Is Feminism Still Relevant?

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I think the principle extends beyond couples. Very often rape occurs because a man believes he is justified in taking control of a woman's body- his claims to it override her autonomy. That's whether he knows her or not. The Stubenville case is a great example. The perpatrators didn't have any sort of vendetta against the girl. She didn't antagonize them, there was no social aggression. One boy was under the impression that she wanted him. And when she was no longer capable of saying yes or no, they just thought it would be really fun to stage a massive scene of sexual humiliation- that they had a right to decide what happened to her. That's misogyny.

I never once for any second suggested that no rape had anything to do with misogyny. :doh:

I was just trying to get us(mainly you) from lumping all rape or all violence into the same category, which is where you were taking this thread.

You've been a bit exhausting to try and have a discussion with in this thread, too many twists, assumptions, and avoidance. I may have to bow out for awhile...
 
You need to stop taking everything out if context. I'm implying that rape is a hold over from more primitive times. Do you think the chimp that rapes other chimps is doing so because he hates the female chimps?
And since you brought it up, pedophilia is a completely different issue. Not even sure why you've included it. But do you think the priest who rapes choir boys does it out of hate for choir boys?
 
BVS said:
You've been a bit exhausting to try and have a discussion with in this thread, too many twists, assumptions, and avoidance. I may have to bow out for awhile...

that's makes two of us.
 
I had to go back to the beginning of this thread to figure out what the original topic was. I don't even know what is going on in here anymore.
 
You need to stop taking everything out if context. I'm implying that rape is a hold over from more primitive times. Do you think the chimp that rapes other chimps is doing so because he hates the female chimps?

I'm all for scientific reasoning, but I think this is a really dangerous train of thought. It's essentially biological determinism in suggesting that men have a primordial urge toward sexual aggression. The next step is to say that it's natural if that aggression turns violent. I'm no scientist, but I suspect that behavioral science is far from exact in this sense.
 
I had to go back to the beginning of this thread to figure out what the original topic was. I don't even know what is going on in here anymore.



Why don't we turn this thread into a general thread on women's fight for further equality? :)

Because of our habit of taking up less space than we deserve (with the possible--but not always--exception of bathrooms, closet space and luggage :D), this became a catch-all feminist thread. The topics will shift.

I do agree with people here that when discussing how woman fare, it is important to distinguish between violent misogynist/nonviolent misogynist and sexist responses to women (as well as misandrist and sexist responses to men). I do not think misogyny is pervasive (although certainly something that should be of serious concern for women). I do think sexism is pervasive if you define sexism as lesser regard, differing standards and expectations, imposed limits, judgment of a woman's appearance as her prime value (or lack of value), etc.

washingtonpost.com
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 13, 2006

Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science.

That's because Barres used to be a woman himself.

In a highly unusual critique published yesterday, the Stanford University biologist -- who used to be Barbara -- said his experience as both a man and a woman had given him an intensely personal insight into the biases that make it harder for women to succeed in science.

After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."

And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: "Your boyfriend must have solved it for you."

"By far," Barres wrote, "the main difference I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect" than when he was a woman. "I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."

Barres said the switch had given him access to conversations that would have excluded him previously: "I had a conversation with a male surgeon and he told me he had never met a woman surgeon who was as good as a man."

Barres's salvo, bolstered with scientific studies, marks a dramatic twist in a controversy that began with Summers's suggestion last year that "intrinsic aptitude" may explain why there are relatively few tenured female scientists at Harvard. After a lengthy feud with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Summers resigned earlier this year.


The episode triggered a fierce fight between those who say talk of intrinsic differences reflects sexism that has held women back and those who argue that political correctness is keeping scientists from frankly discussing the issue.

While there are men and women on both sides of the argument, the debate has exposed fissures along gender lines, which is what makes Barres so unusual. Barres said he has realized from personal experience that many men are unconscious of the privileges that come with being male, which leaves them unable to countenance talk of glass ceilings and discrimination.

Barres's commentary was published yesterday in the journal Nature. The scientist has also recently taken his argument to the highest reaches of American science, crusading to make access to prestigious awards more equitable.

In an interview, Nancy Andreasen, a well-known psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, agreed with Barres. She said it took her a long time to convince her husband that he got more respect when he approached an airline ticket counter than she did. When she stopped sending out research articles under her full name and used the initials N.C. Andreasen instead, she said, the acceptance rate of her publications soared.

Andreasen, one of the comparatively few women who have won the National Medal of Science, said she is still regularly reminded she is female. "Often, I will be standing in a group of men, and another person will come up and say hello to all the men and just will not see me, because in a professional setting, men are not programmed to see women," she said. "Finally, one of the men will say, 'I guess you haven't met Nancy Andreasen,' and then the person will turn bright red and say, 'Oh Nancy, nice to see you!' "

Summers did not respond to a request for an interview. But two scientists Barres lambasted along with Summers said the Stanford neurobiologist had misrepresented their views and unfairly tarred those who disagree with crude assertions of racism and sexism. Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and Peter Lawrence, a biologist at Britain's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said convincing data show there are differences between men and women in a host of mental abilities.

