Miss Representation: Taking on Objectification of Women in Media

The film Miss Representation (currently being screened at Sundance) addresses the sexualization and objectification of women in media and how this relates to the oppression of women in general.

I am personally really excited about seeing the film but Jezebel commentator Irin is wary of the trailer as it

paints a rather broad brush (and yes, trailers are wont to do this — we'll reserve final judgment til we see the actual movie), seemingly uncritically describing all public displays of sexuality as inherently demeaning. It's not that Britney Spears has nothing to do with how female politicians are treated on cable news, but conflating voluntary displays of sexiness in entertainment with demeaning sexualization of public figures, played over ominous music no less, is unnuanced. So are the vague references to the "media" and "Hollywood" as faceless, catchall entities.

Thoughts?

Santorum: Obama's Race Should Shape Abortion View

This is fucking infuriating.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum says it is surprising that the nation's first black president is willing to deny civil rights to fetuses.

Santorum, who is a potential Republican presidential challenger to President Barack Obama in 2012, linked civil rights with abortion during an interview posted Thursday with the Christian Broadcasting Network. Santorum, who lost his 2006 Senate re-election bid in Pennsylvania, is an outspoken critic of abortion rights.

Santorum notes that for decades, slavery allowed African-Americans to be treated like property. And he says fetuses are denied the right to life because they are considered property.

Santorum says he is disappointed that Obama, a former law professor, refuses to treat fetuses as humans under the Constitution.

The White House declined to comment on Santorum's criticism.

The comparison between the Civil Rights movement (which was about gaining rights) and the anti-choice movement (which is about stripping away the right women have to their own bodies) is ridiculous and upsetting.

Gay Parenting Most Common in South

This article is very interesting and enlightening on a number of levels.

In addition, the data show, child rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gay couples in Southern states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are more likely to be raising children than their counterparts on the West Coast, in New York and in New England.

The pattern, identified by Mr. Gates, is also notable because the families in this region defy the stereotype of a mainstream gay America that is white, affluent, urban and living in the Northeast or on the West Coast.

“We’re starting to see that the gay community is very diverse,” said Bob Witeck, chief executive of Witeck-Combs Communications, which helped market the census to gay people. “We’re not all rich white guys.”

My first reaction is to hope that the fact that the South is home to the most gay parents will serve as a wake up call to residents of other states that consider themselves progressive but aren't forcing their state legislatures to make a real push for gay rights (I am looking at you, New York). What are your reactions? What stood out to you about these findings?

U.S. Racial Disparities in Health

File this under unsurprising, but nonetheless upsetting, news: a recent federal report found that the poor and racial and ethnic minorities are less healthy than their more affluent, white counterparts.

The agency did not delve into why suffering is so disproportionate, other than to note the obvious: that the poor, the uninsured and the less educated tend to live shorter, sicker lives...

“Some of the figures, like the suicide rate for young American Indians, are just heartbreaking,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the C.D.C. director, who ordered the report compiled.

He ordered it, he said, after promising at his agency’s African American History Month celebration last February that he would do so.

“We wanted to shine a spotlight on the problem and some potential solutions,” he said.

Many of the differences are large and striking

To find out more detailed information on the report's findings, click here.

Bad News from Somalia

A Somali town has banned women from working.

On Tuesday, the Al shabaab administration in southern Somalia's Kismayo town banned women from working — despite the imperative of providing for their families. Al shabab, the islamist insurgent group, has imposed a strict form of Sharia law over much of southern Somalia.

This is bad news not just for the women who are being oppressed by this, but for the Somalia economy in general. Giving women economic power is proven smart economics yet sexism has overridden both good ethics and good business strategy here. Here's hoping the town reverses this ridiculous ban soon.

Guy Talk

I will be up front. I’m upset. If you disagree with me or feel I jumped to conclusions, feel free to comment. Maybe we can make something constructive of this.

I suppose most people in America are familiar with the term “girl talk”. This term is generally associated with women who get together to talk, most often to complain about men.

Well, a week ago I got a peek at what one young man called “guy talk.” Here is a rough transcription of the entire exchange between two men who are in committed, monogamous relationships:

Man 1: So how’s your woman? You haven’t told me much about her.
Man 2: She’s great. She’s thin, blond, and loves sex.
Man 1: Sounds like you should keep her around.
Man 2: Yeah, I will. She takes care of me, too. How’s your woman?
Man 1: We’ve been fighting a lot but I don’t want to get rid of her.
Man 2: Man, don’t you hate that?
Man 1: Yeah, and the sex is great. Makes it even harder to get rid of her.

People will ask me what’s so bad about this. Why am I making such a big deal about this? This is normal, it’s…guy talk. And that is the problem. I called Man 2 out about this behavior and he said just that, “What? It’s guy talk.” I know that people like to talk about sex. Besides the fact that I live in a society where productive, meaningful discussions about sex are practically nonexistent, the above conversation bothers me because it reminds me that certain men only know how to talk about women with other men in terms that verbally turn women into objects. Why stay with her? Well, the sex is great. Never mind anything else. Her sex is what she’s good for, otherwise she's disposable.

