Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Corkey]

Can't control himself so she pays. Fucking Patriarchy.

[Kobi]

BOSTON (WHDH) -- Some local students think they've found a sweet solution to pay for college -- in the form of “sugar daddies.”

A new website aims to match "sugar daddies" with "sugar babies".

While some think it's a great idea to cut down on debt, others aren't so sure.

Students in Boston find themselves under the same crushing college debt load as kids all over the country. Some of them will look for jobs, or second jobs. Others are turning to a website where they can find benefactors advertised as boyfriends.

Answer a couple of questions, post your picture, and you could be just a couple of clicks away from finding a match made of cash.

The dating site “seekingarrangements.com” says its gaining popularity, especially with coeds struggling to pay for school.

“A lot of these girls grew up thinking college is going to be paid for and then when the recession happened they had to use their savings to stay afloat and now there's no college money for those girls,” said Jennifer Gwynn, “seekingarrangement.com”

“Seeking arrangements” lets singles find what they call a “sugar daddy” or “sugar momma.” The company says the average college aged sugar baby gets an allowance of about $3,000 per month -- that's for what it describes as a “mutually beneficial relationship.”

“We really believe this is a better way to pay for school,” said Gwynn.

“Seeking arrangements” claims to have 2 million users, it says 44 percent of them are college students, including some at BU and UMass.

“Given the expense of your colleges it doesn't surprise me that people are forced to end up doing things like this,” said one man.

“Sugar babies” can earn as much as $20,000 per month;more than enough to pay for books, loans, or even tuition.

But to most students, whatever the payout, it isn't worth the price.

“It sounds dangerous. I wouldn't do that. Wouldn't recommend it,” said one woman.

BU and UMass representatives told 7News they were not aware of any of their students participating with the site.

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/l...h-benefactors/
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Sometimes there just arent any words.

[DapperButch]

My first thought when reading the above article is that gay men have been doing this forever.

The site is set up for all combination of sexes, with sugar daddys, sugar mommas, sugar male babies, and sugar female babies. Straight and gay.

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

My first thought when reading the above article is that gay men have been doing this forever.

The site is set up for all combination of sexes, with sugar daddys, sugar mommas, sugar male babies, and sugar female babies. Straight and gay.

Sorry but the article really pushed my buttons. One of my first thoughts is yet more enabling of spineless "I am too special, smart, talented and beautiful to be expected to live among the mortals."

I live in an area full of well intentioned middle class liberals who are clueless and raised to believe they are open hearted, fair minded and not racist. They could not do an honest day of work or find their way out of a paper bag if their life depended on it.

College fees, tuition are rediculious. Guess what? It has been this way for generations for many. So now that it is in the back yard of the little darlings, it is a problem? Gawd forbid they might have to get a job or take the bus instead of daddy's old car.

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Greyson

Sorry but the article really pushed my buttons. One of my first thoughts is yet more enabling of spineless "I am too special, smart, talented and beautiful to be expected to live among the mortals."

I live in an area full of well intentioned middle class liberals who are clueless and raised to believe they are open hearted, fair minded and not racist. They could not do an honest day of work or find their way out of a paper bag if their life depended on it.

College fees, tuition are rediculious. Guess what? It has been this way for generations for many. So now that it is in the back yard of the little darlings, it is a problem?

Well, when I went to the site I didn't see anything about it being a paying for college type of thing, so it seems to me that the article is making the assumption that this is what the site is mainly used for. But, it is not like I read further into it.

I took a look at the site after I read the article and it seems to be also used as just a regular personals site. Many of the "sugar mommas" make around 40K per year, so I don't see how they plan to spend $1,000-$3,000 for their "sugar male babies". Some of them are also in their 20's.

However, I didn't join the site, so maybe they mention the college thing, I don't know.

Really, this stuff already goes on on personal sites, anyway. People searching for wealthy people to help take care of them. The difference is this site gives one location for those people.

So, for me, when I read the article it pushed my buttons, but when I looked at the site and saw how it was a level playing field between the sexes, it "pushed my buttons less", so to speak.

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Well, when I went to the site I didn't see anything about it being a paying for college type of thing, so it seems to me that the article is making the assumption that this is what the site is mainly used for. But, it is not like I read further into it.

I took a look at the site after I read the article and it seems to be also used as just a regular personals site. Many of the "sugar mommas" make around 40K per year, so I don't see how they plan to spend $1,000-$3,000 for their "sugar male babies". Some of them are also in their 20's.

However, I didn't join the site, so maybe they mention the college thing, I don't know.

Really, this stuff already goes on on personal sites, anyway. People searching for wealthy people to help take care of them. The difference is this site gives one location for those people.

So, for me, when I read the article it pushed my buttons, but when I looked at the site and saw how it was a level playing field between the sexes, it "pushed my buttons less", so to speak.

