It just never fails to amaze me the depths that newspapers go to in blaming women. I did not even need to search to come up with the following: "The scorching heatwave in early July caused road accidents to soar because male drivers were distracted by womens' skimpy outfits, according to insurance claim figures.". The emphasis is mine to highlight how they are blaming women for distracting men and therefore causing the accidents. Perhaps it is just the construction of the language, but surely these accidents are caused by men’s failure to concentrate on the road rather than because of what women are wearing?
At the same time, I discovered another article thanks to a Facebook friend. "Casual sexism is nothing but misogyny". This give a number of examples of behaviour and language that just shows the level of misogyny that exists. The next to last paragraph really says it all:
“There is a final, huge, virtually universal form of casual sexism which is expressed in nearly every house. Any man who thinks it's OK to live in a household where the woman does the overwhelming majority of all the housework, childcare and family admin is a woman-hater. If he weren't, it would agonise him to live in such an unequal and exploitative setup.”
Of course, some could argue that the following headline shows responsible action "Council bans mini-skirts in crackdown on 'inappropriate' clothing in the office" but when I reached the end of the article, I became concerned at a comment from a council spokesman: “We do not have lots of staff at the council wearing mini-skirts - that was just picked as an example of what would be inappropriate.” Why not pick on men’s clothing? Why pick on women? Once again, it is women that are put down.
"There aren't many women who can pull off looking equally as stunning off-duty as she does at a formal ‘do’.". At what point is a woman required to dress in a certain way? Why do newspapers demand that any woman should look as good off-duty as she does on-duty? What gives them a right to even comment on a woman’s clothes?
Perhaps I have come full circle: the media demands that women dress in a particular way and as a result, this cause them to become a distraction for male drivers, causing them to have more accidents. So it is not women who are to blame for men having accidents, but the media; a sector dominated by ... men!
Friday, 30 July 2010
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Why are women blamed for getting themselves raped?
The two rape incidents at the Latitude festival sparked a response from both the organisers and the press.
Two women in two different incidents were raped – a 19-year-old woman told police she had been attacked by a group of men on Thursday, after becoming lost while looking for the toilets in her campsite and a 17-year-old girl then said on Saturday that she had been raped in a tent on the campsite the previous night. The incidents do not appear to be connected so we are talking about at least two men attacking two women.
Two criminals loose amongst us.
So a reaction from the organisers and the media was undoubtedly warranted and sure enough, there was a response. Melvyn Benn, the chief executive of Festival Republic which runs Latitude, said, "it is fair to say that in the future we will be making much more high profile the issues of being alone at night, particularly if you are a girl – definitely".
"Police have urged people to stay with friends while at the event"
"We are also reminding individuals to be vigilant and are advising groups of friends to stick together and look out for each other."
These were comments included in the newspaper reports, but then there were comments left by some readers:
"The rules for ladies/girls at festivals is that you never go anywhere alone after dark. I'm sorry but if you were at home would you seriously ask a bunch of guys for directions? So why would you you do it at a festival? Poor incredibly naive girl."
"They should understand that they should not put themselves at risk - you just can't trust others to look after you and behave well."
These are just a couple of the multitude of comments.
I could not even bring myself to put my thoughts down about these at first because of how angry I am. A week has now passed and I have had time to be more considered in my feelings.
As I said earlier, two criminals are wandering around, but it seems the organisers, the police, the newspapers and the readers have decided who the criminals are: the two women!
Yes, they are blaming the two women. If they had followed the rules “that you never go anywhere alone after dark” or if they hadn’t “put themselves at risk” or if they had “stay[ed] with friends” and, of course, if they were more aware of “the issues of being alone at night, particularly if you are a girl” then they would not have been raped.
HELLO!!!!
Who is at fault? The women? I don’t think so. Let’s think again.
Two separate incidents in which men used their strength (and numbers) to pick out a lone female and rape her.
Who did what to who?
The MEN raped the women. The MEN are responsible.
It is not the responsibility of women to prevent men from raping them; it is the responsibility of men NOT TO RAPE!
There is nothing complicated about it. Men should not rape. Blaming the victim shows how low our society has sunk.
