Says it all.
To be clear: @marksandspencer believe that the 'MUST HAVES' are:
For MEN: 'outfits to impress'
For WOMEN: 'fancy little knickers'
Imagine for a moment if those window displays were reversed.
Go on M&S …. we are watching.PS Who signed this off? #sexist #marksandspencer pic.twitter.com/XOqLUSElgd
— FiLiA (@FiLiA_charity) November 18, 2018
Originally a comment by iknklast on A notoriously testosterone-charged profession.
Where I teach, we frequently get female students in the automotive department. The instructor sits them down and explains to them that they will face discrimination and hostility from the males. The instructor never sits down the males and says “They will not face discrimination and hostility or you will answer to me”.
I can be charitable, and accept that he believes this is in the best interest of the female students, that he wants to prepare them for the eventuality they will face outside of the classroom, and that it never occurs to him to try to change the situation, or that he can. I can be uncharitable, and assume that he is trying to persuade the female students to leave them alone. I have no way of knowing, other than my own experience in the world, as men tried to persuade me (and women – especially my mother – tried to persuade me) that science was no field for a woman. Of the people I knew, their motive was always the same – get me out of science, married, and pregnant as soon as possible, and keep me in my place. Therefore, I tend toward the uncharitable assumption, because I have very few examples of the opposite.
Originally a comment by iknklast on Genius shmenius.
While at a play this weekend, I found myself wondering something I have wondered frequently: Why is it that men dressed as women is considered hilarious and campy, while women dressed as men can be taken seriously and not laughed at or mocked?
Besides the obvious answers about men being default, and sissy, and all that, one thing struck me in this performance that I think says a lot: The men playing women were playing it to the hilt. They were dressed ridiculously, they simpered, they had foolish wigs, they posed “coquettishly” in a very exaggerated manner. The women playing men just…played men. They put on the outfit, they did the part, they didn’t butch it up, they didn’t exaggerate stereotypical male characteristics. They just played the role.
This, I think, is another aspect of that whole misogynistic thing that happens in the entertainment world. I have long found it uncomfortable when men played women and now I realize why – because they play us like some sort of alien being who is strange and unfamiliar, and very, very silly. When women play men, I can enjoy the show (if it is good in other ways) because they do not go out of their way to make themselves “macho” or do anything to exaggerate characteristics – unless the script calls for that because a character is a woman playing a man and doing it badly.
So much of entertainment is centered around the male as the norm, the female as the outlier. The male as the doer, the female as the receiver. The male as the leader, the female as the follower. And the most exaggerated, June Cleaver-esque distortions of woman’s reality.
I have a plan, and I hope I can stick to it. If you know anyone who is a creative type, or you yourself are a creative type, please join me. Maybe we can create a website, or something, that could send this around the world (I’m sorry, I have no idea how to send this around the world; I don’t do Facebook, and I have no idea how to get the message out). I plan to write something feminist – play, poem, short story, or essay – for every single day of Woman’s History Month. Every day. An entire work (which is why I do not say novel – I can write a 10-minute play in one day, but I have never yet managed to write a novel in one day).
I think women need to assert themselves in the entertainment world – maybe even take it over. The men have been in control too long.
If anyone wants to get this plan moving beyond my own little corner in my own little room on the second story of my own little house in my own little state, feel free to promote the idea, boost it, steal it, whatever – just, if you steal it, allow me to participate. That is all I ask.
Study comes up with the least surprising findings ever:
A new study from the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering found that films were likely to contain fewer women and minority characters than white men, and when they did appear, these characters were portrayed in ways that reinforced stereotypes. And female characters, in particular, were generally less central to the plot.
No kidding. The vast majority of movies these days have literally only men in starring roles.
The study, conducted by the school’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab, used artificial intelligence and machine learning to do a linguistic analysis of nearly 1,000 popular film scripts, mostly from the last several decades. Of the 7,000 characters studied, nearly 4,900 were men and just over 2,000 were women. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the male characters spoke far more than the female ones did, with 37,000 dialogues involving men and just 15,000 involving women.
Women are there to look hot, not to say stuff.
While previous studies examined how frequently characters of each gender spoke, the school’s researchers went further by analyzing what was actually said.
They found that the language used by female characters tended to be more positive, emotional and related to family values, while the language used by male characters was more closely linked to achievement. African-American characters were more likely to use swear words, and Latino characters were more apt to use words related to sexuality. Older characters, meanwhile, were more likely to discuss religion.
