Sexism in the 21st Century

Saudi Arabia does not allow women to be athletes, let alone Olympic ones.

America... let's start small here. Tip-toeing back into a realm that was so much more at the forefront during the 70s, and it went dormant until Hilllary gave her concession speech.

This has little to do with Hillary 's own personal demons which led her to do some plenty dishonorable things in her campaign. So Hillary is not the point. Just that NOBODY has addressed sexism in recent years in a way that resonated with anybody until that speech, when she reminded many, with hope, that women can actually do things. I think we all forgot.

Nowadays in America the popular culture hates women. Hates them. Women are either whiny bitter hags or idiot sluts. That is about it. Or they are invisible.

Debate, please.

***

Related;

WHAT MEN LOVE ABOUT THE WOMEN IN THEIR LIVES

I thought to write a book called that at one point.

I thought that would be a great way to do my small part in fostering some goodwill.

To my profound disappointment, none of the ten men I asked thought it was even an interesting subject, and none wanted to even list some basic reasons. All of these guys were interesting straight guys who had an interesting, cool wife or significant female other. Some had kids including daughters. All, being that they were human, had mothers, dead or alive, and most had sisters, significant female co-workers, teachers, coaches, inspirers, and yet they would not even address it.

SO I thought maybe the question was intrusive, and I asked 10 women what they loved about the men in their lives.

No surprise: all had great praise and gratitude to offer.

Ask your significant men what they love about the women in their lives.

Hopefully some will answer!

As I've said before, the most vulgar words and phrases are saved for women.

I mean, there's whore, the "C" word, BITCH, for women and there is really no equivalent that will stab at the heart of a man the same way.

I was watching this Jamie Kennedy stand-up bit. I know it was a joke and ha ha, but the reason he tells it, is because it has an element of truth. I'm summarizing, but here it is:

I watch The Bachelor and I get it. One guy with twenty-five women. That's a party.

Then I watch The Bachelorette. One woman with twenty-five men. Who would wanna date that whore?

I've also said this before, but I'm putting it in topic here and expanding on it. When women say "I'm not friends with women because all they talk about is hair and make-up" I just look at them like how can they be a traitor to their own gender? How much do they hate themselves?

There's a Nutrisystem commercial where Jillian Barberie (from Good Day L.A. - who I like sometimes and wanna punch sometimes), says she's "not like other women"

Then she catches a football.

"How many GIRLS can do that?"

ARRRGGGHHHH! First, GIRLS??? Second, I personally know plenty who can. I also know plenty of men who can't.

It does run rampant. I do stand by the fact that from the time they're little kids, boys are taught not to cry and girls are taught to manipulate. When I said I did that study in elementary school classrooms, I also saw that boys were more rambunctious and so were paid more attention than the girls who sat like little ladies the way they've been trained.

We crucify both sexes for acting like the other sex. Women's sports are seen as laughable. Female athletes are not given the same cachet as male athletes.

Also, when women are putting down their own gender and feeding the stereotype, what chance do we have?

Quote :

I do stand by the fact that from the time they're little kids, boys are taught not to cry and girls are taught to manipulate. When I said I did that study in elementary school classrooms, I also saw that boys were more rambunctious and so were paid more attention than the girls who sat like little ladies the way they've been trained

As the mother of a son and two nephews and two neices , I absolutely can assure you do not "train" a child to do anything. When my son was small I offered hom both types of toys male and female. He nor my nephew never played with the girl toys. They may have picked up a doll once to look at it and put it back down. I absolutely forbid toy guns , so what did they do? Made guns out of sticks or anything else I could find. This is nothing I told them to do trust me. I have two neices both vastly different .oNe always went for the Barbies , the other all the cars, etc. My point is they were offered BOTH. I firmly believe a person is who they are when they are born and try as you might you cannot mold them into what you want. My next door neighbor a male played dress up and Barbie with my sister and I everyday. Today is is a hairdresser along with my sister. I also never told my son he could not cry if he were upset . I know of no other parent that did that either. People are who they are. Period.

Maybe I really am a hermaphrodite, or a gay guy in the body of a woman. Nah...my sisters were the same way, though I was a tad more flamboyant:

We played with trucks, shovels, bats, pogo sticks, guns,swords, bows and arrows, as well as dolls and tea sets, make up and clothes. My brother was fascinated by vacuum cleaners. Where does that put him? He wasn't much into dressing up but was willing to be dressed up by me because we had a most delightful un-acted upon, ever, slightly incestuous undercurrent going. He is mightly heterosexual, married to another cool fun smart funny woman. And she knows how to fix cars, even.

