Women have come a long way, Baby. Since the 1970s when Reddy wrote I Am Woman, my sisters have made huge strides in the political and corporate arenas. Yet many battles continue - the fight for equal pay and reproductive rights, the fight to be treated as the victim in rape and spouse abuse. Minority women have an even larger battle.
Women are still fighting the characterization of our sex as mere pieces of meat. Whole magazines feature illustrations of nude or semi-nude women. TV and billboard ads feature women in suggestive poses with pouty lips and curvaceous bodies.
Maybe this is to be expected in the world of advertising and magazines. After all, boys of all ages will be boys and I suppose playing out their sexual fantasies by looking at girlie pictures should be expected.
But I'm having a hard time accepting this - especially on normally progressive blogs published by supposedly intelligent men who usually write well about the issues of today. Girlie pictures are insulting to most women. You have the right to post such crap. We have the right to change channels - perhaps feeling some disappointment that in this day and age, in this year of 2010, all men seem to be created equal in the world of the meat market.
There may be a link missing in the post. To what does "this" refer?
ReplyDeleteBloggingdino, allow me to speculate on the missing link. I think what tnlib is trying to say reminds me of an argument that took place about 2 1/2 years ago at Echidne’s blog under a post called Will You Have My Back? (January 1, 2008):
ReplyDeleteEchidne: “An odd aspect of writing both on liberal politics and on feminism is that I tend to think of certain male liberal bloggers as in my team. Some of them I admire and respect and some of them I'd even want to have as friends. Then I read something like this blog post. And I make a mental note that the post is written as some trivial entertainment, in-between the more serious posts, so that what it reveals is most likely not something even intended to be revealed. It's a trivial post about a trivial gender, just a little bit of fun among the guys. Some ideas how sex could sell ice-hockey games better. To men, of course (…) I have to keep reminding myself that those* guys will not have my back. Unless it's naked.”
The gist of the commentary following the above post can be summarized roughly as follows:
nitpicker - “I think taking Matthew Yglesias apart like this is utterly ridiculous.”
swampcracker - “If you hang out here long enough, you discover consistent themes emerging from Echidne’s articles. When she refers to “othering,” she refers to a tendency to turn people into “objects” for derision, ridicule, scorn, and exploitation.
Consider, for example, the literature of the Gulag where prison camp guards referred to inmates as “chairs,” “tables,” and the like. In the language of oppression and subjugation, people are turned into objects. When stripped of their humanity, objects become easier to abuse, humiliate and torture than real people. There is a compelling body of behavior research that supports this view.
Feminism, as I understand, is not merely about equal rights, equal opportunity, and pay parity. There is also a struggle against what is commonly perceived as a man’s tendency to turn women into sexual objects and reduce them to less than human status.
So how does this apply to [Matthew Yglesias]? This issue is not about “loyalty” but about “betrayal.” Why should this phenomenon of “othering” be taking place in the progressive blogosphere, most especially among progressive bloggists from whom one would expect a higher standard? I think “betrayal” is the appropriate word to use in this context (January 3, 2008, 3:20:43 PM EST).
BTW, is Helen Redding's song inspired or influenced by an earlier song performed by Maria Muldaur of a similar name, I’m a Woman (circa 1960s)?
Octo,
ReplyDeleteYes, I understand the phenomenon, thanks -- just wanted to remind tnlib that the post seems to refer to a specific, current example that still needs hyperlinking.
For me, feminist theory goes back to Mary Wollstonecraft, who in her own late-C18 terms pinpointed this problem and the tautological essentialism men have long used to trivialize women. De Beauvoir writes in a similar vein but with new "existential" terminology.
In the college courses I've been teaching in recent years, I don't see a lot of blatant or contemptuous sexism in young people face to face. The more subtle conceptual things, well, I don't know -- it's hard to tell.
The mainstreaming of pornography on the Internet certainly adds to the objectification problem. One can only hope it also trivializes the gesture to the point where all but the dimmest bulbs recognize it for what it is: an over-the-top, depersonalizing representation of the minimal degree of "objectification" that's probably necessary for people to have intercourse at all. But I can hardly feel confident about this potential recognition.