The researchers also looked at the “centrality” of each character by mapping his or her relationship to others in the film. They found that in most cases, when a female character was removed from the narrative, the plot was not significantly disrupted — except for in horror movies, in which women are often portrayed as victims.
It’s the same old thing. Women aren’t really people – they’re facsimiles, who can play the parts of people in a limited way, but they’re not people all the way through, with complicated thoughts and feelings. They don’t really matter. They don’t make anything happen. They’re not agents.
The study was one of two released recently by U.S.C. researchers that looked at diversity in film. The other, by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, found that in 900 films released from 2007 to 2016, the percentage of speaking characters who were women never climbed above 32.8 percent.
Because women, meh. They’re too boring to be allowed to speak much.
Morrisons, are you serious?
Boys’ top: “Little Man, Big Ideas”
Girls’ top: “Little Girl, Big Smiles”
Boys’ top: “King Of The Castle”
Girls’ top: “Pretty Little Me”This has to be a joke, right?
Sexism? I don’t see any sexism, do you see any sexism?
What happens when a man accidentally uses a woman’s name on the job?
Martin R. Schneider, an editor for the movie-reviewing site Front Row Central based in Philadelphia, realised men and women are treated differently in the workplace after he accidentally signed off on emails using his female co-worker’s signature
He tweeted the experience that made him realise women do not get the same respect in the workplace. The tweet that has been liked nearly 7,000 times and shared more than 5,400 times at the time of writing.
Mr Schneider, at the time working at another company, said that his colleague Nicole was getting criticism from their boss for taking longer than he did on tasks that involved communicating with clients.
As her supervisor Mr Schneider thought this was due to his higher level of experience, until one day he noticed one of his clients acting unusually difficult.
“He is just being IMPOSSIBLE. Rude, dismissive, ignoring my questions,” he said, adding “Telling me his methods were the industry standards (they weren’t) and I couldn’t understand the terms he used (I could).”
He realised the problem was coming from his signature – Mr Schneider was accidently signing all his emails with the name “Nicole” since they shared an inbox and she was handling the project before.
So he corrected the mistake and you’ll never guess what happened next hahahaha of course you will.
“IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT. Positive reception, thanking me for suggestions, responds promptly, saying ‘great questions!’ Became a model client,” Mr Schneider said.
“Note: My technique and advice never changed. The only difference was that I had a man’s name now,” he added.
He and his colleague then did the switch for two weeks; nightmare for him, bliss for her.
“I realised the reason she took longer is because she had to convince clients to respect her.By the time she could get clients to accept that she knew what she was doing, I could get halfway through another client,” he said.
“For me, this was shocking. For her, she was USED to it. She just figured it was part of her job,” he concluded.
Yep.
Are you serious.
Amal Clooney shows off her baby bump at the United Nations https://t.co/0Vkr8aad1D
— TIME (@TIME) March 10, 2017
There’s a string of angry retorts to that insulting tweet – such as
https://twitter.com/SophiaCannon/status/840100679788052481
https://twitter.com/designsponge/status/840188531058319360
.@TIME @motto wow. I am shocked at how disrespectful that headline is to the critical work she was doing.
— Janice Person – JPlovesCOTTON (@JPlovesCOTTON) March 10, 2017
If you go to Google News and type in Amal Clooney you find similar insulting headlines:
OH BABY! George Clooney’s wife Amal Clooney shows off her blossoming baby bump in a chic yellow dress as she heads out in New York
Amal Clooney is a vision in yellow as she shows off hint of baby bump in chic dress
Samantha Schmidt at the Washington Post says what Amal Clooney was actually doing at the UN, besides “showing off her baby bump”:
An accomplished, international human rights lawyer delivered a potent call for action at the United Nations on Thursday, urging the organization to back an investigation into crimes committed by the Islamic State in Iraq.
“I am speaking to you, the Iraqi government, and to you, U.N. member states, when I ask: Why? Why has nothing been done?” Amal Clooney, the British-Lebanese barrister who represents victims of Islamic State rapes and kidnappings, said.
She implored Iraq and the world’s nations, using another name for the Islamic State: “Don’t let ISIS get away with genocide.”
It was a day after International Women’s Day, and a renowned female lawyer was giving a powerful speech addressing one of the world’s most pressing humanitarian threats.
Blah blah blah, shut up, she’s A WOMAN and she’s HOT, ok? Who cares what she said and what it was about, let’s just talk about how awesomely hot she is.
The tabloid Mirror published the headline, “Amal Clooney is a vision in yellow as she shows off hint of baby bump in chic dress.” Entertainment Tonight went with, “Amal Clooney Stuns in Yellow While Delivering Passionate Speech at the United Nations.”
