Posts in category Power
Half the Sky
"Half the Sky" is a new documentary on PBS which "... introduces women and girls who are living under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable — and [who are] fighting bravely to change them."
Read more about the woman in the photo, Rebecca Lolosoli.
Can They Talk?
Douche of the Day:
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on his radio show today "... that the way he and his network pick out female hosts is, 'we go into the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and we said, ‘Can any of these people talk?’"
Listen to it here.
Sexual Assault Prevention
Women are routinely taught how to avoid being raped. We're taught not to leave our drinks unattended, to not walk in certain neighborhoods, to not wear certain clothes, etc. The responsibility for rape prevention is placed on women's shoulders instead of where it belongs -- on potential rapists. It's about time that we saw more Sexual Assault Prevention Tips like these:
Birth Control
Contrary to what many conservatives would have us believe, affordable access to birth control isn't about making taxpayers pay for slutty women to have sex. Birth control is an economic issue and a basic human right:
Read more at Buzzfeed."Access to contraception isn't just a privilege, it's a basic human right, the United Nations says in its Population Fund's annual report, which came out on Wednesday. Lack of access to contraception, the report finds, is an economic barrier that can hinder economic opportunity and growth."
She Just Wanted to Learn
Badass Girl of the Day -- Malala, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban last month. She was targeted because ever since she was 11, she'd been encouraging other girls to defy the Taliban and to go to school. This photo is from a few days ago.
Read more at CNN.
Not Very Gentlemanly, GQ
Can you spot the difference between these three photos? One of the things that indicates sexism is when women are treated in a way that reduces them to a superficial quality, such as treating women as sex objects. In these photos, "Ben Affleck and Channing Tatum sharing the 'man of the year' title and Rhianna [is] named 'obsession of the year.' Affleck and Tatum are fully dressed, while Rhianna just gets a leather jacket. Affleck and Tatum get closeups, while Rhianna gets a suggestive body shot."
Why am I getting deja vu? Oh yeah, it's because of the recent British GQ's Men of the Year covers, which featured fully-clothed comedian/Broadway star James Corden, fully-clothed singer Robbie Williams, fully-clothed rapper Tinie Tempah, fully-clothed "Mad Men" star John Slattery, and naked singer/Internet celebrity Lana Del Rey.
I'm noticing a trend here. Apparently, GQ doesn't think women are noteworthy unless they're undressed. You'd think that a magazine called Gentleman's Quarterly would behave in a more gentlemanly manner. But no.
Keeping Up with Limited Options
In a new study conducted by USC Annenberg and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, researchers looked at the way women are portrayed in the media. They analyzed nearly 12,000 speaking roles on prime-time TV and in children's TV shows and family films, studying "female characters' occupations, attire, body size and whether they spoke or not."
The results were pretty depressing:The team's data showed that on prime-time television, 44.3 percent of females were gainfully employed -- compared with 54.5 percent of males. Women across the board were more likely to be shown wearing sexy attire or exposing some skin, and body size trends were apparent: 'Across both prime time and family films, teenaged females are the most likely to be depicted thin.' ... Perhaps most telling are the percentages of speaking female characters in each media form: only 28.3 percent of characters in family films, 30.8 percent of characters in children's shows, and 38.9 percent of characters on prime time television were women.
... [R]esearchers reported that they found a lack of aspirational female role models in all three media categories, and cited five main observations: female characters are sidelined, women are stereotyped and sexualized, a clear employment imbalance exists, women on TV come up against a glass ceiling, and there are not enough female characters working in STEM [science, technology, engineering, math] fields."
Media messages reinforce sexist attitudes about what women are capable of achieving. As this study shows, female characters are significantly limited in the roles they play -- they're often relegated to supporting roles, as characters less central to the plot, and as sex objects. This impacts how girls grow up feeling about their own abilities and what opportunities are open to them, and it also affects how boys learn to view girls -- who gets to be the star, who gets to be the boss, and who's supposed to just sit there and look pretty:
"Both young girls and boys should see female decision-makers, political leaders, managers, and scientists as the norm, not the exception. By increasing the number and diversity of female leaders and role models on screen, content creators may affect the ambitions and career aspirations of girls and young women domestically and internationally."
Read more about the study at Huffington Post.
Vietnam
In June 1972, Kim Phuc was pictured in a world-famous and iconic photograph from the Vietnam War. She was the naked child who was horribly burned with napalm and was running from an airborne attack.
