Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Soon]

Major Victory Against Rape Apologist Hate Speech in South Africa

[Soon]

At 76, Steinem laments elusive equality for women

[Soon]

Men with sexist views 'earn more'

[Soon]

You're not guilty of rape: Those skinny jeans were too tight to remove by yourself, jury rules

[Soon]

Why the media gets rape so wrong

[Soon]

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp6EVKr7sLs&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube- Eudy Simelane -- A Story of Corrective Rape[/nomedia]

[Soon]

Bret Easton Ellis on American Psycho, Christian Bale, and His Problem with Women Directors


What are your thoughts on women directors? After you saw Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, you tweeted that you might have to reevaluate your preconceived notions about them.
I did. And after I saw [Floria Sigismondi’s] The Runaways, too.

Really?
I loved it.

I wish I’d loved it.
Well, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I avoided it, and then I was with some people and they said, “It starts soon at the Arclight. Let’s go.” So yeah, I do have to reevaluate that, but for the most part I’m not totally convinced, [except for] Andrea Arnold, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola…

Not Mary Harron?
Mary Harron to a degree. There’s something about the medium of film itself that I think requires the male gaze.

What would that be?
We’re watching, and we’re aroused by looking, whereas I don’t think women respond that way to films, just because of how they’re built.

"Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg?"

You don’t think they have an overt level of arousal?

[They have one] that’s not so stimulated by the visual. I think, to a degree, all the women I named aren’t particularly visual directors. You could argue that Lost in Translation is beautiful, but is that [cinematographer Lance Acord]? I don’t know. Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don’t know. I think it’s a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. I mean, the best art is made under not an indifference to, but a neutrality [toward] the kind of emotionalism that I think can be a trap for women directors. But I have to get over it, you’re right, because so far this year, two of my favorite movies were made by women, Fish Tank and The Runaways. I’ve got to start rethinking that, although I have to say that a lot of the big studio movies I saw last year that were directed by women were far worse than the sh***y big-budget studio movies that were directed by men.

Which are we talking about?
"I mean, do I want to say this on the record? Did you see The Proposal? Anyway, whatever."

[Soon]

Elena Kagan, cross your legs!
Robin Givhan goes after the Supreme Court nominee's "unusual" posture (and perhaps her sexuality)


This weekend, the Washington Post raised a new concern about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and her posture. No, not her political stance, but how she carries her body. Naturally, this commentary comes from the Post's fashion writer Robin Givhan, who is disturbed by how "she sat hunched over" and "with her legs ajar" while courting senators on Capitol Hill.

Givhan writes, "In the photographs ... she doesn't appear to ever cross her legs." (Oddly enough, the first image I came across of these meetings shows Kagan crossing her legs -- but, hyperbole aside, let's move on.) Givhan continues:

People tend to mimic each other's body language during a conversation, especially if they're trying to connect with one another. But even when Kagan sits across from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has her legs crossed at the knees, Kagan keeps both feet planted firmly on the ground. Her body language will not be bullied into conformity.

She does not cross her legs at the ankles either, the way so many older women do. Instead, Kagan sits, in her sensible skirts, with her legs slightly apart, hands draped in her lap.

Certainly this sort of critique can't be taken too seriously, given the context. Givhan is on the fashion beat, after all, and she indiscriminately targets political figures, male and female alike. But what silliness, subjecting a 50-year-old woman to that classic grandmotherly scolding of "cross your legs, young lady!" The truth is, Kagan still sits rather demurely, despite her legs being uncrossed.

Beyond that basic ridiculousness, I find Givhan's emphasis on Kagan's otherness, her refusal to conform and be normal, somewhat discomfiting. It feels like Kagan is, however indirectly, being indicted over her sexuality -- once again. An accompanying photo caption reads: "UNUSUAL: Most women, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, cross their legs when sitting, but not Kagan." Maybe because she's an "unusual" lesbian.

