the world in which we moved. Want to know what it feels like to be prey? Be an adolescent girl walking down the street of an ordinary industrial town in Britain.
These are not compliments - they are an imposition. They get shouted at women of all shapes, sizes and aesthetic types.
But hey - we should all be fucking grateful right? Because that's what all women really want - attention from men. Got it.
I didn't said any "should's" - She was speculating why men don't get it, I explained that it had very little to do with whether they know what is happening and a lot more to do with their point of view in the dynamic of what is happening.
These are not compliments - they are an imposition.
Those don't actually contradict:
I need to do groceries and get food and cook followed by washing the dishes - those are chores - frankly sometimes I really don't feel like it, I sometimes even hate it. But I am not sitting around wondering why people from actual 3rd world countries are rationing dried bread for the next few days because the sweatshop money is only coming next week would be having a bit of a difficult time "getting" my complaint.
I am not going to go and tell them that food isn't a privilege but a chore, because I do acknowledge that it can be both, and depending on where you stand, sometimes the value of one of those elements can greatly overshadow the other, and yet that in no way makes me feel any better about the chores ahead.
Yes, your mother's thing about appreciating bad food because of hungry children in Africa is total bullshit, both complaints can absolutely be legitimate in the same time. I am calling her out on it! And I am not afraid if she knows (OK maybe I am. Please don't tell her) .
Perhaps this still has a bit of a proportional problem, so a better metaphor might be this: I hated the army service and the war, the whole running towards people shooting at me and people you care about dying really isn't for me, It was genuinely a very difficult experience for me, but I can still acknowledge that and in the same time acknowledge that people who are living in areas that don't have the means to defend themselves at all might have a hard time seen where I am coming from. One problem doesn't contradict the other.
Edit: For an even more balanced example, someone in the US just got hurt in a car accident on the way from getting groceries, someone from a village in Africa just broke their leg because they couldn't withstand the 5 hour walk with a jug of water over their heads. They are both hurt, but the later got hurt for lacking the means of the former, and might find the particular complaint about driving safety a bit hard to identify with.
Regarding "should's" - if you are trying to get a value judgement out of me... That's difficult. When both sides stick to their guns and just refuse to see how their perspective comes from where they stand rather then the nature of the terrain, or in MMO terms (What class or skillset they picked rather then the overall gameplay), then both are pretty ignorant. I suppose my "Should" would be for both sides of that debate to get their heads out of their asses and try to analyze the exchange as a whole. But that's an ideal I gave up on awhile ago, I still believe most people can do it if they wanted too, but I realized a long time ago that regardless if they can, most people don't want too, since it has the awful tendency to invalidate what they feel.
I was responding mainly to the poster you showed, Trace.
But also this:
To put it in perspective, while some women get sick and exhausted from beating the horde of potential lovers away with a stick, many women and almost all men can occasionally go through a few years without anyone approaching and saying anything that can remotely be interpreted as complimenting or nice.
Most cat calling isn't about potential lovers complimenting the objects of their desire. It's a power trip (as Sundae pointed out). And it's not about the women for whom this happens, and the women for whom it doesn't - we're the same women. As you say, it is perfectly possible to go for quite a while without anybody saying anything nice or complimentary to you. It's also possible then to get a flurry of incidents across a year or so.
An actual compliment is a lovely thing. Despite the fact that I have a real problem with the idea of catcalling and some of the assumptions and permissions that underlie it - some random bloke (or group of lads) makes a genuine, if clumsy attempt to express appreciation, I generally take them at their word and smile or laugh as appropriate. I generally choose not to take offence if none seems to have been intended - and if I've not been put into a horrible and publicly humiliating position (has happened) by their attention.
But the root assumptions that underlie catcalling are pretty unpleasant to my mind.
Hmm... You seem to be looking at reframing the action itself by superimposing an assumed vilifying frame of intentions that are completely outside of your actual qualia - criticizing the color choices of invisible clothes says very little about anyone else's fashion sense.
If you examine the actions in themselves and view them as harmful, that is a fact about the actions, but if the only reasons they take a negative tone is because of the hidden agenda you assume is there, which you assume because of the negative tone... That's a super imposed image, not an observation.
Not really. What I'm suggesting is that as cultural understandings change it is unfair and unwise to expect all members of the community to move at the same pace and in the same direction. It's a little like not taking offence when an elderly person makes a mildly racist assumption about 'coloureds' - recognising intent is important in any human interaction. We all make assessments as to other people's intentions when they interact with us.
if the only reasons they take a negative tone is because of the hidden agenda you assume is there, which you assume because of the negative tone... That's a super imposed image, not an observation.
There are different kinds of catcall/uninvited remark which carry very different meanings. Some of the negative elements are obvious, some intended. Some are not intended - but they do not happen in a cultural or social vacuum.
We talked earlier about attitudes towards rape. We can view that issue at a case level - an experience level. Or we can look at how it fits into the bigger picture. Catcalling (and Eve Teasing as it is known in India) also speaks to that bigger picture - it says something about how we view not just the roles of men and women, but the responsiblities, expectations and permissions of men and women.
There is a spectrum of unwanted attention, ranging from clumsy, but well-intentioned come-ons to intimidating and demeaning jibes. They all have at their base an assumption both that women want male attention, regardless of where it comes from - and that men have a right to women's attention. Because the thing about catcalling a woman is the man isn't just paying her attention -m he is demanding hers back. Whatever reaction you give, whether it is to engage, try to scurry away, try to laugh it off, blush whatever - you are now dealing with him and his wants not you and your own stuff.
If I've got dressed up and am dancing in a club and some random lad moves up close and tries to make nice - I wouldn't be offended - that's the game. Everyone's clearly playing - we're all in the kind of place where the game is played and God loves a trier after all.
If I am on my way to the bus stop to catch a bus and get to a lecture - or I'm coming back from the shop, with some knotty problem on my mind - maybe wrapped up in a coat and not feeling particularly sociable - I am not playing the game - random strangers are just that: random strangers. Why would any random stranger assume I want to know what he thinks of me?
Drunk lads out on the pull - fair enough - they're in that mindset, they're on the playing fields, and if it strays a little towards catcalling people who aren't playing, you kind of see why. But when guys just do it as an ordinary part of the day - to girls and women who are just trying to go about their own damned business - on the high street, the bus, the school gates - that is different.
What it all goes to say is - that for those men, any woman is potentialy playing the game at all times - if they like her then she is fair game. She might have chosen to not play the game - but that choice doesn't cut it. She might have clothed herself in baggy, saggy clothes that hide her shape and try to make herself invisible - but that also doesn't cut it. Because she is female - and therefore fair game.
So no - I don't like what underlies it. I don't like what it says about my right, as a woman, to opt out of the mating dance. But that doesn't mean I am going to lamp every guy who still thinks that shit is acceptable. Because, like most aspects of sexism and gender relations there are two distinct strands to look at: the theoretical, taking account of the wider cultural context and structures and the personal, taking account of our lived lives as human beings.
They all have at their base an assumption both that women want male attention, regardless of where it comes from - and that men have a right to women's attention. Because the thing about catcalling a woman is the man isn't just paying her attention -m he is demanding hers back. Whatever reaction you give, whether it is to engage, try to scurry away, try to laugh it off, blush whatever - you are now dealing with him and his wants not you and your own stuff.
That is a curious way of seen things... Did the modern day ability to block users we don't like on social media made it such a "right" in our mind, that we view our bubbles of our own little universes as a right to take for granted and breaching it as a right never given? Instead of the right for free speech, we now demand the right for selecting what speech we hear and view the inconvenience speech we dislike as an entitlement for a right not had?
You'd have a fair point if catcalling was something that wasn't loaded with sexual meaning and gender assumptions. Does it happen to men? Yeah, sometimes - but mainly it is something that women experience, and experience because they are women.
Going back to Sundae's point about being propositioned for cash and after the Quiz for Ladies thread sent me down a Man Stroke Woman road on Youtube - came across this:
[YOUTUBE]7dlhQzPGHt8[/YOUTUBE]
You'd have a fair point if catcalling was something that wasn't loaded with sexual meaning and gender assumptions. Does it happen to men? Yeah, sometimes - but mainly it is something that women experience, and experience because they are women.
It is certainly a manifestation of gender dynamic and it's certainly - at least a good portion o the time - a sexual advance, neither one of those form particular good exceptions to what I said.
There is an awkward combination of competing social forces atm which vilify sexual and/or romantic initiative in more and more of it's forms in a way that makes good old Catholicism and Jewish Hasidics seem like the 60s sexually revolution by comparison. Why should sexuality be exception to the basic tenants of liberty?
I don't suggest that it should be.
Freedom of speech is about having the right to express your opinion without fear of state reprisal or judicial response. It is not the right to express yourself without any social consequence.
I don't suggest that it should be.
Freedom of speech is about having the right to express your opinion without fear of state reprisal or judicial response. It is not the right to express yourself without any social consequence.
Social - yes.
Legal - no.
It's a key difference, our rights aren't a guarantee that everything we do within them is right, just that it isn't right to prevent us from doing it. On that level I have no problem with cat calling becoming consciously rude - maybe to be treated a few decades from now the same we do now with elders using racial slurs. But that's on a level of cultural adaptation.
Still, the general trend this is part of is... Troubling & interesting. We are culturally blocking more and more of the old natural mediums of initiation just at the time we've become remarkably good at consolidating human interaction artificially.
But what about my inalienable right not to be offended?
The word "inalienable" makes me think of of in-alien-able, able to be placed in an alien & the over-sexualization of both terrestrial and non terrestrial foreigners, the first I tend to be the larger portions of my life and the later I may or may not be depending on whether mommy lied to me. This offends me greatly.
Next time, TRIGGER WARNING! ;)
Oh, offence is a funny one. Everybody has their own idea of what may or may not be offensive.
At a theoretical level I'm less concerned with the content - I'm more concerned with the context and degree of imposition. At a personal level, the content matters - but again, it's not really about offence. If a bloke tells me my mouth would look a lot better round his cock (and I must say that sort of comment doesn't come my way much now I'm in my 40s ;p) my response isn't so much to be offended, as it is to be flummoxed, embarrassed, suddenly and cripplingly self-conscious and to try and exit the encounter with as much grace as possible.
The only time I feel offended, as such, is when someone has made a really horrible comment which intended to hurt and offend - like being told by a random stranger that i look like a man in a dress - or that I look like a dog.
I've been frightened and intimidated by encounters though. But again - that is all about context.
Here's two real life scenarios that show a distinct tonal difference:
1. Walking through a housing estate, past a shop and there's a group of young men larking about. They see me coming, and block my way. They're smiling and joking, but I am also half surrounded. One of them makes a lewd suggestion - another says, 'ignore him' and laughingly puts his arm around my shoulders.
I laughed along, made a comment of my own and continued on my way.
It doesn't sound like much - and they didn't say or do anything greatly offensive - but their physical domination of the pavement, and imposition of their interaction on me was intimidating.
2. Standing outside a hotel in London having a quick smoke and a young, very hip looking black guy in his 20s calls over to me if he could get a cig off me. Then asked me if I was looking for another kind of smoke. I declined as i was already sorted for that (;p) he made a very flattering comment and invited me to go back home with him to get wasted. I declined. And before he went on his way he asked if he could hug me goodbye. So we hugged.
That was a positive interaction. He was very sweet - there was a little flirting -It was an uninvited approach from a total stranger - but he wasn't imposing or intimidating. It had a social context - a conversational opening gambit, with continued interaction following social cues. If he'd have made a real pass at me or something, at that point, whilst I'd have declined, i certainly wouldn't have been offended.
The trouble with catcalling is it is without the appropriate
social context. Otherwise it wouldn't be catcalling.
One of them makes a lewd suggestion - another says, 'ignore him' and laughingly puts his arm around my shoulders.
This is the thing that is so insidious. The "good guy" wanted to show that he would protect you from the lewd friend. But the way he does it is not to block or intimidate the lewd friend, but rather to use his body language to claim you as his own.
I have had so many problems in my life with so-called nice guys who in the end behaved with no less entitlement than the lewd guys, but they had convinced themselves that rather than "wanting" it, they had "earned" it. At least the lewd guys usually know they're being a jackass.
These are not compliments - they are an imposition. They get shouted at women of all shapes, sizes and aesthetic types.
But hey - we should all be fucking grateful right? Because that's what all women really want - attention from men. Got it.
I was thinking about this when I read a
This American Life transcript just now. Act 2 is a female-to-male transgender person, describing what it's like to suddenly go from no testosterone in your body, to a lot of it:
Griffin: After that shot, and after an average shot, my testosterone levels go up to over 2,000 nanograms per deciliter, so that I have the testosterone of two high-testosterone men in my body at once.
Alex: You have the testosterone of two linebackers.
Griffin: Exactly. Exactly. That's a lot. That's a lot of T. And what's amazing about it is how instantaneous it is, that it happens within a few days really. The world just changes.
Alex: What were some of the changes that you didn't expect?
Griffin: The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women and the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone, I would be riding the subway, which is the traditional hotbed of lust in the city. And I would see a woman on the subway, and I would think, she's attractive. I'd like to meet her. What's that book she's reading? I could talk to her. This is what I would say.
There would be a narrative. There would be this stream of language. It would be very verbal.
After testosterone, there was no narrative. There was no language whatsoever. It was just, I would see a woman who was attractive or not attractive. She might have an attractive quality, nice ankles or something, and the rest of her would be fairly unappealing to me.
But that was enough to basically just flood my mind with aggressive, pornographic images, just one after another. It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind. And I couldn't turn it off. I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I touched, turned to sex.
continued
Griffin: I was an editorial assistant. And I would be standing at the Xerox machine, and this big, shuddering, warm, inanimate object would just drive me crazy. It was very erotic to me.
Alex: The Xerox machine.
Griffin: The Xerox machine. Or a car. I remember walking up Fifth Avenue one day, and this red convertible went by. It was a Mustang. And I remember just getting this jolt in my pants, this very physical, visceral, sexual reaction to seeing a red convertible.
Alex: What did you do with that? I mean, what did you think?
Griffin:Well, I felt like a monster a lot of the time. And it made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. Suddenly, hair is sprouting, and I'm turning into this beast. And I would really berate myself for it.
I remember walking up Fifth Avenue, there was a woman walking in front of me. And she was wearing this little skirt and this little top. And I was looking at her ass. And I kept saying to myself, don't look at it, don't look at it. And I kept looking at it.
And I walked past her. And this voice in my head kept saying, turn around to look at her breasts. Turn around, turn around, turn around. And my feminist, female background kept saying, don't you dare, you pig. Don't turn around. And I fought myself for a whole block, and then I turned around and checked her out.
And before, it was cool. When I would do a poetry reading, I would get up, and I would read these poems about women on the street. And I was a butch dyke, and that was very cutting-edge, and that was very sexy and raw. And now I'm just a jerk.
continued[LAUGHTER]
Griffin: So I do feel like I've lost this edge, this nice, avant-garde kind of-- and I've gotten into a lot of arguments with women friends, co-workers, who did not know about my past as a female. I call myself a post-feminist. And I had a woman say, you're not a post-feminist. You're a misogynist. And I said, that's impossible. I can't be a misogynist.
And I couldn't explain to her how I had come to this point in my life. And to her, I was just a misogynist. And that's unfortunate because it's a lot more complicated than that.
Alex: I'll say. Wow. Testosterone didn't just turn you into a man. It turned you into Rush Limbaugh.
Griffin: I know. That I was not expecting. That I was not expecting.
So I had to relearn how to talk to women. And I had to learn how to rephrase things, how to hold my tongue on certain things. And I'm not very good at it. So I get in trouble.
Alex: That is so fascinating. Because as a man, I think, from the time I went through puberty, I feel like that's something that I've been learning to do in a certain way, is just figure out how to say things without getting myself in trouble.
Griffin: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Alex: I would not have thought that you would have had that problem.
Griffin: Right, because I should know better or something.
Real humans are so tough to nail down though. Because if I take this, and the experiences of other very frank men, at face value, I can construct the "male experience" as a certain thing, and try to work with it and learn how to interact with it. But then other men who have less testosterone naturally flowing in their system will get angry that assumptions are being made.
On the one hand, I truly believe we're all just a bag of chemicals and free will is an illusion, but on the other hand, we're each such a completely different bag of chemicals, you know?
I would like to see a time where we can all just be accepted as people. Not male or female or any of the other labels in between. Recently there was a transgender child who was born a boy, but has apparently identified as a girl since he/she was old enough to think for herself. She's in year 3, so 8yrs old and recently was permitted to compete with the girls rather than the boys. Whilst ethically I think this was the right decision, it certainly leaves a lot to be asked about physical strength etc and there has been a social media uproar about it over here.
Obviously the reason for that is because, no matter how much women or feminists push to be considered equal to men in all areas, the fact of the matter is that we aren't. Just as men are not equal to women in all areas. Of course there will always be exceptions to these rules, but in general, male and female humans respond differently emotionally and physically to just about everything.
How could we ever expect to be equal?
Griffin: The Xerox machine. Or a car. I remember walking up Fifth Avenue one day, and this red convertible went by. It was a Mustang. And I remember just getting this jolt in my pants, this very physical, visceral, sexual reaction to seeing a red convertible.
Is that testosterone or just... Objectophilia?
[YOUTUBEWIDE]Ba9L6n8zj1U[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
Obviously the reason for that is because, no matter how much women or feminists push to be considered equal to men in all areas, the fact of the matter is that we aren't. Just as men are not equal to women in all areas. Of course there will always be exceptions to these rules, but in general, male and female humans respond differently emotionally and physically to just about everything.
How could we ever expect to be equal?
Actually the exceptions mark huge portions.
Between 00:30 and 2:14:
[LIST]
[*]"The average woman is better [in spatial awareness] then 33% of all men"
[*]"33% of men are better then the average woman [in language]"
[/LIST]
[YOUTUBEWIDE]ce31WjiVcY0[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
Disclaimer: These are regarding cognitive psychology though, their might be differences in personality that aren't as easy to place on a metric.
The most obvious one is ofcourse crime statistics, followed by the wage gap analysis. Certainly there are groups that would insist that one of those is systematic oppression while the other is natural (MRA/feminism), but in all closer examinations it seems a matter of the choices people make, which can reflect that men and women do make different choices.
I would like to see a time where we can all just be accepted as people. Not male or female or any of the other labels in between.
Doesn't the very idea of transgenderism go directly against that?
The moment you agree to the notion that someone is "truly [insert gender inside] but in the wrong body", you agree to the assumption that gender is about what you truly are and not simply your sex. In a way it contradicts with the premise of a gender neutral society.
I had a few interesting discussions about that with an MTF who was more scientific minded then ideological. There is a lot of interesting research done about gender differences that show up in FMRI's and actually correspond with the FMRI of transfolk (MTF get female indicators and FTM get male indicators)... So it might just be that the "Gender = nothing but sex" premise is simply wrong.
Maybe the closest we can come is feminism in the style of Wendy McElroy or Christina Hoff Sommers rather then traditional 3rd wave feminism: Simply a society of equal opportunities within our system & a culture empathy beyond the realms of our own gender. Maybe that's the most that can be done without causing more damage then good.
It's being done... To a much better effect:
[YOUTUBEWIDE]qZTt6sZtvqU[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
Not better, not even the same. :rolleyes:
Youse guys suck, this is how it should be done.
No heroes in that discussion... One side jumps to throat slitting, and the other equates "male heterosexuality" to catcalls and ogling.
They're such extreme positions though. Someone finding me attractive isn't an imposition. Never had a problem with men looking at me.
If a woman I did not know, had never met, and had no social context for interaction with, initiated a conversation with me, out of the blue, by telling me I was too skinny - I'd find that an imposition. Quite a few random blokes, over the years, have felt quite comfortable in telling me, a total stranger, how much they like a particular body part, how much better I'd look if wore a short skirt, or that I should get some meat on my bones (actual phrasing).
A total stranger shouting things at you in the street isn't nice. The lads, and indeed grown men, who engage in that kind of nonsense need a lesson in manners - and who the fuck knows, maybe even empathy. And I get that sometimes it may be hard to know what signals (if any) are being put out - that not everyone is equally adept at reading social cues - but headphones on, collar up, head down and eyes on the pavement is not easily misread as interested in interaction. That's what I mean by imposing - often quite literally. That doesn't mean any social interaction from anybody at that point is an imposition - but it is really not the time to make a romantic approach and certainly not a time I'm likely to give a flying fuck what a total stranger thinks of my tits.
Of course they're extreme, stupid extreme, but not uncommon on the net. They're also highly counter productive because they drive non-teeth gnashing people away from the subject entirely. Anyone taking a moderate stance is risking snipers and hooligans from both sides.
I did think this was funny, however.
Separate schooling for young boys and girls ?
...Maybe OK
Separate academic locations for men and woman ?
...No, this knight is not going forward
Women Respond to Nobel Laureate’s ‘Trouble With Girls’
NY Times - DAN BILEFSKY - JUNE 11, 2015
LONDON — A Nobel laureate has resigned as honorary professor at University College London
after saying that female scientists should be segregated from male colleagues because
women cry when criticized and are a romantic distraction in the laboratory.
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt said Monday
at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea.
“Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them,
they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”
...
“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he said.
“I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me,
and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important
that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”
And he elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when criticized.
“It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them
and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,”
he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything
that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”
...
He's quite right of course.
Ban gay scientists too.
The argument for choosing to attend all women colleges is not so different from what this caveman is saying. But of course, how you say something is sometimes more important than what you say.
What you say, too often has no bearing on what they hear.
[YOUTUBE]hmKix-75dsg[/YOUTUBE]
That was awesome. Nice find.It's so true I think - we all, as individuals experience gender (or the absence of a sense of the same) in our own way. At so many different levels as well. I have a strong sense of myself as female - but my sense of what it is to be female is not necessarily in line with what a lot of other people think being female means.
Certain elements of gender can, I think, be separated out as probably more cultural than biological - if for no other reason than a wealth of evidence to suggest not just a range of gender conception, but paradigm shifts depending on historical circumstance. Different cultures have different degrees of fluidity in gender conceptions - and allow for smaller or greater ranges of gender expression. But there are also elements that seem far more biological - and then you have complexity within that as the divisions don't always break down comfortably between male and female.
However contingent on particular cultures and social structures, those elements of gender as experienced by the individual are no less real or profound.
Unfortunately our sense of what is to be male, or female is so wrapped up in what our culture understands as male or female, that it becomes almost impossible to separate self-conception from social-conception of gender. Hence another person not adhering to the same sense of gender can threaten the bounds within which that sense of gender is set.
Watched a really sweet film last weekend - Ready? Ok!, a little independant coming of age comedy about a kid growing up with gender issues; or more accurately a kid growing up with a perfectly sound sense of self whilst some of the adults in his life have gender issues on his behalf. Which I just thought was such a lovely twist on the usual way of looking at it.
I found it via my watch everything Michael Emerson's been in mission :p It's a nice little film - it's not perfect - there are couple of odd moments that didn't quite work for me, but it has heart and was made on pennies and goodwill. And there are some excellent performances.
[YOUTUBE]rabQrSlSdGQ[/YOUTUBE]
Sidenote: Michael Emerson is playing the gay neighbour who ends up as a kind of mentor to the kid - his wife, Carrie Preston is playing the boy's single mother. How many guys, if they were actors, would be comfortable playing a gay man in scenes with their wife?
Do women and men have different brains?
Back when Lawrence H. Summers was president of Harvard and suggested that they did, the reaction was swift and merciless. Pundits branded him sexist. Faculty members deemed him a troglodyte. Alumni withheld donations.
But when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism.
“My brain is much more female than it is male,” he told her, explaining how he knew that he was transgender.
NY TimesWhich goes to show how wrong Summers was.
What breaks his mold more than a transgendered person?
Does Jenner get the male aptitude or the female aptitude?
Which goes to show how wrong Summers was.
Burkett seems to think so, and fumes about this rally 'round the trans is feminism backsliding.
After a couple of months of getting into gender politics and more or less discovering I have a near equal dislike for both the MRA and feminist movement, and choosing to resign the issue of gender politics until a movement that is neither innately incompetent or stupidifyingly counter productive can emerge... I think I finally found something I am more or less ok with:
http://www.equalityagnostic.com/
A tiny gender egalitarian movement that attempts to bridge positions on gender inequality issues from both sides of isle without adhering to one particular narrative over the other... Technically right now it's tiny, but given the 67% who believe in gender equality but wouldn't consider themselves feminists, and given how little traction the male movement has, I would say this - or something like it - has the largest audience to grow on. I don't agree with quite everything the blogs of these sort have to say, but it's the right position to examine things from IMO (Except for not actually understanding what the word "agnostic" means... But you can't have everything *sigh*).
I'm always uncomfortable with the idea of the, or a feminist movement. There are feminist movements I'd say - or if there is a movement it is a very disparate one.
The problem with comparing feminism with MRA is that generally speaking there is no soft wing, so to speak. To self-identify as MRA at all requires a degree of intensity that isn't necessarily needed to self-identify as feminist - in part because of the ways in which those two movements arose. Lots of people casually identify with feminism in general terms but aren't particularly part of any movement or activism - it's like classing yourself as liberal, or conservative - a secular kind of feminism. I'd venture to suggest that most people who self-identify as feminist do so at that casual level. It is understood, mostly, I think, as a statement of a desire for equality and a recognition that some of the ways we organise ourselves as a society are a little screwy.
Hardcore feminism, like any hardcore philosophy, is a sometimes necessary (this near-equality we appear to have achieved in our society was never uncontested) and sometimes counter-productive mess. A little like liberalism or conservatism, feminism is much broader than an individual party. Like those philosophies, or viewpoints, it is embedded in our political and philosophical landscape as part of an ongoing discourse stretching back almost 200 years.
MRA is a fairly recent and usually very specific reaction to feminism - it is reactionary in every sense. It hasn't yet acquired those embedded roots or broader meanings.
MRA is a fairly recent and usually very specific reaction to feminism - it is reactionary in every sense. It hasn't yet acquired those embedded roots or broader meanings.
They aren't going too, precisely because they are reactionary.
They all unite under anti-feminism but can't collect around any actual agenda, because they anti feminism includes everything from the most progressive gender egalitarians to the most traditionalists to actual movement of individualist feminism who have gotten thrown out of the sidelines of the movement during the 80s and 90s to MGTOWs who are pretty much an ironic answer to lesbian separatism mixed with PUA.
Take one simple issue: Father's rights in divorce law. All of the above groups can use this rhetorically as an example for unfairness. But Will they act on it if the progressives who want equal parenting rights need to get together with the traditionalists who want things to look like american 50s movies and thus outright want fathers to be the providers so that mothers can be the caregivers?
To actually get anywhere they need a movement that stands together on what they are for, not just what they are against. For men that doesn't currently exists.
I'm always uncomfortable with the idea of the, or a feminist movement. There are feminist movements I'd say - or if there is a movement it is a very disparate one.
Do you?
I am asking because in larger scale discussions I have constantly seen how "not all feminists" used as a deflection tactics, the feminists who disagree with those "Extremists" don't actually show any actual disagreement with them publicly but will indirectly defend them from criticism through the defending the label for what it means for them, and yet there is no actual reference to the "extremist" other then that label or a full way to describe it.
Look at it from the other side: How do you criticize feminist movement within literature, feminist dogma in academia, feminist political organizations, feminist lobby groups, feminist campus activism, feminist blogosphere and so on, if you are not allowed to use the word feminism because it includes people who might not quite agree with it? And if the "casual feminists" do have disagreements the "hardcore feminists", why is saying there are not one of them more important then actually expressing your disagreements with them?
The reality is that if you simply believe in equal rights for women, well - so do 85% of americans (and an even larger portion of brits if I recall)... yet only 18% of them identify as feminists, not because 67% don't know how to read the dictionary, but because feminist academia and has grown to include a lot more then that, often at the expense of meeting the dictionary definition.
After getting downsized to 18%, the chances that if you are still identify as one of them you are closer to being among the "hard core" group then you'd think is pretty high, even if you think the criticism only applies to the even more extremists.
Most of the criticism does not require lesbian separatists in order to count, if you believe in the patriarchy as a reasonable interpretation of social exchange the chances are the criticism applies to you too.
But maybe all of this truly doesn't apply to you and you genuinely both disagree with those the criticism is applicable too - in that case why not just accept the meaning of the word and their meaning they acquire in the context used by the people saying them and allow a critical discussion of people you - according to the very sentiment of "not all feminists" - disagree with? Take a step back and look at what role your position can take within the exchange, and whether you truly want to act as a smoke screen for extremists you disagree with.
Well - I've had some fairly vocal disagreements with hard-core feminists in my day.
Not all feminists - not all men - not your shield. These are snappy slogans doled out in forum wars. They get used so much they lose meaning - just another set of weapons in the arsenal.
I know lots of people who consider themselves feminists - because of the historical meaning of that term - but whose feminism assumes the necessity and desirability of equality for men too. I suspect the surveys under-represent those who see feminism as a positive thing, but don't necessarily hold it at an identity level.
Feminism in academia is, I think, an over-played card. Probably more valid 10 or 15 years ago before the big shift in gender studies started to bring men and masculinities to the forefront. Feminist academic approaches have followed, or are following, a similar path to marxist academic approaches, and post-modernist approaches. That isn't to say that there is not a field of feminist study of various kinds - but the conceptual stranglehold that took hold around certain subjects has fallen away for the most part. This happens in academia - a revolution of thinking that invigorates several fields, gets a little too omnipresent, and then the next generation of scholars coming through start to overturn it.
I think it's probably on a slightly different path in the States than in Britain and Europe - there's always been something of a tonal difference between British and American feminism, particularly in academic approaches. You can see it really clearly in the historiography of feminism and the early women's movement. The American scholarship has a much more optimistic tone to it - so, the apparent social construct, in the nineteenth century, of 'separate spheres' with men leading public and women domestic lives, in the American analysis operates to foster sisterhood and shared female experience (though also limiting agency in many ways) - the British analysis is much more pessimistic in terms of the emotional payoff of separate spheres. You don't get the same reading of sisterhood when you include a larger class component.
That's a gross generalisation on my part - the scholarship went through different iterations on both sides of the pond and at various times converged with or informed each other. But - I think there was always a slightly more political edge to the American feminist analysis - or rather that feminist analysis in American academia was more tied in with the political mission of feminism. We were slower onto that here, and then we didn't stay with it as long because the world moved on.
I have a few other thoughts - yes I know it's already fairly rambling :p I'll be back later.
[eta] quick point about patriarchy: I don't 'believe' in the patriarchy as something that exists. I sometimes find it a useful conceptual framework through which to examine some power relations and social structures. It is not the only conceptual framework - nor is it the most useful. As a historian I find it next to useless. Like most of those large-scale, total solution frameworks. Interesting to have in your head when you look at stuff (along with a bunch of different academic lenses).
Not all feminists - not all men - not your shield. These are snappy slogans doled out in forum wars. They get used so much they lose meaning - just another set of weapons in the arsenal.
Agreed.
Feminism in academia is, I think, an over-played card. Probably more valid 10 or 15 years ago before the big shift in gender studies started to bring men and masculinities to the forefront.
Can you expand on that?
:thepain:
Wrote a really long and detailed response and then windows crashed before I pressed submit.
I'll come back to it at some point :p
When you do, I am also curious about these:
Well - I've had some fairly vocal disagreements with hard-core feminists in my day.
I'll have to come back to the emergence of masculinities as a field of study - having just smoked something very pleasant, i'm not sure I could give a coherent account ;p
As far as disagreements with radical feminists? God, where to start. I'm semi plugged in to the local activist scene - not as much as I used to be - in terms of party political campaigning and the like - and also some ties to the cooperative movement, women graduates assoc, and the women's assoc. Mostly left-leaning, some centrist, and in the women's organisations more of a spread across the left-right divide. I know a lot of women in those scenes who are feminist - most of them, as far as I can tell, have an eye-roll response to radical feminists.
For myself, I have several fairly fundamental problems with their approach. Most recently, I was pretty disgusted with the way many radical feminists responded to the issue of trans women in women-only spaces.
I don't like some of the attitudes I've seen from that branch of feminism towards masculinity. Aside from being deeply unpleasant, those attitudes suggest a very confused ideology. To whatever extent gender is constructed, it is constructed for both genders (and indeed all variations). It is also as complex for each. And - if we are going to throw off those essentialist chains - well, then we can't also have women as the natural civilising force for brutish men, can we? If women are not contained within a narrow gender definition, then how is it that women's presence in the boardroom is going to bring about greater harmony and a more caring attitude, purely because they are women?
Most of the problems I have with the way our society thinks about gender boil down to a belief that, whilst there are some differences in how our brains work, we are far more united by our shared experience of humanness than we are divided by our disparate experiences of gender. We focus so much attention on differences that are slight, or highly contextual and ignore the massive overlap.
Alongside that is the idea that we all have our own conception of gender - of what it means to us to be our gender. And if that is ok at one end of the spectrum of masculinity then it is also ok at the other. Masculinity is not a problem for feminists to solve.
Jelly on the smoke.
So this is interesting... I don't know if it's a different degree or a different perspective to construct the spectrum from to began with. I don't know about the british ones, but I have followed the american equivilents and I certainly consider them to be fanatic extremists on my spectrum (Or rather, I believe that their leadership is the result of politics, so representing feminism as an ideology gradually got replaced with representing women as a demographic), yet none of the particular beliefs you describe come across as particularly radical.
Help me get an idea of how you construct your spectrum here - You are an activist from the sound of it, at least to some degree, so what do you agree with in the feminist movement? What differentiates you from the more extremists? What differentiates you from those less?
Sorry, I wasn't really clear there. I have been at various times a political and/or community activist - so, I was an active member of the Labour party for years and a local politician - and I've been involved in anti-racism activism and some local issue stuff. The two women's groups I mentioned aren't really groups for feminist activism. A lot of the people i know or am connected to in these groups are feminists and there is a baseline of gender consciousness, but there's also a baseline of class consciousness for most as well. As interested as I am in gender issues, I am not in any way an activist in the feminist movement.
That said - I have on occasion supported causes which come under the umbrella of feminist issues - but they've tended to be quite specific, such as supporting the campaign to stop funding cuts for a domestic violence support unit.
I don't mean to diss the whole movement there - I've known some wonderful people who have worked with passion and commitment to try and make our society a fairer one, or even just a more accepting one. Several of my personal heroes are women who have been active in the women's movement - but they're also active in the labour and trades union movement. One was the MP for my town up until 2005 -Alice - now in her late 70s I think. To be a female Labour MP for a northern town in the 80s/90s; man, that's a tough gig :P
One problem with radical feminism - aside fom the echo chamber effect of social media - is that feminism is not a total solution. It is not sufficient - but is treated as if it is all there is - eclipsing other, equally pressing, sometimes more pressing concerns. With the best will in the world, human beings are messy creatures - whilst i think it is useful and desirable to challenge the status quo and try to understand and tackle systemic inequality, the challenge is pointless if it is not relevant to people's lived lives.
As to the spectrum - I think the whole thing's been sent out of whack by the twittersphere.
I watched a show last night (sort of. It was on TV and I couldn't be bothered turning it off till I got up from the computer) called Blinging up Baby. It was a British show about women who are totally obsessed with buying fancy clothes and putting make up on their baby/toddler/little girls.
One of the women was talking to her little girl of about 6 about wearing make up and how all women look better with 'a bit of make up on', and the child was agreeing and going along with it.
When we live in a society where grown women think like this, and actively encourage the next generation to believe it, is it any wonder that we're all confused about gender roles and equality? According to the woman on that show, a woman who doesn't wear make up isn't even a real woman anyway!
When we live in a society where grown women think like this, and actively encourage the next generation to believe it, is it any wonder that we're all confused about gender roles and equality?
According to the woman on that show, a woman who doesn't wear make up isn't even a real woman anyway!
... until she's riding a bronc or driving a pick up.
Fair enough, they are all famous enough to have a lot written about them, but a quick WIKI check gives a rough sketch...
Maria Mitchell (August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer who, in 1847, by using a telescope, discovered a comet which as a result became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet".
She won a gold medal prize for her discovery which was presented to her by King Frederick VI of Denmark - this was remarkable for a woman. On the medal was inscribed "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" in Latin (taken from Georgics by Virgil (Book I, line 257) (English: “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising of the stars”). Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer.
Emmy Noether we talked about before.
Dame (Susan) Jocelyn Bell Burnell, DBE, FRS, PRSE FRAS (born 15 July 1943) is a Northern Irish astrophysicist. As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars while studying and advised by her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin Ryle, while Bell Burnell was excluded, despite having been the first to observe and precisely analyse the pulsars.
The paper announcing the discovery of pulsars had five authors. Hewish's name was listed first, Bell's second. Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Martin Ryle, without the inclusion of Bell as a co-recipient. Many prominent astronomers expressed outrage at this omission, including Sir Fred Hoyle.
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova; IPA: (born 6 March 1937) is the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. In order to join the Cosmonaut Corps, Tereshkova was only honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force and thus she also became the first civilian to fly in space.
Before her recruitment as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur skydiver. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices. She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is still regarded as a hero in post-Soviet Russia.
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin (May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) was a British–American astronomer and astrophysicist who, in 1925, proposed in her Ph.D. thesis an explanation for the composition of stars in terms of the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium.
According to G. Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes, Payne's career marked a turning point at Harvard College Observatory. Under the direction of Harlow Shapley and Dr E. J. Sheridan (whom Payne-Gaposchkin described as a mentor), the observatory had already offered more opportunities in astronomy to women than did other institutions, and notable achievements had been made earlier in the century by Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Annie Jump Cannon, and Henrietta Swan Leavitt. However, with Payne-Gaposchkin's Ph.D., women entered the 'mainstream'.
The trail she blazed into the largely male-dominated scientific community was an inspiration to many. For example, she became a role model for noted astrophysicist Joan Feynman. Feynman's mother and grandmother had dissuaded her from pursuing science, since they believed women were not physically capable of understanding scientific concepts. But Feynman was later inspired by Payne-Gaposchkin when she came across some of her work in an astronomy textbook. Seeing Payne-Gaposhkin's research published in this way convinced Feynman that she could, in fact, follow her scientific passions.
Lise Meitner (7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the Hahn-Meitner-Strassmann-team that worked on "transuranium-elements" since 1935, which led to the radiochemical discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium and thorium in December 1938, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944. Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women's scientific achievement overlooked by the Nobel committee.
A 1997 Physics Today study concluded that Meitner's omission was "a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist" from the Nobel. Element 109, meitnerium, is named in her honour.
Caroline Lucretia Herschel (16 March 1750 – 9 January 1848) was a German British astronomer and the sister of astronomer Sir William Herschel with whom she worked throughout both of their careers. Her most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets and in particular the periodic comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, which bears her name.
She was the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science, to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828), and to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, with Mary Somerville). She was also named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1838). The King of Prussia presented her with a Gold Medal for Science, on the occasion of her 96th birthday (1846).
Rita Levi-Montalcini; 22 April 1909 – 30 December 2012) was an Italian Nobel Laureate honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). From 2001 until her death, she also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life.
Rita Levi-Montalcini had been the oldest living Nobel laureate and was the first ever to reach a 100th birthday. On 22 April 2009, she was feted with a 100th birthday party at Rome's city hall.
Seems to me most of these women got screwed over for recognition. But they were lucky to make the big time, by being related to or friends with someone influential in the scientific community, or occasional shit luck. For the vast majority with neither, think of the brains and ability that's been wasted. :(
For the vast majority with neither, think of the brains and ability that's been wasted.
This, right here, is one of the tragedies of gender inequality. And it works both ways. When we corale, with the full force of society and culture, each gender into a narrow path - how many potentially great scientists are stifled? And, on the other side of that equation, how many potentially wonderful nurses and teachers?
I watched a show last night (sort of. It was on TV and I couldn't be bothered turning it off till I got up from the computer) called Blinging up Baby. It was a British show about women who are totally obsessed with buying fancy clothes and putting make up on their baby/toddler/little girls.
One of the women was talking to her little girl of about 6 about wearing make up and how all women look better with 'a bit of make up on', and the child was agreeing and going along with it.
When we live in a society where grown women think like this, and actively encourage the next generation to believe it, is it any wonder that we're all confused about gender roles and equality? According to the woman on that show, a woman who doesn't wear make up isn't even a real woman anyway!
This is what makes the whole gender / sexism issue so complicated and difficult. We all make this culture. Sexism isn't something men apply to women - it's something we as a society build in to our culture. We inculcate our young into whatever gender conceptions we have. Right up to the extremes - it isn't men who carry out FGM on young girls, it is grandmothers and female elders of the community.
We exist within our gendered world - it is impossible to fully step outside it, even if we want to. For those who don't even question it - it is as simple and immutable a fact of life as the air we breathe.
It's weird how attitudes can shift and change in such a short space of time though.
For example the idea that "Every little girl wants to be a Princess." When I was a little girl, there were plenty of stories of Princesses desperate to escape palace life, who ran away and lived poor, who loved their horses and grooms more than dresses, who would never kiss a frog just in case it became a Prince, but knew how to shoot an arrow or splint a broken wing...
And yet it's presumably my generation of women who are raising little girls believing they are obsessed with pink, hate getting muddy and really only want to attend State Functions where they talk to elderly statesmen until they become brood mares.
My heroines were Florence Nightingale, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Grace Darling, Zola Budd.
Maybe I let the side down by not passing this on to daughters of my own.
This, right here, is one of the tragedies of gender inequality. And it works both ways. When we corale, with the full force of society and culture, each gender into a narrow path - how many potentially great scientists are stifled? And, on the other side of that equation, how many potentially wonderful nurses and teachers?
I agree, which is why I think a return to gender traditionalism would be economically and culturally devastating in so many ways, not to mention individually (IMO it was a rotten deal all around).