The day before the speech, Motto, Time Inc.’s website aimed at younger women, displayed the headline “Amal Clooney Shows Off Her Baby Bump at the United Nations,” publishing an article written by People magazine, which began:
Amal Clooney was all business on International Women’s Day. The mom-to-be (who also happens to be married to George Clooney) stepped out outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Wednesday, showing off her baby bump in a dark gray pencil skirt and matching cropped blazer.
Then there was E! News: “Amal Clooney Shows Baby Bump in What Could be the Ultimate International Women’s Day Poster.”
Woman! Dress! Movie star! Baby!
Those watching her speech would have hardly noticed her barely visible bump, unless, of course, they were specifically looking for it. Most were more focused on her impassioned address, which she attended with her client, Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi woman who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State militants.
What did she wear?
Clooney is a barrister for Doughty Street Chambers in London and represents clients before the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights as well other domestic courts in Britain and the United States. She served as a senior adviser to Kofi Annan when he was the United Nations’ envoy to Syria, and was counsel to the British inquiry on the use of armed drones, in addition to serving on the country’s team of experts on preventing sexual violence in conflict zones.
Yeah yeah yeah. What color were her shoes?
Speaking of Hollywood…there’s that whole thing about how they systematically and deliberately keep women out.
The ACLU put out a statement about a federal probe last year. I wonder if Trump will be able to kill the probe. I think we can be sure that if he can he will.
May 11, 2016LOS ANGELES — A year ago, the ACLU of Southern California and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project asked the federal and California governments to investigate blatant and rampant discrimination against women directors in the film and television industries. The request was made after an ACLU investigation revealed an industry-wide pattern of gender bias and stereotyping that all but excluded women from directorial roles.
Melissa Goodman, director of the LGBTQ, Gender and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California, had this comment:
“ACLU SoCal and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project are pleased that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs gave careful consideration to our findings and responded by launching a wide-ranging and well-resourced investigation into the industry’s hiring practices. We are encouraged by the scope of the government’s process and are hopeful that the government will be moving to a more targeted phase.
“In the year since our report was released, there has been much lip-service paid to furthering opportunities for women, but few definitive steps and no serious movement in the number of women directors hired. We are confident that the government will corroborate our work and push industry leaders to address the ongoing violations of the legal and civil rights of these directors and of all women in the film and television industries.”
May 2016. It still seemed possible back then.
Oh what a surprise. The Harvard Crimson October 25:
In what appears to have been a yearly team tradition, a member of Harvard’s 2012 men’s soccer team produced a document that, in sexually explicit terms, individually assessed and evaluated freshmen recruits from the 2012 women’s soccer team based on their perceived physical attractiveness and sexual appeal.
The author and his teammates referred to the nine-page document as a “scouting report,” and the author circulated the document over the group’s email list on July 31, 2012.
In lewd terms, the author of the report individually evaluated each female recruit, assigning them numerical scores and writing paragraph-long assessments of the women. The document also included photographs of each woman, most of which, the author wrote, were culled from Facebook or the Internet.
I seriously could not be less surprised unless you told me Donald Trump bullied someone. Of course he did, of course they did. That’s what Facebook originally was, doesn’t anyone remember? It was Zuckerberg’s catalogue of gurlz, complete with photos so that You Too could decide if she was hot enough or not.
The author of the “report” often included sexually explicit descriptions of the women. He wrote of one woman that “she looks like the kind of girl who both likes to dominate, and likes to be dominated.”
Each woman was assigned a hypothetical sexual “position” in addition to her position on the soccer field.
Of course she was. That’s what women are for – so of course men have to grade them. You don’t go to the supermarket and just grab some tomatoes at random do you? You examine them first. Same with women.
The “report” appears to have been an annual practice. At the beginning of the document, the author writes that “while some of the scouting report last year was wrong, the overall consensus that” a certain player “was both the hottest and the most STD ridden was confirmed.”
Several members of the 2012 men’s team declined to comment on the document, including whether subsequent men’s soccer teams continued to create similar “reports.”
What would they say if they did comment? This kind of thing is totally normalized, so you can’t expect them to burst into tears and swear they’ll never do it again. This is PornWorld, and women are meat that talks.
Director of Athletics Robert L. Scalise viewed the document for the first time Monday and said he had been unaware of the document until then.
Directly after seeing the document, he said “Any time a member of our community says things about other people who are in our community that are disparaging, it takes away from the potential for creating the kind of learning environment that we’d like to have here at Harvard.”
Hahahaha oh brilliant. Yeah don’t do it to fellow Harvard students, go to Roxbury Community College for that kind of thing.