Since then, Kim has found a way to transform her suffering into good. She runs The Kim Foundation International, and she acts as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO. She has transformed into a viable, visible symbol of peace and hope. Hers is an important story of resilience, courage, and forgiveness.
Give Birth
I love this advice! But even if you took a different path, it's never to late to grow into yourself.
Is America Ready for a Male Leader?
LOL -- I love this little bit of satire regarding the different ways we speak about male vs. female politicians. The role reversal points out how absurdly sexist and condescending it is:
"The Secretary of State job requires both tenacity and restraint, both of which may be difficult for a man's unique chemical constitution. The male hormone testosterone, while responsible for such wondrous miracles as back hair and upper body strength, is also responsible for an increase in male aggression, anger, and even violence. Diplomacy is a difficult enough task without having to temper a man's natural tendency to throw chairs through windows when angered by gridlock. ...
"In addition to fluctuating male hormones, a male Secretary of State will undoubtedly be faced with the difficult task of trying to balance work and family. For generations, men have tried to 'have it all' — the great career, the perfect family, a hot body, a youthful, buoyant buttocks ... I know it's not the 'politically correct' question to ask, but it needs to be addressed when making important decisions about men in the workplace: if Jon Huntsman is appointed head of the State Department, can we trust him not to shirk his responsibilities in favor of fulfilling his duties as a father of seven? ... Who is going to make after school snacks? Can America, with a clean conscience, remove a father from his natural role as hands-on provider and permission slip signer?"
Read more at Jezebel.
We Won – Deal With It
There have been a lot of sore losers since election results were announced -- plenty of political pouting, arguing, and Facebook un-friending. The losing side wants us to stop gloating and just get on with life. Ordinarily, I'd agree, but not this time. They want us to stop now, even though all throughout election season, these same people didn't stop making inflammatory attacks and absurd claims about the Nazi-Communist-Socialist-liberal agenda, the Black man in the White House, gay marriage bringing on the apocalypse, baby killers, sluts wanting you pay for them to have sex, "legitimate" rape vs. girls who "rape easy," and so on. In spite of all this "fair and balanced" rhetoric, conservatives still lost fair and square. But now they want everyone to stop talking about the election and to shut up with all our celebrating.
Well, you know what? Fuck that! Fuck that, because YOU are the ones who lit the fires. YOU are the ones who started shit. YOU are the ones who fought to take away people's rights to their lives and their bodies. YOU are the ones being degrading and insulting. So damn right we're going to express how absolutely thrilled we are that we shut that shit down!
There's been so much bigotry throughout politics lately, an incredible amount of sexism, homophobia, and racism. And those who support those ideals -- or those who can so casually excuse them -- deserve to be called on it.
This is the most politically involved that I've ever been in my life, because as many other women realized -- our rights are being threatened. And I'm finding it really hard to separate people from their politics, because beliefs matter. They impact your worldview and your behavior toward others.
You're entitled to believe in whatever you want, but you are not entitled to impose your beliefs on me. And I don't care if it's under the guise of religion or if you believe that God Himself personally spoke to you. Because when you start forcing your beliefs on me, it becomes abundantly clear that your "traditional values" are less about following a moral code and more about oppressing others in the name of your self-serving ideology. Those are not values that I will abide by. You are not allowed to infringe on MY rights, MY body, MY choices, no matter how "righteous" or "justified" you believe yourself to be. Your beliefs do not get to trump my freedom. Your sense of entitlement over others' personal lives, your selfish belief that you have the right to control others -- these are complete and utter boundary violations. How dare you say that your beliefs matter more than mine! That kind of arrogance and lack of compassion astound me.
When our rights are attacked; when we're treated with condescension and our morals, maturity, and ability to make decisions about our own bodies and lives are questioned; when the definition of rape is twisted to benefit the rapist and punish women -- well, damn right we're going to take it personally! We're going to defend ourselves against insulting, selfish, and paternalistic attacks against our humanity. We're going to stand up against sanctimonious bullies who use religion and legal maneuvers to chip away at our civil rights. We're going to vote for the people who actually respect our constitutional and moral rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we're going to question the integrity of those who are so willing to throw our rights under the bus. How dare you speak about freedom when you are so intent on attacking ours.
In this election, we had more on the line than you did. We had more to lose. And guess what? YOU built that. So hell yeah -- of course we're going to celebrate and we're going to do a bit of gloating about how we prevailed.
