Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Greyson]

Okay, back. Blav and HSIN, thanks for bringing it to my attention that this was posted in another thread earlier. Sorry, I did not see it. Also, Admin, please can you correct the spelling in the title of this thread? I was in a rush and missed one of the y's in misogyny.

I found this article worthy of posting and timely. We have been discussing racism quite a bit. Sexism is also one of those embedded "isms". I do not think I am exempt from internalized sexism and flat out influenced by some masculine privilege.

I am not posting any of this to be provocative and just to stir it up. I am posting this and dedicating a thread specifically to Misogyny and Sexism because I believe this community is capable of looking at uneasy, difficult things and capable of self reflection and change.

It is true many woman around the world are suffering atrocities daily. I don't want to get into measuring the victim status. Subtle, blatant, physical, emotional abuse it's all not acceptable. Where do we begin to address this in our B-F/Trans/Gender Variant Community?

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Greyson

Okay, back. Blav and HSIN, thanks for bringing it to my attention that this was posted in another thread earlier. Sorry, I did not see it. Also, Admin, please can you correct the spelling in the title of this thread? I was in a rush and missed one of the y's in misogyny.

I found this article worthy of posting and timely. We have been discussing racism quite a bit. Sexism is also one of those embedded "isms". I do not think I am exempt from internalized sexism and flat out influenced by some masculine privilege.

I am not posting any of this to be provocative and just to stir it up. I am posting this and dedicating a thread specifically to Misogyny and Sexism because I believe this community is capable of looking at uneasy, difficult things and capable of self reflection and change.

It is true many woman around the world are suffering atrocities daily. I don't want to get into measuring the victim status. Subtle, blatant, physical, emotional abuse it's all not acceptable. Where do we begin to address this in our B-F/Trans/Gender Variant Community?

Doesn't matter if this was posted elsewhere at all. That might be a good thing (re.: circulation). I did read it somewhere else and thought it to be a clear analysis that just lays out some facts but doesn't inflame, which all too often causes division and halts our ability to even attempt change.

I think having a thread dedicated as such could be a very good thing just as the new thread on white priviledge might prove to be in promoting self reflection and change. Thanks, good idea!

[Greyson]

This morning as I was partaking of my 90 minute commute to work, I was listening to the Local Talk Radio AM Station and then to NPR. Here are some stories that I heard that are directly impacted by misogyny and sexism.

• The Navy is going to allow women to now serve on submarines.

• Crime On College Campuses. The rape and assault of women.

Regarding the story about women serving on submarines, the radio host a heterosexual male spoke of how our laws, policy and practices are set up to serve the fears, concerns, behavior of heterosexual men. For example, DADT.

The second story, a young woman was raped while intoxicated by two male friends on a college campus in Wisconsin. She did not report the rape, initially. In fact it took her I believe over a year to report it.

Basically nothing came of the report and following investigation. One student had already graduated and the other denied it. He said it was consensual and he was allowed to remain on campus and finish his degree.

I am meandering a bit here because I am thinking out loud. Many of you know that I have been in the process of "transitioning" for a few years now. This transition, for me has begun my questioning my beliefs, values, and motives.

I do know that I want to consciously be a part of redefining masculinity. Masculinity does not exclude, nor elude women and/or femininity. I think this process of redefining masculinity must include looking at my life, my world, my actions, my beliefs through the lens of my entire life experience. In other words, my experience and history as a cisgendered woman, perpetrator and victim of patriarchy.

[Greyson]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fa...07campus.html?




February 5, 2010
The New Math on Campus
By ALEX WILLIAMS
CHAPEL HILL, N.C.

ANOTHER ladies’ night, not by choice.

After midnight on a rainy night last week in Chapel Hill, N.C., a large group of sorority women at the University of North Carolina squeezed into the corner booth of a gritty basement bar. Bathed in a neon glow, they splashed beer from pitchers, traded jokes and belted out lyrics to a Taylor Swift heartache anthem thundering overhead. As a night out, it had everything — except guys.

