Feminism & Other "Isms"
I have, probably since the age of 14 or so, considered myself a feminist. But I always find myself somewhat conflicted by identifying with this "ism" or any other. I first became aware of this in college. In High School, nobody else that I knew belonged to my "ism" so I could happily go along deciding what it meant for myself. 
In college, I wound up belonging to one of those student activist groups that takes over buildings because of the college's questionable investments in other countries (in my case, South Africa, still under Apartheid) or because of cuts in financial aid. I was gung-ho for the causes, but the meetings would drive me absolutely bonkers! Everyone kept bringing up Roberts Rules of Order which seemed very silly when you are just about to take the President's Office.
I think where this has caused my the most conflict is in my identification as a feminist. I think roughly I would say that what I mean by feminism is an acknowledgement that our culture has, almost since its inception, had 1) a disproportion in power along gender lines, with women kept out of public spheres of power; and 2) a misrepresentation of male/female in which men generally are associated with what the culture values; but 3) these generalizations have to be adjusted historically and do not always adequately represent individual experiences of men and women.
That's my definition, but it's not every person's who identifies her/himself as a feminist. So this is the first problem (and maybe the major one) that I've had as a feminist--the idea that everyone has to agree on the definition in order for any political progress to be made. Maybe there are certain foundational values otherwise the term ceases to make sense (I hate the idea, for instance, that Camille Paglia describes herself as a feminist). But why should any one person, or group define the term in any absolute way--isn't that a re-institution of the very process that feminism is trying to get rid of? I could go on with examples, but I actually am more interested in what others have to say. I will say that I found this recently read quotation relevant and helpful: "many revolutionary movements (which range from traditional commmunism to the feminism of sisterhood) seem to share a curious linguistic code based on the intrinsice morality of pronouns. The "we" is always positive, ... the "they" has the face of an antagonist, the "I" is unseemly, and the "you" is, of course, superfluous" (Adriana Cavarero, "Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood")
Hollywood's take on aging men and women
Joanna Weiss here compares the portrait of aging men on the show "Men of a Certain Age" with aging women on "Cougar Town" and "Sex and the City"--finding that men are allowed to be a "mess" both emotionally and physically" while women are not. I sometimes read or hear people make the argument that this is feminism at work--that women are being shown as stronger and more together than men. I liked what Weiss says in regard to this:
"This is female vulnerability, circa 2010: You say you’re insecure, and then you put on a see-through T-shirt and take the town by storm. And these are the contours of the midlife crisis, as our culture has come to accept it. The men get to be vulnerable (and overweight, and bald), while the women get to be fabulous.
But there’s a fine line between 'get to be’' and 'have to be.’ "
She goes on to describe the way in which women's maintaining an ageless look is portrayed on the talkshows as if "Botox is essential to their lives, as if it’s an act of bravery to admit that they [Vanessa Williams and Jenny McCarthy] paralyze their facial muscles."
This reminds me of the way in which in the Victorian Age women were idealized as the "Angel in the House"--completely and naturally virtuous, while men were represented as morally straying and needing to be kept to the path of virtue by women. But of course if women strayed at all they went from Angel to Demon.
It seems to me that one of the ongoing signs of gender inequality is that men are represented as messy because human beings are messy; women aren't really being represented as human but as representations of some idea--Beauty, Goodness, Sex, Evil. And with things like Botox they literally are becoming statues which is incredibly creepy.
Hollywood's burden on aging women
Hollywood's take on aging men and women
That's a good summary of the article, Jaz... and I find it all very depressing.
The new black Barbies
I really liked this piece that starts off describing the new line of black Barbies in order to talk about the way in which the rejection of natural "nappy" hair has come down to us from slavery--where "straight hair is 'good hair' because straight hair is white hair. And when blacks were slaves, straight hair could literally mean survival."
For one thing, I didn't know the process of straightening hair was so painful (resulting sometimes in burning the scalp). And I imagine that must also have long range health consequences. This was the paragraph about that that really got to me:
"Here’s what I remember about the black girls I knew: They had Mickey Mouse afro puffs tied in giant gumball barrettes or tight cornrow braids, or hair that was bound by nothing at all. For a little while, they had no idea what the word “nappy” meant, until one day they knew exactly what it meant. The black girls I knew marked their entry into womanhood reluctantly, with a first trip to the hair salon that often lived up to their worst fears. Caught in an in-between time when they were too old to sit for their mothers and too young to know what to do themselves, they climbed into swivel chairs and waited for the smell and then the feeling of chemicals that seared their scalps, leaving clumps of hair and Afro-puff innocence to be swept from the salon floor."