We won. You lost. Deal with it.
No More
This got me all choked up -- this courageous woman is taking back her power ...
The Voice
By: Shel Silverstein
A Woman’s Place
The conservative social forces conspiring to roll back the clocks on women's reproductive rights have much in common with the forces that tried to keep women from having voting rights. In an attempt to undermine suffragettes' struggles to gain rights that men were able to enjoy, these women were demonized as ugly, masculine, bad mothers, morally challenged, promiscuous, childish, and emasculating to men. Nearly 100 years have passed since then, but not much has changed:
“The social pressures that resisted suffrage can’t be underestimated. ... It wasn’t just that women had to fight for the right to vote, but women had to fight for the right to speak in public to be able to advocate for their own rights. ...
The battle for suffrage wasn’t just about the legal right to vote, but it was also about women’s ability to be public figures, not confined to the home. It was more broadly about women’s role in society. ... "The messages you find on anti-suffrage postcards from the 1910s are not dissimilar from what you might hear from Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly today in the 2010s. Suffragettes were drawn as conniving coquettes, ugly, mean spinsters or, worse, ugly, mean wives who left their families helpless as they attended town-hall meetings. ... “That was a common theme, that if women were given political power they would crush men and upset the gender roles in society, particularly in the family. ... “We operate with this zero-sum mentality, which is, if women gain rights, men lose them. ... You see the same sort of idea that if people of color or ethnic minorities make gains, whites therefore lose something. So if men only understand their identity in relationship to being bigger than women, then it’s a trade-off. You see it in dozens of anti-suffrage postcards, showing men being hurt if women advance. Human beings seem to operate with this mentality where if you expand the rights of some, it diminishes the rights of others, instead of collectively expanding the rights of all of us as a people.”
Read more here:
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright, 1st woman to become United States Secretary of State, appointed by former President Bill Clinton ...
Princess or President?
Found at Handsome In Pink.
Your Mirror
Over the last several months, I've noticed that lots of women have been smiling at me on the street, in restaurants, in stores, etc. I'm not used to this, partly because I can be a little shy & I avoid eye contact with passing strangers, but partly because of a sad habit shared by many of us -- that we view other women as threats.
So why does it seem like women are smiling at me more often? Was it because I've gained a few pounds, so they're not worried about me anymore? No, that's probably not quite it. So what's changed? And all of the sudden, it occurred to me ... I've been smiling at them first. I've been making eye contact. I've been treating them as non-threatening. And in turn, they've been treating me the same.
We can choose to connect with others or to feel separate from them. Either way, we're all each others' mirrors. What are you reflecting?
The Scariest Halloween Costumes of All
In the past several years, Halloween has morphed into something really scary -- scary enough to make some of us want to scream. But not because of the blood and gore, creepy decorations, or traditionally spooky costumes.
Halloween used to be the day when you could put on a disguise and pretend to be someone else for the night. For women, it could be a reprieve from the daily pressure to look thin, beautiful, and sexy. But instead of a day off from that pressure, Halloween is now a day to amp it up. Nearly every option for women is a sexy take on a traditional costume, from fetishized caricatures from porn to the totally absurd, such as the Sexy Hamburger, the Sexy Crayon, the Sexy Skittles, the Sexy Sponge Bob, and the Sexy Nemo (the clown fish from Finding Nemo). I just ... I ... have no words:
But it's not all just harmless fun. Even child characters in fairy tales have been made into sexed-up costumes for women, e.g., Sexy Little Red Riding Hood, Sexy Goldilocks, and Sexy Alice in Wonderland. (See more examples here).
In addition to fairy tale characters, here are a few other ways for women to dress up as sexy little girls -- the Sexy Girl Scout, the Sexy Schoolgirl, and the Sexy Baby (WTF is wrong with people?!):
What's so troubling about these costumes is that:
"... [M]any of the 'sexy' costumes are highly sexualized versions of characters who are supposed to be little girls ... The fact that many women dress up as sexy little girls points to both the sexualization of female children and the infantilization of adult women."
The sexualization of girls teaches them early on that their value lies in their appearance, their bodies, and their sexuality. The American Psychological Association found that sexualization damages girls' feelings of self-worth, impairs their mental functioning, and contributes to eating disorders. In other words, it fucks girls up. The infantilization of adult women reinforces attitudes that women should be treated as naive, dependent, and incapable of making intelligent decisions or holding leadership roles. In other words, it fucks women over.