While bias could be a factor in why there were fewer women at the pinnacles of science, both argued that this was not a primary factor.

Pinker, who said he is a feminist, said experiments have shown, on average, that women are better than men at mathematical calculation and verbal fluency, and that men are better at spatial visualization and mathematical reasoning. It is hardly surprising, he said, that in his own field of language development, the number of women outstrips men, while in mechanical engineering, there are far more men.

"Is it essential to women's progress that women be indistinguishable from men?" he asked. "It confuses the issue of fairness with sameness. Let's say the data shows sex differences. Does it become okay to discriminate against women? The moral issue of treating individuals fairly should be kept separate from the empirical issues."

Lawrence said it is a "utopian" idea that "one fine day, there will be an equal number of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research."

He said a range of cognitive differences could partly account for stark disparities, such as at his own institute, which has 56 male and six female scientists. But even as he played down the role of sexism, Lawrence said the "rat race" in science is skewed in favor of pushy, aggressive people -- most of whom, he said, happen to be men.

"We should try and look for the qualities we actually need," he said. "I believe if we did, that we would choose more women and more gentle men. It is gentle people of all sorts who are discriminated against in our struggle to survive."

Barres and Elizabeth Spelke, a Harvard psychologist who has publicly debated Pinker on the issue, say they have little trouble with the idea that there are differences between the sexes, although some differences, especially among children, involve biases among adults in interpreting the same behavior in boys and girls.

And both argue it is difficult to tease apart nature from nurture. "Does anyone doubt if you study harder you will do better on a test?" Barres asked. "The mere existence of an IQ difference does not say it is innate. . . . Why do Asian girls do better on math tests than American boys? No one thinks they are innately better."

In her debate with Pinker last year, Spelke said arguments about innate differences as explanations for disparities become absurd if applied to previous eras. "You won't see a Chinese face or an Indian face in 19th-century science," she said. "It would have been tempting to apply this same pattern of statistical reasoning and say, there must be something about European genes that give rise to greater mathematical talent than Asian genes."

"I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today?" she concluded. "The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."

Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist

We discussed this topic a while ago.

My favorite part (assuming it's accurate) :

After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."

We need to watch who and what defines us. Doesn't mean every reaction we have is valid. Doesn't mean a reaction we have is necessarily invalid either.
 
I know rape jokes was just analyzed to death, but it's being discussed in the comedy world now. This article makes a good point:

And when feminists say that rape jokes contribute to rape culture, this is a big part of what they mean: That if you send rapists the message that what they did is normal, and something we can all laugh about – the way that jokes like Morril’s and Tosh’s do – then the next time they’re with a woman who’s too drunk to say yes, they’re going to know that they’ve already got some implicit approval for whatever they choose to do. So when I – and presumably a lot of other people who think that Tosh, Morril, and the rest of the rape-jokes-are-hilarious crowd are assholes – get upset about the jokes, it’s not that I’m offended. I’m really hard to offend. It’s that I’m mad that the person had a mic in their hand, and a whole room full of people listening to them, and they decided that the way they were going to make them laugh was to tell a joke that would made a rapist feel better about himself.

The Soapbox: What Do Rape Jokes Make Rapists Think?

Basically, yes. Why shouldn't a comedian be aware of the message he's sending? Censorship isn't necessary, but a little responsibility helps.
 
I'm all for scientific reasoning, but I think this is a really dangerous train of thought. It's essentially biological determinism in suggesting that men have a primordial urge toward sexual aggression. The next step is to say that it's natural if that aggression turns violent. I'm no scientist, but I suspect that behavioral science is far from exact in this sense.

I wasn't implying that all men have some suppressed urge to rape. I'm arguing that the act of rape has a long and well documented history in the animal kingdom. To suggest that, when it comes to humans, there must suddenly be some other motivating factor is unrealistic.


Because of our habit of taking up less space than we deserve (with the possible--but not always--exception of bathrooms, closet space and luggage :D), this became a catch-all feminist thread. The topics will shift.

I do agree with people here that when discussing how woman fare, it is important to distinguish between violent misogynist/nonviolent misogynist and sexist responses to women (as well as misandrist and sexist responses to men). I do not think misogyny is pervasive (although certainly something that should be of serious concern for women). I do think sexism is pervasive if you define sexism as lesser regard, differing standards and expectations, imposed limits, judgment of a woman's appearance as her prime value (or lack of value), etc.



Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist

We discussed this topic a while ago.

My favorite part (assuming it's accurate) :



We need to watch who and what defines us. Doesn't mean every reaction we have is valid. Doesn't mean a reaction we have is necessarily invalid either.

Great article. I tend to side with Steven Pinker in that men and women are predisposed to being better at different tasks, but predispositions aren't limiting. There are plenty celebrated men in mathematics; there's no reason for there not to be more women in science. The world could use their brains.
For an illustrative look at how hard women have it in science, read up on the history behind Wilson and Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA
 
Valuing women based on appearance, versus controlling what women wear lest they be too sexual for onlookers- tough choice.
 
prospect.org

E.J. Graff

June 10, 2013

Fifty years ago today, in 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act. The idea was simple: Men and women doing the same work should earn the same pay. Straightforward enough, right? Change the law, change the world, be home by lunchtime.