One last thing I found really strange was reading the comments from readers that followed this article (there were 29 when I read them)--most people didn't seem to have read the article very well. There were all kind of misperceptions of what it was about (mostly along the lines of people thinking the writer was accusing white people or Mattel of racism, whereas I thought she was showing how racism has come down to everyone in this society) and a whole lot of people saying something along the lines of--well, no woman likes her hair--women just need to get over it.
And here's info on the Chris Rock movie mentioned in the article:
Gender/Sex categories
I subscribe to this blog coming out of Bryn Mawr ("Serendip") that has had some interesting links/articles about the categories of gender and sex that are connected up to a series of courses.
This one is a link to a Newsweek review of a book called "Pink Brain Blue Brain" by Lise Eliot. Eliot claims among other things that many of the studies that "prove" male/female brain differences are flawed. Her main thesis seems to be that there may be very minor differences but that difference in treatment based on sex which begins in infancy actually changes the brains of boys and girls to produce exaggerated sex difference.
And this is an interesting paper by a female student in the course--a personal narrative paper about her experiences of gender and how the curriculum in her K-12 years shaped her ideas about men and women.
Finally, this is a page written by one of the Professors with lots of links to other material, entitled "What Biology Has to Contribute to Thinking About Sex and Gender: Some Suggestions."
Gender categories in Athletics
Read this very long and interesting article that begins with the recent case of Caster Semenya but goes on to talk about the history of the region that she's from, the history of attempts to define sexual difference--in sports and otherwise, and gives some of the medical background which makes clear that a simple division into two sexes is not "reality" but a particular framework with very far-reaching political and social implication. I particularly liked the analogy the author made with the similar history to give absolute definitions of race--and how that was also connected to structures of power and dominance.
Sudanese woman jailed for wearing trousers
Lubna Hussein could have exempted herself from the rulingbecause she is a UN employee. She also refused to pay the $200 fine.
rock on sista!
Response from Lubna Hussein after her union paid fine
She-sore-us
...is a beast I just made up in response to reading this definition from an online thesaurus:
" Noun 1. adult female - an adult female person (as opposed to a man); "the woman kept house while the man hunted" "
*ROWWRRRRR*
"Noun. 1. She-sore-us - an elusive beast whose odd diet consisted of text of various kind. Thought to have been hunted by primitive...um...primitive...ah...well that's odd, this part seems to be missing...."
re: She-sore-us
Yeah...
I know...I stopped reading at about "d"--but the one's that really stood out to me so far were "bachelorette" (unmarried woman who lives alone? If you're unmarried you are alone?) "Cinderella" (her merits have not yet been recognized? ) and "coquette" ("exploits" men....yeah...right....).
Useful for teaching purposes though--want to show to my students without comment and see what they think.
"Women's Work"
I'm reading a book on the development of gender roles in prehistory (The Invisible Sex) and it cites an earlier study that I'm very excited to read next called Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years.
The customer reviews contain some intriguing snippets from the book--for instance, that if one restores the Venus de Milo's arms, they are in the same position as pictures of women on Egyptian artifacts who are hand-spinning. Or the conceptualization of the Fates as midwives awaiting a new thread as a newborn.
Anyway--cool stuff I think. There are snippets from the first book too that I'm really liking, but now having read the main negative review on the Amazon site I'm wondering how good the evidence is.
Evolution of Midwifery
Was able to find some research online supporting one of the claims of that first book (The Invisible Sex). The authors claim that the first social groupings after kinship groupings were probably female--that is within a kinship group you'd have a subset of primarily females that had strong bonds to each other. Eventually the authors claim that this grouping would have a division of labor aspect--women as the first weavers. But the origin of the grouping they see in the practice of midwifery which they see as the oldest profession. They base this on two facts. One is that human beings, unlike other primates, are born facing backward. That would make solo birth much more dangerous, especially for the infant. The other fact is what's been called the "tend and befriend" response to stress. This has generally been associated with women, though the article suggests that the response in women may only be to acute stress and that the same stress response may occur in man to long term stress (which would make sense--to have a social bonding mechanism for both men and women). I know that towards the end of this post there was a discussion of hormones and female bonding, and I think DL brought up the point that human behavior is much more complex than can be determined hormonally. And generally there seem to be all kinds of cultural influences going against female bonding as the GC's post here goes into.