And yet this is also the reason why the solution needs to be in the realms of equal opportunities, not strong arming institutions into equal results, because in many ways we are turning the wheel backwards, for the 18 girls who didn't get to study what they wanted within the sciences because the 60 student course teaching it didn't reach the required gender quota (Or you know, for the 42 boys).
Separate schooling for young boys and girls ?
...Maybe OK
Separate academic locations for men and woman ?
...No, this knight is not going forward
Women Respond to Nobel Laureate’s ‘Trouble With Girls’
NY Times - DAN BILEFSKY - JUNE 11, 2015
As outdated and foolish as Hunt's comments were - I do think the UCL forcing him to resign was a step too far. I don't think it helps at all that this man's career is now in the wind. He had apologised for what he said - an attempt at humour that went awry.
I get why UCL take it seriously - with all the historical and current barriers to full participation in scientific fields, and the great efforts academic institutions are putting into finding a better balance - his comments were very unhelpful - coming from such a leading voice in academia. But - I don't like that he's been forced out over it.
Show of hands, who here has ever cried at work, whether in front of people, or in the bathroom or parking lot but at least one coworker caught you?
I have.
As outdated and foolish as Hunt's comments were - I do think the UCL forcing him to resign was a step too far. I don't think it helps at all that this man's career is now in the wind. He had apologised for what he said - an attempt at humour that went awry.
I get why UCL take it seriously - with all the historical and current barriers to full participation in scientific fields, and the great efforts academic institutions are putting into finding a better balance - his comments were very unhelpful - coming from such a leading voice in academia. But - I don't like that he's been forced out over it.
Ironically might do a better job at pushing women away then he did, by missing the joke and reinforcing the stereotype that scientists tend to live lower along the autistic spectrum (One of my closer friends is a quantum biologist outright diagnosed with autism and he was able to get the social tone and humor.... Just sayin').
Show of hands, who here has ever cried at work, whether in front of people, or in the bathroom or parking lot but at least one coworker caught you?
I have.
I generally don't cry. But I get choked up a bit, or get teary-eyed, and in my 24 years here, that's happened on a few occasions at work.
Most memorable was when a homeless guy committed suicide at our workplace by gaining access to our roof and jumping into the alleyway. So many people rushed to the offices on that side of the building to gape at the body during the police investigation. It was just so SAD to me. The suicide, sure, but mostly my cow orkers' reactions to it. I didn't look, BTW. It still bothers me today, years later. What's wrong with people?
Show of hands, who here has ever cried at work, whether in front of people, or in the bathroom or parking lot but at least one coworker caught you?
I have.
I have, more than once. But as far as I can remember, only for personal reasons. My sister made me cry more times at work (not all caught) than any other reason put together.
I think partly in ignorance, as after the age of 21 she's only ever worked part-time and never had an accessible work landline. She seemed to think she could be as mean and disapproving as she wanted while I was sat at a desk I couldn't get away from for a good few hours... But then I never smoked at work, so if you add up the paltry minutes lost to my tearful episodes, my employers would have benefited more from refusing to employ smokers.
Women are tricksy! I was reading this
interesting article by Sarah Laskow on the hundreds of products in our grocery basket which have been modified by atomic radiation.
Suddenly, without warning, I was subjected to this:
Recently, mutant breeding's enjoyed a bit of a Renaissance, too, as biomolecular advances have enabled more targeted mutations and quick assessments of what's changed in the plant's genome. Instead of waiting for a plant to grow, a scientist can quickly recognize changes in the mutated plant's DNA sequence and decide whether it's the mutation [COLOR="Red"]she[/COLOR] wants or not.
A woman scientist?!? What a preposterous notion, I damn near dropped my monocle.
Show of hands, who here has ever cried at work, whether in front of people, or in the bathroom or parking lot but at least one coworker caught you?
I have.
Yes, though technically I wasn't caught crying so much as had a waitress mentioning there's wet spots on a sandwich she was about to bring to the customer (I was working in the kitchen at the time).
I cried in my bosses office when I was asking for time off when I split from the boys father. He was understanding and never judged me for it. He was an old softy though. I miss him actually. He was always good to me too. Continued to promote me afterwards too.
I have dealt with numerous crying women in office situations though, both as an equal and as a boss. Occassionally as an underling. I think (believe it or not) people irl see me as someone to be relied on to offer good advice, and who can be trusted with sensitive information.
Actually even now I have women crying into their teacups at my kitchen table at least once a week. Often more often. I think locals know I work from home and the kettle is always hot, and there's usually a cookie around too, so the just drop in. It's nice. I like the company, and no one minds if I keep working while we talk. :)
If'n it got me into your kitchen, I'd be walking down your street rubbing oniony fingers into my eyes every week...
Then again, I'm semi-professional at crying these days, so I wouldn't even need to do that.
It would be a real treat to have you in my kitchen sundae, even if you were crying. X
*shakes head*
The FA appears to have scored a spectacular own goal after posting on the England Twitter account that the women’s team, who won bronze at the World Cup in Canada, could “go back to being mothers, partners and daughters” now that they have returned home.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/06/england-women-twitter-world-cup-mothers-partners-daughters
Seriously. Wtf were they thinking?
The account, which has a following of nearly 1.2m, is managed by the FA and has been supportive of England’s women during their World Cup campaign but following the posting of the tweet at just after 1pm BST, it was widely criticised on social media for appearing to portray them as something other than simply athletes.
-snip-
The tweet, which has been deleted, was taken from an article published on the FA website, which has also been amended to omit the mention of England’s players as “mothers, partners and daughters.”
And just to show that they really, fundamentally don't get why this is problematic :
The FA insisted the tweet was taken out of context: “The full story was a wider homecoming feature attempting to reflect the many personal stories within the playing squad as has been told throughout the course of the tournament.
“However, we understand that an element of the story appears to have been taken out of context and the opening paragraph was subsequently revised to reflect that fact.”
So - reflective of the 'many personal stories' of the women's team players, were the roles of mother, partner and daughter. Not teacher, fitness coach and accountant - mother, partner and daughter.
Well that's where they belong, having babies and [strike]supporting[/strike] obeying their man. Next thing you know they'll be wanting to work on trucks in the Army, like that Elizabeth chick. :lol2:
I complained to Channel 4 a few years back, after they mentioned an Israeli politician, new to the position, was a mother-of-two. Interesting information for anyone who wants to set up a play date I suppose, but hardly appropriate on an international news broadcast about her appointment. My question was whether a male politician would be similarly credited with now many children he had in a similar piece. No, only if it were specifically relevant ie he was meeting with Fathers For Justice and speaking on the reform of the Family Court system or suchlike.
On a side note, I wonder if the players really weren't mothers, partners or daughters while they were away...
"fathers, partners and sons” ... still offensive to you? not to me.
"fathers, partners and sons” ... still offensive to you? not to me.
No - because the cultural context is entirely different. If we were coming off the back of two centuries of struggle for men to be taken seriously in the workplace, where no matter what their successes they are routinely denied the identity of worker - with even top executives and politicians judged and identified primarily on their roles as childbearers and husbands - then it would be an equivalent.
Reversing it only works if you can actually reverse all of it.
Bit like with racism :P
[youtube]dw_mRaIHb-M[/youtube]
"fathers, partners and sons” ... still offensive to you? not to me.
"Today, these firemen go back to being fathers, partners, and sons... but now they are also heroes."
You really think anything like would ever be said, by any newscaster or PR person, ever? It's not about the fact that the women have personal lives, of course they do. It's the implication that the personal is their primary job, that this is what they
really are on a day-to-day basis, and their status as good soccer players is surprising, plucky, and practically adorable. The whole comment is a verbal pat on the head. It's not malicious, it's just patronizing as all fuck.
Thankyou Clodfobble - that's the explanation I was reaching for and failing to find :P
"Today, these firemen go back to being fathers, partners, and sons... but now they are also heroes."
You really think anything like would ever be said, by any newscaster or PR person, ever?
Yes I do, when it's amateurs athletes. After the US hockey team's "miracle on ice", the press and public got tired of rehashing the game, so they got into what the individual players are were doing next. Most of those stories emphasized the life they were returning to as fathers, husbands and sons. I think Dana's right about "mothers, partners and daughters", is the result of a pretty narrow view of women's role in society, but I think the intention was to indicate they were amateurs returning to normal lives.
Is this team not a professional, full-time one? I don't follow the sport at all.
Well - all women's football in this country used to be entirely amateur. Since 2009, there have been contracts for the main squad - giving salaries of £16k p/a. Some of the squad also have part-time jobs or their own businesses - in order to receive the salary they are not alowed to work more than part-time hours outside of the team.
Claire Rafferty is an analyst with Deutsche Bank in the City
Jo Potter is an FA skills coach
Jade Moore owns her own Sports Therapy business
Eniola Aluko recently qualified as a sports and entertainment lawyer (she's waiting til she retires from the team to work in that field).
Bruce is absolutely right abotu the purpose of that press release. It was about them returning to 'normal' life - and it clearly wasn't intended as anything negative - but damn was it clumsy. Particularly given the issues around acceptance of women in sport, and in particular football - women's sports get a fraction of the attention that men's sports do (in this country anyway), female athletes get paid a fraction of what male athletes get paid - and the prizes and accolades are similarly tiny in comparison to those showered on the men.
Basically, there has been, for a very long time, a cultural attitude towards women's sports that suggests they are a novelty and somewhat frivolous and unnecesary - unlike the serious and hero-making business of men's sports.
The ban on women playing on FA grounds was lifted the year I was born - 42 years later and women's football is only just starting to get anything like the recognition it deserves - can you imagine offering a male footballer a salary of 16k a year?
42 years and the FA are still putting their collective foot in it when it comes to women's football.
Basically, there has been, for a very long time, a cultural attitude towards women's sports that suggests they are a novelty and somewhat frivolous and unnecesary - unlike the serious and hero-making business of men's sports.
Case in point: bikini-clad Olympic "beach volleyball"
You don't see a spedo-clad male counter-part to this farce.
(The spedo's are reserved for men's swimming where they are for "function")
Is this team not a professional, full-time one? I don't follow the sport at all.
I don't think they're pros because they don't fall down and writhe in pain when someone comes within three feet of them, like the pros do. ;)
I don't think they're pros because they don't fall down and writhe in pain when someone comes within three feet of them, like the pros do. ;)
Now
that's entertainment!
:p
Oh - I think I was mistaken about all women's football being amateur - I think some of the clubs have professional women's teams on the books.
That said - it really is a pittance compared to the men's game.
You probably earn about the same as the captain of the England football team.
Casey Stoney, captain of England women's football team, earns £25,000 a year - around the national average wage (£26,500) and a fraction of what her male counterparts earn.
Wayne Rooney, Manchester United striker, earns 50p a second, and his annual wage is £15.6m, which is far, far more than what any women’s footballer could hope to make.
So - the captain of the England team - arguably representative of the cream of women's football earns a little less than the average annual wage.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/five-reasons-football-much-better-4684810
And yet ... they've been doing far better than the men's national team.
Having the women play at Wembley has been a marketing triumph for the FA. They’ve sold 55,000 tickets, more than they managed to shift for the men’s lacklustre game against Norway in September, which just 40,181 attended
In September they put 10 past Montenegro. Away from home. You’ll mostly remember Montenegro’s men from our boys only drawing 2-2 away and Rooney getting sent off.
The England women also scored 13 against Hungary in an away World Cup qualifier as recently as 2005.
England’s men haven’t scored ten goals or more in a game since 1964, when they beat the USA 10-0.
After that dismal trip to Brazil, England’s men are currently 20th in the FIFA rankings. England’s women are currently 7th. And have never been ranked lower than 14th in the world.
England’s women have won the Cyprus Cup twice, in 2009 and 2013. And they also twice won the Mundialito in the eighties, which was the pre-cursor to the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
England’s men have won...erm...well...they won Le Tournoi in 1997. And...erm...couldn’t even win the Umbro Cup when we held it in 1995.
Mind you...
There is one stat where the men have DEFINITELY done better
Number of World Cups won
Men 1 Women 0
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-zed/five-stats-prove-england-womens-4672335I stand corrected :blush: I don't follow soccer either.
Mary Pilon asserts in a Politico piece that the National Women's Soccer League salaries range from $6,000 to $30,000 with a $200,000 cap. The U.S. Men's National Team, in comparison, had a salary cap of $3.1 million last year. The total payout for the (winning!) Women's World Cup will be $15 million compared to the (losing!) men's $576 million.
OK, $6 to 30 grand means semi-pro to me. They can't support themselves on that.
Bruce covered most of my response. No, technically they are not pros although there is a purse that is paid out to the winner.
Yes, men have been referred to in a similar manner - no not professional athletes though.
Still not offended either way, but apparently that's because of my gender. Whatever.
Offended is too strong a word, for me. More like just eyeroll-inducing. I honestly think the solution is to talk about men's personal lives more, not women's less.
That's been happening more with pro athletes lately... in courtrooms.;)
Offended is too strong a word, for me. More like just eyeroll-inducing. I honestly think the solution is to only talk about women's and men's personal lives when it's directly appropriate.
Agreed, with amendment (although I know that's a whole 'nother can of worms).
Those Brits had to be keep in line, prison or penal servitude. :eek:
President Eisenhower's diary says he liked the ladies.
Plz to send that to me as a HUGE canvas.
Love it.
[COLOR="White"]'cept WW would need some of the anti-monkey-butt powder you sent me (and I STILL use when it's hot) to prevent chafing in that costume[/COLOR]
Like it or not if women want to achieve equality they will have to win the support of a lot of the men. This stuff doesn't help.
Can you guess the gender of this robot ...
[YOUTUBE]RyFRfFPV9xI[/YOUTUBE]
oxB's blurb in the above post might give a clue..
[ATTACH]52439[/ATTACH]
Here we have probably the original, Tits or GTFO, from 1904.
What a sick(and probably greedy) mind, to dump this bullshit on women at the end of the Victorian era.
The shoe on ther other foot.
Bar staff at a pub in Inverness have stopped wearing their kilts after complaining of constant harassment by women attempting to check whether they are "true Scotsmen". Until now, the men at Hootananny have donned their tartan in keeping with the pub’s traditional atmosphere. But they are swapping to trousers, claiming sexual harassment mainly from groups of women revellers who lift up their kilts to check if they are wearing anything underneath.
He said: "It may seem funny but it is serious, too – the women are sticking their hands up their kilts. Can you imagine if I went into a restaurant and stuck my hand up a girl’s skirt? I would be taken to the police station and rightly so." He added: "I look after my customers but equally important are my staff. I am not forcing them to do something they don’t want to do. We fellows are very, very aware of sexism. I think the women need to catch up."
linkSay what you will, you know that at least one of them has occasionally gone "true scotman" (And I am betting it's the one in the middle)
Jackie Fox of The Runaways tells
how she was raped in front of the band and crew. It's a sad read but goes into how it haunted her for the rest of her life, even though she went back to school, became a very successful lawyer. Scroll down at the link.
No woman, no drive. :rolleyes:
[YOUTUBEWIDE]aZMbTFNp4wI[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
Oh Christ, this is sick.
What Open Marriage Taught One Man About Feminism
As I write this, my children are asleep in their room, Loretta Lynn is on the stereo, and my wife is out on a date with a man named Paulo. It’s her second date this week; her fourth this month so far. If it goes like the others, she’ll come home in the middle of the night, crawl into bed beside me, and tell me all about how she and Paulo had sex. I won’t explode with anger or seethe with resentment. I’ll tell her it’s a hot story and I’m glad she had fun. It’s hot because she’s excited, and I’m glad because I’m a feminist.
And it gets sicker.
A reply.
Um, monogamy means you BOTH control each other’s sexual expression, to the extent that you expect fidelity. It’s a submission, sure, but it’s a mutual submission- and it has benefits. This “asking your partner to be faithful is patriarchal oppression” bullshit is just a sick, sad cover story for a marriage that’s lost its spark. What if I said, “hey baby, I need a side ho to counteract your matriarchal oppression in order to express my sexual agency”? It sounds like pure bullshit coming from the mouth of a man, because it’s pure bullshit. It’s someone with a women’s studies degree justifying away being a skeezbag. I know, I have a women’s studies degree. I speak the language.
Progress from IBM.
Big Blue will soon launch a service that allows moms traveling on business to send expressed breast milk back home to their babies.
My one and only experience of an 'open relationship' was during my first year with J. I'd drifted into his orbit - a world of far left politics, theatre folk and activists - and desperately did not want to be uncool about it.
It didn't last very long. Roughly until I exercised my side of the open relationship* at which point the idea seemed to lose its lustre for J.
*a horrible experience on a beach in Skegness - with an activist and wannabe people's poet at the Socialist Workers Party annual convention.
A lesson for not only women, but voters who feel powerless. If you want it, you can get it.
Golda Meir was elected prime minister of Israel in 1969, Indira Gandhi in 1966... Unless they specifically mean "the first leader who's elected office is called a presidency", which is a pretty lame loophole, I am not sure how they came up with that one.
01.08.1980-01.08.1996 President Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Iceland
In 1972-80 Director of Iceland’s National Theatre was the world’s first democratically elected female President. Since 1996 she has been involved in a wide range of international humanitarian and cultural organizations. She was a divorcee and mother of an adopted a daughter. (b.1930-).
link
Just because the statement does meet your criteria doesn't make it a loophole, it means you didn't read for content.:p:
link
...That says that both Bolivia and Argentina call their head of state office the presidency and had women fulfilling those roles before Iceland... wouldn't that meant that even with that added arbitrary criteria that meme still got it wrong?
Does "democratically elected" ring a bell.
Does "democratically elected" ring a bell.
So not the first democratically elected female head of state...
Not the first female head of state who's position is called a presidency...
This seems to be
Might as well say she wsa the first female Forseti ever - since no prior female president was called that in icelandic... Hell golda meir was the first female rosh memshala...
And there's a good chance they all were the first female elected leaders who did so while owning a particular breed of dogs while driving a particular type of car and almost certainly the first female presidents to have their great aunt from their mother's side live in whichever particular address she happened to have lived in...
At what point does the impression the title "first woman president" seems to try to imprint is kind of getting lost?
Your right to not understand is constitutionally protected. Run with it.
Your right to not understand is constitutionally protected. Run with it.
As is yours: I understand they wanted to highlight the significance of the victory and saying she was the first was helpful towards that... I am saying the reason it was helpful in highlighting the significance of the victory is by creating a false impression while using a technically correct statement. Contrast with a scenario where the author would assume most if the audience was knowledgeable about history, and the highlight no longer has any effect.
You own your false impressions.
You own your false impressions.
Yes and no.
Yes - you can say it's people's fault for not knowing the history of women leaders throughout the world.
No - that doesn't exempt the meme author from an attempt to deceive people reading it by utilizing that ignorance.
People don't have a problem, you have a problem. You misunderstood what was being said and now you're trying to shift the blame like a fucking lawyer... or pedant.
Now you can have the last word.
It's just a meme why are you been so defensive about it?
edit: nvm. I just realized it was locally uploaded. It was your lame-deception or bad fact checking I was been critical of. Now it makes sense.
Here's a gender checkpoint for you from the news. There's not a lot of equality though.
High school grad strikes back at dress code with amazing yearbook quote
Chloe Cross was fed up. Fed up with her school’s dress code, fed up with being harassed by boys, fed up with being punished for what she wore. But she didn’t run to the media or get her parents to complain; she found a sly, funny and much more effective way of getting her message across that she shouldn’t be shamed for her clothing.
Cross posted a picture to Tumblr of her yearbook from San Mateo High School, about 20 miles south of San Francisco, with a senior quote that struck at the core of every young girl’s argument that dress codes are sexist and send the wrong message.
It read, "I would just like to apologize to those who were unable to graduate with the class of 2015 because they were too distracted by my midriff and consequently failed all of their classes! xoxo"
Pictures and an interview at the link. Worthwhile.
Midriff? That slut. :lol2:
Never underestimate the ladies.
I wonder why the motorcycle disappears during that loop?
Oh, and in high school, I would totally have been distracted by some girl's midriff. If she was in my class, I'd be staring at her through the whole class, and probably be trying to hide a boner under my notebook. You can't get much hornier than a high school boy.
I've wondered about that...
When a man speaks, we do pay attention.. To his physique, height, posture, tone of voice, dominant body language... regardless of our own gender.
To whichever extent we are willing to listen to our instincts, "intuition" and first impression, we will be as much of a factor in how we take what he has to say as the content of his words, more so if we include more general factors like humor, likability, how much we relate to him, and other factors that are more gender neutral, it all melds together, and we don't make any fuss about it. We fully accept that certain elements of masculinity - of his sexuality - are dominant variables within the composite emotion of how charming we find a man and how our subconscious will guide us to take his words. What's the problem with that being true for both genders?
I think the "lipstick feminism" side of that debate gets my vote.
AutoZone, an auto parts retailer (GET IN THE ZONE! AUTOZONE!), has recently dropped its challenge to a verdict which ordered them to pay an unprecedented $185 million in damages to a former employee who claims she was demoted, then fired, for being pregnant.
According to ThinkProgress, Rosario Juarez claims she was urged to step down from her role as store manager after announcing she was pregnant. After her baby was born, she was demoted and her paycheck decreased. And if the Ellen Pao trial unveiled the “subtle” sexism of Silicon Valley, the Rosario Juarez trial revealed that the “wave-my-dick-in-your-face” brand of workplace misogyny is alive and well:
linkI wonder why the motorcycle disappears during that loop?
Oh, and in high school, I would totally have been distracted by some girl's midriff. If she was in my class, I'd be staring at her through the whole class, and probably be trying to hide a boner under my notebook. You can't get much hornier than a high school boy.
I spent much of my high school time quietly lusting after our English teacher. When he was talking, I really wasn't taking in the detail of what he was saying.
I knew plenty of girls who were completely led by their hormones and totally distracted by the presence of a 'hot' guy in class.
Learning to wrench your mind away from those distractions and focus on the task at hand is all part of growing up. Placing the onus on the girls to not be distracting - rather than on the boys to not be distracted is unfair and silly. For you the sight of a bare midriff may have been distracting - in some cultures the sight of a bare ankle or calf would have the same impact. The formal style of school skirt with ankle socks would be unthinkable past the age of 10.
And for individual boys different things might be a distraction - the nape of a girl's neck, the back of a knee, the slight suggestion of breasts under a demure blouse...
Where the line is drawn seems arbitrary.
It always boils down to girls having to cover up and not allow their body shape or surface to show. I know some girls have got into trouble for wearing form-fitting jogging pants - no skin on show, but the shape of their legs and butt is apparently enough to render them a distraction to the boys.
Do we "learn" to wrench our minds away from distraction, though? Or do we simply grow up and it becomes easier with maturity? Give a 12-year-old easy access to drugs and there's a decent shot he'll take them, because his ability to envision the future and make rational decisions based on outcomes is not fully developed yet. Give a 21-year-old easy access to those same temptations, and he is far less likely to take them, even if he didn't spend his youth learning the hard way to say no all the time. All the studies show that if you can only delay the age of decision--not try to affect it or persuade in any way, only delay it by as many years toward adulthood as you can--the outcomes of those decisions will be far better.
It's not that females should always cover up. It's that children of both genders are simply not adults yet, and we shouldn't treat either of them as such.
It's not that females should always cover up. It's that children of both genders are simply not adults yet, and we shouldn't treat either of them as such.
I agree - but that generally translates to an emphasis on modesty and physical appearance for girls as it relates to how boys might see them and react. Boys are supposed to look presentable and that's about it.
Meanwhile boys have to play flag or touch football, can't wrestle in class even if both kids are having fun and no one is getting hurt, and generally must behave in a more restrained manner because there are females in the building (both child and adult, ironically) who are made uncomfortable by physicality even when it doesn't touch them. Just because the compromises are different doesn't mean there aren't compromises on both sides.
Stories like this abound. I haven't heard much objection to the idea of a dress codeo one is lobbying for the right to wear a toga or a swim suit or anything else ridiculous. What all the objections seem to be about are the sexual distraction a given outfit represents. As glatt points out and as I'm sure we've all experienced, sexual distraction is in the eye (or pants) of the beholder. It doesn't *have* to be especially revealing or exposing.
Reading through these articles I find one other thing common and that is the way the adults handle the situation is awful. The sexual shaming directed at these girls is horrible. It's not an exaggeration to see that comments like "your bare shoulder/curvy thigh/exposed neck/ankle/does it really matter? is provocative and invites unwelcome attention" is just more support of the rape culture. "She was asking for it, just look at that midriff." What. Bullshit.
When my daughter chooses her outfit, there's nothing in her closet that justifies sexual assault. And the same goes for my sons--what a woman in their field of view is wearing is in no way an excuse for any improper behavior on their part. Period.
Rape culture is also evident in the attitudes that lead school administrators to treat young girls’ bodies as inherently “distracting” to the boys who simply can’t control themselves. That approach to gender roles simply encourages our youth to assume that sexual crimes must have something to do with women’s “suggestive” clothes or behavior, rather than teaching them that every individual is responsible for respecting others’ bodily autonomy.
Listen to some of these idiot adult authorities (and their deputized parents/grandparents/meddling bystanders).
“Have y’all ever seen any ‘skanks’ around this school…I don’t want to see anyone’s ass hanging out of their shorts.”
A school superintendent in Noble, Oklahoma allegedly asked female students to bend over during a dress code check on the first week of school and claimed, “If you’re not comfortable with bending over, we might have a problem.”
For fuck's sake.
#CropTopDay
In an event page on Facebook, Halket wrote that a male teacher at Etobicoke School of the Arts complained that a shirt she was wearing one day looked “too much like a sports bra.”
“I went in to the office and refused to change or cover up, and I was sent to the principal where we talked for over an hour and came to no conclusion except a threat that if I wore something like this again I would be called in to the office,” she wrote.
Lots of good discussion in the comments on this article.
Teen Girl Kicked Out Of Prom So Her Dress Wouldn’t Lead Boys To ‘Think Impure Thoughts’
A 17-year-old high schooler from Virginia says she was kicked out of her prom because the parental chaperones were worried she was inspiring “impure thoughts” among the boys in attendance. Even though her dress adhered to the “fingertip length” dress code requirement, she was asked to leave.
More slut-shaming dress code examples.
No tight pants.
No yoga pants.
No curvature of breasts.
Kindergartner's skirt too short one week, not the other.
Degrading clothing inspections bordering on sexual harassment.
It is ridiculous. The sad thing is that this *could be* a golden opportunity, a teachable moment for all, including the person wearing the clothing about how to handle "distracting situations", but alas. No. I think it'll be alright, the stories we hear about are the epic fuckups by the administrators and parents; the successful outcomes just don't make the news, but I know they're out there. But some of these administrators need a different job.
That's a good point Clod - but, I think BigV nails what it is I find objectionable about the way that some schools approach this issue.
I personally would take issue about not been able to go to school in Toga, but that's just me... and the fact me and the rest of my HS geek squad used to organize the local LARP scene...
Unfortunately... I looked up the dress code of the countries ranked at the top of student performance, admittedly hoping to see no correlation at all and coming back here with definite proof that the whole thing's bullshit, and... It did not give me what I was hoping for. Kind of the opposite:
1. China
Uniforms are a common part of the schools in China. Almost all secondary schools as well as some elementary schools require students to wear uniforms. Uniforms in mainland China usually consist of five sets, 2 formal sets and 3 everyday sets. Formal sets are for Mondays or special occasions (school anniversaries, school ceremonies, etc.), and is consist of a white collared shirt with sweater on top and a skirt for girls and a suit for boys.
2. Singapore
Like all schools in Singapore, SAS has a dress code and students are to remain in school uniform for the entire school day.
The SAS student uniform consists of a white polo shirt with an embroidered logo and navy bottoms, also with an embroidered logo. Students require both regular uniforms and PE uniforms. Alternate dress days occur twice each month and are noted on the school calendar.
3. Japan
Japan introduced school uniforms in the late 19th century. Today, school uniforms are almost universal in the public and private school systems.
4. South Korea
Almost all South Korean secondary students wear a uniform called Gyobok (Hangul: 교복; hanja: 校服). The majority of elementary schools except some private elementary schools do not have uniforms; however, the uniform is strictly monitored from the start of middle school and up. A typical South Korean uniform usually consists of a shirt, blazer and tie, with skirts for girls and long grey trousers for boys.
5. New Zealand
Traditionally, many New Zealand intermediate and high schools, and state-integrated and private primary schools, have followed the British system of school uniforms,[41] although it is common in state schools for the boy's uniform to have a jersey and grey short trousers rather than a blazer with tie and long trousers.
:-/
I have no problem with school uniforms. It's pretty much the norm here for secondary, and even some primary schools.
I have no problem with school uniforms. It's pretty much the norm here for secondary, and even some primary schools.
Isn't that like... The most extreme of all dress codes?
My problem isn't with dress codes - my problem is that even in an environment without a formal uniform, the dress codes for girls are often partly founded on what may or may not distract the boys. The emphasis in how schoolgirls' clothing is policed by the school is, very often, on ideas of immorality and sexual immodesty - and in the school's communication of that the message given to the girls is clear: you will dress modestly so that your inherent and unavoidable sexual presence is not a distraction to male students
I have far less of a problem with a dress code founded on, and communicated as, maintaining a kind of professional standard.
My problem isn't with dress codes - my problem is that even in an environment without a formal uniform, the dress codes for girls are often partly founded on what may or may not distract the boys. The emphasis in how schoolgirls' clothing is policed by the school is, very often, on ideas of immorality and sexual immodesty - and in the school's communication of that the message given to the girls is clear: you will dress modestly so that your inherent and unavoidable sexual presence is not a distraction to male students
I have far less of a problem with a dress code founded on, and communicated as, maintaining a kind of professional standard.
I see that, so it's not so much the problem with their action but the intent and reasoning behind it....
I think I agree that it's dumb and arbitrary and set in an accumilation of traditional mindset, I just don't see how this is an exception to any other aspect of cultural dress codes, anywhere. From the western obsession with bras to African nudist tribes that tie up up penises so they won't show when they are erect qualifies for this. It's the process from which we generate dress codes... Culturally. It's always going to be silly and arbitrary and set in traditions with complete disregard to whether they make much sense.
The question of whether those should be enforced in general (Legally) or in small scale (Such as schools) is another one altogether, and my personal answer is "no" mixed with "I should be able to sue governments that measure up my toga length for sexual harassment, my eyes are up here!". But, while I don't know about you, I am not expecting a libertarian utopia any time soon...
Slightly relevant brain dump of an argument I had in my head and have no real context to get it out... If anyone here would like to pretend you've invoked Lewis's law for me to address, feel free to do so. Now...
i think the problem with Lewis's law is that the exact same principle would apply from the perspective of any movement which feels like it is fighting for a cause demanding a single mindset.
That is, if you are a x, and If someone speaks positively of x, it will naturally justify it, and if someone criticizes, disagrees or speaks about x negatively in anyway, it shows you have resistance against what you believe x stands for and thus x is justified in fighting off that resistance, because part of the cause is getting everyone else to agree with you. and given how positive your movement clearly is, or otherwise you wouldn't be in it, speaking about it neutrally is in itself negative because it demonstrates the speaker doesn't acknowledge how positive it truly is.
This will seem like that from the perspective of any movement: Libertarian and communists, the ancient Roman supporter of the emperors and those who fought to restore the senate, democrats, republicans, fundamentalists, militant atheists, pro-palestinians, pro-Israeli, feminists, MRA... It would even apply to arguments within feminist factions, comments made by individualist feminists will justify the cause of collectivist feminists and vise versa. All would feel that the criticism or resistance to their cause justifies the importance of their cause, by the simple act of showing that their cause does not have as much support and agreement as they would like it to have.
Whichever movement you agree with and might feel that said principle applies, you would not be able to explain why it wouldn't equally apply to any movement that resists yours.
And yet, you may have met plenty people on every movement within those who are open to criticism and don't invoke any direct equivalent of Lewis's law. The main mistake here is simple: approaching the argument from the assumption that your movement is right so dogmatically as to assume that regardless of it's content any criticism about your beliefs must be invalid and thus prove that not enough people understand how valid your movement truly is.
And yet, now you can be true to Lewis's 's law and dismiss this all, because in criticizing feminists for invoking Lewis's law, and invoking the suggestion that doing so is dogmatic and close minded, it clearly justifies the need to fight for feminism until people finally understand. ...Except that in doing this, you do not only justify the opposition to feminism on the simple act of resisting them despite the content of your disagreement, rather, you justify it because of it, reinforcing the stereotype of close minded militant fanaticism by actually been true to it, and in doing so, you are making yourself feel better about the cause of the movement at the cost of actual harm for the cause of the movement. Remember, it requires to assume that your movement is already correct in order to identify with the notion that all critique towards it is proof for it's misunderstanding. It acts to increase the loyalty of those already believing in it while alienating not just those on the other side but anyone who might be on the fence, not yet knowing whether what they'll think will be in terms with what the movement believes in and thus not being unseasonable to first asses how you relate to people who question you before they can be new recruits with new questions.
(This is particularly interesting in the case of gender politics because when almost everyone says they are fighting for equality but disagrees on the framework in which it is defined, there is a very fine line between the opposite side and sitting on the fence, as personally I know from experience).
Feminism related brain dump #2....
Does anyone else have the sense that the most accurate elements within all those ideologies is the critique they give each other?
The feminists & MGTOW are right - MRA truly do make a reactionist group that is unified by their fight against feminism rather then anything else. You can't argue for equal father's rights and then argue that we should go back to the providers-husbands and housewives, as that is the very dynamic that justifies keeping the father for financials support and giving the mother the major care taking time in the first place. Arguing against feminism matters very little when they can't seem to be able to choose the agenda they want to argue for, and yes, this means they need to loose some support, either loosing the neocons or the progressives, but it also means they get to actually do something beyond bickering.
The feminists and MRA are right - you can't read an MGTOW blog post anywhere without misogyny spilling out on your shoes, unlike the MRA they are clearly not above excluding women from supporting them, and they are destined to go the same way as 2nd wave feminist lesbian separatism - you can only grow your movement so much when you require people to counter their basic physical and emotional needs and you are very unlikely to grow over time at all if you don't apply the most ancient meme transfer mechanism of all - raising children. And no, a small group of hermits tying up their dicks in a chastity belt in protest isn't going to convince anyone of anything.
The MRA & MGTOW are right about most of what they have to say about feminism, which I would expend upon except that it would have to include everything they every said about anything since they had people who can speak since they don''t actually say things other then attacking feminism, so instead I'll point at what IMO is the most notable exception - their historical reevaluation of 1st wave feminism on the inherently unverifiable basis of "it would have happened anyway". The old way was a rotten deal for everyone involved, both men and women, and we don't get to pretend feminist movement didn't bring that change about on the basis of "If they wouldn't someone else would" - credit doesn't work like that, and that someone else wasn't fast enough.
So it's all the fault of Indian cooking!
I wonder why the motorcycle disappears during that loop?
Oh, and in high school, I would totally have been distracted by some girl's midriff. If she was in my class, I'd be staring at her through the whole class, and probably be trying to hide a boner under my notebook. You can't get much hornier than a high school boy.
So true. Even girls who were objectively a solid four became eights or nines when the hormone coefficient was figured in.
I look back at my HS yearbook photos and think "How did I think she was hot?"
I'll trade this ability:
http://go-girl.com/
For the ability to get laid whenever I want. Then we'd be equal.
See, if a girl was exposing her midriff you'd be all goo-goo over her, and if she was wearing a burka you'd still be belly dancing her in your head.
I had a 6 ft blond teacher, fresh out of college, my first year in High School. She had a 6 ft 4 boyfriend, and she drove a tiny Morris Minor. I often imagined them doing it in that car, which would be neigh on to impossible. Through no fault of hers, my hormones could overcome basic physics... or a burka. :blush:
I'll trade this ability: http://go-girl.com/
For the ability to get laid whenever I want. Then we'd be equal.
Thing is though - it's just not true about any girl/woman being able to get laid whenever she wants. Nice idea in theory - doesn't work in practice.
Well it would be true if you weren't so damn picky about trivial matters like hygiene. :stickpoke :lol2:
Thing is though - it's just not true about any girl/woman being able to get laid whenever she wants. Nice idea in theory - doesn't work in practice.
I believe you are arguing the exception, Dana.
In theory, ok - woman walks into a bar and says in a loud voice: does anybody fancy a fuck? She'd probably have a few takers - depending on the bar and the clientele. Man does the same and he probably wouldn't have any takers. But then again - I'm pretty sure if all a guy wants is sex and it doesn't matter what she looks like, how old she is, how not-psycho she may or may not be, I'm pretty sure most can find someone to shag. You could rfn if you were wholly indiscriminate. As could I. Anything more than that and I really don't think it's any easier.
From a Flavorwire interview with Roger Corman, the king of B movies, with 600 low budget films to his credit.
One of your first films for New World Pictures, which you co-founded in 1970 after AIP, was Student Nurses, directed by Stephanie Rothman. You gave a lot of well-known directors their start in the industry, but you gave a lot of women directors their start in the industry when no one else would. Can you talk a little bit about your decision-making with that?
People have praised me for going out of my way to hire women and being at the forefront of the feminist movement in Hollywood. It wasn’t exactly that way. It wasn’t that I was looking to hire women. I was looking to hire the best person available for the job. And it made no difference to me whether they were men or women. So, very often, the best person was a woman. I would hire that person, simply on the basis of ability. When you figure that the population is roughly 50% women — I’m making this number up, but you know what I mean — roughly half the time you’re going to be hiring a lot of women.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
I have two daughters. I support them, and I think in general I would be a bit of a feminist. But, I still only hire on the basis of ability.
The Slumber Party Massacre has two women behind it. The film was directed by Amy Holden Jones and written by Rita Mae Brown, who was an activist in the feminist movement. There’s so much subversive feminist commentary in this film, it’s fantastic. It’s great to see some exploitation directed at men and male bodies. I know it was written as a parody of sorts, but I’ve read that you filmed it straight. Can you talk about this?
It started off simply as horror film. Rita Mae Brown wrote the script. Amy Holden Jones directed it, but worked with Rita and me — although it was primarily their work. They put together a picture that satisfied what the requirements were. And we did have nudity in that picture. But, they also put some personal thoughts of their own in it, and they put a little bit of humor in it as well. Rita is an excellent writer. And Amy has gone on to have a very, very good career. These were two very talented women working on a subject that in other hands could have been a cheap exploitation film. It is still an exploitation film, but it has a quality that enabled it to stand alone. They understood they were making an exploitation film, but they also knew they had a great deal of freedom.
You are known for some degree of sex and female exploitation in your movies, but your handling of female sexuality in your films has always been pretty straightforward. As my editor and I once agreed, everyone has their fair share of sleazy moments.
Laughs.
You also offer us some social commentary in films like Student Nurses where women enjoy sex, and they’re liberated, but there’s also an abortion subplot. I know your wife Julie has worked closely with you behind the scenes. Has she been a source of advice about your depiction of women or women’s subjects?
These pictures started before Julie was working with me. But I remember with the scripts for a number of them, for quite a while, I would explain to the writer what I wanted. And I would get back — always in treatment form, I believe in treatments before going to the screenplay — the girls set up the way I wanted. They would have a problem to be solved. But in these scripts, their boyfriends would solve the problem. And I remember how many times I would say to the writer, ’No, they must solve the problem themselves.’ It killed the whole idea if their boyfriends come in and solve it. That was something that seemed, to me, self-evident, but I remember many times having that same discussion.
Sounds to me like he's doing it right. :thumb:
Very interesting interview, bruce.
Kevin Bacon campaigns for equality in Hollywood.
[YOUTUBE]3Dt3IrdampY[/YOUTUBE]
I'm definitely in favour of more male nudity...
;p
C'mon dwellar hotties, show us whatcha got!
[eta] I really like Kevin Bacon. He seems a sorted bloke.
The new Netflix show Sense8 has already had full-frontal male nudity multiple times, yet no vagina shots so far. Takes balls to do something like that.
ha ha ha
and ouch
Oh foot! You zip up too fast?
Oh foot! You zip up too fast?
ha ha ha
And ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip.
Great move by Target, removing the gendered signage from toys and bedding; predictably negative response from Fox and Friends who will apparently now be confused about what to buy as gifts for children because they won't know what is a girl's toy and what is a boy's toy. Which, frankly, makes the argument for me as to why they never needed labelling in the first place. What is the difference between a girl's toy and a boy's toy? The girl's toy is being played with by a girl. The boy's toy is being played with by a boy. Either they are not fundamentally different, in which case it doesn't actually matter which is which - or they are fundamentally different, in which case why would adults need signs to tell them which is which?
Though - in their defence, aside from the opening line about possibly being confused by it, the actual report was fairly balanced.
I particularly like the way the studio peeps completely disregarded the thousands of people who've complained to Target by labelling them 'the non-people who are upset by this'.
[YOUTUBE]xEkN_bEvvBs[/YOUTUBE]
Which, frankly, makes the argument for me as to why they never needed labelling in the first place.
But, but, what if a confused grandma buys a girl a gun! :eek:
Nobody thunk it, nobody knew
No one imagined the great girl guru
Girls are one
She hid in the forest, read books with great zeal
She loved Che Guevera, a revolutionary squeal
Girl Tse Tongue
She spoke about justice, but nobody stirred
She felt like an outcast, alone like a nerd
Girl doldrums
She moaned we must fight, escape or we'll die
Girls gathered around, cause her heels were so high
Bad Girl pun
But then she was captured, stuffed into a crate
Loaded onto a truck, where she rode to her fate
Girls are bummed
She was a scrawny girl, who looked rather woozy
No one suspected she was packing an Uzi
Girls with guns
They came with a needle to stick in her thigh
She kicked for the groin, she pissed in their eye
Girl flaps hung
Knocked over a tractor and ran for the door
Six gallons of gas flowed out on the floor
Run girls run!
