Today, on a very special SheKos...
A view from the XY side.
Are We That Different?
by zenbassoon, SheKos guest contributor
My sister’s friend overheard the following declaration from her daughter, Coral (about 8 years old) to her male cousin: "Girls have a weak spot and it is their heart. It's our FEELINGS. Now don't tell anyone what I told you or I'll kick you in YOUR weak spot and you will hurt. Cross your heart..."
From out of the mouths of babes comes the purest distillation of centuries of argument.
When I finished laughing, I pondered how true Coral’s assessment seems to be, at least for us guys. Witness the discussion on The Termite's highly recommended diary. (The sensitivity men have to that particular area of their bodies says more about male attitudes than almost anything else.)
Not to debate the wisdom of little Coral, but I do want to talk about how this prevailing attitude has influenced gender perceptions and societal assumptions about the roles of men and women.
Comedians have made millions on the idea that men think and are ruled by their "parts", while women are ruled by their hearts. Heck, where do you think "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" comes from? I could embed numerous comedy routines, featuring both male and female performers, addressing this very notion. So then I ask myself:
Why is this version of role separation so very prevalent in the belief systems of both sexes? What, if anything, does it have to do with true equality? And why does it seem to be true? After all, men have feelings too, and women also have the same "urges" that drive men.
The cheap and easy answer is to point to biology and brain structure. We still have the reptilian and early primate parts of the brain, and they control our baser instincts. For men, this includes dominance fighting, and mating with as many as possible. For women, this includes the nurturing and caring for young, as well as (and this is certainly not mentioned too much on nature shows) authority within the group. Think about it. All the man is supposed to do is get the females pregnant and defend the territory -- physical roles. It’s the women who hold the authority in the group. In higher primate groups, the females have been known to refuse to acknowledge the dominant male. They have even gone so far as to kick that male out of the group.
So there are clearly deep roots for the concept of male roles being physical and female roles having a greater moral and emotional leaning. But that's biology and anthropology. We are beings of reason and supposed intelligence. We have a cerebral cortex much more highly developed than anything yet seen. So why do we still embrace these gender roles? When a man touches his feelings, he’s derided as some sort of metrosexual-whipped-by-his-girlfriend pansy. And we all know what happens when a woman is proud and open about her sexual drives. And we still accept as the "norm" that men think with their "parts" and women think with their heart, and that’s where their weak spots are.
I got into a nice comment thread after reading this SheKos diary. The topic was Rachel Maddow and her personal style. It was pointed out that she has had to make some compromises for the sake of the network -- things like the make up she wears, the cut of her blazers, that sort of thing. I remarked that her style, which to me seems a bit androgynous, might be off-putting to some. In fact, androgyny is a topic that makes a lot of people a bit uncomfortable. Those of us around in the ’80s remember the SNL skit "It’s Pat". In those sketches, Pat, was a person who had both strong "male" and "female" characteristics, and dressed and spoke like either. The "funny" parts were all about trying to figure out Pat’s gender and the intense discomfort felt by the Pat's acquaintances because the solution eluded them. The unstated message was that knowing Pat's gender was crucial for knowing how to interact with him or her.
I never got what was so funny. Perhaps it’s because when I was either in junior high or high school, I read a short story about androgyny. It was about a family of an androgynous child. The plot, as far as I can remember, was that the child’s teachers and other people outside the family kept trying to force the child into a set role, but the child’s parents allowed the child to be who the child wanted to be. It was very sweet and poignant, and for the life of me, I can’t remember the story.
So here are my points, after much roundabout traveling. We shouldn’t need to be defined by what little Coral has determined our "weak spots" are. We are complete beings, with both heart AND "parts." We all have feelings ("Trust your feelings, Luke") and to some extent can be ruled by them and let them express who we are. We also are sexual beings and should revel in that, as well. There is a reason sex feels so good. This, I think, is the true meaning of equality. We are men, we are women, but we share the same feelings, the same urges and drives, even the same needs for creation and nurturing. But as long as we continue to think about us in terms of the differences little Coral expressed, then there is no equality.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
THIS WEEK IN WOMEN'S HISTORY: The Long Fight for Civil Rights
by joedemocrat
- Sojourner Truth (1787-1883). She was born a slave. In 1826, she had a life-changing religious experience and became a devout Christian. In 1843, Sojourner began to travel and preach about abolition. In 1851, she gave her famous feminist Ain't I A Woman speech to the Ohio Women's Rights Convention. She spoke often about abolition, women's rights, and prison reform, and was staunchly against capital punishment. Today, evangelist and Democrat Jim Wallis publishes Sojourners, a magazine about social justice.
