As complaints among friends who agree with each other perhaps. About what might actually be done to rectify matters among folks with different ideas, definitely not.
I’m not sure why you think this. Google the word “sexism.” You’ll get over 3 million hits. Look at the posted laws in your workplace. I guarantee that gender issues are addressed there. Talk to your HR department. I guarantee that they are well aware of gender issues. Turn on your TV. Turn on your radio. Read a newspaper. Read a message board.
I don’t understand how a person can move through life and not hear sexism being discussed pretty much every day.
Gender issues, yes. The overall general inequality that still exists between the genders, no.
That’s what I mean by balkanization of issues.
“General Inequality” sounds nebulous. My first question would be “Can you give me some examples?”…
I think it’s pretty normal/natural to segment out the different concerns and issues that are a subset of “inequality” and address them compartmentally. In a lot of ways, each particualr issue may need a different approach and solution.
What am I missing here?
If you merely talk about how genders are unequal, you get justifications like “well, sure, everyone thinks you’re a molester and you never get equal visitation rights, but hey, we don’t make as much money and are still discriminated against, SO ITS MORE THAN FAIR.” It’s not like we can’t work toward solving all the gender inequality ISSUES at the same time, after all, the status quo does not in any way “balance out”, but rather produces lots of inequalities to individuals no matter what their gender.
Discussing gender equality as a whole is not very helpful, and is usually just a front for justification on the prioritization of a speaker’s pet gender inequality issue.
Examples, well, I think a good place to start is with a look at how things considered feminine are derided especially in relationship to how men view things.
“Throws like a girl.” “You’re acting like a girl.” “Why are you so pussy-whipped?”
“Don’t be such a whiny little bitch.” That’s a girly drink, color, movie…whatever.
Another good place to start would be to consider the lookism issue in popular culture. Why do mothers of characters in movies look as thought they are barely older than their grown children? Where are all the elderly folk? All the plain women? Are there really so many walking talking barbie dolls among us?
Let’s talk about our obsession with thinness, plastic surgery, and the like. Why aren’t women good enough as they are? Why doesn’t the inside count like it’s supposed to?
These are just a few suggestions. I think you probably can come up with more.
I’m incredibly offended by your implication that all men are somehow insatiably horny all the time in a way that women aren’t. You seem to be saying that men, if they cannot get sex through the normal methods, will pay for it or take it by force because they cannot simply control their desires. Yet this is far from the truth, in my personal experience as a male.
In fact, I think the idea that males are more sexually driven originates from cultural sexism. For a long time, the cultural meme was that men were the only ones who felt sexual pleasure at all. That women were not supposed to enjoy it. Obviously, if men were the only ones acknowledging their horniness, they would be acknowledging it much more strongly than women. And even after the sexual revolution and women’s movements, the idea that men were much more sexually driven would stay, via feedback loop. Think about it–if the cultural norm was that men were constantly horny, then that would be an aspect of manliness, of the Platonic man. As such, men who feel little sexual desire are not going to make mention of it, or lie to fit in more easily. This, in turn, spreads the idea of male horniness through the public consciousness, enforcing the meme.
A similar process happens for women, but in reverse–women acknowledging horniness are shamed or ostracized from a great deal of the community, leading them to become quiet about it, and discouraging other women who are horny regularly from speaking up.
And of course, this is all amplified by the fact that sexual desire is generally taboo, meaning that any cultural shifts involving it take longer, as in order to have cultural shifts about a subject, people must be made aware about that subject, and it’s harder to make someone aware of a subject if you can’t tell them about it without breaking social norms.
Because we are biologically evolved to find women who appear to be fertile to be attractive. Those kind of women are over-represented in movies to attract viewers.
Clear skin, glossy hair, symmetrical features, a waist-hip ratio of about .7 - these attributes are considered to be beautiful across most cultures. And relatively few people enjoy looking at ugly people.
Regards,
Shodan
I wasn’t actually asking for examples.
I was trying to say people aren’t going to discuss the nebulus concept of general equality. They are going to address specific issues, each of which will vary in importance to individual people, and each of which will require it’s unique solution.
You dislike the “balkanization” of gender issues, but most peoples minds automatically try to organise the broader issue (“general inequlity”) into bite sized chunks.
This is no doubt the way Hollywood thinks. But there used to be a great many not overly attractive people (i.e. normal, not ugly) who were in movies and on television. The sit-coms of the early 70’s for instance.
Personally, I find the pretty plastic people look of today’s movie and television to be hideously boring to look at. I couldn’t pick these people out of a police line-up.
Men or women.
Sometimes when we have threads about racism, I’ve posted that many issues viewed through the lens of racism are actually class issues, but in the US we don’t want to acknowledge class differences. I feel the same ways about many sexist issues. Middle class white women got liberated, so fuck the poor women who have less access to family planning assistance, child care, etc.