"Vatican conducting sweeping investigations of American Nuns"
This worries me--it could affect a lot of the women I work with.
"While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world."
I really lean toward the latter interpretation.
The sisters that I work with often are strong voices on political and social issues. The woman who is the President of the founding order of my school is someone who has been arrested a number of times for leading anti-war protests.
just have to wait and see how it plays out...
Sexism in controversy over the tennis "grunt"
Wimbeldon begins tomorrow and there's apparently a lot of controversy over the tennis "grunt"--especially as vocalized by Michelle Larcher de Brito. There seem to me to be a lot of sexist assumptions behind this controversy, at least in the coverage of it in this piece in the Globe.
For one thing--the grunts are primarily coming from female players--and when vocalized by female players the grunting is described as:
(in relation to Monica Seles) "Purists found it alarming, and perhaps worse, unladylike."
"tennis players slugging it out at a volume more typical of men using the bench press at Venice Beach."
(in relation to Larcher de Brito) the author likens the sound to the sound of "ecstasy" (!)
Contrast to what is said about men making the grunting noise: "one starts to worry that Nadal’s audibly Herculean effort will eventually wear him down, if not out."
Whereas Roger Federer's quietness is seen as a kind of admirable restraint--restraint which equals power: "In a world of grunters, it may be the quiet man who is king."
To me that says that grunting is too much a sign of power in women and the kind of power has emotional/physical/sexual associations. For men, grunting as a show of emotion is weak and it's restraint that equals power.
Wha-unhhh! A defense of the tennis grunt.
Discovery of 35,000 year old sculpture of a female form
Shakesville has a very interesting discussion going on about the recently discovered 35,000 year old sculpture of a female form.
Some interesting points to the discussion:
The whole media coverage including the assumptions that 1) it was carved by a man; 2) it's "grotesque"--and a follow-up discussion of how the media might use the word "grotesque"; 3) it's pornographic--all those assumptions were taken apart very skillfully in comments.
I also thought the comments by Sapphirecate (who seems to teach anthropology) about the way in which animals and people were represented in the Paleolithic to be very interesting though I had a follow-up question as to why the features of maleness and femaleness were the ones on a body that would be shown in order to convey the whole person.
And I loved what she had to say here about not imposing contemporary views on prehistoric cultures:
"To bring this all back to feminism: think of it as trying to hear the vocabulary of the silenced (in this case, silenced by time and its ravages) through the noise of the majority's explanation. For all the same reasons i reject labels for these figurines like 'porn' 'grotesque' or 'mother goddess'. These labels valorise our socially significant perspectives on humans, the human form, craftwork and religion and concomitantly obfuscate those of prehistoric people."
I Say Tomato, You Say Grotesque
The NH legislature
I think there was a post some time ago about the all female legislature in New Hampshire, but I can't remember where it is. If someone else does, maybe they could link?
Anyway, thought this editorial about the NH legislature was interesting--tracing a more progressive turn that the state is taking to the fact that it's the only all female state legislature--though I wouldn't want to assert that there's anything that would make women inherently more progressive--just that I think current circumstances might support them being a bit more so statistically in the US.
Transsexual woman wins sexual discrimination suit
A federal judge has found in favor of a woman who was offered a job with The Library of Congress before gender reassignment surgery and then had the job offer withdrawn when she made known that she would be undergoing surgery. I don't know if this is the first finding of its kind but it does seem significant that this is being defined as an instance of sexual discrimination.
Follow-up, Obama Administration will not appeal
Obama Admin will not appeal transgender ruling
Transsexual wins discrimination lawsuit
Bullying and Gender
Yesterday was the 13th annual "Day of Silence"--the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network's day acknowledging the silencing of students that results from bullying.