“This is so typical, like all nights, 10 out of 10,” said Kate Andrew, a senior from Albemarle, N.C. The experience has grown tiresome: they slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another, Ms. Andrew said, “because there are no guys.”

North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students.

In terms of academic advancement, this is hardly the worst news for women — hoist a mug for female achievement. And certainly, women are primarily in college not because they are looking for men, but because they want to earn a degree.

But surrounded by so many other successful women, they often find it harder than expected to find a date on a Friday night.

“My parents think there is something wrong with me because I don’t have a boyfriend, and I don’t hang out with a lot of guys,” said Ms. Andrew, who had a large circle of male friends in high school.

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”

These sorts of romantic complications are hardly confined to North Carolina, an academically rigorous school where most students spend more time studying than socializing. The gender imbalance is also pronounced at some private colleges, such as New York University and Lewis & Clark in Portland, Ore., and large public universities in states like California, Florida and Georgia. The College of Charleston, a public liberal arts college in South Carolina, is 66 percent female. Some women at the University of Vermont, with an undergraduate body that is 55 percent female, sardonically refer to their college town, Burlington, as “Girlington.”

The gender gap is not universal. The Ivy League schools are largely equal in gender, and some still tilt male. But at some schools, efforts to balance the numbers have been met with complaints that less-qualified men are being admitted over more-qualified women. In December, the United States Commission on Civil Rights moved to subpoena admissions data from 19 public and private colleges to look at whether they were discriminating against qualified female applicants.

Leaving aside complaints about “affirmative action for boys,” less attention has been focused on the social ramifications.

Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.

“I was talking to a friend at a bar, and this girl just came up out of nowhere, grabbed him by the wrist, spun him around and took him out to the dance floor and started grinding,” said Kelly Lynch, a junior at North Carolina, recalling a recent experience.

Students interviewed here said they believed their mating rituals reflected those of college students anywhere. But many of them — men and women alike — said that the lopsided population tends to skew behavior.

“A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” Ms. Lynch said. “They’ll text them and say: ‘I had a great time. Want to hang out next week?’ And they don’t respond.”

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

As for a man's cheating, "that's a thing that girls let slide, because you have to," said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. "If you don't let it slide, you don't have a boyfriend." (Ms. Kennard, however, said that she does not personally tolerate cheating).

Faculty members and administrators are well aware of the situation. Stephen M. Farmer, North Carolina’s director of admissions, said that the university has a high female presence in part because it does not have an engineering school, which at most schools tend to be heavily male. Also, he said, more young men than women in the state opt to enter the military or the work force directly out of high school.

And the university feels obligated to admit the most qualified applicants, regardless of gender, Mr. Farmer said. “I wouldn’t want any young woman here to think that there’s somebody we’d rather have here than her,” he said.

The phenomenon has also been an area of academic inquiry, formally and informally. “On college campuses where there are far more women than men, men have all the power to control the intensity of sexual and romantic relationships,” Kathleen A. Bogle, a sociologist at La Salle University in Philadelphia, wrote in an e-mail message. Her book, “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus,” was published in 2008.

“Women do not want to get left out in the cold, so they are competing for men on men’s terms,” she wrote. “This results in more casual hook-up encounters that do not end up leading to more serious romantic relationships. Since college women say they generally want ‘something more’ than just a casual hook-up, women end up losing out.”

W. Keith Campbell, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, which is 57 percent female, put it this way: “When men have the social power, they create a man’s ideal of relationships,” he said. Translation: more partners, more sex. Commitment? A good first step would be his returning a woman’s Facebook message.

Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them, Professor Campbell said. In this way, some colleges mirror retirement communities, where women often find that the reward for outliving their husbands is competing with other widows for the attentions of the few surviving bachelors.

“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray, a senior at the University of Georgia, who said that it is common to see six provocatively clad women hovering around one or two guys at a party or a bar.

Since that is not her style, Ms. Deray said, she has still not had a long-term relationship in college. As a fashion merchandising major, she said, she can only hope the odds improve when she graduates and moves to New York.

