No, I’m serious, if women all got together and went into electrical engineering or automotive repair en masse, then ten years later people would be talking about how it was a “soft field” and it would pay proportionately less than other fields.
Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.
None of these things are inherently masculine or feminine; none of these things inherently elevate you or drag you down. But whatever women are seen to do is automatically seen as being inherently more frivolous than anything men do. And shaming women for not pigeonholing themselves into a narrow range of acceptable “masculine” behaviours is just going to result in the goalposts getting moved once again.
This is literally what happened to basically every field women have entered. The opposite happens when men enter. Computers used to be a “woman thing” until the guys who did it got really mad about how badly their job was viewed and realized they could fix it by forcing out women.
Also happened/ is happening with the fields of biology and psychology….
I honestly wonder how much of the backlash against public education in the last generation has been due to teaching becoming a woman-dominated profession.
Fashion used to be a men’s thing. Then women got involved in the late 17/1800’s, so men went the other way because it came to be seen as “frivolous” and “anti-intellectual” to care about how you looked. Add in the homophobia that arose around that time, bam, staid bland dress. Ditto leggings/tights, that are now called attention-whoring when on men they were required to show you cared about your figure and had the money to pay for such a fitted item.
People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”:
Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity.
Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.
Love and romance are highly valued in eastern countries, because men are interested in it too—of course they would be, surely you want to share your life with someone? Here, it’s strictly a women’s subject.
The field of anthropology as a whole illustrates this.
Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.
This has already occurred with linguistic anthropology and cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology in particular went VERY quickly from being seen as a manly, scientific discipline (e.g., Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski) to being seen as a touchy-feely female thing.
Let’s examine a traditionally male-dominated role that is very well-respected, and well-paid, in many parts of the world — that of a doctor. In the UK, it is listed as one of the top ten lucrative careers, and the average annual income of a family doctor in the US is well into six figures. It also confers on you significant social status, and a common stereotype in Asian communities is of parents encouraging their children to become doctors.
One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?
The answer is crushingly, breathtakingly simple. In Russia, the majority of doctors are women. Here’s a quote from Carol Schmidt, a geriatric nurse practitioner who toured medical facilities in Moscow: “Their status and pay are more like our blue-collar workers, even though they require about the same amount of training as the American doctor… medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation ‘naturally suited‘ to women, [which puts it at] a second-class level in the Soviet psyche.”
What this illustrates perfectly is this — women are not devalued in the job market because women’s work is seen to have little value. It is the other way round. Women’s work is devalued in the job market because women are seen to have little value. This means that anything a woman does, be it childcare, teaching, or doctoring, or rocket science, will be seen to be of less value simply because it is done mainly by women. It isn’t that women choose jobs that are in lower-paid industries, it is that any industry that women dominate automatically becomes less respected and less well-paid.
I want you to see this side by side I put together.
On the left is a young student attempting to integrate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. I want you to see the hatred in the faces of the women there - the pure vitriol.
Now, look on the right, at Joseph Pryor at a Donald J. Trump rally. Look at his face, his eyes. Now, realize that he was so proud of how he looked that he made this his Facebook cover photo.
It’s the same spirit, just a different generation.
The reasoning behind “Light It Up Blue” (that there are more autistic boys than girls) stems from a tendency in doctors to base their autism diagnoses on stereotypes and sometimes refuse to diagnose girls.
Most autistic people don’t want a “cure” for autism and don’t support Autism Speaks.
Autism Speaks has given abusive/ableist parents legitimacy by portraying autism as a terrifying, life-ruining affliction and sympathising with parents who have contemplated killing their children, or actually killed them.
The views of autistic people are more important in this topic than the views of our allistic family members and peers.
Autism is not a disease.
Very little (about 4%) of Autism Speaks’ proceeds go toward supporting autistic people. More of it goes toward catering.
Autism is not a tragedy.
What autistic people need is acceptance, not awareness.
NBC’s Powerless, a sitcom pilot based on DC Comics, has recently cast four of it’s leading roles.
As revealed throughVariety, Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical, Grease Live), Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Wreck-It Ralph), Danny Pudi (Community), and Christina Kirk (A to Z) have joined the pilot, which has to potential if picked up to become DC’s first comedy series. Roles are listed as;
Vanessa Hudgens as Emily Locke, an insurance claims adjuster who loves her job because she gets to help people. The character likes to fly under the radar and just get her work done, and she finds herself increasingly exasperated by the disruptive antics of the various superheroes that proliferate in her city.
Danny Pudi as Teddy, best friend to Emily at work and her trusted confidante. He spends his days creating time-wasting pranks as a way to make their office, the “least super place on earth,” just a little less “unsuper”.
Alan Tudyk as Del, Emily’s new boss in the claims department. Del has just been promoted, not through any merit of his own, but because he’s the owner’s son. A self-proclaimed “rich, over-educated globetrotting wastrel,” Del is a power-mad disastrous dictator of a boss.