He added: “It’s very disappointing and disturbing that people are doing this.”
Do I believe he means it? No.
Scalise said the document reflects issues that extend far beyond Harvard’s campus.
“We’re not insulated from these types of things,” he said. “These things exist in our society. Society hasn’t figured out a way to stop these things from happening.”
“Whenever you have groups of people that come together there’s a potential for this to happen,” Scalise added.
“It could be an individual, it could be a group, it could be a rooming group, it could be an athletic team,” he said
Yeah, people, that’s what it is. It’s just people. Random sets of people, of all different kinds; no pattern to it at all. It means nothing that this was the men’s team, and it was the women’s team they did it to. Oh look, a squirrel.
Though Scalise said his first steps for responding to the document would “certainly” include speaking to coaches of both men’s and women’s athletic teams, he added that “there’s a role for the administration at the College to also play in this” in addition to the athletics department.
Any reaction to the document, though, should be “an internal Harvard matter,” Scalise said.
“This is not a media thing,” Scalise said. “This is something that should be looked at by us in the administration to figure out what our steps are, but we shouldn’t do anything more with the media on this other than ‘thank you for letting us know about this, okay. We need to look at it.’”
Oh yes sir. Definitely sir. Sorry to trouble you sir. It’s entirely a matter for the people of the Harvard community, sir, and I’ll take my prole self out of your sight this instant. Thank you for not whipping me, sir.
First contacted about the document late Friday afternoon, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana did not respond to multiple requests for an in-person meeting to view the document. College spokesperson Rachael Dane wrote in an email that Khurana was unavailable for an in-person interview. Khurana instead emailed a statement, after Dane had viewed the document herself in person.
“As a human being, and a member of the Harvard College community, I am always profoundly disturbed and upset by allegations of sexism, because I feel it is wrong and antithetical to this institution’s fundamental values,” Khurana wrote. “No one should be objectified. In light of all the attention that has been given to issues of inclusion, gender equity, and personal integrity at Harvard and elsewhere, we must work together to build a community of which we can all be proud.”
Maybe they should call in Wonder Woman to help.
The document, though written four years ago, surfaces amid a year at Harvard defined, in many ways, by campus discourse about gender equity and campus sexual harassment. It also comes at a time in which national conversations on the current presidential campaign focus on the same subject. After the surfacing of a 2005 tape in which Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump boasts about groping women, Trump dismissed his comments as “locker-room banter.”
What I said. It’s normalized. It’s silly to pretend it isn’t.
Suzanne Moore is delighted that Bono won a Woman of the Year award. Ok maybe delighted isn’t exactly the right word.
Bono’s peers have given him all sorts: from a knighthood (honorary knight commander of the British empire) to a Philadelphia liberty medal, but according to the doublethink of Glamour’s editor-in-chief Cindi Leive, giving awards to actual women at the actual women of the year ceremony “might be an outdated way of looking at things. There are so many men who really are doing wonderful things for women these days.”
Finally, men doing things for women! It’s what the struggle has been all about. Give that man a round of applause for “babysitting” his own children. A medal and a paper hat for any man who thinks things should be better for girls!
And not just any medal and paper hat, but a medal and paper hat with “For a woman” on it! Women have grabbed up all the awards for far too long, and it’s about damn time men started winning some of the awards for women of the Minute, Hour, Day, Week.
Bono has basically irritated everyone by hanging out with popes and presidents but maybe his heart is in the right place even if his taxes are not. Maybe he could be offered a daft award and do the right thing: decline to line up with the likes of US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles; or Nadia Murad, the Yazidi woman who got away from Isis; or Emily Doe, the student who was raped by Brock Turner and wrote a shattering letter about her experience. He could have politely declined but carried on his work on HIV, as so many of his colleagues do. He could have said that poverty is a key feminist issue and passed the prize on to one of the many brilliant female campaigners. But no, he said he is very grateful because this is a chance to say: “The battle for gender equality can’t be won unless men lead it along with women.”
Oh that’s such an outdated way of looking at things, saying it should be along with women. Fuck no. The battle for gender equality can’t be won unless men lead it period, all by themselves. Get the fucking stupid helpless incompetent talkative bitchy women out of it, and the battle for gender equality will be won in a week or less.