She picked up a bullhorn and jumped up on the hay
We are free roving ladies, we run free today
They crashed the gate in a great stampede
Tipped over a milk truck, torched all the feed
Girls have fun
Sixty police cars were piled in a heap
Covered in girl poop, covered up deep
Much girl dung
Black smoke rising, darkening the day
Twelve burning men's clubs, going away
The President said "enough is enough
These uppity women, its time to get tough"
Girl dung flung
The newspapers gloated, folks sighed with relief
Tomorrow at noon, they'd all be a faint queef
Girls with runs
The girls were surrounded, they waited and prayed
They moaned their last moans
They chewed nails away
Girls out gunned
The order was given, turn girls into shoppers
Enforced by the might of ten thousand coppers
But on the horizon surrounding the crowd
Came the deafening roar of mothers in choppers
Girls with guns.
IDK, with the whole moving and everything I really wished there were "boys" and "girls" signs at Ikea.... But I think I managed to get it right:
[ATTACH]52993[/ATTACH]
[SIZE="1"]
A female Army Ranger student lifts a rucksack onto her back on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015, at Camp James E. Rudder on Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.[/SIZE]
For those not familiar with US Army Rangers, there's Infantry, then there's Rangers (kinda like
high speed Infantry), and then there's Delta Force (kinda like
high speed Rangers). The focus of their respective missions narrows; but, they're all
direct action missions as opposed to an organization like Special Forces which, while maintaining that capability (fighters-teachers) , focuses on training indigenous forces in guerilla warfare.
[SIZE="5"]Army's top officer: Pioneering women in Ranger School have 'impressed'[/SIZE]
... General Odierno said that the feedback on the female soldiers currently making their way through Army Ranger School – for the first time in US military history – has been almost universally positive. ...
... The Army will announce next week whether the two female soldiers still in the running to become the first women to wear Ranger tabs – of the 19 who started the course in April – have successfully made it through the program and will graduate in a ceremony next Friday.
The Army will probably launch another coed Ranger School course in November, Odierno said. “And then we’ll make a decision after that on whether we make it ... permanently open to women,” he said.
The question, he added, is, “Can they meet the standard or not? And if they can, we lean towards the fact that it would probably be good if we allowed them to serve” in combat. ...
I saw a picture of one of those women in Ranger school, at the end of a horrendous test, something like carrying a 500 lb pack, run over a 50,000 ft mountain, and walk on water. At the finish she was dragging her pack but she fucking did it, and the men in the class were cheering her on.
I believe from what I've read, the females in the services have been invaluable in the middle east, and far Pacific, connecting with native women who are very Leary of men.
There's a cookie file somewhere that is a quote about how back when gays were ejected from the military, 90% of them were women.
... I believe from what I've read, the females in the services have been invaluable in the middle east, and far Pacific, connecting with native women who are very Leary of men.
There's a cookie file somewhere that is a quote about how back when gays were ejected from the military, 90% of them were women.
Of course, they didn't want them connecting with indigenous women. It would demoralize the straight males who think that's their job. :haha:
Honestly I don't think it's going to matter much... Obviously it does matter for those women individually and that they can be allowed to do that, which is fantastic, but in the long run... Speaking as an Israeli - where it's actually considered shameful for a woman to not serve in the military as much as it is for men - I do not think the US has the right cultural makeup and attitude to reach a significantly gender mixed defense force.
It's good that it's enabled and allowed, but unless there's a more significant change in the culture the women serving will be the minority for some time.
Outside of official combat roles, women in the US military are represented similarly to US corporations - pretty well represented at the lower levels, less so as you go up.
Huh - that's interesting.
The ones they sent here as part of the UN peace keeping force at the end of the 2nd Israeli-Lebanon war acted like they've never seen women soldiers. Has it changed so much since then, or was it particular to those troops, or something else... I am just curious.
PEW(pdf) says, enlisted = 14%, commissioned officers = 16%.
PEW(pdf) says, enlisted = 14%, commissioned officers = 16%.
Going straight to the data - I like that.
According to this there are actually slightly less enlisted women soldiers now then when I was in service, though more officers.
HM stipulated outside of official combat roles.
What are official combat roles? Does that mean a job in the military is non-combat when stateside, but combat where there's a war going on? Women assigned to units as radio operators, medics, or mechanics, had to be replaced before going into a war zone? Would a woman flying a Predator drone from the US be a combat role?
This is 3 years old; but, will give you an overview (you know how to search the specifics).
Why Can't Women Serve at the Front?
As for why this hasn't changed, ask Obama. He could change it with the stroke of a pen. It's not in the Constitution, it's not a law, it's just a matter of public policy.
What are official combat roles? Does that mean a job in the military is non-combat when stateside, but combat where there's a war going on? Women assigned to units as radio operators, medics, or mechanics, had to be replaced before going into a war zone? Would a woman flying a Predator drone from the US be a combat role?
My cousin and his wife both flew planes for the Navy during the first Gulf War. He was dropping bombs, she was doing supply runs and the like. She was still in a certain amount of danger, but she wasn't killing anyone.
Why Can't Women Serve at the Front?
Because they can operate drones from Arizona?
Because the politicians couldn't take the heat from something like this happening to military servicewomen:
Family says daughter raped repeatedly while held by IS
WASHINGTON (AP) — American hostage Kayla Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, U.S. intelligence officials told her family in June. ...
As for why this hasn't changed, ask Obama. He could change it with the stroke of a pen. It's not in the Constitution, it's not a law, it's just a matter of public policy.
The DOD has required the services to integrate women into the remaining closed positions by the beginning of next year, but the department has no plans to monitor progress after that date, the GAO said.
Except for the Navy saying OK, except for three classes of small ships that would be too expensive to retrofit and are close to the end of their service life, none of the branches have objected to the deadline. There's no need for Obama to intercede.
Should've been done in his first year in office; but, he procrastinated until he could pass any problems with implementation on to his successor.
Procrastinated? You're assuming it was even on the list of pressing issues when he took office. I doubt it was even on the list. You're right that it's a politically hot button issue with some people, primarily conservatives. So even if it did come up in the Oval Office, it would be passed to the DOD for action.
The brass at DOD don't make changes to public policy without considering the political ramifications to their boss and getting his approval.
You seem to be saying that gender equality wasn't a priority for Obama when he took office and that primarily conservative politicians would be concerned about fallout, like that described in post 211, resulting from changes.
I can accept those as rationales for Obama's procrastination.
I'm saying gender equality in the military probably wasn't on his list of priority issues when he took office in 2008. It certainly wasn't on most peoples at the time, with all the shit going on. I can picture a shitstorm of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the conservatives and K street, how the Kenyan Devil is sending mothers/sisters/daughters to be raped and slaughtered by the a-rabs. :rolleyes:
Anyway, better late than never. If after the policy change any female combatants are taken hostage, we should have a Delta-cup Force to send in and rescue them.
...
As for why this hasn't changed, ask Obama. He could change it with the stroke of a pen. It's not in the Constitution, it's not a law, it's just a matter of public policy.
... and not wanting to hurt the delicate feelings of the US Marine Corp
Delta-cup force? :eyebrow:
Females who make it through Delta Force training are gonna have pecs!
[COLOR="SlateGray"]Just kidding, developing their pectoral muscles isn't going to change their cup size.[/COLOR]
Because they can operate drones from Arizona?
Actually that's a really good point.
I guess both genders deserve an equal chance at been replaced by robots...
Females who make it through Delta Force training are gonna have pecs!
Don't look now, but....
History in the making: 2 women will graduate from Army Ranger course
CNN -Holly Yan and Barbara Starr - 8/18/15
(CNN)Two women are about to make history by becoming the first female soldiers to graduate from the Army's exhausting Ranger School.
They're among the 96 students who will graduate from the intensive training program Friday in Fort Benning, Georgia.
This was the first year the Army opened the course to women on a trial basis.
"This course has proven that every Soldier, regardless of gender, can achieve his
or her full potential," Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh said in a statement.
But it's not clear what awaits the female graduates.
The Pentagon isn't expected to make final decisions about exactly
what combat roles women will be allowed to fulfill until later this year.
This is Army, but it's a matter of time til the Marines will have to face up too.
Don't look now, but....
History in the making: 2 women will graduate from Army Ranger course
CNN -Holly Yan and Barbara Starr - 8/18/15
This is Army, but it's a matter of time til the Marines will have to face up too.
You also make a good point:
If there is a first organization to get rid of gender barriers, and others to follow.. There is going to be a last.
Will it be the navy? Will it be the marines? The national guard? Who will we laugh at as the new era's catholic school boys? Who will we make gay jokes about for years passed the point where gay jokes are still a thing? Who will be the new bottom of the progressive barrel for as long as we live in gravity filled environments and can still make sense of top and bottom metaphors? Stand up future victims of mockery, show yourself.... Or you know, don't stand up, don't do anything, it's kind of the defining feature of the position.
Even if those two female Ranger School graduates can't be assigned to the Ranger Regiment right away, they should allow them to start using men's restrooms IMMEDIATELY!
You're using and extra large [strike] spoon [/strike] paddle. :rolleyes:
Jocularity! Jocularity! Jocularity!
Most places this wouldn't fly. There, the gender equality and equal opportunity officers are in a snit.
A Black Forest town has earned criticism from gender equality officers and social media after advertising a "men's parking space" in a public car-park - using a naked woman's silhouette. The silhouette shows a woman lolling backwards, legs splayed and breasts exposed. Painted beside her are the words "Steep mountains, moist valleys" in German. But this semi-erotic image isn't printed on the cover of a top-shelf lads' magazine. In fact, it's plastered onto the wall of a public car-park - notifying drivers that this is a men's parking space.
Humour or horror?
This "Männerparkplatz" is the first of its kind in the Black Forest town of Triberg, reports Bild.de. Of course, it's become something of a tourist attraction since it was introduced in 2012 – and its new artwork looks set to increase its publicity. The artwork is a contribution to humour in today's society, Triberg Mayor Dr. Gallus Strobel claimed.
Werner Oppelt, the artist behind the image, said that passers-by have mostly been fans of the picture. "Again and again, people come to have a look – including visitors from Holland, Spain and Italy – and no-one has expressed any negative opinions." However, it seems not everyone is as enthusiastic about the artwork as its creator.
linkBizzare. And Triburg is such a beautiful little village. I'd think this would be in some edge city or something, not in this place.
I keep reading it as "Sterile barge"... Which I suppose most women might prefer not to park under anyway...
They made it !
Two women make Army Ranger history
Fox News - 8/21/15
Capt. Kristen Griest, 26, of Orange, Connecticut, and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, 25, of Copperas Cove, Texas,
will become the first women to wear the Army's coveted Ranger tab when they graduate
alongside 94 male soldiers Friday at Fort Benning.
…
Spc. Christopher Carvalho, a medic in the same Ranger school class,
said his skepticism ended on the first road march when the women
left many of their male counterparts far behind.
…
Classmates 2nd Lt. Michael Janowski and 2nd Lt. Zachary Hanger both told of how
Haver and Griest jumped in to help carry heavy loads when other male trainees were too fatigued to assist.
Apparently, one soldier still couldn't appreciate the irony of his ingrained orientation:
Hanger called the women "absolutely physical studs"
I wonder if there's a reason they're both officers? Coincidence, only officers could apply, being women officers means they are committed to an army career and in better shape, the army chose officers so they would less likely get shit from testosterone pumped grunts? :confused:
Coincidence most likely. They were simply among the best prepared for the physical and psychological demands. Limiting female equal opportunity to officers wouldn't fly since Ranger School is open to all ranks. IIRC, the rank comes off when reporting in to RIP (Ranger Induction Program) and students don't know each other's rank. Only the instructors would wear theirs and know that of the students.
NOTE: I don't see rank insignia on the students in the picture I posted.
Thanks, I would imagine applicants are evaluated pretty heavily, both physical and psychological, before acceptance.
Old broads are helpful too. :haha:
Judith Jarvis Thomson, 85, another of MIT’s professors emeriti, is a philosopher best known for the elaboration of thought experiments called “trolley problems,” which test our moral intuitions. In the most famous trolley problem of all, Thomson asks her readers to imagine pushing a fat man onto a track in order to stop a runaway trolley from running over five people. She remains keenly interested in questions of rights and normativity (whether, ethically, one ought to do or refrain from doing something). Trolley problems are useful in thinking how autonomous vehicles and military robots could be programmed to behave in ways consistent with most people’s moral intuitions.
Helen Murray Free, 92, developed a series of self-testing kits for diabetes while working at Miles Laboratories in the second half of the last century. The tests transformed the way people with diabetes monitor their disease, helping make it into a manageable condition. Since retiring in 1982, she has devoted herself to promoting science education, particularly for young women and minorities.
From
prostitutionresearch.com .
Like drugs, legalize it and 90% of the problems go away. Maybe some of the problems that cause women to become one also.
So I have been looking into gender politics again, reading on the
2015 Rosenfeld research paper saying that while women do initiate divorce more often in martial affairs, no gender initiates breakup more often in nonmartial affairs.
The media coverage is what you would expect, with most authors trying to form feminist explanations on how the reason is how oppressive marriage is for women, while comment sections get filled with people complaining how the court makes divorce inaccessible to men due to favoritism.
I am starting to wonder what is the legal history of contract partnerships legitimacy in courts. Are they usually held? How does it change between countries? What about matters concerning child custody or financial matters?
Don't know about elsewhere, but the tendency to assume maternal custody (in itself now starting to give way to assumptions of shared custody) is relatively recent. It was a reversal of the previous assumption of paternal custody. Up until the 20th century it was generally assumed that the man was the head of the household and had legal rights over both spouse and children. Up until the 19th century, in Britain, women essentially lost their legal identity when they married. It was called 'coverture' (or couverture)- literally it meant that she was covered by her husband - she existed under his authority and protection and therefore her legal identity was contained in his. She was not, legally speaking, an equal partner in the marriage, and she did not have the right to remove his children from him. Only if the child was still of nursing age (actually, I think it could sometimes count up to about 5 years old) was maternal custody considered appropriate.*
Not sure, but I think in cases of extreme cruelty, petitions for custody may have been successful sometimes. I know of at least one infamous case in the late 18th century in which such a petition was unsuccessful, despite the apparent sympathy of all concerned for the cruelty the wife had suffered and feared for her child.
By the 20th century attitudes had shifted and matters of custody were dealt with very differently - even so, I think assumptions of maternal custody as a preferred solution may not have started to take hold until the latter half of the century. But - I'm guessing there - it's a long time since I read up on this stuff.
* I should point out that up until relatively recently divorce of any kind was pretty much only available to the wealthy, and until the late 18th/early 19th century only through successful parliamentary petition. Separation, like marriage was a different matter further down the social and economic scale and they really did do things very differently. It varied enormously, from place to place, trade to trade, but there were certainly many working-class (as we might term them) cultures in which marriage was much less formalised, and where women were the custodians of children, with men moving in and out of the family and the children remaining with the women. Also, somewhat counter to the common image of distant fathers, there seems to have been a lot more sharing of parenting between wives and husbands in some working cultures - just from a pragmatic perspective.
I found out as an adult that my Great-Grandfather was not married to my Great-Grandmother. He moved in and out of the house and in and out of prison. And it was not thought of as evil or disgusting - it was a convenience. He stored stolen goods at her house, and she could have been called on to testify against him in court, not being his wife. But he was already married, and marriage was for life, purely because (as you say) divorce was the privilege of the wealthy.
Not that she'd have let a copper in the house. She'd have hit him with a ladle and shrieked the place down until the neighbours came to make it a proper East End street party.
She married in the end, and stayed with him for life. He raised my Nan as his own. But Nan kept her father's name and still saw him every now and then. No word on whether her Mum did (I bet she did, because he sounded like he could talk the knickers off a nun).
Despite what romantic novels tell you, outside of Royalty and the Great Houses, where inheritance was an issue, being born out of wedlock held no stigma back then. I can only talk about the working poor of London, but WWI certainly helped a few girls without rings on their fingers get accepted. It was family business, and families got on with it.
I mean don't get me wrong - it depended on circumstances. Women were still being put in mental health units for liking the old hokey-pokey too much, ending up with their babies taken away and subsequent grief and/or post-natal depression leading to a stay so long they became institutionalised.
And Mum's cousin was forced into marrying his pregnant girlfriend the day she turned 16. I mean they're still married happily now, with two grown daughters. But it shows teenage pregnancy is nothing new.
@DanaC True - the argument at the time was that men had 100% of the financial responsibility so they'd keep the children in their households to keep them fed, the counter argument is that women didn't have access to the means to take financial responsibility, and so on and so forth.
The whole argument gets ridicules when you consider that - as you pointed out yourself - when you consider the slow revolving door of the time the reality is that if you could afford a divorce at all, you were most likely supporting your kids with capital from accumulated family assets, not your own income, and the people doing the day to day raising of the kids were most likely household staff, so really neither members would have much claim for earning rights through taking responsibility by today's standards. Add to that the fact that if the family owned land, chances are the children were part of the labor force - they were viewed as financial assets rather then financial responsibilities.
The historical context is important to understand why the laws today are what they are, and I appreciate that, but I don't think that changes the consequences of what they are, and while members of either genders can argue who gets more screwed over, the answer IMO remains - it doesn't work for either parties - find an alternative that does. A.K.A. an alternative contract.
Despite what romantic novels tell you, outside of Royalty and the Great Houses, where inheritance was an issue, being born out of wedlock held no stigma back then. I can only talk about the working poor of London, but WWI certainly helped a few girls without rings on their fingers get accepted.
Interesting - that wasn't true in Jewish communities in eastern europe. My grandmother never married my grandfather, and from what I understand that turned out to be pretty messy business.
It gets interesting because she was able to support my father easily (Apparently taking part of the communist revolution had perks), and my grandfather couldn't - he was considered a con artist, they met every few years outside of the village because he wouldn't be allowed back there.
Also, never seen him but according to her I look and think more like him then anyone else in my family... :yelsick:
Ah, bringing religion into it changes everything.
Location also.
My reading and the anecdotal evidence I've heard suggests that closed communities are the most accepting. Which includes areas in cities and rural communities. Obviously not in the case of your Grandparents.
But the East End was very much a place where you deal with you own problems, and don't invite Lily Law in to deal with them for you. So the chap at number 42 smacks his wife about. You all know it, but that's life.
And in a village you know the chap who lives at Church End cottage diddles with his daughters. Well, that's what happens. If he diddles with yours he'll get a pitchfork where the sun don't shine. But you won't mess with what don't hurt you.
Things are different now.
I'm not saying these things don't happen any more, and I'm not saying people don't turn a blind eye. But it's not as easily glossed over these days.
And I don't mean to make it all about men vs women - in the times and in the situations I've mentioned, what we would now consider crimes were those in which men believed they owned the women living under their roofs, and used physical strength to get what they wanted. In no way a typical male/ female relationship.
Actually the talk about physical force brings an interesting point that's relevant to the thread at large I heard made by historian Yoval Harari about patriarchy theory (Which he does generally believes in).
In 8 minutes 32 seconds into the interview:
[YOUTUBE]vvwK5PrG21A[/YOUTUBE]
FOX on women.
[YOUTUBEWIDE]DEoWSaM61NI[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
I have had a number of links collected for this thread. I want to just unload them here before I lose track of them.
How 7 things that have nothing to do with rape perfectly illustrate the concept of consent
Son, it's ok if you don't get laid tonight.
Hey kid. You’re at an age where I’m pretty sure you’re about to have sex soon, or actually, you might even already be having it and you’re just *that* good at keeping it from me. I don’t really fret over that because I trust you. And because I trust myself and the job I’ve done as your parent all these years.
...
We’ve also talked about rape and about rape culture. I’ve tried to show you how this pervasive attitude exists toward women as objects, or at best, supporting characters in a man’s adventure. And that even though that isn’t your fault and you didn’t make the world that way, allowing yourself to be a passive beneficiary of that dynamic is unacceptable.
...
And yet, the reality is that even with everything I’ve taught you, you are still capable of committing rape. Not because you’re some kind of testosterone-driven monster on the inside, but because you’re at the center of swirling variables and messages.
...
A teaser, really. I liked the whole article. I think you'd like it too.
Article from the Hate Mail.
Turns out that in two of seven age ranges (only five of which are shown in their graphics) women earn a small percentage more than men. Rising to the heady heights of 1.1% more in the 22-29 age group.
Which wholly justifies the headline
Pay gap? Women earn MORE than men till their 40s: 20-something woman have been paid MORE than men in the same age group over the last decade
Article here (Daily Mail website).
I watched the whole FOX on women video. Urghk..
That letter was awesome. What I like about it is that it connects the dots. One thing that really strck me with a lot of the surveys and polls that have been done, show that a lot of men, often young men, when presented with the question 'Have you ever raped a girl/woman?' will answer no, but when presented with the question, 'have you ever had sex with a girl/woman who was too drunk to say no?', or 'have you ever continued to have sex after a girl/woman has changed her mind about wanting to?' and even 'have you ever got a girl/woman really drunk in order to have sex with her?' will say yes.
And the role of peer pressure really has to be recognised too. A lot of the cases we see in the news, of young women being raped while passed out or drugged involve groups of lads. I suspect that the individual boys are often not bad lads on their own.
That Fox video is just so depressing.
Don't forget when that lad has a boner, he might encounter a lady... now this is one in a million or more, who fibs.:eek:
Not telling him the truth, or being so vague, he'll make the wrong decision.
... not.
Chrissie made the comments to the Sunday Times Magazine in relation to an incident that happened to her when she was younger.
The star recalled how she crossed paths with members of one of Ohio's leather-clad gangs who promised to take her to a party - but instead took her to an empty house.
Despite that, she says she takes 'full responsibility' for what happened.
She continued: 'Technically speaking, however you want to look at it, this was all my doing and I take full responsibility.
'You can't f*** about with people, especially people who wear "I Heart Rape" and "On Your Knees" badges... those motorcycle gangs, that's what they do.
'You can't paint yourself into a corner and then say whose brush is this? You have to take responsibility. I mean, I was naive...'
When asked whether the gang took advantage of her vulnerability, she replied: 'If you play with fire you get burnt. It's not any secret, is it?'
Hynde went on to say that women who dress provocatively while walking down the street drunk are also to blame if they are attacked.
'If I'm walking around in my underwear and I'm drunk? Who else's fault can it be?'
She explained: 'If I'm walking around and I'm very modestly dressed and I'm keeping to myself and someone attacks me, then I'd say that's his fault.
'But if I'm being very lairy and putting it about and being provocative, then you are enticing someone who's already unhinged - don't do that. Come on! That's just common sense. You know, if you don't want to entice a rapist, don't wear high heels so you can't run from him.
'If you're wearing something that says 'Come and f*** me', you'd better be good on your feet... I don't think I'm saying anything controversial am I?'
Now I'd like to think that even if I was walking around drunk in my underwear, men would feel protective and get me to safety. Okay, some might "accidentally" cop a feel, but in general they would know I was in some sort of trouble.
And to equate wearing high heels to "putting it about" and "being provocative"! I'd like to think she was misquoted, but it's not just a single sentence.
Leaving your valuables on display in a car is careless and does make robbery more likely. Leaving your ground floor windows open at night (depending on where you live) raises the potential for opportunistic theft. Walking through high crime areas without paying due care and attention/ displaying conspicuous wealth is likely to end badly.
But wearing high heels makes you responsible for being raped?
I wonder if Chrissie Hynde actually bothers to read the news. Knows about grandmothers being raped in their own homes, or women out walking dogs or with their children? Sluts, obviously.
Yes, there are things you can do to lessen your chances of being raped on a night out. Same as the crimes I cited above. But
they are common sense (awareness of surroundings, area, company) not her version of it. She was very naive - to the point of stupidity - to choose to go to a party with men wearing I heart rape badges, yes. But being naive and even being stupid are not illegal as far as I know. She should not have had to pay for her actions by being sexually violated.
Now I'd like to think that even if I was walking around drunk in my underwear, men would feel protective and get me to safety. Okay, some might "accidentally" cop a feel, but in general they would know I was in some sort of trouble.
That defines the fundamental difference between an adult and an adult who is only a child. A child will take whatever he can especially if he thinks he can get away with it. An adult is required to have ethics. In fact, we should test every adult by having actors walk down the street looking drunk in their underwear - to find the scumbags BEFORE they actually harm America and the world.
If that not the premise of an ABC News show where actors create situations to see what strangers will do? How many are adult enough to 'do the right thing'.
From where a lot of you guys stand it seems you approach it like a one dimensional dichotomy between traditionalism and feminism, putting a lot of emphasize on small differences and ignoring the core shared principles values and world view they build upon. In the mean time I can't decide what's worst - the fox news sound bite collection or the letter - poison spread thin to a lot of people or poison focused on a few at high dosages.
traceur, are you suggesting the letter I linked to in post #245 is concentrated poison focused on one person?
I hope I misunderstand you, but either way, I'd be interested in hearing you expand on your remark.
The point of this thread is to point out gender inequality.
It's not about celebrating the fact we're all human and share the same values.
I don't post cat photos in the dog thread.
Also, although most of us know eachother's gender, I don't think many Dwellars react to general posts in a way that reflects that. This forum is pretty much a level playing field in that respect - I think there are more cultural differences here than gender issues. This thread helps to contain and isolate them. Not saying they can be stripped from every day life, where pretty much every Dwellar faces them, but it saves having some of the more off tangent thread drifts.
thread drift is a feature of the cellar, not a bug.
now that that's out of the way, I have read and reread your post Sundae, and I'm at a loss as to what you're trying to say. which is par for the course for me but wildly out of character for you. can you comfort the poverty of my understanding, please?
Sorry V, I was responding to traceur. Dodgy internet connection at home, often have to save and repost.
I should at least have addressed the response to him.
I thought the letter you posted was well written and well phrased. I was actually in two minds all the way through whether it was written by a mother or a father. Which shouldn't matter, but the fact that it came across as gender neutral is a reflection of how I think the majority of men think.
And yes, I love thread drift on the Cellar. But you have to admit it sometimes makes individual posts you want to find tricky :)
thank you Sundae, your clarification makes it much clearer.
:)
The point of this thread is to point out gender inequality.
It's not about celebrating the fact we're all human and share the same values.
I am not saying there isn't inequality between genders, I am saying there isn't that much of a difference between how traditionalism and feminism approach those differences:
They are both aged old traditions that exchange the value of women's agency for the value of women's wellbeing, rationalized by much of the same process, each a semantic framework that makes sense from a very narrow perspective and no other, and is reliant on compliance with that perspective.
The only reason feminism had to become more dogmatic was because traditionalism also exchanged men's well being for agency, which makes the deal "make sense" externally without having to focus your mind on the perspective of one gender only as long as you view it in terms of the shallow exchange but without understanding the connection between liberty and well being - because without agency the factors of your well being has to be presumed rather then chosen and without a value of your own well being your agency doesn't actually benefit you. Feminism broke loose of that part by separating agency and responsibility, which meant it had to rely on people been compliant with a much narrower perspective.
At the core, they are both reliant on our psychological tendency to anthropomorphise life itself as if it was a parental figure, on a much more subtle way then monotheist faith (Although in the case of traditionalism the two often come together).
Take for example your answer to the actress quote in your post: You aren't wrong, that it's not her fault, and you aren't necessarily right in thinking the question she is asking herself when she's giving those answers is a question of fault to began with.
Personally I am more like her, my reaction to trauma is to find ways to explain what have I done to get to that point and what I could have done differently, how can I change to avoid it. It is at the core wishful thinking seeking to regain a sense of control to not feel helpless. The question "Did I deserve this" doesn't come to my mind, it's not really part of my framework.
From this perspective, taking responsibility away doesn't free you away from "fault", it's taking away your sense of control - it doesn't help to heal but makes you into an eternal victim.
The framework of fault comes into play when you think in terms of "deserving" - as if life is a parental figure and when bad things happen to you it is a punishment for being a naughty child.
You are right that it's not her fault, but the reason there is value in taking away fault depends on this very specific framework, and it's not one that is universal for all humans.
And yet if you look at the comics from bigV - the feminist "fight against entitlement" which it views as the core of traditionalism - that sense of entitlement comes from the other side of the exact same coin: You have done something good, now Life should fulfill it's promises to you (But she can't because she's too busy going to therapy since your gandparents named her Life).
This is why - from a gender egalitarian perspective - while at it's best feminism might just be another word for gender egalitarianism, most of the time it's traditionalism's identical twin arguing over which side of the toast to spread the jam.
traceur, are you suggesting the letter I linked to in post #245 is concentrated poison focused on one person?
I hope I misunderstand you, but either way, I'd be interested in hearing you expand on your remark.
Because that kind of crappy vilification of male sexuality can give medieval Catholicism a run for it's money, and she decided not only to instill it in her son, but to help convince a few others to do the same to their children - probably nothing close to as many viewers as fox news has, but potentially a lot more destructive to those it does impact.
snip--
Because that kind of crappy vilification of male sexuality can give medieval Catholicism a run for it's money, and she decided not only to instill it in her son, but to help convince a few others to do the same to their children - probably nothing close to as many viewers as fox news has, but potentially a lot more destructive to those it does impact.
So it looks like I did not misunderstand you. But we do not agree on what constitutes "vilification of male sexuality". Let's take the talking points as a starter, hm?
Here’s how you can rule out sleeping with someone:
1. She’s hammered.
Are you ok with this "rule"? If the girl is very drunk should it be ok to have sex with her?
2. She seems unsure if she wants to (you should never have to talk anyone into it).
Like the one before, this one is on a continuum. There's coyness, shyness, reluctance, resistance, defensiveness, hostility, aggression, etc. I concede that it's a judgement call. But the answer is more communication for more clarification, not damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
3. She’s passed out.
I doubt you'd consider this "rule" a vilification of male sexuality. But I'd appreciate your honest answer; passed out girls are off limits, sexually, agreed?
4. It seems like there’s any other reason she might regret it in the morning. (Even if it’s not rape, do you really want to be someone’s morning-after regret, when instead they can remember you as a total gentleman?)
Even this one doesn't rise to the level of vilification of male sexuality. This is not poisoning her son. AT BEST, an encounter like this is a temporary pleasure, and the downside is a hole with no bottom. If "she" doesn't want to, then "I" don't want to.
Here’s how you can be sure it’s okay to proceed with sex:
1. She is in control of her faculties.
2. She is enthusiastically willing.
3. Check in with her! “Do you want to be doing this?” is a great thing to ask when things are going to another sexual level. The worst thing that will happen is she’ll rethink it and say, no, she’s actually not ready. It’s important at that point to pivot to doing something else together, and not make her feel guilty for changing her mind. While that may feel like a bummer to you in the moment, what you’ve just achieved there is fucking badass. You’ve just put someone else’s feelings ahead of your physiological desires. You’ve just treated somebody the way you hope another guy would treat your sister.
And I don't have any problem at all with any of the "go" signals from the letter, I doubt you do either.
I'd be happy to reinforce these points to my sons, and my daughter, when it comes to sex. Poison them? pfffft. Hardly. Teaching respect for one's intimate partner is not poisoning them. At the very least, it's planting the seeds of the Golden Rule.
OMG! Bill Cosby's turning over in his grave and he's not even dead yet! There was a time when hammered and nailed went together like soup and sandwich. We're witnessing the end to a way of life.
snip--
You are right that it's not her fault, but the reason there is value in taking away fault depends on this very specific framework, and it's not one that is universal for all humans.
And yet if you look at the comics from bigV - the feminist "fight against entitlement" which it views as the core of traditionalism - that sense of entitlement comes from the other side of the exact same coin: You have done something good, now Life should fulfill it's promises to you (But she can't because she's too busy going to therapy since your gandparents named her Life).
--snip
Dude.
You're seriously overthinking this one here, and missing the whole point as a result. The comics are making analogies about what consent and the absence of consent look like. Just because a familiar situation exists, that is *not* the same as consent. You might have gotten the point that "playing cards/getting a tattoo/cooking breakfast/etc" were all analogies for having sex, but I think you've missed entirely the gender neutral quality of these illustrations. This advice, this demonstration of what consent does *not* look like are valid for any and all genders on any side of any of these exchanges.
Now, you may well cry that since the link uses the word "rape" that the comics are about men not raping women. So what? Men should not rape women. Nor should women rape men. Nobody should be raping. Rape==bad, ok? But you'd have to be blind to not see that the vast majority of rape is by men. So, whatever. Call it an overreaction by the feminist fight against entitlement or whatever. No character in any of these comics should feel entitled to what they were expecting. Entitlement is the anti-consent. Sex without consent is
trouble, even if you do get laid.
Dude.
You're seriously overthinking this one here, and missing the whole point as a result. The comics are making analogies about what consent and the absence of consent look like. Just because a familiar situation exists, that is *not* the same as consent. You might have gotten the point that "playing cards/getting a tattoo/cooking breakfast/etc" were all analogies for having sex, but I think you've missed entirely the gender neutral quality of these illustrations. This advice, this demonstration of what consent does *not* look like are valid for any and all genders on any side of any of these exchanges.
Now, you may well cry that since the link uses the word "rape" that the comics are about men not raping women. So what? Men should not rape women. Nor should women rape men. Nobody should be raping. Rape==bad, ok? But you'd have to be blind to not see that the vast majority of rape is by men. So, whatever. Call it an overreaction by the feminist fight against entitlement or whatever. No character in any of these comics should feel entitled to what they were expecting. Entitlement is the anti-consent. Sex without consent is trouble, even if you do get laid.
You are not entitled to demand other people to stop thinking about things just when they've reached the exact same amount of thought you have invested into them :p:
Seriously though - Overthinking is something that can happen when there is an urgent action to be done based on the thought... It doesn't really work when it comes to analysis unless you are trying to get someone to agree with a thought that you don't want them to think more of it because then they'd figure out why it's wrong. Don't underthink overthinking.
Yes though - that is the psychology I was talking about. I am not sure what to say other then that, it seems I was using the exact meaning you had in mind as my example.
So it looks like I did not misunderstand you. But we do not agree on what constitutes "vilification of male sexuality". Let's take the talking points as a starter, hm?
It's not the rules - it's in the introduction, the frame in which they are presented in.
How do you feel about sex without consent?
How do you feel about sex without consent?
An exceptionally traumatic experience people shouldn't inflict on other people.
But if you want to convey that as the entire meaning of the letter, then I call bullshit. That's like saying that me teaching my son to be honest with people is the same thing as carefully explaining to him how the poor goys grow up in a culture lacking financial scrutiny and it's our responsibility as Jews to make sure we do not accidentally scam anyone. <- One of those is clearly loaded with a lot more meaning then the other.
no, no, no. I want to convey that as the entire meaning of the *comics*.
each one introduces a situation where something (sex) might happen then illustrates how the situation itself is not consent. You described them as
snip--
And yet if you look at the comics from bigV - the feminist "fight against entitlement" which it views as the core of traditionalism - that sense of entitlement comes from the other side of the exact same coin: You have done something good, now Life should fulfill it's promises to you (But she can't because she's too busy going to therapy since your gandparents named her Life).
--snip
Each of those comics illustrates a scenario taken straight out of "traditionalism" and points out why it's not consent.
We agree about sex without consent. I'm just not sure we agree on what constitutes consent and what does not constitute consent.
no, no, no. I want to convey that as the entire meaning of the *comics*.
each one introduces a situation where something (sex) might happen then illustrates how the situation itself is not consent. You described them as
Each of those comics illustrates a scenario taken straight out of "traditionalism" and points out why it's not consent.
Again, you are just reiterating the very same meaning I was using as an example as part of a larger piece...
What is the problem exactly? You don't seem to express any disagreement with the context I was using them in (Other then considering it "overthinking"), just an insistence that you are not sure I understood what it meant and then reiterating the very meaning I used it as...
You highlighted in bold me describing it as "the feminist "fight against entitlement" which it views as the core of traditionalism", and now reiterating that you view you it as the core of traditionalism..
In what way do you feel it doesn't fit the context I was using it in? Do you disagree that the comics is an example of the feminist self-perceived fight against entitlement culture which it views as the core of traditionalism? Is it merely that you dislike the specification "which it views" or the quotation marks around "fight against entitlement" and thus acknowledging it as a matter of framing rather then pretending it to be a clean cut description of reality? We seem to be getting stuck in the conversation and I am not sure what is it exactly that we're stuck about...
I would imagine a fairly large percentage of young men and a fairly large percentage of young women have experienced a situation where the lines of consent were in some way blurred or complicated. I would also imagine that the nature and outcome of those experiences differed greatly according to gender.
I'd go further and suggest that there is statistically likely to be a fairly large percentage of dwellars who have experienced situations where lines of consent were blurred or complicated. And again, I imagine those experiences differ according to gender.
Chances are, if studies over the last quarter of a century are in any way indicative of real patterns of behaviour, that the percentage of women who have experienced such situations is likely to be much higher than the percentage of men: such studies suggest that men who rape usually start very young (teens) and repeat the offence. In particular young men who admitted in surveys to getting a girl drunk to the point of insensibility, or spiking her drink, with a view to having sex with her while she was unable to rebuff them (a depressingly high percentage amongst college students as I recall - that number drops drastrically as soon as the word 'rape' is used - suggesting again that they do not consider it to be rape) also often said that they have done this multiple times and would use the strategy again. Likewise, men convicted of rape and serious sexual assault are often shown to have raped or assaulted multiple times before conviction. The percentage of women who have experienced rape or sexual assault meanwhile is still very high.
The vast majority of men do not rape or sexually assault women. But - enough do to create a really serious problem. We have spent centuries telling women not to get raped. We're still doing it - look at the above comments by Chrissie Hynde. The police are often completely onboard with the notion that some girls are just asking for it - and that boys will be boys. How else did the police in Rocdale and Burnley come to the conclusion that 12 year old girls, groomed and serially raped by a network of middle-aged men, were willing prostitutes? Time and again, talking heads on tv and columnists in newspapers beat out the 'how not to get raped' drum. It's how we dress, it's how we do our hair, it's what streets we walk down and at what time, it's how we may give mixed messages, it's the invitation we somehow stamped on our tits before leaving the house. Ignoring, usually, the fact that the vast majority of rapes are not stranger rapes but committed by people we know. We can take every precaution in the world, but if your rapist is also your lover/husband/father/boss/neighbour/friend - then keeping a curfew and dressing in a burkha won't help us. Case in point: in countries where women cover up and are barely seen on the streets without a male chaperone women still get raped.
A group of lads at a party were faced with the prospect of a schoolfriend passed out from drink and instead of helping her they stripped her, fucked her - with objects in every orifice - filmed it on their mobiles and passed the video around their friends. (I'll try to find the news story but it's from a year or so ago). They didn;t consider what they had done to be rape - because rape is when you jump out of the bushes, knife in hand and force a girl tpo the ground. This wasn;t that - she was just drunk and they were drunk and leery. They used her like a blow-up doll. UIn thatmoment, that girl had no humanity in their eyes. That is scary. That they felt quite happy having that on their fucking phones - with no concept of it being evidence of a crime is scary.
For a few years - a very fucking few years - we've begun to have a conversation about consent. Not rape - consent. Because we have as a culture embraced for a very long time a fairly narrow definition of rape - up until fairly recently, for example, it was not considered possible, in law, for a husband to rape his wife. By marriage she had already given consent. There is still an air about rape that suggests that it isn't really rape unless it is forced sex by a stranger. The boys who passed that girl around like a doll and then happily passed the video of it with their friends have a different notion of what rape is. That is a conversation that needs to be had. It's not one we've been having for very long. Oh sure - we've always had societal and legal sanctions against rapists - and most people, male and female, consider someone who rapes to be beyond the pale - most men subscribe to the idea that rape is wrong. But if we don't know what rape is - if only that kind of rape is wrong, and this other thing that totally dehumanises and brutalises the victim is not rape then what do we do about that?
We teach our children not to bully. We teach them not to hit those who are weaker than them. We teach them all sorts of things about being a good human being. Why not this?
Chances are, if studies over the last quarter of a century are in any way indicative of real patterns of behaviour, that the percentage of women who have experienced such situations is likely to be much higher than the percentage of men
Did you miss my first entry in this thread?
Not sure if this is a good place to put this but...
A 2010 checkpoint: "To be made to penetrate" - Female on male forced sexual intercourse - was counted in the US for the first time as a catagory of rape... Within the confines of a study, not legislation, in which it is still not quite considered rape yet. But it's progress.
TL:DR men get raped as much as women do, by both men and women, they just don't know that it's rape, but still express the same post-traumatic symptoms (Although she annoyingly doesn't provide a citation to the last bit). If you examine it more closely, you'll notice that while males are slightly more likely to be the offenders, as with almost every other crime, the ratio of female to male offenders is actually more leveled then a lot of other crimes. Relatively to the world of criminal behavior, rape would be one of the least reasonable crimes to attribute to males only.
I would not be shocked if there are women here who have raped and have never stopped to consider it rape, and society gives them absolutely no reason to think otherwise, in fact it justifies their actions - since supposedly men always want sex. Which brings me to the next bit...
For a few years - a very fucking few years - we've begun to have a conversation about consent.
As of the 31st of august 2015, rape by women is still not legally considered rape. You are complaining that the legal definition of rape by males is too narrow, when the legal definition of rape by females is non existent and offers little to no legal protection at all.
If oranges are legal protection from non-consensual sex, you are complaining that your gender is at a special disadvantage and the victim of not having enough oranges and only getting some of their oranges pretty recently, when in fact your gender's basket has almost all of them while the other gender has a basket with only one orange (Sexual assault by other males), which is actually more recent.
Do you understand what a limited perspective that stance requires? "I don't have as many oranges as I could, this isn't fair", while you are virtually the only one who has them in the first place. This is the complete blind fold to male victims, and the perfect demonstration of how the school of thought views the well being of one gender is a lot more important then the other, leaving the equality of the dictionary definition as nothing but lip-service.
We teach our children not to bully. We teach them not to hit those who are weaker than them. We teach them all sorts of things about being a good human being. Why not this?
Again, this is far from the same thing as "teaching them not too rape":
An exceptionally traumatic experience people shouldn't inflict on other people.
