Feminism in News and Popular Media

[Allison W]

Originally Posted by Kobi

a whole bloody lot of words

This, this is the thing. I think I wept with joy right around Part Four. These boys really need to learn that what's keeping them down isn't misandry, it's patriarchy.

(That said, I consider myself both a feminist and an egalitarian, and I don't really see any conflict between these two positions.)

Originally Posted by femmeInterrupted

evidence incriminating the folks at Maxim Magazine as people who need to be thrown off a mountain

Holy shit do these people need to be thrown off a mountain.

Originally Posted by femmeInterrupted

humourous chart

Hold on I need to post this to Facebook.

[femmeInterrupted]

[femmeInterrupted]

"The Gulabi Gang is an extraordinary women’s movement formed in 2006 by Sampat Pal Devi in the Banda District of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. This region is one of the poorest districts in the country and is marked by a deeply patriarchal culture, rigid caste divisions, female illiteracy, domestic violence, child labour, child marraiges and dowry demands. The women’s group is popularly known as Gulabi or ‘Pink’ Gang because the members wear bright pink saris and wield bamboo sticks. Sampat says, “We are not a gang in the usual sense of the term, we are a gang for justice.”

The Gulabi Gang was initially intended to punish oppressive husbands, fathers and brothers, and combat domestic violence and desertion. The members of the gang would accost male offenders and prevail upon them to see reason.
The more serious offenders were publicly shamed when they refused to listen or relent. Sometimes the women resorted to their lathis, if the men resorted to use of force.

Today, the Gulabi Gang has tens of thousands of women members, several male supporters and many successful interventions to their credit.
Whether it is ensuring proper public distibution of food-grains to people below the poverty line, or disbursement of pension to elderly widows who have no birth certificate to prove their age, or preventing abuse of women and children, the Pink sisterhood is in the forefront, bringing about system changes by adopting the simplest of methods - direct action and confrontation.

Although the group’s interventions are mostly on behalf of women, they are increasingly called upon by men to challenge not only male authority over women, but all human rights abuses inflicted on the weak."



One day when Sampat Pal Devi, a simple woman living in a village in Northern India, saw a man mercilessly beating his wife. She pleaded with him to stop but he abused her as well. The next day she returned with a bamboo stick and five other women and gave the rogue a sound thrashing.

The news spread like wild fire and soon women started approaching Sampat Pal Devi in droves requesting similar interventions.
Many women came forward to join her team and in the year 2006 she decided that the sisterhood needed a uniform and a name and thus the pink sari was chosen, to signify the womanhood and understated strength.

The Gulabi Gang kept a watch on all community activities and protested vociferously when they saw any manifestation of injustice or malpractice.
On one occasion, when Sampat Pal went to the local police station to register a complaint, a policeman abused and attacked her.
She retaliated by beating him on the head with her lathi. On another occasion she dragged a government official out of his car to show him a crumbling road that was in need of urgent repair. After all, what cannot be endured must be cured!
http://www.gulabigang.in

[femmeInterrupted]

[Allison W]

Originally Posted by femmeInterrupted

the Gulabi Gang

This is pretty great. And somewhat amusingly, it's an example of problems being effectively solved through a little judicious violence. But I've long believed that the patriarchy won't come tumbling down until women take their share of ownership in the use of force, rather than violence being owned almost solely by men. So I pour a glass every time I hear of a woman, or women, giving a righteous ass-whooping. Excuse me while I go do so.

[femmeInterrupted]

[femmeInterrupted]

http://jezebel.com/rape-and-death-th...-rea-476882099

[Kobi]

By now, you’ve likely seen the new Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, which purports to change the way women see themselves by attempting to show that women judge themselves and their appearances too harshly. Simultaneously, we have Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg promoting her new book, Lean In, touted by corporate media as the new feminist manifesto, encouraging women to “lean in” to their work environments and further their careers.

And so it appears that feminism is having a corporate moment. But rather than embrace this new feminist facade, the truth remains that when feminism becomes embroiled in corporate interests, the already-marginalized in our society are sidelined, omitted, and simply oppressed under a more progressive guise.

Sheryl Sandberg should not be excluded from feminism because she is a corporate businesswoman. That’s no different than excluding a woman on welfare from feminism because of her economic status. But Sheryl Sandberg isn’t just being included in feminism; she is largely being heralded as the face of the feminist movement. A COO of a major American corporation rapidly ascends to the forefront of feminism because of one book, while thousands of online feminists and grassroots activists have been doing community organizing and feminist theorizing for years, to little public fanfare. And it’s no wonder that Sandberg, a white, thin, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied woman of distinct economic and educational privilege, is incessantly framed by corporate media as the new feminist leader: she’s the perfect package of privilege to promote a water-down brand of feminism.

In the meantime, we see Dove seemingly challenging the hegemonic beauty norms that for years, have made their parent company Unilever (also the owner of Slimfast and Axe Body Spray) billions of dollars. The campaign reveals that “we are more beautiful than we think,” but according to whose standards? Against whose beauty standards are we measuring ourselves? We have internalized the regulatory practices perpetuated by Dove’s own advertising to the point that it is entirely naturalized, as evidenced by this campaign.

Women have been conditioned for decades to believe that they are never enough, that if you buy this cream, this pill, this soap, you will temporarily feel better until it’s time to go out and buy more cream, more pills, more soap. This new advertising campaign from Dove is simply another corporate ploy to make you spend your money on their product. Dove is not interested in your well-being; if they were, their parent company Unilever wouldn’t be promoting sexist and exploitative Axe Body Spray ads like this. Dove’s new advertising campaign is nothing more than a faux feminist bandage on a corporate exploitative wound.

So what do Sheryl Sandberg and the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign have in common? They are both mainstream, corporate visions of feminism, sidelining actual critique in place of a narrow reaffirmation of the virtues of capitalist consumerism. There is a vibrant online feminist community, dedicated to interrogating oppression and challenging the patriarchal power structures that perpetuate misogyny, racism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other forms of bigotry. But that community is completely absent from the mainstream corporate visions of feminism, and for good reason; much of the online feminist community exerts substantial energy to critique capitalist and consumerist oppression. Corporations hoping to profit from feminist posturing avoid the wealth of feminist work that critiques the very power systems that they themselves perpetuate.

“Corporate feminism” is an oxymoron. Feminism cannot hope to be a real movement for social change if it is pandering to the same structures it is supposed to be critiquing. Social justice movements are meant to challenge and dismantle oppressive power structures, not silently profit from them. Sheryl Sandberg may be a voice within feminism, but she cannot be lauded as the face of the movement any more than Dove can be commended for taking a stand against the very sexism and exploitation from which it profits. If we truly want a feminist movement that will work to eradicate misogyny and end patriarchal oppression, we cannot align ourselves with the corporate system that actively oppresses us every day. If we’re looking for a radical movement for social change, we need look no further than ourselves.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/37...orate-feminism