Bono is not alone in this patronising attitude. Most of the male voices on the left continue to see gender as some kind of afterthought and are not interested in the bodily politics of flesh and blood and women. The new UN ambassador for women is Wonder Woman, a bleedin’ cartoon. Everyone fell over themselves to celebrate Caitlyn Jenner’s womanhood, ignoring her dubious politics. The misogyny around Hillary Clinton is unmissable. The one bit of sexual politics that the “radicals” embrace is often a denial of biological difference. Yet some of the most hard-won campaigns have been around rape, FGM, sexual violence, childbirth and HIV, where women’s experience is absolutely embodied.
Alongside this strange disappearance of womenhood has been the rolling back of tokenism: the assumption that everything is already a level playing field. Where many used to feel a public discussion should involve more than just white men, we are back to a position where it is now permissible to have all-male panels and comedy shows.
It’s the up to date thing.
Classics of Mansplaining, entry #whateveritisnow.
Walter Holt @walcarpit 24 hours ago Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Methinks you are missing the point @boodleoops @OpheliaBenson Sure women do gestation & labour, but they are only one part of conception.
Very classic, you must admit. A man solemnly telling two adult women that women don’t conceive all by themselves. You don’t say!
Also classic in that it was out of nowhere, i.e. not part of an ongoing conversation but a cold-reply to a tweet. Also classic in that in fact we hadn’t missed the point at all, we were addressing the point.
For refreshment, have Christiane Amanpour on sexism in the coverage of Clinton:
https://twitter.com/LeanneNaramore/status/775704856187338752
It doesn’t get much more unmistakable than that.
Jim Hightower was on the Dr Pepper FOR MEN story in 2011.
It seems that the honchos over at the Dr Pepper Snapple Group have done intensive market analysis and found that men think of diet drinks as…well, girly. So they flinch at buying them.
So of course the geniuses in charge of the vats of flavor figured out a way to make a new Dr Pepper with only 10 calories but still the same amount of manliness. It’s a miracle how they did it, but we will never know more, because it’s a secret secret secret.
The pepped-up Dr Pepper is being launched with a massive, testosterone-infused ad campaign that bluntly proclaims: “It’s not for women.”
TV ads will run on all networks during college football games, and the promos will reek of machismo, showing men — real men — in a jungle battling snakes. Also, instead of the gentle bubbles on Dr Pepper’s regular diet can, the cans of Ten are gunmetal grey — with silver bullets. Pow!
In case ladies still don’t get the point that this is a manly man’s drink, they might go to Dr Pepper Ten’s Facebook page. There, they’ll find a virtual shooting gallery that invites members of the male species to fire virtual bullets at such feminine symbols as lipstick and high heels.
Because it’s never a bad idea to encourage men to get violent toward women and their symbols. Aw hell no!
So, I take it back about the irony. They did mean it.
A friend told me it’s not just Yorkies – it’s Dr Pepper too.
Clearly this is not meant literally; clearly it’s ironic in some sense…and yet. Again: would they do the same thing “for white people” instead of “for men”? Would they do an ad saying Dr Pepper is not for black people?
I don’t think so, and if I’m right, what does that say? Why is it amusing to “pretend” to insult women if it’s not amusing to “pretend” to insult other not-seen-as-equal kinds of people?
Gee, a sexism hat trick. The Israeli government is imposing “modesty” rules at government-sponsored events.
Israel’s Culture Ministry is to introduce new rules about how modestly performers should dress at government-sponsored events.
“Festivals and events funded by public money will respect the general public, which includes different communities,” a Culture Ministry spokesperson said.
And by “communities” they of course mean not communities at all, but religious sects. Calling them “communities” makes them sound cuddly rather than coercive.
The spokesperson spoke after a singer at a government-backed beach concert near Tel Aviv was kicked off the stage for wearing a bikini top. At a beach.
Hanna Goor, who came to public attention in Israel after appearing on a TV talent show, said a production representative told her to “get dressed” during her performance.
When she refused, he kicked her off stage before her set had finished, she claimed.
“Immediately after they took me down, I asked for an explanation. The bottom line, he explained to me, is that the request was imposed on him,” Ms Goor told the Haaretz newspaper.
Haredi influence?
Israel’s Culture Ministry disputed Ms Goor’s claim that her set was cut short, but said removing her from the stage was “necessary” because her performance did not “respect the general public who attended the show”.
“This is exactly the difference between freedom of expression and freedom of funding,” the spokesperson said, according to Jewish daily Forward.
Or maybe it’s exactly the difference between living in a secular country and living in a theocracy.
I’ve never been able to figure out how David Brooks ever got to be David Brooks. He’s so staggeringly conventional and mediocre and empty – what does anyone see in him?
