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Treated myself to a banana split for breakfast before my last day of school and oh my god it was too good - banana filled with...
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The question is how we react to this great prejudice against women. The rule of law and social activism certainly are crucial. But no matter how...
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“Be of service. You are taking your degree into a society dominated by concentrated poverty and a vulnerable middle class, a society where it is...”
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Word x 100 !!! Via @imanisublime #PR #cancer #truth #woc
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Homosexuality has a long history in Africa, says anthropologist Patrick Awondo, contrary...
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“I think marriage in general is not a healthy institution in our society. If people want civil rights, then that’s what I feel we should be fighting...”
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“[Judith] Butler’s argument against unequivocal gendered identities is most powerful when it is seen as a strategic response to the social emphasis on...”
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“As for white America, perhaps it can stop crying out against ‘black supremacy,’ ‘black nationalism,’ ‘racism in reverse,’ and begin facing reality....”
Within modern societies, there is a cultural power system of aggressive, sexist and structurally violent masculinity that most heterosexual men, to varying degrees, take part in. As an academic who in the past has described himself as a feminist, yet who occasionally lapses into this same culture, it is important for me to speak out clearly about how this culture connects to sexual violence, predominantly against women.
In its least sinister and most popular form, this culture is one of male bravado and stereotypes that sexually objectifies and commodifies women’s bodies. Many men are socialised and brought up within this culture, and many of us know it when we see it in others. At the same time, as active members of the culture, many of us miss our supporting role in it. The behaviours do not seem wrong when we are among a group of male friends. Often it is part of the membership rites and language of the group.
Social psychologists suggest that somehow, when we’re with other people, we lose our rational capacity or personal identity which controls our behaviour. And that it is acceptance of the norms and the values of the group that becomes most important. To better understand that not all sexual violence means rape, academic Liz Kelly suggests understanding women’s everyday experiences of sexual violence along a continuum from “choice to pressure to coercion to force.”
This helps to understand the subtleties of sexual violence, the point being, sexual violence is more complicated than violent assault such as rape, but starts with and involves far more common, everyday situations, such as harassment or targeting someone who is drunk.
Now many men might take offence to being swept up and placed in a culture that produces sexual violence. Many of us consider ourselves empathetic, caring, sensitive to women’s concerns—ie, men who support women. And in many cases this is true. It is certainly problematic to argue, as some do, that every man is a sexual predator-in-waiting.
This does not avoid the initial claim that many men are part of a sexist culture that generates disrespect and violence against women. What is this culture of masculinity that many are part of? It can begin with actions many feel normal and non-threatening. What some might see as a compliment might actually be an unwanted compliment.
Not all might be offended, granted, but it’s not like women have choice in the matter. Holly Kearl, founder of Stop Street Harassment, says: “Street harassment is often an invisible problem or one that is portrayed as a joke, compliment or the fault of the harassed person. In reality, it’s a human-rights violation.”
Colleagues in the workplace making suggestive comments—especially superiors—can be classed as harassment too. Men might deem it nothing, a harmless piece of flattery, but again this is part of a culture where men get to decide what behaviours women should accept. These behaviours often become internalised by women and expected of men. This produces the ironic situation that a female’s attractiveness involves legitimation by male heckling or flattery. The male world of objectification becomes the cultural norm.
Another issue within this culture is that men often push the responsibility for crimes of sexual violence onto women. They make claims about the way a woman dresses or claim she gave them signals. Yet no is always no, and harassment is still harassment, no matter what a person wears. Furthermore, people should always have the right to change their minds and remove consent at any point in an encounter—from flattery to sexual relations.
The situation is so bad that we teach women what not to do in order to avoid sexual violence while ignoring that it is men who are perpetrators of 99 per cent of sexual violence, and it is men who need educating. If we want to fix the problem, it requires attack on multiple levels. Research suggests the strongest enabling factor in sexual violence is the idea that such behaviour is covertly condoned. That is the culture I’m talking about here. And that is one level we can attack.
It just takes one man in a group of men to be offended and to make that point in front of his peers for the smokescreen of acceptance to be questioned by others. Many men might feel like they don’t want to be that man because they will lose credibility with their friends. Yet losing that credibility compared with being part of a continuum of sexual violence against women is a straightforward choice all men can and should make.
http://guardian.co.tt/columnist/2013-01-21/boys-will-be-boys
It started as a way for an 8-year-old girl to keep up with her big brother.
Sam Gordon just wanted to run with the older kids. The coaches in the local tackle football league figured, hey, why not? Maybe they could turn it into a drill: Who can outrun Max’s little sister?
They were shocked to find the answer: no one.
Sam Gordon, now 9, became one of the fastest kids this Salt Lake City area “Gremlins” league had ever seen. They put her in drills and she outran boys two years older. They allowed her into the “Sharks and Minnows” game and stared in awe at not only at her speed, but her ability to move like a tailback.
“She could cut and follow blocks like a college football player,” says her coach, Chris Staib.
Staib hatched a plan: His team was drafting seventh out of nine. He wanted to pick the girl. So he started talking her down, suggesting she would get hurt. The other coaches bought it, and with his first selection he chose Sam Gordon.
“You dog!” they howled.
Staib just laughed. Sam ended up running for 25 touchdowns and 10 conversions (no PATs at this level) in her first season playing tackle football. She earned the nickname “Sweet Feet” – a modern-day Rudy Huxtable – and a breathtaking viral video in which she looks so fast that you have to wonder if it’s real.
“Oh it’s real,” says Staib. “That’s her. I was there for all of that.”
