Posts in category Sexism

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Newsstand by Me

What should a woman’s day consist of? More importantly, what is a woman’s true essence? According to magazines, we should aim for glamour and allure, as these are what will offer us the most value in life. Psychology today tries to put us in touch with the self. It tells us that we’re wired to look to our parents and our family circles for details about navigating the world, or simply our town and country. They teach us that being a woman requires us to look pretty and have good housekeeping skills. If our mothers jones for cellulite prevention and physical perfection, chances are that we will too. They ready us for the beauty and fashion magazines to reinforce this notion by taking over as both car and driver. They make our vanity fair game.
Magazines offer highlights into how our lives can be lucky as long as we take the right road and track. To them, this means being in style, in vogue, much like a cosmopolitan New Yorker would be. It means being in shape like Ms. Muscle and Fitness and perpetually seventeen years old. It means being a sassy mademoiselle. It means being thin and beautiful enough to deserve a playboy* who will offer us food and wine, travel and leisure, better homes and gardens, and the big O in his penthouse* – maybe even turn us into brides. This is supposedly the dream written about in each Saturday evening post in any ladies’ home journal and every wish upon a star.
But it’s all a mirage. Magazines waste so much of our time with mindless entertainment weekly, monthly, and daily. The popular science of marketing ensures they make smart money with the advertising age, striving for consumer reports that signify people are letting the ads in magazines and TV guide them in their purchases. And we readers digest it all.
The maxim* that you can’t believe everything you see is true. It’s real simple – magazines offer spin. From across the nation, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there are thousands of women who are mad about the endless pressure to look perfect. We need to stand up and bitch, to say it’s not OK, because seriously, the stuff* we put up with is just bazaar.
(* Don't worry -- these link to Wikipedia pages, so they're SFW.)

Dumb Acronym Meets Naïveté

H. er

U. ndermining

S. hirt

B. rings

A. ssholes

N. ot

D. ream guys






Are You Voting for the Hot One, the Bitch, or the Mom?

Criticism of female politicians focuses on gender almost as much as policy. From late night talk show comics to political commentators, female politicians are regularly evaluated on their looks, questioned on their ability to balance work with family, and judged if they step out of ladylike roles. Certainly, male politicians are mocked and criticized as well, but they’re not treated with the same condescension. Regardless of political party or stance, female candidates will most likely face attacks or sexual comments based solely on their possession of a vagina. These comments are an underhanded way to reinforce traditional roles of a woman’s place – and traditionally, a woman’s place is not in power. Sexist comments are a way to invalidate women and to shut us up if we dare to challenge the status quo.
Typically, those who lack the skills to intellectually and rationally argue tend to resort to ad hominem attacks: attacking a woman’s appearance (fat, ugly), sexuality (frigid, slut), femininity (butch, ball-breaker), or character (liberal, feminist). Even compliments can be used as a way to direct attention to a woman’s gender rather than her opinions. This subtle manipulation is done to throw her and the audience off topic. These tactics are commonly seen in forms of media that attract a less-intellectually minded, albeit vocal, crowd – Internet comment threads, letters to the editors of certain publications, ultra-conservative talk radio, and pundits on cable TV programs that try to pass off propaganda as “news” (some might even call it faux news).
Sexist comments are so commonplace that they generally go unchallenged. Also, we’re less likely to object when the candidate’s political ideology differs from our own. (Heard any good Sarah Palin jokes lately?) This isn’t any less offensive though. Why not stick to criticizing her political stances or even her lack of intelligence, but stay away from the comments that narrow her down to her being a chick? Is that too much to ask? There’s certainly public outrage when politicians or media personalities make racist slurs -- as there should be. These people are reprimanded or even fired. They might even formally apologize for their ignorance and insensitivity. Where’s the outrage when Glenn Beck calls Senator Mary Landrieu a prostitute? Or when G. Gordon Liddy says that he hopes the “key conferences aren't when [Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is] menstruating”? Or what about when Senator Arlen Specter tells Representative Michele Bachmann, "I'm going to treat you like a lady ... now act like one"? (see more) Seriously, WTF?
Need more examples? Check out this short video from the Women's Media Center that demonstrates just how common this crap really is:
This boy’s-club-locker-room-frat-brother mentality continues because there's a lack of accountability. The anonymity of the Internet allows people to make offensive comments that they might otherwise withhold in public. And those who would say such things in public may not get much push-back anyway. Not enough people resist or speak up about sexism, and our silence allows it to go on. It's particularly difficult to change these attitudes culturally when those who hold positions of privilege and power in society (both males and females) contribute to them.
Here's the cost of our apathy. A recent study offered evidence about how sexist insults hurt female politicians (and I’m not just talking about their feelings). These comments are not mere annoyances. They have an actual impact on women’s ability to have respect, influence, and power in society.
Maybe it's time to speak up.

