Sexism
 

Aloha !

After my remark in regards to women not being funny and this, to my surprise, sparking a more serious discussion, I'm wondering how much sexism really bothers you?

I rarely used to pay attention to it. I joke about pretty much anything, so obviously the derogatory jokes about women are some I enjoy making every now and then, but only if it's obvious I'm taking the piss. If someone's seriously offended by it and thinks I'm serious I feel quite bad, I rarely make a joke to seriously offend someone.

With that said, I had a conversation a few years ago about how much sexism dominates TV, billboards and other advertisments. I was pointed to a video in which somebody demonstrated how often sexism, especially towards women, is used to get a point across and portrays a skewed image of real life. Ever since I've seen that video I started paying attention to it, and it actually is quite shocking.

For example; whenever I'm drawing things I put on a TV show in the background. Sometimes they're good shows (Dexter, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development...) and sometimes quite average ones, as in The Walking Dead. I've no idea if anyone's watching this show (if you don't look up what it's about or some of the details here might fly over your head), but the sexism in this show is mind-blowing. The men are always out there "shooting zombies", driving cars, taking the lead, being strong, saving everyone. And then there's the women. What are they doing? They are always, always doing laundry, rasping potatoes, doing more laundry, and then act all dramatic and being the women that needs to be saved by the man. True, there are some exceptions, no needlessly those who are the exceptions get shot, crash cars and die.

Am I the only one who's bothered by this? Ever since I started paying attention to this it's odd to see how used society is to sexism. We all know sex sells and obviously the women using their body in adverts are just as guilty as the men staring at them, but considering how civilized the western world should be, I'm kind of wondering if either audiences aren't quite ready yet for independent women, or if independent women are just not ready for society?

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

It doesn't bother me. I often think that this is more of a woman's world now though than it is a man's.

As you know it bothers the hell out of me. I probably go the other way too much to overcompensate, but all and all sexism is still pervasive. There was a good article in the New York Times last week addressing this particular topic. His comments are about the USA obviously and may not be applicable to Europe. But it pretty well sums it up for me, anyway.

Sexism’s Puzzling Stamina
By FRANK BRUNI
Published: June 10, 2013

This month the Supreme Court will issue raptly awaited decisions about affirmative action and gay marriage. But what’s been foremost in my thoughts isn’t race, sexual orientation or our country’s deeply flawed handling of both.

It’s gender — and all the recent reminders of how often women are still victimized, how potently they’re still resented and how tenaciously a musty male chauvinism endures. On this front even more than the others, I somehow thought we’d be further along by now.

I can’t get past that widely noted image from a week ago, of the Senate hearing into the epidemic of sexual assault in the military. It showed an initial panel of witnesses: 11 men, one woman. It also showed the backs of some of the senators listening to them: five men and one woman, from a Senate committee encompassing 19 men and seven women in all. Under discussion was the violation of women and how to stop it. And men, once again, were getting more say.

I keep flashing back more than two decades, to 1991. That was the year of the Tailhook incident, in which some 100 Navy and Marine aviators were accused of sexually assaulting scores of women. It was the year of Susan Faludi’s runaway best seller, “Backlash,” on the “war against American women,” as the subtitle said. It was when the issue of sexual harassment took center stage in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings.

All in all it was a festival of teachable moments, raising our consciousness into the stratosphere. So where are we, fully 22 years later?

We’re listening to Saxby Chambliss, a senator from Georgia, attribute sexual abuse in the military to the ineluctable “hormone level” of virile young men in proximity to nubile young women.

We’re congratulating ourselves on the historic high of 20 women in the Senate, even though there are still four men to every one of them and, among governors, nine men to every woman.

I’ll leave aside boardrooms; they’ve been amply covered in Sheryl Sandberg’s book tour.

But what about movies? It was all the way back in 1986 that Sigourney Weaver trounced “Aliens” and landed on the cover of Time, supposedly presaging an era of action heroines. But there haven’t been so many: Angelina Jolie in the “Tomb Raider” adventures, “Salt” and a few other hectic flicks; Jennifer Lawrence in the unfolding “Hunger Games” serial. Last summer Kristen Stewart’s “Snow White” needed a “Huntsman” at her side, and this summer? I see an “Iron Man,” a “Man of Steel” and Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Channing Tatum all shouldering the weight of civilization’s future. I see no comparable crew of warrior goddesses.

