Feminism - Distractingly Sexy Edition

[Lyanna Stark]

Since the search function is buggered and since we haven't had a feminism thread going for like ages and ages, I thought it was high time for another one!

The thread is named in honour of the recent debacle where women in science were deemed too distractingly sexy and too prone to burst out crying in the lab. The response has been both hilarious (the tweets) and the predictable when all the "well it wasn't that bad, why did he have to quit?" discussions started.

One interesting take I read on this whole thing was someone commenting on how men aren't more offended when they're reduced to victims of their urges which they then allegedly cannot control. In other words, heterosexual men can't work together with women without being completely overcome by the need to have sex with, supposedly, every female member of staff. (It makes you wonder how you would handle gay and bisexual men. Should the first group be placed one by one in groups of only women to not get too attracted to their male colleagues, and I suppose the bisexual men will just have to work all alone, at all times?)

Stuff to read, see and do with a feminist slant:

The Minister for Men

Anita Sarkeesian has new vlogs up about positive female characters

Or, if you really have some time to kill, how about a one hour panel featuring among others Roxane Gay (author of "Bad Feminist"), Anita Sarkeesian and Germaine Greer. It's a bit slow to start and only really gets going once Roxane Gay starts to talk, imho, and the discussion in the second part of the panel is far more interesting than the first part since it deals with stuff like "are we fighting the same battles over and over again" and "has any progress actually been made".

They also discussed stuff like, you can't actually unsee the sexism once you know it's there, and how do you deal with that. I've had some issues with that myself since I've been trying to play one of the games I know Anita Sarkeesian had issues with, and it's "Witcher 2" which is extremely highly regarded by most people and...I've been finding myself not being able to do the "shutdown" thing I normally can to just ignore sexism and enjoy the other aspects of games/novels/whatever other media form. I was just unable to. Which means I kinda feel there is something wrong with me instead. Why can't I just shut that part of my eyes and unsee it and just enjoy it for what it is? Why is that so hard?

In other news, I've decided that this summer's intellectual reading will be bell hooks. Most of the year I read all sorts of shite, but during my summer holiday I try to be a better person and actually get something a bit more wholesome and intellectually challenging/stimulating. I've read scattered parts of "Feminism is for everybody" before, but the e-book format hurt my eyes so I am thinking an actual paper book this time (see Ser Scot? I'll end up like you after all :P ). Now I just need to figure out how to get my hands on an actual paper book in foreign redneck-ville where I live. Last time I asked after bell hooks at the local library the librarian was convinced I had the name spelt wrong, even when I explained it was non-fiction. Perhaps I should just go get one of their 15 copies of the "DaVinci code" instead. /snark @ worthless libraries.

EDITED TO ADD: And we are going to get a movie about SUFFRAGETTES!! With Meryl Streep. I love Meryl Streep and I am so going to see this movie x 100, even if it sucks. But how can it? Meryl Streep and Helena Bonham-Carter fighting for women's rights in awesome hats. 100 points even before it goes live.

Teaser trailer.

EDIT:

As always:

1. If you don't believe in feminism, then start a thread about that. This is for the discussion of feminist topics

2. If you have questions of what feminism means or why you should believe/be a feminist, try one of the introductory 101 FAQ pages This is not rudeness, it's just to avoid sidelining the discussion with basics.

3. Politely framed questions will generally be answered even if they pertain to "basics"

4. Feel free to post examples, links, youtube videos or suggested reading if you have stuff you think could be interesting

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

I love the title :lol:

That movie looks amazing and I can't wait to see it!

Trying to spend a lot more time with my son to teach him not to be sexist, but it is so hard when nearly everything aimed at kids is listed as "boys" or "girls" and his father is a total sexist (but would never think he is).

I've always hated traditional gender roles, and that seems the best place to start. His best friend's favorite color is pink and that has actually helped spark some conversations. He hates pink, but some of the boys at school teased him as they were equating it with breast cancer (so weird, but I do live in a red neck area, and the footballers all do pink in october :rolleyes: ) But we were able to talk about why he didn't like it, and that it is not just a "girl" color, that there are no such things as girl/boy colors.

This year has also been good for getting rid of the family roles, with the husband working Saturday, Sunday & Monday, and me Monday - Friday. So dads can cook and clean while moms work, it doesn't have to be the other way around, and they can actually both do it.

Anyway, he had his first girlfriend this year (until her parents said she had to wait 1 more year to "date"), so I am hoping he continues to expand his thoughts on male/female roles as he matures and girls become more than just friends.