Well, maybe not by lunchtime. After all, back then the law still accepted the idea that men and women were born for different jobs. Newspapers like The Washington Post still had separate classified ad sections for “men’s” jobs and “women’s” jobs. Female law school graduates had trouble even getting interviews. The pre-1963 world being what it was–sexist, in a word—you’d figure activists might well have estimated that the culture would need at least a decade to catch up and treat women fairly on the job.

“When I first came to the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, which is now the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF), in 1974, it was very fashionable to walk around with those big buttons that had “59¢” with the international “no” sign, the slash, through it,” Judith Lichtman of NPWF told me. “We all wore those buttons.” Women then were making the ridiculous 59 cents to a man’s dollar.

Fifty years later, women are still earning about 77 cents for a man’s dollar—and it’s been bouncing around at that level for about 15 years. There’s plenty of discussion around the attempts to take away women’s reproductive rights, and around the consequences of sexual assault. But I just don’t see the same outrage about that missing money—even though the daily consequences are just as damaging. How often does a woman need emergency contraception or an abortion? Maybe once or twice in her lifetime. How often does she get paid less than the guy down the hall doing the same damn entry-level job, or the same nonprofit, government, medical, legal, or managerial job? Every single day.

So where’s the outrage?

Let me back up and admit that, yes, things are much better for women now than in the 1960s. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, astronaut, pro-basketball player: We take it for granted that girls can do just about everything, and will probably outperform the men they go to college, law school, or medical school with—at least while they’re still in school. And yes, because of the Ledbetter Act, Lilly Ledbetter could sue if, today, she found out that for the past thirty years men with fewer credentials and less experience were being paid more than she was. [And yet we still have a gaping wage gap within nearly every occupation, right out of school.

Let’s look at some of the facts. The wage gap, of course, varies by all kinds of measures. Women in Wyoming make only 64.3 cents to a man’s dollar, while women in Washington, D.C. are paid up to 88 percent of what the men there make. (Single childless women do even better, but that only means that once women have children, they fare much worse—more on that below.) If we’re looking at race, you can guess how much worse it is for black women and Latina women compared to white men: 68 and 59 cents on the white male dollar respectively. But it also varies by occupation: female RNs make 95.7 cents to a male RN’s dollar; a female cook makes 89.4 cents to a male cook’s dollar; but female accountants and auditors make only 76.5 cents to the men in their profession’s dollar; and female truck drivers are bumping along with flat tires at 71.8 cents on the dollar.
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The wage gap starts right away: One year out of college, men make more than women even when they have the same majors from comparable institutions, and went into the same occupations. Let me quote the American Association of University Women, or AAUW’s, 2012 study “Graduating to a Pay Gap:”

"Among teachers, for example, women earned 89 percent of what men earned. In business and management occupations, women earned 86 percent of what men earned; similarly, in sales occupations, women earned just 77 percent of what their male peers earned…."

And we all know that the starting gap is just like the alligator’s mouth: it widens over time. Start with a $3,000 difference, and by the end of your careers, you and he are living in completely different economic zip codes.

Former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy, for whom I wrote the book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don’t Get Paid Like Men—and What To Do So We Will, likes to ask women what they would do with that extra 23 cents. Eat more fresh vegetables and fruit? Pay off your student loans? Buy a new car? Send the kids to more expensive summer camps? Then she asks women to add that money up over a lifetime. Depending on your educational status, ladies, you will make $700,000 less than a man (that’s with a high school degree), $1 million less (college degree), or $2 million less (MBA, JD, MD).

The situation is much worse for mothers. If you give neutral reviewers the same job applications or job evaluations and you that a woman has children, she not only gets offered less money than anyone else (men with or without children, women without children), but also is allowed fewer absences and fewer tardy arrivals before she’s fired.

So how do we fix this? AAUW and NWPF want to see Congress pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would give more oomph to the 50-year-old law that’s showing its age, closing some loopholes and improving enforcement. Among other things, it would make it illegal to fire you for comparing pay with your coworkers, which ought to be a duh. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to figure out an appropriate way for the government to collect pay data by sex, since the government is already collecting a lot of different kinds of employment data; the idea is that if companies saw their own gendered wage data, they could work on fixing any gaps—and if they didn’t fix those gaps, the EEOC could come in and investigate.

Here’s where I find the hope: Four out of ten American households with children now have women as the primary earners. That’s hopeful because it means the pay gap is a family issue. I regularly hear about men outraged when their wives, girlfriends, sisters, or daughters are fired for being pregnant (having to find another job sure does hold back your advancement) or are passed over for manager or get sexually harassed in the Air Force Academy or whatever face discrimination takes in their lives. I hear, over and over, that these good men won’t let their wives or friends or sisters just roll over and get walked on; they insist that women stand up and push harder on the family’s behalf.