Upholding his record of conventionality and mediocrity, he did an opinion piece for the Times on Friday musing on why Hillary Clinton isn’t “gracious” enough for his taste, and how important it is to be “gracious,” and how might Hillary Clinton become “gracious” enough for him.
Hillary Clinton is nothing if not experienced. Her ship is running smoothly, and yet as her reaction to the email scandal shows once again, there’s often a whiff of inhumanity about her campaign that inspires distrust.
So I’ve been thinking that it’s not enough to be experienced. The people in public life we really admire turn experience into graciousness.
Those people, I think, see their years as humbling agents. They see that, more often than not, the events in our lives are perfectly designed to lay bare our chronic weaknesses and expose some great whopping new ones.
Sooner or later life teaches you that you’re not the center of the universe, nor quite as talented or good as you thought.
Or at least…it does if you’re a woman. Because let’s face it, women are not the center of the universe – men are – and they are of course never as talented or as good as they think, because after all, they’re women. Women aren’t talented or good. It’s just so irritating when they swan around thinking they’re qualified to do a big job, when obviously only men are qualified to do that. It’s a good thing we have talented good genius men like David Brooks to take those women down a peg or two or six or a squillion.
People who are gracious also understand the accuracy of John Keats’s observation that “Nothing ever becomes real ’til it is experienced.” You can learn some truth out of a book or from the mouth of a friend, but somehow wisdom is not lodged inside until its truth has been engraved by some moment of humiliation, delight, disappointment, joy or some other firsthand emotion.
Especially humiliation, right? Bring on the humiliation! Let’s see Hillary Clinton humiliated a lot, starting right now. She can’t be gracious or dainty or sweet enough until she’s been humiliated a few thousand times. I can sense David Brooks’s excitement at the prospect from here.
Gracious people are humble enough to observe that the best things in life are usually undeserved — the way the pennies of love you invest in children get returned in dollars later on; the kindness of strangers; the rebirth that comes after a friend’s unexpected and overawing act of forgiveness.
Yup yup yup – Hillary Clinton needs to realize that she doesn’t deserve any of this – the bitch – she thinks she’s so great but really she’s just another useless woman.
It’s tough to surrender control, but like the rest of us, Hillary Clinton gets to decide what sort of leader she wants to be. America is desperate for a little uplift, for a leader who shows that she trusts her fellow citizens. It’s never too late to learn from experience.
If only everyone were as wise and generous with advice and sympathetic and just downright helpful as David Brooks.
Aaaaaaaaand again:
Before he became a full-time swim coach, he was an engineer and inventor. His latest project: Katie Ledecky. https://t.co/Zq3aq363b0
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 12, 2016
There are some…lively responses to that tweet.
Punished Venonat @hamsandcastle 18 hours ago
@JDrutman @nytimes Elon Musk gave her gillsLauren @lkroner 23 hours ago
@nytimes Oh thank goodness. For a moment there I thought Ledecky was going to get credit for her accomplishments not relative to a man.David Roy @david_roy 16 hours ago
@nytimes This is garbage. She just put on one of the very best performances in Olympics history, and you are angling a rando tech guy.summer of harbaugh @stefanielaine 15 hours ago
@david_roy @nytimes “Hmmm, a woman is historically great……let’s do a piece on the man responsible for her greatness”KELLY @MsFopra 17 hours ago Franklin, TN
@nytimes FFS Could you be more sexist. She’s not a project. Or an innovation. She’s a woman, an amazing athlete with a lot of talent. She worked her ass off to accomplish what she has. She deserves to be celebrated for her accomplishments.Wendy Lady @NerdRage42 16 hours ago
@nytimes oh wow. Now we’re automatons. This is unacceptable…and was seen by more than one set of editing eyes before posting. Shameful.Truth April Teale @TruthTeale 19 hours ago
@nytimes You know what he can’t do? Win gold medals for swimming. Seriously, what the everlasting fuck were you THINKING with this article?Meg @garlicmeg 11 hours ago
@nytimes Unbefuckinglievable NY Times. Let the woman own her own accomplishment. She is not a machine that was engineered by a man!Lauralu @mslauralu 19 hours ago
@nytimes one more time story must find a way to credit a man for a woman’s greatness. It’s 2016! Just. Stop.Jessica Smith @Echo6979 16 hours ago
@nytimes Um, she’s an athlete, not a robot, and this is an incredibly gross headline. Stop giving men credit for a woman’s accomplishments.
And much more.
Cameron does Cabinet reshuffle. Cameron increases the number of women in the Cabinet. News media report on reshuffle and increase in number of women.
What’s the next sentence? You know this one.