[Elder Sister]

Lyanna Stark, were your ears burning this week? People were saying good things about you. <3

Re: the topic of male urges and such....This is the time of year when I see posts on FB about modesty and how important it is for women to dress modestly. Or I see posts about how girls were sent home from school for wearing something too revealing, and it looks fine to me. The whole point of these posts is to make sure that women are dressing decently, because if we don't, we injure the poor males who are not able to control their urges. It's all very puzzling to me. In response to this, one of my favorite Christian writers wrote a great essay on how it's not up to women and our outfit choices to make sure men behave, so wear the damn bikini or crop top or whatever if you want. In the essay, she points out the obvious; men are perfectly capable of controlling themselves and acting appropriately regardless of what they see. I'm paraphrasing, but the tag line of her article was that 'modesty doesn't mean what you think it means'. I loved that. She correctly points out that modesty is about my attitudes, not what I'm wearing.

This sort of goes back to what you originally posted. If a person is being distracted in the lab by someone who's 'too attractive', doesn't that have more to do with their lack of concentration skills, internal discipline, etc.? I've worked with some distractingly attractive people, and I managed to get my job done without any fallout. I personally have more of a problem concentrating when people are super-funny, rather than super-attractive.

I'm glad that society is starting to question why it's necessary for women to help police men's actions by dressing and comporting ourselves in 'modest' and 'ladylike' fashion, but it's still a way of thinking that is too accepted, by both men and women.

ETA: I noticed the pink signs referencing the women's restrooms in the Atlanta airport vs. the blue signs for men's...for some reason, that never stood out to me before.

[Arkhangel]

Re: the women in science remarks, yes they were stupid and offensive and sexist, but I also think the reaction to them has been a little overboard. He needed to make a public apology, no doubt about that, but to end the career of an elderly Nobel laureate over the kind of old-fashioned sexist comment that almost everyone's grandpa has made seems extreme.

I thought this article about his perspective was interesting.

[sologdin]

utilitarian logic there: hang a parking violator to discourage all other nihilistic motorists.

[Ormond]

One interesting take I read on this whole thing was someone commenting on how men aren't more offended when they're reduced to victims of their urges which they then allegedly cannot control. In other words, heterosexual men can't work together with women without being completely overcome by the need to have sex with, supposedly, every female member of staff. (It makes you wonder how you would handle gay and bisexual men. Should the first group be placed one by one in groups of only women to not get too attracted to their male colleagues, and I suppose the bisexual men will just have to work all alone, at all times?)

I normally do not like the term "homophobia" because I think that most anti-gay prejudice has little to do with fear.

However, for that small subgroup of men who really do have such a reaction, their socialization that being a "real man" means always being ready and willing to have sex with a woman is a big part of it. I well remember 30 years ago when I was teaching an introductory psychology course at the University of Michigan and trying to have a conversation with a male student who said he would become violently angry if another man propositioned him. I asked him "But what would happen if a woman you were not interested in propositioned you?" His response was that he simply could not conceive of NOT having sex with a woman who offered it to him, no matter how unattractive or older she was. In his mind a man who wouldn't take up a woman on a voluntary sexual offer just wasn't "masculine". (I should add this was long enough ago that HIV/AIDS was not yet a public issue.)

So I think some heterosexual men do have a sense of panic if another man propositions them precisely because "saying No" is not an option. Therefore they don't know how to say no to another person without blaming them for the offer and lashing out violently -- and they tend to believe that all gay men would want to have sex with any adult male, since they believe they should have sex with any consenting adult female.

I am NOT saying that the Nobel Prize winner would be someone who had such a reaction, just commenting on Lyanna's linking of this to gay and bisexual men.)

[ElizabethB.]

In response to this, one of my favorite Christian writers wrote a great essay on how it's not up to women and our outfit choices to make sure men behave, so wear the damn bikini or crop top or whatever if you want. In the essay, she points out the obvious; men are perfectly capable of controlling themselves and acting appropriately regardless of what they see. I'm paraphrasing, but the tag line of her article was that 'modesty doesn't mean what you think it means'. I loved that. She correctly points out that modesty is about my attitudes, not what I'm wearing.

I would love to read that article! :)

[john]

One interesting take I read on this whole thing was someone commenting on how men aren't more offended when they're reduced to victims of their urges which they then allegedly cannot control. In other words, heterosexual men can't work together with women without being completely overcome by the need to have sex with, supposedly, every female member of staff. (It makes you wonder how you would handle gay and bisexual men. Should the first group be placed one by one in groups of only women to not get too attracted to their male colleagues, and I suppose the bisexual men will just have to work all alone, at all times?)