I was particularly into dressing up in high heels, red lipstick, fur stoles (fake fur) and fuschia feathers.

I honest cannot imagine being uninterested in all the cool things the world has to offer, and do wonder if maybe they started putting something in the water to make the girls the nasty icky things some describe and the boys un-curious duds sometime after I was grown.

And it wasn''t just my sisters, all my girl friends in grammar school were highly adventurous.

What have they done to the cool girls! (If, in fact this is universal, or even common).

And if it really is common, and doping is not involved, then I do think there is something gone askew in the culture. Finding ways to get kids to be curious is of primary importance in my book, if they aren't currently.

Quote :

When women say "I'm not friends with women because all they talk about is hair and make-up" I just look at them like how can they be a traitor to their own gender? How much do they hate themselves?

The correct answer to that remark is, "Well, then, either change the topic of conversation, or go talk to a different woman." I just joined a Meetup group of women because I need to get out of the house more. I ended up in a lively conversation that began with The Other Boleyn Girl and ended with Tudor history in general.

Quote :

As the mother of a son and two nephews and two neices , I absolutely can assure you do not "train" a child to do anything.

Yup. Some of this stuff is wired in. Sarah chose dolls and Sam chose legos all on their own, and both were offered both from their earliest days. However, it is extremely important that the girl who likes cars be allowed to do that, always.

My son John likes vacuum cleaners, too.

Quote :

And if it really is common, and doping is not involved, then I do think there is something gone askew in the culture

I don't think it's gone askew. I think it is the way we've always been, ever since men were able to dominate women physically and keep them from voting or going to school. Our culture is in the very long, slow ascent to get right, and we are farther along than much of the world.

At least the United States does not practice female circumcision, a guy can get thrown in jail for beating his wife, and Hillary was allowed to try. As physical strength (measured in how much stuff you can lift) continues to decline in importance for modern productivity, and childbearing becomes less and less a detriment to being an effective employee, this long slow march will continue.

Do you all know that eleven years ago I had to call a lawyer to enforce my right to be allowed to express milk in the workplace? My female supervisor thought that breastfeeding was one of those things I was just going to have give up for my job.

I was considered a troublemaker after that and they practically did cartwheels when I resigned to move to Fort Worth.

Over breastfeeding. And these were female supervisors. That would not be tolerated in my current workplace. I was a militant women's rights advocate in the city of Waco! They'd never seen somebody ask for that right before!

If you knew me personally you'd know why this is funny. I'm a mouse.

The mouse that roared! YAY Abrahammy!

Sometimes I don't make myself clear. In this case, it's obvious I haven't. I don't mean that parents sit down with boys and say, "you must play with guns now. You're a little boy. Here's a fake gun. Have fun" or say to a little girl, "you're a little girl. Here's a doll. You will only play with dolls. If I say you with a toy gun, you will be punished." I don't mean that kind of training.

What I mean is, I see all too often that certain behaviors are DISCOURAGED and that one of the worst things you can tell a little boy is "you're acting like a girl". Conversely, some behaviors are ENCOURAGED.

I see women getting the advice "withhold sex! That'll teach him!" To reconcile a fight by manipulation, not clear concise argument.

So, do I think mothers all over America are sitting down with their children and telling them what they can and cannot do? No. I am saying that in many families, certain behaviors are encouraged and certain discouraged.

Am I saying that's true with all moms? No. As frazz was saying, she was allowed to be a free spirit.

I mean that society as a whole wants to see each gender in their traditional roles and that when you step out of that role you're called "gay" or a lesbian. Society has a great need to place labels on people and if you don't fall within your role, people look at you like you're a freak.

Abrahammy, I was watching something on that recently. They had to pass laws in 39 states or something just so women couldn't be told not to breastfeed in public.

It's the things that make us uncomfortable that we really have to look at. That people are that uptight over a woman feeding her baby is outrageous.

Now, let me say this. As a young girl I was brutalized by other little girls. Nobody was as vicious or vile to me as other little girls. Thank God it wasn't the era of myspace and luring a girl to a house to beat the shit out of her. I would definitely have been one of those girls (the one getting beaten).

Now for the boys. One boy I had never seen before came up to me and threatened to beat me up. Other things physical happened. If I fell, there would be laughter.