If men are taught that it is acceptable to speak about women as if they are nothing but their bodies, their looks, the sex they can give to men, if they are taught that this kind of dialog is normal and should be expected among men, then we are living in a world where many forms of oppression of women are possible.

This small exchange, this seemingly insignificant act puts a mask of normacly over the idea, whether consciously agreed with or not, that women are objects, not humans, good only for things like sex and pleasing men, and they can be gotten rid of if the getting isn't good enough.

It doesn’t matter if you’re like Man 2 and you “bought roses for her because she had a bad day” and you “hold doors open for her”. If you think talking about women in this way is acceptable you are helping to uphold a society where women are still, in many ways, treated like they are inferior. Talk opens doors. What doors are we holding open if we think it’s acceptable for our male friends to talk about their girlfriends like this?

Boycott American Women campaign hits Female Impersonator

An American man has decided that he's had enough of American Women and he's been sending in comments to this blog to encourage American men to join him in his boycott of American women.


Of course, none of this comments have appeared on this blog. And they never will.


But this was written about on Jezebel, so I thought I'd let our readers know of the nonsense that I've been getting in my comment moderation queue.

Muslim Women in U.S. Gain Higher Profile

A recent New York Times article explores the role of Muslim women in the U.S. The article maintains an overall positive tilt, emphasizing how successful Muslim women in America are. The author does a pretty good job of alluding to the discrimination Muslim women face in America and the discrepancies between their empowerment and some of their religion's doctrine. However, the hardships these women must face is perhaps understated in the overall celebratory tone. I am including an excerpt below, but I would love to hear thoughts and impressions from people who have had a chance to read the whole thing.

These [American Muslim] women have achieved a level of success and visibility unmatched elsewhere. They say they are molded by the freedoms of the United States — indeed, many unabashedly sing its praises — and by the intellectual ferment stirred when American-born and immigrant Muslims mix.

“What we’re seeing now in America is what has been sort of a quiet or informal empowerment of women,” said Shireen Zaman, executive director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a nonprofit research institute founded after the 2001 attacks to provide research on American Muslims. “In many of our home countries, socially or politically it would’ve been harder for Muslim women to take a leadership role. It’s actually quite empowering to be Muslim in America.”

As Najah Bazzy, a American-born nurse and founder of several charities in Michigan, put it: “Yeah I’m Arab, yeah I’m very American, and yeah I’m very Islamic, but you put those things in the blender and I’m no longer just a thing. I’m a new thing.”

It is not always easy. Several of the Muslim women interviewed for this article said they had been the object of abusive letters, e-mails or blog posts.

Yet in their quest to break stereotypes, America’s Muslim women have advantages. They are better educated than counterparts in Western Europe, and also than the average American, according to a Gallup survey in March 2009. In contrast to their sisters in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they are just as likely as their menfolk to attend religious services, which equates to greater influence. And Gallup found that Muslim American women, often entrepreneurial, come closer than women of any other faith to earning what their menfolk do.

“Muslims coming to North America are often seeking an egalitarian version of Islam,” said Ebrahim Moosa, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Duke University. “That forces women onto the agenda and makes them much more visible than, say, in Western Europe.”

Via Racialicious

Access to Emergency Abortion Care Threatened

A recent case highlights the importance of emergency abortion care and the threat religiously affiliated hospitals can pose to providing women with this necessary service:

"...A hospital in Phoenix, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four children who was dying from pulmonary hypertension and was 11 weeks pregnant...Last week, the Bishop in Phoenix threatened to strip St. Joseph’s of its status as an official Catholic hospital unless St. Joseph’s agreed to sign a written pledge that it would not perform another life-saving abortion. The diocese made good on that threat yesterday, and stripped St. Joseph’s of its endorsement after the hospital defended its actions. As Amie Newman of RH Reality Check discussed last night, St. Joseph’s refused to agree to allow their patients to die. The hospital said, “Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”

St. Joseph’s did the right thing by standing up for women’s health. But the Phoenix bishop’s actions send a chilling message to other Catholic hospitals in the country: if they save women’s lives by providing emergency abortion care, there will be consequences. This could have a profound impact on women's health care throughout the country, especially given that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also recently reaffirmed that even life-saving abortions cannot be performed in Catholic hospitals across the country.

To learn more about how individuals and institutions may deny patients health care on ideological grounds, click here. To tell the Obama administration that you want this issue to be made a priority, click here.

Female Authors 2010

It is no secret that modern literary culture favors men, but in 2010 women might have finally made major publications do something about their bias.

It started when Jodi Picoult (followed by Jennifer Weiner) took to twitter, complaining about the fact that female authors are given significantly less notice by prominent critics. Subsequent research found that the numbers confirm Picoult's charge- Times Book Review does give far less space to novels written by women than to those by their male counterparts.

After being so publicly called on their sexism, influential review publications have taken note of the female authors they have ignored for so long in their best of 2010 lists. Times' and Salon's lists prominently featured books written by women, and the National Book Awards had four female finalists out of five.