It's part of a broader idea that often men just have gallons of jizz sloshing around between their legs, rendering them unable to function in a normal manner, even when they're totally alone. If you add females to the environment then it's a fine justification for a whole range of sexual shenanigans from dirty thoughts to molestations. Personally I prefer shame, rather than bizarre ad hoc argumentation, as a response to my own perversity.

Re: the women in science remarks, yes they were stupid and offensive and sexist, but I also think the reaction to them has been a little overboard. He needed to make a public apology, no doubt about that, but to end the career of an elderly Nobel laureate over the kind of old-fashioned sexist comment that almost everyone's grandpa has made seems extreme.

I thought this article about his perspective was interesting.

I mean, "Science" lost something, sure. But it also gained something by getting him out.

I did find the speed and severity of reaction to a Twitter backlash mildly distressing, especially since you know it's never going to happen to TV personalities and other profitable entities who make similar remarks. But it definitely seems like the right call.

[MinDonner]

Ended his career? He's 72. He had one of his (many) honorary, non-paying titles retracted. Which seems a reasonable response from the intuition that awarded the honorary title in the first place, given the general purpose of honorary degrees (ie. To associate the university in question with the credibility of the awardee). What job has he lost? What funding has he had pulled? Is that the sound of a tiny violin?

[Elder Sister]

I would love to read that article! :)

Here's the article. http://qideas.org/articles/modesty-i-dont-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/

Ended his career? He's 72. He had one of his (many) honorary, non-paying titles retracted. Which seems a reasonable response from the intuition that awarded the honorary title in the first place, given the general purpose of honorary degrees (ie. To associate the university in question with the credibility of the awardee). What job has he lost? What funding has he had pulled? Is that the sound of a tiny violin?

Yes. This. It's actually fortunate for him that he's at this point in his career. There are plenty of people who have said idiotic things and lost livelihoods as a result of the media backlash.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Lyanna,

Paper books for the win!!

Lany,

Last weekend we were over at my Dad's giving our kids a chance to play in his pool. My Sister's boys were down too. Dad had bought new "pool noodles" two green, one blue, one pink. My daughter immediately rejected the pink noodle. My nephew chimed in saying, "Awesome, I love pink".

:)

[Lyanna Stark]

Yay, I am so glad you liked the title! :D

Trying to spend a lot more time with my son to teach him not to be sexist, but it is so hard when nearly everything aimed at kids is listed as "boys" or "girls" and his father is a total sexist (but would never think he is).

I've always hated traditional gender roles, and that seems the best place to start. His best friend's favorite color is pink and that has actually helped spark some conversations. He hates pink, but some of the boys at school teased him as they were equating it with breast cancer (so weird, but I do live in a red neck area, and the footballers all do pink in october :rolleyes: ) But we were able to talk about why he didn't like it, and that it is not just a "girl" color, that there are no such things as girl/boy colors.

This year has also been good for getting rid of the family roles, with the husband working Saturday, Sunday & Monday, and me Monday - Friday. So dads can cook and clean while moms work, it doesn't have to be the other way around, and they can actually both do it.

Anyway, he had his first girlfriend this year (until her parents said she had to wait 1 more year to "date"), so I am hoping he continues to expand his thoughts on male/female roles as he matures and girls become more than just friends.

That's really interesting and encouraging! I am already sort of worrying about having to have these sort of conversations with my son when he grows up. I just wonder if I can make him question things early on by reading stuff with him. He seems awfully interesting in letters, reading and books even though he's not yet three, but who the hell knows. I really think your approach is a good one though, even if it's hard to tackle.

(The dating rule seems so odd to me, as I remember kids as young as 11- 12 having boyfriends/girlfriends and the "play mate" stage sort of organically merged into more real relationships without parents really bothering much. But I live in a "loose" place. :P )

Lyanna Stark, were your ears burning this week? People were saying good things about you. <3

Awwwh no, but maybe they should have been? :D You are the loveliest people.

Re: the topic of male urges and such....This is the time of year when I see posts on FB about modesty and how important it is for women to dress modestly. Or I see posts about how girls were sent home from school for wearing something too revealing, and it looks fine to me. The whole point of these posts is to make sure that women are dressing decently, because if we don't, we injure the poor males who are not able to control their urges. It's all very puzzling to me. In response to this, one of my favorite Christian writers wrote a great essay on how it's not up to women and our outfit choices to make sure men behave, so wear the damn bikini or crop top or whatever if you want. In the essay, she points out the obvious; men are perfectly capable of controlling themselves and acting appropriately regardless of what they see. I'm paraphrasing, but the tag line of her article was that 'modesty doesn't mean what you think it means'. I loved that. She correctly points out that modesty is about my attitudes, not what I'm wearing.