At colleges in big cities, women do have more options. “By my sophomore year, I just had the feeling that there is nobody in this school that I could date,” said Ashley Crisostomo, a senior at Fordham University in New York, which is 55 percent female. She has tended to date older professionals in the city.

But in a classic college town, the social life is usually limited to fraternity parties, local bars or coffeehouses. And college men — not usually known for their debonair ways — can be particularly unmannerly when the numbers are in their favor.

“A lot of guys know that they can go out and put minimal effort into their appearance and not treat girls to drinks or flatter them, and girls will still flirt with them,” said Felicite Fallon, a senior at Florida State University, which is 56 percent female.

Several male students acknowledged that the math skewed pleasantly in their favor. “You don’t have to work that hard,” said Matt Garofalo, a senior at North Carolina. “You meet a girl at a late-night restaurant, she’s texting you the next day.”

But it’s not as if the imbalance leads to ceaseless bed-hopping, said Austin Ivey, who graduated from North Carolina last year but was hanging out in a bar near campus last week. “Guys tend to overshoot themselves and find a really beautiful girlfriend they couldn’t date otherwise, but can, thanks to the ratio,” he said.

Mr. Ivey himself said that his own college relationship lasted three years. “She didn’t think she would meet another guy, I didn’t think I would meet another girl as attractive as her,” he said.

Several male students from female-heavy schools took pains to note that they were not thrilled with the status quo.

“It’s awesome being a guy,” admitted Garret Jones, another North Carolina senior, but he also lamented a culture that fostered hook-ups over relationships. This year, he said, he finally found a serious girlfriend.

Indeed, there are a fair number of Mr. Lonelyhearts on campus. “Even though there’s this huge imbalance between the sexes, it still doesn’t change the fact of guys sitting around, bemoaning their single status,” said Patrick Hooper, a Georgia senior. “It’s the same as high school, but the women are even more enchanting and beautiful.”

And perhaps still elusive. Many women eagerly hit the library on Saturday night. And most would prefer to go out with friends, rather than date a campus brute.

But still. “It causes girls to overanalyze everything — text messages, sideways glances, conversations,” said Margaret Cheatham Williams, a junior at North Carolina. “Girls will sit there with their friends for 15 minutes trying to figure out what punctuation to use in a text message.”

The loneliness can be made all the more bitter by the knowledge that it wasn’t always this way.

“My roommate’s parents met here,” said Janitra Venkatesan, a student at North Carolina. “She has this nice little picture of them in their Carolina sweatshirts. Must be nice.”

An earlier version of this article may have left the impression that Emily Kennard might personally condone a boyfriend's cheating. As the article now states, it was her characterization of some other people's attitudes.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 14, 2010


An article last Sunday about dating on campuses where women outnumber men misattributed a quotation. It was Janitra Venkatesan, a student at the University of North Carolina — not Mitali Dayal, another student there — who said: “My roommate’s parents met here. She has this nice little picture of them in their Carolina sweatshirts. Must be nice.”

Apparently now universities in the USA are beginning to tilt toward a majority of female students. Is this the best that the gold standard for daily journalism in the States can do? The big story is it is hard to get a date?

Women go to university to snag a partner? How many stories do we read about men, boys, transmen, cisgendered men, white heterosexual men, queer men, POC men going to college and the big worry is dating?

[SuperFemme]

Anyone want to talk about the way the media markets feminine hygiene products to us? Like it is something we ought to be fearful of, irritated with and made to go away? Rather than what it really is?

I wonder how many little girls are freaked out when their first periods do not come out in the form of blue gel, like on the commercials?

[Soon]

Memo to all women: No half for you in Hollywood

OK, we’re not just imagining it.

Women may make up 51% of the population, but actresses nabbed only 29.9% of the 4,379 speaking parts in the 100 top-grossing films of 2007, or so says a new study released by University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, which was conducted by professor Stacy. L Smith.

According to Smith’s study, 83% of all directors, writers, and producers on those films were male. Not surprisingly, the number of female characters grew dramatically when a woman directed a film -- up to 44.6% from 29.3% if a man was behind the camera.

