Links to stuff

Why do we need an Occupy Australia?
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/25/why-do-we-need-an-occupy-australia/

Because Amber Cole is Just a Kid and Boys Learn to Be Boys
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/28/because-amber-cole-is-just-a-kid-and-boys-learn-to-be-boys/

Line 'em up: A Visual Trope
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/10/28/line-em-up-a-visual-trope/

And it's (just) still Asexual Awareness Week;
http://www.asexualawarenessweek.com/index.html

Gender Division in Big W catalogues

Gender/sex divisions are really rampant in society. I mean, while sex divisions may occur for biologically reasons, gender reasons have no cause, I think. 

Below is a page from a Big W catalogue:

There is an immediate division. The girl is outfitted in pink (oh, yes, the only colour that little girls can wear, apparently. All things girls are all things pink!), and the two sets of pink (and kinda purple, but still in the same colour-area) on the same 'row' obviously are targeted - or rather - made for girls. Whilst the little boy gets the dark-blue colours (in the same way that all things girls are pink, people seem to think that all boys only like blue), and again, two sets of clothing on the same row directly correspond to a boy wearing it.
Other than the clothes, something else strikes me. Their poses. The girl has her knees bent in - a sign of cuteness, shyness, and her body is bent away from the camera. The boy, on the other hand has a firm pose, staring more-confidently forward. Again, what does this say about what girls and boys need to conform to. Girl = pink = 'weaker', boy = blue = 'stronger'.

Next up, from the same catalogue;

The boys are wearing darker colours - blue again, and it's close cousin green. The two girls are wearing pink (darker, but still pink-y) and innocent, innocent white.

By boy's faces are facing directly forward. Both of the girls' faces are facing the camera on an angle. Between the two youngest, the contrast in their pose is strong. The boy stands legs appear, arms by his side and looking forward. His head is also tilt up, a sign of confidence, pride, maybe superiority. The girl on the other hand has one hand tucked away, other hand shyly in the hair. Her face is facing partly away and looking down - She looks at the camera through her lashes. In short, compared to the other boy, her pose is somewhat playful, but meek, and, with her head titled slightly downwards, subservient. Any remnant of her stronger -legs apart-ness are ruined by the 'conveniently' placed words/price (in more ways than one)

You can't entirely blame Big W for doing this. Mainstream society does seem to see in this divisionalistic way. But you can blame them for continuing to promote it, especially on things that don't need a gender/sex division.

Those things on girls' chests, ya know?

 I admit that I'm one of the many, many people who are dazzled by the manga/anime drawing style. But obviously I'm not dazzled enough to not notice the proliferation of young-female-prepubescent characters sporting generally small, but obvious breasts and unnaturally wide hips, and often the artists appear to feel the urge to do a panty shot along the way!

Image from here

And often, older teenage/young adult counterparts also miss out from a heavy dose of realism, such as here, and here (mature warning!)

All said before, but I can't help to say again. On that note, read on below...

Excerpt from 'Jailing girls for men's crimes'

...
But one can’t just blame the Internet for the increasing numbers of girls sold for sex in the U.S.; it’s a deeper societal issue. Observers have noted the increasing sexualization of young girls in our culture, which helps nor­malize men’s demands for younger and younger sexual partners and teaches girls that to be acceptable they have to be sexual. Lloyd argues that “corporate­-sponsored pimping” plays a role in sex trafficking of girls by glamorizing prostitution. For exam­ple, Reebok awarded a multi-million-dollar five­-year contract for two shoe lines to rapper 50 Cent, whose album “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” (with the hit single “P.I.M.P.”) went platinum. Rapper Snoop Dogg, who showed up at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards with two women on dog leashes and who was described on the December 2006 cover of Rolling Stone as “America’s Most Lovable Pimp,” has received endorsement deals from Orbit gum and Chrysler. The mostly white leaders these corporations thus profit from these race-stereotyped images of black men, and care little about the effects these images may have on communities.

Corporations also act the pimp by pervasively selling young girls’ sexualized bodies, such as Miley Cyrus’ pole dancing performance on the Teen Choice Awards. Then of course, there are the highly sexualized Bratz dolls marketed to girls.

The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls recently published a report de­scribing how the “proliferation of sex­ualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising and media is harming girls’ self-­image and healthy development.” Psycholo­gists have further identified a process of self­-objectification, in which girls treat their own bodies only as objects of oth­ers’ desires (see “Out of Body Image” in Ms., Spring 2008). This process doesn’t just negatively affect the sexual and physical health of developing girls, but can affect their mental health, cog­nitive functioning and even motor skills.
...