Today’s coverage in the London Evening Standard was shocking. The male subjects who were profiled had standard bios – career highs and lows, nothing about their personal lives. Michael Gove was said to have “one of the most acute political brains of his generation”, while Philip Hammond apparently has “a hard edge” and set up his own companies at a very young age.
The profiles of the three women who’d been promoted, although containing factual and some complimentary descriptions, all mentioned their marital status and how many children they had. The unmarried woman – Esther McVey – was singled out for special treatment. In the West End final version of the paper, there were not one but two photos of her, one as a young TV presenter in a revealing crop-top and skin-tight satin trousers, and the other as she was this morning, the wind blowing up her otherwise respectable business skirt such that the slit parted and revealed a bit of thigh. In the text, of all the thousands of phrases she’s ever uttered in her time on GMTV, the journalist chose one in which she mentioned sex, and readers are also helpfully informed that she once flashed her underwear on air. Most disturbingly, she has an entire paragraph about her relationship status that would not be out of place in a gossip column. In it, we learn that although she’s “unmarried”, she’s been “linked” with two prominent men, one of whom proposed marriage. (One cannot help suddenly picturing her as a feisty Lizzy Bennet, spurning not only Mr Collins’ advances, but Mr Darcy’s as well!) Coyly, the piece concludes that she “shares a flat” with a male MP, and allows readers to draw their own conclusions.
Well what else can a newspaper possibly say about a woman in the Cabinet? Come on – be sensible about this. Obviously there can’t be anything substantive to say about their political views, their political record, their work – I mean get real. So what’s left? Their looks and their sex lives, duh. That’s all there is to women when you get right down to it.
Richard Scudamore, the head of the Premier League, supports women’s football, good on him, but – he talks the drearily familiar way about them when he lets his hair down.
Premier League chief Richard Scudamore’s sexist views are today exposed by his former PA.
She reveals how the boss who publicly backs women’s football exchanged sleazy emails with senior colleagues in which females were referred to as “gash”.
Yeah that’s no good. Talking about them as if the hole between the legs were all there is to them – that’s no good.
Scudamore – who will be at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium today for their expected crowning as Premier League champions – likes to be seen as a champion of equality in the game.
He has joined forces with the FA and Sports England to promote a new FA Women and Girls programme with a £2.4million investment over two years.
The soccer boss has publicly claimed the league strives to be at “the leading edge” of the “whole equality agenda”.
But his former PA saw another side to 54-year-old Scudamore who earns more than £1million a year. She told the Sunday Mirror his emails were sent to her automatically while she was working for him at the Premier League last October so she could arrange his diary.
“I can tell you he has no respect for women,” she said. “I don’t think anyone should have to be exposed to such language and opinions at work.
“It was highly offensive. The emails portrayed women in a very derogatory manner. I have worked for very professional organisations and never seen anything like it. That’s why it shocked me.”
But it’s the hip new thing.
PZ has a post on The Cunt Question (that’s where I saw Maki Naro’s tweet, and there are more there).
The defenses are hilarious, irrational, and indignant. It’s incredibly common to see people protest that it’s a perfectly acceptable word; everyone says it in England; it doesn’t have any sexual connotations at all, because apparently, people in the UK are so stupid that they don’t remember that it’s a word that refers to the female genitalia. The Argument from Regional Ubiquity simply doesn’t work — would we accept that Southerners get a free pass on calling people “nigger” because everyone down there is rednecked cracker, so it’s OK?
I must remember to call it that, because I have this argument over and over again. It’s The Argument from Regional Ubiquity and it is bullshit.
There are a lot of good comments.
The first, for instance, by aziraphale:
I’m a Brit and I have never, in my whole life, called anyone a cunt. Possibly because if I did, my female friends (mostly also Brits) would never speak to me again.
But but but The Argument from Regional Ubiquity!
Bad argument. Next?
thetalkingstove @ 28 is another useful datum:
I’m British and I can’t remember the last time I actually heard someone say the word.
Perhaps I have a sheltered existence, and I’m positive that there *are* people and groups where it’s thrown around all the time, but this idea that everyone in the UK is going around saying it in every other sentence is ludicrous.
carlie @ 32 on two ways the conversation can go:
Exchange from a reasonable person who has no INTENT to use a slur in its sexist/racist/etc way:
Person 1: *slur*
Person 2: Hey, that’s a *** slur that is really demeaning towards *** people. Don’t do that.
Person 1:
Option A) Oh no, I had no idea! I certainly did not mean to do that. I won’t use that word in the future, then!