- Harriet Tubman (1822-1913). She was born a slave in Maryland, but in 1849, she escaped to Philadelphia. She returned to Maryland first to free her own parents and then others. She made a total of 19 trips, freeing 300 slaves as she traveled mostly at night in the dead of winter. Guided by the North Star, she used the famous Underground Railroad to help fugitive slaves escape to the North and Canada. The Underground Railroad worked by transporting slaves from contact to contact, providing food, shelter, and clothing along the way. She also served as a Union spy, gathering information to help Union solderis disrupt Confederate supply lines. She is also well known for leading the Combahee River raid, a military operation that freed more than 700 slaves. After the civil war, Harriet Tubman worked for women's suffrage.
- Rosa Parks (1913-2005) is widely acclaimed for helping to start the civil rights movement on December 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested, booked, and fined. The resulting Montgomery Bus boycott lasted 382 days, and the Supreme Court struck down the Montgomery city ordinance. Rosa Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, where she worked on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. We marked her birthday earlier this month in a previous SheKos diary.
- Kiilu Nyasha is a former Black Panther, political activist, and writer. She has been a strong supporter of prison reform, and has worked for the millions of Americans who are incarcerated in our prison gulag system. She has written and talked extensively about police brutality against the Black Panthers and African Americans. She has also written and spoken against COINTELPRO, a series of covert and illegal FBI projects that put on trial Black Panthers and other perceived political enemies.
- Safia Bukhari (1950-2003) was also a Black Panther and political activist who worked tirelessly for civil rights and on behalf of political prisoners held in the U.S. She was arrested in 1975 and falsely charged with armed robbery, even threatened with the death penalty. She was released in 1983, and afterward, she co-founded both the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition and the Jericho Movement for U.S. Political Prisoners. The Feminist Press has just published a book The War Before about her life.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: Sports
by pat of butter in a sea of grits
In the United States, Olympic medalists are nowhere near the most highly paid athletes. However, the Olympics is one of the main places where women athletes are able to compete with men, financially speaking. Shaun White easily outpaces his fellow American Winter Olympics athletes in terms of money earned through prizes and endorsements ($7.5 million last year from Red Bull, Target, and others), but female skater Kim Yu-Na of South Korea earned about the same amount as White through sponsorships from Hyundai, Proctor & Gamble, Samsung and others. In fact, six of the top ten earners from the winter Olympics this year are women, including Lindsey Vonn, Gretchen Bleiler, Lindsey Jacobellis, Hannah Teter, and Maria Riesch. Australian snowboarder Torah Bright may become that nation's highest earning athlete once her endorsements begin to come in.
When it comes to professional sports, though, women don't even rank. There was not a single woman among the Sports Illustrated "Fortunate 50" in 2008, a list of the 50 most highly paid athletes. (Tiger Woods was at the top of that list with almost $128 million in a single year.) In past years, Michelle Wie and Venus and Serena Williams had been included in some of the Fortunate 50 lists, but in 2008, as Jonah Friedman at SI.com put it:
The lack of female athletes is striking. For only the second time, the Fortunate 50 features zero female athletes. Serena and Venus Williams, despite their resurgences over the past few years, haven't earned enough on the court to keep up with the boys, nor did they renew the huge endorsement deals they had when they were dominating the WTA.
And for now, the shine appears to have come off 18-year-old Michelle Wie, the only other woman ever to make the list (No. 22 last year). Wie's inability to win tournaments has soured event organizers on her, and the appearance fees that helped her earn millions in '07 have accordingly dried up.
Forbes put together a list of the top earning female athletes, also in 2008; there were several women earning millions, but nowhere near the amounts the top male athletes are making. Tennis and golf were the main sports for these highly earning female athletes. Maria Sharapova ($26 million), Serena ($14 million) and Venus ($13 million) Williams, Justine Henin ($12.5 million), and Michelle Wie ($12 million) were at the top of the list.
NBA players are well known for earning in the millions. What about the women of the WNBA? In the 2008-2009 season, the salary cap for an entire WNBA team was $803,000 compared to about $44 million for the NBA. The highest a woman playing for the WNBA could make that year was $97,500. There are now eight professional women's soccer teams in the U.S. and six fastpitch softball teams. There were previously softball and women's hockey organizations that folded. These organizations seem to be on tenuous footing, but then again, so are even some men's pro teams -- witness how much pro football and basketball teams move around as they feel a better market may be located elsewhere.
Title IX passed in 1972, so women's sports still have a long way to go to come to equality, including the need to garner a consistent fan base willing to support the teams and players. We're making progress -- although sometimes it seems like the International Olympic Committee would like to set us back in the past. Do read Angry Mouse's diary about the IOC's refusal to include women in ski jumping in the 2010 Olympics. I encourage you to get out there and support your local women in sports.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
GLBT NEWS THE KAT DRAGGED IN: Protecting Hatred and Bigotry
by KentuckyKat
Last month, Colorado Representative Jared Polis introduced the Student Nondiscrimination Act. If you question why such legislation is needed, consider the fact that 28% of gay and lesbian high school students in a national study dropped out of school because of harassment resulting from their sexual orientation. Because of this, we now have GLBT high schools (see here and here). Unfortunately, high school is not the only -- or even the biggest -- battleground for GLBT students.