(Reading this kind of stuff made me realise I actually wasn't hallucinating)

A New Year Resolution: To raise awareness?

Word and thought for the day

Pejorative

disparaging; derogatory; insulting

 The English language is rather discriminative and pejorative towards women, reflecting a long held world view of the dominant group (i.e. men), and accepted and believed by many of the muted group (i.e., women) Phrases such as husband and wife, brother and sister and men and women sound rather familiar and though many would deny it today, the fact that the male came first reflected the supposedly objective world view held by the patriarchs - that man was the normative and came first in the natural order (does the Bible's creation story ring a bell?), and that woman was deviant, unnatural, non-normative.

The creation story of the Bible calls that Adam was created first, and that Eve was created from the rib of Adam (reducing worth of women already -to that of a rib! Furthermore, this is a gross inversion of Eve born of Adam, female born from male, rather than female giving birth to male). The snake tempts/tricks Eve into eating The Apple (side note: the snake has been the sign of fertility of many supposedly 'pagan' religions before the advancement of Christianity - portraying the snake as the sign of evil also equated to saying that all other religions were evil). When Eve convinces Adam to eat the Apple, who cops the blame?
Well, the woman, of course! Eve obviously seduced and tricked Adam into eating it! Of course, Adam, being male, can't be stupid! It's not his fault he consented to eating it! It was entirely against his will - he was coerced, absolutely! /SARCASM
As Gail Shulman (1974) says it more succintly;

'Rather than blaming the man for his weakness in yielding to temptation, the woman is branded as dangerous, irresistible temptress'

Shulman, Gail, 1974, 'View from the back of the synagogue: women in Judaism', in Alce Hageman (ed.) Sexist Religion and Women in the Church, in Dale Spender, Man Made Language, p168

Of course, there are other Christain Creation stories, just that the one above is the most well known and favoured one.

Then there's Yin and Yang. They are suppossedly equal, but think about it; Yin represents dark, low, cold, female while yang represents light, high, hot, male. Again, man comes on top, as reflected in the society where this 'duality' originates from.

Indeed, the English language is pejorative to the muted, female group.

Female Clothing Habits

I remember hearing somewhere, someone saying -or writing- that women's (and girls')^[1] clothing is specifically designed such that the wearer is obliged to have a handbag. In fact, on the rare occasions when I actually do go browsing the clothes section at major retails stores, I find this generally and irritably true. There are exceptions, I think.

Clothing made targeting females often consists of tight clothing. As such, they either contain a) no pockets or b) pockets that useless because the clothing is so tight you can't put anything in the pockets [comfortably] and thus must only be there to look 'cool' ???

Oh no, don't forget that there are specifically loose clothing for women. Ya know, those sport-wear for the puny number of women who actually play sport or exercise or somethin' liek dat. Some contain no pockets, some do. My school sports tracksuit pants contained no pockets; my previous school had a little pocket. A little pocket --which is usable - is better than nothing, of course. Though, if you're exercising, there's not much point in lugging around a handbag.

Then what about loose women's clothing that’s not sport-wear? Of course they exist. Do they have pockets? I don’t remember a satisfying percentage (above 20% would be nice) of having pockets.  Obviously, according to my very limited knowledge, usable pockets in women’s fashion are a no-no.

Note: Hoodies and similar do often have big pockets, whether tight or not. However, on both women’s' and men’s', these pockets are for putting your hands in, because the shape and opening of the pockets themselves aren't made for keeping objects from rolling out.

Another big thing in women’s fashion. Dresses and skirts. The one small pocket on my school’s dress and skirt are laughable. Even though it’s not designed for it, I can’t fit my hand in one of them. I mean, what woman of the right of mind would want pockets on their dress or skirt anyway. Everybody knows that pockets are supposed to only appear on men’s clothing, and women are born to carry handbags. Really, I mean it. I mean, the majority of people (western, maybe) can’t be wrong, can they?

A bit further on skirts; I find that in popular culture and the media, that office women wear those tight-looking skirts. I write ‘tight-looking’ because I’ve never worn one myself, but they look tight because the material always looks like it’s stretched. I ask myself, how do they walk in them? By moving just their lower legs and taking lots and lots of tiny steps, I answer. Well, okay, then how do they go toilet? 0__0 Maybe they don’t. Maybe they wait until they change out of it to go? I do notice that on the train, a huge majority of office-working-looking women wear pants. So, a popular culture that likes seeing women in tight skirts, despite its evident impracticality?

______________

^[1] The terms woman, girl and female will be used interchangeably here. We all know girls aren't women but the media obviously portrays them as such, and a lot of girls, it appears, want to be older, like women, but when they actually become women, they suddenly want to get younger? ↑