As this study "From Teasing to Torment" points out two-thirds of all bullying is based on one of these categorizations "gender, sexual orientation, gender expression, race/ethnicity, disability or religion." One-third of all bullying is aimed at a student's perceived sexual orientation.
Earlier this month a middle school boy in the town next to where I teach committed suicide after extensive verbal and physical bullying which included anti-gay slurs.
I agree with the conclusions of this editorial by Sue Hyde: "Let's ensure that our political leaders take fast action to implement strong school safety policies that include accountability mechanisms, training for school personnel, and specific definitions of bullying behavior and its lonely targets."
The War Against Women in the Congo
I got an email from Care2 this morning regarding what's been called "The War Against Women"in the Congo. Some info from a CBS report: "it's the deadliest conflict since World War II"; "more than 5 million people have died"; the primary weapon used by the militias is rape--"rape is the norm."
Raise Hope for the Congo a website devoted to raising awareness and taking action against the violence in the Congo:
""It is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier right now."
Major General Patrick Cammaert, former UN Deputy Force Commander, describing the situation in eastern Congo, May 2008"
"“This violence was designed to exterminate the population.”
Louise Nzigire, social worker at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, spring 2005"
"“In Congo, if someone starts an armed group or kills people, they have a better chance of becoming a senior minister or a general than being put behind bars.”
Anneke Van Woudenberg, Human Rights Watch, January 2008"
"Why do girlfriends and wives keep trying to change their men?"
I had great hopes when I saw that title on the cover of the Sunday Magazine. 'Cause this is one of those gender differences that is so prevalent and accepted in our culture--I thought, hey, someone's taking a look at it instead of just accepting that it's so. But, no...the author never really looked at that question, just accepted that's it's true for the most part and turns the focus/responsibility onto herself and her dating life. As an older single woman she decides that her ability to accept difference and her hope that the man she's with will change are both much diminished.
This way of thinking about men and women--where women are responsible not only for their own moral choices and values--but for men's as well--I see it everywhere (hmmm, I did say prevalent). Sometimes complained of--and by both sexes (a male friend and I jokingly came up with the idea of a parody show called "This Old Boyfriend" in which newlywed women would come on and discuss how they remodelled their boyfriend into their husband), but most of the time romanticized/idealized. On magazine covers: "How to get the perfect man, and make sure you keep him" (obviously a man in need of revision despite the "perfect" adjective because unwilling to stay of his own accord). Or this whole "Twilight" phenomenon--"How to keep your man from chomping down on your jugular through Luhrvvvve."
It's also showing up in that British survey I cited below.
The realities behind it are probably most obvious in an older story like "Pride & Prejudice." In Hollywood versions of this, the reality of women's class situation is usually downplayed. In a family with all unmarried daughters, the death of a father literally meant destitution and homelessness. The main character, Elizabeth, is frowned upon for even asserting the physical independence of walking from one place to another. Darcy's "Pride"--his aristocratic and male privileged position is overcome by love--that's Elizabeth's only power--the power to inspire feeling. So at this point in history you get the transformation of the ideological figure of the good lord--caretaker of those on his estate--to the ideological figure of the good husband. But serfs weren't responsible for inspiring their lords to take good care of them by getting them to love them.
It's so entangled in our stories about how men and women love and treat each other in relationships that it seems incredibly resistant to change.
Here's the original article
"This Old Spouse"
Blast! Someone stole the idea my friend and I had :-) Seriously--was in the library today and saw that title.
Anyway, it got me thinking of a simpler way to talk about this. When I bring this question up I often hear that it shows that women feel they're better than men (men the ones in need of improvement). But I think it shows a feeling of dependence--just as one would have for shelter--and literally in a society of gender inequity that feeling is based on the reality of financial dependence (of men providing shelter). It just gets translated into this emotional dependence that sees the more financially independent gender as in need of remodelling.Insecurity projected upon this old spouse
Why men should try to change their women
The title of my post was only to raise your eyebrows. I recommend a book by Harville Hendrix titled: Getting the Love You Want. It delves into the primordial psychology of why we choose a partner in life.