Givhan also lays into Kagan for her "frumpiness," noting that "Kagan's version of middle-age seems stuck in a time warp, back when 50-something did not mean Kim Cattrall or Sharon Stone, 'Cougar Town' or 'Sex and the City.'" I'm going to give Givhan -- and my own sanity -- the benefit of the doubt and assume she doesn't actually mean that the gold standard of sartorial appropriateness for a 50-year-old Supreme Court nominee is "Cougar Town."

[Enigma]

Tight Pants Ban Takes Effect In Indonesia

MEULABOH, Indonesia — Authorities in a devoutly Islamic district of Indonesia's Aceh province have distributed 20,000 long skirts and prohibited shops from selling tight dresses as a regulation banning Muslim women from wearing revealing clothing took effect Thursday.

The long skirts are to be given to Muslim women caught violating the dress code during a two-month campaign to enforce the regulation, said Ramli Mansur, head of West Aceh district.

Islamic police will determine whether a woman's clothing violates the dress code, he said.

During raids Thursday, Islamic police caught 18 women traveling on motorbikes who were wearing traditional headscarves but were also dressed in jeans. Each woman was given a long skirt and her pants were confiscated. They were released from police custody after giving their identities and receiving advice from Islamic preachers.

"I am not wearing sexy outfits, but they caught me like a terrorist only because of my jeans," said Imma, a 40-year-old housewife who uses only one name. She argued that wearing jeans is more comfortable when she travels by motorbike.

more...here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_593796.html

[Martina]

That is so interesting and so lame. i loved it. Thank you!!!

How does he explain other women visual artists -- photographers, graphic artists, etc?

And Spielberg and Hitchcock???? Of course there are not women Spielberg's and Hitchcock's. None of us has been an adolescent male. Plus when Hitchcock was directing, how many women could dream of getting to make major motion pictures.

The reason why there are fewer major women directors is simple. It's a very expensive medium. You have to be able to work within and get the support of corporations to do your work. i do not know the nature of the business. But there do not seem to be a lot of women producers either. And that is business acumen. No one has ever said women lack that. So there must be some old boy stuff going on.

And he's also not looking at foreign films. i am not a huge fan, but what about Lina Wertmuller?

And he's totally conflated eighties film theory about the gaze -- which is about how films use point of view to reinforce gender hierarchies -- and psychological theories about men being more visual.

LOL. Oh well, he wrote American Psycho. Nuff said.

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Bret Easton Ellis on American Psycho, Christian Bale, and His Problem with Women Directors


What are your thoughts on women directors? After you saw Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, you tweeted that you might have to reevaluate your preconceived notions about them.
I did. And after I saw [Floria Sigismondi’s] The Runaways, too.

Really?
I loved it.

I wish I’d loved it.
Well, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I avoided it, and then I was with some people and they said, “It starts soon at the Arclight. Let’s go.” So yeah, I do have to reevaluate that, but for the most part I’m not totally convinced, [except for] Andrea Arnold, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola…

Not Mary Harron?
Mary Harron to a degree. There’s something about the medium of film itself that I think requires the male gaze.

What would that be?
We’re watching, and we’re aroused by looking, whereas I don’t think women respond that way to films, just because of how they’re built.

"Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg?"

You don’t think they have an overt level of arousal?

[They have one] that’s not so stimulated by the visual. I think, to a degree, all the women I named aren’t particularly visual directors. You could argue that Lost in Translation is beautiful, but is that [cinematographer Lance Acord]? I don’t know. Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don’t know. I think it’s a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. I mean, the best art is made under not an indifference to, but a neutrality [toward] the kind of emotionalism that I think can be a trap for women directors. But I have to get over it, you’re right, because so far this year, two of my favorite movies were made by women, Fish Tank and The Runaways. I’ve got to start rethinking that, although I have to say that a lot of the big studio movies I saw last year that were directed by women were far worse than the sh***y big-budget studio movies that were directed by men.

Which are we talking about?
"I mean, do I want to say this on the record? Did you see The Proposal? Anyway, whatever."

[Heart]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/wo...1flogging.html

[Nat]

Jesus this thread is upsetting.