But if you want to convey that as the entire meaning of the letter, then I call bullshit. That's like saying that me teaching my son to be honest with people is the same thing as carefully explaining to him how the poor goys grow up in a culture lacking financial scrutiny and it's our responsibility as Jews to make sure we do not accidentally scam anyone. <- One of those is clearly loaded with a lot more meaning then the other.
Do you really not see the difference?
If a woman has sex with a man without consent it is a serious sexual assault (by law).
That's more than women were offered within marriage for the span of years Dana was writing about.
That's more than women were offered within marriage for the span of years Dana was writing about.
...The same was true for either genders, a spouse of either genders not getting some was socially treated as a crime (though legal consequences varied - usually it was just grounds for divorce).
Treating this as a gender only issue only proves to demonstrate that while giving lip service to equality, at it's core feminism is an expression of gender-exclusive empathy and about placing the well being of one gender above the other. And it has won - this is what we do as a society - both men and women care more about women.
If a woman has sex with a man without consent it is a serious sexual assault (by law).
Depends actually - in practice it's almost never gets prosecuted, especially when you consider the study I linked and use it as as a measurement for how frequent rape by women actually is.
As of the 31st of august 2015, rape by women is still not legally considered rape. You are complaining that the legal definition of rape by males is too narrow, when the legal definition of rape by females is non existent and offers little to no legal protection at all.
Not so. I am complaining that our definition of rape is too narrow and that consent is an issue that needs to be discussed. I also, as it happens, think that the lack of recognition, in law and in society, of rape against male victims and rape by female perpetrators (as indeed with domestic abuse) is appalling and in urgent need of redress.
I must admit, those stats are new to me. I was always under the impression that number of male victims of rape and sexual assault were significantly lower than that of female victims - still far too many of them, and probably more than the figures would be able to reflect. I also was under the impression that male victims of rape were more likely to have been raped by male perpetrators.
I'd need to take a closer look at the article. I'm mildly suspicious - then again, I am mildly suspicious of the figures from the end of the extreme that make it seem like every other woman has been assaulted. This despite the fact that a majority of the women I know in my life have experienced sexual assault of some kind.
I'd need to take a closer look at the article. I'm mildly suspicious - then again, I am mildly suspicious of the figures from the end of the extreme that make it seem like every other woman has been assaulted. This despite the fact that a majority of the women I know in my life have experienced sexual assault of some kind.
It comes down to the same problem of determining whether the surveyed were honest and whether there was some selection bias.
There is a definite need for peer review, which we have for sexual assault by males on females and some by male on male but very little in female on male and none when it comes to female on female (And I know victims of this personally, so it's definitely there). Specifically peer review that uses the same definitions reliant on non-consent and asks about the acts themselves.
I also think we'd get better results and less of a selection bias if it was part of a larger study, perhaps including the questions in a survey about crime or heath or dating culture, and not with taglines like "National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey ".
That domestic violence in the UK is from a place where they define yelling as violence, if the yelled at complains :haha
I think you have the cellar confused with facebook.
This despite the fact that a majority of the women I know in my life have experienced sexual assault of some kind.
christ how dya think I feel? I felt a girl's tit from behind in 3rd form age 14 without her consent
and now it turns out i'm a rapistI know how you feel. brought flowers, took her to Stokesay Castle way up in Reading for a meal that was 70% of my paycheck, she ordered very expensive wine, got back to her place, played kissy face, got naked, and she passes out. WTF?
I didn't go to jail, although I may go to hell, but call me what you want, I ate it and I'm glad, hear me, glad.
Trapist? I ain't even Catholic.
Hey at least you remember most of it.
I unconsciously raped someone from which I remember about 2 seconds of me waking up to her riding me before I passed out again, but hey, she was pissed drunk too and I'm the dude, so... Thank you feminism.
Ok fuck it, I am opening this shit up.
On the surface, feminists can quote the dictionary definition and thus claims feminism is inherently against such things because they are unequal. In practice, it is CAUSING them.
Take this one:
Personally, I relate to this. i am a 6'4 foot man and was physically abused by my wife on a weekly basis because I refused to lay a finger on her. I did not get help, and I probably would have been arrested myself if I tried.
Whenever someone posts one of these kind of posters in public:
You see it, and so do little kids. About half of those kids are going to grow up to be men, raised with such a vilification of violence against women that they'll be psychologically locked from defending themselves if needs be, and a smaller portion of these kids will be cops, which is how you create this:
To be raised and brainwashed to not defend yourself even when getting beaten because its from a women, institutions staffed by people who think one problem is more important then the other, not to mention raising policy makers to create the ridicules situation which is the state of shelters. This is the position every single one these kind of campaigns are putting our boys in.
You can not defend only members of one group without enabling it to do the very thing it is defended from with no risk of retaliation. You can not make an issue gender-exclusive without enabling systematic gender-based exploitation. You are not merely "solving half the problem", You are creating more of it, in gross mutated form ...And feminism does this to fucking everything, including these very campaigns.
There are many things that say one thing but demonstrate the other. I.E:
"I am such a mess, sometimes I don't even use coasters while drinking" <- says your a mess, but demonstrates your a neat freak.
"I give so much to others and don't get enough in return" <- says your a giving person, demonstrates that you view it as trading.
"I am sorry, but.." <- No, no you aren't.
Feminism has evolved to be among those things.
You can not fight for gender equality while fighting to define it within a a framework that requires the complete and absolute discriminating against any perspective or experience outside that of your own gender.
Supposedly to prove a female surfers can be both accomplished and sexy.
But I wonder why the two can't stand on their own? Would she feel the need to climb a mountain, drive a race car, or parasail, in a little black dress?
[YOUTUBEWIDE]8OfWdE96uXw[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
Okay, so maybe she can do all that shit in a little black dress.
She didn't even try to walk across the sand in heels...:yelsick:
I don't know, in the right context heels could be pretty useful:
[YOUTUBEWIDE]nd1m5_n9P9w[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
:p:
Heels are good, is a stupid fantasy.
don't be jelly, we can have bouncy shock absorbers too:
As a gender checkpoint, do you see the glass 4% full or 96% empty ...
From: Catalyst. Women CEOs of the S&P 500. New York: Catalyst, April 3, 2015.
• Mary T. Barra, General Motors Co. (GM)
• Heather Bresch, Mylan Inc.

• Ursula M. Burns, Xerox Corp.

• Debra A. Cafaro, Ventas Inc.

• Susan M. Cameron, Reynolds American Inc.

• Safra A. Catz, Oracle Corp. (co-CEO)

• Lynn J. Good, Duke Energy Corp.
• Marillyn A. Hewson, Lockheed Martin Corp.

• Ellen Kullman, EI DuPont De Nemours & Co. (DuPont)
• Lauralee E. Martin, HCP Inc.
• Gracia C. Martore, Gannett Co. Inc.

• Marissa Mayer, Yahoo Inc.

• Sheri S. McCoy, Avon Products Inc.

• Carol Meyrowitz, TJX Companies, Inc.

• Beth E. Mooney, KeyCorp

• Denise M. Morrison, Campbell Soup Co.

• Indra K. Nooyi, PepsiCo, Inc.
(As of April 2014, I think these companies represent >50% of the US corporate $
But CEOs are like congress critters, all smiles and pretty for the corporate brochures/business magazines. But they're puppets, while the man behind the curtain has his fist up their ass. :crone:
But CEOs are like congress critters, all smiles and pretty for the corporate brochures/business magazines. But they're puppets, while the man behind the curtain has his fist up their ass. :crone:
Fisting, for the boardroom as well as the bedroom...
That sounds like something that could be a common dream for women to have, one of those that should have it's own chapters in psychoanalysis books for dream meanings. "Doctor, I keep dreaming someone puts their hand deep into my vagina and then controls me like a puppet". It probably means she needs to get the hell out of her current relationship.
That's dark, man. Even for you, that's dark lol.
Hey! What do you mean by "even for you" ?! :p:
That sounds like something that could be a common dream for women to have, one of those that should have it's own chapters in psychoanalysis books for dream meanings. "Doctor, I keep dreaming someone puts their hand deep into my vagina and then controls me like a puppet". It probably means she needs to get the hell out of her current relationship.
It's called a baby, and it controls her for the rest of her life.;)
Na, that only works for pokemon
Come the end of September, the following political ad will make sense being in this thread...
[YOUTUBE]WpgdsaH2v3s[/YOUTUBE]
What would you expect from A. Dick. :haha:
Helen B. Andelin? That's a man, baby. :eyebrow:
When your husband is harsh, respond with the power of femininity.
Gotcha.
Dalai Lama to BBC: female successor possible but only if she is attractive
BBC presenter Clive Myrie asked the Buddhist leader if his 15th reincarnation could be a woman. “Yes,” he responded. “One occasion in Paris, one woman’s magazine reporter come to see me, I think more than 15 years ago. She asks me, ‘Any possibility of a female Dalai Lama?”
“I mention, why not?” he recalled. “The female biologically [has] more potential to show affection and compassion.”
“And then, I told this reporter, the face must be very attractive. Otherwise, not much use,” he added chuckling.
Myrie had to laugh at that. “You’re joking, I’m assuming?” he asked.
“No, I meant it, true,” the Dalai Lama replied.
Innit weird how every single big religious figure is a product of their own culture. Take off their robes, and their standard of piety is judged according to their cultural notions. Women's role determined according to their culture. What is honorable, what is good, etc. You would think after thousands of world cultures that a truly religious being would be a vessel beyond all that bullshit. With an ethics we couldn't even understand at first, but that would shine a clear light to something beyond ourselves.
No, it appears to be standard douchebag.
I'm just saying.
It worked for this former porn star turned preacher:
[ATTACH]53481[/ATTACH][ATTACH]53480[/ATTACH]
Okay, now I know this is WAAAAAAAY out of date.
But someone I know posted a link to some sort of behind-the-scenes Beastie Boys video.
It was the '80s. I listened to them in the '80s.
Shoot, I listened to them in 1992, when I went on my l'il solitary roadtrip to Wales to celebrate my 30th birthday (This was BC - before Cellar.) But I also listened to Dolly Parton, Carter USM, The Pet Shop Boys and various musicals, as well as Radio One.
Anyway, I watched it, expecting to laugh.
Hahaha, Beastie Boys, with their attitude and everything. I didn't expect them to be Guardian (Huffington Post?) readers or bleeding heart liberals or sitting knitting or anything. I mean, I'd listened to their lyrics. At the time, and later. And I even sang along. In an ironic way, y'get me (no, not really).
But it really shocked me. Not just the way they treated the women (girls) who came backstage, but the way the girls were so desperate to be "cool" that they let themselves and the appearances which they'd surely contrived to be attractive to get backstage, be trashed by silly boys, with whipped cream, honey, whisky, whatever.
I'm not specifically making a point about their appearance, but that was what struck me as most ironic - that they would work on it all day (I never got hair that high - and I tried) and then just pretend it was fun when it was ruined.
It was acceptable in the '80s and all that.
I'm certainly not doing a Chrissie Hyndes.
I'm just saying what I started watching as a laugh, something that exists in my timeline, was really quite shocking to me.
I may have enjoyed Licensed to Ill, but I'd never have let them Boys into my house.
Cat in the Hat and all that.
It doesn't have to be a Beastie Boys or Stones, you'd be amazed what the groupies will endure for a nobody garage band. :facepalm:
Hahahahahahahahaha. Oh, and: hahahahahahaha
yeah, I liked that.
British women be sneaky, trained in them jiu-jitsus and shit, gettin so a guy can't cop a feel anymore. :o
Why should just boys be robbed of the lunch money, and piggybanks cracked, by the makers of action figures. Mattel feels girls should be abused equally. To that end, they hired women to design female superhero 12" dolls, and 6" action figures, from
Mattel's agreement with Warner Brothers' DC comics.
So is this a step up, or down, for girls?
Sideways. Maybe a little up.
The female characters should be released with the superhero lines, in the same release, and the same style. If you get a Justice League set, Wonder Woman shouldn't be the one who looks like an alien.
But it's a step up from just not releasing the female characters at all.
See, you're a guy and think the look of alien Wonder Woman is a bad thing. I agree with you, but I'm also a guy.
Women apparently designed these. The test is, do girls like the way they look?
That's not my issue; she would look like an alien
when standing with the rest of the Justice League members. Because the male characters are from a different set.
I don't like that they separate the lines in a way that if kids play with them together, the difference between the male and female characters is extremely highlighted. It can make her seem like she's not really part of the team.
Now, I'm not sure whether WB has been particularly bad on this front, but it is a
fairly common problem.
Yes, in the past the males all had cool unique weapons, but if there was female in the set, her weapon was apparently being nearly naked.
The tagline in the article is:
The result is less buxom and more athletic than the typical Wonder Woman.
In that context, this line is great as a special release. But if they continue having the porny versions of the characters, or skipping them altogether, in their other lines, then this is just a stunt.
I hate them.
I have never, not ever had calf muscles wider than my thigh muscles.
The proportions would have had me thrown out of art class. These things are mutants. They are not super-heroes they are monsters.
Then again, I only used to read DC Vertigo comics, so I never liked the caped crowd anyway. I guess they're aimed at the Bratz buyers. And at least these gals kick arse, rather than simply get their clothes changed.
We used to play Star Wars.
And when I say play, I mean we didn't have action figures (okay, the rich kids did, but they weren't allowed to bring them to school) we were live-action. And yes, I was cool enough to be allowed to play Return of the Jedi with the boys. Because I wasn't too nice to kick.
I hope I didn't mentally scar Trevor or Nathan for life. It's not my fault they were relegated to the role of Stormtroopers...
And my calves were still thinner than my thighs.
I agree with the monkey of cheer. One thing that struck me as well, is that, whilst male superheroes are generally depicted looking ready and psyched for battle - these dolls are all smiling cheerfully. I quite like the catwoman doll. And the girl that hangs out with the Joker (can't recall her name) looks suitably manic and like she'd probably do some serious damage with that mallet - the others look a little too demure and pretty.
Serious step up from no female figures, or female figures designed for the male gaze - but they totally need integrating into the main line.
Also... That's not a wonder woman smile. It completely misses her tone and character. This is a wonder woman smile:
I don't care if Wonder Woman has big boobies.
I have some. It happens occasionally and it's allowed.
I don't care if some of the female superheroes/ villains don't cover up completely. Not all the males do. So that's okay.
The thing I don't like is that all those dolls - and they really are dolls - look the same.
You don't make The Thing look like Superman, or Hellboy look like Peter Parker or Dream of the Endless look like Batman (I mixed DC and Marvel there, so sue me.)
So why make all the DC dolls look like Barbie dressing up for Halloween with unfeasibly thin legs?
I'd rather see a Wonder Woman with Serena William's physique in the old costume of bustier and hotpants than this covered up travesty. And no, I have nothing against slim/ skinny/ slight women. Was one myself for years.
I just don't like this cookie-cutter approach.
With a slant towards smaller = better.
Even though I know male characters have some bias towards bigger = better it does not apply across the board, see refs above.
Swamp Thing is not the most popular character, despite the fantastic work of Grant Morrison (yeah, okay, I do have some comic book chops.)
I'll shut up now.
You're right. It still seems a bit like their primary attribute is that they are female.
I remember having a really heated argument with some comicbook guys on some comments thread somewhere. There had been a story about, I think, the uber sexualised Wonder Woman cover art on some commemorative issue. The artist, as I recall, was best known for erotic fantasy art and there was some kickback from some sections of the fanbase (not just women, some men too) that this was a step in the wrong direction.
Cue some fairly angry voices on either side of an argument about whether or not DC and Marvel should be presenting female superheroes in a way that might appeal more to female fans, or whether they should stop buckling to SJW pressure.
I remember a few people (myself included) had made points about the different physicality of male and female super heroes - the way male super heroes tended to be portrayed as powerful and shown in fighting poses - whereas female super heroes, even when fighting tend to stick their arses invitingly out and 'camera'wards. And when standing ready for action, male superheroes look like they can impose themselves upon the enemy, where the female characters tend to adopt a more sultry pose. It's like, even in a fight to the death they are more concerned with presenting femininity than beating the shit out of their opponent.
There were a number of guys who objected to the idea of women being presented as strong fighters who can battle it out with their enemies, because it's not believable. Men are stronger than women - showing a woman beating up the male villain snapped them out of the fantasy because they didn't believe it. It jarred too much. They preferred female super heroes who used other means to subdue their enemy because they found thatmore believable.
Man flying through the sky and putting out erupting volcanoes with his breath? Groovy, sign me up. Man bitten by radioactive spider becomes spider man, scurrying up and down walls and squirting web? Awesome, I'm right there. Chick strong enough to fight a man? Just not realistic enough.
Is this going to be about how fictional characters depicted in idealized physical forms the vast majority of humanity could never live up too are harmful and objectifying when their gender happens to be female because their idealized form isn't equally objectified and judged on strength?
No - it's about what do we as readers want to fantasise about, and who are the comics aimed at? It's also about, despite my earlier comments, a degree of 'realism' or believability. It doesn't have to meet the real world's standards of logic and possibility, but it needs to have internal logic. If a female character uses their sexuality to seduce, I actually don't have a problem with that if it's in the right context. There is nothing wrong with the femme fatale trope - anymore than there is something wrong with the strong, silent male character trope. What I object to is that the female characters are expected to be female first, and heroes second. If they're fighting, with fists and weapons in a flurry of violent action and bodies flying about the place, then the sultry, arse-out, or knees together with hip crooked and one foot tipped poses don't fit the context.
It isn't really about women being objectified (except in the most abstract sense) - it's about almost all female characters being drawn and conceived primarily to appeal to a male audience, in such a way as to be off-putting or alienating for girls and women who also like super hero stuff. In a stable of super heroes, I don't see why some of the female heros can't be kickass heroes first, and females second.
The comic book depictions of men often emphasise certain aspects of idealised masculinity, in both character and form. But that idealised masculinity is in sync with notions of heroism - because they are about agency and action. The comic book depictions of women also emphasise aspects of idealised femininity, but they are at odds with notions of heroism because they are about seduction and pleasure.
Seduction and pleasure - works for the Black Widow and Cat Woman - really not necessary for Spider Woman.
One thing that struck me as well, is that, whilst male superheroes are generally depicted looking ready and psyched for battle - these dolls are all smiling cheerfully.
That's the look of, don't-need-a-grimace-or-scowl-ready-for-anything-I-can-handle-it, confidence. ;)
And class too.
There were a number of guys who objected to the idea of women being presented as strong fighters who can battle it out with their enemies, because it's not believable. Men are stronger than women - showing a woman beating up the male villain snapped them out of the fantasy because they didn't believe it. It jarred too much. They preferred female super heroes who used other means to subdue their enemy because they found thatmore believable.
Those guys show up on every IMDB board where a female character beats up a male, and bemoan their lost masculinity.
From now on all genders are equal: some are just more equal than others.
You're welcome.
Also... That's not a wonder woman smile. It completely misses her tone and character. This is a wonder woman smile:
Agreed.
Also, to add to my earlier point about the different idealised forms of masculinity and femininity and going back to the question of who the audience might be - whilst both male and female characters are presented in an idealised and unobtainable form, that does not make them the same. The idealised masculine form presented in the comics is not aimed at female readers for their delcetation (objectification) it is presented for consumption by other men for whom that fantasy of an other self is enjoyable. The women are also presented in an idealised form, but like the male characters, they are also usually designed to appeal to a male fantasy of women, rather than a female fantasy of self. Hence attributes of physical strength and power tend to be undercut with poses of seduction (arse stuck out and towards the reader, glamour model style) or coquettishness (hip tipped out, one leg straight and the other crooked in with foot tilted inwards).
Things have changed and are changing - mainly because of the way female heroes are now depicted on screen. It is now possible to show a thoroughly kick-ass female character and it fit the world she's in and the idea that she is a force to be reckoned with. Characters like Shaw on Person of Interest (not a super hero - but the show is basically caped crusaders template withoutthe capes) and Starbuck on BSG are characters I'd have sold my soul to see as a young girl.
I remember when the Tank Girl film came out. She was one of the first really, properly awesome female characters I'd ever come across. To have some kind of visual reference for female strength and badassery? Frikkin amazing.
And she was way more overtly sexual than most female comic characters.
Hmmm....
Care to add flesh to that 'hmmm'?
Also, it's worth considering that some of the movement towards better depictions of female heroes fighting is down to a different approach to fighting more generally on the screen. I love the way screen fighting has changed in recent years - but that's a conversation for a different thread:P
Second from left, hand-shandy Sasha.
Whip me, thrill me, make me clean the bathroom. :whip:
Care to add flesh to that 'hmmm'?
Also, it's worth considering that some of the movement towards better depictions of female heroes fighting is down to a different approach to fighting more generally on the screen. I love the way screen fighting has changed in recent years - but that's a conversation for a different thread:P
Like what? I looked up Mattel, they have several lines of toys who all have the exact same body type. This is a re-branding done by a woman for girls as action figures, of toys that were already designed for girls as the main target audience.
You could try to argue that the problem is deeper in that these are depicting characters that are designed for the male audience in the first place, and I'll point out that we both just complained that they don't do a very good job depicting those characters in the first place, and that they would look more heroic and strong if they did.
You could argue that the problem is that the executives and marketing and creative teams think this is what the female target audiance wants, and I'll use the starbucks action figure to point out that girls do have a choice of buying more athletic and stronger looking female character action figures, because this is the 2010s and the long tail is rule of law, and yet these aren't very successful or popular among girls, and in fact - judging by the response above - that is actually the one that appeals more to guys.
At that point you usually leave the argument and I try to go a bit meta - perhaps in this case make a point that this is to some extent generational difference, that you would have killed for a Starbucks but I never had a childhood in a world that didn't have Starbucks equivalents, which never actually gets any response not just from you but from nearly anyone - they are structured in a way that don't include clear talking points to jump board from, and I've more . Then I will try to break the silence with a mildly relevant joke or funny link. Probably this one:
[YOUTUBE]4Mw1ARQc7vw[/YOUTUBE]
Instead, you said you would have killed for a Starbucks character when you were a child. So there - get your inner child a Starbucks action figure.
Second from left, hand-shandy Sasha.
Sorry, Sasha is
the company that makes them.
The person it is a figure of is Katee Sackhoff playing a badass space fighter pilot - Lieutenant Starbucks:
[YOUTUBE]a0oErSGxvWQ[/YOUTUBE]
Like what?
Seriously, trace, I just wanted to know what the 'hmmm' indicated - I wasn't being snarky.
And that's why we can't have gender equality, because some women are too snarky and ruin it for the rest of them.
Seriously, trace, I just wanted to know what the 'hmmm' indicated - I wasn't being snarky.
I didn't think you were, I figured you were on your toes an thinking I might be snarky. Which is not a horrible idea - I am on my toes wondering if the back of my head is going to be snarky at me too.
Honestly I wrote and deleted a few before not being sure which direction to go with - they all felt like they'd lead to dead ends convo cut offs, I was partially hoping you'd jump to a conclusion on what I meant and I was going to see where that went, but lacking that, a BSG starbucks action figure for your inner child seemed like a better dead end then the others.
There was this article "the art of conversation" of an interviewer who had years of talking to philosophers and artists and politicians and whatnot, can't remember his name, though I think he was british.
But I remember he had this really edifying view of it, you know the sort of format that brings something from just under the view into light, like a concept that is on the tip of your tongue but never ad a word getting verbalized into something you can work with and build upon?
His was like that, that there is a dynamic and an art to it, a game in which people take turns to make the rules as they as they go along, building a language within it...
And you see this all the time, in every conversation - imagine any conversation you ever heard, and now imagine hearing it for the first time without knowing who it is from. Think how many questions come to mind - What are the rules of the game? Are fallacies going to be the hammers? Are feelings and authenticity the legitimizing force? What is shared and assumed so easily it's never said? What is referenced outside as a show of common language - tropes or memes or bible verses or philosopher quotes or norse myths or tom and jerry episodes? Where is there friction? In the branches? in the basic foundations? in the direction they approach the shared foundation with? Where do the perspectives struggle to hear each other? What is it they each think they know the other doesn't? All of these are rules that unfold as it goes along, creating a fantastic and very unique game - and it can happen with anyone: From family where the dialogue might have rules so solidified and established they are part of you, to a stranger in the bus where a complete spontaneous game erupts. Remember in mofo? There used to be conversations that went on weeks, months, in a few cases years.
but dead ends... it might be civil, it might be agree to disagree and all that jazz and not letting conflicting opinions about one thing stop from making a doctor who joke later that day....
Listen to twaceur Dani, he knows what's best.
Those guys show up on every IMDB board where a female character beats up a male, and bemoan their lost masculinity.
Gotham had a girl win a martial arts contest in a police academy.
Good for her (
fixed link here), but it happened months ago, and not much came of it, so it looks like the author's fears were realized.
So... Do you largely agree with it? what do you think of it's point of view and interpretation?
I agree with her, and it's a pity she didn't get more support, but I can safely say that from outside the world of international diplomacy, where speaking precisely is more valued than speaking plainly.
OMG, the fourth annual "Race of Gentlemen"
invaded by women... and had fun. :D
An experiment for guys:
Go with another guy to a largely female or at least a mixed gendered social environment. Initially make sure you integrate into the conversation with them and that you two are generally welcomed.
Then when there's a pause, and quickly "check your messages" while starting a stopwatch app on your phone and then putting it back in your pocket. Ask the guy about a recent date he had and how it went.
Don't ask him about her looks. As he goes, ask for additional details about her behavior, her actions, and what she does in life, and continuously judging her about those with the assumption that your friend is looking for a long term partner, pick them apart and extrapolate out loud - what they means about her, about how well/badly she'd treat him, how happy she'd make him, and even what it would mean for your future household or what kind of a parent she'd be.
When the last women leaves the table in discomfort or disgust, stop the timer, and check the results. For a control - do the exact while focusing instead more on how she looks, how far she went and generally stay in line with basic dude questioning.
p.s.
IME the experiment takes 3-17 minutes. As far as the control, your battery will most likely die before you get to stop the stopwatch. A good few of them will feel quite comfortable joining in.
An experiment for guys:
See how long your weird attempt to mimic female behaviour takes to p*ss off everyone around you.
Probably not long.
Huh. That is actually more of a loaded statement then the BS I read that weekend I spent investigating the MGTOW movement, surprisingly loaded with much of the same notions though.
But no - thinking about it as female behavior without questioning why is being obtuse. The experiment's purpose is a two fold:
1. Guys come out of it realizing it actually makes sense to do so - judge women for who they are as people includes judging them for how they'd treat the guys as people - and questioning why they normally don't do it.
2. In the same time, it demonstrates that women aren't used to being judged by guys as... Well, people, judged for their potential agency. For the most part the desire for that is a bad cliche of it's greener on the other side of the fence fantasy that breaks down the moment it is put to the test - judging who you are as a human being is a lot more intimate level of judgement then simply judging your intimates.
... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.
... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.
Again? Already? I have to admit the last session was pretty satisfying.. Ok we can go again but give me a few minutes to get in the mood.
Ok, I am ready babe
... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.
Oh I am remarkably shallow - for instance if your posts are written with the assumption that other people will gaze into a vision of your knowing eyes and see the marvelous levels of depth that exists behind your artistically minimal output - such layers of depth into you are well beyond my reach.
All I see is someone whose entire expression and content generation comes down to a series of like/dislike about what other people say, like a facebook bot squirming out of water trying to adapt to doing it's thing without an available button.
But maybe I am wrong about you. Luckily for you, my shallow impressions are also quite fragile, paper thin constructs made to break apart by the first sign that they are wrong. In this case it's pretty simple - just say something. Not merely whether you agree or disagree with something someone else said, but a full thought of your own, a reasoning or argument of some sort, an idea or analysis, anything - I don't care whether it agrees with me or not, just something with any amount of meat to it. Even assholes can produce something - I am pretty sure that is not a title that should require grand delusions to be good enough for.
It shouldn't be that hard for someone of your depth - to disprove someone so shallow as to think that if your always on a wheelchair you probably can't stand on your own two feet very well - it's pretty simple - if you can walk walk, get off your ass and prove them wrong.
Maybe I misunderstood your post Trace, but it did seem to be lumping women together as some kind of homogenous whole, entirely separated from the male of the species, who are invited to test and analyse 'women' in that scenario.
Yeh, thanks for that... I read some of it. whatever.
Maybe I misunderstood your post Trace, but it did seem to be lumping women together as some kind of homogenous whole, entirely separated from the male of the species, who are invited to test and analyse 'women' in that scenario.
I can sort of see how there might be a notion that experiments/tests are something you do on other species, but I am not convinced that was ever the case... my preferred reading for awhile has been psychology where almost all studies are on groups of people, so I guess I don't quite have that association.
I wonder if you would have had the same association with an alternative response to the square/model poster - quoting a study where hetrosexual women and men where given images of the opposite gender and while different men gave more or less the same rating to women, women gave vastly different ratings to the various men (and then ranting on the implication). Would that have the same implication of treating genders as different species simply because it was accounted for and lumping them up together into statistics? Is the act of examining generalized differences an immediate taboo that must not be looked upon for the wraith of the amazon goddess will smite us all?
I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.
Personally I have no doubt that if this was conducted on a large enough population there would be exceptions and it wouldn't be a 100%, and yet I have very little inclination to throw the baby out of the bathwater, or to deny it on the basis of ideological reasoning.
I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.
So you're conducting your own little psyche experiments, on unwitting groups of people in a social setting, with no set parameters or control and think you've cracked the code of female behaviour.
I wonder if you would have had the same association with an alternative response to the square/model poster - quoting a study where hetrosexual women and men where given images of the opposite gender and while different men gave more or less the same rating to women, women gave vastly different ratings to the various men (and then ranting on the implication).
And therein lies the difference. In fact, I'd be very interested in reading that study and finding out more about the methodology employed - I find that kind of thing very interesting. I'd also be interested in (and have read many) studies about the psychology of attraction, group dynamics and social hierarchies.
What I don't find interesting, is men treating the women they encounter in their everyday life as labrats or specimens. It is grotesquely dishonest and manipulative to use someone in that fashion. It reminds me very strongly of the attitude many pick-up artists / wingmen exhibit when they talk about women and the various social understandings and interactive tools and strategies to employ when engaging with them.
I'd find it just as revolting if one of the dwellar women suggested all us gals should perform ad hoc psychological experiments on the men in our lives.
So you're conducting your own little psyche experiments, on unwitting groups of people in a social setting, with no set parameters or control
You are getting pissy about a post that presents the parameters as well as the control - are you particularly bothered that they were unwitting, s every single person who's entered the visual perception of every other single person in the world? And if it was just day to day pattern recognition without awareness would it have been better? Unless you take a moral stance against the working of human minds in general, then by the process of elimination your disgust comes down to a disgust at awareness - doing what our minds naturally do consciously and knowingly.
And disgust at awareness is problematic... Willful ignorance really has made me puke in the past. Our previous instances of friction surround your offense at my criticism about applying designated walls of ignorance too. And we were friends from before I really understood it as a tool and it's ramifications well enough to have any problem with it... I suppose it makes sense I wouldn't have noticed that. Yay for value differences - always fun.
Hey trace, in case you're curious, it's not the so-called "experimental" nature that's irritating people. It's this kind of bullshit:
When the last women leaves the table in discomfort or disgust, stop the timer, and check the results.
...
As far as the control, your battery will most likely die before you get to stop the stopwatch. A good few of them will feel quite comfortable joining in.
You have (sexist, and revealing more than a little anger) assumptions and expectations about how it will go. When pushed on these, you first claim it's to teach the guys a lesson (typical sophomoric urge, by the way, to need to educate the world on why they're not as sophisticated as you are) and then retreat further, into the assertion that it's somehow scientific and therefore innocent and unassailable.
:) There ya go buddy. You're welcome.
You have (sexist, and revealing more than a little anger) assumptions and expectations about how it will go.
I have 'assumptions' on how it
went:
I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.
One of my two gender-based assumption is generally that for the most part it would continue to repeat itself along gender lines the same way it has so far, while hopefully producing some exceptions along the way. I could be wrong, and would actually like to be wrong.
The other - and the one I view as the cause - is that most men don't naturally judge women on their internal merits, which is why I don't think women are used to being judged by men on their internal merits. Note that the ones who responded by calling it "behaving like women" were sundae and Dana. I stumbled on it by doing it myself the first time around, and I am pretty sure it's not a cause for me to change my gender identity.
As far as been preachy to other guys... Absolutely. Do you disagree that guys should judge women on their internal merit? Who she is as a person? I don't know about you, but when women speak about their relationships, current, past or future, I constantly hear "him treating her right" as a ruler to measure it up by, whether it's herself or her friends. Which is a fantastic thing - one I learned to adopt myself (alongside handbags - seriously pockets are horribly limited). What I never heard is the equivalent said to me as a guy, and have never heard it said to other guys, ever. It may seem obvious, but it surprisingly not. Even guys who do judge women on internal merits more instinctively - including myself - will do so more on the basis of what impresses them, not how good of a human being they are in treating others. So much so that the idea of doing it myself seemed out right alien until it became a solution to a problem. That is worth getting angry over - I don't think that making sure your potential partner is a decent person and looking out for your own emotional well being in thinking how they would treat you should be "behaving like women".
When did I say anything about behaving like a woman?
I don't remember that.
Trace - I get that you are just interested in psychology. But the assumptions that clod points out are reductive in the extreme. That you can sit in a handful of group situations and try this experiment out and then extrapolate that out to predict how 'women' will respond, or indeed how 'men' will respond in general is ludicrous. That you conduct these experiments on people you're socialising with is frankly creepy.
Are these your friends?
You're just that guy who judges women no matter what. A strong woman? She must be a ball- breaker. A subservient woman? She deserves bad treatment and a whole bunch of your personal drama.
Either way or any way between seems like a losing situation for your judgment.
When the last women leaves the table in discomfort or disgust, stop the timer, and check the results. For a control - do the exact while focusing instead more on how she looks, how far she went and generally stay in line with basic dude questioning.
1. You are deliberately attempting to make other guests at this social function feel discomfort and disgust - literally timing how long it takes to drive those people away from the conversation.
2. You have set out to have a staged conversation on the pretense of innocent socialising when in fact you have a hidden agenda
3. You have made a massive assumption about how
all men view and discuss their dates with women, based solely on your own personal experience. You do not have enough personal exerience to extrapolate that to all men.
4. You have made a massive assumption about how
all women respond to and view men's conversation about women. You do not have enough personal exerience to extrapolate that to all women.
It is a cold way to treat friends and acquaintances.
It is a fundamentally flawed methodology for any kind of test.
It is a test that is wide open to confirmation bias
It is a test that relies on you 'reading' why those people have left - was it really the content of the questioning that made them leave, or was there something in your tone that was off-putting. Maybe the dishonesty inherent in such ulterior motives made you seem cold or strange, or pushy during the conversation. You have no idea and neither do I - because there was no control. Flipping the questions to looks does not control for changes in your own demeanour - you are not a mere observer in the test, you are a participant in the group and your participation changes the dynamics of that group and must therefore affect the results of the test, one way or another.
It is a test that relies on a wholly reductive view of gender.
Couching it in terms of wanting men to judge women on their behaviour and personality instead of looks does not remove the insidious layer of judgement you apply to women.
Maybe there's a communication breakdown here, trace, but your view of women does not seem very nice to me. Nor indeed does your view of men.
To throw one entirely unscientific personal experience out there to counter your entirely unscientific personal experience:
I was once a member of an online guild who believed I was a man. It was in the days before Teamtalk and other such things - all communication was text based - in game, in ICQ and mIRC. I became very good friends with several of the guild - to the point I eventually trusted them enough to 'come out' as female.
Back when they thought I was a guy I had the experience of talking with a group of men who thought there were no women present. Know what I discovered? The conversations were not different to the conversations I have with my girlfriends. One of them, the guild leader, was recovering from a nasty divorce and was now a single parent to his little girl. He was back on the dating scene - he would tell us about the women he'd dated - and you know what was of most concern to him? What she was like as a person. Did he tell us how awesome she looked? Sure. Did he tell us about her gorgeous smile, and beautiful hair? Yes. He was surprinsgly circumspect about what they'd done in the sack. There were odd comments about tits and ass. But the bulk of what he talked about was what she was like as a person - whether she was someone he could spend time with and whose company he enjoyed, and whether or not she'd get along with his girl. Oh yeah, and whether she believed in God. I remember that being a deal breaker with one woman. Rog was a believer - though not a bible-basher.
I've never forgotten that experience of being in a group of guys who didn;t know there was a woman there. I didn't keep my gender secret to test them or observe. It was the late '90s and being a woman in an mmorpg brought a lot of unwelcome bullshit from the mostly male players. To be accepted fully, I had a male character and initially stayed wholly in character throughout. As ad-hoc groups became guilds, then friends, I didn't want that acceptance to evaporate so i stayed male even when not in character.
I eventually came out and stayed friends with those people. The dynamic changed - and there was a tonal shift in how those men related tome now that I was known female.
It stayed with me though. Because it surprised me and confounded a lot of my expectations. The biggest lesson i took from it was that really, friends talk with friends in very similar ways whether they are male or female. The differences come in when the group is mixed. Maybe when groups are mixed, men act like men and women act like women - without the other gender there we are free to simply act as people.
I don't know. It's complicated. People are complicated. Taking a stopwatch to a social function and trying to deliberately freak out female guests with staged conversation does not give you a superior insight into people.
Couldn't you least have the good humor to include:
"tl-dr: How dare you would say that women would react by feeling the act of judging women for who they are as people is insidious and revolting, I feel your judgement is insidious and revolting!".
Look, if you want to dismiss it as anecdotal evidence at best, that I can understand. The control for myself was actually checked - this is not the first time I asked anyone else to do it and I did get feedback last time, but the truth is that while I did get feedback on people recreating the experiment itself I never got anyone to recreate the control or understand why it's needed - so the control for the type of questions asked was checked on a rather limited basis.
This is quite a higher level of scrutiny then I ever seen you use towards your own notions or even notions from others that you are more comfortable with, so the reason for why you are explaining the dismissal of them aren't genuine, but to a limited extent they are still somewhat applicable.
If you take issue with the generalization about how "all guys" pass judgement, I'll point you again to the fact the only people so far who have made that generalization in characterizing it as "behaving like women" were you and sundae - this started with me making an internal judgement with a friend and we are both guys, so it doesn't actually make much sense to think I am saying that not doing so characterizes "all guys".
Your issue with dishonesty and ulterior agenda's is being very dishonest with not just me and everyone else but with yourself considering the clear leeway you give your own dishonesty when the agenda for it were your own, but the message of lowering my expectations is well received.
As far as your friend, that resonates with my own experience as well, but that for me is the problem - the fact it took a divorce to get me to the point of having to face the need for judging them on whether they are decent human beings in the first place. The very fact that it was "an innovation" in how to treat or think of women and that it was not viewed or even accepted as part of the norm for guys to do (As you are demonstrating right now).
You're just that guy who judges women no matter what. A strong woman? She must be a ball- breaker. A subservient woman? She deserves bad treatment and a whole bunch of your personal drama.
Either way or any way between seems like a losing situation for your judgment.
I don't think I ever used the term "ball breaker" in my life, or said that someone deserved bad treatment on the basis of being subservient, so I am guessing you are dressing me up with notions of guys that you know.
As far as your main statement, the answer is no: It can be won and has been won
edit: I actually I don't think I heard the second part said by anyone about anyone in my life, and my bullshit sensor is blipping bright red on that one. "They are subservient and thus deserves my personal drama" is generally not the sort of thoughts human beings are inclined to have, for several reasons, the most critical one is that people generally view their own motivations issues and point of view as legitimate and don't lump it up as their own "personal drama" to be used as a weapon to punish those who "deserve it". I am clearly missing a story there, but my gut instinct is that to think that someone would think this way about their own actions in the first place sounds like an incredible mis-characterization that's 99% the unlikely dressing of a villainous character archetype in the sort of stories we tell ourselves and 1% inspired by a real human being.
That you can sit in a handful of group situations and try this experiment out and then extrapolate that out to predict how 'women' will respond, or indeed how 'men' will respond in general is ludicrous.
To prove you can't extrapolate, try that at a posh party, then try that at ghetto bar in Philly. I guarantee the results won't be the same, and I'd bet a shitload of money, at one of them you'd get cut or worse. I'll let you guess which one. This is exactly why nothing can be applied to women in general, one of the most complicated organisms in the universe. :rolleyes:
Couldn't you least have the good humor to include:
"tl-dr: How dare you would say that women would react by feeling the act of judging women for who they are as people is insidious and revolting, I feel your judgement is insidious and revolting!".
Look, if you want to dismiss it as anecdotal evidence at best, that I can understand. The control for myself was actually checked - this is not the first time I asked anyone else to do it and I did get feedback last time, but the truth is that while I did get feedback on people recreating the experiment itself I never got anyone to recreate the control or understand why it's needed - so the control for the type of questions asked was checked on a rather limited basis.
This is quite a higher level of scrutiny then I ever seen you use towards your own notions or even notions from others that you are more comfortable with, so the reason for why you are explaining the dismissal of them aren't genuine, but to a limited extent they are still somewhat applicable.
If you take issue with the generalization about how "all guys" pass judgement, I'll point you again to the fact the only people so far who have made that generalization in characterizing it as "behaving like women" were you and sundae - this started with me making an internal judgement with a friend and we are both guys, so it doesn't actually make much sense to think I am saying that not doing so characterizes "all guys".
Your issue with dishonesty and ulterior agenda's is being very dishonest with not just me and everyone else but with yourself considering the clear leeway you give your own dishonesty when the agenda for it were your own, but the message of lowering my expectations is well received.
Right, I am now thoroughly confused.
Firstly, the tl;dr - makes no sense. My point had nothing to do with the content of your findings. I have no idea whether 'women' would find that particular set of circumstances uncomfortable. Secondly - I haven't set my observations out as some kind of psych test. I feel no need to apply a scientific method. It's just stray observations of the people I have met over the years and the interactions we've had. You are the one taking stopwatches to dinner parties to see how long it will take to drive your test subjects from the table.
