Recently in Sexism Category

Normally, I enjoy reading most of the posts put up on rolfrazzi.com and icanhascheezburger.com, however today not so much...

The caption on the photo already rubbed me the wrong way...but the comments made me even more irate.  Only two of the commenters (as of 12:48 EST) indicated that there might be something wrong with the equation our culture seems to live by:  women+sexuality=slut .  Apparently women aren't allowed to be sexual entities without asking to be disrespected.  And apparently we're also not allowed to show natural parts of our bodies, like breasts, hips, what have you, without it being sexual. 

Ok, I have hedgehogs. Little prickly balls of quills with tantalizingly soft underbellies just aching for scritchies. Which is not the point of this post, but rather, the lead-in.

Because of my interest in small prickly creatures I belong to a hedgehog mailing list. And the majority of the posters seem to be women. Occasionally guys show up, but most of us are female.

PETA came up in a thread where someone was trying to expose abusive practices by a licensed breeder. She'd already complained to the cops (didn't do anything), the Humane Society (also zilch) and was trying to figure out how to contact the USDA, when someone suggested PETA.

A couple of us piped up with their hypocrisy in having a nearly 85% euthanasia rate in their shelters, and I mentioned their rampant sexism. The response was, "Can you point to any sexism in their ad campaigns? I don't remember seeing anything sexist by them."

So I listed the fur campaign, the lettuce bikini campaign, the young women in bikinis wrapped in saran wrap and blood, and the nearly nude woman in the sow cage. I haven't gotten a response yet, but we'll see. I'm trying to be politic, but part of me just wanted to type in all caps, "HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ONE OF THEIR ADS? THEY ALL SUCK!" I didn't. I just informed and we'll see how it goes from there.

I could go on about all the reasons why I don't read Cosmo, but I wanted to share this example.

On the website there is a sex positions section, and each lists "Why You'll Love It." Besides the fact that it is only supporting heterosexual sex, it is extremely sexist (as much of this magazine is...)

This one says this:

WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT:
This passion pose supplies the kind of naughty sex scene that all men yearn for. It gives him a full-frontal va-va-voom view of you in action, one that'll undoubtedly fuel his dirtiest fantasies for a long, long time. Plus, because you're the one who sets the speed and timing, you can treat yourself to the exact motions that make you moan with desire and take you over the edge of ecstasy.

Notice how the first half is not about why the man will love it - and the reason is that it's supposed to be fulfilling some naughty-porno-like-sex-scene fantasy. That just irks me on so many levels.

Has anyone heard of this new site, PMSbuddy.com? Its a new site where guys can sign up and be alerted when their girlfriends have their period. At first, I thought this was a joke, but after some investigation it turns out that this site is completely legitimate and thousands have signed up to be "warned" when it comes around that time of the month.
This lovely new site's logo is "saving relationships, one month at a time".

Hi, this is my first time posting something, although I have been reading this blog for a while now. I'm a first year university student majoring in history/women's studies. Just wanted to introduce myself and say hi.

I just read the newspaper today and there was an article about a stripper who is suing her employer for a human right's violation. She was fired because according to her boss she is too old to be a stripper. She is 44 and a single mother of two children. According to her boss, he had gotten complaints from customers stating that she is "old and ugly" (from the picture in the newspaper she looks like a beautiful women but that's beside the point). He said he wanted his club to go in a new direction with younger dancers (apparently according to the boss that's a "new" direction.

Lawrence H. Summers is a top candidate for treasury secretary under Barack Obama. Larry thinks that women are innately inferior to men in mathematical/scientifc reasoning.  As a male math major in my senior year, I know this to be false.  Gender is a very poor indicatior of mathematical talent.  Despite pervasive sexism and stereotyping, there has always been a sufficient pool of talented female students to guarantee women among the top 5% of every class i've ever taken from basic calculus to combinatorics to mathematical physics.

" ...The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all. ... "

--Boston Globe January 17, 2005(while Larry was the president of harvard)

I think Obama is awesome, but Larry Summers is absolutly unacceptable.

Let Barack know

http://www.change.gov/

Ok, so my boyfriend and I are kind of kinky. He got the idea to wear sexy costumes for each other on halloween, and I think it would be fun. So I did some investigating, and as I expected, most 'his and her' costumes consist of a fully clothed man and half-naked woman. This is issue number one.

Issue number two is the lovely outfits I will post at the end of my rant. They are the 'Coroner' and 'Sexy Jane Doe' or whatever. In otherwords, a man who's job is to deal with dead people is looking at a sexy dead stranger. Yeah, I couldn't find a costume where the man is dead. After seeing a whole one outfit for men being skimpy and the rest being complete while the girls are all showing at least some skin, this just set me off (I'm not as pissed as I may seem, mostly really irked.)

So, am I right being mad about the whole coroner and Jane Doe outfit? Am I just looking into it too much? Or is there a deliberate power dynamic being displayed?

Images of that costume set as promised.

Earlier this year, in late August, at a dinner that marked the culmination of a college first year pre-orientation program, all of the upper-classmen orientation leaders took turns going up and telling jokes for everyone. One guy got up, walked to the front of the room and told his joke in the mike, "Women's rights, bitches!" The room erupted in laughter and some people even started clapping.

This offensive, sexist joke did not go unnoticed. About a month ago, a first year female student wrote an article in one of the school publications entitled Nothing Funnier than a Bitch . She stated that the joke was degrading to women and not funny, especially with "bitch" as the punchline, as the double whammy. However she then got a little sidetracked...She wrote about how if it were a racist joke, people would've gotten fired up and angry instead of simply laughing it off. She wrote about how sexism was more acceptable while racism was completely untolerated.

Initially when I saw an article responding to the joke, I was excited that someone had decided to address it. But I was disappointed with the turn the article took in comparing racism and sexism. As many feminists know, and as we established in discourses over the media coverage during the primaries comparing the sexism Clinton faced versus the racism Obama faced, oppression works as a systemic, interlocking network. All forms of oppression work in conjunction with each other and complement each other. None is "better" or "worse" than the other, and therefore comparing them is simply futile and misguided.

Also after reading this article, thinking a lot about and engaging in many conversations about the joke, I am still struggling to clarify when and where to draw the line between what's funny and what's offensive and unacceptable. One of my male friends pointed out to me that jokes as such are usually not meant to be offensive and are not making fun of the subject, women or women's rights, but instead, they are poking fun at the flawed system and the oppressors. While that may be true, I am still deeply offended by this joke and I feel that in some cases, humor enables people to make deragatory and degrading comments about individuals or groups without dealing with the repercussions of what they are truly saying. Too often humor is used to let people off the hook for saying inappropriate and offensive comments.

What do people in the feministing community think?

I wonder if Dick Cheney or Joe Biden look-alikes have porns in the making.

I had last night off and got to go have some fun for a little while.  I met up with some of my friends at some bar.  They were watching the game.  Sports.  I really could not give a shit about them, so I showed up after the whole thing was over and everyone was very depressed because of the losing.  As we were leaving we stopped out front to smoke cigarettes.  This girl showed up out of nowhere and just took over the conversation.  That was fine, who doesn't like meeting new people?