That number would probably be even lower if Smith and her team had to factor in "The Hurt Locker," from filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, who many believe will be the first woman to win an Academy Award for directing come March 7. The number of parts for females in her movie? According to IMDB, only three of the 34 actors were women, which means they accounted around 9% of the characters on screen.

A few more numbers to consider: Smith said these statistics about women directors and female actors should be interpreted with caution -- only three of the top 100 films of 2007 had a female director.

-- Rachel Abramowitz

[UofMfan]

I have yet to get my head around this...

Utah's New Abortion Law Threatens to Punish Innocent Women for Miscarriages
by Ruth Fertig womensrights.change.org

Utah lawmakers have just passed a bill that would charge a woman with criminal homicide for obtaining an illegal abortion or inducing a miscarriage, whether intentionally or through "reckless" behavior.

There are a few narrowly defined exceptions, including failure to comply with medical advice, refusal to submit to a physician's recommended treatment, and negligence (which in legal terms is apparently a less serious crime than recklessness). Otherwise, the law holds women accountable for criminal homicide if they intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly "cause the death of another human being, including an unborn child at any stage of its development," outside the parameters of legal abortion.

The bill was ostensibly a response to a recent Utah case in which a 17-year-old, 7 months pregnant girl was protected from prosecution after she paid a man $150 to beat her in a failed attempt to induce miscarriage. At that time, Utah -- like most other states -- did not hold women criminally liable for seeking illegal abortion, but instead punished those who performed them. It seems Utah lawmakers found it unjust that this desperate girl was not sent to prison. Yet in their efforts to close the supposed loophole, they have now opened up a gaping hole, into which many women who had no desire for an abortion are liable to fall.

As various advocacy groups have pointed out, the terms of the bill are so subjective that a woman could theoretically be charged for criminal homicide if she: fails to wear a seat-belt, gets in a car accident and suffers a miscarriage; uses legal or illegal drugs and the baby is stillborn; carries multiples as a result of fertility treatment, and one or more of the babies die; or remains with a partner whom she knows to be abusive, and she suffers a miscarriage after he beats her particularly violently.

As Utah's ACLU wrote in a letter to Utah's governor in protest of the law, "If this bill is signed into law, women in this state will essentially be in the uncomfortable and unfortunate position of having to prove that the abortions they obtain (or miscarriages they suffer) are not unlawful." In effect, women suffering the trauma of losing a baby they desired could end up facing the double trauma of being charged with causing the baby's death.

Don't think it's possible that women could be held accountable for obviously unintentional harm to the fetuses they're carrying? As fellow blogger Roxy MtJoy made clear last week, you might want to think again.

Says the National Advocates for Pregnant Women: "Once the state has the power to decide what a women's "intent" is, it does not really matter what her intent actually is." Giving police and prosecutors such enormous discretion to decide who will and will not be arrested and charged under this law is an invitation for innocent women (and their families) to suffer.

As both the ACLU and National Advocates for Pregnant Women point out, most states give women immunity from prosecution for a reason -- it's in the interest of both maternal and fetal health. If women are fearful of prosecution for harmful behavior, they won't get the prenatal care they need (which is harmful behavior in itself). Likewise, if they know they will be charged for getting an illegal abortion, they won't seek medical help if the procedure goes wrong. And then there's the fact that prosecuting women for homicide for something that half the country believes should be perfectly legal is just not good policy.

So, yeah, this is a terrible law all around. Please ask the governor of Utah not to sign it into law.

According Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, what makes Utah's proposed law unique is that it is specifically designed to be punitive toward pregnant women, not those who might assist or cause an illegal abortion or unintended miscarriage.

The bill passed by legislators amends Utah's criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion.

While the bill does not affect legally obtained abortions, it criminalizes any actions taken by women to induce a miscarriage or abortion outside of a doctor's care, with penalties including up to life in prison.

[Soon]

At 76, Steinem laments elusive equality for women

[Soon]

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[Soon]

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[Soon]

Why the media gets rape so wrong