As far as your friend, that resonates with my own experience as well, but that for me is the problem - the fact it took a divorce to get me to the point of having to face the need for judging them on whether they are decent human beings in the first place. The very fact that it was "an innovation" in how to treat or think of women and that it was not viewed or even accepted as part of the norm for guys to do (As you are demonstrating right now
I really don't understand how I am demonstrating this. And I think the fact it took a divorce for you to start judging women as human beings is kind of scary.
So you're conducting your own little psyche experiments, on unwitting groups of people in a social setting, with no set parameters or control and think you've cracked the code of female behaviour.
I suspect that the women leaving in disgust could just as easily indicate that they were not unwitting, and were instead opting out of participating.
Right, I am now thoroughly confused.
Firstly, the tl;dr - makes no sense. My point had nothing to do with the content of your findings.
Much like screaming and shouting "I don't scream and shout", It doesn't make the point you think it does.
I really don't understand how I am demonstrating this.
Stopping to read what you are actually writing is rarely a bad idea.
See how long your weird attempt to mimic female behaviour takes to p*ss off everyone around you.
Hehehehehehe. Well said.
And I think the fact it took a divorce for you to start judging women as human beings is kind of scary.
It is - not for the reason your fucked up and distorted context loosing paraphrasing suggests, but it still definitely is on it's own right, and scarier is the fact that it's a
completely normal and accepted psychological phenomena, for both men and women.
I was agreeing with Sundae's assessment that you would piss everyone off by conducting psyche experiments on them.
Much like screaming and shouting "I don't scream and shout", It doesn't make the point you think it does.
ok. But you seem to be arguing with a point I never made. I have no opinion on whether there is any validity in the point you were making about female behaviour and responses - I don;t in fact understand what it is you're testing them for - it was quite a confusing explanation.
I am responding more broadly to the idea that you and the other male friends you've encouraged to do this, are conducting ad-hoc pysche experiments on fellow guests in social situations and then extrapolating that out to female and male behaviour more generally.
But hey: if you want to treat the women in your life as test subjects then go right ahead. i'm sure it will work out well for you.
I've addressed that in the first round - Taking you for your word for what you are arguing for and assuming everything else it happened to expressed was coicndeintal (in the same spirit that giving old men who says "don't have no problem with negro's" the benefit of the doubt would require), even then it comes down to an ideological stance against verifying enecodtal experiences based on some false dicthonomy between "people" and "test subjects" that results in a sense that it's dehumanizing to consciously try and see how people reacts in various situations, even though you readily admit that you yourself do so subconsciously and that's completely fine...
It's like the sort of people who think buying coffee by outright avoiding the thought that it's probably made of beans grown on farm lands stolen from native villages by bribing government officals and then making them work in horrible conditions is somehow ethically superior to doing the exact same thing consciously. It comes down to a high horse in deliberately avoiding awareness. As I said - it's a radically opposite value system to my own, by which willful ignorance is kind of the most disgusting thing people can do.
Wow. Seriously, you have rendered me speechless. I have no response to that.
That's OK, best to keep the mouth closed when the bullshit gets this deep. :eyebrow:
Ahuh. I feel like we slipped down the k-hole at some point during this discussion.
Not to worry Dani, I'm sure it's nothing personal and all just part of some experiment. :p:
The secret of trolling is keep the subject changing, often by claiming they're just rephrasing for clarity, or that the new statement is directly related, only slightly tangential, when in fact it's a U-turn or at least a ninety, and sometimes in a parallel universe. That keeps the trollee always on the defensive, responding, defending, unable to question or make a point. Didn't you learn that from tw?
You'd think I would have, right?
Mind you, learning from past mistakes is not a skill I've ever been accused of ;p
You guys really are assholes, but the way you are assholes is kind of interesting - Most other places I've been too are a lot more likely to explore and delve into such questions - hell even in the forum I met dana in back in the day was a lot more likely to go deeper on most issues - so you'd think such differences would come out more often, but this is actually the first place that outright reacts to so much of what I say like I am speaking alien this unanimously.
... And you actually get exposed to a lot less of it as well -This isn't key hole peeping content, it's more like the left side of my forehead tattoo.
It's not the issues, the issues are fine, it's you: the left side of your foreskin tattoo (bet it's a cross) is boring. Try a little less dicking around.
traceur: When I act like an asshole, people leave in disgust.
"You guys": That's unsurprising.
traceur: You're all assholes!
Yep.
Testing people and/or judging women as human beings is being an asshole, and expression utter disgust at doing something consciously is nothing but the lack of surprise.
...I think it's just about time for the ITAK clause.
It's well past time for the ITAK clause, it's time for Coventry.
From Cellar FAQ:
It takes all kinds. There may people here that you don't like. There may be people here who don't like you. Such is life, and it's not the end of the world. Now, if you don't like most people here, you should find another forum. And also, if most people here don't like you, you should find another forum.
[BOLD MINE]
He's fond of acronyms. Makes him feel superior to make others ask what they mean so he has to explain it to them. He's threatening to take his ball and go home. He preys on unattached women he believes are desperate for the attention he gives them: so desperate that they can't do without him and will rally around him and appease his egocentric needy ways if he threatens to leave.
Failing that, it gives him an out before he is banned. A Peace With Honor ploy like Nixon's where he comes off as the bigger person...at least in his own mind. He doesn't have the integrity to just do it. He has to announce it (this is the second time) and make the aforementioned play first.
It's all about manipulation. Some, like JBKlyde, get into religion for what it can do for their agenda. This one gets into psychology for the same reason. Think of this one as a cross between JBKlyde and tw. It fools a lot of the people a lot of the time, especially those who are predisposed to identifying with others who appear to have deep convictions (even if those convictions aren't altruistic).
I don't think he's a Klyde. I think that is overstating things a little. Trace has been fascinated with psychology for as long as I have known him. I think he's probably genuinely surprised by the reaction to his stopwatch suggestion.
*shrugs*
Sometimes there isn't a middle ground to meet on.
... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.
... and thank you to the cellar ladies for caring enough to enter.
I saw the troll and FOR ONCE decided to walk away. Old dog-new trick and all.
Wiki description for a 1958 movie;
The story of I Married a Monster from Outer Space revolves around a young wife realizing her new husband has become strangely transformed shortly after their honeymoon. He has seemingly lost all affection for her and for his pet dogs, even his earlier habits have now completely vanished. Thereafter, she quickly discovers that he is not the only man in town that has changed into a completely different person.
It should have been a great success, tapping into the feelings of many wives. :lol2:
Sometimes there isn't a middle ground to meet on.
The only time there is no middle ground is when both sides refuse to admit it exists.
Now...Back to the show.
:corn:
Even if the theory "there's always middle ground" is true, it only takes one side to refuse to admit it exists.
Unless you're saying that the "middle ground" in that situation is the other side doing everything that the refuser demands.
Well, it's a slippery slope...
OMG Grav. Just stop talking about my snatch.
A new study, behind a paywall except this synopsis.
Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers
Ghazala Azmat London School of Economics
Rosa Ferrer Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences; Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (Barcelona GSE)
October 2015 CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10867
Abstract:
This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures that are widely used and comparable across firms: the number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated. We find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both measures. Male lawyers bill ten percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue than do female lawyers. We demonstrate that the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance. We also show that accounting for performance has important consequences for gender gaps in lawyers’ earnings and subsequent promotion. Whereas individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the earnings gap, the inclusion of performance measures explains a substantial share of the remainder. Performance measures also explain a sizeable share of the gender gap in promotion.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 59
Keywords: gender gaps, high-skilled professionals, performance measures
JEL Classification: J16, J44, K40, M52
Sorry to hear this. Their reasoning about family and goals seems sound, but in law, I wonder how much influence the old boy network holds sway?
Even if the theory "there's always middle ground" is true, it only takes one side to refuse to admit it exists.
Unless you're saying that the "middle ground" in that situation is the other side doing everything that the refuser demands.
I hear this second half spoken in the voice of the Freedom Caucus of the House of Representatives.
Am I alone in this regard?
Dana, I don't think this thread has developed exactly the way you intended, but it's been interesting to say the least. :D
Hehe. No threads ever develop as intended. Unless the intention is to launch a thread and see where the wind blows it.
I've found it interesting, if mildly disturbing towards the end, but hey - I've had dates like that.
Disturbing? The descent and departure of he who must not be named, or some other trend? And not the end, the current pause, ain't no fat lady singin'. ;)
Yep.
Testing people and/or judging women as human beings is being an asshole...
... Yup you are/were. I think it's just about time for the GFY clause. :cool:
Texas 1928, reaching for the stars.
I don't think so, I don't see her on the ballot for the 1928 election.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham.
No, she didn't win, but she was the first woman from Texas to run for the Senate.
Thanks, HM, I didn't realize she was a big time mover/shaker.
We think of women in academia, attending, no less teaching, as fairly recent. But this shows a woman teaching geometry to boys who look very skeptical, way back in the 13th century.
Of course she must have memorized the lessons because women clearly can't understand math. :lol: Cue monster...:bolt:
She's an Irish lass just taking a break from sewing knots into the drapery.
.
[YOUTUBEWIDE]ulx70PzqAgA[/YOUTUBEWIDE]
The following is an excerpt from the July 1943 issue of Mass Transportation Magazine. This was written for male supervisors of women in the work force during World War II.
Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees:
There’s no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.
Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:
1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.
2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.
5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.
6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.
7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.
8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.
9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.
10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.
11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy.
Wow. 1943 isn't a terribly long time ago. Some of that stuff is really startling.
When I think about the men Grandad used to work with (and this came directly from his stories) shirking off, thieving, having altercations that could only be sorted by fisticuffs, drinking on the job... You'd think any company would welcome the chance to have some nice civilised ladies working for them for a change!
And yes, I am well aware that women can do all of the above.
I just mean that in 1943, with men in short supply, they should have taken what they could get!
In fairness, a lot of that notice seems aimed at making the working environment comfortable, encouraging and welcoming for the ladies.
In much the same way one might tailor the environment to make it more suited for children.
I know. It's just so patronising.
I shouldn't expect anything different from the time I suppose. But as you say, it was so recent. Dad was born by then, so it was only a generation ago.
The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that the women they were discussing were specifically women of the day. If you had been indoctrinated from birth that your appearance was your number one priority and responsibility, then yes, you would be uncomfortable, unhappy, distracted, and inefficient if you were thrust into an environment that ruined your appearance at every turn. If you had been taught subservience from day one, yes, you would not be good at taking the initiative. For heaven's sake, quite a few if not most of the women being considered for the position had been born in a time when women weren't allowed to vote. That speaks to the men of the day, yes, but it also speaks to the nature of the women such a system produces.
On the one hand, yeah, "women" were only like this at the time because of the culture in which they'd been raised, and there is nothing deterministically feminine about any of the stereotypes they were attempting to address. On the other hand, it was a reality that the vast majority of the women these men would be dealing with were, in fact, like this.
working-class women had pretty much always worked though. The stereotype was a stereotype - true for some, not true for some. Femininity, which included things like housekeeping (fucking hard work for most at the time) was like a swan on the water - it looked graceful and easy, because you couldn't see the legs working. That notice was written by someone who couldn't see the legs - it assumes a level of fragility that wouldn't have applied for a lot of women.
Deferrence to men and assumptions that men would generally know more and take a leadership role was pretty ingrained for most people though. As was a degree of dependence for women - the idea of the man as essentially the adult with an understanding of the world and a paternal authority and women as more childlike an so on. I think much of that would have been absorbed and accepted as natural. My comment about making the workplace welcoming in similar tones to making a place suited for children was not really about them patronising women, so much as it was an observation of how the tone of the advice demonstrates the way men and women were separated hierachically and culturally in similar ways to the separation between adults and children. The idea of women as sitting somewhere between children and adult males is a pretty old one.
Working class women? What is that? I always figured it was women living in the section of society where all the neighbors worked at mostly manual labor jobs, although some were more skilled than others. That included the wives/daughters of the men that had those jobs, but were students or housewives. Not the same as working women who may be part of the working class neighborhood.
When the big war push came, the working women still had jobs, although they may have changed jobs for new horizons, or more likely more money... if the government felt the job they wanted to leave wasn't on the essential list. The women moving into the jobs vacated by men going into the service, or created by big increases in production, were mostly fresh out of school or housewives. They had numerous motives for seeking jobs but they didn't have experience in a corporate environment, or skills.
Not only was production ramped up, but efficiency was aggressively pursued, not just to save money, but increase output. In that environment, training new people only to have them quit or get injured was a major obstacle for both goals. With those goals in mind, instead of just letting capitalism work as it always had, this list was created as a proactive attempt to tackle the reasons new hires washed out.
Yes, it seems clumsy. But like Clodfobble said, the men in management had the view of the times, and so did the women then. Little changed from the view of their parents and grandparents. The frailty and emotionality of women was accepted as a truth by both sexes... sometimes as a handicap sometimes as a weapon.
My brother and I were surprised to find out my mother smoked when she met my father, then immediately quit because he didn't. When questioned about it she replied, "Everybody did". Before TV and Internet, not being part of the social life in the neighborhood was not a happy prospect. There were no wife homemakers, no husband child carers, you were what was acceptable or be excluded. Any woman that tried to be a mechanic or machinist was looked at as peculiar, even if sometimes secretly envied.
Both my grandmothers were financially subservient to my grandfathers.
My Nanny - the one I knew and spent a lot of time with - was a very difficult woman (possible mental health issues) married to a very gentle man.
My other grandmother, who died when I was a baby, was married to a very difficult man who did not support her or the family. They stayed married, of course, but the amount of money he handed over for "housekeeping" barely fed them. And he then complained about the meals.
It is such a familiar story of the time - books and plays mention it all the time, whether it's a feature of the plot or just an incidental detail.
Great Aunt Alice stayed a spinster (awful word) to further her career and then look after her parents. She had to make a choice.
Mum handed over the family's finances to Dad, with pretty poor consequences. He was - and is - an impulse spender. Something I either learned or inherited. They are comfortable now, although Grandad's small inheritance and Auntie Alice's certainly helped. But it's more from Mum's pensions, which she did not tell Dad about, and felt she didn't need to as they were taken directly from her pay-packet.
So this is one and two generations ago. Women - strong women - still being financially dependent on men. Not sharing the costs.
Life has changed. Or should have changed. I grew up sharing the costs. I'm poor. I explain this at the outset of any evening out - I'm willing pay my way or I don't go. Men and women have been kind enough to pay for me, but I do not expect it or think it's rude if they don't.
The rich don't count. They've always had different rules.
And maybe the middle class did too.
But where I came from, no woman was seen as frail - unless she was actually ill.
She just had to hand her life over to her man. And if she worked all day and still came home and cooked and cleaned and blacked the stove, she'd better make sure she cleaned the steps, or her neighbours would stop by to find out why not.
FTR, all of the above is simply anecdotal and not really meant to be a rebuttal.
Y'all know I'm not really anti-male.
I'm just sharing.
...Great Aunt Alice stayed a spinster (awful word) to further her career
and then look after her parents. She had to make a choice....
My family has one of those on both sides of my family tree.
On each side, it was the the youngest girl.
And even as a kid it bothered me.
Why should the youngest girl be the one who did not leave home
to have her own family, or go to college, or have a career of some sort ?
Now, all my G-parents, aunts, and uncles have passed, except the one on my Dad's side,
and she is 91 living alone in the family home ... even her aged dog has passed.
And it still bothers me - what might have been ...
.
It is such a familiar story of the time - books and plays mention it all the time, whether it's a feature of the plot or just an incidental detail.
Showing up in books and plays is a pretty good indication is was common, or at least common enough, to lend reality to the story.
And it still bothers me - what might have been ...
Ours was
Aunt Dot, but I don't feel bad for her, she did it her way and a damn good job of it I think.
I think I've established a definitive gender checkpoint,
right here in the
Moms Hate Christmas: thread
...
As the wife/mother, you have to buy the presents for everyone.
Extended family is hard enough, but now you have to add all of his family
--people whose tastes you don't know and may actively dislike. ...
Send everyone a gift card for Amazon.
"Prime if you like them" ... "Non-Prime" if you don't.
We were talking mostly about American women joining the WW II workforce, but Brit women, of course, did too.
'Cause everybody knows raising kids and running the household isn't hard work.
But now we're worried, so skedaddle on home, and let us never speak of this again.
Women have always invented stuff, especially poor women trying to make do are forced to adapt, recycle and rube Goldberg new things. A lot of beauty products have been brought to market after being concocted in some woman's kitchen. All this is well known although not always acknowledged, 'cause we don't want y'all to get uppity.
There's a couple other things women have invented, like;
The Apgar Scoring System
Signal Flares
The foot-pedal trash can
The Monopoly Game
The paper bag
The dishwasher
Windshield wipers
The solar house
The circular saw
Kevlar
Just to name a few. ;)
The circular saw
I remember hearing somewhere that the Shakers invented the circular saw blade, so your post and that memory led me to wikipedia, where the topic is far more complicated than anybody wanting for a straightforward answer would like. And it drives home something I've noticed before. We are so used to living in a world with information at our fingertips, that it's easy to forget that it wasn't always this way.
A woman Shaker did invent the circular saw, but it had also been invented numerous other times by others in Europe decades earlier. But they didn't have the internet, or trade journals, or the Sears mail order catalog. People just didn't share information that quickly. So the Shakers didn't know the Germans had already done it. Fast forward a hundred years, and Alexander Graham Bell was working on inventing an airplane because he didn't know the Wright brothers had already invented one. And he succeeded. Many of the inventions we take for granted as being invented by some specific person were actually invented numerous times by many people and they just didn't find out until later that they weren't the first.
It also sort of points to the weird inevitability of progress. No one's going to invent movable type before paper, but once you have paper, it's the next logical step and someone WILL create it. Like how the squid developed an eye independently from our evolutionary line, even though we split off far enough back that neither of us had vision.
The internet wasn't needed for news to travel, there were ships and people traveling back and forth all the time. Guys like Franklin practically commuted, as well as corresponding with smart guys all over Europe. News of longer, lower, wider, ways to improve productivity traveled fast. We'd had water powered mills here for 150 years or more by 1800, and before 1776 a lot of mills here were owned by foreigners. Even if a couple of those foreigners had round blades who's to say a woman didn't think of it. But nobody patented it, so Tabitha wins because she was obviously a witch, being Samantha's kid. :p:
snip--
Many of the inventions we take for granted as being invented by some specific person were actually invented numerous times by many people and they just didn't find out until later that they weren't the first.
hindsight, 20/20.
How can we tell if this isn't happening still?
only in the future, eh?
How can we tell if this isn't happening still?
It is absolutely happening still. I work in a patent litigation law firm and my livelihood depends on it.
But you have to admit that communication today is faster, so you're not going to have decades go by where news of groundbreaking technology advances isn't shared.
I love this advert. I love (almost) everything about this advert. I like the ordinary dudeness of the player. Very nicely done. I like that they decided it was a good idea to also show a female player.
It's really not so long ago that this would have been pretty much unthinkable in this genre for anything but an indie game (femShep notwithstanding)
[YOUTUBE]ejMqe1WBtEQ[/YOUTUBE]
That's life, you slay the dragon or something and feel like a hero, then suddenly a chick shoots you down. :lol2:
It is absolutely happening still. I work in a patent litigation law firm and my livelihood depends on it.
But you have to admit that communication today is faster, so you're not going to have decades go by where news of groundbreaking technology advances isn't shared.
Now if you do something neat, there's always somebody close by figuring out how to capitalize on it.
Shakers didn't communicate with the outside much. In her mid-teens my grandmother lived with(was used by) a Shaker family.
@Dana: The author of this article was on a tv show this morning.
She finished off her interview with this quote...
As Jenji Kohan, creator of “Orange Is the New Black,” told me:
“Talent with all sorts of genitalia’’ can make money
So l went looking for her entire article... it's long but good.
The Women of Hollywood Speak Out
NY Times - MAUREEN DOWD - NOV. 20, 2015
Female executives and filmmakers are ready to run studios
 and direct blockbuster pictures.
What will it take to dismantle the pervasive sexism that keeps them from doing it?
@Glatt: Yes, I know ... I cherry-picked the quote.
.
@Glatt: Yes, I know ... I cherry-picked the quote.
ok :right:
Fascinating. This caught my attention:
From 2007 through 2014, according to Smith’s research, women made up only 30.2 percent of speaking or named characters in the 100 top-grossing fictional films.
Another study I read about, though can't recall the details, showed a similar imbalance in the gender of characters in children's tv.
Facepalm moment:
When I phoned another powerful Hollywood player to ask about the issue, he said dismissively, ‘‘Call some chicks.’’
There's a lot in that piece that is heartening. But then there's things like this that make me want to do violence:
From Nora Ephron to Dee Rees, women who write their own material may have a better chance to direct it. But even in the writing phase, women must contend with Hollywood conventions that women on-screen must be likable or cleave to Madonna-whore-catfight stereotypes. ‘‘I’ve had male executives say that my lead character was unlikable because she slept with a lot of guys,’’ says the director Julie Taymor. Liz Meriwether, the 34-year-old creator of Fox’s ‘‘New Girl,’’ says that before this show, she received notes from executives saying, ‘‘I don’t understand how this character can be smart and sexy.’’
and this:
But if only 1.9 percent of the top 100 films are helmed by women, there is virtually no trickle-down effect. ‘‘What struck me the most was how blatant and out in the open some of the discrimination was,’’ says Ariela Migdal, who initially helped oversee the A.C.L.U. gender-discrimination case. ‘‘Agents openly say, ‘I’m not putting you up for that because this guy won’t hire a woman director.’ The list for directing big films is five plausible dudes and Kathryn Bigelow. And Bigelow is not going to direct ‘Jurassic World.’ You can’t have a list with no women.’’ Executives have been known to say, ‘‘Oh, we hired a woman once, but it didn’t really work out that well.’’
But then there's things like this that make me want to do violence:
That's not the answer. :headshake
There's a lot in that piece that is heartening. But then there's things like this that make me want to do violence
...
‘I don’t understand how this character can be smart and sexy.’’
I think the next thought was: "Can you insert a rape scene here "
As a spin-off from women in film more generally, here's an interesting piece about female super heroes. It's a really positive article, about the changing scene. But it also frames the problems well. What stifles development of female characters is often the way in which they have previously been depicted. Films with leading female characters have been made and bombed, and the lesson executives and male film makers have taken from that is not that they were bad films with badly drawn and shallow characters, but that people don't want to see female leads - yet plenty of male-led films bomb and nobody suggests that making a film with a male lead is a risk. Male-led films are judged, and succeed or fail, as films. Female-led films are judged, and succeed or fail as ambassadors for the concept of female-led films. And, as the article Lamp posted points out, films that succeed with a female lead, instead of acting as a proof of that concept are set aside as flukes and forgotten, whilst the next flop gets included in the proof that female-led films are a risk, and remembered as such for decades.
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/21/jessica-jones-agent-carter-supergirl-female-superhero
Currently, men outnumber women five to one production roles; in 2014 women made up just 13% of directors and writers. But the problem isn’t just men writing fewer female superheroes, Rosenberg says, it’s that they write them badly. “A white man is never defined by his whiteness and maleness,” continues Rosenberg, “whereas being female is treated as a defining facet.” Writers and producers treating women like “The Other”, she says, results in the same stereotypes again and again: femme fatales, coy virgins, stern battleaxes.
That right there is pretty much 100% my problem with the way female super heroes have generally been depicted.
In fact, a dictionary-worth of terms exists to describe how unfairly women are treated in the superhero genre. There’s Women in Refrigerators Syndrome, where female characters are killed off in a gruesome way – say, stuffed in a fridge – as a plot device to motivate male characters. There’s the Smurfette Principle: that there will always be only one woman on a team of men. And there’s the wonderfully named Sexy Lamp Test. Coined by comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, it states that “If you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.”
Nicely put ;p
With the varied, more dimensional women that we’re starting to see, though, it finally feels as if the genre is recognising and reacting to these disparities. In 20 years, when we’re watching the 11th Avengers sequel, will we look back and laugh at how we once wrote films where cape-wearing journalists spun the world backwards to reverse time, but we couldn’t write a female character who wasn’t someone’s wife or mother?
]“If you can replace your female character with a sexy Lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.”
Fame is fleeting.
It works the other way as well.
In "A Christmas Story", dad delightedly gets a leggy woman by delivery, and displays her in the front window, to the embarrassment of his wife.
The film is improved
In "Aladdin", Young poor Aladdin can't vie for the love of princess Jasmine. So he steals a woman from the Cave of Wonders, which is considered a legendary task. But that's still not good enough, so he rubs the woman a special way, at which point he gets the wishes he needs to transform himself until he can marry Jasmine.
The film is vastly improved
13 women who transformed the world of economics, at the
World Economics Forum.
Economist Justin Wolfers recently wrote about how female economists are airbrushed out of academic discussion when they have a male coauthor.
We decided to bring together some of the women who’ve had the biggest impact on the subject and the practice of economic policy, whether in academia, business, politics, or education.
These women are not just modern academic economists. Several are historical figures who made major contributions to the discipline at a time when female participation was incredibly difficult.
I noticed in this 1925 picture of 6 high school girls, at least 3 of the hairstyles probably wouldn't draw a second look in any decade.
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.
That girl on the right in the front row looks like the kind of woman you might not want to piss off, especially when she's holding a gun. haha
Yes, be careful whom you spurn. :eek:
I was going to post this in the summer, but it got by me and has suddenly popped up on a list of what's currently being read on the site.
One area of life in which women have struggled to achieve much of a presence, and which it is really important for women to achieve some presence is the realm of politics and government. As with the discussion about the number of female characters on screen and the number of female experts and news readers, this is one of those things where we (I think) almost instinctively feel as if there has been an explosion of female presence, to the point where they seem to be everywhere - but when you actually analyse it they've a fraction of the presence of men. We just don't realy notice the number of men, because they are the standard - we notice the presence of women.
One of the ways that sexism manifests in our culture is not just the number of women in politics and government, but how we discuss and understand female politicians. It is worrying to me how little that has changed, in some ways, since I was a child. Any woman in the public eye in any kind of a position of power, influence, or the potential of either gets taken down a peg in the language used to describe her. I don't meangets taken down a peg, as an individual - that happens to all politicians in the media. I mean taken down a peg as a woman. Everything about the way female politicians are discussed, interviewed, described and reported on underscores their femininity in a way that is weakening.
For example, the way a candidate in this year's Labour Party leadership contest was treated by the national political press.
How much do you reckon Jeremy Corbyn weighs? How does he measure up if you compare his looks to Prince William’s? How stylish would you say Andy Burnham is? And, if you had to guess, what kind of product would you say he uses in his hair?
The answers to these questions do nothing to help us decide who would make a better leader of the Labour party. But they do influence how voters perceive candidates.
The Mail on Sunday’s profile of leadership candidate Liz Kendall describes her as a “slinky brunette” and a “power-dressing Blairite” with a “lithe figure” who “remains New Labour to the tips of her stilettos”. The paper’s political editor, Simon Walters, asked if she wants to “get married and have kids”, quizzed her about her fitness routine and twice compared Kendall to Kate Middleton. At one point, Walters speculates that “she looks the same weight as the Duchess – about 8st”; later, he disingenuously asks her to discuss “the cruel comments about being a ‘childless spinster’”, neither telling readers who made those “cruel comments” in the first place, or where.
In any case, sexist media coverage has a real impact. A 2010 US study, commissioned by a non-partisan coalition of women’s groups, asked 800 likely voters to listen to descriptions of two hypothetical congressional candidates, Dan Jones and Jane Smith. Half of the voters then heard a sample back-and-forth debate about the candidates, which included sexist descriptions such as “mean girl” and “ice queen” and “prostitute” to talk about the female candidate. The other half heard a similar discussion without the labels. The findings of the study were stark; when sexist language was included, Jane Smith lost twice the support compared to the discussion that focused solely on her policies. Her initial support rating was 43%, which fell to 33% after policy based attacks, compared to 21% after sexist slurs.
The study also found that sexist language undermines the public perception of the female politician, prompting voters to see her as less empathetic, effective and trustworthy.
A follow-up study in 2013 by US organisation Name It Change It presented 1,500 likely voters with the media profiles of two fictional political candidates, one male and one female. Voters were divided into four groups: one quarter heard no reference to the female candidate’s appearance, while the other three groups were presented with either neutral, positive or negative descriptions of how she looked. The study itself used real quotes taken from media coverage of female candidates in 2012 elections. The conclusion? “When media coverage focuses on a woman’s appearance, she pays a price in the horse race, in her favourability, in her likelihood to be seen as possessing positive traits, and in how likely voters are to vote for her.” Importantly, all references to appearance, even apparently positive coverage that seems to praise a female politician’s looks, still result in a detrimental impact on her candidacy – a fact especially worth remembering when a journalist comments on the appearance of a woman in power and disguises it as a compliment.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/20/sexist-coverage-liz-kendall-female-politicians-damage-voter-perceptionsWe men accept full responsibility for one cause of sexist remarks. As primitive humans we have not yet overcome this obscenity. Please accept our heartfelt apology for the shameful action of dressing our females.
We can't all be Ferengi.
It isn't men, hon. It's people. Unconscious biases affect us all. Women are just as put off voting for other women as men are when this kind of reporting is used. We are also likely to focus on another woman's looks in a way we don't with men.
I noticed it myself with my nieces. As they were growing up I had tomakea conscious effort not to comment on appearance all the time. 'Hi babes - oh you look nice, where did you get that top?' Standard girl-to-girl greeting.
Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, but it has an impact when it becomes the central focus for how we view women even in positions of power and responsibility.
So now you're the uncaring aunt who never even notices how hard they tried to look good. :p:
Hehehehehe. I comment if they've clearly got new clothes or are all dolled up for going out.
The problem is you can't know what someone else is thinking. They may have done something they feel makes them, like totally like different like ya know, but it's such a slight difference it could has been accidental or random. When nobody says anything, they're devastated. Or spent three hours fighting s blackhead or stray wisp of hair, then giving up. When somebody notices they're devastated. To be clear, this is not a female thing, it's a human thing.
I remember Calvin bitching to Hobbes, what good is it to have superhero underwear if nobody comments on it.
True enough. It was more when they were youngsters really. Mum and I realised that the first thing we always said to the girls, in our greetings, was pretty much to the effect that they looked nice. We just tried to be a bit more conscious of stuff and maybe mix it up a bit.
It's hard though - because the pair of them are and always have been drop dead gorgeous.
In truth, it is often one of the first things I say to my bro as well when I see him. Because he is a bit of a style freak (style not fashion, I hasten to add) and likes to look good - he often has new clothes and it is instinctive to me to mention it.
But he isn't surrounded by 24/7 cultural messaging telling him his looks are his most important quality.
This made me smile a lot. These young lads are very impressive.
Long before the idea of ending female genital mutilation (FGM) was gaining traction among world leaders, a group of young Maasai men were already questioning the need for the brutal practice.
“Female genital mutilation is part of our culture and practice and it marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, of women from girls. We now realise FGM is one of the practices we should not have in our society. It’s not helping us but affecting our girls and mothers and wives,” says Sonyanga Ole Ngais, one of the stars of a new documentary that charts how a cricket team formed in the shadows of Mount Kenya helped change attitudes towards the practice.
Interspersed with shots of life at home as they prepare for the trip, their arrival in the UK, and their first visit to Lord’s, we hear the team talking about FGM and the lack of women’s rights in the region, views in stark contrast to those expressed by Maasai elders.
“It started a long time ago when we were young and our sisters were being married off and not completing school,” says Ngais, in London this week to promote the film.
“When I was young I remember very well my last sister to undergo the cut [FGM], and she was married off. I really liked her and was really sad and cried a lot when she was married off. She was like my mother, taking care of me … when she was married I realised I was not going to have that company. I was not going to see her.”
Ngais, 26, had already seen three other sisters undergo FGM, drop out of school and marry young; culture dictates that girls should be cut before they are married. FGM has been banned in Kenya for years.
The pain of losing his sister to marriage never left him. And as Ngais grew older and came to understand more about what girls went through, he began to question the importance of FGM in the Maasai culture, and started talking to his friends about it.
“When I grew up I started to realise what these people were doing … it was not nice, it was inhuman.”
By this time, he had a younger sister, Eunice. He was determined that she would not be cut.
“I realised I was not ready to lose another sister,” Ngais said. “I had the passion to fight for women’s rights in our society.
“We have to realise girls have their rights and need to study. They don’t need the brutality of FGM.”
These young men, having left their communities, travelled and therefore gained wisdom, were given a hearing by their elders. They were asked whether they would marry a girl who had not been cut. Their response was tovow only tomarry girls who had not been cut. Since the parents of girls want most for them to be married - the most eligible and celebrated bachelors of their community refusing to marry girls who have been cut carries serious weight.
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/nov/12/maasai-cricket-warriors-female-genital-mutilation-movie-last-man-stands-championshipThis, on the other hand, did not make me want to smile. This is a piece from the Guardian, about the author's experience of travelling home from a show with her 13 year old daughter.
It was pretty late when we boarded the train, and the carriage was almost full of other theatregoers on their way home. My daughter was sitting on my right and the only free seat was on my left. After a couple of stops, a man got on. It was hard to tell, but he was probably in his 30s. He cast his eyes around the carriage before declaring, quite loudly, that someone would have to move. “I want to sit opposite her,” he said, staring at my daughter.
I could feel her physically recoil beside me, hardly able to believe that he was talking about her. She looked at me wide-eyed and didn’t speak, but grabbed my hand with her smaller sweaty one. I reassured her that it was OK. “There’s a seat next to me,” I told him.
No one else in the carriage spoke or even looked at us. He sat down very close next to me and proceeded to stare across at my daughter, craning to see round me. “What’s your name?” he asked. She didn’t reply.
“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” he said.
I told him quite clearly that she did not wish to speak to him and that I would like him to stop. Again, no one else said or did anything to help or support us.
For me, this was a first. The first time I had been out with my newly teenage daughter when she was sexually harassed. I felt ashamed about not knowing whether she had already been subjected to something like this before, when I was not with her, and I felt nervous to ask – she looked so fearful.
I also felt a sense of responsibility or fault. She had been late home from school, rushing to get changed and, as we left the house, I had grabbed a tailored jacket for her. It belonged to me and she wore it over a short, navy H&M dress, with socks and Doc Marten shoes. Her legs were bare. Maybe I should have taken a moment and insisted she wore tights? Or a longer skirt? Or trousers? So, already I was experiencing feelings of guilt and shame, and the harassment was not even aimed at me.
The incident also felt threatening and isolating. By now, we were four or five stops from our destination and my daughter had hold of my hand very tightly. I told the man we were going to move, but he got up himself and moved further down the carriage as a couple of seats had become vacant.
Now other passengers started to look up at us, one offering a tiny smile. Although the man had moved away, my daughter seemed to feel no safer and asked if we could leave the train before our stop and walk the rest of the way home, but we didn’t.
So we were both, in our own ways, caught in a position of feeling the need to alter our behaviour, either in practical ways, or through the internal dialogue with which we are saddled every day. Girls should dress differently. Or put up with the inconvenience of changing their travel plans. All in order to suit a culture that makes women feel bad about their own choices.
There's quite a bit more, but one passage really stood out to me:
I want to tell my daughter that men are wonderful, supportive, as full of complexities and joy and love as women are. I am sure she knows this anyway. But I also see that she is beginning to experience alternative ways of imagining men – menacing ways.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/21/he-sexually-harassed-my-13-year-old-daughter-right-in-front-of-me
It's a peculiar experience, being harrassed as a young teen. It can be threatening, it can also make you feel grownup. Often it is a combination of the two. I doubt there are many women who have not experienced some form of harrassment as youngsters. This was a particularly extreme example, but I recall several experiences from when I was around 12 years old, that definitely made men seem a much more dangerous proposition.
It's funny how you learn to navigate it - like any other social landscape, it forms part of how you see the world. I don't mean that it warps you - just that the risk and danger is an ordinary part of the world you are in.
Men, of course, have their own ordinary dangers to which they become accustomed and which they naturally take into account and navigate. But I thought some of the guys in particular might find the insight into a particularly female experience of interest.
Here's a good one,
The Thing All Women Do That You Don't Know About.
There's this thing that happens whenever I speak about or write about women's issues. Things like dress codes, rape culture and sexism. I get the comments: Aren't there more important things to worry about? Is this really that big of a deal? Aren't you being overly sensitive? Are you sure you're being rational about this?
Every. Single. Time.
And every single time I get frustrated. Why don't they get it?
I think I've figured out why.
They don't know.
They don't know about de-escalation. Minimizing. Quietly acquiescing.
Hell, even though women live it, we are not always aware of it. But we have all done it.
We have all learned, either by instinct or by trial and error, how to minimize a situation that makes us uncomfortable. How to avoid angering a man or endangering ourselves. We have all, on many occasions, ignored an offensive comment. We've all laughed off an inappropriate come-on. We've all swallowed our anger when being belittled or condescended to.
It doesn't feel good. It feels icky. Dirty. But we do it because to not do it could put us in danger or get us fired or labeled a bitch. So we usually take the path of least precariousness.
It's not something we talk about every day. We don't tell our boyfriends and husbands and friends every time it happens. Because it is so frequent, so pervasive, that it has become something we just deal with.
So maybe they don't know.
I found myself out once with a group of older men I know reasonably well.
I wouldn't call them friends, but we know eachother's names and say Hello in the street, stop to pass the time of day.
One of the men can be quite... irascible.
He'd been challenged by someone on a committee he Chairs and was very grumpy. I was obvious he wanted to kick off.
Now they were drinking (albeit slowly), and I had a soft drink, but there was no hint of violence; they're all retired anyway, not the usual age range for brawling. But I could see that his snapping was bringing the group down and I wanted to stay out a little longer in the warm, the light, some company.
So I did my Princess Diana.
I smiled, paid him attention, lowered my eyes, listened. Slowly diverted his conversation by asking about things I know he likes and enjoys (his caravan FFS!)
It worked. He stopped being sarcastic, got off his high horse, joined in the usual banter.
It wasn't until afterwards I realised what I'd done.
I suppose I was being manipulative. After all I got what I wanted out of it. Another half hour or so stretching out a Diet Pepsi.
And yes, I did feel a bit icky afterwards.
I found myself out once with a group of older men I know reasonably well.
I wouldn't call them friends, but we know eachother's names and say Hello in the street, stop to pass the time of day.
One of the men can be quite... irascible.
He'd been challenged by someone on a committee he Chairs and was very grumpy. I was obvious he wanted to kick off.
Now they were drinking (albeit slowly), and I had a soft drink, but there was no hint of violence; they're all retired anyway, not the usual age range for brawling. But I could see that his snapping was bringing the group down and I wanted to stay out a little longer in the warm, the light, some company.
So I did my Princess Diana.
I smiled, paid him attention, lowered my eyes, listened. Slowly diverted his conversation by asking about things I know he likes and enjoys (his caravan FFS!)
It worked. He stopped being sarcastic, got off his high horse, joined in the usual banter.
It wasn't until afterwards I realised what I'd done.
I suppose I was being manipulative. After all I got what I wanted out of it. Another half hour or so stretching out a Diet Pepsi.
And yes, I did feel a bit icky afterwards.
The irascible gent returned to a more equable frame of mind, the others had a negative influence removed from the evening's proceedings and you spent a little while longer in a relaxing atmosphere.
Manipulative? Nah. You poured oil on troubled waters and it didn't catch fire.
I'd enter that in the credit side of life's ledger. :thumb:
How can people still be aking these points ? This is only three years old.
[YOUTUBE]MPyTYuKsOcw[/YOUTUBE]
And how is this still a thing?
[youtube]gPUUX1YsZUg[/youtube]
And how is this still a thing?
It isn't, but if Faux news keeps bringing it up, maybe the rare cretin out there will think they aren't alone, maybe there are others, maybe a movement, maybe I can me get a button or bumper sticker.
Faux wouldn't do that to avoid talking about real issues, would they? :yesnod:
How can people still be making these points ? This is only three years old.
Number of people who attended the original speech (est.): 200
Number of viewers of the
original speech clip on YouTube: about 10,000 (there are three of the original on Youtube, each with about 3,000 views)
Number of people who have watched this clip, criticizing the original clip: 377,000
Views of a
similar criticism video that's 17 minutes long: 328,000
The outrage is now nearly self-feeding. In the near future we won't need the original clip.
The fair minded British were equal opportunity employers before it was cool. ;)
That looks so obscene. What makes it doubly horrible is that the man sitting there in that basket almost certainly subscribed to the view of women as the 'fairer sex' being weaker than men. That woman is not really a proper woman in his view. Not like the fair european women, epitomising civilisation with their grace and fragility. Her race and her class takes away from her humanity. If it didn't, then he'd be shamed by such a picture.
But, I came in here to post an article I just read in the Graudian (Guardian). Since this is the gender equality checkpoint, it's a good place to look at the big picture.
A recent World Bank survey of 173 countries found that no fewer than 155 still had at least one law impeding women’s economic opportunities. Women face gender-based job restrictions in 100 countries, often confining them to low-paying activities, more often than not in the informal sector. In 18 countries the law gives husbands the right to prohibit their wives from working outside the home.
These legal differences have long-lasting economic and social consequences. Gender based job restrictions tend to be associated with wider wage gaps and lower employment rates for women. And where girls’ future earning potential is limited, families may choose to send their brothers to school instead.
-snip-
And it’s not just about the workplace. Women in several countries face extra documentation hurdles when trying to get a national identity card. Beyond making it tougher to access public services or contracts with others, no proof of ID means no chance of getting a bank loan to start or expand a business. Inheritance and marital property laws affect women’s access to financial institutions – access to property tends to make for greater equality within the household.