Option B) Oh, I didn’t realize that group interpreted that word in that way. I certainly did not mean to do that. I won’t use that word in the future, then!Unreasonable person exchange:
Person 1: *slur*
Person 2: Hey, that’s a *** slur that is really demeaning towards *** people. Don’t do that.
Person 1: But I didn’t mean it that way!
Person 2: I’m sure you didn’t, which is why I’m letting you know. I know that you wouldn’t want to be seen as a bigoted person when you aren’t, so I’m giving you the advice that using that word makes you look that way.
Person 1: You can’t tell me what to do! I’ll use it if I want! Everyone should magically understand that I don’t mean it that way so it’s ok if I say it! Because people in Borneo don’t mean it that way when they say it! I’m not a bad person! You’re the bad person!
Gregory Greenwood @ 38, which was the one that made me decide to collect several, because these comments are filling in the picture:
As a Brit, I would just like to say that PZ is right on the money here. The oblivious misogynist idiot contingent within the UK knows full well that the term is misogynist – they are relying on the likely unfamiliarity of a majority US audience with UK cultural norms to try to get away with it, that’s all.
We have our share of priviliged, oblivious and outright bigoted arsehats over here, just as you colonials Americans do over there. It is the curse of the human condition. Their moaning may amuse you, but it amuses me rather less given that I have to live among people like this every day.
If you think trying to impress upopn them that the term ‘cunt’ is misogynistic is difficult, just try to convey the notion that ‘fag’ is homophobic. They will stubbornly claim it is just slang for cigarette, and ignore all popints to the contrary about its connotations in other cultures.
PZ @ 86 in response to one of those “But context!!” retorts:
We understand the context. We see how it’s part of a long tradition of treating women as inferior. You’re the one refusing to recognize history, context, and meaning to pretend it’s just a one-syllable expletive, a meaning-free insult. That is such total nonsense — and of course everyone uses it a strong insult, because it has such patent connections to female sexuality.
When random women explain to you that it is a shotgun insult — that it causes a lot of splash damage when you use it — and yet you persist in claiming your noble calling as an Englishman to continue to use it whenever you damn well want to, then your claim that you aren’t really sexist is pretty well demolished.
Another British person chiming in here with another data point: The c-word is the vilest single word any British person can say to another. If Ricky Gervais really thinks it isn’t terribly sexist and offensive, he should try saying it on UK TV and seeing what happens to his career.
Yes, some British people might claim to use it as a term of endearment to acquaintances in the same way that a generation or three ago, they might have referred to a friend as a “daft old bugger”. But it’s still incredibly offensive. Maybe manocheese can tell us in exactly which contexts he uses the word. Talking to his mother? His friend’s mother? His doctor? His boss? A policewoman? A nurse? His daughter?
Manocheese, #122,
I’m saying that it’s possible that I can say the word in a culture where nobody takes it as a sexist comment.
Prepare to be inundated with lots of people, myself included, telling you that they DO take it as a sexist comment in UK culture. The meaning (and sadly use) of the word is not completely divorced from either its other meanings or the extant cultural misogyny very much present in the UK.
Do we (typically) see the word as horrendously sexist as the Americans do (where it seems to be directed at women far more than it is here)? No, perhaps not. But that’s a difference of degree, not of nature. Its use is a sexist act, regardless of the user’s intent and regardless of the use of other words. Does that make its user a Global Forever And Ever Super Sexist? Nope. But it does mean that, when considering all the relevant context, its use is sexist and thus it should be used (or rather not used) judiciously.
For a better illustration of context, let’s just say you have a conflict [with] someone who is of “black” African heredity, or Pakistani or Indian heredity, do you call them an “n-word” or a “p-word” (we all know the words I mean)? I’m betting you don’t. The most relevant difference, if indeed you don’t, is that you have a greater awareness of the moral…”dubiousness” (generous term!)…of racism than you do misogyny. The social consequences of naked racism are more apparent to you than the social consequences of naked misogyny.
Speaking as a ‘Brit’ I’m bemused whenever someone claims the C-word is in common usage here. It isn’t, it really isn’t.
While I get the impression there might not be quite the same level of disgust at hearing it as there might be in the US, it is still definitely not acceptable and definitely one of the most socially unacceptable words someone might use.
It isn’t the most unacceptable language, there is even more disapproval of racist terms which seem to be in a different category – not saying that’s right, but it is the case – but no-one is using it who doesn’t understand it to mean exactly what we all know it means.
‘More tea, you c**t?’ is not a phrase you’re likely to hear over here.
Not only is The Argument from Regional Ubiquity a crap argument, it’s also based on a false premise: the supposed regional ubiquity isn’t.