Christina Kirk as Jackie. A fan of superheroes, she has plastered her office cubicle with beefcake shots of super guys. The new claims department boss Del makes her his personal assistant, and she begins buckling under his unreasonable and impossible demands.
For those not in the know, Powerless is a half-hour comedy series focusing on the normal men and women working at “one of the worst insurance companies in America” who also happen to live in the DC Universe surrounded by superheroes and villains. The pilot is written/executive produced by Ben Queen and directed by Michael Patrick Jann.
Due to the unusual high volume of requests it may be some time before we can place your feline friend(s) on our page. Please be patient and we'll let you know when it's been accomplished.
hello everyone if u have a cat that u believe needs protection you can email the san francisco cat museum and they will add your cat to the list of cats under the protective paw of Bastet the Egyptian goddess of cats http://www.catmuseumsf.org/protectpaw.html
okay but actually pls read the list of existing names on this
He’s learning that if he forcibly invades a woman’s space, no one will intervene. And therefore nothing is wrong with his actions. If anything people will videotape and giggle about how he’s such a flirt. He’ll be raised believing this is normal behavior.
She’s learning that no one will intervene when someone invades her physical space. The adults who are supposed to take care of her don’t care that she feels uncomfortable. The people who she’s supposed to trust to keep her safe are encouraging this invasion of her body. She’s learning that her feelings aren’t valid. This’ll be followed with “that just means he likes you”. She’ll be taught that invasion of her physical self is what’s expected of her and that this is genuine affection.
this isn’t even where socialization starts
this boy already feels entitled to her body and affection. so much so that literally being shoved to the floor multiple times and running away from him isn’t even a moment’s deterrent and clearly sets off no warning bells that maybe this is something he shouldn’t be doing
and she is learning in this moment that this is normal. that this is acceptable, because no one is stopping it and taking her away and protecting her. her telling him no and pushing him away from her mean nothing. telling men no is pointless and fighting against it is pointless, because they will not stop until they get what they want. even running away will not help.
they have had so much socialization already that their actions are literally mirroring that of society, of rapists and their victims.
notice how he also keeps thrusting his hips at her. you can see he has
the ability to lean forward without doing that, and the fact that he
does (and with intent, as you can clearly see in the 6th gif)
how much you wanna bet he learned that from watching an older family member? from someone out in public? from something on TV?
and the fact that not a single person is stepping in and telling him no is only reinforcing that when girls tell him no and shove him away, all he has to do is keep trying, and he’ll get what he wants.
this is how quickly socialization and misogyny ingrains irreparably in our minds.
Less critically thinking individuals might think that nothing is happening here, but child psychology has told us time and time again that this is the age when humans are learning a massive amount about human interaction.
So many are blind to it because it starts this early. It’s literally from day 1, you’re whole perspective. Men are particularly blind to it because they are benefited rather than subjugated.
^ great point, child development 101 taught me that children are really sponges while they’re in early childhood/toddler stage. They learn from what they see.
Rebloging for ALL the comments.
I find the hip thrust and arm positioning particularly disturbing. He’s pinning and keeping her in place with his body. This child sees someone in his life, someone important, do this on a regular basis.
Let that sink in. Somewhere there’s a man who uses his hips and arms to pin a woman to wall often enough that the toddler above has learned how to do it. In fact, he’s learned how to persist despite resistance.
I'm glad I'm not the only who is disappointed here.
“Why is Leslie Jones’ character the only non-scientist in the group? Why is she getting framed as the ‘street smart’ character — the one who supposedly doesn’t have as much technological know-how as the other three women on the team? In other words, why is the 2016 Ghostbusters rehashing the exact same tropes as the original Ghostbusters did with Ernie Hudson’s character?”
Dawn Porter: Can you talk about what it’s like for you to be doing reproductive-rights work at this time in history?
Ilyse Hogue: “I came to the movement because it felt like a historic time to be engaged, for a couple of reasons. One is that I saw an extreme minority quite successfully imposing their ideology and worldview on a majority that they were really not aligned with. Any time there is that sort of discrepancy between how real people are living their lives and what elected officials and politicians are doing, there is not only a potential crisis (which is obviously what we are experiencing and what you documented in the movie), but there is a huge opportunity. When a crisis awakens the majority of people to what the reality is, the pendulum doesn’t really stop where it was last at rest. It actually swings in the other direction.
The other thing is that abortion is a medical procedure. What’s going on in this country is not really about abortion. It’s about a clash of worldviews. The opportunity for us to air those worldviews, talk about the values that we want to embrace as a nation and what we are going to do about it, is pivotal. I couldn’t have imagined when I took the job how pivotal it would be in this moment, but I feel like we stand on a precipice as a nation.
There are two real paths we can take, and I want to choose the one that’s forward into the future, where women have agency and are treated with the dignity that we deserve, so we can become equal partners in society. The folks you were documenting in the film have a really different idea of the direction that we should go in. They have largely been successful because they have been so sneaky about how they have pursued their ideology. I think the moment is now to shed a light on what’s real. I think your film is pivotal in doing that.”
tldr: Why make abortion illegal, when you can make it unnecessary, instead?