Now, those are some pretty shocking statistics, but they don't actually spell out the full reasons why this way of organising labour and resources is such a bad idea, particularly when it comes to female participation in the workplace. Not everybody believes that increased female participation in the workplace is a good idea. As evidenced by the recurring themes of working-mother shaming and latch-key kid panic in our media (particularly the conservative media) and the regular bemoaning of a by-gone age when women were wives and mothers first and everything else second, and touting the loss of that world as a corresponding threat to masculinity.
Setting aside questions of fairness - which are complicated by the degree to which an individual believes men and women are just fundamentally different, and that they should retain fundamentally distinct but complimentary roles within society and family - let's look just at the concrete benefits of greater gender equality:
The economic cost of gender inequality is staggering. The McKinsey Global Institute recently estimated that if women participated in the economy identically to men, with equal wages and labour force participation, it would add up to $28tn to global GDP by 2025: a 26% increase over business as usual, equivalent to adding a new United States and China to the world economy.
A more modest scenario, under which countries match the gender parity progress of their best-performing regional neighbour, would add $12tn to the global economy – about the collective economic weight of Japan, Germany, and the UK.
The implications are no less revolutionary for individual households. Literate mothers have healthier children. When women earn an income, they spend a higher proportion of it than men do on their children’s health, education and nutrition.
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/dec/03/women-legal-discrimination-worldwide-consequencesthis thread shouldn't really be in politics or should it
Isn't it all about using politics to control? Maybe politics reflect culture, thereby becoming a tool of the culture to reinforce itself.
I said before I don't think this thread has developed as Dana envisioned it, but following the time honored tradition of drift(he said guiltily), it has veered back to the track repeatedly.
Dana, I recently read from 2005 to 2012, India created 27 million new jobs, and 55 million new workers. They're now adding 1 million workers a month.
To you think there is any grass roots interest in making it easier for more women to go to work? If they did make it easier, isn't there the danger of household A having 2 employed, living well, and household B destitute, rather than both households having 1 employed and getting by?
The inherent followup to "women work" is not that the same number of jobs are redistributed, but that more gets done, which means greater prosperity on a large scale, but also an individual one. When both people in household A are making money, they have more to spend, which means they're going to want someone from household B to perform a service or create a good for them. If nothing else they'll ask B to clean their nice big house.
Walmart can handle the increase in sales, without adding help, while still killing any entrepreneurs who challenge them.
Not hiring B, if someone from household C will do it cheaper. Such is the flaw in the free market when it comes to helping the poor not be.
Yabbut, if they really didn't want the workforce/customerbase to double, then by that logic Walmart would be even happier if half the population died. I mean, putting twice as many men into the workforce is making things hard, right? Better if we only had half the men. Or half of that. Or half...
I mean transitions have to be eased into, sure. You can't just magically dump all of the women into the workforce overnight. There's economic infrastructure that has to be built. But the bottom line is it's always a good thing to add more people into the economy, right up until the moment the natural resources run out--and then, of course, everyone's fucked. :)
Walmart is reactive, not proactive when it comes to population. At least I hope so.:eek:
Dr Dana, lookie lookie...
A Day In the Life of an Empowered Female Heroine
She woke up like she did every day: slowly pulling her motorcycle helmet off, then shaking her head slowly back and forth to reveal a long, blonde ponytail. Everyone gasped. “That’s right,” she said, kicking the winning football goal before sliding into a sheer, sexy camisole under a blazer and playing as hard as she worked, “I’ve been a girl this whole time.” One of the guys, the real sexy one, shook his head in slow motion, as if to say “wh-wh-wh-whaaat?” You know the kind. His mouth was kind of open while he did it. He was totally blown away.
I saw that on the news.
"Secretary Carter's decision to open all combat positions to women will have a consequential impact on our service members and our military's warfighting capabilities," Senator John McCain and Representative Mac Thornberry said in a statement.
Now that's about as non-statement as you can get, neither yea nor nay, as clear as mud but it covers the ground.
What do you think Sexobon, is it smoke and mirrors? Nobody but GI Jane has a chance even with the positions officially open, except for positions that aren't real gung ho macho.
As long as the females concerned can meet existing standards it's not an insurmountable problem. Problems occur when standards are lowered to meet quotas, which inevitably come about, so politicking generals can wear their equal opportunity merit badges.
You've already read about the recent female Ranger course graduates. Few know that Special Forces did an ad hoc feasibility study back in the 1980s by putting a female captain through its qualification course. This was done for reasons mentioned earlier concerning female soldiers' reach to females in indigenous populations. I ran across her in passing at Special Forces Schools where she was assigned to a support position. The word I got was that she acquitted herself well; however, she was only permitted to audit the course and not become SF qualified due to public policy at the time. There are legal ramifications to becoming SF qualified. It would have made her a combatant just as I lost my medical personnel Geneva Convention status when I became a Special Forces medical specialist and I mean my status was actually changed on my military ID card.
There can still be gender segregation in classified organizations. They can be all male; or, all female as missions require. Soldiers in those units are dropped from the roles of the regular Army. If you ask the Army about one of them, the Army will say they never heard of 'em. All civil-military interaction goes through innocuous cover organizations. If they think they need to segregate, they still can albeit on a much smaller scale.
What this is going to do for office romances when the office is a poncho hooch out in the boonies is hard to say.
So you feel the officers on down the line will follow the directive for the most part. I'm sure there will a couple hardasses who will do everything they think they can get away with to disqualify applicants, but they'll get weeded out. Everybody in the military has a boss to answer to.
The problem won't be so much with some trying to disqualify females as it will be that after qualification females will get shuffled into lesser priority positions within the higher priority units. In Special Forces for example, it's long been said that it takes 6 years after the initial qualification course to make a good Special Forces soldier. There's mandatory cross-training in a second SF specialty (cross-training in a third SF specialty for SF warrant officers), training in one or more foreign languages, military free fall, scuba, various survival courses, SERE, SOT ... etc. On top of all that, Special Forces teams are area specialists who've done country studies and are continuously updating them with concentration on their specific area of operation.
How do you replace someone with all those capabilities and specialized knowledge if you have to deploy an SF team; but, one of them is pregnant? You don't. You may be able to put another warm body with the basic qualification on that team but it won't be as effective and they all know their lives depend on that effectiveness: they're not a sports team. It used to be up to chance that someone might become non-deployable because of something like an accidental injury. Now they have to plan on it being a deliberate act.
It doesn't cost them anything in terms of deployability to put females through a qualification course; so, I think where they'll be getting really creative is in how they assign females afterwards even to the point of creating low priority teams around them depending on the individuals they have to accommodate.
Thanks for the insight, I can see where Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance takes a lot of practice and trust.
How do you replace someone with all those capabilities and specialized knowledge if you have to deploy an SF team; but, one of them has an ACL tear?
SHIT SHIT SHIT WE DIDN'T THINK OF THAT! "MAN DOWN" OR WHATEVER THEY SAY
ABORT MISSION!! AH SHIT SHIT DON'T SAY ABORT
Did you all realize how terribly FRAGILE the SF are? Fuck, they can't even plan their way out of simple personnel issues that are understood and can be planned (it's 2015 and they have pills and devices to prevent pregnancy now!) and known about for MONTHS in advance! WHAT TOTAL PUSSIES! One of 'em goes down for 6 months and it's like, ah, mission cancelled I guess. Beginning to understand why it took a decade to get bin Laden.*
Do we really need these people or can they be replaced with drones already. Could have bombed that site in Allottabad just as easily. Might have not risked guys and expensive elite copters to do it.
*i know that was the seals, point remains
So, special forces are, like, soccer players?????
I see UT is on the rag. I'm tempted to do a Lamplighter and twist UT's words,
"(it's 2015 and they have pills and devices to prevent pregnancy now!)", into his inferring the military should impose birth control on female soldiers. Sorry these changes didn't come about early enough for you to get into SF UT. You would've made a fine PUSSIES OF ONE. :p:
So, special forces are, like, soccer players?????
More like world championship playoff game soccer players only if you lose, you die. These teams can be required to operate at the limits of human performance. Take a member off the team when there's insufficient time to fully integrate a replacement and they're not world champions anymore; although, they can still play soccer. Question is, with lives at stake, who wants to be on that team when it goes to the playoff? Who wants to send it there in the first place? It doesn't matter why a member was taken off the team (e.g. torn ACL or pregnancy), the affects are the same.
When something like that happens in the military, the team gets an uninitiated replacement and assigned to lesser missions; or, it goes into a training cycle. The individual who couldn't perform may be put into individual training commensurate with their capabilities (e.g. sitting on their keister in language school); or, given a desk job depending on how much advance notice the command has and what options are available at the time. Males who are repeatedly non-deployable due to injuries resulting from their choices in personal activities can be reassigned to other units. Will they do the same with females who want to have several children? Individuals who are going to be out for more than 6 months can be reassigned out of high priority units. Will they do the same with females having post partum complications? All those who are going to be out for more than a year can already be medically discharged from the military.
Neither those who volunteer for high priority units nor their chains of command aspire to be held back by
anyone. The military will now have to give equal treatment to non-deployable males that it will be giving to non-deployable females. It forces them to lower standards; or, create redundancies that taxpayers will pay for.
We the people ... have chosen the latter. The military will be getting more creative about assignments within high priority units until the taxpayers pony up. :)
We the people ... have chosen the latter.
We the people have no say in the matter. The few who own the politicians decide how much to give the Pentagon, and they decide how many high priority special forces units, how many bombs, and how many golf courses.
There's no difference between a soldier who shoots himself in the foot and a soldier who is pregnant. It's a choice that would keep them from doing their job... your fired.
You're fired.
[COLOR="SlateGray"](U r fired)[/COLOR]
Is the sudden, unexpected pregnancy of current female soldiers an issue? Is the rate of female soldier pregnancy higher or lower than the current rate of unexpected injury among male soldiers?
In my experience most female military members are A.) lesbians and B.) no longer menstruating anyway because of the intense physical training they have to maintain.
The military doesn't issue pregnancies, they have to bring their own.
The same with self inflicted wounds. The soldier owns it, and must suffer the consequences of it preventing them to do the job.
I have a feeling the chicks who would go in for SF would be like the women of a century ago who pooted out the kid in the middle of the rice paddy or wheat field, sat out for a while, had some water and then went on about their job harvesting
True, but that 6 months beforehand would slow them up. ;)
Won't someone think of the critters. What will happen to them if soldiers have to start carrying field delivered babies in their packs?
[ATTACH]54386[/ATTACH]
More warm fuzzy feeling photosYana Gallen, at Northwestern University, has written a paper summing up a study of gender gap in Danish employment. They found women are paid 16% less and are 12% less productive, but have unable to pin down the other 4% other than bias.
One important point, at least to me, was childless women were equally productive with men. I doubt that productivity loss stemmed from showing cow orkers pictures of their kids. Even in a family friendly utopia like Denmark, it's more likely exhaustion and stress, ongoing and accumulative. Days off and holidays bring no respite, just additional pressures, expected duties, and self-recrimination for not living up to the June Cleaver model.
Abstract: Using Danish matched employer-employee data, this paper estimates the relative productivity of men and women and finds that the gender “productivity gap” is 12 percent–seventy five percent of the 16 percent residual pay gap can be accounted for by productivity differences between men and women. I measure the productivity gap by estimating the efficiency units lost in a firm-level production function if a laborer is female, holding other explanatory covariates such as age, education, experience, and hours worked constant.
To study the mechanisms behind the 4 percent gap in pay that is unexplained by productivity, I use data on parenthood and age. Mothers are paid much lower wages than men, but their estimated productivity gap completely explains their pay gap. In contrast, women without children are estimated to be as productive as men but they are not compensated at the same rate as men.
The decoupling of pay and productivity for women without children happens during their prime-child bearing years. I provide estimates of the productivity gap in the cross-section and estimates that account for endogenous sorting of women into less productive firms using a control-function approach inspired by Olley-Pakes.
This paper also provides estimates of the gender productivity gap across industries and occupations. Though the results do vary across industries and occupations, the overall estimate of the productivity gap is fairly robust to the specification of the production function.
The paper can be downloaded as a pdf at the link above.
Interesting, thanks Bruce.
Sometimes, organisations really try to do something positive but trip themselves up by not truly understanding the nature of the problem. IBM has been trying to encourage greater female participation in STEM fields. They came up with this gem of a campaign. It's laudable that they are trying, but they clearly are missing huge chunks of the point. I read the article and I was just trying to imagine the strategy meetings for this campaign. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of this stuff.
IBM has discontinued a campaign encouraging women to get into technology by asking them to “hack a hairdryer” after widespread criticism from women in the industry.
The company admitted the campaign “missed the mark for some” and apologised.
The campaign, which dated back to October and was part of a wider effort by the company to promote STEM careers, called on women in science and technology to “reengineer what matters in science”.
A video posted on IBM’s YouTube account showed a number of experiments involving hairdryers as a voiceover encourages women to take part:
You, a windblaster and an idea, repurposed for a larger purpose, to support those who believe that it’s not what covers your cranium that counts, but what’s in it. So hack heat, re-reoute airflow, reinvent sound, and imagine a future where the most brilliant minds are solving the world’s biggest problems regardless of your gender.
Yep - because obviously, in order to make science and engineering attractive to women, it must first be translated into something they can relate to: haircare and beauty. On the same spectrum as the makers of science kits for kids who market kits to boys that have them creating model volcanoes and kits to girls that have them exploring the science of perfumes and bubblebath.
Women already in STEM fields were not impressed and took to Twitter. Some of the tweets are great.
@reubenacciano tweeted:
Hey @IBM - Margaret Hamilton was too busy writing code to get us to the moon to f*ck w/ a hairdryer. #HackAHairDryer
@Stephevs43 says:
That's ok @IBM, I'd rather build satellites instead, but good luck with that whole #HackAHairDryer thing.
These two made me laugh:
@minxdragon:
Sorry @IBM i’m too busy working on lipstick chemistry and writing down formulae with little hearts over the i s to #HackAHairDryer
@joalabastar posted a picture of a folded towel with this comment:
Here, @IBM. My lady brain came up with this for #HackAHairDryer. Kuhn would declare it paradigm shifting, surely
But my favourite came from the London Fire Brigade. It's nice to know they're keeping an eye on things:
We're staying out of the sexism debate, however we'd suggest that it's generally a bad idea, & possibly a bit dangerous to #HackAHairDryer
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/07/ibm-sparks-anger-with-hackahairdryer-campaign-aimed-at-women
Good on IBM for trying. Good on them for their swift response. Please do better next time - it does matter. Stop focusing on changing the content to make it relatable for women and start making tech fields more welcoming of women in a way that doesn't make them feel like someone on an exchange trip from Venus.
"Hack a Heat Gun". In small print - if you don't have a heat gun, you can use a regular household hair dryer.
I especially agree with the London Fire Brigade, though. Using a hair dryer (or heat gun) in an unusual manner might cut off ventilation, or concentrate heat for too long on something that isn't designed for it. And, even more, when I think "hack" I think "open up and take apart", and that gives you exposed AC and heating elements.
Note: I have, in fact, disassembled a hair dryer, though I forget what it was for. And I do have a heat gun.
The outrage is now very nearly self-feeding. In the near future we won't need the original campaign.
ETA. In the near future, we won't HAVE the original campaign. Companies will realize that, whatever they do and whatever they say, it will be wildly re-interpreted and then the re-interpretation wildly broadcast over all social media. Therefore they will not do anything at all. Women in STEM? Too controversial. Our official company policy is nothing. Way to go.
I agree, you can't say anything without offending someone, especially on the net where trolls are gleaning everything for something to pounce on.
I can envision them trying to come up with a campaign to persuade teen girls the sciences are cool, and trying to think of something mechanical/electrical most girls would be familiar/comfortable enough with to start envisioning other uses. The chick snapping she was too busy coding obviously was not the target, and foolish to think all girls are on her path.
What would you call it, constraints of the mother? These are the options my mother and her mother had so they must be mine. I guess this is where family encouragement works best, but if nobody in the family has broken out of the box, that's not likely to happen. World war II was the turning point for working women, maybe we need another world war. :haha:
The outrage is now very nearly self-feeding. In the near future we won't need the original campaign.
ETA. In the near future, we won't HAVE the original campaign. Companies will realize that, whatever they do and whatever they say, it will be wildly re-interpreted and then the re-interpretation wildly broadcast over all social media. Therefore they will not do anything at all. Women in STEM? Too controversial. Our official company policy is nothing. Way to go.
Well, that's one way of looking at it. On the other hand, maybe the major companies might start taking on board that when they do this stuff they need to be particularly thoughtful and careful. Is it really such a reach to suggest that maybe the 'girls like hairdressing and fashion so lets get them into science by making it about that' approach might be a bit of an own goal? This stuff been talked about ad nauseum in recent years, for example through the 'Let toys be toys' and 'let books be books' campaings, where science and tech toys in particular were a focus for concern.
It isn't like this stuff is not being talked about. Did nobody in those strategy meetings consider that wider discourse?
As I said, I think it's a really good thing that IBM wants to encourage girls to take up STEM subjects. But actually, what is needed is an approach that reaches children and draws them in and then doesn't put constant cultural and systemic roadblocks in the way of one gender.
Girls are studying STEM subjects in greater numbers than ever. The problem is that it doesn't translate to large numbers of women working in STEM fields, or women progressing to management and leadership in anything like equal numbers to men within those fields.
Look at a bunch of young children being taught about scientific concepts or engaging in physical experiments to learn about the world around them and you'll see no real difference in interest between girls and boys. Somewhere between those early explorations and work in the field the girls drop away. Even where a cohort has taken on higher study in large numbers, between that and Silicon valley, again the girls drop away.
It's the context that needs dealing with, not the content. What puts girls off STEM? All sorts of things, but cultural assumptions that girls naturally have a different set of interests to boys and that science and technology are primarily male, play a part. This campaign attempts to tackle the latter of those, whilst reinforcing the former.
What, in my opinion, would make for a much stronger approach would be to start breaking down those barriers between boys and girls. Because, actually, though we particularly want to encourage girls in order for them to make up a more equal proportion of those going into STEM - we also still need to encourage more boys to go into those fields. Rather than target it at girls, maybe target it at young people in a way that includes girls and boys equally. Or if you're going to particularly target girls, consider the varied interests and proclivities of the girls you're trying to reach.
As a one-off campaign, taken in isolation it's not such a big deal. In the real world, where it does not exist in a vacuum but as part of an ongoing cultural discourse it is. If the leaders of the STEM fields tried to bring more boys into their ranks and the only way they could ever think to reach them was through football, and if every book designed to reach out to boys, and every promotion attempting to draw boys into any subject automatically assumed they were football mad - they'd alienate almost as many boys as they drew in, probably more. If every industry and every field that ever wanted to bring in more boys always focussed on football. It would be ridiculous and reductive.
Is it true lots of girls like hair and make-up? Yep. So, is the way to reach girls through hair and make-up? No. Because girls, even girls who like looking pretty, have more than one interest in their lives. And lots of girls, aren't actually that interested in hair and beauty. It might be a factor in their lives - but it sits there with a bunch of other stuff. Some of which, quite remarkably, crosses over with the boys's interests.
There are lots of ways to reach girls that don't set them into a cultural and emotional silo from boys, subtly reinforcing the notion that girls are essentially different and that their lives revolve around their attractiveness.
It's no good having an overt message of inclusivity and welcome if the subtext reinforces the barriers you're trying to break down.
An additional thought:
I wonder, what it was that drew in the women already working in STEM. What was it about physics, or engineering, or coding that got them so interested as girls? What was it about their learning environment that made them feel that was open to them, despite the barriers that companies like IBM are now trying to address?
Maybe IBM could consult with them. Find out what got them interested in science and technology and what made them as girls follow that path. That might inform a useful campaign. Unless, of course, were suggesting that those women were unlike other girls, because they were interested in science and technology.
More research into why girls drop away might also be useful. Much of the research that has been done has looked at the jump between junior and senior as a natural drop-off point around puberty. That's useful - and the sudden importance of gender during puberty is likely to be a factor - with girls becoming far more focused on expressing their femininity than they would have been before puberty, the idea of 'boys' subjects and 'girls' subjects is likely to gain additional weight for some. But that doesn't have to become the trap that it is at the moment. If we demasculinise science then it should become less of an issue for young people focused on establishing their gender roles and identities.
But there are other drop off points throughout that are more problematic. When kids reach that age there's a drop off from STEM across the board. As soon as subjects become optional and it becomes possible to specialise people drop away, girls and boys. It's uneven at the moment, but that's changing. The drop off rate becomes more uneven as you progress through the higher levels of education and into industry. So, what is happening to those girls who were interested in those subjects, and who saw the value of scientific curiosity and then dropped away?
You won't get more girls by focussing on beauty products. There's a small chance you might get a different group of girls - but I very much doubt that a girl with no interest in scientific subjects, or engineering will change her mind because someone showed her how to hack a hairdryer. The girl who will be interested in hacking a hair dryer, was probably already into science and tech, rather than already being into harirdryers.
IBM's campaign, which asks women to re-engineer a hairdryer and share that idea on social media, aims to "blast away the negative effects of gender stereotyping and the unconscious biases that women in STEM face every day," the company said.
Just too subtle. Can't be subtle.
Well maybe there will be more women in STEM now that they've been all over-dramatic, humorless, and strident about it is presented.
That's the very stereotype of the feminist movement for 50 years but hey. Good luck with that! Me, I'm off to my job. It involves STEM.
The very idea that we need to "do something" for, or to, or about girls actually perpetuates the lowered expectations.
What I think needs to happen--and I know I'm basically alone in this--is we need to encourage boys into teaching, nursing, etc. It's not "boys' jobs are automatically better, let's raise the girls to their standard," rather it's "all jobs are legitimate, make the boys (and everyone else) stop shitting on the jobs that have been traditionally done by women." At the same time, greater participation in these fields from men would drain off some of the questionable-to-downright-bad STEM guys, leaving more openings and demand for the talented STEM gals.
I originally picked my career because it involves working with machines instead of people. Nursing and teaching, I hear they require you to interact with others.
It's not about being too subtle, it's about always falling into the same conceptual traps whenever male-dominated industries attempt to reach out to women.
I don't see they were over-dramatic. They posted mainly humourous and snarky comments about something that pissed them off a little : the same thing that has probably been pissing most of them off for many years - the constant assumption that female = interested primarily in beauty and fashion. They are the women at the coalface - they are the ones who've gone through a university education that was until quite recently unwelcoming of women (I've read about young women being catcalled by primarily male audiences whilst giving academic papers, or technical presentations, for example) and work in fields which still often favour their male colleagues as the 'serious' option for hiring, and routinely expect different things from women (such as offering different remuneration, funding levels and mentoring to a 'male' candidate than to a 'female' candidate when presented with identical resumes and research profiles).
When you look at some of the experiences of women in STEM fields, in which they are often assumed by visitors to be less senior than they are, and subject to comments about their looks and constant reminders by some male colleagues that they are different - the lazy stereotyping of women as primarily intrigued by matters relating to beauty and fashion might a) feel a little too on point and b) resonate with them as people who have far more insight into what might get girls and women interested in those subjects.
The campaign was a laudable attempt at redressing some of the imbalances but it was clumsy, inept and inadvertently feeding into, because it is informed by, the very stereotypes that are causing the problem in the first place.
Lots of people go on twitter to raise an issue, trend a hashtag, mock ineptness, have a laugh, or express frustration. You are dismissing these women as shrill and humourless, because they didn't just suck up the almost ubiquitous insults to women that underlie the tone of many of these campaigns, and give the company gold stars for a good effort. Because the tweets listed in that article are pretty good humoured for the most part. They are mainly jokes, a little snarky, but not particularly aggressive or nasty. As has become the norm, these days, the way to protest or disagree, or send a message is to make a funny tweet. There are some really fiery twitter storms - and this is not one of them. But hey - they are women rejecting and commenting on a misguided and not nearly well-enough researched campaign which yet again relies on the same old stereotypes - so obviously they are shrill and humourless.
Damn women eh? Keep shooting themselves in the foot by not accepting whatever progress gets thrown down from the top table without question. Keep undermining their cause by not smiling and saying thankyou and being generally gracious.
IBM are a big company. Campaigns like that go through many stages of design and approval. Is it too much to ask for someone in that chain to say - hey....you know what....this might actually play into the same lazy stereotypes about girls and science that has been so talked about lately, is it worth us maybe consulting with women in the industry to see what they think?
What I think needs to happen--and I know I'm basically alone in this--is we need to encourage boys into teaching, nursing, etc. It's not "boys' jobs are automatically better, let's raise the girls to their standard," rather it's "all jobs are legitimate, make the boys (and everyone else) stop shitting on the jobs that have been traditionally done by women." At the same time, greater participation in these fields from men would drain off some of the questionable-to-downright-bad STEM guys, leaving more openings and demand for the talented STEM gals.
The best nurse I encountered when my FIL was in and out of the hospital a year ago was a dude. He was so compassionate. That guy rocked.
Oh, and teachers? No way would I ever be a teacher. That job is way too demanding. I don't have what it takes. My wife comes home every day, and the stories she tells. I wouldn't survive an hour.
The very idea that we need to "do something" for, or to, or about girls actually perpetuates the lowered expectations.
What I think needs to happen--and I know I'm basically alone in this--is we need to encourage boys into teaching, nursing, etc. It's not "boys' jobs are automatically better, let's raise the girls to their standard," rather it's "all jobs are legitimate, make the boys (and everyone else) stop shitting on the jobs that have been traditionally done by women." At the same time, greater participation in these fields from men would drain off some of the questionable-to-downright-bad STEM guys, leaving more openings and demand for the talented STEM gals.
I very much agree with this. I do think there needs to be a concerted effort to make STEM areas more conducive to female participation - but that's not about making science and tech more interesting for girls, it's about making the fields in which those things are studied less unwelcoming of them, by degendering them. Not by reinforcing gender stereotypes.
But the reason I want that to happen, isn't because science and tech jobs are better, or that male dominated industries are more important - even though they are remunerated and treated as such. It's because girls are just as able to follow those paths and just as likely to want to if the barriers are removed. It's great for the girls because they get to fulfil their potential without being streamed off in childhood to something that is simply considered more appropriate to their gender. And it is good for society, because it means we have a much wider pool of potential talent to draw from.
Absolutely the same thing applies to nursing, teaching and caring. It is fucking surreal that we as a society consider those jobs as somehow a lesser career choice, and that they pay so much less. Purely because they are fields that involve attributes we consider primarily female. When a job type changes from being considered mainly male, to mainly female, it drops down in respect and reward. Secretarial work is a classic example of that, as is teaching.
How many potentially awesome nurses and carers do we lose because boys get discouraged, directly or indirectly, from entering those fields. The further down the age scale you move, the more female dominated teaching becomes (though not, it has to be said when it comes to head teachers/principles and management). It is rewarded more as you move up into deeper subject teaching with older children - because teachers of young children get kind of dismissed a little as child carers - which is bizarre really. First - child caring is fucking hard work and requires a lot of mental agility, and second, teaching small children who aren't yours is not the same as babysitting - it requires years of training and learning about how to teach and manage a classroom, the psychology of learning and a host of other highly specialist skills and knowledge.
So we get a double-bind. Femaleness is once again the factor that devalues - and it sets the scene for further devaluation and segregation - whilst at the same time robbing boys of some of their opportunities to reach their potential and find success and fulfilment.
The best nurse I encountered when my FIL was in and out of the hospital a year ago was a dude. He was so compassionate. That guy rocked.
Oh, and teachers? No way would I ever be a teacher. That job is way too demanding. I don't have what it takes. My wife comes home every day, and the stories she tells. I wouldn't survive an hour.
I couldn't teach children. It's my idea of hell. Young people, cool. I'll teach university students with delight. But kids? No.
I've known some awesome male nurses and carers. And I have knownguys working unfulfilling sales jobs that would probably have made fantastic nurses had that ever been presented to them as something other than an oddity when they were growing up.
You don't break down barriers by erecting a smaller fence made of the same wood.
I got drawn back into this discussion, but I actually came in to post something else :P
Because then there are the times that I just think, oh ffs, get a grip. The IBM campaign was an own goal, because it was clumsy and could easily have been done so much better. A major player - one of THE major players in tech and they couldn't be bothered to get it right on a campaign for something they apparently consider very important.
And then there's this - where really, you have to ask, are they damned if they do and damned if they don't?
We just had the 'how many female characters are on the screen and how many good female roles are available in comparison to men' debate - indeed it is currently raging. One of the key players in big budget hollywood movie making tries to do something about that and seems to actually, largely, get the point and this is the response:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/02/female-friendly-film-star-wars-the-revenant-old-fashioned-nonsense
Abrams’ assumption that in order for a movie to be female-friendly it has to have women in it is on the same spectrum as Wells’s claim that women won’t cope watching men clobber each other for a couple of hours.
No, it isn't. And no, that's not what he said. A male film-maker decides that, in an iconic sci-film film franchise, with a large cast of characters who have traditionally tended to be mostly male, having some of them be female, and those female characters not be gold bikin-clad, decorative rescue objectives, might make the film more appealing and enjoyable for female fans and allow that franchise to possibly occupy a similar cultural role amongst mothers and daughters as it has previously occupied for fathers and sons - and gets roasted.
Nowhere did he say, or even imply, that women only watch films with female characters. He did recognise the extreme imbalance, not just in the number of female to male characters, but in the level of agency those characters are given, and in how they are presented, that has always existed in the Star Wars franchise. There were always girls and women who liked Star Wars - and girls and women have always read/watched fiction with male protagonists and mainly male casts of characters - because otherwise we'd have about 30% of current fictional output to choose from. But actually - it is kind of nice to watch a movie, or read a book and have some good male and good female characters. It does get a bit wearisome, as a sci-fi fan, when all the good characters are guys and you can count the interesting female characters on one hand.
A film with a small and tight cast of characters that is all or mostly male, doesn't bother me - why would it? I get just as into that - I'm just as happy to associate into a male character as I am a female character, if it's well-rounded and engaging. But a film or show with a large cast of characters, unless it is set in the army or a male prison or something, that doesn't have some interesting and active female characters feels off. And if the female characters that are included just seem there for ornamentation or mission objective, or are always declawed or made powerless, undercut in some way, no matter how kick ass they seem to be, that gets a little stale.
I was into Star Wars as a little girl. We all were - kids, I mean. When it first came out, it wasn't a boy's film, it was a family adventure film. I went to see it with my mum, dad and big brother. My best friend, David, had all the models. Millenium Falcon and everything. Our little gang used to play Star Wars. I used to get really pissed off, because I always had to be Princess Leia. Because she was the only real female character, and whilst, at times I could be a boy, if we were playing army, for instance, none of the boys could be Princess Leia, because she was a girl. And as Leia, I mainly got rescued. I got to dance about doing toy fighting, but it always ended up with me waiting to be rescued. David was a bit of a stickler for the plot of Star Wars.
And that's my roundabout way of saying that I appreciate the effort with this new Star Wars, to do something a little better and have female characters who are relatable and exciting for the little girls who see it and play it with their friends.
The very idea that we need to "do something" for, or to, or about girls actually perpetuates the lowered expectations.
What I think needs to happen--and I know I'm basically alone in this--is we need to encourage boys into teaching, nursing, etc. It's not "boys' jobs are automatically better, let's raise the girls to their standard," rather it's "all jobs are legitimate, make the boys (and everyone else) stop shitting on the jobs that have been traditionally done by women." At the same time, greater participation in these fields from men would drain off some of the questionable-to-downright-bad STEM guys, leaving more openings and demand for the talented STEM gals.
[SIZE="5"]THIS[/SIZE] Clodfobble nails it once again.
Each individual should be considered on their own merits and talents relative to the task.
I like Danas comment about unfulfilled sales guys, similar thing in reverse
Yep - because obviously, in order to make science and engineering attractive to women, it must first be translated into something they can relate to: haircare and beauty.
Big assumption that was IBM's strategy.
Women already in STEM fields were not impressed and took to Twitter. Some of the tweets are great.
They were not the target of the campaign.
Good on IBM for trying. Good on them for their swift response. Please do better next time - it does matter. Stop focusing on changing the content to make it relatable for women
How about stop changing the content because of criticism from a few . There's no way to make everyone happy.
and start making tech fields more welcoming of women in a way that doesn't make them feel like someone on an exchange trip from Venus.
Hmm... affirmative action. Sure, nobody could criticize that.
"Hack a Heat Gun". In small print - if you don't have a heat gun, you can use a regular household hair dryer.
How does a heat gun, even when a hair dryer is suggested as an alternative, become a campaign based on "hair care and beauty"? That's a stretch, even for nitpickers.
An additional thought:
I wonder, what it was that drew in the women already working in STEM. What was it about physics, or engineering, or coding that got them so interested as girls? What was it about their learning environment that made them feel that was open to them, despite the barriers that companies like IBM are now trying to address?
Maybe IBM could consult with them. Find out what got them interested in science and technology and what made them as girls follow that path. That might inform a useful campaign. Unless, of course, were suggesting that those women were unlike other girls, because they were interested in science and technology.
I'd bet a lot of money the answer would be "I don't know", or more likely there was one person in their youth, Dad, older brother, teacher, Mr Wizard next door, who was always messing with stuff and took the time to explain what/why they were doing. That sparked her interest in science and wanting to emulate people she admired. Whatever, I'm 99% sure it was a person, not a corporate campaign.
But there are other drop off points throughout that are more problematic. When kids reach that age there's a drop off from STEM across the board.
~~~~~~
So, what is happening to those girls who were interested in those subjects, and who saw the value of scientific curiosity and then dropped away?
Peer pressure, wanting to fit in by having the same mindset and goals as the popular girls?
You won't get more girls by focussing on beauty products. There's a small chance you might get a different group of girls - but I very much doubt that a girl with no interest in scientific subjects, or engineering will change her mind because someone showed her how to hack a hairdryer. The girl who will be interested in hacking a hair dryer, was probably already into science and tech, rather than already being into harirdryers.
HEAT GUN, it's the critics who have twisted this into hairdryers and beauty.
OK, do you think the
women in the PR department have any technical/mechanical background, and could suggest a better idea than a heat gun, or would object the adding the hairdryer footnote when somebody said kids aren't likely to have a heat gun even if they know what it is?
I know you're fully aware of the problems. I also know most women agree with some part of it, and others are happy with their life and don't get it at all. Think of the Republican women who have stated women shouldn't hold public office. IBM's campaign targeted a specific group, maybe too broad, maybe to narrow, I don't know. But I do know that if they get shit every time they try to do something good, they'll stop completely.
The heat gun was me, not IBM. I was suggesting a less haircare-oriented approach they could have taken.
They were not the target of the campaign.
.
No, they were not. But, they may have some insight into the issue at hand.
The ad uses the hair dryer to make all kinds of empowering puns. The woman narrating talks about "blowing away the misconceptions" and "blasting through the bias."
"It's not what covers your cranium that counts," she says.
It's this all over again:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ibm-apology-hack-a-hair-dryer_5665a739e4b08e945ff004c9OK, thanks. That means nobody in PR thought it was sexist or hair care and beauty related.
The heat gun was me, not IBM. I was suggesting a less haircare-oriented approach they could have taken.
Thanks for pointing that out. I had intended to respond to your post, because I thought it was excellent, but then I got distracted with other posts.
Why do companies/corporations so routinely get the tone wrong? With all of this stuff such a big part of cultural discourse right now, how did nobody at IBM think to query this? How was this not picked up? It's fucking obvious.
I do agree that it's unfortunate that their efforts have ended up with a backlash. It's a shame. But - sometimes, it isn't enough just to try, you actually need to get it right.
Now, I don't know, because I am not privy to how they came up with this campaign, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the main creative input into the specifics of what that advert would look like, were male. I also wonder, as many of the articles have, how many of the 25% of IBM management that are women had sight of the drawing boards and scripts before they made them.
Cause it's not fucking obvious.
Almost anything has the potential for an outrageous take that seems obvious after the fact. To see it before the outrage is much more difficult. Like the hidden arrow in the Fedex logo, you can not notice it for 20 years; and then, once it's pointed out, you can't NOT see it.
I expect women helped to design this program. It's likely a woman thought of it. (IBM is a STEM company so the all chicks work in Marketing. :b ) "Did they think to run it past" of course they ran it past. Yeah, they did. It's a corporation, every single thing is vetted nine different ways. A place like that, you can't take a shit without getting a buck slip signed by two vice-presidents.
And if the question came up during vetting: is using hair dryers sexist? One would only have had to ask at the conference room table: who here uses a hair dryer? And 90% of the women would raise their hands, and 0% of the men.
And there would be jokes made around it, because half the men would be balding, and could not possibly use a hair dryer ever. And so hair dryers, anyone would conclude, are merely a simple tool that women in particular use, most of them every single day.
While 90% of the women are drying their hair every morning, are they thinking "this is a terribly sexist thing I'm doing"?
and 0% of the men
I miss the 70s. ;)
Ok. I take it back. Apparently, it is not obvious that attempting to make science more female friendly by showing them all the fun things girls can do with a hairdryer might be perpetuating the cultural link between girls and beauty and the idea that science needs to be made more girly, for girls to get it.
So much has been wrong for so long, it's easy to agree with comments that ring even possibly true. The people who are negative about everything attempted, should come up with a better way, like you suggested, and with enough online push and chatter the corporations will listen. Unfortunately there will still be some habitually negative people who will pick those ideas apart so you need numbers to fight them.
Fight them is a negative term, how about show the majority are rational.
Lots of people, particularly, but not exclusively, women, have been telling the STEM industries what the problems might be and how they might be addressed, for quite a long time now. There are some really good initiatives reaching kids in schools and colleges, and they might be part of why female participation in science and tech subjects, past the primary education age, and into later study has grown substantially. There's a lot of really solid research and case study work to draw from.
It is not that people haven't been offering better ideas. It is that the STEM industry giants have only listened with one ear. They've heard and understood that women actually should be, for a more equal society, but more importantly for better industry, more equally present in their fields. They clearly want to do something about it. IBM has made progress in terms of women in management that really matters. But - they're not prepared to listen to the rest of it. They don't want to know, possibly because they are still overwhelmingly managed by men, all that boring, icky shit about sexism and stereotypes that women keep banging on about.
Here's an example of an alternative approach focused on school age children, on sparking the desire for scientific exploration and a sense of the possible. Note that the way they show and encourage girls into STEM subjects is by encouraging a bunch of kids of both genders to explore science and technology. Degendering, rather than regendering.
http://www.girlsintostem.co.uk/So what's the answer? How do you get girls to be interested in STEM jobs? How do you get boys to be interested in teaching and nursing?
I've personally tried to involve my daughter in the tinkering activities I do, and she will respond in order to spend a little time with me, but as we get into whatever the project is, she wanders off to go read a book. Maybe I'm doing or saying something unconsciously that turns her away, or maybe she just has no interest in this stuff. And my boy is the opposite. He starts and finished his own projects without me. He devours this stuff.
It's a small sample size, but something is grabbing his attention and not hers.
That's right, glatt, you're children are suffering your shortcomings. :lol2:
Isn't that every decent parent's nightmare, true or not, because there's no way to know if you're doing the right thing for that particular child. I've heard parents say they think they did good and the kids OK, if he/she reflects some of the parents values. Is that raising clones instead of free thinking humans? Is having free thinking children worth the anguish? :haha:
That may be just be two different kids with two different sets of interests and proclivities who just happen to correspond broadly with what we assume their gender will be into. I've known sibling pairs who were exact opposite.
Or it could be the influence of the wider culture in which they live, and over which you as a parent have only minimal control. It's very difficult to tell. The world is noisy with messages, and clearly some girls do get put off somewhere along the line, as boys also get put off. How many little boys are quite content to follow mum round the house 'helping' her vacuum, only to lose that the moment they walk through the school gates?
It takes a fairly strong sense of self, to forge your own way as a small child. Most of us will get pushed or pulled in some direction along the way - to lesser or greater degrees. Maybe we'll let something go that we used to find interesting - forget we ever liked it by the time we're 12. Maybe we just didn;t explore a thing that kind of intrigued us but felt vaguely transgressive, or socially dangerous. Like the little boy who really likes playing in the wendy house.
*shrugs* it's a complex soup of stuff, some of which we have it in us to change, some of which might never change, some of which should or shouldnt change.
They don't want to know, possibly because they are still overwhelmingly managed by men, all that boring, icky shit about sexism and stereotypes that women keep banging on about.
You've pictured in your head how the IBM decision-making process went, and you applied all the stereotypes you could think of, and here we are. The thing must be run by men, men must have made the decisions, they don't want to know, hence they were clueless, hence the result.
Your narrative and this entire thing comes out of stereotyping men and the IBM decision making process. What's up with that.
IBM is run by a woman. She wears a hairstyle that requires blow-drying.I was being facetious and my description of the decison-making process was meant to be humorous. But also to recognise an eseential truth about STEM companies as they are right now, which is that at a strategic and managerial level they are overwhelmingly male.
Yes - IBM is run by a woman. And yes, IBM have, partly through her pushing, increased the number of women in managerial positions. But - as a general rule, the CEO of a global tech giant, is unlikely, I'd have thought, to be micro-managing the specific editorial content of every part of a campaign like this. This advert was part of a larger initiative by the company to promote careers for women.
Even with a female CEO, IBM at a strategic and managerial level is three-quarters male. Unless she is specifically involving herself at every level of this campaign, rather than running the company, and unless IBM have specifically tasked their female management with this campaign, then there is a statistical likelihood that the majority of those making decisions about what makes the cut across the various components in this campaign are men.
And the fact that she might use a hairdryer is besides the point.
I'm now trying to find evidence of the original campaign and cannot find any.
We didn't need it anyway -- but if anyone can point to evidence of the original campaign that would be great.
I like Danas comment about unfulfilled sales guys, similar thing in reverse
It is changing I think, slowly but I think it is gathering pace. The idea of nursing as a credible and respectable career for young men to go into is becoming much more culturally accepted than it once was. I quite often see male nurses in tv shows now where they were kind of a novelty thing at one time.