I suppose everybody objectifies others to some extent, and not only in the context of sexuality -- what's pathological and dangerous is the much more intense and permanent form of it that is pushed at us through our cultural venues.
I think maybe I just need to write "more clearer."
ReplyDeleteThe "this" in the third graph refers back to the what I was talking about in the second. The "this" in the fourth graph could have been improved with "this kind of thinking?"
There are times when I wish I had an editor!
Octo: I don't think so. I listened to Muldaur's "I am (a) woman" and don't see any connection in style or message. Redding wrote her song in conjuntion with Ray Burton in 1970.
ReplyDeletebloggingdino - I suppose everybody objectifies others to some extent ...
ReplyDeleteIndeed we do, an honest admission – present company included, but perhaps there is also a distinction between the ‘public’ person versus the ‘private’ person.
I think what Echidne and tnlib are asking of us is to be public persons in the sense that they can count us as allies in support of feminism. How can they consider us as allies if we, the male of species, lapse so easily, so subconsciously, into sexist objectifications and stereotypes? How can we be liberal and progressive humanists when we dehumanize … without even a hint of self-awareness? I can certainly understand feelings of betrayal when we let our sisters down, and these posts are meant to be consciousness-raising.
About the private person, most mature adults, men and women alike, are capable of making a distinction between having a rich fantasy life versus acting as ‘public’ persons; and gender awareness certainly does not mean negating a healthy and fulfilling sex life with our counterparts as equals in life and love. Perhaps the ‘private’ person is a separate topic, or perhaps not even the topic at all.
Octo: You say it much better than I do but then you write much better than I do.
ReplyDelete"I can certainly understand feelings of betrayal .. ." Exactly.
And as I commented on my own blog, I am not coming from a position of prudishness and I'm certainly not negating a healthy sex life - not at all.
Hey tnlib
ReplyDeleteI'm still learning about this site.
I saw you posted and wanted to say hello. You all write better than me.
Hell I barely understood what you were saying in all the comments.
I have a granddaughter now, It's a real eye opener as far as Woman's plight. Already I'm concerned as I want her to exceed in this screwed up World that Men mucked up. Sorry I can't find my glasses so I'm not looking at the screen...opps
Anyway I'm commenting Sunday Morning. Coffee Time!!!
tnlib,
ReplyDeleteOkay, got it on the "this."
Octo,
3,000 lbs of sharp-toothed support for feminism here -- we are at an odd state of affairs in gender relations in 2010. On the one hand, it's great that we have seen women moving into powerful positions in business and government -- HRC as our 67th Secretary of State being a prime example. On the other, the old animosity against and contempt for females is hardly gone: there's still plenty of abuse and inequality to reckon with, both in terms of public and private.
If there's one thing I'd like women in their late teens and twenties to understand, it's that gains made a generation or two back aren't guaranteed to hold -- there are MILLIONS of of Americans who want to roll everything back several decades, and they're not shy about it, either. There's nothing inevitable about the march of progress. We can still go backward even if, on the whole, a majority of people don't want to do that.
I grok you, sister.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't make too much of how far women have come in the corporate world.
We still get less than 30% of the promotions and raises (and the professional treatment of women by men is abominable at most big companies although there are a few trying to change this). None want to be sued, of course, so this is now further underground than it used to be.
It's a woman-objectifying world out there yet, and we can only hope that our blog brothers do have our backs - naked or not.
Thanks for commenting on "this" phenomena.
S
Women are still fighting the characterization of our sex as mere pieces of meat
________________
The thing I never get are these women who work as strippers or whatever and say they are "empowering" themselves. No, you're not. You're taking the easy way out, using your sexuality instead of your brain. You're not "owning" anything except the right to continue to be seen as a sex object.
ReplyDeleteThat's just my take on it. YMMV.
I see many instances of marginalized women on a regular basis. Women who are battered, vicitms of rape, passed over for promotion, women of such low self esteem they sell their bodies to peep shows and stripper bars.