Sometimes I wonder whether it’s easier for young feminists to argue about women’s bodies because it’s not sex but money that’s the real American taboo. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s that sexual freedom is a young person’s issue, immediate and consuming at that life stage. But you don’t quite notice how pinched your finances are compared to your male peers until you’re in your thirties or forties, and you look around and realize: Wait, I ran circles around him in college; how did he get there when I’m still back here?

That’s why I got such hope from the broad conversation that Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, launched. Sure, as some objected, her solutions are focused on women in business, but for God’s sake, let’s at least get the conversation started somewhere. Nothing can change if we’re not all talking about the subtle and overt ways women don’t get paid fairly. Equal pay is a family issue; it’s about children’s well-being. And that makes it a societal issue. So what if earlier feminists couldn’t get the wage gap fixed by lunchtime? That just means it’s our turn now.
 
NY Times

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June 10, 2013
Sexism’s Puzzling Stamina
By FRANK BRUNI
This month the Supreme Court will issue raptly awaited decisions about affirmative action and gay marriage. But what’s been foremost in my thoughts isn’t race, sexual orientation or our country’s deeply flawed handling of both.

It’s gender — and all the recent reminders of how often women are still victimized, how potently they’re still resented and how tenaciously a musty male chauvinism endures. On this front even more than the others, I somehow thought we’d be further along by now.

I can’t get past that widely noted image from a week ago, of the Senate hearing into the epidemic of sexual assault in the military. It showed an initial panel of witnesses: 11 men, one woman. It also showed the backs of some of the senators listening to them: five men and one woman, from a Senate committee encompassing 19 men and seven women in all. Under discussion was the violation of women and how to stop it. And men, once again, were getting more say.

I keep flashing back more than two decades, to 1991. That was the year of the Tailhook incident, in which some 100 Navy and Marine aviators were accused of sexually assaulting scores of women. It was the year of Susan Faludi’s runaway best seller, “Backlash,” on the “war against American women,” as the subtitle said. It was when the issue of sexual harassment took center stage in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings.

All in all it was a festival of teachable moments, raising our consciousness into the stratosphere. So where are we, fully 22 years later?

We’re listening to Saxby Chambliss, a senator from Georgia, attribute sexual abuse in the military to the ineluctable “hormone level” of virile young men in proximity to nubile young women.

We’re congratulating ourselves on the historic high of 20 women in the Senate, even though there are still four men to every one of them and, among governors, nine men to every woman.

I’ll leave aside boardrooms; they’ve been amply covered in Sheryl Sandberg’s book tour.

But what about movies? It was all the way back in 1986 that Sigourney Weaver trounced “Aliens” and landed on the cover of Time, supposedly presaging an era of action heroines. But there haven’t been so many: Angelina Jolie in the “Tomb Raider” adventures, “Salt” and a few other hectic flicks; Jennifer Lawrence in the unfolding “Hunger Games” serial. Last summer Kristen Stewart’s “Snow White” needed a “Huntsman” at her side, and this summer? I see an “Iron Man,” a “Man of Steel” and Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Channing Tatum all shouldering the weight of civilization’s future. I see no comparable crew of warrior goddesses.

Heroines fare better on TV, but even there I’m struck by the persistent stereotype of a woman whose career devotion is both seed and flower of a tortured private life. Claire Danes in “Homeland,” Mireille Enos in “The Killing,” Dana Delany in “Body of Proof” and even Mariska Hargitay in “Law & Order: SVU” all fit this bill.

The idea that professional and domestic concerns can’t be balanced isn’t confined to the tube. A recent Pew Research Center report showing that women had become the primary providers in 40 percent of American households with at least one child under 18 prompted the conservative commentators Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson to fret, respectively, over the dissolution of society and the endangerment of children. When Megyn Kelly challenged them on Fox News, they responded in a patronizing manner that they’d never use with a male news anchor.

Title IX, enacted in 1972, hasn’t led to an impressive advancement of women in pro sports. The country is now on its third attempt at a commercially viable women’s soccer league. The Women’s National Basketball Association lags far behind the men’s N.B.A. in visibility and revenue.

Even in the putatively high-minded realm of literature, there’s a gender gap, with male authors accorded the lion’s share of prominent reviews, as the annual VIDA survey documents. Reflecting on that in Salon last week, the critic Laura Miller acutely noted: “There’s a grandiose self-presentation, a swagger, that goes along with advancing your book as a Great American Novel that many women find impossible or silly.”

I congratulate them for that. They let less hot air into their heads.

But about the larger picture, I’m mystified. Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity, our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect.

Well, women are in the next cubicle, across the dinner table, on the other side of the bed. Almost every man has a mother he has known and probably cared about; most also have a wife, daughter, sister, aunt or niece as well. Our stubborn sexisms harms and holds back them, not strangers. Still it survives.
 
Really?? Do you not understand what it is?
God forbid should we inject a little humour in here

Did you post this to poke fun at the guys who are trying to seem tough by tweeting, "make a me sandwich, bitch!", or are you trying to stir up something here?

