Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[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

[Soon]

New Jersey Catholic School Makes Girls Swear Not to Swear, Lets Boys Do Whatever the Fuck They Want

/snip:

Following in the grand tradition of Catholic hypocrisy and misogyny, the girls at Queen of Peace High School in North Arlington, NJ were asked to take a no-cursing pledge on Friday while their male classmates looked on, blinking like the bemused rescue greyhounds the Pope flagellates every time he stubs his toe on a piece of priceless marble statuary.

[Greyson]

Who You Calling a Female?

Ask Demetria: Before accepting a date, consider how a guy refers to women. It says a lot about him.

By: Demetria L. Lucas | Posted: February 7, 2013 at 12:11 AM


That you are startled by his use of "female" in a nonscientific context implies that you and I may have similar thoughts on the use of the word. To me, it's objectifying women, robbing us of a bit of our personhood. And that makes it sound woefully misogynistic.

That, of course, is a red flag, one that many people don't recognize. The heterosexual man who enjoys sex with women but doesn't actually like women -- or, er, "females," as he might call them -- is initially a bit of an enigma. I believe that calling women "females" is one of his calling cards. Whenever I hear it, it's as if the guy is trying really hard not to say "b--ch."

http://www.theroot.com/views/who-you-calling-female
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For me, I feel and think similar to the use of the word "female" when referring to women. I am Trans. This means I have lived much of my life socialized as a woman in many ways. When and if I was ever referred to as a female instead of a woman, I would say something.

I was reluctant because this word is used by many POC and/or others at the lower end of the economic scale. Since I come from both, I was more willing to say something to the use of "female" when referring to a woman. When I was going through my morning reads, I knew I had to post this one.

[Soon]

American Horror Story: Oscar Pistorius and Misogynist Myth-Making