The generation coming of age now seem to have a much more fluid interpretation of gender than ours in many ways. When I see my nieces and their friends together, and the way they talk about stuff just seems a lot less hung up on gender and notions of 'girl's stuff' and 'boy's stuff'. The boys seem way more comfortable and confident in talking about emotional matters than the boys of my youth, and the girls don't seem to consider that there may be any barriers in the way of them doing anything. Amelia is one of only a few girls in her cohort for her subject at university, and generally ends up in mostly male projects and she hasn't experienced any of that exclusionary behaviour that dogged a lot of the girls who went into male fields of study a few years ago (and I have heard tales of that still going on in a few areas) - the lads weren't remotely phased by having a girl in their group and just got on with working together and being friends.
These kids have grown up in an education system that really tried, consciously, to off-set some of the messages kids were being given about what was or was not for girls or boys. Hopefully, they mark the next leaps forward.
Some of the divisions are so arbitrary and ridiculous. The idea of a male nurse has only recently lost its novelty value in popular culture - yet that same popular culture assumes a paramedic is likely to be male.
It would be so nice if we could just draw and recruit the best carers and nurses and technicians and scientists from a pool of 100% of the population. Instead of shutting out, accidentally or deliberately, huge numbers of potential recruits just because we're hanging on to a narrow and reductive view of gender. Which is pretty much what Clod was saying.
I think much of the boys should, girls should, comes from parents, my little princess, my rugged lad. The manufacturers of toys and shit are playing to what has proven to sell, and kids don't buy toys, adults buy toys that fit the stereotypes they grew up with.
The original IBM ad would be of interest to see if it came from in house, or an agency. From an agency would probably get more rubber stamps and less eyeballs.
It is changing I think, slowly but I think it is gathering pace. The idea of nursing as a credible and respectable career for young men to go into is becoming much more culturally accepted than it once was. I quite often see male nurses in tv shows now where they were kind of a novelty thing at one time.
When I was friends with student nurses - we all worked together in a pub - there was one male nurse across the whole year.
I've just been discharged from hospital, and although the female nurses FAR outnumbered the men, within a week on one ward I had three male nurses. All younger than me, all obviously at the beginning of their careers, but I was heartened all the same. And given that the ward was mixed gastro-intestinal, albeit each individual section was gender separated, I think some of the male patients would have been pleased about this. When I walked to the Day Room I saw patients aged 20-70 (guessing). The older gents may have expected female nurses, and even been more comfortable with them. But the younger ones may have appreciated a bit of banter with their blood pressure cuffs and anal swabs.
Personally I didn't care. The only nurse I didn't like was the very brusque female senior nurse (female) who came back from two days loff and said, "Oh, you're still here then."
When I was young my peer group, which included several nurses, a dentist, and an anesthesiologist, assumed any male nurse was queer. A lot of guys were drafted right out of high school during the Vietnam War, and most had no trade when they got out. Consequentially the ones who became medics, and there were a ton of them, came out with something they could pursue, nursing. Then it became more common to see male nurses in hospitals, although schools, clinics, and doctor's offices are primarily still female domain.
Stuff like this, as tiny as it is, really gets under my skin. Partly because it seems insane to me to bracket children so tightly (and if it is so fucking natural and innate why do the people who feel that way also seem to feel the need to encourage and reinforce it so strongly in children?), but also because it resonates with some of my own experience of growing up - where what I thought being a girl should be didn't always match what the culture I was in thought being a girl should be. To be clear I mean the wider culture - my family pretty much let me be what I wanted to be and explore what I wanted to explore - which was a range of stuff some of which was seen as boyish by others some of which was more 'girly'.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/dec/05/girls-can-be-pirates-too
I am with my three-year-old twin daughters at a princess and pirate-themed child’s birthday party where there is an Anna from Frozen character dishing out temporary tattoos. She is, however, nonplussed by their preferences. “Are you sure you don’t want a princess one? Look at this sparkly tiara! Or there’s this fairytale castle!”
“No, this one please.”
“Are you really sure?” Lookalike Elsa’s wide eyes look to me for confirmation.
“She’s sure,” I say, pointing to the skull and crossbone tattoo. “She loves pirates.”
“Oh-kay,” says Elsa. “If you’re really sure. Look! Here’s a glittery wand!”
“No thanks,” my daughter says. “I really like this one.”
By now I’m giggling. I’ve just spotted my daughter’s twin sister behind her in the queue, and she’s holding a transfer with a pirate’s galleon on.
“Another unusual choice! There’ll be none left for the boys!”
Daughter number two looks absolutely crestfallen. Her hand falters. “Of course you can have a pirate one too!” I overcompensate for Elsa’s overly pencilled arched eyebrows.
“My girls are really into all things pirate. They love Peter Pan and Swashbuckle’s their favourite CBeebies programme …” My girls break into a rendition of the Swashbuckle pirate salute, and nearby parents smile. They don’t think my daughters are odd. Do they?
“Proper pair of tomboys you’ve got there.” Elsa’s parting shot.
“I’m not a boy!”
“I’m a girl, not Tom boy. She’s a silly lady!”
“Yes, she is a bit silly, isn’t she?”
Even before that:
At their two-year health check, one of the tests was to identify words on picture cards. I spotted the friendly childcare assistant quietly putting aside certain cards, while cherry-picking others with an excited, “Ooh, you’ll get this one!”
What was on the discarded pile? You guessed it, pictures that could be considered to be for boys: trucks, tractors, worms and dragons. As soon as I spotted what was happening, I asked the lady just to turn the cards as they came up, explaining that my twins loved playing with a range of toys. I know she’d meant well, but it just sat too awkwardly with me not to say anything. Why should they only get to look at princesses and ponies? Why should their world be shrunk in such a way?
There's quite a bit more, but this bit struck me as particularly interesting, given the earlier comments about the effect of this stuff on boy's opportunities:
A friend recently asked me whether she should be concerned that when she picks up her three-year-old boy from nursery he’s often dressed as a fairy. Another friend’s son is usually to be found pushing a vacuum cleaner or making everyone cups of pretend tea. She gets constant comments about him being “soft”.
“It’s worse for boys,” both friends have said when we’ve nattered about our non-fixed-gender-play conformist children. They feel that girls can get away with being tomboyish, but with boys the assumption is that there’s something seriously wrong with them if they embrace what are considered to be feminine traits and behaviours. “I bet you’ve not seen a boy attend at a themed party in a dress …”
Until this month, they would have been right. That was before Paul Henson, a dad from Virginia, posted a picture on Facebook of his son dressed in his Halloween costume of choice – Elsa from Frozen. Paul explained that his son had chosen this costume for a Halloween party, and that he’d also asked him to go along as Anna, something he was game to do. “Halloween is about children pretending to be their favourite characters. Just so happens, this week his is a princess.” The post went viral, featuring on BuzzFeed, and had over 28,000 Facebook shares in a week.
What an awesome dad.
Why the fuck shouldn't a little boy play at being a princess? We're fine as fucking dandy with him imagining himself as a dying soldier (remember how fun death throes were as a kid? They were the best part of a pretend battle), or a gun-wielding criminal, a morally questionable, rage-driven super hero, a tiger, a lion, a wolf, or an alien species from a different galaxy - but to imagine themselves momentarily as a female character is an unnatural and dangerous reach.
If boys wear dresses the Ghey can sneak up from beneath, even kilts invite the Debbil hisself. :yesnod:
I'm now trying to find evidence of the original campaign and cannot find any.
We didn't need it anyway -- but if anyone can point to evidence of the original campaign that would be great.
Hereby documented: the first time the outrage machine had no original source. It's self-aware now, and of course, growing. Good luck to all of us. :yeldead:
A spokesperson for IBM said: “The videos were part of a larger campaign to promote STEM careers. It missed the mark for some and we apologise. It is being discontinued.”
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/07/ibm-sparks-anger-with-hackahairdryer-campaign-aimed-at-women
I've seen in a couple of articles, particularly the ones which are more sympathetic to IBM's situation, descriptions of some other elements of the campaign. But I have seen so many articles about it, I can't recall which ones they were.
I was happy to take IBM's word for it that this was only one element of their attempt to engage girls, rather than the entirety of it.
Hereby documented: the first time the outrage machine had no original source. It's self-aware now, and of course, growing. Good luck to all of us. :yeldead:
How hard did you look?I understand people's concern about the 'outrage machine'. On the other hand I also can see the frustration of those women who are in STEM with the same mistakes being made over and over by companies big enough and well-resourced enough to do better. Innovation is king in tech - but not apparently when it comes to trying to tackle gender inequality. It's the predictability of it all that is disheartening. And the drip, drip, drip of it.
From one of the articles HM cited:
A common complaint was the whole thing felt patronizing: Trying to attract women to tech with the lure of hairdryers, even with empowering language, felt a bit like offering pink lab coats to women instead of seriously addressing systemic barriers that discourage women from entering the tech industry. For instance, a 2014 Center for Talent Innovation study found that women in engineering and tech were far more likely to leave the industry than their male peers, at least in part due to factors like "hostile macho cultures," exclusion from the "buddy networks" of their peers and a lack of female role models.
How hard did you look?
Thanks. Your last link is the Facebook video page for the campaign with
60 shares and
3633 views.
That, I could not find. How long did it take you?
All I could find were stories about the program's termination. Which are your first four links. Your first four links are the outrage machine in operation.
The campaign was launched on October 2. At some point in October it was cancelled. That video was down before Google's cache of the page on December 1. So.
search Google News for "Hack a hair dryer". You get thousands of outrage take results.
Use Google's search tools to
restrict your search to October.
This is the period during when the campaign was launched, and the outrage machine is not visible. There are no criticisms of the campaign. The first search result is a Vimeo page of - I did a little digging - the Art Director for the Hack A Hair Dryer campaign! The video is gone, but the cached search result includes the tag:
"The concept: take a hairdryer – something typically viewed for beautifying purposes – and make it gender-neutral..."
Here is the idea that made it through corporate. The original campaign actually INCLUDED the outrage take!
The first result not from IBM is
a reaction to the campaign from the blog: "Tech Savvy Women". Their blog entry is still live and so you can see how women in tech reacted, when the outrage take hadn't launched:
One of the ways we will increase the number of women in STEM fields is to break through traditional thinking and consider a different perspective. A program that is embracing this idea is the Hack a Hair Dryer campaign. The idea is to take something feminine that is used on a regular basis and transform it to serve a different purpose.
It would appear that the outrage engine geared up on December 7. (That's when it arrived here.) And the BBC story HM linked to points that out:
After running for a couple of months more or less unnoticed online, IBM's "hack a hairdryer" campaign suddenly attracted a barrage of criticism by Twitter users who called it patronising and sexist
The campaign's take "make it gender-neutral" was nuanced, a little complex. That's why an appealing, simpler take could outweigh it. Original campaign: 3,633 views. Outrage engine:
tens of thousands of news stories. Each story designed to tweak your outrage, and attract your attention, clicks, and shares.
But eventually we will not need the original campaign.
And one more thing... I'm actually sorry for getting geared up over this, it's just that I find it to be utterly fascinating!
And one more thing... I'm actually sorry for getting geared up over this, it's just that I find it to be utterly fascinating!
It is fascinating. I didn't think you were getting 'geared up' it just seemed like robust debate to me. I've really enjoyed the discussion - it's been some nice back and forth, and I learned a lot from it.
Thanks. Your last link is the Facebook video page for the campaign with 60 shares and 3633 views.
That, I could not find. How long did it take you?
I googled "IBM hair dryer".
All I could find were stories about the program's termination. Which are your first four links. Your first four links are the outrage machine in operation.
And you what, assumed that they made it up? That a program that was terminated never existed?
It seems like you're searching so hard for the "outrage machine" that you're doing what you're claiming it does.
I googled "IBM hair dryer".
Ah, I should have done that. It's result #22!
And you what, assumed that they made it up? That a program that was terminated never existed?
Ha! Ha! Of course not!
Did you think when I said "the machine is self-aware" that I believed the machine was self-aware?
Come on now. It's gonna take at least another six months for that.
Why the fuck shouldn't a little boy play at being a princess? .
Hebe was going to a princess party. Hector got invited to go keep the brother company so it became a princess and king party. Hector insisted on a princess dress to match Hebe's. And got one. When he got there, the brother was in a long flowing robe as a bishop :lol:
I'll have to fish out the picture. He wore the shoes better than Hebe too
Dilbert creator's Scott Adams's words inserted into his comic:
http://mradilbert.tumblr.com/Yes, I like those. :thumb:
We've seen a number of girls shooting teams from colleges and high schools, but they are cheap to setup, a gun, target, and sturdy backstop. This flying club however is a much bigger commitment, those J-17 trainers can't be cheap to buy or operate. They might be from the Federal Government but this was two months before D-Day, when the war was hardly a given, and all materiel was part of the war effort, with no surplus yet. I suppose the Army Air Corps might have been training in this room and the club got time after hours.
From
here (BBC link) which is an article about a new film called Love You to Death by Vanessa Engle, detailing stories of women killed by partners in 2013.
In 2013, 164 women were murdered in Britain - 86 of whom (52%) were killed by their male partner or ex-partner. In that same year, 381 men were murdered in Britain, 12 of whom (3%) were killed by a female partner or ex-partner.
At least they were dealt with seriously by the Courts. There was a time when Judges routinely meted out lighter sentences for domestic murder, citing provocation.
Yeah, I read an article about that. Very interesting.
This caught my attention today:
One of Britain’s biggest exam boards has changed its A-level music syllabus to include female composers after a student launched an online campaign calling for better female representation on the course.
Jessy McCabe, 17, noticed that Edexcel’s A-level music syllabus featured 63 male composers and no female ones.
She contacted Edexcel to make it aware of the situation, but despite the board’s insistence that the music course aims to let students “engage in and extend the appreciation of the diverse and dynamic heritage of music”, its head of music seemed reluctant to implement any changes.
In response to an email from Jessy, the head of music wrote: “Given that female composers were not prominent in the western classical tradition (or others for that matter), there would be very few female composers that could be included.”
*chuckles* so because there would be very few female composers, they figured they'd just not include a single one. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it was less about difficulties in finding examples of female composers (though I accept certain periods and musical traditions would prove a challenge) so much as it just never occurred to them to actively include female composers, because this is how music has always been taught.
Well done to the lass who got them to change. And kudos to the exam board for making a relatively swift and genuine change in response (despite some early, kneejerk defensiveness and heel digging).
Pearson, the organisation that offers the Edexcel qualifications, has now implemented changes to its 2016 A-level music specification to include five new set works by female composers. They include Clara Schumann, Rachel Portman, Kate Bush, Anoushka Shankar and Kaija Saariaho.
Additionally, Pearson has reviewed the wider listening recommendations and there are now 12 works by female composers listed.
Speaking about the changes, Anderson said: “We have updated our music AS and A-level specification to achieve a better balance of female and male composers. We took on board feedback from Jessy and a range of experts to ensure we found the right balance.
“We are keen to ensure diversity is reflected through the qualification and we hope schools and students are pleased with this outcome. Jessy deserves recognition and congratulations for her successful campaign.”
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/dec/16/a-level-music-female-composers-students-campaign-jessy-mccabe-edexcelAnd then there's this:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/20/feminism-axed-a-level-politics-dfe-draft-protest
A move by the UK government to drop feminism from the A-level politics syllabus has triggered outrage among campaigners and students.
The section on feminism in a revised version of the course put to consultation by the Department for Education has been removed, along with the topics of sex/gender, gender equality and patriarchy. Furthermore, only one woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, appears in a list of seven political thinkers in the draft.
Now, I am guessing socialism and liberalism will both still be on that syllabus - and no doubt there will be stuff about class and labour relations - but let's not teach feminism as ever having been part of our political landscape or having had any role, at any time in its two centuries of history and multiple iterations and evolutions in shaping our current political systems and institutions.
And poor old Mary Wollstonecraft - always the only chick at the gig. She must get so fucking lonely.
And I am so tired of hearing the excuse that, women weren't part of the public picture for much of history - there weren't many women composers, or writers, or thinkers of prominence, or culture makers, or scientists or political animals. It's a lazy excuse - because there were always a few. They made an impact in their day but historians let them slide away unseen. So we compound that travesty by accepting the analysis of academics who did not consider women worth recording or investigating as historical subjects. We look back through the eyes of historians and cannot see any women and so we say, look there were no women - therefore to say that there were would be to misrepresent our past - a well-meaning lie to assuage modern sensibilities.
And it is important. This stuff matters.
Student June Eric-Udorie has launched a petition to urge Nicky Morgan, the education secretary and women’s minister, against going ahead with the changes and urged her to add more female thinkers to the A-level politics syllabus.
She writes: “When women are underrepresented in society, the government should be working to address this problem. As a young woman and student, it is imperative that girls and boys get the full picture at school, or we are doing them a disservice. It has been said that you cannot be what you cannot see. Female role models are important.”
The A-level music syllabus was probably created when women knew their place, and now it's reused over each year and making money with no work. These meddling wimmin are rocking the boat, shameful behavior, anti-business, not cricket, anti-tradition, eroding foundations of the empire, what are the posh to do. :facepalm:
All women, unless they have some serious medical condition, menstruate every month from the age of puberty until the menopause - so, if we say starting roughly from the age of 11 and going on roughly to the age of 50 that's around four decades. Every month for around forty years we have this thing to deal with. And yet, somehow our tax system in the UK continues to consider sanitary towels and tampons a 'luxury' item and therefore imposes sales tax. MPs recently voted to maintain that classification.
[YOUTUBE]s26g_U4qGXo[/YOUTUBE]
consider sanitary towels and tampons a 'luxury' item
Is "luxury item" how tax or not is determined? I think here they call it non-necessities, but amounts to the same thing I guess.
If they're not taxed, they become cheaper, and more women will buy them, then when women have them they'll get dressed, resulting in them wanting to leave the house, and clogging up traffic, and making TV dinners when the lord returns to the manor. :haha:
There are different bands of VAT (value added tax). In fairness to the government, the VAT system is byzantine and partly a matter of EU regulation. We end up with some truly bizarre classification issues. Such as the great Jaffa Cake tax question. I don't know iof you guys have Jaffa Cakes over there, but they're like the bastard child of cake and biscuit. The base is a kind of dense, dry, either cakey biscuit, or biscuity cake. They call it sponge cake. Then there's a layer of orange jam then chocolate.
Biscuits and cakes are in different VAT categories -
In the United Kingdom, value added tax is payable on chocolate-covered biscuits, but not on chocolate-covered cakes.[12] McVities defended its classification of Jaffa Cakes as cakes at a VAT tribunal in 1991, against the ruling that Jaffa Cakes were biscuits due to their size and shape, and the fact that they were often eaten in place of biscuits.[13] McVities insisted that the product was a cake, and according to rumour produced a giant Jaffa Cake in court to illustrate its point.[13] The product was assessed on the following criteria:[14][15]
The product's name was regarded as a minor consideration.
The ingredients were regarded as similar to those of a cake, producing a thin cake-like batter rather than the thick dough of a biscuit.
The product's texture was regarded as being that of a sponge cake.
The product hardens when stale, in the manner of a cake.
A substantial part of the Jaffa Cake, in terms of bulk and texture, is sponge.
In size, the Jaffa Cake is more like a biscuit than a cake.
The product was generally displayed for sale alongside other biscuits, rather than with cakes.
The product is presented as a snack and eaten with the fingers, like a biscuit, rather than with a fork as a cake might be. The tribunal also considered that children would eat them in "a few mouthfuls", in the manner of a sweet.
The court found in favour of McVities and ruled that the product should be considered a cake, meaning that VAT is not paid on Jaffa Cakes in the United Kingdom.[12][16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Categorisation_as_cake_or_biscuit_for_VAT
The argument against making menstrual products tax-exempt is that it is a problem under EU regulations (I'm not wholly sure why). The same is true of contraceptives. But - ya know - Cameron's currently going to the mat in Europe over the right to withhold in-work benefits from EU migrants, and they went to the mat to stop the EU enforcing limits on bankers' bonuses - and that's real fighting. That's not navigating a tricky bureacratic monolith and trying to iron out the quirks, that's the full-on drawing of lines in the sand and threats to leave the Union. But they vote, with barely a ripple, against any attempt to make these essential products, that all women, rich or poor will have to use for most of their adult lives, if they want to be able to fully and freely participate in the world outside their homes and not have to hide away one week in four, exempt.
We're not talking about staggering sums here - it's maybe a difference of around .30p per woman, per month. But that shit matters if you're already buying the super cheap 20p per tin spaghetti bolgnese, or 15p baked beans to survive. That extra 30p, is a fucking meal.
Anyways. I came in here to post this:
I remember the Everyday Sexism site launching and have read some of Laura Bates's articles -but I'd never seen her speak. This is an excellent talk:
[youtube]LhjsRjC6B8U[/youtube]
Is it all menstrual products, or is it like cake/biscuit where tampons are taxed but pads are not? I only ask because everyone keeps very distinctly talking about tampons and nothing else.
It's all menstrual products. It just got christened the Tampon Tax because of our media's obsession with alliteration :p
"Tampon Tax" is a media soundbite.
Towels are taxed too.
ETA - I was too slow - see above.
15p baked beans to survive
You have hunger in Britain?
Aheh. Oh yes. Numbers of people having to resort to foodbanks on a regular basis (usually if they're referred to the foodbank they can get a food parcel once a month) are through the roof.
My monthly income, including wages, housing benefit assistance and council tax benefit is less than £800. My rent alone is £375. If I kept up with all the payments on all the stuff I'm supposed to pay - rather than juggling around and missing alternate months , falling into arrears or getting extensions etc etc - my outgoings outstrip my income by about £150 per month.
I count myself fairly fortunate. I know many are having even bigger struggles trying to raise families on not much more than I have for me and the dog. And through ythe miracle of lifts from mum I have easy access to the stores that sell beans so low. A lot of people make the choice between having enough to eat and keeping their houses warm. Fuel prices are ridiculously high here.
If you're a youngster, under 25 things are even harder.
A family cannot live on beans alone.
An example of a request from a food bank for people donating suggests items such as:
Milk (UHT or powdered)
Fruit juice (carton)
Soup
Pasta sauces
Tomatoes (tinned)
Cereals
Tea Bags/instant coffee
Instant mash potato
Rice/pasta
Tinned meat/fish
Tinned fruit
Jam
There are other suggestions, but those are the basics. Protein, sugar, carbs, fibre. Items which don't require much preparation.
And how could we survive without hot drinks, especially tea (says me, who only gets tea in hospital)?
Things used to be worse of course.
My Dad grew up eating sugar sandwiches when the money ran out. But his Dad was a drinker.
My Grandad's parents (and subsequently Great Aunty Alice) could make a roast last four days. For a whole family.
And poor families these days are more likely to scrape up enough money to go to the local chippy than use that money to keep a goose or a rabbit in their backyard.
But times have changed.
You don't expect the super-rich to have their staff serve lukewarm food because of the trek from the kitchens to the table.
So why expect those who are struggling with poverty to keep and kill their own meat.
Probably illegal in most low-cost housing anyway.
Most people who use foodbanks use them temporarily. Often only once or twice. They get to fill their bellies - and those of their children - with cheap, bland food, but the money goes instead to keep the wolf from the door long enough to recover. An electricity or gas bill paid, power back on, bus fare to work that month until payday, a new pair of shoes for a schoolchild etc.
Some need longer term help, but in general a foodbank is a stop-gap.
Crikey me, when I was working I used to send shoeboxes to UK troops serving overseas. "Luxury" items like boiled sweets, decent razors, toothpaste that didn't taste of old socks.
Hmm... I wonder how you know what old socks taste like. :greenface
Knowing someone who volunteers in a food bank several days a week, I hear stories about the difficulty of both getting and handling perishables. Also the purely subjective opinions of the volunteers about the attitudes of "customers" grouped by age, sex, race, etc. Who are grateful, respectful, cooperative, demanding, combative, obnoxious, etc. I won't repeat them here because they are opinions and not conclusive, but...
Lord you know it ain't easy,
you know how hard it can be,
The way things are going,
They're gonna crucify me.;)
I guess it depends on your grasp of history. :rolleyes:
Wapo says, never buy the pink one.
Radio Flyer sells a red scooter for boys and a pink scooter for girls. Both feature plastic handlebars, three wheels and a foot brake. Both weigh about five pounds.
The only significant difference is the price, a new report reveals. Target listed one for $24.99 and the other for $49.99.
The scooters' price gap isn't an anomaly. The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs compared nearly 800 products with female and male versions — meaning they were practically identical except for the gender-specific packaging — and uncovered a persistent surcharge for one of the sexes. Controlling for quality, items marketed to girls and women cost an average 7 percent more than similar products aimed at boys and men.
Supply and demand, man. Nobody wants that shit, so you're gonna pay for it.
We always get mad at the people who price things. But it's mostly the people who BUY things who are responsible for the price.
This signal tells us that the people who want to make their girls into little Princesses are absolutely willing to pay the price.
This is how it actually works. The scooter HAD to be priced that way in order to sell.
And when Princess grows up? She continues to live her Princess lifestyle of course! Don't you DARE TRY to tell an American woman that her hair and skin products are pretty much bullshit. Of COURSE they are more expensive!!! and that's because women are precious delicate flowers!!! and if she doesn't use a product that says it will ADD! NUTRIENTS!! to her HAIR!!!, she knows there's a chance her hair will smell like industrial waste and probably fall out in clumps.
They also made 50x more of the boy version. Production scales have a lot to do with it also. Oh, and don't forget the cost of shelf space for that pink crap which doesn't sell nearly as fast but they HAVE TO have or else the lawsuits will fly....
Yup - you want it - Pay for it.
Please. They injected a different color dye into the plastic and a different sticker on top and it flies off the shelves.
And please. Nobody is suing anyone for what scooter is not being marketed. That one is gender horror fantasy and beneath you and deserves two lol heads :lol: :lol:
The pink scooter is a gateway indulgence.
[YOUTUBE]29_RZ82aZ6A[/YOUTUBE]
I read a counter argument that this article cherry picked low priced shit, and if the entire spectrum of consumer buying is considered, things targeted at men cost more. He cited cars which are practical transportation compared to sporty cars with all the bells and whistles, and big enough houses compared to homes five times bigger than you need with a pool/tennis courts.
I don't think that's a valid argument because that's spending choices vs pricing structure, although they're both marketing, and there's a lot of factors shaping buyers choices
This 1916 book extols the wisdom of teaching girls to use their hands for more than cooking and sewing. Of course there are always some people bucking the status quo, but I wonder about the timing here. WW I was rearing it's ugly head at us. If we got in deep, who would produce the materiel and tend the home front? I don't think that came about until WW II, but manual arts training might be good for the industrial boom coming post war. A bigger potential labor force helps keep wages down.
Or it could be some do-gooder trying to help the oppressed, although the money in that is mostly in selling the book. Cynical? Moi? :rolleyes:
Great find that, bruce.
Here's an old video that popped up on youtube links:
[YOUTUBE]srnaXW9ZgZc[/YOUTUBE]
Just to be a pedant - may be a cultural issue or practical failing not a religious one (as in the woman lost/ damaged her shoes). The babies may simply be more comfortable with her. And after all, I've seen plenty of white (presumably Christian) men allow women to struggle with babies and shopping.
The walking female child has shoes after all, and is not carrying her ?sibling?
I only say this because of the many educated and successful Muslim women I've worked with, whose fathers have supported and paid for their education up to and including Masters degrees.
There are serious gender equalities in the poorest nations of the world, and many countries which are predominately Muslim, and especially where they overlap. But they don't have the exclusive right to "barefoot and pregnant".
That picture, complete with caption, supposedly came from a Brit newspaper.
That picture, complete with caption, supposedly came from a Brit newspaper.
Why is everyone dancing around the issue? A 'grossly in error' title actually promotes hate. The title should read "Feminism in the Human world". Since that attitude is not unique to Islam.
Or probably more accurate, "Feminism in a wacko extremist's world". Since extremists make these mistakes only because that was how it was always done.
Extremists typically are not team players. Need one observe our House of Representatives to see same?
That picture, complete with caption, supposedly came from a Brit newspaper.
That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
The British [print] press have extraordinary knee-jerk reactions. As long as it sells a paper, it's fair game.
I think it was Iain Banks who wrote that the aphorism "the first casualty of war is truth" was naive in suggesting that truth in print was an existing commodity outside of conflict.
Two moves in the right direction.
Child custody is something that should be decided on a case by case basis, according to what is best for the child and family concerned. That is impossible if the start point is an assumption that the mother is first choice for custody unless someone can give a compelling reason for her not to be.
At one time fathers were considered the last word in custody. Only if a child was still an infant, would custody be given to the mother and even then it wasn't a guarantee. That led to some appalling situations, given that men generally didn't do the child-rearing.
Assuming that the mother is automatically the better parent also opens the door to a great deal of misery. I know plenty of people who'd have been far better off if they'd been raised by their dads instead of their mums.
From the assumptions of the patriarchal rights of men, to assumptions of the natural mothering skills of women - both based on rigid concepts of gender and potentially damaging when applied to individual families.
One of 29 maps at
WomenStats showing the worldwide condition of problems women face.
That's a fuckton of places coloured red.
I would be interested to see an equivalent map for men. I suspect that it would not be greatly different.
On November 11th, 1817, Mary M Archer placed this ad on the front page center of a Philadelphia newspaper which was predominantly notices of ships leaving for or arriving from the far corners of the Earth. I sounds like a serious attempt to start a school teaching skills which could produce income, mostly for women.
Interesting early rendition of the $
I had my camera out in the supermarket because I saw something with Sheldon's name on it.
Wandered into the children's clothing aisle - which I don't often do, as the items are not on my list and it's not on my way to the checkouts.
Turns out boys like dinosaurs
[ATTACH]54911[/ATTACH]
and girls like pandas.
[ATTACH]54912[/ATTACH]
You go, girls - at least your chosen animal isn't extinct. Yet.
The children these clothes are aimed at would be my grandchildren's generation.
I don't know why I am so disappoint. Maybe because although I do genuinely have a thing for pink and sparkly (in the same way MI5 Special Agent Limey does for purple and knitted), I grew up in jeans and trainers.
I may be over-thinking this.
In which case it's me who is disappointing.
jebus those are ugly jumpers.
I don't know why I am so disappoint. Maybe because although I do genuinely have a thing for pink and sparkly (in the same way MI5 Special Agent Limey does for purple and knitted), I grew up in jeans and trainers.
But is your gut reaction against the idea that the girls aren't being taught practicality (as you were with your jeans and trainers,) or that they're being spoiled (as you only wore jeans and trainers because they were less expensive and could be handed down from your brother?)
As most of you know I have a strong interest in sexism and gender roles - how they arise, how they shift, and the current contours of our gendered culture.
Often I read an article, or series of articles, which set out, or highlight current areas of gender inequality...
6 Absurd Ways Modern Medicine Fails Because Of Sexism <---Cracked.com link, be warned.
I really liked that article, thanks Grav.
Very interesting that, Grav. Some of them I was aware of, but some were new to me.
But is your gut reaction against the idea that the girls aren't being taught practicality (as you were with your jeans and trainers,) or that they're being spoiled (as you only wore jeans and trainers because they were less expensive and could be handed down from your brother?)
I never had hand me down clothes from boys, only girls. My brother, in fact, had some of my hand me downs, because clothes were more gender-neutral then. I did wear dresses of course (in fact probably all my family photos have me in a dress, because photos were taken on special occasions).
I've thought about this a bit now. And I have to admit I'm still not sure why I don't like it. Maybe I'm a bit of a dinosaur myself.
I think it may be something to do with the lack of choice. Although I only took a photo of one of each item of clothing, the whole aisle was similar. Boys' clothes had dinosaurs, cars and trucks - right down to pants and socks. Girls' had fluff and froth and polka dots and frills.
And the market is driven by parents, which means long before these children have a sense of their own identity, they are being dressed in a gender specific way. And in my mind an outdated idea of gender.
But what would I prefer? Parents having no choice and everyone dressing in Communist era boilersuits? No, not at all. And you weren't suggesting that either, Clod - this came as part of my self-questioning.
It just seems odd to me that in the West we live in a time and place where a woman can be a programmer, a pathologist, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist. But she grew up wearing sparkly polka-dot frou-frou little tops and knickers with sparkles on them. Whereas her brother can be a stay at home Dad, a carer, a nurse or a teaching assistant and he grew up wearing dinosaurs, monsters and trucks on his socks.
Obviously I'm painting with a broad brush. It may simply have been the impact of seeing row after row of separate identity clothing which startled me.
jebus those are ugly jumpers.
Actually I'd wear both if they were in my size ;)
Today's installment of
Girl Genius ended with this... :D
Looking at the global picture the anti-FGM movement is gathering force. I wonder how many more generations of girls and young women will have this barbarous act performed on them.
This is another of those things about some cultures' approaches to gender that fucking baffles me. It is so counterintuitive at a species level. Like parents driven by honour to douse a daughter in petrol and set her alight because she looked at a boy a couple of times and dishonour in the eyes of the community means a kind of social death for families. FGM, practiced in cultures that have as one of their central family goals the production of healthy babies, particularly sons, runs utterly counter to those goals. In order to control the sexual urges of girls and make them pure mothers and wives, they inflict physical injuries which massively increase the chances those women will be infertile, or unable to bear a healthy child.
What the almighty fuck was going through the minds of the people who first decided this would be a cracking good thing to do to their little girls?
[YOUTUBE]HN1mulqwv5g[/YOUTUBE]
... What the almighty fuck was going through the minds of the people who first decided this would be a cracking good thing to do to their little girls? ...
It was probably conceived by some rough equivalent to an MBA who figured it would work out cheaper than either chastity belts or letting nature take its course. The older women jumped on the bandwagon and made it trendy. They still do that today.
It would appear that barefoot and pregnant isn't the only option. ;)
Just the tip of the iceberg, so many more who never got credit...
[YOUTUBE]AmkM4YQpoXk[/YOUTUBE]
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/afghanistan-domestic-violence.aspx
The UNICEF-supported survey examined women's attitudes toward domestic violence as part of a larger study on maternal and child health. Women were asked a series of questions posing scenarios, or reasons, under which a husband would hit or beat his wife.
Overall, [SIZE="4"]92 percent of [SIZE="5"]women[/SIZE][/SIZE] in Afghanistan feel that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife for at least one of these reasons: going out without telling the husband, neglecting the children, arguing with the husband, refusing sex, and burning the food. Seventy-eight percent of women believe that going out without telling the husband is justification for beating, while 31 percent think the same about burning the food.
This same list of reasons has been used by the Demographic and Health Surveys in dozens of countries worldwide to measure attitudes toward domestic violence. The Afghanistan survey added an additional question to reflect local attitudes—wearing inappropriate clothes. Sixty-three percent of Afghan women feel a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife if she wears inappropriate clothing.
Not surprising, that's all they've ever known. One lesson they all... well, the ones still alive, learned young, is don't rock the boat, don't make waves, don't attract attention, don't piss anybody off. That's been passed down from mother to child for a thousand generations.
Naaaaw. They're just kinky, consider disobedience foreplay, and like their foreplay rough.
:bolt:
And everyone knows the area is full of dope, so when someone says, stone her, they all cheer and pull out their BICs.
The first female cop in the US.
One politician was so sure of his gender stereotypes that he thought that introducing a gender equality amendment would be a poison pill.
It passed (in committee at least).
Hilarious. He can take his patriarchal bullshit and put it right back where it came from.
1965 Lord help the man who gets caught using one of these...
Looking at the picture two questions;
1- Why are they wearing confederate uniforms?
2- Where is a sign or caption saying the raised fist is anything but an expression of victory for these 16 people about to graduate from West Point, which is pretty fucking awesome.
Everything I read at your link, and the link in the link, is construed interpretation by people looking to be offended. Much ado about nothing. :rolleyes:
It's elementary my dear xoB,
The clenched fist can be a symbol or a salute; but, that's not how cadets are trained to salute.
It's a symbol of solidarity or support. People are asking with or for whom; because, the cadets aren't facing each other in the picture: they're facing the viewer. Who is the intended viewer they're using their military credentials to support by raising a clenched fist?
I've read the Wikipedia
List of gestures (which includes Single handed gestures - Clenched fist); also, the linked article
Raised fist and I don't see anywhere that the raised fist is a an "expression of victory" as you propose.
Of course you know a picture can be worth a thousand words, with no sign or caption needed, in which case the historical use of the gesture is what resonates. The cadets will have the opportunity to explain whether or not they were using their military credentials to express solidarity or support in a prohibited way. That's what it's about. Your contention that it's about people being offended is a red herring.
But so far these future military leaders aren't talking, go figure. ;)
WTF, you've never seen athletes punch the air when they are victorious?
Even the mild mannered, like chess players and pro wrestlers celebrate a victory.
But say you're right, and it's solidarity. Is it unusual for a military unit to express solidarity, be it basic training, a battle, or West Point? They certainly have something to celebrate after four years of pressure.
Why would these future military leaders say anything, nobody is asking them anything yet. Right now they are being tried by press in absentia.
But that doesn't explain why the leadership of this august institution requires black women to wear confederate uniforms.
The picture doesn't show them punching the air. There's a difference between punching the air and holding it:
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, medal winners John Carlos and Tommie Smith gave the raised fist salute during the American national anthem as a sign of black power, and as a protest on behalf of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. For this, they were banned from further Olympic activities. The event was one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympic Games.
The uniforms don't have to be politically correct; but, military personnel do and West Point cadets are considered part of the military. Perhaps you'd like to see all battleship gray military hardware painted chartreuse so as not to offend anyone. Feel free to write the Dept. of Heraldry which regulates these things. Another red herring. Watch out for mercury toxicity, it can make you do crazy things like trying to play the race card to deflect attention from an issue.
Why would these future military leaders say anything, nobody is asking them anything yet. Right now they are being tried by press in absentia.
That's what's expected of LEADERS. When their actions create controversy, the onus is on them to take the initiative and (situation permitting) explain themselves in the interest of organizational cohesion. Otherwise they're just followers which raises the question of which special interest group they're following and does their action represent prohibited political endorsement.
I pay for the military academy with my taxes and I would like it to be arbitrarily racist.
Military academies and the conventional military reflect society in general. It's not until you get into elite units that those who make it to that level see each other as the same color...olive drab.
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, medal winners John Carlos and Tommie Smith gave the raised fist salute during the American national anthem as a sign of black power, and as a protest on behalf of the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
Wrong, raised BLACK GLOVED fist salute.
Watch out for mercury toxicity, it can make you do crazy things like trying to play the race card to deflect attention from an issue.
You're confused, it's John Burk playing the race card, saying because these cadets are black, they must be giving a black power or black lives matter salute.
That's what's expected of LEADERS. When their actions create controversy, the onus is on them to take the initiative and (situation permitting) explain themselves in the interest of organizational cohesion.
Respond to every shit stirrer
outside the organization(Burk), for cohesion within the organization? If that were true the chiefs in the Pentagon wouldn't have time for anything else. There is absolutely nothing any person can do that can't be twisted into a controversy.
Military academies and the conventional military reflect society in general.
Piss poor example of leadership. :p:
Wrong, raised BLACK GLOVED fist salute.
You're confused, it's John Burk playing the race card, saying because these cadets are black, they must be giving a black power or black lives matter salute.Respond to every shit stirrer outside the organization(Burk), for cohesion within the organization? If that were true the chiefs in the Pentagon wouldn't have time for anything else. There is absolutely nothing any person can do that can't be twisted into a controversy.Piss poor example of leadership. :p:
Yes dear.
Real leadership is holding everyone to the same standard and not making exceptions for small groups of the same race, religion, gender...etc. because it becomes politically incorrect.
In your depiction of real leadership, everyone who needs to have their thoughts about race changed is white. You probably didn't even notice because ...
You're brainwashed.
Probably pussywhipped too; but, that's OK 'cause you're a short-timer. :D
Of course they're white, the black, brown, yellow, beige, plaid, and red people can't be prejudice, they told me so.
But when that was drawn, it was white people keeping black people out of the military.
Brainwashed? Yes, I have a clean mind.
Pussywhipped? Not a chance, that's why there's none in my life.
Menstrual Panties from Bloody Mary's have a detachable heating pouch, and a large selection of faces in the crotch you can bleed on.
That's kind of, um, disgusting and offensive. imho
Oh, absolutely. But also genius.
From the home of a giant porn industry.
A Japanese artist who made a kayak modelled on her vagina has been found guilty of breaking the country’s obscenity laws, in a case that has invited widespread ridicule of attitudes towards images of female genitalia.
Megumi Igarashi, who works under the pseudonym Rokudenashiko – or good-for-nothing girl – was arrested in July 2014 after she distributed data that enabled recipients to make 3D prints of her vagina.
The 44-year-old was fined 400,000 yen (£2,575), half the penalty demanded by prosecutors, at the Tokyo district court on Monday after she was convicted of distributing “obscene” images. She was cleared of another charge of displaying similar material.
Igarashi distributed the data to help raise funds to create a kayak inspired by her genitalia she called “pussy boat”.
linkFrom the country that brought you restaurants where food is eaten from the naked body of a woman, and where the most sexualised imagery is of childlike teens.
The other side of the gender coin...
We talk an awful lot about, and indeed society has historically been very interested in defining, femininity, both in terms of setting and policing those definitions, and breaking down and challenging them. In recent years, there has been an increase in the conversation around defiing masculinity, or more properly, masculinities. Certainly as an area for historical and sociological study, it is a rapidly growing and developing field.
I really love the study of masculinities - having first encountered it via the historical study of gender and femininity, it really struck a chord with me. When 'women's studies' first started to take hold, and then 'gender studies' grew out of that, there was a tendency to see masculinity as somehow natural and unchanging, with femininity differentiated and imposed. Likewise, in the period I study (18th and early 19th centuries) there was a huge amount of discourse about 'the Sex', i.e women. Hundreds of thousands of words were published attempting to define womanhood, often in direct counterpoint to manliness. And historians for a long time, took as read that manliness had always been more or less the same, with only minor distinctions between one period and another. Men were the constant against which the shifting face of woman was measured. In recent decades that has changed and more and more academic discourse focused on how men conceive of their own masculinity, and how masculinity is perfomed and understood. The contextual and often contested nature of gender has now been expanded to include masculinity. I find it utterly fascinating.