Let's say I posted a similar site of girls poking fun at guys for not being real men or whatever. Would you find it humorous or would you roll your eyes and move on?
 
Did you post this to poke fun at the guys who are trying to seem tough by tweeting, "make a me sandwich, bitch!", or are you trying to stir up something here?

Let's say I posted a similar site of girls poking fun at guys for not being real men or whatever. Would you find it humorous or would you roll your eyes and move on?

You clearly have no idea what's going on in that website
 
psst, you were the first one who was rude :sexywink: I was just trying to spread the funnies



Initially, I thought that tumblr site sided with those guys. But now I see what the point really was.

Forgive me, but I just came from HuffPo were I literally got into an argument with some guy over VAWA. Apparently, thinking it is good for men to stand up against violence against women makes me a man-hater. So, I'm a bit edgy over his verbal attacks at me.
 
Initially, I thought that tumblr site sided with those guys. But now I see what the point really was.

Forgive me, but I just came from HuffPo were I literally got into an argument with some guy over VAWA. Apparently, thinking it is good for men to stand up against violence against women makes me a man-hater. So, I'm a bit edgy over his verbal attacks at me.

Its okay :) Read how dumb the guys are on the tumblr site. It will make you feel better
 
I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year.
A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. The response was furious. The men started swearing at me, called me a bitch and threw a cup coffee over me.
For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Speaking up shattered their fantasy, and they responded violently to my voice.
Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism.
After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. Many of the girls have eating disorders, some have had peers heavily pressure them into sexual acts, others suffer in emotionally abusive relationships where they are constantly told they are worthless.
I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of "the best schools in the country", to try to tackle these issues. However, this was more difficult than I imagined as my all-girls school was hesitant to allow the society. After a year-long struggle, the feminist society was finally ratified.
What I hadn't anticipated on setting up the feminist society was a massive backlash from the boys in my wider peer circle. They took to Twitter and started a campaign of abuse against me. I was called a "feminist bitch", accused of "feeding [girls] bullshit", and in a particularly racist comment was told "all this feminism bull won't stop uncle Sanjit from marrying you when you leave school".
Our feminist society was derided with retorts such as, "FemSoc, is that for real? #DPMO" [don't piss me off] and every attempt we made to start a serious debate was met with responses such as "feminism and rape are both ridiculously tiring".
The more girls started to voice their opinions about gender issues, the more vitriolic the boys' abuse became. One boy declared that "bitches should keep their bitchiness to their bitch-selves #BITCH" and another smugly quipped, "feminism doesn't mean they don't like the D, they just haven't found one to satisfy them yet." Any attempt we made to stick up for each other was aggressively shot down with "get in your lane before I par [ridicule] you too", or belittled with remarks like "cute, they got offended".
I fear that many boys of my age fundamentally don't respect women. They want us around for parties, banter and most of all sex. But they don't think of us as intellectual equals, highlighted by accusations of being hysterical and over sensitive when we attempted to discuss serious issues facing women.
The situation recently reached a crescendo when our feminist society decided to take part in a national project called Who Needs Feminism. We took photos of girls standing with a whiteboard on which they completed the sentence "I need feminism because...", often delving into painful personal experiences to articulate why feminism was important to them.
When we posted these pictures online we were subject to a torrent of degrading and explicitly sexual comments.
We were told that our "militant vaginas" were "as dry as the Sahara desert", girls who complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10, details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos, and others were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon "get personal".
We, a group of 16-, 17- and 18-year-old girls, have made ourselves vulnerable by talking about our experiences of sexual and gender oppression only to elicit the wrath of our male peer group. Instead of our school taking action against such intimidating behaviour, it insisted that we remove the pictures. Without the support from our school, girls who had participated in the campaign were isolated, facing a great deal of verbal abuse with the full knowledge that there would be no repercussions for the perpetrators.
It's been over a century since the birth of the suffragette movement and boys are still not being brought up to believe that women are their equals. Instead we have a whole new battleground opening up online where boys can attack, humiliate, belittle us and do everything in their power to destroy our confidence before we even leave high school.
It is appalling that an institution responsible for preparing young women for adult life has actively opposed our feminist work. I feel like the school is not supporting its girls in a crucial part of their evolution into being strong, assertive, confident women. If that's the case for a well-established girls' school, what hope does this generation of women have in challenging the misogyny that still pervades our society?
If you thought the fight for female equality was over, I'm sorry to tell you that a whole new round is only just beginning.

What happened when I started a feminist society at school | Education | guardian.co.uk

Sigh. I just don't understand why so many men everywhere in the world has this obsessive hatred for women. It feels like it is getting worse, maybe because of the Internet. It also makes me scared to bring a kid into this world. If I have a daughter, I'll have to not raise her to be strong but also to prepare for all the misogyny out there. If I have a son, I could try to raise him to respect women with every ounce of my being. But peer pressure could very easily kick in, and he could be another guy with the motto, "bros before hos". Sad to think that even my toddler nephews, cute and funny as they are now, are at risk for turning out this way.
 