Two women in two different incidents were raped – a 19-year-old woman told police she had been attacked by a group of men on Thursday, after becoming lost while looking for the toilets in her campsite and a 17-year-old girl then said on Saturday that she had been raped in a tent on the campsite the previous night. The incidents do not appear to be connected so we are talking about at least two men attacking two women.
Two criminals loose amongst us.
So a reaction from the organisers and the media was undoubtedly warranted and sure enough, there was a response. Melvyn Benn, the chief executive of Festival Republic which runs Latitude, said, "it is fair to say that in the future we will be making much more high profile the issues of being alone at night, particularly if you are a girl – definitely".
"Police have urged people to stay with friends while at the event"
"We are also reminding individuals to be vigilant and are advising groups of friends to stick together and look out for each other."
These were comments included in the newspaper reports, but then there were comments left by some readers:
"The rules for ladies/girls at festivals is that you never go anywhere alone after dark. I'm sorry but if you were at home would you seriously ask a bunch of guys for directions? So why would you you do it at a festival? Poor incredibly naive girl."
"They should understand that they should not put themselves at risk - you just can't trust others to look after you and behave well."
These are just a couple of the multitude of comments.
I could not even bring myself to put my thoughts down about these at first because of how angry I am. A week has now passed and I have had time to be more considered in my feelings.
As I said earlier, two criminals are wandering around, but it seems the organisers, the police, the newspapers and the readers have decided who the criminals are: the two women!
Yes, they are blaming the two women. If they had followed the rules “that you never go anywhere alone after dark” or if they hadn’t “put themselves at risk” or if they had “stay[ed] with friends” and, of course, if they were more aware of “the issues of being alone at night, particularly if you are a girl” then they would not have been raped.
HELLO!!!!
Who is at fault? The women? I don’t think so. Let’s think again.
Two separate incidents in which men used their strength (and numbers) to pick out a lone female and rape her.
Who did what to who?
The MEN raped the women. The MEN are responsible.
It is not the responsibility of women to prevent men from raping them; it is the responsibility of men NOT TO RAPE!
There is nothing complicated about it. Men should not rape. Blaming the victim shows how low our society has sunk.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Thoughts on Gender Part 1
When I decided to study gender, I thought that looking at transsexual people would provide some insight into what we mean by gender. The reasoning for this is that such people are starting in one gender and then moving to the other gender. I gained access to a number of transsexual spaces and observed, in most cases being accepted as transsexual. The acceptance happened because I have allowed people to believe that I am in the same position as them.
The more I have observed, the more confused I have become. I plan to use this blog to capture much of my rambling thoughts. Consequently, there will be conflicts between different posts as I develop the ideas. At this stage, it occurs to me that transgender people have merely confused the whole gender issue. For reasons I will go into another day, gender is complex, including internal feelings, external perception, personal presentation and, of course, biology.
I was fortunate in having a good friend who was undergoing transition, providing me with a very intimate insight into the process of transition (the actual process of crossing the gender “divide”). I was fortunate to watch her from prior to transition through the social and medical aspects of her transition. I was also able to attend a number of the medical appointments she went to and was with her when she underwent sex reassignment surgery (SRS). The actual term for the genital surgery is hotly debated by transsexuals, but I use this as a factual term: Sex refers to the bodily definition of gender based upon genitals; reassignment because the genitals are being reconstructed to the gender they identify with and surgery is obvious. The dual meaning of the word sex is part of the rejection of this term, but the same people also reject the term transsexual as it also includes the same word. The problem is that there is confusion over sex referring to the act of sex as well as referring to the genital configuration.
As I became more involved in these groups, I was amazed to discover a massive range of people, covered by a more general term transgender. This covers not only transsexuals, but also transvestites, cross dressers and so on. In fact, it has been used to define anyone who does not wholly identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Looking more deeply, I discovered that there were people who merely adopt female presentation, but in a generally exaggerated mode. I initially defined this as being people who part time adopt a female gender role, however, I rapidly discovered that this was not strictly correct. In fact, they do not tend to adopt a complete female gender role, but only certain elements. I will consider this in more detail later, however, it appeared that they used clothes, hair and make-up in an exaggerated manner to counter an inability to accurately adopt other elements of the female gender role, such as mannerisms. I had identified a group of people whose experience of moving to the female gender was entirely based on appearance. What was more surprising was that they adopted the appearance generally used by young women as seen in many popular magazines. This was at odds with their own bodily structure and also their age. They were not seeking to blend with women of their own age and social grouping, but were attempting to adopt the hyper sexualised images presented through the media.