ReplyDeleteBut I have another observation that I think contributes to the ability of others to objectify us; the way women treat each other. I have noticed that whenever I have worked in a setting of predominately women that there is a lot of back biting and demeaning of other women. If we cannot respect and honor the power, presense and intelligence of the women around us why would we expect the men to do so?
I know there are some of us who get it and we go to great lengths to ensure that other women feel empowered but I also see disturbing trends.
The "Christian" female oppression doctrine I think is pretty much in the public consciousness.
But what of the media influence of programs like Desparate Housewives and Meet the Kardasians?
What are teaching our girls and young women about their abilities and potential?
If we want to hold on to all those strides we have made in the name of feminism, we need to take a serious inventory of where we are, where we are heading and make some course adjustments before we find ourselves going in a circle.
I'm not ignoring you or your good comments. Am trying to wrap up one of those biggies I love to do so much. Will get back tonight or tomorrow. I'm really sorry.
ReplyDeleteSoBe, there was article contributed by my fellow cephalopod, Squid, almost 2 years ago titled Sex For Money / Money For Sex which delved into the subject of prostitution, gender bias, and morality policing. I re-quote this comment in the discussion thread that followed:
ReplyDelete“There is a large body of evidence that correlates sex abuse during childhood with prostitution during adulthood. Some background data:
It is estimated that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will experience sex abuse before age 18;
34% of all victims are under age 12;
40% of sexual abusers were themselves abused as children;
Victims of child sex abuse are 28 times more likely to be arrested for prostitution as adults;
The incidence rate of child sex abuse among prostitutes is 87% and more (meta-studies).
For adult survivors of child sex abuse, the consequences are many – lower self esteem, chronic depression, and a range of anxiety and dissociative disorders such as PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares, depersonalization, and derealization. In addition, there are outright medical consequences such as physical injury and sexually transmitted disease. In general, victims may have a difficult time relating to others except on sexual terms. Certainly, victims who have been sexually compromised at an early age are far more likely to engage in the sex trades.
So what is my point? Prostitution is NOT a victimless crime as conventionally understood. When viewed from this perspective, prostitutes are victims too, and our puritanical and draconian legal system fails to take into account the preponderance of clinical data that supports this view.
When prostitutes are singled out for arrest while johns get away scot-free, it underscores another form of gender bias and a fundamental injustice: Prostitutes get victimized twice. First, there is the child sex abuse that stole their innocence and profoundly impacted their adult lives. Second, there is an inherent gender discrimination that refuses to recognize the role of men in a two-sided transaction than punishes women, or condemns them in moral terms, but lets johns off scot-free, or with minimal legal or social consequences.
Prostitutes are often victims of early sex abuse, and their abuse histories predispose them to risky behaviors in adulthood. Our society has a tendency to engage in victim blame, i.e. blaming prostitutes for being victims of sex abuse, or blaming the poor for their own impoverishment, or blaming a rape victim for her attack. There is a “blame the victim” mentality within our culture, and a disconnected chain of causality in how we understand these issues."
Since the sex trades became part of this discussion, I thought a clinical viewpoint should be included.
I'm with you sisters (and particularly on the victimless prostitution argument).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a manager in the 80's in the aerospace world with lots of new women professionals entering the workforce, we became quite aware of the victimization we received from many of the clerk/secretary types who only felt "esteemed" themselves if they could dis-esteem us.
Sad, but it led me and others to try to empower them (and it worked sometimes!) by asking them to join our lunchtime groups, etc., and thereby created a sense of camaraderie that was absent in most stratified (and seemingly unconcerned) offices.
I hardly know how to respond to today's glorification of the shallow/uneducated females who seem to reign on the tube (no matter what education is claimed for them in the scripts) other than to say that I point it out to everyone within hearing distance whenever I get the chance - and demystify the source of such shenanigans as corporate sponsors who obviously need constantly insecure female buyers of cleaning products, and incredibly high standards of female perfection, etc.
Thanks for the chance to develop some group consensus today here.