Indeed. There is a lot of double standards here. There's one thing to have a discussion on dress codes in various areas (work vs when you have time off, etc) and completely another one to claim girls/women should dress modestly or they had it coming.

I normally do not like the term "homophobia" because I think that most anti-gay prejudice has little to do with fear.

However, for that small subgroup of men who really do have such a reaction, their socialization that being a "real man" means always being ready and willing to have sex with a woman is a big part of it. I well remember 30 years ago when I was teaching an introductory psychology course at the University of Michigan and trying to have a conversation with a male student who said he would become violently angry if another man propositioned him. I asked him "But what would happen if a woman you were not interested in propositioned you?" His response was that he simply could not conceive of NOT having sex with a woman who offered it to him, no matter how unattractive or older she was. In his mind a man who wouldn't take up a woman on a voluntary sexual offer just wasn't "masculine". (I should add this was long enough ago that HIV/AIDS was not yet a public issue.)

So I think some heterosexual men do have a sense of panic if another man propositions them precisely because "saying No" is not an option. Therefore they don't know how to say no to another person without blaming them for the offer and lashing out violently -- and they tend to believe that all gay men would want to have sex with any adult male, since they believe they should have sex with any consenting adult female.

I am NOT saying that the Nobel Prize winner would be someone who had such a reaction, just commenting on Lyanna's linking of this to gay and bisexual men.)

That is a really interesting perspective. Perhaps this is somewhat of a generational thing as well, or tied to location/class? While it's definitely true that men as a group get taught from early on that masculinity is tied extremely strongly to being able (and ready) to perform sexually, it's still pretty surprising to learn that it's so...across the board? That regardless whether it is an 18 year old or Auntie Bertha from across the street, it shouldn't matter. It's also pretty sad, I think.

It does highlight how feminism can help men as well though, since that type of gender role sounds decidedly unfun.

EDIT: Weirdly, I had conversations with my SO about subjects sort of touching on this. I rarely worry anymore about how I look in front of men, I don't care about being seen strident, annoying or bossy and I feel way too old to put myself out there as an object for desire (I'm too old and too tired and I have too few fucks to give about things), yet he claims that for many men it won't matter, I will be lumped into that group anyway. He also describes something similar to the above, although I'd say a milder form.

[ElizabethB.]

ES thanks, but I did have to stop at the 'rulers slapped against childrens bare legs'.

Your thoughts on the article sound cool, although I am not sure if its easy to define a correct modest attitude.

[Seli]

...

I mean, "Science" lost something, sure. But it also gained something by getting him out.

I did find the speed and severity of reaction to a Twitter backlash mildly distressing, especially since you know it's never going to happen to TV personalities and other profitable entities who make similar remarks. But it definitely seems like the right call.

To be fair most of those other people are less likely to be in a position where they are meant to help or stimulate the people they are insulting with remarks like that. Don't forget that at this point women almost certainly make up the majority of students and (young) researchers in university biochemistry labs.

[karaddin]

The panel linked was one I really wanted to go to, but boycotted because of one simple reason. Germaine Greer. They are trying to run a modern feminist festival but show they have no concern for trans women, merely inviting her and giving her a huge platform like that says I am not welcome at that event.

You could try and say that her TERF stuff is in the past, but you would be wrong. A short time before she was invited to this panel she claimed that trans women aren't women because we don't have big hairy smelly vaginas. I found this especially offensive at the time, as I was suffering (and still am) from obtaining my own vagina which was most certainly big, hairy and smelly at the time. It's also the kind of biological essentialism that should be antithetical to feminism. But any attempt to try call out Greer at any of the events she gets invited to get utterly quashed. We are not allowed to question her. The TERFs constantly complain about how the evil trans empire censors them and no-platforms them in interviews where they are being given a platform. It is is that are no-platformed.

I have also heard that the Suffragette movie whitewashes the movement and completely leaves out the contributions of any non white woman, although I haven't seen it to see the truth of that claim, but it brings me to my key point.