A rather facinating pose is made by Mr. Hendrix that the reason we choose mates is because they exhibit both the good and bad traits of our parents/gaurdians. He uses the terms "Old Brain" and "New Brain" to distinguish between what we learn before our brains can begin to think for themselves and then after we can think for ourselves. To condense, in the womb or at a very young age is the time period encompassing the Old Brain - typically when your parents did everything for you.
New brain begins when you can recognize forces beyond your parents control - gradeschool, teachers, other kids your age who then begin to impact your life and create the experiences that form your personality.
Hendrix suggests that we originally seek a partner who can repair the wrongs done to us in youth. And for much of the book, Dr. Hendrix serves to depress the reader with a rather negative view for why this doesn't work. From what I took away, the fallacy was centered on the "injured" partner not quite able to pinpoint the source/reason for the injuries. Please note injuries here does not mean physical, but more emotional injuries - no matter how small, the brain compiles them.
Thankfully, he then suggests a solution: the other partner must change in order to help their injured partner heal the wounds of their youth. He calls it "becoming the perfect partner." The concept works simultaneously in reverse so an atmosphere of mutual healing occurs between both partners.
Difficult to summarize such a theory here, thus the suggestion to read the book. Quite an interesting read if you can plow your way through the depressing middle section.
Repairing past hurts
I don't want to judge the book without reading it Stip, but just based on the summary I think there are things I agree with and disagree with.
I agree that people often seek partners based on injuries from childhood, and I agree with Dr. Hendrix's overall negative view--that this doesn't work.
I can't think though that it would work for the injured person to find the source of their injuy and then ask their partner to change in order to heal the wound (and vice versa). I think that's opening up a whole new avenue of judging and anger directed at the partner for ways in which they might fail to make up for injuries they had nothing to do with. Those kind of injuries, in my opinion, are best tackled with someone outside of an intimate relationship--like a therapist--who's going to have a bit more objectivity (hopefully)--and is getting paid to take some of the anger of transference--of seeing people through the eyes of our past.
I've had much more luck personally with separating out the people in my current life from my past rather than attempt to have them step in and try to make it better.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding Hendrix's point--I'll try to come back to once I've had a chance to actually read it.
Changing
I think I agree with you Jaz that its difficult to ask anyone to change from their core persona. Minor changes are possible like (trying to come up with an example) trying to reduce/eliminate bad habits like smoking, excessive drinking, gambling (pick a vice) are easier to accomplish. But asking someone to "Be kinder" or "I wish you would engage more in stimulating intellectual conversation" may be beyond the person's capacity.
I do think its possible for a partner to help another heal a wound from their past. As an example, someone with an abusive father would welcome a relationship with a partner who was comforting and nurturing. Sure some wounds are deep seeded psychological ones where a therapist the perfect remedy, but not everything is drastic and dire and therefore can be addressed by mature adults to a resolution.
Changing & Helping
Book Review of "Bodies"
Body Image
Men's Body Image & the Media
So we borrowed the documentary from another library and watched it. There were some very good things about it and there were problematic things. The set up of the documentary is that a professor has her students talk about the effect of media on body self image and she says that she finds that almost all her students have a negative image of themselves. She then runs a retreat in which some of the students from the class are invited to discuss their experience. The only students in the retreat setting are women although the class is co-ed. That seemed a problem, as did the fact that in much of the discussion "men" were referred to as all having the same reaction, opinion, etc. of women's body types. Some of my male students said this put them off as they didn't see themselves as making some of the stereotypical judgements that men in general were described as making.
This also led to a discussion of how Men's body image might be affected by the media (which wasn't addressed in the documentary)--and a couple students decided to do further research on that topic (heh, I love this process where they are going out and finding the articles for class instead of my providing them with a textbook). One of them just emailed me this study which was interesting--the finding is that it is images of women in magazines like Maxim that have the biggest impact on men's negative self image.
"The researchers divided male study participants into three groups. Group one examined layouts from lad magazines that featured objectified women along with a brief description of their appearances. The second group viewed layouts about male fashion, featuring fit and well-dressed male models. The final group inspected appearance-neutral layouts that featured topics including technology and film trivia.
"Men who viewed the layouts of objectified females reported more body self-consciousness than the other two groups," Aubrey said. "Even more surprising was that the male fashion group reported the least amount of body self-consciousness among the three groups." "
Media images of female models have negative effect on men
Fat is a feminist issue
I have to say I'm still floored when people are freaked out by the fact that I don't obsess about my weight.