Seems that with the increasing strength of the xtian rightwingnutters, particularly among the vastly undereducated lower classes, we are no longer gaining on the equality arguments.
S
the way women treat each other. I have noticed that whenever I have worked in a setting of predominately women that there is a lot of back biting and demeaning of other women. If we cannot respect and honor the power, presense and intelligence of the women around us why would we expect the men to do so?
____________
Tim: This is teific site ad I'm glad you stopped by. Judging by a couple of comments left by fathers on Parsleys, I think this may have been a bit of a eye opener.
ReplyDeleteSuzan: If a woman does make it in the corporate world, you know it's only because she screwed the boss don't you know? Snarl. Sadly, the women say this more than the men.
SoBe: I don't think I can add to Octo's comment. It covers all kinds of life events that have a huge psychological and ultimately degrading impact on prostitutes. The same applies to strippers - but I have read articles about strippers who are putting themselves through school, even med school, and who see it simply as a means to an end. Within this group is a sub-group of single mothers who are trying to get their education as well so they can hopefully have a better life. Of course, there are those who don't go any further.
Rocky: "I have worked in a setting of predominately women that there is a lot of back biting and demeaning of other women."
Boy, am I familiar with this one. I hate to say it, but I think women have no loyalty to other women, they're cattier and can be just plain vicious. I saw this in a girl's boarding school and when I had a staff of 22, all but two of them women. I saw this with the female psychologists in the three custody evals I had when getting out of an abusive marriage.
I wish I could address every thing you said but I can't. Just know that I appreciate and agree with every word of it. Very perceptive.
Octo: I really appreciate your quoting Squid's comment - or yours?
It's always easy to dismiss ladies of the evening as being simply sluts. There is so much more to it - so many layers and ramifications.
Gender bias? Here's an example I gave on my own blog, by no means as severe, but it provides a good picture of this bias:
True story. That photo of me in my Anniversary Issue was taken when I managed The Denver Post library. My staff and I were talking about all the girlie pics around the city room. We decided to display our own collection - all male of course. Guess what? We were ordered to take them down.
Suzan: This kind of touches on what you said. I used to take members of my staff to lunch (individually) on a semi-routine basis. Sadly it did nothing to enhance the relationships with each other or to improve their feelings of self-worth.
On the other hand it has been said that women have to provid six reasons to introduce a new idea while men only have to provide three.
I don't mean to run this into the ground, but I feel the need to say that for years later I would still be approached from women colleagues at that earlier time (and some men!) who would mention those gatherings and the nonstop pep talks I would give about needing to build up our support system for women, thereby empowering everyone.
ReplyDeleteIt was good while it lasted.
Of course, the continuing "corporatization" of the workplace worked against this as you then became a bad "team player."
We will prevail!
It just will take a little longer.
S
Sadly it did nothing to enhance the relationships with each other or to improve their feelings of self-worth.
______________
I have a term for the women who lay claim to the sexual freedom espoused by seventies feminism (as informed by the popularization of the pill) and the equal wages initiative of feminism, but who don't get the rest of it: Cosmo Feminists (an oxymoron, if ever I heard one).
ReplyDeleteI've been blogging a bit about Palin's brand of feminism (Pageant Proverbial Feminism) back home on Landscaping. I differentiated there on the Cosmo Feminists by referring to the Bridget Jonesians and the Sex And The Citizens; feminists tend to be united against male encroachment on territory hard won, but internally quarrelsome and, therefore, easily flanked by commercial aggression.
Quite a lively discussion here, and that's always good for us.
"Prostitution is NOT a victimless crime as conventionally understood."
ReplyDeleteThey say that about marijuana too, but I consider the argument to be specious.
Can we use this picture of it in a country where it's popular but felonious without qualifying it as a special circumstance? Are the women at those Nevada places who make a lot of money and like what they're doing victims? Why is it anyone's business in the first place?
It seems like that silly tautological argument we get from the police: where there are illegal drugs there is crime so drugs should be illegal.
Yas, some prostitution involves victimhood, but without addressing the circumstances and the definitions of that difficult term I have to disagree in the extreme.