In 2015 your feminism needs to be intersectional, it needs to be for all women, or gtfo and stop calling it feminism and stop putting yourself on a high moral ground. Minority women in western nations, be they queer, trans or of colour have substantially greater issues than your average woman. Combine it with white feminism typically meaning middle class, and you are throwing all the poor women when those who happen to be cis, het and white, under the bus. Feminism can be more, feminism shouldn't be more, feminism is more in certain circles. Stop giving the platform to second wave bigots who are more interested in saying controversial things to keep themselves in the media instead of giving room for new, more diverse voices.

I went to the talk just by Roxanne Gay and it was mostly good, however she was on that panel and then the next night on another panel TV show with Greer. And yet despite having spoken about the need to include trans women in her talk, she sat there on that second panel and didn't say a peep to Greer, but she did laugh at something else she said that was really horrid. I lost respect for all the people on that panel who went along with Greer that night instead of standing up and making a stand. I can't recall what it was she said, it wasn't about trans woman on this occasion (any attempt to confront her on that got ignored naturally, including my attempt at submitting a question) but it was really awful. If I have to I can go back and find it.

[Lyanna Stark]

I was actually partially watching that panel to see if Greer would say anything about it. I noticed some of the other women on the panel making specific comments about being inclusive to trans-women, but Greer didn't react to it and it wasn't brought up. Personally I thought the stuff she did talk about was mostly off-topic anyway, and when she went off on a rant about being a has-been and some of the others laughed, I had to wonder if it was they laughed with her, or *at* her. At least her TERF stance seems to be something that is generally not something shared by younger feminists (luckily) and which will be, or I bloody well hope so, a thing of the past. This is judging by the things the other panelists said, which was far more focused on intersectionality.

Perhaps feminists are still worried/afraid about getting into discussions with Greer?

[karaddin]

I half suspect they've been told by the organisers they aren't allowed to. That festival where the panel was at... Has issues with not being queer inclusive enough as well, and I've had the impression the organisers are sympathetic to TERF views. Last year they had submissions for pieces about feminism and book reviews, on Angalins urging I did a review of Janet Mocks memoir and didn't even get a rejection response. I don't think the review was that terrible, it had some editing passes by Ang, I think it didn't fit the agenda they wanted so it got ignored.

The TV show I mentioned used to be good but has become a parody of itself of late, pursuing faux balance, defending the two party status quo, manufacturing controversy and supporting some other very questionable stuff. They are having a panel on LGBTQI issues next week, two of the panelists are old white gay men, another is Fred Nile an old white hateful Christian bigot with nothing to add to the issue who shouldn't be on their. A young trans lesbian friend was considered as one of the last panelists, then rejected as they had filled their "youth" quota. Because apparently only one young person on show about LGBTQI issues makes sense and we need to keep it all on the old white men who are there for their opinions, not a "quota".

Sorry I'm running OT, I'm very passionate about this and very angry of late. There's been a lot of anti trans stuff even on this forum and I'm just... Yeah. Too many people I care about being hurt by this including me.

[Arkhangel]

Ended his career? He's 72. He had one of his (many) honorary, non-paying titles retracted. Which seems a reasonable response from the intuition that awarded the honorary title in the first place, given the general purpose of honorary degrees (ie. To associate the university in question with the credibility of the awardee). What job has he lost? What funding has he had pulled? Is that the sound of a tiny violin?

He's also been forced to stand down from the European Research Council, for example, and it would be pretty naive to think that this hasn't sullied his professional reputation. Clearly what he said was wrong, clearly he needed to make a full and public apology (and his initial half-arsed non-apology was unacceptable), clearly he deserves a level of public disapprobation, but the reaction we've seen is disproportionate in my opinion. I don't think it serves to further feminism either; quite the opposite, I think it will be used to fuel a "political correctness gone mad", "hysterical women" discourse which does us no favours.

[BitsOfBrains]

This guy is brilliant and likely slightly autistic.

The fact that people had crucify the poor guy I think to me just shows it hit a nerve.

Like if someone at my shop came in and said, "God damn it always stinks whenever you are in the room." I would just laugh it off because I know it's not true.

If I went berserk it would just show I was insecure and thought/knew they were right.

[MinDonner]

And why on earth would women in science be insecure, eh? Perhaps because of so many old dudes telling them they are frail and incompetent over and over? Even if they don't believe it themselves, shit like this would definitely be reinforcing the idea that other people thought these things were true, which is gonna knock anyone's confidence in succeeding in their career. I had a physics teacher in school who was insistent that girls couldn't do science; don't try and tell me that hearing that shit from an authority figure is going to have zero impact on people's sense of insecurity.

Can we leave this macho posturing ("well I wouldn't care!") out of the conversation? Thx.