A 2007 study of harassment of middle school students found the following:
More than 9 out of 10 LGBT middle school students (91%) said they experienced harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, 59% experienced physical harassment and a startling 39% said they had been physically assaulted, nearly twice as many as in high school (20%).
More than 8 out of 10 LGBT middle school students (82%) reported hearing homophobic epithets (e.g., "faggot" or "dyke") frequently or often from other students in school – a higher percentage than high school students (73%). Perhaps most shocking, 63% of LGBT middle school students had heard school staff make homophobic remarks. [emphasis added]
The negative and hostile climate had a profound effect on student academic success. Half of LGBT middle school students (50%) had skipped at least one day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe. Further, their grade point average was half a grade point lower than students who had not missed school due to safety concerns.
source
[Please follow this link and read more about the findings of this study, even if you click on no other].
This sort of hostility and hatred played a part in the death of Lawrence King, killed by a fellow student based on a typical gay panic defense. You see Larry asked his killer to be his valentine...so, he really asked for it, right? Here's what Ellen DeGeneres had to say about King's murder:
Enacting the Student Nondiscrimination Act is a no-brainer, right? Apparently not. On Monday, Fox News ran an article claiming that if the Act is passed, the free speech rights of students (and presumably staff) will be violated. While this is not a surprising argument from Fox or its sources, it still seems surreal. The idea that the free speech of certain students trumps the rights of GLBT students to be free of violence and discrimination is foreign to me. Is it possible that such a law could be interpreted too broadly? Certainly. Is that sufficient cause to refuse protections to those being abused? Well, I think you know where I stand. Where do you stand?
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
by Oke
- The Winter Olympics has raised awareness of the tenuous status of equal rights for female athletes. RH RealityCheck looks at how traditional attitudes hamper the progress that remains to be made in The 2010 Olympics and Gender Roles: Highs and Lows, written by Sarah Seltzer.
- yomamaforobama's Doggone Absurd explains why Sarah Palin is a prime example of Madeline Albright's "special place in hell" opinion of women who don't supporting other women.
- The Loon Award of the week for misogynistic insanity goes to Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall. DocHoc's diary, "Wingnut Insanity: Disabled Kids=God's Punishment for Abortion," provides the jaw-dropping details.
And from outside the Orange:
- Eve Ensler’s Mission: Awaken the Girl Self
Eleven years after the launch of V-Day, Eve Ensler sets out to do for girls what she did for women—uncover the truth of their experiences and create a global dialogue...She hopes that the impact of her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls, will be just as far-reaching: "To create a girl revolution."
- Yes, Abuse Is Your Business
All kinds of abuse, whether they be sexual, physical, or emotional — though most commonly when the victim is a marginalized person — are supported through the assertion that it doesn’t concern me. It’s not my problem. I don’t want to get involved. Why should I have an opinion? That’s a private matter. Abuse is allowed to continue because all kinds of people decide that it has nothing to do with them.
- UN seeks aid of private sector, philanthropies in empowering women
The United Nations launched a new effort today to expand its partnership with the private sector and philanthropies in the battle for complete gender equality and the empowerment of women, not only as a necessary human right but as economic common sense as well.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
RECOMMENDED READING
by dirkster42
This week, I've selected two early works of feminist criticism of American literature. While many liberals nowadays have a preference for "facts" over "narratives," it is impossible to communicate without any narratives. This means we must pay attention to how we use narratives, rather than letting narratives use us. The two books I've selected take opposite approaches to feminist engagement with the way stories shape our minds, a task that has direct bearing on what kind of political visions we're able to pursue.
The first book, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction, by Judith Fetterley, tackled the problem that still existed in the 1970s of teaching American literature exclusively through the works of white men. Fetterley describes how women were compelled, by the simple elimination of women's voices, to take on male experience as universal experience. She diagnoses the problem as the immasculination of women, forcing women into thinking through male frameworks. She then cites specific works from authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner to show how the process works and ways in which women can resist it.
The second book uses a very different strategy. Instead of fighting against male norms, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar construct a female-centered world with American women's literature in The Madwoman in the Attic. This is a long, but very readable text; I eagerly devoured it in high school.
As with much feminist thought in the 1970s, a major weakness of these texts is how they all but ignore the difference race makes in women's experience. So they should be read along with Reading Black, Reading Feminist, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.