The Horror of Sexy Victims

Our culture has a twisted way of dealing with female sexuality. On the upside, women are placed on pedestals as pretty objects to peer at; however on the downside, we're threatened with violence and control. Attractive women are featured as victims in all forms of media: they’re the dead bodies or rape victims in horror movies, action thrillers, and television crime dramas; they're the abused women in Lifetime movies; they’re in print and Internet ads as dismembered, sexual body parts, or they’re striking corpse-like, dominated, or submissive poses in Vogue. As if being victims of violence weren't enough, those victims are usually portrayed in various stages of undress, which further communicates vulnerability.
To be fair, women are not merely portrayed as sexy victims -- we're also the sexy perpetrators. (Yay?) We use our sexuality as weapons against men, threatening them with temptation and making them vulnerable. But the femme fatale fetish is merely the other side of the same coin. It all goes back to a sexually repressed culture that still hasn't gotten over its virgin/whore complex. Both victim and femme fatale imply that female sexuality is dangerous and must be controlled. This is also reflected in our cultural attitudes about virginity, sex education, unwed mothers, and abortion.
"Torture porn" is a recent trend in the horror film genre that features exceedingly graphic violence. The terminology itself links violent imagery with sexuality. Although the films do not necessarily involve sex, they often show nude or partially dressed women being pursued, captured, raped, tortured, and murdered -- therefore making the name quite appropriate. Torture porn is meant to shock, disgust, and degrade more than to frighten and is a more extreme example of the typical forms of media violence.
And this mentality bleeds into real life. Even local news programs, while not exactly entertainment, tend to follow the same theme. They offer airtime for stories about attractive, upper-middle class, white, young, female victims of kidnapping, rape, or murder, while largely ignoring less stereotypically attractive, poor, or minority victims. Is it really true that only cute little blond girls, suburban teenagers, or pretty college coeds get victimized? Of course not, but the media treats those stories as the most compelling. They're just more sympathetic victims, apparently.
The regular depiction of attractive women as victims conveys an undercurrent of hostility. These images create and reflect a culture in which varying degrees of sexual aggression and domination against women are normal -- even socially acceptable. Violence against barely-dressed women in the media suggests the antiquated notion that "boys will be boys," with the unspoken implication that women can "ask for it" or "deserve it" based on what we look like, what we're wearing, or how we act. Overt female sexuality apparently can be a causal factor for violence against us.
Hell, wearing "fuck me" heels must be practically an invitation then.
I didn't have to try hard at all to find the large collection of images displayed here (see more below). Unfortunately, I could've kept going. Men are definitely portrayed as victims in the media as well, but they are not depicted in the same manner. Their lives may be threatened, but their sexuality is not. Why is this?
Violent imagery plays on women’s real fear of sexual violence. Guys may invoke prison movie shower scenes or the “squeal like a pig” scene from Deliverance as humorous ways to refer to the rape of men. It can be joked about, because the threat is far from the reality of most men. There aren’t many situations in which grown men fear sexual violation. Women live in a different world. Female sexuality paired with violence is particularly threatening because it happens, and not just when we’re in prison or on a camping trip in the backwoods of Georgia with inbred hillbilly banjo players. And even if we never personally suffer sexual violence, we live with the fear that it’s a possibility. Most of us have either been assaulted or know another woman who has. We watch the news. We’ve heard the statistics. We’re aware of our vulnerability in fighting off unwanted advances – either due to lack of physical strength or because we’re socialized to please men and we fear speaking up. We nervously glance over our shoulders while walking alone at night. We feel anxious walking past a group of leering men. We feel violated when a male acquaintance get a little too touchy-feely after a few drinks. And for good reason. Women get raped by men we don’t know. We get raped by men we thought were our friends. And we get raped by men we love.
All of this imagery reflects real world dangers for women in the rate of actual violent crime against us and also in the lessons we learn from an early age in how to protect ourselves against those dangers. We learn not to talk to strange men, walk down dark alleys alone, leave our drinks unattended, wear certain outfits, go back to the guy's place on a first date, or to engage in similar risky behavior. As women, we learn that we’re never really safe, but it's our responsibility to avoid being attacked. And then if we fail to take the "right" precautions, the implication is that we may have even asked for it.
There's more than one reason why these images are scary. Individually, they could be considered entertainment. But together, they seem like a warning.
Drag Me to HellUnderworld: Rise of the LycansParanormal EntityTrainWanted
It’s as if we’re daring to seduce death itself.

Kidnapping is Funny!

The Cheeky has unveiled a collection of suitcase stickers designed to make it look like your Samsonite® has been ripped open to reveal its contents. Their four designs let FAA personnel, along with your fellow passengers, think that you either: a) smuggle cocaine, b) have stacks of cash, c) have a sex toy fetish, or d) are a kidnapper (my personal fave!).
The description on the website reads: “Take a stand against monotonous travel with Suitcase Stickers.” Wow. You can totally tell that whoever designed these stickers is like a real social activist.
Hell yeah! Hear that, people! I’m gonna take a stand! It’s time to do something about boring air travel. Enough’s enough. And you know what would amuse me? Here's what! Holding up everyone at security as the screeners do double-takes of my luggage until they realize how incredibly witty and clever I am! OMG – it would be so funny if people thought that I kidnapped a flight attendant, tied her up, gagged her, and shoved her in my suitcase! How hilarious! Her mascara’s smeared too, so it looks like she’s been crying. ROTFLOL!
How very cheeky indeed.
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