Heroines fare better on TV, but even there I’m struck by the persistent stereotype of a woman whose career devotion is both seed and flower of a tortured private life. Claire Danes in “Homeland,” Mireille Enos in “The Killing,” Dana Delany in “Body of Proof” and even Mariska Hargitay in “Law & Order: SVU” all fit this bill.

The idea that professional and domestic concerns can’t be balanced isn’t confined to the tube. A recent Pew Research Center report showing that women had become the primary providers in 40 percent of American households with at least one child under 18 prompted the conservative commentators Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson to fret, respectively, over the dissolution of society and the endangerment of children. When Megyn Kelly challenged them on Fox News, they responded in a patronizing manner that they’d never use with a male news anchor.

Title IX, enacted in 1972, hasn’t led to an impressive advancement of women in pro sports. The country is now on its third attempt at a commercially viable women’s soccer league. The Women’s National Basketball Association lags far behind the men’s N.B.A. in visibility and revenue.

Even in the putatively high-minded realm of literature, there’s a gender gap, with male authors accorded the lion’s share of prominent reviews, as the annual VIDA survey documents. Reflecting on that in Salon last week, the critic Laura Miller acutely noted: “There’s a grandiose self-presentation, a swagger, that goes along with advancing your book as a Great American Novel that many women find impossible or silly.”

I congratulate them for that. They let less hot air into their heads.

But about the larger picture, I’m mystified. Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity, our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect.

Well, women are in the next cubicle, across the dinner table, on the other side of the bed. Almost every man has a mother he has known and probably cared about; most also have a wife, daughter, sister, aunt or niece as well. Our stubborn sexism harms and holds back them, not strangers. Still it survives.

I don't know how things are there in Europe, but here the hypocrisy of women really annoys me. They say that are tired about men looking at women like sex objects and then all uploading pictures on Facebook of wet dudes without shirts, or watch the TV Shows where men are naked; or say that women jokes are offensive but joke about men all the time.

And don't make me start with feminism. Feminism is cancer, as it's machismo, both are shit. People should look for people having equal rights, not one having more than another.

Women say that they have less rights than men here in Argentina, but the salaries are equal for same genres, and they have more advantages in case of divorces (yeah, guess who gets the house and the kids), they have social care that man don't have just because of being women (is this equality?) and this is the funny fact, if a man kills a woman, he can get life emprisonent, if a woman kills a man she can get from 8 to 25 years top. Why? Is a woman life more valuable or important than the one of a man?

The other day 3 women raped a man, nobody cared, they tried to kill him after that but he could escape. A man rapes a woman and is all over the news.

I've seen a woman in a forum that wanted to have another kid but his husband didn't wanted, you know what the other female users said? That she should lie to her husband, say she's taking the pill, or use the semen in the condom to get pregnant because "it doesn't matter what he wants, is your right to have kids".

Or a girl writing on Facebook to his ex-boyfriend that he was a dick, he says to her that she cheated on him and you know what she answers? "Stop it or I'll tell the cops you raped me".

And I could go on with examples like this or even look for the screenshots but I really want to go to sleep.

tl;dr: Feminism, as machismo, is retarded. Look for equality, not revenge for what people in the 13 century did.

I couldn't agree more. The examples that you gives just show that women can be just as big assholes as men can. But the word "equality" that you used is what it should be about. I am not looking for preferential treatment as a woman but I would like to be considered equally for the same job and that includes pay. I am a structural engineer and believe me I am not considered for the same job at equal pay.

Never said that you were, I was just pointing out that (as you say) women can be just as big assholes as men can.

I really don't know how things are outside my country, but here two people that work the same amount of hours in the same job must and get the same salary, doesn't matter the genre.

Hah. Hah. Hah.

Smart, independent women who don't seem to 'need' a man intimidate many men.

I remember back in 2004, when John Kerry was running for president in the United States. My parents, Democrats, supported him, and, by extension, his wife, the outspoken, foreign, worldly (former Republican), Teresa Heinz Kerry.

My dad told me he went to a non-political meeting with some of his neighbors, and all of the men were making derogatory jokes about Teresa Heinz Kerry, saying they "didn't like her", but they could never really say why (and this wasn't just about differing politics).

My dad, always a mellow person who never raises his voice, finally spoke after all of the potshots were taken, simply saying, "I like her; she's smart."

The other men looked at him like he was an alien from another planet. He told me later, "No matter what their political affiliation, these guys were terrified of women who seemed smarter than they were."

Hillary Clinton evokes much the same response among some men, imo. Our culture 'trains' both women and men, through our media, and through the examples in our own families, that men are supposed to act 'a certain way' and women are more often than not trained to be the 'helpers' of men.