[AtLast]

Feminism's Fourth Wave
Women are doing nearly everything men do, but...
November 4, 2003
by Katie Allison Granju


Last year, during the U.S. assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan, my seven-year old daughter, Jane seemed truly puzzled by the photos of Afghani women that dominated the news. Why, she wanted to know, did those women want to wear clothing that covered them from head to toe? Weren't they hot? How could they run or even smile at other people? Why weren't there ever interviews on television with any Afghani women? What was meant when it was said that now, women and girls in that country could read and write again?

I explained to Jane about the cultural and religious restrictions faced by these particular mothers and daughters, and she listened, mouth hanging open in vivid disbelief. She peppered me with questions about every aspect of the lives of Afghanistan's female population, and seemed utterly astounded when I told her that there are actually many places and cultures around the world in which girls cannot go to school; choose what they will wear or whom they will marry; own property; or vote.

As sad as it made me to explain the state of so many of the world's women to the most important girl in my life, I realized that the fact that Jane found this information so incomprehensible represented something very positive. The environment in which my daughter is growing into adulthood is one in which she sees few, if any restrictions on what is possible for her. Her American girlhood is very different from the one in which I came of age only a few decades ago.

When I was Jane's age, my working, feminist mother was an anomaly among the women I knew, and my parents had to make a conscious effort to be sure I understood that, although most doctors, police officers, and engineers were men, this didn't mean that "only" men could hold these jobs. My parents had to be ever-vigilant to protect both their daughters from being held back by unfair and sexist limitations, and they worked to be sure that we were exposed to art, music, and great ideas by women. They ensured that we had "Free to Be You and Me" books and records around the house, and a lifetime subscription to Ms. Magazine in our mailbox.

Today, however, the world has changed enough that parents don't have to make these kinds of special efforts to promote a sense of equality and possibility in our young daughters. Basic feminist consciousness has become an organic part of our culture, and we are all the better for it.

My third grade girl gets her news and information from terrific female journalists, and she is personally acquainted with women lawyers, priests, doctors, firefighters, farmers, athletes, social workers, and artists. Jane is an aggressive and successful competitor in her own chosen sport, and she enjoys listening to music by everyone from 'tween queen Hilary Duff to riot-grrls Sleater-Kinney.

Unlike my own parents, I do not feel compelled to pontificate on the wrong-headedness of rigid gender roles every time I see Jane playing with her dolls. I'm confident that she understands clearly that motherhood is not incompatible with professional achievement or civic engagement.

Also different from my own childhood as the daughter of '70s "women's libbers," Jane and her friends don't seem to feel any conflict between their femininity and their power. When I was a little girl, equality often meant trying to act or look like the little boys. Jane, however, is growing up in a pop culture infused with grrl-power -- from the Powerpuff Girls to Jessica Lynch. I observe her and her little friends playing superheroes, but their superheroes proudly wear sparkly pink capes as they save the world.

While all of this progress is terrific, I also recognize that my daughter is growing up in a society where women still earn less money than men for performing the same work; where women continue to live in realistic, ever-present fear of sexual assault; and where girls are still too often discouraged from studying math or science. There is still work ahead for her generation of rising young feministas. But as I watch her playing things like "President Barbie solves the Mideast peace crisis" with her friends, I feel hopeful.


Katie Allison Granju lives in Knoxville and is the mother of three children. She is the author of Attachment Parenting (Simon and Schuster, 1999) and her website is www.locoparentis.blogspot.com. This article first appeared in Metro Pulse Online.
From Feminist.net
http://www.ifeminists.net/introducti...104granju.html

[Soon]

Banker Deemed Too Sexy For Her Job

[Soon]

Worth a Read: (I think the title is inflammatory and am still reading it as I post, but would love to hear what others think):


The End of Men

[Soon]

Brazilian judge refuses abortion for fetus without brain

[Nat]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Brazilian judge refuses abortion for fetus without brain

That is fucked up.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Worth a Read: (I think the title is inflammatory and am still reading it as I post, but would love to hear what others think):


The End of Men

The title is over the top! Very inflammatory, but does what the media wants it to do, get us to read the article. And it is typical of the anti-feminist rhetoric that has gone on for yeras. We just want men to be erased, yanno! And the article is about women's work, educational and social standing as it has progressed.