I do my best to focus on health issues... not just finding some way to spackle, paste it all together and throw glitter on it. *sigh*
You can pretty much tell I went home for the weekend as much as I'm ranting LOL. My mom's family is the worst about this kind of stuff. I'm still contemplating disowning them! Hm... maybe I already have as I've distinguished my isolation from them. heh heh heh
Fat is a feminist issue
I just don't think it's completely accidental that the "average" dress size has gone from a 12 to what? a 4? And that the average model is now 25 pounds less than she was 40 years ago--and that both of those things are happening at the same time that women are gaining more power in the public sphere.
And it's scary how pervasive the effect of that is, and how it's expected that we judge ourselves with that same lens. I had a bad cold a couple weeks ago--and a male friend said "You look like hell" (to which I replied--"In this case, appearances are not deceptive")--and another friend who overheard asked me later, didn't that make me angry? Well, basically I thought it was an accurate assessment at the time (I mean, who can look great when they can't breathe...really...). But it actually reminded me of how much, for women especially, looks are determined by what someone else says.
I'm curious to read Orbach's book to see how she might connect up culture and family--'cause family can definitely reinforce that stuff in such a bad way. When I look at myself, I don't think of myself as fat at all--and yet when I was 15 and weighed 30 pounds less than I weigh now, my parents talked about sending me to fat camp ('cause if I didn't watch it my hips would get out...of...control! heh).
I think we're much more distinguished as we are :-)
British Survey on Violence Against Women
My "Care2" Newletter today contained results of a survey taken in England in which respondents were asked to state in different circumstances when violence against women was acceptable, sometimes acceptable, or never acceptable. First what is shocking is that in general, in response to all the questions, you still get a number as high as 8% believing it is either acceptable or sometimes acceptable. But the most shocking result is what elicited the highest number--in response to the question if a woman is dressed in a sexy or revealing way the total saying that it is either acceptable or sometimes acceptable is 20%! Is there any doubt that this is the result of women's bodies represented over and over to us as products? So women with a boyfriend or husband who dress sexily can be punished because they are marketing what is already owned, and women who are raped can be blamed because they were wearing a "for sale" sign.
The survey results are at the end of this report.
Rihanna & Chris Brown
From the WBUR show Here and Now: "As more details come out from pop-singer Chris Brown’s alleged violent beating of his girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna, kids are saying some surprising things. A recent survey conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission found that nearly half of young people surveyed in Boston say Rihanna was responsible for the incident."
(If you go to the website--you can listen to this segment--it's the last story on the page. If you go to the site after today you'll have to go into archives to find the story I think--Mon. March 16.)
Re: Rihanna & Chris Brown
An editorial from the Globe on reactions of teenage fans.
" 'This whole idea that control and jealousy equals love is very dangerous,' said Susan Cayouette, co-director of Emerge, a batterer's counseling service in Boston."
Talking about this to a friend of mine who has preteen girls who mentioned another factor--the effect of celebrity glorification. Aside from this particular issue, we were talking about how many children we know want to be "famous" for something rather than to have a particular skill or talent. And then that idealization of celebrity seems to enter here--also with some confusion of Chris Brown's public persona--which is very nice, good boy next door. Not to say that the whole "she deserved it" doesn't enter in when the couple isn't famous--but it adds yet another layer of dysfunction.
Teenage fans
I'm glad you posted this. Unfortunately I'm in a place right now where this hits too close to home for me to discuss at the moment.
I'm very worried in particular about one of my nieces. That's really all I can say. This kind of stuff makes me sick to my stomach.
Women as products/property
What is going on in the minds of these men that think women ought to be beaten or raped, even situationally? Are they so powerless that if they see a woman acting or dressing provocatively, they have no choice but to rape her?
To me, those stats show that rape and abuse are accepted as situationally accepted norms which, I think, fosters that sexist behavior into a varying important cultural norm for people to have. As a result, abusive behavior will appear as just some ordinary thing. Afterall, "it's her fault anyway". The victim's choices and behavior is often used as a shield to hide behind when people expose their sexism.
