women’s issues

What Girls Wear in Summer Time

From Role Reboot: A Message To Teenage Girls About Summer Dress Codes By Chelsea Cristene

The other day while driving home from work, I saw a shirtless man who looked about my age—mid 20′s—mowing his lawn. I did not roll down my window and cat call, or yell to him that I’d like a piece of that. I did not scoff in disgust, thinking that his lack of shirt was an invitation for me to comment on his appearance in a derogatory way or to view him as someone with no self-respect. He was a man mowing his lawn, sweating under the high afternoon sun, and dressed for the weather.

That is the difference.

We live in a culture that produces girls’ tops with narrower shoulder straps than boys’ tops, girls’ shorts that expose more leg than boys’ shorts, and then shames girls for wearing the clothes that are sold to them. We live in a culture that tells boys it’s OK to shed clothing in the heat in order to be more comfortable, but tells girls that their comfort is secondary to how others perceive them.

When people tell you these things, they are part of a larger system that often operates without their full knowledge. It is the same system that excuses assault if the victim was drinking or was not a virgin, and that tells women not to get raped instead of telling men not to rape. You are not a piece of uncovered meat, and you are not to blame when your fellow autonomous human beings choose not to exercise self-control. Your body and the clothes you put on it are not “things” “given” to others.

The difficulty is that this message is being sent to young women. It also needs to be sent to young men. The script needs to change. Tell young men it’s their responsibility to keep their hands to themselves, and that understanding the importance of clear verbal consent from young women is their responsibility and anything else is illegal and immoral.

Women have been spreading this message for years. When men finally get with the program and join them in spreading it, then young men’s behavior will change.

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Go Ahead and Play Project by the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana

UPDATE: Here’s a cool promo video for the Go Ahead and Play Project.

I’m very pleased to have contributed to a fun local public art project organized through The Women’s Fund of Central Indiana – the Go Ahead and Play project.

Women's Fund Go Ahead and Play Project

Go Ahead and Play will place 20 pianos, all transformed into works of art by local Indiana artists, throughout Indianapolis in public spaces and in neighborhoods of organizations serving women and girls in central Indiana. Pianos will be in place August 1 – 18, and people will be encouraged to sit down and play to their heart’s content.

Women's Fund Go Ahead and Play Project

The project is part of the Women’s Fund’s “GO: Give Back” program, which teaches philanthropy and leadership to young people. Go Ahead and Play was led by children in 6th through 12 grade, they made decisions about what the project would be and how it would work, guided by parents and by Women’s Fund volunteers.

Women's Fund Go Ahead and Play Project

Our piano was decorated with knitting and crochet pieces, creating a “piano cozy” in shades of pink. Organized by the Yarnburners and led by Annette Marino, we knitted and crochet and then sewed together and attached the various panels to create a warm and homey piece.

I’ll have more photos of the finished piano after the opening reception where we get to see all of the completed work from various artists.

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The Standard You Walk Past Is The Standard You Accept

The Standard You Walk Past Is The Standard You Accept via Yes Means Yes Blog.

Nice blog post – specifically about how officials in Australia’s Army are changing things for women in the army, but broadly about women and their place in the world, and about power and how it should not be built on humiliating others.

Nice quotes in the post:

No-one has ever explained to me how the exploitation or degradation of others enhances capability or honors the traditions of the Australian Army.

and

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

also

NCOs and officers who cannot keep their own troops from victimizing each other have not achieved the necessary unit cohesion to expect troops to operate effectively in the field.

what you will allow is what will continue

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Wikipedia Is Quietly Moving Women Off Their American Novelist Page

From Jezebel: Wikipedia Is Quietly Moving Women Off Their American Novelist Page

If you go to Wikipedia’s page for American Novelists, you might notice something strange: Of the first 100 authors listed, only a small handful of them are women. You could potentially blame this on the fact that there simply are more famous male authors than there are female (a-whole-nother can of worms), but the real reasoning is much more intentional. Wikipedia editors have slowly been moving female authors to a subcategory called American Women Novelists so that the original list isn’t at risk of “becoming too large.” Bad luck, ladies. They need to make room and someone has to go first. Why shouldn’t it be unimportant literary folk like Harper Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Louisa May Alcott?

Novelist Amanda Filipacchi was the one who — very recently — first cottoned on to what Wikipedia was doing. The edits, she noticed, have been happening gradually and mostly alphabetically by last name though in a few special cases the editors jumped ahead because they just couldn’t wait for R and T to get Ayn Rand and Donna Tartt off the list. Filipacchi herself was one of the authors to get booted to the subcategory.

More reporting on this:

Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists [New York Times]

“American women novelists” segregated by Wikipedia [Salon]

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How Movies Teach Manhood: Colin Stokes

More about this TED Talk:

When Colin Stokes’ 3-year-old son caught a glimpse of Star Wars, he was instantly obsessed. But what messages did he absorb from the sci-fi classic? Stokes asks for more movies that send positive messages to boys: that cooperation is heroic, and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain.