What bothers me is that everything that is about women, in and of ourselves, continues to be used as anti-feminist fodder - when it just isn't about men at all..... men are not the center of the universe as some of them want to continue to be.....

I am so glad my 42 year old son looks at this and laughs! A big, deep, belly laugh! As do the fine and secure men I know do.

[Nat]

School district blames disabled student for own molestation

When a teacher's aide at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, CA was arrested for molesting one of the special-ed students under his care, the school district's first impulse was to cover the incident up and hope no one would find out.

Now the student's parents have sued the Santa Ana Unified School District for negligently keeping on an employee that other parents had been complaining about for years. The district's lawyers have responded by not only blaming the mentally disabled girl for her own abuse but asking that the judge dismiss the charges and make the victim's family pay the district's legal fees.

The seventeen-year-old victim, who has cerebral palsy, has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old and is confined to a wheelchair. Because she is unable to speak, no one knows exactly what was happening when another school employee found her alone in a room with Alonso Manuel Gonzalez, with her shirt pulled up and her breasts exposed, but the incident resulted in the aide's arrest for a "lewd act with dependent adult."

The school's immediate reaction was to attempt to keep the incident under wraps. Saddleback teachers told the OC Weekly they had been told not to discuss the incident with anyone. Parents were not notified and a school representative refused to discuss the matter with a reporter. Over the next few months, the school district made no public acknowledgment of the arrest, either when Gonzalez was arraigned or several months later when he pleaded guilty to child abuse and endangerment.

The parents of other disabled students, however, quickly came forward with their own complaints about Gonzalez, going back to at least 2005. They told the OC Weekly that a group of parents had met with Saddleback's principle and the head of the district's special-ed program to complain that Gonzalez made the students uncomfortable and seemed to want to spend time alone with female students, but that the district ignored their concerns.

Now, a year after the aide's guilty plea, the parents of the student have brought a civil suit against Gonzales for causing mental and physical trauma to their daughter and also against the school district for negligence. As a result, the district's lawyers are fighting back -- hard.

In a filing with the Orange County Superior Court, the attorneys claim that the wheelchair-bound girl "chose to encounter the known risk" of being alone with Gonzalez, that she "consented to" him lifting up her shirt, and that her injuries were the result of her having "failed to use due and reasonable care for her own safety and protection."

They also charge her parents with having "negligently, carelessly and recklessly supervised, monitored, controlled and instructed the minor plaintiff so as to legally cause and contribute to her injuries and damages, if any."

"As a grand, caring finale, the district asked presiding Judge Luis A. Rodriguez to not only dismiss all charges against them but to make the victim's family pay all legal fees," the OC Weekly concludes, adding, "Since when did the Santa Ana Unified School District take its directions toward sex abuse from the Diocese of Orange?"

[Soon]

No, Sexual Violence Is Not 'Cultural'

By LISA SHANNON

A month into my first trip to eastern Congo, site of the deadliest conflict since World War II, I had heard plenty of horror stories — from forced cannibalism to the burning alive of the inhabitants of entire villages. I was no longer easily shocked. But one exchange with an aid worker stopped me cold.

I arrived in Baraka, a town on Lake Tanganyika that was overrun with Congolese soldiers and international aid workers, in February 2007. I asked a disheveled European woman working with the United Nations about security. She enthusiastically described her pet video project, to convince refugees in neighboring Tanzania that it was safe to return home.

“Foreign militias are gone,” she said. “Just rapes and looting for the moment. No attacks.”

Stunned, I asked, “You don’t consider rape a security threat?”

“Rape here is so common,” she said. “It’s cultural.”

That was the first of many times I would hear mass rape in Congo dismissed as “cultural.”