One in three women experience sexual or physical violence -- most likely from their intimate partner, according to a report from the World Health Organization.
The report, called the first of its kind, estimates the global toll of such violence on women at 35.6%. In a statement, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director-general of WHO, described it as a "global health problem of epidemic proportions."
Women who have been physically and sexually abused are more likely to contract HIV/AIDS, to have an abortion, to get depression, injuries, alcohol use disorders and pregnancy complications, according to the WHO report.
About 38% of all murdered women are killed by an intimate partner (compared with 6% of all murdered men).
Violence against women should not be considered as isolated events, but rather a "pattern of behavior that violates the rights of women and girls," the authors wrote.
They also warned that the figures from the report are likely underestimated.
Opinion: Why domestic violence is never a private issue
Getting accurate statistics on sexual and physical violence remains difficult due to stigma and underreporting, said the authors from the WHO, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and South African Medical Research Council. Also, reporting sexual violence may put women's lives at risk, they wrote.
The report, compiled through global and regional population data, was constrained by the lack of information in places such as the Middle East, central Sub-Saharan Africa, East and Central Asia.
WHO: 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence - CNN.com
Based on the available information, Southeast Asia is the most affected region with 37.7% experiencing partner violence. The data included Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.
In India, outrage stemming from high-profile rape cases prompted national discussions on the treatment of women and changes in the country's laws.
The other regions of the world reporting higher partner violence were the Eastern Mediterranean with 37% (based on data from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and the Palestinian territory) and 36.6% in Africa.
The Americas followed with 29.8%, Europe (Albania, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine) at 25.4% and the Western Pacific (Cambodia, China, Philippines, Samoa, Vietnam) had 24.6%. Higher income countries (which included places like Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, United Kingdom and United States) had 23.2% prevalence of violence.
When factoring in non-partner violence, authors found that 45.6% of females in Africa had experienced abuse. Southeast Asia followed with 40.2%.
Despite such figures, the report authors wrote: "Violence is not inevitable."
"This new data shows that violence against women is extremely common. We urgently need to invest in prevention to address the underlying causes of this global women's health problem," said Charlotte Watts, professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in a released statement.
The WHO recommended better access to post-rape care and healthcare training. The authors also supported recommendations such as more legal and policy accountability, programs for women, as well as the underlying causes that "foster a culture of violence against women."
"Promising prevention programs exist, and need to be tested and scaled up," the authors wrote.

WHO: 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence - CNN.com
 
NY Times

July 5, 2013
In Australia, Misogyny Lives On
By JULIA BAIRD

SYDNEY

THE fastest way to lance a country’s anxieties about women and power is to appoint a female leader. For the three years and three days that Julia Gillard was prime minister of Australia, we debated the fit of her jackets, the size of her bottom, the exposure of her cleavage, the cut of her hair, the tone of her voice, the legitimacy of her rule and whether she had chosen, as one member of Parliament from the opposition Liberal Party put it, to be “deliberately barren.”

The sexism was visceral and often grotesque.

There were placards crying “Ditch the Witch,” toys designed for dogs that encouraged them to chew on the fleshier parts of her anatomy, and, most recently, a menu offering “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail — small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box.” By the end of her term, on June 27, the prime minister struggled to be heard above the sexist ridicule. When she addressed this, she was accused of igniting “gender wars.”

To point this out is not to imply that Ms. Gillard was flawless: far from it.

Her biggest problem may have been the way she became Australia’s first female prime minister. Under the Westminster system, voters elect parties, who are able to change leaders at will. In June 2010, Ms. Gillard, then deputy prime minister, deposed Kevin Rudd, with support from other members of their governing Labor Party, ostensibly because of poor polling. “The government,” she said, “had lost its way.” It was the first time that a sitting prime minister in Australia had been overthrown by his own party during his first term. Meanwhile, Mr. Rudd never left the picture. He stayed in government, and last month — almost exactly three years after Ms. Gillard had pushed him out — he returned the favor, after polls suggested that the party would be annihilated at the coming election.

Uneasiness over the way Ms. Gillard came to power fed deep currents of misogyny throughout her time in power. (She remains a member of Parliament but will retire at the election.)

She was pragmatic and effective, presided over solid economic growth, reduced Australia’s carbon emissions and enacted historic reforms in the areas of education and disability. History will be kind to her.

But she made many mistakes: abandoning a promise not to introduce a carbon tax, being slow to condemn corruption in her party, and negotiating a limp tax that failed to reap significant revenue from Australia’s mining boom.

She lacked canny political instincts and was unable to project her natural warmth, humor and empathy or convince the public of her sincerity.

Women across Australia had clinked glasses at her ascension: at last, the mold was smashed. She was an unmarried red-haired atheist with no children, living with a hairdresser boyfriend who often rose early to tend to her tresses. Yet Ms. Gillard was determined not to let her sex be a distraction. She fought the 2010 election hard, playing politics like the boys, with wit, pragmatism and tough debating skills. She ignored the sneers, the contempt and the catcalls.