But who wants to talk about that? But if you ever get dragged into a stupid debate with someone who inevitably starts their argument with “it’s because back in the cavemen days…” to explain division of labor, or fat cell production, or why women don’t easily have orgasms, or whatever, here is something I recently read: from examining the skeletons of Neanderthal adult females, compared to Cro-Magnon females, the Neanderthal women either were treated much more violently than Cro-Magnon women, or they were on a more equal basis than their men, who also had the same damages to their skeletons.
If the latter is true, it means that Neanderthal women went hunting along with the men, and they went extinct in competition with the Cro-Magnon because the CM’s women had stayed at camp and invented agriculture. When game became scarce, the Neanderthals were doubly disadvantaged, sinc ethier hunting methods (and communication abilities) were cruder, but also because they had less options for food.
Just a theory, and if it’s true it makes it’s own sense. But it’s still a great “what-if” to think of a human race that evolved with gender egalitarianism from prehistory.
That’s very true. In fact, I’ve been talking about lookism, which could be considered yet another issue.
As long as we remember that we need to think about our attitudes towards equality between the sexes, both men and women, we’ll be heading in the right direction.
Agreed. I see this even on this board where men will often condescendingly try to explain that the male sex drive is just SO intense, and women are never going to get it. Or that the male orgasm is just this HUGELY powerful thing and that’s why men pursue sex with so much effort. I’m not saying it’s not–I’m just saying it’s kind of naive to think that you’re the only one who feels that. Like a kid who thinks he’s invented masturbation. I don’t claim to know which gender likes sex better or has better orgasms or higher sex drives, and I don’t know that I will ever know. I just think it’s odd that guys seem to be so assured that their sex drives are the most intense ones ever.
Plus, few people seem to want to acknowledge that we women get blue balls, too.
Your examples are pretty crappy. And if anything they’re a subset of the pisspoor shift in media away from “regular people” and towards “celebrities”. For example, your average reality TV series will not use any professional actors, but almost all of the “regular people” are damn good looking.
Now then, your examples…
On the average, girls throw for shit and little girls act a specific way. Of course, you neglect to mention that men are also often told they’re acting like girls by women or are also told they’re acting like little boys.
Do you know what this even means? This is acknowledging that the woman in a man’s life has more power than he does. It’s a sexist put-down, yet, but it’s not sexist against the woman. Because she’s the one with the power.
Is “bitch” off limits in all discourse now? What about when women use it?
If you think things can’t be more often associated with women than with men, you’re just looking for offense.
And this is the fault of men? Are there no female casting directors or directors otr producers? Is Judi Dench and Meryl Streep not up for an Oscar every year?
And how much of this is just better makeup, lighting and camera tricks? Jessica Simpson just did a photo shoot with no makeup and no fancy retouching. Looks like any pretty girl you’d see at the mall.
And this is the fault of men? How is this sexism as opposed to just an unhealthy obsession with faux fitness?
No, actually it comes more from the social sciences - cite, cite.
What is your evidence that the proportions of ordinary looking vs. attractive people have changed, please?
Regards,
Shodan
Obviously the genders aren’t equal.
Women have a special c-word that’s off-limits to everyone.
I wish I had a word that I could get unnecessarily pissed off over.
We are nowhere near equal. In fact, in some ways, women are less equal now because “feminism” is now a bad word.
During the 2008 election, there were people in the crowds holding up signs in Hillary Clinton’s rallies saying “Iron My Shirt”. That was laughed off. Imagine if someone came to Obama’s rallies with a sign saying “Pick My Cotton”, they would have been labeled a racist and villified to no end. As bad as the rhetoric against Obama is now, if Clinton had won, there would be open mocking of her in all aspects of her administration twice as bad as we are seeing directed at Obama
Um, there’s lots of racist rhetoric aimed at Obama.
I’d argue that working on specific issues is the best way of making progress. 50 years ago people didn’t talk about racism, since it was so pervasive. No one tried to eliminate the fact of racism, which would have been impossible. Instead, they dealt with specific issues, like school segregation. It is a lot easier to be bigoted against the kid in that other school who you hardly see versus against that kid next to you in class. I’m not saying it is gone, but as someone who grew up in that environment (which existed in the North too) it is a lot better.
Income inequality is still a big problem, but couldn’t we fix a lot of it by providing cheap and accessible childcare? Today many women take time off for childbirth, which puts them behind, or take jobs compatible with the pitiful childcare we have today, which also does that. Maybe someday men will take as much maternity leave as women, but until that happens isn’t it useful to do something?
I think sexist isn’t used much anymore because even sexists say they are against sexism - most of them, anyway.
You should take a look at their head shots. My daughter was in a TV series 15 years ago where she was made up to be ugly - hairnet, frumpy clothes, the lot. She isn’t. I’ve seen head shots of lots of women who play ugly who aren’t. Fact is, except for character roles, it is easy for a good looking person to be ugly than an average person to play beautiful.
When you join SAG you fill out an incredibly lengthy questionnaire, the contents of which would get any other company sued. In show business, looks are relevant to the job. That’s how scripts are written. It is more or less the same as how characters in low paying jobs have gigantic lofts in the middle of Manhattan.
It goes both ways. Not many men look like George Clooney either.