Women as products
Yes I think it is a culturally accepted norm, and one that we've all been exposed to. There are influences pushing in the opposite direction as well--more and more I hope. At least I like to believe that these numbers would have been higher if the poll had been taken 30 years ago.
I think it's important to think of it in terms of something that all of us are part of culturally even though the violence in this poll is violence perpetrated by men against women and men in our culture are statistically much more likely to be perpetrators. But just to bring in a different statistic--victims of homicidal acts by men are 76% men, and 24% women. And in the poll cited in the study above--that 20% of people who thought women deserved violence were both men and women, as well as the 80% who thought it was never acceptable. I think it helps bring about change to think of it as the culture itself that needs to change and that that change is for everyone's benefit.
No, I don't think these men are so powerless that they couldn't resist. In fact seeing it as about "desire" for another person at all doesn't seem to make sense to me. But I got exactly this same argument presented to me in highschool about why the girls had a dress code that wasn't the same as the one for guys--girls couldn't wear tank tops or expose their stomachs because then guys couldn't concentrate. No such rule for guys. So does that mean that heterosexual girls are less sexual than heterosexual guys? More able to resist? Girls have to watch their behavior to keep guys under control? What I think it is really saying is that girls have to police the "marketing" of their own presentation, and guys are consumers with no ability to do anything but consume whatever is available. That's a horrendous way to think of either men or women.
Culture change
Sneaking in a brief reply for now...
I agree about the culture change. And in response to the view of male and female... I'm tangenting but I think this is one of the central conflicts - one thing this reminds me of is the idea of gender being the root of sexism (among other things) and given how deep-seated sexism is, that it will always be around if gender itself isn't viewed differently in society.
What I think it is really saying is that girls have to police the "marketing" of their own presentation, and guys are consumers with no ability to do anything but consume whatever is available.
I agree, well said.
Afghan women's rights
The notion of Afghan women's rights starts to take hold
"Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, a more egalitarian notion of women's rights has begun to take hold, founded in the country's new Constitution and promoted by the newly created Ministry of Women's Affairs and a small community of women's advocates."
I hope these kinds of institutions continue to strengthen.
The new marriage law in Afghanistan
The most controversial article says that the wife is "bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires" and "is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desire of her husband". "
Bowing to international pressure, Karzai has asked for a review of the legislation according to this report by "The Guardian."
Wednesday, women protesting the law were pelted with stones by those supporting the laws passage. (MSNBC report here)
Update on marriage law in Afghanistan
Those protesting the law state that the revised version proposed by Hamid Karzai is just as oppressive as the original.
Related News
Tuesday a young couple in Southern Afghanistan were executed for eloping. "Senior human rights workers said the trial suggested the presence of a Taliban shadow government. "That area is totally under the control of the Taliban," said Zaghrulla Baluch, a tribal elder from the province."
Court cases in India & Egypt
Article about an Afghani woman who is seeking justice through the court system in India against an Indian soldier who married her and then abandoned her admitting that he was already married.
"Then the taunts began. People in Kabul jeered at her. "If I spoke ill about him, it was like slapping my own face. So I kept quiet," she said. "Women said that I was a stigma on earth and should take poison and die."
"I decided to come to India to confront him," Ahmadzai said. She got a bank loan, collected her savings, and went to India with her mother."
Bride's story of being deceived, seeking justice
Reminded me of hearing a story on NPR about a successful court case in Egypt against a man sexually harassing a woman on the streets. A blogger's report of that case is here (note "Laila" refers to a campaign to get women access to the internet).
Islamic girl athlete competing in traditional dress
I liked this article about Bilqui Abdul-Qaadir who will be the first basketball player at a Div 1 school to compete in Muslim dress.
Disney Revision of Rapunzel to make it "boy-friendly"
Linda Homes is right on target in this criticism of Disney's decision to rename "Rapunzel" and introduce a storyline about the swashbuckling rescuer to attract boys: "There are princess characters who do just fine with boys, but I think the word "princess" now carries an implication of passivity and romantic fixation and... therefore a lack of interest that Disney has created, not discovered."
And by doing so Disney is adding to a definition of what girls are like that's incredibly damaging as well.
Dear Disney, Boy's Aren't Stupid, But Renaming Rapunzel Is