Then, last year, her father died. While she was still grieving, a radio shock jock named Alan Jones declared that Ms. Gillard’s father must have died of shame. Shortly afterward, in Parliament, the leader of the Liberal opposition, Tony Abbott, said that Ms. Gillard’s government should “die of shame.” Ms. Gillard delivered a blistering response. She would not be lectured to, she said, by a man who had stood next to placards calling her “bitch,” and who had suggested that men had a better temperament for leadership. “My father did not die of shame,” she said coolly. “What the leader of the opposition should be ashamed of is his performance in this Parliament and the sexism he brings with it.”

“If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a mirror.”

As her popularity dropped — especially among men — Ms. Gillard’s failings were unfairly pegged to the fact that she had dared to talk about the perils of female leadership. With gender dominating front pages for months, the media described her daily as a failed experiment. Even her fiercest critics conceded, in the final weeks, that no other prime minister was ever treated with such vitriol.

At her last news conference, Ms. Gillard said being the first woman “does not explain everything about my time in the prime ministership, nor does it explain nothing.” Her voice quavered when she said, “What I am absolutely confident of is that it will be easier for the next woman and for the woman after that and the woman after that, and I’m proud of that.”

The woman who had been known for playing politics like a man had suffered the most extraordinary, foul attacks on a woman we have seen in this country. Both her success and her failure acted like pipe songs, luring the snakes of contempt and woman-hating from their baskets. School students threw sandwiches at her.

Now the demons have settled, if wakefully. Mr. Rudd has revived his party’s chances at the next election, and commentators have turned from misogyny to taxes, carbon, refugees and investment; there is a discomfiting sense of relief that the woman has gone.

But we have all changed for having a female prime minister. Ms. Gillard was unable to control her party or her political narrative; unlike Margaret Thatcher, who silenced critics by staring them down, she seemed to only spur them on. But her steel and stoicism were remarkable.

And the robust discussion we had about archaic attitudes about women has mattered.

A 4-year-old girl from Canberra, when told that Australia had a new prime minister, said: “Really? What’s her name?” This, too, matters.

Julia Baird, the author of “Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians,” is writing a biography of Queen Victoria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/o...sogyny-lives-on.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print
 
A view from inside Australia appears to be a bit different. :D Your post is from a Conservative opinion writer for context. Just as the post below is from a liberal opinion writer.

10 October, 2012 · 5:45 pm

The Gender Card


Julia Gillard, Feminist Superstar

You have to admit, the world moves in mysterious ways. Overnight, Tony Abbott became an international laughing stock as result of Julia Gillard’s big rant.


The most enthusiastic praise came from US women’s site Jezebel, which described Ms Gillard as “one badass mother—-er”.

“In an impassioned 15-minute smackdown in front of the House of Representatives, the country’s first female leader gave a scathing speech calling out opposition leader Tony Abbott’s extremely misogynistic comments, actions, views on abortion and single women, all while pointing in his face.”

Jezebel also highlighted some of her “choice quotes” including:
- “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man, I will not. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The leader of the opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the leader of the opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the house of representatives, he needs a mirror.
- “I was very offended personally the Leader of the Opposition said abortion is the easy way out.”
- “I was offended when he stood next to a sign that described me as a ‘man’s bitch.’”

Online political magazine Salon said US politicians such as Todd Akin, who said “legitimate rape” did not result in pregnancy, and Allen West, who was blasted after telling a Democrat she was “not a lady”, could learn something from Ms Gillard.

“If only the US could borrow Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to take on Congress’s misogynist caucus,” Salon said.
“We wonder if Gillard takes requests: Todd Akin, R.-Mo., and Allen West, R.- Fla., to name just a couple, could certainly use a similar treatment.”

And so it went. Germaine Greer, eat your heart out, the world has a new poster-child for Feminism. And yes, Tony Abbott looked a right git toward the end of Gillard’s rant.

Shut Up ‘n’ Take Yer Medicine Tony

Of course today, Tony Abbott’s trying to come back at the rant, trying to characterise it as ‘playing the gender card’.


Mr Abbott said today he would not retreat from his criticism of the Prime Minister.
He called on Labor to stop playing the gender card.
”Just because the Prime Minister has sometimes been the victim of unfair criticism doesn’t mean she can dismiss any criticism as sexism or she can dismiss any criticism on gender grounds,” Mr Abbott said.

The staggering chutzpah of Tony Abbott is that he nary shows that he has to acknowledge he got beat by his own cudgel yesterday, good and proper. Maybe this kind of chutzpah is something admirable to a certain kind of conservative mindset, but I wonder if he’s going to ever overcome the international PR damage of being ‘that guy who had to sit there and take that 15minute rant from the first female Prime Minister of Australia’.

The sad (and decidedly ugly) point about the whole Peter Slipper affair is that Peter Slipper was indeed a one time friend of Tony Abbott, who got sold down the river by Tony Abbott. Peter Slipper – for whatever reasons of his own – made his move to accept the role of Speaker of House if for no other reason than the money and prestige. It certainly damaged the Coalition because it went against the overall aim of destabilising the fragile Parliament where the independents held so much power, however it really must be asked whether it was realistic of Tony Abbott and his front benchers to expect the apple of government to fall on their laps like some gift from the gods.