This was not what I was looking for. These people generally did not adopt the other gender full time and this was a position unique to men: I did not find any women who adopted a male appearance part time in the same manner. So I decided to limit my observations to those who live in the other gender to their birth gender full time. But this proved difficult. I came across a number of people who decided that they would not undergo any medical transition, but would live in the other gender full time. In the case of a number of trans men, I discovered that they were unimpressed with the surgery available to them and consequently decided to avoid phallus construction, but did undergo processes such as mastectomy to create a more male chest. But I found a group, primarily trans women, who had made a conscious choice not to undertake hormone or surgical treatments.
I had found various groups:
• Those who seek to adopt a female gender appearance part time
• Those who seek to live their lives full time without any medical treatment
• Those who seek to live their lives wholly in the other gender, undergoing medical treatment.
It is this final group that I was most interested in. The idea was that by analysing the gender experience of these people both before and after transition, it would be possible to gain an insight into the differences by analysing the changes they had undergone.
Even then, it got more complicated. I had assumed that a trans woman was a person assigned male at birth who wished to be accepted by society as a woman, but I was wrong.
In fact, I found that a number of such people did not consider that they were wholly female, but a combination of both male and female and they wished to be acknowledged outside the gender binary. This was illustrated by an Australian case of "norrie mAy-Welby" (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/03/11/australia-is-first-to-recognise-non-specified-gender/) where, following transition and SRS, Norrie decided zie was neither male nor female and sought to have this legally recognised. Zie is not the only person who expressed this view, although no other cases have been legally pursued that I could identify at this stage. A number of people expressed their view that they were 60/40 female/male or 80/20 female/male, but that they were not 100% female or male.
That latter point is one that I have always believed: we are not all entirely male or female, but I would have put it slightly differently by stating that we all display a range of stereotypical male and female gender role elements.
This left me rather confused. I had made an assumption that transsexual people would experience gender in a much more intense manner than most other people. The reasoning for this, was that the process of changing from one gender to the other is so complex and emotional that there would need to be an extreme issue to cause someone to undertake such a change. To discover that some people are undertaking this course of action because they simply do not feel wholly of their birth gender seemed somehow to contradict their expressed reasoning.
This made me consider further what people were actually doing.
My experience of the gay scene back in the 1980s & 1990s saw me mixing with a massive variety of different lesbians and gay men. What I was amazed at was a certain group who took everything to total extremes. There was a pretty universal understanding that these people were actually taking these extreme positions just to gain attention. By shocking people, they were achieving a personal aim. The people they set out to shock were often their own family, but also included the general public. I have seen the same techniques within the general population, but it was extreme within these the gay scene. I knew people who were unhappy if they had gone to all that trouble and people just ignored them.
I called upon this idea and questioned if this “shock” desire may be behind the behaviour of some transgender people. Is the actual aim of their behaviour to be the ultimate in shock to their family, or to the public at large? An interesting idea, adding yet another dimension to what is going on.
The more I have observed, the more confused I have become. I plan to use this blog to capture much of my rambling thoughts. Consequently, there will be conflicts between different posts as I develop the ideas. At this stage, it occurs to me that transgender people have merely confused the whole gender issue. For reasons I will go into another day, gender is complex, including internal feelings, external perception, personal presentation and, of course, biology.
I was fortunate in having a good friend who was undergoing transition, providing me with a very intimate insight into the process of transition (the actual process of crossing the gender “divide”). I was fortunate to watch her from prior to transition through the social and medical aspects of her transition. I was also able to attend a number of the medical appointments she went to and was with her when she underwent sex reassignment surgery (SRS). The actual term for the genital surgery is hotly debated by transsexuals, but I use this as a factual term: Sex refers to the bodily definition of gender based upon genitals; reassignment because the genitals are being reconstructed to the gender they identify with and surgery is obvious. The dual meaning of the word sex is part of the rejection of this term, but the same people also reject the term transsexual as it also includes the same word. The problem is that there is confusion over sex referring to the act of sex as well as referring to the genital configuration.