The sexual violence in Congo is among the worst on the planet. The U.N. estimates that hundreds of thousands of women have been gang-raped, tortured and held as sexual slaves since the conflict began in 1998.

That’s when armed groups began behaving like mafias, battling for control of the minerals in eastern Congo. To control territory, militias use rape as their weapon of choice.

In May, the U.S. Senate included a provision in its financial regulation bill requiring publicly traded companies to ensure that “conflict minerals” are not purchased from militia-controlled mines in Congo. Such efforts are welcome, if grossly overdue.

Still, we in the West too often find it easier to perceive rape as an accepted part of an unfamiliar culture rather than as a tool of war that we could help banish. Too often, the enemy becomes all Congolese men rather than men with guns terrorizing the Congolese people. By casting the chaos and violence as “men vs. women” or dismissing the crisis as “cultural,” we do a profound injustice to Congolese men. Rather than help, we send an implicit insult: It’s a pity, but, well…it’s just who you people are.

This perception is widespread. I work full-time for Congolese women, and I find myself devoting an inordinate amount of energy to defending Congolese men, whether arguing with a gazillionaire at a backyard barbeque over “Africa’s tribal rape rituals” or sitting on a panel with a human rights activist who waxes on about “the cultural roots of the sexual violence in Congo.”

Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently described such thinking as the “lingering assumption that sexual violence is a tradition, rather than a tactic of choice.”

Any Congolese will tell you rape is not “traditional.” It did occur in Congo before the war, as it does everywhere. But the proliferation of sexual violence came with the war. Militias and Congolese soldiers alike now use sexual violence as a weapon. Left unchecked, sexual violence has festered in Congo’s war-ravaged east. This does not make rape cultural. It makes it easy to commit. There is a difference.

Analysts often use the phrase “culture of impunity” to describe Congo. John Prendergast, who has worked in African conflict zones for 25 years, explains: “The rule of law breaks down and perpetrators commit crimes without fear of conviction or punishment. Over time, this leads to further breakdown of societal codes and the very social fabric of a community.”

The media, aid workers and activists alike have consistently failed to tell the stories of Congolese men who were killed by fighters because they refused to commit rape. In interviews with hundreds of women, I heard countless stories of men who chose to take a bullet in the head, literally, rather than violate their child, sister or mother. In Baraka, one survivor recalled: “They tried to make my older brother rape me. He refused and was killed. So they raped me.”

Describing the violence in Congo as “cultural” is more than offensive. It is dangerous.

The European aid worker who dismissed the violence as “cultural” implied that Congolese women should expect to be raped. In so doing, she dismissed her responsibility to so much as warn returning refuges about the extreme security threat.

Later that day in 2007, I met 20 Congolese women who had returned from refugee camps in the last six months. In that time, half had been raped.

“Cultural relativism legitimizes the violence and discredits the victims, because when you accept rape as cultural, you make rape inevitable,” Ms. Wallstrom explained in a recent opinion essay co-authored with the Norwegian foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store. “This shields the perpetrators and allows world leaders to shrug off sexual violence as an immutable — if regrettable — truth.”

When we blame all Congolese men for sexual violence, not only do we imply that rape is inherent to the African landscape, we avoid critical questions, particularly regarding the role that we in the West play.

Who has been silent during 12 years of mass rape and off-the-charts atrocities? We have.

Who funds the bloodshed with our hunger for the latest computer processor and smart phone produced with minerals from Congo? We do. Perhaps unwittingly, but we do.

Who helped the fighters get their guns? We did.

This prevents us from taking the basic steps required to end the crisis: a coordinated international effort to choke off the militia leadership, some of whom reside in Europe and the United States; requirements that technology companies spend the extra penny per product that would guarantee conflict-free gadgets; and an aggressive plan to end the culture of impunity through justice and accountability measures.

When we label rape in Congo “cultural,” we let ourselves off the hook. And that is a cultural issue. Ours.

Lisa Shannon is founder of Run for Congo Women and author of “A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman.”