To this – mostly imaginary, partly mirage-like – end, Tony Abbott has bent his considerable effort at portraying the Prime Minster as a lying witch, bitch slut and whatever else, as well as hunted Craig Thomson into a kind of wilderness where he may never get a fair trial should he ever have to face charges. The utter lack of restraint and the most naked of blind ambitions has made him less of a candidate for the highest elected office of Australia.

Now, he might complain and call all this dressing down he got from Julia Gillard as Gillard playing the gender card, but no, no, no, Mr. Abbott, this is just the beginning. It is fairly clear that the polite, protective rubber gloves are off, and Julia Gillard has stainless steel fists.

Why Does Paul Sheehan Even Have A Job At The SMH?

I know he only writes opinion pieces but really, somebody should tell him the tone of his writing is as low as he accuses others of being.


After sending out two attack dogs, Gutter and Sewer, to do the dirty work, after hiding behind two political zombies, Insufferable and Unspeakable, to stay in power, after using the Minister for Innuendo and the Compromise-General to play the gender card, the mask has finally dropped away to reveal the driver of the politics of hate in Australia.

The mask fell at exactly 2.42pm in the House of Representatives. Looking on were the member for Gutter, Anthony Albanese, the member for Sewer, Wayne Swan, the Minister for Innuendo, Tanya Plibersek, and the Compromise-General, Nicola Roxon, and the independents who will do anything to avoid facing their electorates, Mr Insufferable, Robert Oakeshott, and his fellow regional zombie, Mr Unspeakable, Tony Windsor.

Someone had to set Gutter and Sewer loose. Someone directed Innuendo and Compromise to play the gender card. Someone paid the bill for Insufferable and Unspeakable. Someone’s authority still rests on the vote of Craig Thomson. And someone had to approve making Peter Slipper the Speaker despite his being manifestly disrespected by either side of the house, a low point of political opportunism.

At 2.42 pm on Tuesday that someone rose to speak. The mask fell away. Julia Gillard came out snarling. The Parliament had before it a great issue, the dignity of the house itself, which had been traduced by the scandal that had attached itself to Slipper.

Instead of directly addressing the issue of a discredited speakership which had become engulfed in an expensive and degrading legal action that did no credit to anyone involved, least of all the Attorney-General, the Prime Minister wasted no timing in using misdirection and personal abuse.

That’s all pretty vulgar as he is trying to paint the Prime Minister for daring to point out the blindingly obvious – the reason why the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott cannot be taken seriously for his motion against Peter Slipper on the basis of misogyny and sexism is that the only way to interpret Tony Abbott’s public utterances and prevarications and qualifications and babble-burble-bicker-banter is that he himself is sexist and a misogynist. And no amount of hauling Abbott’s wife out into the limelight is going to fix that fact – not perception, but fact on the public record. Similarly, no amount of name-calling and belittling of the Prime Minster (for being a woman, I guess) is going to add any moral authority to a man who has made hypocrisy a sport all his life and can’t even tell when he’s doing it.

Paul Sheehan then goes on to argue that Julia Gillard lied about the Carbon Tax.

“Lied”!

Now, regular readers of this blog will well know that I do not approve of Julia Gillard and will not vote for her or the ALP at the next Federal Election. My mind is made up; she cannot persuade me otherwise. This is between me and my political conviction.

All the same, even I know and understand and remember well enough, that what happened with respect to the Carbon Tax was that she had to go ahead with it in order to form government with the one Green MP and the 3 independents. It didn’t matter that she campaigned against it and removed Kevin Rudd in order not to have the ETS. It was the hung Parliament that forced her to agree to the Carbon Tax. To argue that she “lied” given these circumstances is stretching the truth way beyond breaking point. It’s one thing for idiot pundits like Alan Jones and other shock jocks to call this a lie: They’re not smart enough to understand how things went that led up to that point in history. They’re intellectual pygmies (and I’m being un-nice to real pygmies when I say that) preaching to the brain-damaged sub-literate morons who cannot read newspapers nor hold a thought long enough to understand history (but alas as citizens have the vote nonetheless).

However, a man who is paid to write opinion pieces in the Sydney Morning Herald website ought to have a better understanding than calling Julia Gillard a liar. It’s willfully stupid and blind to the facts.

If I had Gina Rinehart’s money to buy Fairfax, I’d make a point of sacking Paul Sheehan too.

Paul Sheehan | The Art Neuro Weblog

I don't know whether Ms. Gillard is a good PM. I don't mind when ( figurative shots) are fired at any politician. But I watch the ammunition.

I don't really expect many men to notice the ammunition. Hell, I expect that a lot of women won't notice it. I'm also not as inclined to call most of it misogyny. I think misogyny is rarer than some other feminists may thin. Sexism, however, is a different story. Like homophobia and racism and xenophobia, it's not as noticeable when you're not the one feeling the effects.

I don't believe in censoring, but I believe in noticing and pointing out now and again.

Nice to see you back, Crusader.
 
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