Dapper, thanks for digging deeper. I am not against women making ends meet, raising their standard of living, spending their money however they choose among consenting adults. What rubs me the wrong way is when women, men and any other gender believes are entitled to something. Although the article does not speak directly to "entitlement" for me, it pushes that button.

In the media the discussion of entitlement is usually about "minorities." What is glossed over is the reality of middle class, upper middle class and cooperate entitlements. IMO, many are born into it and do not even realize their world is full of entitlement, privlege.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

My first thought when reading the above article is that gay men have been doing this forever.

The site is set up for all combination of sexes, with sugar daddys, sugar mommas, sugar male babies, and sugar female babies. Straight and gay.

I didnt visit the site to see all the available options.

Some people might see this as an example of capitalism in action, fitting a need that is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Some might see this as an example of human exploitation.

I dunno.

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Kobi

I didnt visit the site to see all the available options.

Some people might see this as an example of capitalism in action, fitting a need that is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Some might see this as an example of human exploitation.

I dunno.

I guess I kind of see it as both. I have mixed feelings about Hooters, too, but seem to lean more towards viewing it is exploitation since it is most often very young women. Of course, the women who work there may be insulted by my feeling that way.

[Soon]

School Tells 13-Year-Old That She Should Get a Breast Reduction to Combat Bullying



"It makes me feel like now you are telling me it's my fault, it's God's fault the way he made her. The lady on the phone said they could transfer my daughter and said her boobs were so large she will always get teased. And the only suggestion she had for me is to have my daughter get a breast reduction," said Jackson.

[Greyson]

Remembering Civil Rights in 1963, 50 Years On

Posted: 01/27/2013 2:42 pm

In 1963, Pauli Murray was working hard to make Americans aware of an idea she had come up with two decades earlier -- one that influenced people as different from one another as Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Wright Edelman -- and which would help change the meaning of equality. She called it Jane Crow. Alongside the system of Jim Crow race segregation, Murray argued, there was an equally wrong system of sex segregation. Sex discrimination should be against the law for the same reasons as race discrimination. This was a radical idea at the time. In the early 1960s, there were still laws excluding women from certain jobs (like bartending), and from jury service (unless they volunteered to serve).

In 1963, Pauli Murray was working hard to make Americans aware of an idea she had come up with two decades earlier -- one that influenced people as different from one another as Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Wright Edelman -- and which would help change the meaning of equality. She called it Jane Crow. Alongside the system of Jim Crow race segregation, Murray argued, there was an equally wrong system of sex segregation. Sex discrimination should be against the law for the same reasons as race discrimination. This was a radical idea at the time. In the early 1960s, there were still laws excluding women from certain jobs (like bartending), and from jury service (unless they volunteered to serve). As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote in 1961, "woman is still regarded as the center of home and family." The mainstream view, among men and many women, was that restrictions on women were a simple reflection of their essential nature as wives and mothers.



Murray strongly disagreed, and had been developing her contrary view of "civil rights" ever since she graduated first in her class at Howard Law School in 1944, hoping to become a civil rights lawyer for the NAACP. That job never materialized, but by the early 1960s the lawyer/activist found herself at the crossroads of history, as civil rights and feminist groups sometimes worked at cross purposes. Seizing the opportunity, Murray began pushing her view of Jane Crow everywhere. When Congress had to decide whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should apply to sex discrimination, she was there, writing a memo that went to every member of congress, arguing that it should -- and it did. When civil rights activists planned the March on Washington, she was there, publishing an open letter that criticized march leaders for appearing at the National Press Club, which excluded women from its central space. When women's rights activists pushed for enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was there, convincing them that they should also look to the civil rights movement's successful use of the existing Fourteenth Amendment. She was a founding member of the National Organization for Women -- and one of its few early black leaders. Among her most important listeners was a young lawyer (now a Supreme Court Justice) named Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In 1971, when Ginsburg convinced the Supreme Court to rule that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to sex discrimination in a case called Reed v. Reed, she placed Murray's name on the brief as the originator of that idea.



Then, as now, there were many who argued that the legacy of the civil rights movement of the 1960s should be restricted to the African American fight against Jim Crow. To most civil rights leaders, women's equality was a different cause with a different history. Murray, however, felt differently. The reason lay in what one of her friends called Murray's struggle as a "minority of minorities." Murray always felt out-of-place as a representative of African Americans -- a person who was supposed to stand in for the aspirations of her entire racial group. She was light-skinned and hailed from multi-racial family, and often found herself on the wrong side of the color lines that were supposed to divide blacks and whites. More importantly, she was a sexual dissenter. Although her own society lacked the words to name it, Murray felt as though she was a man trapped in a woman's body. Although it was the source of intense emotional discomfort, Murray wanted to do the things in life that only men did -- including becoming a black civil rights lawyer.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kennet...Black%20Voices