(via socio-logic)
I realized that they had never understood that women produce the whole labor force and that that work is not acknowledged and not even considered as work. It’s like, “What did you do all day?” was a very popular way that men would greet women when they came home from “real” work.
And so, we then, you know, talked about the unwaged work that women were doing. That is, you got some payment, you got your food and board, if you were a housewife, but you didn’t have the autonomy of money, which ensured that everybody knew you were working and which gave you the independence of having money of your own. But that was really only the beginning, because then we began to understand that most of the world had no wages, that we—that the subsistence farming in Africa—you know, 80 percent of the food that is eaten in Africa is grown by women, unwaged—you know, no money, nothing, just very, very hard work—and that all of this work, the volunteer work, you know, the reproduction of the human race, really, that women do, not merely, you know, in giving birth, which is quite important, not merely in giving children the food that they want and that they need, which is breast milk, but just caring for everyone and fighting for everyone. You know, it’s women who fight to get justice for their children and for men. You know, we have a slogan in London: “Mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, fighting for our loved ones’ lives.” And that’s not a Romantic view of women’s work that—women’s justice work. That is the reality. That’s who does it. That’s who’s on the line in front of the prison where men and women are held unjustly. It’s women who are doing this work. And it’s an extension of the caring work that we have always done.
Now, I want to make it absolutely clear: we do this work, and we are civilized by this work, we women, and have a much greater understanding of human beings, because that’s what we’re dealing with all the time. But we don’t want to be the only ones to do it. Men need to do this work, because men need to be civilized by this work as we have been. Men don’t—we don’t want them to be doing this work for capitalism and not doing this work for ourselves, for each other, you know, for the society generally. Men have to start making society, along with women, not to help—I’m not talking about men helping. Sometimes we have to fight so that they give us a little help, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about that being the aim and purpose of our lives, to be with others, to care for others, and to, as I say, to make society with us.
“If it’s too brute and too obvious,” Diaz said, “then it becomes allegorical, becomes a parable, becomes kind of a moral tale. You want to make it subtle enough so that there are arguments like this.” The value of literature, then, comes from presenting readers with morally ambiguous situations and letting them react. “For kind of sophisticated art I’m interested in,” he said, “the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don’t think makes for good literature.”
I work in a family-friendly setting. The staff and administration, my colleagues and my graduate students at American University have been nothing but supportive of me during my difficult first year as a parent. AU is also a campus that prides itself on its gender and sexuality inclusivity, a place where students commonly refer to themselves using words like cisgender, and where the male-bodied student body president came out last year as a woman. It wasn’t until some of my undergraduate students saw me feed my baby through my breast that my workplace became a hostile environment.
Why are Women Devouring Fifty Shades of Grey? - Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. (via mehreenkasana)
Having not read it that helps me to understand this craze a lot better
nice blend/picture of gender, power (wealth, violence, structure), patriarchy and popular culture
(via brasssnuggles)
Some people hate the word “patriarchy.” It makes them run a mile. Even worse to such people is the word “feminism.” For some it is a synonym for male bashing. Patriarchy is the power of the social structure to keep one group—men—in positions of power over another group—women.
Yet patriarchy does not have to be some vast conspiracy by Dr Evil and his male cronies sitting in a room plotting against women to keep them down—it could be, but I’m hoping it’s not. Patriarchy can be subtle, unintended and normalised. In other words, it can happen even when people don’t realise their decision-making is exclusionary.
(via jayaprada)
This is what mothers teach - love, survival - that is, self-definition and letting go. For each of these, the ability to feel strongly and to recognize those feelings is central: how to feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be overwhelmed by it, how to enjoy feeling deeply… knowledge is the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn’t feel, or if he wins.
and fatherfucker isn’t
is all I know of woman’s pain
on earth, and all I need
to know of Western wisdom
Found these walking home from the Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil. I don’t know who put them up, but I’ve got a hunch it’s someone from my Women in Politics class. The final project in that class is to do an act of feminist conciseness raising.
These signs were put up at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
That’s really cool.
Now let’s make them not white and see what happens :x
(via fuckyeahethnicwomen)
Ok I just finished doing some social studies with my daughter going through the practice papers for national test. Am I the only parent who has problems with some of the questions and answers?
1. There are questions about the role of the father and the role of the mother. You see where I am going with this right?! Question- what is the role of the father? My daughter’s answer which is marked as wrong is look after the children and do chores. Now people, in our household things are shared and go back and forth. What exactly are we trying to teach our children by saying that the correct answer is mother is supposed to nurture and father is supposed to protect the home and bring home money!! Come on people get real. My great grandmother worked and brought home the bacon in 1932. My brother 19 years ago raised and nurtured his son! As my daughter just told me, Mummy this answer is not true but to get the points I have to put this down. I am sorry something is wrong here.
2. Ok the next question that irritated me they put a picture of a turtle and asked where is this found. They then listed Matura, Maracas, Store Bay and Las Cuevas. The correct answer is Matura for the marks but according to the Trini Eco warriors there are also turtles nesting at Las Cuevas and I suspect they may nest at one of the other beaches as well.
3. Third rant. There is a picture of a child in a thick winter coat playing in the snow. Multiple choice answers a-tropical, b-polar, c- temperate, d-desert. Umm I need some clarification here since I live in the Caribbean. Don’t they use those types of coats in the polar and temperate? They probably meant temperate but how are the children supposed to guess that?
Ok there are more issues but I think I have ranted enough for one day. True this is not the actual social studies test however I suspect it is very close and number 1 is definitely following the curriculum.
So who do I approach to get the curriculum changed and corrected?
Madness
(via izatrini)