It's not quite the same in other countries which leads me to speculate that it's not prostitution itself but the basement into which it's forced by Religion and it's handmaiden, secular Academia.
In some countries, having coffee witha coworker is prostitution and carries dire, perhaps lethal consequences. It's hard to see who is always the victim here, isn't it?
It's hard for me to say I support feminism actually, since I never get the same description twice and I never hear any discussion of the way commerce objectifies men in so many ways we're somehow not told to be angry about. We are being otld a lot about what any particular woman can and can't do and what men can't or should say and what words to use when saying or not saying it and any movement, if it be such, that attempts to force my thoughts and words and actions into some ever changing and usually self contracdictory framework isn't something I'm going to feel obligated to recognize.
I've been laughed at and dismissed for saying that language itself is demeaned by recognizing misuse as legitimate. Why should I in turn not laugh at people who lecture me on the difference between sex and gender as though it was handed down from Sinai and assume the right to do so becuase of some amorphous, ever changing system of arbitrary rules and definitions by professionaly angry academics?
I'm as annoyed - probably more annoyed - by politicising our bodies, our instincts, our loves, our feelings and the effect they have on other bodies as I am by the idea that other people's private business is mine to criticize. If someone wants to pose for an underwear advertisement I feel is demeaning to men or to women I simply don't care unless of course they were forced to. If there's a magazine - and there is - that hints that the only man worth being is 18 and very tall with zero body fat, or some body builder pumped up with steroids or some 15 year old adolescent with vaseline in his hair and abone in his nose, I don't think I'm being victimized, as much as it revolts me. If some guy wants to sign up with Rentboy.com I'm still pretty happy with my life.
If someone has sex because of a few drinks or a marriage proposal - or just for the hell of it, and that's not something to go out in the streets with signs and demonstrate about, why should I care that some Amsterdam graduate student pays her tradition by having sex for money? Are some of these feminist ideas simply another way to make women feel guilty about themselves anyway?
Do those store window dummies with anatomically impossible proportions victimize women? Fashion designers and runway models that feature only clothes designed for that .001% of the population? Not any more than those ads for 35 million dollar yachts victimize me. Commerce is here to victimize us all.
Comment Part 1
ReplyDeleteCapt. Fogg and all,
I believe what’s being condemned is particularly the traditional kind of prostitution – you know, the kind practiced in red-light districts, sometimes by women who betray signs of a serious drug habit. I think they are as horribly trapped and abused as they ever were. We’re never going to stop that kind of prostitution unless and until sexual repression, ignorance, drug addiction, and dire poverty are stamped out, and in the meantime any woman trapped in it deserves help and compassion. Blake wrote well when he etched the lines, “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.” (The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, 1790)
It’s fair to say, though, that practices that might be labeled prostitution have multiplied in the last few decades with the Internet’s advent: what about someone who creates an account on some site and demands “tribute” for engaging in naughty behavior or talk online? That’s a species of prostitution because it involves selling sex or a simulacrum thereof. I think it’s silly and anyone who parts with his money on that basis is a jackass, but it may not involve some ugly sot taking his cut of the action, or any physical abuse by the cyber-johns. The practice may be degrading and absurd, but with regard to this kind of activity, at least, I think law enforcement should have nothing to say unless it involves fraud, coercion, blackmail, tax evasion, or something along those lines.
I also have no problem with so-called adult entertainment – the Right’s criticism of pornography mimics moral concern but really stems from a repressed mindset, and some older lines of feminist criticism betray a similar degree of repression: they would have us process nearly all sexual activity as inherently violent and aggressive no matter what the partners involved may think they’re doing. Rigid ideological determinists of any kind are their own worst enemies. Still, I would suggest that the boundaries between free expression and abuse are by no means fixed: there’s plenty of abuse of women in the so-called adult film and cybersex industries – I wouldn’t buy the notion that 100% of it consists in purely voluntary decisions made by the participants or that everything they’re doing is a great business decision, etc. It’s a messy industry, and a risky one in which to be involved.