Even my own sister, an otherwise-intelligent woman who works full-time in a demanding job and is raising two young boys, belongs to a church where women are not allowed to speak at meetings or teach adult men (they take the Bible literally when it comes to what women are 'allowed' to do). Men must speak for them. This kind of behavior perpetuates itself: Women actively work to diminish their own worth by ignoring the historical and cultural limitations of the Bible and view this decree as eternal, simply because they happened to be born a particular gender.

The cognitive dissonance of an otherwise fearless, outspoken woman demurring in this way shows how we often let sexism stand, simply because if women were thought of as not worthy of having something to say back in Biblical times, it must be "good enough" for the women of today.

Aloha !

Well yeah, I can't stand feminism, but when looking at how women are portrayed in certain media I can kind of understand where it's coming from. The entire issue in regards to women needing to be thin and thus plenty of guys now thinking that a women with a few curves is considered fat is insane. I know guys who have told me they'd be embarrassed to show off their girlfriend to their friends simply because she's got a few more pounds on her body, which then again without a doubts feeds the insecurity of their own girlfriends.

Just have a look around. I'm not saying advertisements or video's should show fat people only, but why show nothing but skinny people in advertisements or TV shows when the real world is so different? I fail to understand why TV shows like The Walking Dead set out to promote the stereotype dating from the fifties, while the show is supposed to be happing in current times or the near future. And this show just isn't the only one out there, pretty much 80% of what's being shown on TV consists of this stereotypical behavior. It's so wrong but it seems like it just won't change.

Mysterytrain's reply in regards to men not liking smart women is probably true. Personally, loved it when girlfriends showed their intelligence (This sounds so bad but you get the point) and whenever I was involved with a dumb blonde it bothered the hell out of me. Like I said, feminism gets on my tits, but when digging a little deeper, I get where it's coming from.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Yeah, and how many women say that a man is fat only because he's not ripped like, I don't know, Zyzz? Also, are male models in clothes ads fat and ugly or they are tall with good bodies? It's all about marketing and affects both sexes. And it doesn't annoy me, I'd rather see the clothes in a better body than mine than in someone who's height is 165cm and weights 150kg.

Another thing I won't get, I was really fat and when I used to saw a ripped guy and think "dude, I need to start the gym and get a good body", most women thinks "god, that girl is so skinny, her life must suck, it's obvious that she's anorexic and I'm more healthy" doens't matter if she weights 200 kg and her veins are full of cholesterol.

The other day I saw a Levi's ad on the subway with a model with a great body (wasn't extremely skinny) and there was a grafiti wrote with an arrow pointing at it and saying "This is unhealthy". What?! Pretty sure that girl is more healthy that whoever wrote that.

About The Walking Dead, yes, they indeed show a sexist image but:

• Nobody's making you watch it. If you don't like it, just turn off the TV and go do something else.
• If you take a TV Series about a zombie apocalypse as an example of what you should do in real life, you gotta be more than retarded.
• You seem to forget that there're "strong" women like Maggie, who I've never seen washing clothes, she's always with guns, killing zombies and facing the bad guys as a man would do. Also there was Andrea, that was really tough and did everything the men did. Now you have Michonne who I really can't imagine washing a t-shirt.
• Carol on the other side is weak, but just because not everyone's the same way. It got nothing to do with her sex, it's just that every time she goes outside, she almost gets killed, she's scared of everything, of course she's going to wash clothes because it's the end of the world and she's not good at doing other stuff.
• Lori used to do "women things" but she was pregnant, you can't put the baby on risk just to send her to kill some zombies.

This is my lecture, though. And I agree with what you say about intelligence, I'd rather date a smart girl, someone I can have a good conversation with.

Sexism is total crap and yes it bothers me because it is there to evoke our instincts abut it is a lot more complex the way it is used. We are living in a masculine society which means that women (many of them) use their looks to get certain advantages or their "little girl game" but on the other hand are totally tough. And I blame the Americans for it with their "dating":-). Personally I don't give a shit about how my boyfriend looks or if society considers him attractive but at the same time if I put make-up on I do it for myself because I am in the mood and I think it is funl) I wish we would get away from it since there are more important qualities within people but I HOPE the more educated a person is the less important looks become or the thought about it because as long as we have to discuss it, it is still in people's minds and influences us.
But it is still a LOOONG way to go for American society:D.

Awesome post is awesome.