Another disturbing trend in sexy costumes is linking sexuality with violence. Here are some creepy sexy costumes, such as female versions of horror movie serial killers -- Sexy Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Sexy Jason (Friday the 13th), and Sexy Michael Myers (Halloween). I guess the Sexy Body Bag (seriously, who comes up with this shit?!) fits in here as well :/ :
Of course, many Halloween costumes are intended to be frightening or gory, but turning a male horror movie killer that often targets scantily-clad female victims into a scantily-clad female horror movie killer has some interesting connotations. Horror movie killers tend to murder (punish) the sexually open "whores" early on, while the good girl "virgins" often escape (reward). Underlying the sexy female killer is a misogynistic fear of female sexuality and power -- it threatens conservative social attitudes about women owning our sexuality and our bodies. It also sparks our own conflicted feelings about sexuality or our insecurities about other women being competition or threats. Since all of these fears are uncomfortable, they must be buried or "killed".
Clearly, there are lots of "sexy" costumes for women, but those for men are a bit different. This Tumblr page has tons of examples of the same costume idea, but different versions for him and her. The differences are quite striking when you look at them side-by-side. His costumes are typically silly, while hers are always sexy. Here are his-and-hers versions of Tigger, Skunk, Firefighter, and Astronaut:
Making sexy versions of non-sexy characters like Tigger or Skunk invariably make sexiness cross into absurdity. However, sexing-up women's costumes of traditionally male careers, such as Firefighter or Astronaut, is another breed of animal. First, how could women realistically fight fires in a mini-skirt, garters, and fishnets or work in zero gravity in a mini-skirt and a top that low-cut? The answer is that they can't. And that speaks to deeper cultural beliefs about what women can and can't do. Underlying sexy costumes such as these are sexist beliefs about a woman's role. This reinforces beliefs that we're primarily sexual objects and that we don't belong in certain careers or positions of power unless we're there to support men.
So far, we've only looked at sexy costumes for women, but men have a few choices as well: the Breathalizer (Get it? You "blow" into that straw between his legs), the One Night Stand, and the Pimp (Parents -- make sure to teach your sons early that by treating women like hos, they'll be rewarded with money and status!):
There's obviously a discrepancy between men's and women's sexy costumes:
"... [W]hen women go sexy for Halloween, it usually means being seen as a sex object for others. When men go sexy, it means joking about how men should be sexually serviced, have access to one night stands, or being in charge of and profiting from women’s bodies. A different type of 'sexy' entirely."
That's it. I'm skipping Halloween. These are all just too scary for me. :/
Fifty Shades of Sexism
I've written previously about the negative impact of sexism in politics here and also in the article "Are You Voting for the Hot One, the Bitch, or the Mom?" Here's a recent example of how women also perpetuate this sexism.
During New York Senate debates, moderator Liz Benjamin — a reporter from YNN from NY1 -- actually asked female Senate candidates Kirsten Gillibrand and GOP challenger Wendy Long if they'd read Fifty Shades of Grey. WTF kind of question is that? And would a similar question ever have been asked if the candidates were male? "So Senator Bob & challenger Joe, tell me -- have you watched any Girls Gone Wild videos lately?" It would be absurd ... and just as absurd as asking these women about Fifty Shades of Grey.
By asking female political candidates such an inane question or focusing on their appearance, Research has shown that it damages the credibility of all women who try to run for political office or otherwise hold positions of power:
"[The] unfair treatment of women candidates is extremely detrimental to their campaigns ... [You can] identify sexism by using the reversibility test, which states that if terms are being used for women that wouldn’t be used for men, it is sexist. Would this question be asked if it had been a man standing at the podium? Why were these two professional and qualified women asked about a saucy romance novel? Not only did it unfairly trivialize an otherwise well-worded and intellectual match, but asking the candidates about such a sexually explicit novel is essentially asking them about their sexual interests. These comments lead the viewer to see these candidates in an unprofessional, inappropriate, and sexualized light—producing attitudes that gender stereotype and draw attention away from the issues at hand."
Watch the video here:
African Philosophy of Ubuntu
"[The African tribal philosophy of] Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity. ... A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
Why Women Have Abortions
(NOTE: There's no mention of: "Treated abortion as birth control because it's just so easy & convenient & I'm an irresponsible slut")