Comment Part 2
ReplyDeleteThere’s also the objectification issue we have already been discussing: does anyone really doubt that a great deal of pornographic video and imagery involves an over-the-top degree of objectification of the female body? I don’t. Some objectification (as per Hegel and Sartre) is inherent in human relations, but the philosophers don’t treat that fact of life as risk-free. It can be carried very far indeed, and at some point it raises genuine concerns. Still, so far as I’ve been able to tell – and let me know if I’m wrong, please – there are no solid studies indicating a direct correlation between the rise of explicit electronic material and incidences of rape or abuse in the material world. If there were or are such, that would be alarming, but I don’t think the evidence supports that thesis. I suspect that what generates those incidences are poverty, brutal ignorance, and sexual repression and dishonesty as well as a long-standing status and power differential between men and women. I don’t believe they are likely to be generated by “dirty movies” per se, though it’s not unlikely that some such contribute and become agents of the power differential and other factors.
I agree with some here who have noted the dubiousness of young women claiming to be feminists because they’re part of today’s so-called hookup culture. I don’t know that embodying an image made to order for immature male fantasies is liberating. Isn’t that mistaking conformity for freedom? What they’re doing, they don’t seem to be doing on their own terms. True, ignorance sometimes leads the way to the revaluation of stale mores, but I’m not buying it on this issue: I think the hookers-up are just forgetting the past, forgetting all the ways in which men have generated the values and images whereby women are to be judged and treated.
The opposite of this view is certainly not that females must be “chaste” or save themselves for marriage, but are the practices we’re discussing any better than “Edwin Edwards feminism”? Y’all remember the proudly decadent sometime guv’nuh of Looziana? Ostensibly commenting on the role of women in his state’s politics, Edwards blurted out, “The mot-to from here on out is ‘Up with skirts and down with pants!’” If C21 Ladies’ Libbers aren’t careful, they might well come to be described as Edwin Edwards feminists. I can’t imagine Betty Friedan would approve of that.
Finally, one thing that bothers the pettifogging grammarian in me is the ideology-driven replacement of good pronominal constructions with barbarisms such as, “If one arrives late to class, they will miss important material.” What is that? Let’s just use the plural for both halves of the sentence, or pick a gender and stay with it for the duration. If not, I insist that the barbarism be ratcheted up to include the appropriately bad verb agreement: “If a person is aware of the problem, they is going to be better off.” After all, we know the pronoun “they” functions as singular here.
No one can out pettifog old Capt. Fogg and I agree about the one-they idiocy, but I'm also fed up with academics dictating how I must talk and citing the tawdry and crapulous argument that neutering the language will make people respect women and their rights. If I have to accept that tiring and tiresome, Tortuous and torturous must be synonymous the first time some imbecile confuses them, I'll be damned if I'm going to be told, as I once was, that calling a boiler manhole a personnel access opening, would serve the cause of Feminism. I'm sure it will if the cause of feminism is feminism and not the fair, respectful and equal treatment of all human beings in which I do passionately believe. Is there something wrong or embarrassing about being female that we have to call a waitress a waiter? I certainly don't think so.
ReplyDeleteAs to prostitution, which happens to be something I find quite un-sexy, I don't think it's quite on the up and up to keep stressing the plight of women forced into it as human slavery is already illegal and frowned on by some and is hardly a necessary part. Isn't anyone offended by telling a woman she can't do as she pleases as long as she harms no one -- the kind of thing we Liberals like to call freedom? In places where it's not illegal but controlled in a way to protect those who choose to participate, it's another story and doesn't making anything illegal make it a vice subject to human abuse all by itself?
So what if magazine photos "objectify" women in the mind of some beholders. It's in someone's mind after all and nobody's goddamn business. My grandparents' generation would have raised holy hell about showing a woman's ankles being demeaning to "ladies" so where really is the mental problem? If someone chooses to get all hot and bothered at a nude painting by Ingres it's his or her own business, not mine or NOW's and if we're going to tell people their thoughts are not free and what they can or cannot be moved by for one reason or another, then we've long ceased to be liberals, haven't we?