Why is it that when guys get competitive, they want the bigger house and the better car and when women get competitive, they get vicious? Why do men believe women hate each other? Why ARE girls luring other girls to a house to beat them up and then have no understanding of the level of the crime they've committed. Is this what it means for women to become more like men? That would be a sad sad thing.

I am sorry you had a mean girl gang in power when you were a kid, GE.

In my schools there were a variety of cliques, and within those girls would turn on each other, but there was no one big group with power.

I do wonder what it was that allowed the girls I grew up with to be pretty much free of spirit-restraints, given that such a thing seems uncommon these days.

Maybe it ONLY has to do with age. The "cool girls" to my granny were people like Clara Bow, a naughty girl, and many of the silent film stars were saucy, sassy, and not passive girly at all. In the talkies and on into the 40s, for my mother it was Marlene Dietrich, Garbo, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy, Katherine Hepburn, Gene Arthur..no shrinking vines there. It was not until after WWII that the Marilyn Monroe / Elizabeth Taylor (and yes, the lovely but impossibly uber-feminine Audry Hepburn) model took over and spunky girls started to disappear.

Or maybe it has to do with social/financial classes. The town I grew up in was not homogenized that way, though racially it was...ONE black and ONE Asian family in the whole town... but it was about 1/4 working class Italian, 1/4 both working- and middle-class Irish-Catholic and non descript-Protestant, 1/8 Professional class (doctors, lawyers, professors) Jewish, and 1/8 rich snotty wasps (I mean like Rockefeller rich -- only the duds and black sheep of those families were in the public schools, though).

I hung out with all the groups at one point or other, though mostly my friends fell into the working class end of middle class.

***

Seems I am missing a quarter. Ahh well, math just ISN't one of my strong points, and over time (since I sometimes have to do LOTS of math in -- get this -- graphics for the web) I have come to conclude that my math deficiency is inherent, and has not much to do with cultural conditioning and me being a girl. I just suck at it, and would if I were a boy. Geometry? YES COOL. Algebra (like making quarters add up), just no.

Maybe I need to make a freehand pie chart to show you what I mean about the demographics where i grew up.

Well, I can't add 2+2, but I personally have 2 female friends who kick ass in math. So, I don't believe in that little stereotype either. I think I"m just wired to instinctively know when a word is spelled wrong, even when I've never seen it before. Same with grammar. I can't tell you the parts of sentences, but I know when a sentence is structured wrong. Like the kid who never studied music but sits down at the piano and plays by ear.

You do have to look at the icons of the day. Let's see...

Paris, Lindsey...oh boy. Mission Control, we have a problem.

I do not mind Angelina Jolie being a role model. Now there's a woman who looks like she can kick any guy's ass and is really intelligent to boot. More like the old-time movie stars you were talking about Frazz. Plus, she's doing something good with her celebrity and not just going to trendy hotspots to be seen. I realize she's probably REALLY weird and sometimes on another planet, but she can focus her energy and I'm all for that. Weirdness doesn't bother me anyway. It's the uptight, do-right people who scare the crap outta me.

This new era of women becoming famous for doing absolutely nothing is disturbing. At least Lindsey at one point was a hard-working actress. Paris does nothing. That blonde Barbie from "The Hills" doesn't really do anything.

Maybe that's it. The female role models of old at least had to do something to get famous.

Unbelievable:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7556058.stm
(Go there to see pics of the two girls)

Quote :

China Olympic ceremony star mimed
By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing


A pretty girl who won national fame after singing at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was only miming.

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of “Ode to the Motherland”.

But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as "flawless" as nine-year-old Lin.

The show's musical director said Lin was used because it was in the best interests of the country.
. . .


Speaking on Beijing Radio station, musical director Chen Qigang said the organisers needed a girl with both a good image and a good voice.

Yang Peiyi had the perfect voice but apparently not the perfect face

They faced a dilemma because although Lin was prettier, seven-year-old Yang had the better voice, Mr Chen said.

"After several tests, we decided to put Lin Miaoke on the live picture, while using Yang Peiyi's voice," he told the radio station.

"The reason for this is that we must put our country's interest first," he added.

"The girl appearing on the picture must be flawless in terms of her facial expression and the great feeling she can give to people.

But then, we have Paris Hilton.

Wow. I love how there's not apologies for it and in fact, the explanation makes it even worse.