So, I was quite excited to see Grayson Perry's new documentary series exploring modern masculinities. I highly recommend it, if you can find it. It's called Grayson Perry: All Man.
Here's a nice interview with Perry about his new series: (am hoping this plays outside the uk)
[YOUTUBE]yLVFMAOb9Cg[/YOUTUBE]
It does, I watched it, very interesting stuff.
On the things that our cultures are different on, it's interesting how they are damn near identical on how age 13-14 goes for boys. A biology that somehow you need relief from. Yes you have to be a level of macho, yes it's practically policed. I don't know anywhere this doesn't happen, does anyone else?
It's like, y'ever watch animals fight, for no particular reason? It's always when the rut begins.
[YOUTUBE]1u5Tdf8-er8[/YOUTUBE]
BTW this is also why men can fuck each other up and then say good game at the end of it. Hey we had to get into it. It's the rut. But you're a good guy. That was some good antler spiking you got in.
[YOUTUBE]BQqJWu_gVp8[/YOUTUBE]
It seem we have failure to communicate. :facepalm:
At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor...
ANN ARBOR—When applying for a job or to college, women seek positions with fewer applicants than men, according to a new University of Michigan study.
The researchers found that the size of a competition—such as the number of applicants to a particular job or the number of people vying for a monetary reward—shapes who enters the competition.
Women prefer smaller competitions, whereas men seek larger competitions, which are typically associated with higher monetary rewards.
"These patterns of findings can contribute to a better understanding of gender inequality in the workforce," said Kathrin Hanek, the study's lead author. "The gender difference in preferences may in part explain pay gaps and the underrepresentation of women in particular fields or at the helm of large organizations."
The difference between the genders can be partially attributed to women feeling more comfortable in smaller competitions. Hanek points out that some environments offer greater opportunities for women to behave communally rather than competitively.
"Smaller social groups, even when individuals are in competition, tend to allow people to form more intimate social bonds and be more attuned to others' needs," said Hanek, who recently received her doctorate from the U-M Department of Psychology. "And these communal behaviors, in turn, tend to be more normative for women."
More ... This research by no means blames women for gender inequality but rather uncovers a novel environmental factor that might contribute to inequality, ...
Mercy! Send the EPA in to straighten this situation out.
A recent story in the news caught my attention.
A receptionist claims she was sent home from work at a corporate finance company after refusing to wear high heels.
Nicola Thorp, 27, from Hackney in east London, arrived on her first day at PwC in December in flat shoes but says she was told she had to wear shoes with a “2in to 4in heel”.
Thorp, who was employed as a temporary worker by PwC’s outsourced reception firm Portico, said she was laughed at when she said the demand was discriminatory and sent home without pay after refusing to go out and buy a pair of heels.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/11/receptionist-sent-home-pwc-not-wearing-high-heels-pwc-nicola-thorp
Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I personally never wear heels - I gave them up as a teenager because they were fucking uncomfortable and I tended to end up twisting my ankle a lot. I'm really glad I did, because regular wearing of heels can damage your feet and your spine. I know plenty of women like wearing heels, but the idea of enforcing them as a dress code for work I find ridiculous. I get the idea of a dress code - nothing wrong with insisting that your workforce look smart, or dress according to a particular style - but there is no reason why a woman can't look perfecly smart in flat shoes. There are however, compelling reasons for not wearing heels - particularly given that part of this woman's role would have been to escort guests around the office complex, meaning she would be on her feet and walking for much of the day.
Heels are not a pre-requisite for loking smart. They do however increase the sexual attractiveness of women. So - apparently, for a receptionist it is not enough that they look smart and presentable, they also have to look sexy.
Another columnist comments:
First impressions count, even for business. It’s why the reception of any building is usually the smartest part of the office. There will be brightly coloured flowers, comfortable sofas, free water and, more often than not, a pretty young woman ready to welcome you. They’ll be wearing a full face of make-up, the smartest clothes their salary will allow, and a beaming smile. They’ll know the name of everyone in the building but nobody will know theirs. They are the first thing any visitor knows about your company and the guardian of your secrets. They’re undervalued and underpaid. And no matter how good a job they do, the one thing you will judge them on is what they look like.
I know this because I spent a year welcoming guests, pouffing the cushions and answering the phone in my best cut glass accent for a finance company. At my annual appraisal they told me I’d done a great job and they were thrilled at the effort I was putting in, there was just one thing to be improved on. Could I possibly wear more lipstick?
So - wearing lipstick was not enough - she had to wear enough lipstick. Guess she wasn;t looking sexy enough to do her job?
We know how you dress is no longer a signifier of success or importance, Steve Jobs’ dedication to jeans and trainers ended that, so why do we still feel it’s necessary to dictate the type of shoes that women wear? Yes, dress codes might ask men to wear ties and not apply this rule to women but there’s one clear difference here: unless your office takes its influences from Fifty Shades of Grey, there is nothing particularly sexual about a tie. High heels on the other hand, they’re designed to sexualise women. They lengthen our legs, change the way we walk and, whether we intend it or not, make us more attractive to both sexes.
(for the sexual attraction aspect of heels see:
http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(12)00122-5/abstract)
The columnist continues with an acknowledgement that heels can feel empowering, adding height and stature, but only when you are wearing them by choice.
For some reason I don’t believe that Portico wants its female employees to feel empowered by their shoes, if they did they wouldn’t have minded so much when one of them pointed out the company’s blatantly sexist policy. So why is it so wedded to this outdated dress code?
Perhaps it’s because even now in 2016, nearly 100 years after women got the vote, 50 years since we were entitled to equal pay and more than 10 years since Sex and the City stopped trying to convince us that heels were independence in shoe form, what we really judge success on is the attractiveness of the woman attached to it. It’s not enough to have a professional, competent receptionist welcoming your guests, she also needs to be sexy.
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2016/may/12/enforcing-high-heels-in-the-office-is-the-height-of-workplace-sexismThe reality for receptionists is they are in the same boat with actors, salespeople, and TV talking heads, appearance is primary. But If heels are a requirement, she should argue the company should provide them, like hard hats, earplugs and safety glasses.
Difference being that alll those items promote safety and well being, where heels actively damage health.
It is perfectly acceptable for an employer to demand a particular dress code. It is not acceptable that they demand a dress code that could damage the health and well-being of their employee.
Employers have a duty of care to their employees, to ensure that their employees are as safe as practically possible. That means, according to law (in this country) that every effort be made to mitigate risks associated with work and the workplace - so, for example, desks and computer set-up are supposed to take account of the risks to health and employees given training on posture and proper usage in order to minimise risk of RSI and eye strain. Workers in dangerous environments are to be provided with appropriate safety wear, such as hard hats and steel toecap boots. Nurses are not supposed to try and lift paralysed patients on their own, they're supposed to work in twos when lifting.
Insisting that an employee wear a smart suit, or that they only dress in black or navy is acceptable - insisting that they wear an item of footwear which could cause long term damage to their feet, when it is not necessary for them to take such risks in order to perform their jobs is not acceptable.
Ffs. Here we go again:
Iron Man 3 could have been a very different film if director Shane Black had got his way.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) squared off against main villain Killian (Guy Pearce) in the superhero movie, but it should have been Rebecca Hall's character.
Why was this changed? Because, apparently, Marvel didn't think a female toy would sell.
www.digitalspy.com/movies/iron-man/news/a794310/iron-man-3-villain-was-almost-a-woman-but-was-changed-because-the-toy-wouldnt-sell/
This is such utter bollocks, it makes my blood boil. I cannot believe we are still having this debate now. I'm guessing their 'consultation' wasn't with the kids or parents who might buy the toys. And I'm guessing they just assume all the toys bought would be for boys anyway.
I wonder whether it originated* with Marvel corporate, or Disney corporate.
Because Disney is already pretty bad on this front.
* The article says it came from Marvel corporate, but it could have been passed down from the parent company.
They are probably basing it on past performance of action figures in the market place, but I suspect much of that is self fulfilling. Girls are to be saved, not save.
This is such utter bollocks, it makes my blood boil. I cannot believe we are still having this debate now. I'm guessing their 'consultation' wasn't with the kids or parents who might buy the toys. And I'm guessing they just assume all the toys bought would be for boys anyway.
Listen, it's like everything else--the girls will play with the boy toys, but the boys* simply won't go for the girl toys. The parents might even say they would buy them in interviews, because they would feel like it's the right answer. But they absolutely wouldn't buy it when they're standing alone in the toy store. And maybe that's society's fault, or the parents' fault, or whatever... but I have children, and I know a ridiculous number of children, and I have been to countless birthday parties in a very liberal city with a healthy rejection of gender norms and the highest gay percentage second only to San Francisco, and I am telling you: the girl-villain action figure would not sell even a fraction as well as the boy-villain.
Honestly, I think the bigger crime here is dictating the plot of a movie based on toy sales. Like Marvel doesn't have enough money already?
*as they currently exist today, not some inherent biological programming. But Marvel is selling toys to boys as they currently exist today. You can argue that they
should make a girl toy because it's the right thing to do, but you can't claim that the girl toy would sell as well.
Maybe many of the boys won't buy a female villain figure - I suspect they might though if that is just a figure in a range of toys from a movie. It's different to expecting boys to play with the toys that are aimed at girls. I wouldn't expect hordes of prepubescent boys to buy Frozen characters - but I bet a fair few of them have alll the Star Wars figures, including the female characters
Also - if Marvel have more and better female characters in their movies, then maybe more girls will get into them and want to buy those figures. If they play the long game they could increase sales of their toys by nurturing the girl market which they have hitherto ignored. Girls are a rapidly growing demographic for comicbook and sci fi films.
You're right though - the sales of toys should not be dictating plot of film.
But as an aside here's what happened when the toymakers decided to stop being dicks and include the main female character in their toylines (having at first pretty much left her out, despite her being one of the key heroes of the film)
http://www.mtv.com/news/2688307/female-star-wars-toys-selling-out/Yes, but don't forget Star Wars relies heavily on adult nostalgia. Grown men who aren't afraid of their sexuality are buying the Ray dolls. Iron Man 3 is still only being bought by/for children. It will change, it IS changing, but we're not there yet, and getting there requires companies doing the right thing rather than the monetary thing.
I think they may find that if they market to the girls as well, they can increase their sales overall. They just have to do it in a way that doesn't put the boys off.
Course it's the frickin' parents doing the buying part... the kids will probably be fine with whatever the parents are fine with!
Nope nope nope nope. We've never bothered with gendered anything (more because we're lazy than any kind of active choice,) but each of my kids came home one day (Kinder for the boy, first grade for the girl) declaring, quite emphatically, that they didn't want girly/boyly (yes, that's the word she uses) things.
The kids are fine with what their friends are fine with. It takes all the parents being okay with it at once, which is a shift that takes more than one movie's product tie-ins.
A lotof this stuff is based on assumptions that don;t bear out in the real world. For instance, when the compute game, The Last of Us was about to go live, the publishers and distributers didn't want the female character to be shown on the box, despite her being a lead character, because they said, according to their consultations, boys and young men would be put off from buying the game i fthey thought it was a 'girl's game' and the presence of a female main character (as opposed to female set dressing) would give that impression. The makers stuck to their guns, she was shown on the box, and the game broke sales records and became a massive hit, with both male and female gamers.
It is absolutely the case that girls are often a lot more comfortable with, and subject to a lot less stigma for, playing with 'boys' toys than are the boys playing with girls' toys. But - kids of both gender seem perfectly fine playing with neutral toys that aren't specifically marketed at one or the other gender. The problem is that toy makers routinely market film tie-ins and action figures in a highly gendered way, whereas if they marketed them simply as toys, rather than as boys toys, they could bring in both boys and girls.
Nope nope nope nope. We've never bothered with gendered anything (more because we're lazy than any kind of active choice,) but each of my kids came home one day (Kinder for the boy, first grade for the girl) declaring, quite emphatically, that they didn't want girly/boyly (yes, that's the word she uses) things.
That may be so - but that may just mean that we are coding toys too strongly, so that they do sit firmly in one of those camps. Boys may not want a pink bike, and girls may not want a blue bike - but they both want bikes.
Boys may not want a doll and girls may not want an action man, but there's no reason why they might not both want lego. And there's no reason why theymight not both want figures from the most popular movie on the cinema screen, if it's being watched by both girls and boys and has both male and female characters.
And it may well end up with the boys mainly playing with the male characters, and the girls mainly playing with the female characters - but if they're both playing with characters from that movie then the toymaker will make money.
I wonder whether it originated* with Marvel corporate, or Disney corporate.
Because Disney is already pretty bad on this front..
Bloody hell, you're not kidding.
The Disney Store have been selling Iron Man 3 tshirts for boys/men and girls/women - the boys tshirts have the slogan 'Be a Hero' whilst the girl's tshirts say 'I Need a Hero' and 'I Only Kiss Heroes'. In light of a bunch of negative feedback they've removed the 'I Only Kiss Heroes' one, but are still only selling 'I Need a Hero' for the girls and 'Be a Hero' for the boys.
And in other Superhero toy news ....
In Age of Ultron, there is one truly kickass female character - Black Widow. There is an iconic scene in the movie in which Black Widow exits the Quinjet on a black Harley.
Having previously left Black Widow out of the toy line for the Avengers movies, the toy makers have now included both the Quinjet and the Harley, which comes out f the the bottom of the jet just ;like it does in the film, so that kids can recreate that iconic scene - except with either Captain America or Iron Man riding it.
So they have erased Black Widow from her own iconic scene.
I get that boys might not want to buy girl toys. But there is no reason at all, why boys would not want a complete set of characters, including the female character. And there is no reason at all to assume that only boys will be playing with these toys. The fact that Disney made a tshirt for girls and women at all is a tacit acceptance that girls and women are wanting superhero film merchandise.
Time and again, the toymakers remove the female characters from their line up. They did not include Rey initially in their Star Wars Force Awakens line up, despite her being one of the central characters - they replaced her with minor characters and characters from previous films.
They did not do this in the 70s! The Princess Leia figure was there in the line up for the original Star Wars toys - my best friend, David had them all (including the Millenium Falcon and one of those things with the giant legs). Nobody thouight it would be a good idea to remove the only key female character - they just sold all the characters, and they all sold just fine. I remember the Princess Leia figure - she was done in exactly the same style as Luke and Solo - with a gun in her hand (the later figure sets granted, did opt more for the Leia in a gold bikini sex slave figure). It wasn't an issue. And that was back before anybody thought about girls wanting to buy the toys - they just put out the key characters for the film. And boys bougth and played with them (and so did some girls as it happens)
This kind of over the top gendering of toys is a new thing.
Here are the Disney tees
We're waaaay gayer than you. . .
Um, that kinda came out wrong. . :p:
The men who designer safety measures for war workers were determined to save the TaTas.
That looks uncomfortable to work in.
I saw a comment once about cosplay "breast armor" that if someone falls down while wearing it, the cleavage bit (which is, of course, a ridge on the inside) can crush your ribcage, and they wince whenever they see a costume like that.
1965 Lord help the man who gets caught using one of these...
Customer Review
40,940 of 41,398 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars FINALLY!, August 24, 2012
By Tracy Hamilton
This review is from: BIC Cristal For Her Ball Pen, 1.0mm, Black, 16ct (MSLP16-Blk) (Office Product)
Someone has answered my gentle prayers and FINALLY designed a pen that I can use all month long! I use it when I'm swimming, riding a horse, walking on the beach and doing yoga. It's comfortable, leak-proof, non-slip and it makes me feel so feminine and pretty! Since I've begun using these pens, men have found me more attractive and approchable. It has given me soft skin and manageable hair and it has really given me the self-esteem I needed to start a book club and flirt with the bag-boy at my local market. My drawings of kittens and ponies have improved, and now that I'm writing my last name hyphenated with the Robert Pattinson's last name, I really believe he may some day marry me! I'm positively giddy. Those smart men in marketing have come up with a pen that my lady parts can really identify with.
Where has this pen been all my life???
hahahah. That's frikkin brilliant
OOPS! I forgot the critical reviews.
1.0 out of 5 stars Missing the batteries
ByM.on August 28, 2012
I can't find a switch to turn it on, and it didn't come with batteries. This is not the "for her" product I was expecting. At all.
MoreMargaret Knight invented the first machine to make square bottom paper bags, and it only took a few months, along and a $100 a day(1871) patent lawyer, to get her credit.
Please choose your gender:
[ATTACH]57131[/ATTACH]
Could go here, could go in the Orlando thread....
[youtube]toap7iPpTbs[/youtube]
Wow. That was very moving.
Vi Hart's videos are usually fun, but always interesting.
Sufferagetto, the game.
About Print RulesAnd stick him with the check... :lol:
Does that work for men also?
Not until they pay the check. ;) The chivalrous Brits must protect fair lady.
I think it's a good idea if she's in danger, but if she's just disappointed or changed her mind, it's rather underhanded to sneak out.
All it takes is one stalker to make you afraid that every guy is a stalker. It's not fair, but it's true. (Nevermind the many guys who aren't stalkers, but who still get angry to some degree when you tell them, no matter how politely, that you aren't interested.)
Does that work for men also?
Well, I've never personally met a man who was stalked to the point of fear (rather than the sort of irritation you get from a buzzy fly) but I suppose it happens.
However I do know men who have developed intense feelings of jealousy and controlling behaviour and blame it on a single woman who either cheated on them or finished with them. Of course it's all "he said, she said" because I've never known both parties, but some of these men were seriously creepy and felt justified in being so.
Nothing to do with this particular scheme of course, which I suppose can come across as sexist. But fear can sometimes be a learned behaviour, and if you are physically smaller and weaker than every date you have, and face daily ogling and comments on your physical appearance (and supposed shortcomings) I can certainly understand wanting a Get Out of Jail Free Card.
I've never bailed on a date in this way, but I have set up code words with friends, asked for calls at certain times, and frankly just lied to get out of first dates without trying to challenge the "masculinity" of my date, in case I get into a situation I can't handle...
"Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them."
I think it's rarely justified, but certainly common sentiment.
flippant comment .. didn't really warrant a response.
Any comment, even flippant ones, keep the dialog open and views expressed. That's always a good thing.
Makes sense, if they show too much leg strip them naked.
The religion of peace, my ass.
Falsely claim to be Muslim holy men.
and a quarter century ago
Heck, there are televangelists in the US today blaming the gays for hurricanes.
The religion of peace, my ass.
Unlike all the other major religions which of course have a super record on women's rights and equality :p
My favorite part of the Bible is the part where it says I have to remain silent in church and never cut my hair.
Of course Dana, stripping them in public is so humiliating(even though they've been circumcised), not like hanging or burning at the stake. ;)
All it takes is one stalker to make you afraid that every guy is a stalker. It's not fair, but it's true. (Nevermind the many guys who aren't stalkers, but who still get angry to some degree when you tell them, no matter how politely, that you aren't interested.)
Did someone say stalker?
https://youtu.be/pwAgD-F6cXoAny religion that imposes its beliefs on anyone else is a Satanic religion.
This is a long read, but a fascinating look at the plight of women in Nazi Germany and
Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, pretty much lost to history.
The story of the Nazis’ only concentration camp for women has long been obscured—partly by chance, but also by historians’ apathy towards women’s history. Sarah Helm writes about the camp, where the “cream of Europe’s women” were interned alongside its prostitutes, and members of the French resistance perished alongside Red Army prisoners of war.
At its height, Ravensbrück had a population of about 45,000 women; over the six years of its existence around 130,000 women passed through its gates, to be beaten, starved, worked to death, poisoned, executed and gassed. Estimates of the final death toll have ranged from about 30,000 to 90,000; the real figure probably lies somewhere in between, but so few SS documents on the camp survive nobody will ever know for sure. The wholesale destruction of evidence at Ravensbrück is another reason the camp’s story has remained obscured. In the final days, every prisoner’s file was burned in the crematorium or on bonfires, along with the bodies. The ashes were thrown in the lake.
It has the history of the camp and it's main characters. A really fascinating at the Nazi regime and women.
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[/CENTER]Now that the US military is allowing women into its elite units, there's an effort to augment the Green Beret (male) statue at Ft. Bragg with a female version next to it. The latter would be similar in design and oriented to face the former. It would capture the current uniform and individual weapon, be constructed of space age polymers and done in full color.
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[/CENTER]The current statue was privately funded and so too must be any new statue. They decided to sell miniatures (statuettes) of the proposed design to raise the money and test marketed pre-production samples. Those didn't go over well. Perhaps it was because there aren't many female Green Berets yet. They tweaked the final design for the statue; however, and now the miniatures are selling like hotcakes:
LinkThat link goes to a white dot on a black screen.
you might be looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
The link goes to my BB photo album. I have it set for viewing by registered users only; so, you have to be logged in to see it.
Ain't nobody got time fo dat.
The link goes to my BB photo album. I have it set for viewing by registered users only; so, you have to be logged in to see it.
What? No facebook? :rolleyes:
[SIZE="5"]U.S. Air Marshal Left Loaded Gun in an Airplane Bathroom[/SIZE]
WASHINGTON — A federal air marshal on a flight earlier this month from England to New York left her loaded service weapon in the aircraft’s bathroom where a passenger found it, four marshals familiar with the incident said.
The passenger gave the weapon to a member of the flight crew, who returned it to the air marshal. But the marshal, who is based in the New York region, failed to report the incident to her superiors, as required by agency policy, until several days later. The incident happened on April 6, aboard a Delta flight from Manchester to Kennedy International Airport.
Despite the security lapse, the marshal was assigned to a flight a few days later, people familiar with the case said. ...
Gee, I wonder how she managed to keep her job. :eyebrow:
Question on Quora...
What will it take to close the gender wage gap?
Todd Miller, former Marine Corps jet pilot
Written Mar 14
Stop hiring women
Don’t allow women to take company offered time off
Force women to upgrade to higher paying positions as soon as they become available
Here’s the explanation of how women Airline Pilots are paid less and why, despite the pay scales being gender neutral.
Wages measured are average aggregate wages by gender.
Since women are entering the workforce at the highest rate in history, they are entering at the bottom of most company pay rates. Which pay the least. So they drag down the average aggregate pay.
This is especially true with Airline Pilots.
So how can Airline pilots, who are solely paid based on type of airplane flown, and position (i.e. Captain or FO), pay women less?
Well for starters, an airline like Skywest, a regional feeder airline pays less than an airline like United, a global airline.
Regional airlines fly Regional Jets. Major airlines fly 777s.
If airlines (and other businesses) completely stopped hiring women, they would only be hiring men.
Those men would be hired at the lowest payrate. Which means that those men being hired would be paid less than all women currently working there.
Since pilots entering the workforce do so at regionals, they are paid less than experienced pilots at major airlines.
In time, the gender pay rates would be the same, until women would start being paid more because only men are being hired, so the lowest paid employees would be only men.
Also, when employees want to take time off, you’d have to restrict that choice for women.
Right now at airlines, female pilots voluntarily take three times as much time off as male pilots do.
In a recent company offering of monthly leaves of absence by a major airline, roughly 20% of all leaves requested were by women, despite women only representing 6% of that airlines pilots force.
Additionally, women pilots are far less likely to voluntarily upgrade to a higher paid position, but choose to stay in a lower paying position to have better seniority.
A recent analysis showed that in narrowbody and widebody First Officer positions at a major airline, 15% of those positions were held by women who could bid Captain, but chose to stay in those seats for the benefits of controlling their schedule. In many bases the #1 First Officers were women. Despite being only 6% of the pilot force. Those women could choose to upgrade to Captain at any time, but have chosen to forego the higher pay of that position for the benefits of better schedules, better vacation selection, and ensuring they could have weekends off, while their male counterparts overwhelmingly chose to upgrade, flying weekends, and getting paid more money.
If we removed the choice of women to take time off, and forced them to upgrade, the gender wage gap would disappear.
See, this is why funding sports for girls is a waste, they can't even follow the simple rules of T-ball.
:lol2:
Here's a problem for men. Most agree that NO means NO. From her point of view it's NO, but from his point of view it's ON. What we have is failure to communicate. Think about that before you give sworn testimony.:eyebrow:
Oh, it's on, alright.
Like a pot o' neck bones.
In the US, women's right to vote was rescinded by each state between 1777 and 1807, starting with NY and ending with NJ.
In 1838 KY said, female heads of household in rural areas could vote in elections deciding taxes and local boards.
In 1848 women started having conventions, getting organized and stirring up shit in every state. They chilled during the Civil War.
In 1867 Kansas voted No on women and/or Black Males voting. In 1869 WY Territory voted yes for women.
That got them really fired up and switched from pleading to confrontational tactics.
The 1870 15th amendment says no barring for race, color, or previous condition of servitude, but still allowed for sex.
1870 Utah said Yes, but 1872 Dakota Territory says No by one vote. 1874, MI No, 1875 MI and MN Yes for school board elections
In 1880 NY grants school suffrage to women. 1883 Washington territory says Yes.
1887 women in Utah and Washington Territory lose it, but win Yes in municipal elections in Kansas, But No in RI.
1890 No in SD, Yes in WY and 1893 CO says Yes. 1896 Utah and Idaho Yes, but CA No, and 1902 NH No.
1910 WA state and 1911 CA vote Yes.
All during this time there have been several National leaders and organizations which came and went, merged and split, infighting and arrests, plus anti-suffrage organizations campaigning in some states.
So by the time this picture was taken women were split between the pretty frustrated, and didn't give a shit.
Teddy Roosevelt's third party had put suffrage as a plank in their platform.
[SIZE="5"]First women enlist to join Navy special operations teams[/SIZE]
Two women have become the first females to enlist as candidates to join the Navy's special operations teams, CNN reported Saturday. ...
... Only men were previously allowed to serve in combat roles in the U.S. military. But the positions were opened up to women in January 2016.
But since then, no females have applied to join special operations forces, CNN reported. Eight classes of SEALS and seven SWCC class have graduated since March 2016. All of them have been made up entirely of men.
[BOLD MINE]
Ha!
They typically want candidates who already have at least one term of service under their belts, those well oriented to the military, for placement in spec ops units. They waiver the time in service requirement and make it an enlistment option when they have to fill quotas. That usually happens when they're critically short on spec ops personnel. They seem; however, to be graduating full classes ... except they're all men.
Makes me wonder if they're taking people right off the street for spec ops training, hoping to snag some females, just to be politically correct. There's a reason women already in the military aren't volunteering to be trained for those assignments. It'll be interesting to see if this plays out as anything more than a dog and pony show.
Probably because women aren't mean enough. :haha: :lol: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:
Women Parliamentarians of Iran in front of the gate of the Iranian Parliament , mid 1970s. Thank Allah that threat is gone.
Why is it always the pretty ones that shoot me down? ;)
OK, I misspelled fighter, exciting women do that to me, so shoot me.. wait no, don't shoot.
Ah yes, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol...
[strike]Well, sure, ya don't get stopped, ya don't get raped.
Seems legit.[/strike]
[strike]His[/strike] That statement is taken somewhat out of context:
[YOUTUBE]2DYNdqwx3LU[/YOUTUBE]
He wasn't responding to a question such as "What should women do to not get raped during a traffic stop?" He's responding to a "What should I do during a traffic stop?"-type question.
That whole post is almost 'fake news'.
Not really, being the spokesperson for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, he was being interviewed by the TV station because of the numerous allegations and three convictions against his troopers for sexual assault and rape of women at traffic stops. Think how hard it is to convict a cop of anything.
If you weren't breaking the motor vehicle laws you wouldn't get raped, c'mon.
I don't know if coming out with that statement was an attempt to avoid the issue or he's clueless of how serious the problem is, or just extremely bad taste humor.
[YOUTUBE]joC9_8_EzDE[/YOUTUBE]
[youtube]o4QHxIUiZlc[/youtube]
[COLOR="White"]...[/COLOR]
Algeria gets it... put them bitches to work so we poke the hookah and drink coffee.
This does not help:
Martha led an anti-street harassment campaign while at university in Nottingham.
It led to misogyny being made a hate crime in the city.
"Women now feel safer on the streets of Nottingham. They can walk with their head held high.
"It doesn't mean these things aren't going to happen anymore, but if they do the police are going to act and take it seriously."
Officers in the city now define misogynistic hate crime as "behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman".
That includes things like wolf-whistling and cat-calling.
"I think it's very easy to say this is the end of flirting, but I don't think that's true," says Martha.
"I think if you're flirting in a way which you feel might be touchy ground, then you're flirting in the wrong way."
Martha ran around 40 training sessions for police on misogynistic harassment and now wants the rest of the UK to follow suit.
This is from an article on the BBC news site looking at what today's 'suffragettes' are up to. Much of which is laudable - like anti FGM work - but making catcalling a fucking hate crime?
Jesus wept.
This:
Officers in the city now define misogynistic hate crime as "behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman".
Is insane.
It didn't need a new law. There are already laws in place to deal with a broad category of anti-social or lewd acts - if someone is shouting 'show us your tits' at schoolgirls, then the broad category of 'breach of the peace' or 'causing a disturbance' could come into effect.
It's not a criminal offence (in England anyway - not sure about Scotland) nothing goes on your record. But the police can arrest you. You get a warning and agree not to do it again. If you break that agreement in a given period you have committed an offence.
Breach of the peace/disturbance is already suitably vague and broad to be able to cover a frightening amount of stuff without adding another terrifyingly vague legal definition with much more serious consequences.
Rest of the article (some of which highlights really important work)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-42949970With one caveat - the pre-existing laws pre-existed.
ie, they did not perform the function this law is intended to perform. That's not to say that this one will, either, as it is also vague, but saying that the police could apply existing law in a certain way to achieve the desired result doesn't help if they don't.
The problem seems to have been that the police didn't take the issue seriously. Would the 40 training sessions have been enough to fix that, if they weren't accompanied by a law that also made the offense more serious?
(not a rhetorical question)
If the training sessions don't cause them to act, it doesn't matter which law they're not enforcing, so there's no need for a new one.
Specificity also helps (though I'm not sure from the blurb in the article how good this particular law is on this front); If they aren't considering the behavior to be breaching the peace, that's not ignoring the law; it's interpreting it. But if the new law says it is, then you would have to ignore the law.
OK, I see your point, but it's still a matter of the cop... er, bobby, interpreting the actions of the man.
With one caveat - the pre-existing laws pre-existed.
ie, they did not perform the function this law is intended to perform. That's not to say that this one will, either, as it is also vague, but saying that the police could apply existing law in a certain way to achieve the desired result doesn't help if they don't.
The problem seems to have been that the police didn't take the issue seriously. Would the 40 training sessions have been enough to fix that, if they weren't accompanied by a law that also made the offense more serious?
(not a rhetorical question)
For the more serious cases of catcalling or sexual threat there has been a lack of enthusiasm for pursuing under the laws that are currently available - partly because it's not been taken at all seriously until fairly recently.
For most of the other stuff, what is needed is not another serious offence added to the books. If it's a particular problem in a particular town at any given time, police can go looking for that stuff and use the public order offences to discourage it, without criminalising people.
Or if someone tells them a guy on that street shouted lewd comments to them as they walked past, see if he's still there and have a word with him - point out its not acceptable behaviour in a public place. Doesn't have to be heavy. It's no different to telling someone they shouldn't be playing their music at its loudest volume late at night when they live in a small apartment block.
I think there has to be, and we are in the middle of it, a sea change in how we think about certain aspects of gendered experience and the ways in which our social structures and institutions respond to it, as well as how we navigate a world in which the gender roles have changed so quickly.
I say we're in the middle of it - perhaps I should say I think we
were in the middle it when the Interwebz happened and threw everything into overdrive.
The speed everything moves now. #revolutions sweep across the twittersphere, are consumed by other movements and implode in a matter of days. A company launches a product with a questionable advertising strategy on Monday, the calls for global boycotts are in full voice by Tuesday morning, the advert is pulled on Tuesday afternoon, and a low level executive is fired on Wednesday.
That builds an expectation of rapid change and winnable battles. Which can be very alluring.
If we try to do this by criminalising more and more interaction - that is not going to help.
I think there are better ways to effect change. Slower - because it's complicated and messy and because whatever lines we draw in the sand we still have to live with each other.
Sometimes it's a good thing to march in the streets, give voice to a grievance and demand justice. Sometimes you have to find a livable solution to a complicated problem in which lots of people have a stake. And that's a much slower thing.
For the last few months the TV has been flooded with ads for replacement windows, Renewal by Anderson, in particular.
It sounds like a first class operation, it also sounds expensive, but hey you get what you pay for... [SIZE="1"]or less[/SIZE].
Yesterday I got a hand addressed envelope the size and shape of a Valentines Day card. Silly bunny.
Inside was a letter and business card from the General Manager of Renewals by Anderson for the Philadelphia area.
Her name is Kristin Gardner. Imagine that, a woman running that whole operation.
The question that comes to mind, is she serious, or just wants to use me for a sex toy and discard me? :confused:
Kirstin, if you find this in a vanity search, it's a joke. :blush:
If she sees this, she may want to remodel the windows to your soul.
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[/CENTER]
[SIZE="4"]Kristin Gardner[/SIZE]
Kristin came to RBA in 2009 as the accounting manager after having worked in the new home construction business for 7 years. After graduating from Villanova University with her MBA in 2011, she was promoted to the operations manager handling both the financial aspects of the business in addition to managing the operations. Working with the most dedicated and FUN professionals in the window business makes coming to work every day a real joy. She takes pride in helping to find solutions to any issues that arise and to making sure our customers have the best experience possible when working with RBA. A happy customer is a reminder of the job we strive to do every day and it’s great to know that the hard work and time we put in really get results. It’s the best reward! Kristin enjoys spending time with her RBA family – from family fun days at Dorney Park to company bowling tournaments and BBQs, she loves that the “Philly Family” can always have a good time together! How many people can say they love to come to work to spend the day with friends?
Personally, Kristin grew up in New Jersey and Switzerland. She loves skiing, travelling and is obsessed with Instagram! She now lives in New Jersey with her husband Matt and new baby, Grace and her four-legged child, Morgan, the dog.
A wonderful interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Well, emotions like anger, remorse, and jealousy are not productive. They will not accomplish anything, so you must keep them under control. In the days when I was a flaming feminist litigator, I never said to judges who asked improper questions, “You sexist pig.”
I’ll tell you one such incident. So I was arguing a case in Trenton, New Jersey, before a three-judge federal district court and one said, “Well, women are doing fine these days, opportunities are equal for them everywhere.” And I said, “Your honor, flight training isn’t available to women.” “Oh,” he said, “even in the military they have equal opportunity,” and I answered him with flight training is not available. His response to me was, “Oh, don’t tell me that, women have been in the air forever, I know from experience with my own wife and daughter.” So what is my comeback? “I’ve met some men who don’t have their feet planted firmly on the ground.” You don’t see that anymore, but in the 70s when judges knew it was improper to make racist jokes, women were still fair game.
Very interesting.
[YOUTUBE]3WMuzhQXJoY[/YOUTUBE]
Excellent, Dana!
We have met the enemy, and they are us.
It's often the way. I know I found that out when I was a councillor. There's nothing like working with 'the enemy' on a shared goal and responsibility to make you question your certitude.
Local politics (probably national as well come to that) is funny in that way. On the one hand you have the elections and the council meetings that tend to be very party focused, while on the other hand, you find yourself on various committees where the accepted norm is you try to leave the party politics at the door as you walk in - because now it's about the nuts and bolts of providing various services and achieving various small goals - and then meta-narratives aren't really very helpful. At that point, you're really just a group of people grappling with a practical issue.
According to the first chart, in 2014, 95% of US residents did not agree with the statement that men should have more rights to a job when times are tough. Up from 80% fifteen years earlier. I think that's pretty good.
And things are consistently improving everywhere except India.
Too bad the data ends in 2014. In the US, things were improving dramatically, but with the election of Trump, I bet they have slipped and gotten worse again.
The Cosmo Girl in 1967...
"The Gender Equality Checkpoint"
Hmmm, what would the phonetic equivalent to Checkpoint Charlie be for this thread ... Checkpoint G-String?
Mary Bara, General Motors CEO and Chair(wo)man of the board, took a pay cut in 2017 with a total compensation of only $21.96 million. She got $22.58 million the year before. Gotta keep them bitches in line you know. ;)
linkCongratulations women, you've finally made it!
[SIZE="3"]After 80 Years, The Barbershop Harmony Society Will Allow Women To Join[/SIZE]
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[/CENTER]
If you're at all familiar with the modern perception of barbershop singing, you might have guessed that one of its leading organizations, the Barbershop Harmony Society, was an all-male — and all-white — organization at the time of its founding in 1938. The organization opened to people of color in 1963, as the country was living within the crucible of the civil rights movement. For 80 years, though, it remained closed to women. Until yesterday. ...
They were helping the war effort but also angling for the vote... it worked. :thumb2:
An interesting read, the year of the woman.
According to our data, women have won 65 percent (90 of 138) of decided open Democratic primary races featuring at least one man and one woman. About 46 percent of all women who ran for office won the nomination — a stat we’ll call “win rate.” Men’s win rate has been just 23 percent (although part of their lower win rate is simply that more male candidates are competing against each other and, obviously, only one person can win each race). Women make up 48 percent (114 out of 2384) of the Democratic nominees in primaries that have been decided so far even though only 32 percent (263 of 811) of the candidates we analyzed were women. So, women are clearly having greater success than men.
In fact, all else being equal, being a woman has been worth an additional 10 percentage points over being a man in the open Democratic primaries we looked at.5 That’s one of the two biggest effects we found among all the variables we looked at. (The other variable with a similarly sized effect was having previously held elected office — more on this in a moment.)
Well, the POTUS has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and issued the annual proclamation:
… NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim August 26, 2018, as Women’s Equality Day. I call upon the people of the United States to celebrate the achievements of women and observe this day with appropriate programs and activities. …
Congratulations American women, the double-edged sword awaits you for another year.
The Don lied again. It is habitual.
The same way I know you are but what am I.
Takes one to know one.
When you talk to the mirror, does it also talk back?
The mirrors talk only to you. What appears to be reflections are redundancies in your posts.
You've come a long way baby... er Ms. ;)
It's about time that the experts in gossip were suitably employed for information gathering in the interest of national security. Probably not so good for the Bond types though.
[SIZE="3"]Sisterhood of spies: Women now hold the top positions at the CIA[/SIZE]
CIA Director Gina Haspel has appointed another woman to the top level of the agency, naming Cynthia "Didi" Rapp as deputy director for analysis, essentially the top analyst in the CIA. The appointment means that the top three directorates of the agency, for operations, analysis and science and technology are now all headed by women. ...
Now there's probably an assassin waiting for me if I go outside the country. I can only hope that she does me before doing me in.
That makes sense, they were always better at gathering gossip. :bolt:
However despite progress in management, since Roe vs Wade individual states have prosecuted women for...
FETAL ASSAULT
DEPRAVED HEART MURDER
DELIVERY OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE
CHEMICAL ENDANGERMENT OF A FETUS
MANSLAUGHTER
SECOND-DEGREE MURDER
FETICIDE
CHILD ABUSE
RECKLESS INJURY TO A CHILD
CONCEALING A BIRTH
CONCEALING A DEATH
ABUSE OF A CORPSE
NEGLECT OF A MINOR
ATTEMPTED PROCUREMENT OF A MISCARRIAGE
RECKLESS HOMICIDE
so you've got a long way to go, baby. :(
This lovely lady was ahead of her time.
Her husband bought her a car and she put 6,000 miles on it the first year.
That was a lot of work in 1907/8 when the roads in NJ and vicinity were crude at best.
That was not the car she drove cross country.
Not just another pretty face...
The Marines need a few good women...
Part of the training, you have to carry a fellow Marine sometimes.
Now do it with a 75-100+ lb ruck sack on ya back...Not this country boy.
She does it with every hair still in place.
That's a pretty steep ramp too.
In Finland they taken over...
In Finland they taken over...
4 commies & a vegetarian
Ferrari is courting favor of the ladies.
I guess they are asking their sugar daddies for BMWs and Mercs instead of Ferraris.
Was she the first pilot to successfully ever land a Warthog without any hydraulics?
No, that was Colonel Kim Nichole Reed-Campbell.
1940, the world was headed straight to hell and educators, as a reflection of society, didn't want girls wearing pants.
But that was 80 years ago. So what?
Only 80 years ago, and until they were needed in the war production wearing pants was frowned upon.
However during The War To End All Wars, WW I, it was brutal...
Sexism - however it manifests - like racism needs to be discussed and understood.
The world is changing. And our concepts of gender are changing.
Agree!
One of 4 or 5 ladies...
I had always wondered why this wasn't permitted until fairly recently. The USSR had female pilots in WWII that scared the crap out of the Germans.
I had always wondered why this wasn't permitted until fairly recently. The USSR had female pilots in WWII that scared the crap out of the Germans.
The night flyers, they were fearless, developed their own method, they stuck to the plan, and every sortie was as good as it could be after things out of their control was factored in.
Russia had some hot women fighter pilots too. To become an ace in the shit they flew took skill.
These stories are so common, not just ambitions and dreams squashed but reward withheld from those who fought repression and exceeded in making the world a better place.
The Dakota, Lakota, and Yankton tribes of the Sioux Nation living on the great plains of the western US
felt killing women was very dangerous therefore a brave deed.
The only female lighthouse keeper in the USA.
Likely the last as the switch to automation.
I'd see this picture before but it was quite awhile ago and don't remember if it got posted here.
Stirring up shit in 1915...
My my, they've been getting uppity for a long time.
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I look at this picture and think hey great, good for them.
But when I think about it I think, WTF, why not from the very beginning?
Hard working ladies keep the war hot for the boys...