As I became more involved in these groups, I was amazed to discover a massive range of people, covered by a more general term transgender. This covers not only transsexuals, but also transvestites, cross dressers and so on. In fact, it has been used to define anyone who does not wholly identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Looking more deeply, I discovered that there were people who merely adopt female presentation, but in a generally exaggerated mode. I initially defined this as being people who part time adopt a female gender role, however, I rapidly discovered that this was not strictly correct. In fact, they do not tend to adopt a complete female gender role, but only certain elements. I will consider this in more detail later, however, it appeared that they used clothes, hair and make-up in an exaggerated manner to counter an inability to accurately adopt other elements of the female gender role, such as mannerisms. I had identified a group of people whose experience of moving to the female gender was entirely based on appearance. What was more surprising was that they adopted the appearance generally used by young women as seen in many popular magazines. This was at odds with their own bodily structure and also their age. They were not seeking to blend with women of their own age and social grouping, but were attempting to adopt the hyper sexualised images presented through the media.
This was not what I was looking for. These people generally did not adopt the other gender full time and this was a position unique to men: I did not find any women who adopted a male appearance part time in the same manner. So I decided to limit my observations to those who live in the other gender to their birth gender full time. But this proved difficult. I came across a number of people who decided that they would not undergo any medical transition, but would live in the other gender full time. In the case of a number of trans men, I discovered that they were unimpressed with the surgery available to them and consequently decided to avoid phallus construction, but did undergo processes such as mastectomy to create a more male chest. But I found a group, primarily trans women, who had made a conscious choice not to undertake hormone or surgical treatments.
I had found various groups:
• Those who seek to adopt a female gender appearance part time
• Those who seek to live their lives full time without any medical treatment
• Those who seek to live their lives wholly in the other gender, undergoing medical treatment.
It is this final group that I was most interested in. The idea was that by analysing the gender experience of these people both before and after transition, it would be possible to gain an insight into the differences by analysing the changes they had undergone.
Even then, it got more complicated. I had assumed that a trans woman was a person assigned male at birth who wished to be accepted by society as a woman, but I was wrong.
In fact, I found that a number of such people did not consider that they were wholly female, but a combination of both male and female and they wished to be acknowledged outside the gender binary. This was illustrated by an Australian case of "norrie mAy-Welby" (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/03/11/australia-is-first-to-recognise-non-specified-gender/) where, following transition and SRS, Norrie decided zie was neither male nor female and sought to have this legally recognised. Zie is not the only person who expressed this view, although no other cases have been legally pursued that I could identify at this stage. A number of people expressed their view that they were 60/40 female/male or 80/20 female/male, but that they were not 100% female or male.
That latter point is one that I have always believed: we are not all entirely male or female, but I would have put it slightly differently by stating that we all display a range of stereotypical male and female gender role elements.
This left me rather confused. I had made an assumption that transsexual people would experience gender in a much more intense manner than most other people. The reasoning for this, was that the process of changing from one gender to the other is so complex and emotional that there would need to be an extreme issue to cause someone to undertake such a change. To discover that some people are undertaking this course of action because they simply do not feel wholly of their birth gender seemed somehow to contradict their expressed reasoning.
This made me consider further what people were actually doing.
My experience of the gay scene back in the 1980s & 1990s saw me mixing with a massive variety of different lesbians and gay men. What I was amazed at was a certain group who took everything to total extremes. There was a pretty universal understanding that these people were actually taking these extreme positions just to gain attention. By shocking people, they were achieving a personal aim. The people they set out to shock were often their own family, but also included the general public. I have seen the same techniques within the general population, but it was extreme within these the gay scene. I knew people who were unhappy if they had gone to all that trouble and people just ignored them.
I called upon this idea and questioned if this “shock” desire may be behind the behaviour of some transgender people. Is the actual aim of their behaviour to be the ultimate in shock to their family, or to the public at large? An interesting idea, adding yet another dimension to what is going on.
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