Thoughts? Have you read any 2010 publications written by women that you would recommend? I myself am currently making my way through Courtney E. Martin's Do it Anyway: The New Generation of Activists. Martin's book explores the causes and biographies of eight young activists in a reverent, but still critical way. If you get the chance to read it it is definitely worth your time.

Senate repeals Don't Ask Don't Tell

The United States Senate voted 65-31 in favor of repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell today.

I am smiling.

(via Shakesville)

EDIT: And Obama signed the appeal.

Update on My Life (Because I Know You Were Wondering)

Just writing to apologize for how little I have posted lately. Finals are starting over here and I probably won't be able to post regularly again for a little over a week. Just know that I miss my impersonated community very much. Hopefully you and I will be comforted with some posts from my lovely co-bloggers in the meantime.

To tide you over until my return to the blogosphere, here are some of the things that I have been reading to procrastinate studying that you might find worthy of procrastinating with as well:

Jessica Valenti on the Assange case

Chloe's thoughts on Glee

Latest from NYT's "Women at Arms" series

December 6th was the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre (thanks to my roommate for reminding me about this)

First two openly trans judges in the U.S. were appointed last month

And another amazing feminist friend of mine just brought this piece by Andrea Gibson to my attention.

LGBT books vandalized with urine

Around 40 books about same sex marriage and gay and lesbian issues were found to be vandalized with what appears to be urine in Lamont Library at Harvard University. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

Marco Chan '11, co-chair of the Harvard College Queer frustrating" and "disconcerting," and said that it represents a Students and Allies, called the incident "extremely concern not only for the LGBT community, but for the Harvard community at large.


"I am very outraged. It is hard to conceive this as a coincidence when there are 40 books on the same subject," Chan said. "The message that this incident sent to me is that we need more resources not only for the LGBT community but also targeted towards other people."

Chan suggested workshops on homosexual, bisexual, and transsexual issues—similar to the mandatory freshman orientation event Sex Signals—as one possible way to respond to the bias evidenced by the incident.

(via Feministing)

Civil union bill passes IL House and Senate

Good news from my home state today.


The Illinois House and Senate have both passed SB1716, the "Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act" which would give gay couples similar rights and legal status to other married couples. It is now up to Governor Pat Quinn to sign the bill into law.


For more, read here.

Feminist Break-Ups

My roommate from this summer/one of my favorite feminists just brought to my attention this really sweet article about how to deal with a break up while feminist. I would summarize, but I will let the author win you over herself with the below excerpt:

How To Get Through the Feeling Betrayed / Feeling Sorry for Yourself / "My Life Sucks And Nobody Has Ever Been In As Much Pain As I Have" Phase:

Sisterhood
In this garbage dump of a situation, I realized I have an AMAZING group of friends. ...They made me laugh, they let me cry. Which made me realize how important the feminist value of sisterhood is...it's so important to have a close group of girl friends that will get you through to the other end and keep you on track no matter how trivial the problem you're dealing with seems in the scheme of things.

My Relationship with my Mom/Other Female Role Model
Strong women role models – in this case, my Mommy – helped me (and can help you) remember that even when other people act in ways that are pretty low, you can still hold yourself to a higher standard and rise above them.

How To Move On To Empowerment


Set Yourself Aside and Focus on Other People

Settle Your Karmic Score

I realized that while I was hurting, I had hurt other people. Without going into it, freshman year my two best friends and I had a huge fight. Stupid freshman that I was I walked away thinking that I was the only one who had been hurt. It took nearly 3 years and some heartbreak to figure out I may have hurt them, too. I began to realize the people I had designated "good" and the people I had designated "bad" were turning out to all be in the wrong categories and set out to fix it.


Now. Maybe I didn't react to this experience in the most feminist way. Maybe instead of focusing so much on this one incident I should have channeled that energy into rallying for a more important cause. Instead of curling up in the fetal position, I probably should have volunteered for Planned Parenthood or something. And maybe this advice isn't even the most feminist guide ever. But sometimes life, emotions and just being a freakin' teenager interfere with perfect feminist theory. And when that happens, this is what I have learned: be a kind human being. Treat others the way you want to be treated. When you slip up and do something bad to somebody else, own up to it and make it right. When somebody does something bad to you, try to maintain your integrity and look inwards toward your own strength and outwards towards a future where you are a stronger person for the pain. Because in the end, that's essentially what feminism is.

I highly recommend you read her full article, which elaborates on all of her advice and details her own recent break-up experience.

Please share your own feminist break up advice (for any or all genders) in comments.

Setback for Paycheck Fairness

Apparently our senate is not making wage discrimination a priority:

A bill aimed at stamping out wage discrimination was blocked Wednesday as too few senators voted to move forward with the legislation, the Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 17. The Paycheck Fairness Act was short by two votes.

The bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last year and would have amended the Equal Pay Act to limit the defense that employers can use to respond to charges of wage discrimination based on sex, among other actions. In a press statement, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said she would continue fighting for the legislation so "women are not treated as second class citizens by employers who refuse to compensate them in a fair and equitable manner."

You know what to do, contact your senator and tell them that you want them to stand up for equal pay.