Why you should listen to him:
Colin Stokes divides his time between parenting and building the brand of Citizen Schools, a non-profit that reimagines the school day for middle school students in low-income communities in eight states. As Managing Director of Brand & Communications, Colin helps people within the organization find the ideas, words and stories that will connect with more and more people. He believes that understanding the human mind is a force that can be used for good and seeks to take advantage of our innate and learned tendencies to bring out the best in each other and our culture.

Before starting a family, Colin was an actor and graphic designer in New York City. He starred in the long-running off-Broadway musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, as well is in several musicals and Shakespeare stagings. But he jokes that he seems to have achieved more renown (and considerably more revenue) for his brief appearances on two Law & Order episodes.

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Fantastic Article on Teaching Consent

Yes Means Yes has a Fantastic article on teaching consent as a part of sex education.

They walk through how a curriculum of teaching some basic concepts to young men in school…

  1. Teach young men about legal consent
  2. Teach young men to see women’s humanity, instead of seeing them as sexual objects for male pleasure
  3. Teach young men how to express healthy masculinity
  4. Teach young men to believe women and girls who come forward
  5. Teach males about bystander intervention

… could help reduce the number of rapes, even though it probably won’t stop serial rapists from committing their crimes.

Studies of predatory males show that most rapists know they are committing crimes, and don’t care whether they have a yes or no consent. BUT… Predators rely on something that researchers have labeled “Social License to Operate”:

The Social License to Operate is the set of beliefs that make rape seem like a continuation or extension of normal sexuality, instead of an aberration and personal violation. By normalizing rapists and rape, by blurring the lines between rape and sex, we create a culture where instead of responding to the crime like we should, there’s always room to argue for and or excuse or mitigate the rape and the rapist.

Basically, Predators rely on stereotypes about women being sluts, about our judgement towards women who drink, and our willingness to not understand what is and isn’t a crime to get away with their serial rapist criminal behavior.

Teaching basics about consent makes it harder for serial rapists to use our societies Social License to Operate by making non-rapists more vigilante about how rapists engineer situations to get women into vulnerable positions.

Continue ReadingFantastic Article on Teaching Consent

Week 1: What is gender? Theories and views

Gender Through Comic Books Online Course at Canvas.net.

The Course Syllabus

Class hasn’t started, but I can already tell by the reading materials that I’m going to be FIRED UP about some of this week’s subject, because I’ve written about it before! The readings from Lorber are definitely a feminist take on gender, but it’s a take from the mid-90’s before the great feminism vs. transgender wars started. I believe the trans folks have successfully proven their arguments in that war by now, so some of the ideas in Lorber’s writing need to be adjusted to be less “all gender is a social construct” and more “many parts of gender are a social construct.” Science, people. It can stop wars.

If Ruth Hubbard’s ‘The Social Construction of Sexuality’ is actually intended to be a course subject and isn’t just tacked on the end of the other paper, things get really interesting. Hubbard is laying the groundwork for the sexual fluidity argument, and the course selections from Strangers In Paradise seem to carry that subject on. I sure hope that Afterellen’s Senior Editor Heather Hogan is taking this class, too. It would be really fun to fight the sexual fluidity war with her in an actual academic setting.

I understand some feminists’ desire for “all gender is a social construction” to be true – it certainly makes it easier to break down arguments of one gender having greater social value than the other. But it’s too simplistic and really leaves out the experiences and soul-searching that trans folks go through in arriving at an understanding of themselves. The same is true for the “all sexuality is a social construct” argument – it undercuts the experience of both Kinsey 6 gay people and Kinsey 0 heterosexuals.

Strangers in Paradise

Week 1 Reading Assignments:

Comic Book reading assignments
Strangers in Paradise 1-3 (Vol. 1), Strangers in Paradise 1-9 (Vol. 2), and Rachel Rising #1

Course Additional reading
Article: “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender by Lorber

(Note that this PDF also has The Social Construction of Sexuality by Ruth Hubbard included.)

My Additional Reading

Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
“The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of gender identity disorder.”

Transsexual differences caught on brain scan – 26 January 2011 – New Scientist

Reader Response to “Night to His Day” by Judith Lorber | hannahcylkowski

See also, my own post on Sexual Fluidity: Sexual fluidity, Skins US, and labels! labels! labels!.

Continue ReadingWeek 1: What is gender? Theories and views

Batgirl’s Equal Pay Public Service Announcement

How cool is this that the actors from the Batman TV show starred in a political public ad in the early 1960’s? You’d never see this today. In case you were wondering after watching the below video, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 did get passed, and has improved women’s salaries, but needs to be amended to achieve the true aims of the bill, because women are still paid on 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.

The EPA’s equal pay for equal work goals have not been completely achieved, as demonstrated by the BLS data and Congressional findings within the text of the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. President Barack Obama said in March 2011 that he will continue to fight for the goals in the Paycheck Fairness Act.[4] The bill was reintroduced in both houses of Congress in April 2011.

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