The abortion rateis declining, but that has nothing to do with the sharp increase in anti-abortion legislation over the past decade. Instead, you can give credit to effective contraception, according to a new study.
From 2008 to 2011, the abortion rate dropped 13 percent, but it did so at a similar pace as the overall decline in the national birth rate, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank that regularly releases data on sexual and reproductive health. A new study by Guttmacher, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, states that unplanned pregnancies are occurring less frequently, but the percentage of unplanned pregnancies that end in abortion remains statistically the same. In 2008, for example, 40 percent of unplanned pregnancies ended in abortion, and in 2011, 42 percent did. But, the overall rate of unintended pregnancies dropped 18 percent between 2008 and 2011—its lowest in 30 years, according to Guttmacher.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine
The study's authors point out that the use of long-acting reversible contraception (or LARCs) such as IUDs or implants more than tripled between 2007 and 2012. Considered by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists as the most reliable and effective form of birth control, the use of LARCs contributed to the declining unintended pregnancy rate. But poor women and women of color are still disproportionately affected; while rates are falling everywhere, they are falling less for these women, most likely because LARCs are more difficult to obtain in these communities. A different study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that rates of unintended pregnancy for poor women were two to three times the national average. IUDs are very effective, but they can be costly—according to Planned Parenthood's website, it's possible to pay up to $1,000 for one that lasts 12 years.
A New England Journal of Medicine study last month found that when Texas eliminated Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid public family planning program for low-income women, fewer claims were filed for contraception, and more low-income women in Texas ultimately gave birth. A number of restrictions on abortion in Texas have already shut down more than half of the state's 42 clinics and could close 8 more.
"Supporting and expanding women's access to family planning services not only protects their health and rights; it also reduces abortion rates," says Joerg Dreweke, senior policy communications associate at Guttmacher. "The clear implication for policymakers who wish to see fewer abortions occur is to focus on making contraceptive care more available by increasing funding and stopping attacks on all family planning providers."
Tweet early and often. That's one takeaway from a new study showing that hashtag activism online can have real-world consequences. The study, from the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University, found that Black Lives Matter activists and their supporters have managed to drive the national debate on policing, in part because they tweet about it more often, and with wider reach, than mainstream news outlets or the conservative Twitter users who push a counter-narrative. The activists' social media efforts, the researchers found, were essential in turning local incidents—such the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri—into national stories.
The researchers examined more than 40 million tweets that used one of 45 keywords and phrases, such as "black lives matter," "Ferguson," or the names of 20 African Americans killed by police in 2014 and 2015. The tweets were divided intonine time periods starting in June 2014—a month and a half before NYPD officers choked Eric Garner—and extending through May 2015, one month after the Freddie Gray-related unrest in Baltimore.
Accounts associated with the Black Lives Matter movement outnumbered those of mainstream media outlets and anti-BLM conservatives in the three months after the Ferguson unrest. They also had a wider collective reach. The thickness of the lines depicts the frequency of Twitter communication between communities.
The study, titled "Beyond the Hashtags," identified dozens of Twitter communities that used the 45 keywords frequently. Users within a community looked to the same subset of Twitter figures for information on police brutality and discussed the topic in similar ways. Among them were Black Lives Matter (whose hubs were activists like DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, and the writer Shaun King); the "multi-racial left," hacktivist group Anonymous, the mainstream media, conservatives, black entertainers, and young black twitter users.
The communities associated with Black Lives Matter were consistently larger than those associated with mainstream outlets, and their most popular members were retweeted more often and reached a wider audience. This enabled the BLM activists to control the narrative on specific police cases, protests, and the movement as a whole, independent of mainstream news outlets, the authors determined. The BLM communities were also larger than their conservative opponents. Three quarters of the dataset consisted of retweets; only about 8 percent included direct mentions of other users.
"The movement was able to circulate [its perspectives] largely on their own," says study co-author Deen Freelon, a professor of communications at American University. That's a break from the past, when social movements relied on mainstream news outlets to reach the masses. BLM activists often criticize news outlets for seeming to demonize victims of police brutality, or for shaping coverage around early police claims that have sometimes been proven false. Social media, Freelon says, has "to a great extent removed the middleman—the mainstream media—and allowed activists to talk directly to the publics that they are interested in communicating with."
The protest voices dominated the larger web conversation, too. Because the most widely circulated tweets turn up in Google searches, so the results of a search involving the latest police shooting case are "influenced by the volume of activity of black voices," says Charlton McIlwain, a professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University. "I think that's where you get your impact—both in terms of the visibility, but also of the framing of events."
This juxtaposition of a 1960s civil rights protest with an August 2014 protest in Ferguson was the most widely circulated image in the dataset, with more than 46,000 references.
Activists and news outlets have distinct audiences, McIlwain adds. The activists are reaching protesters and supporters who are plugged into the movement, whereas news outlets are communicating "with people who probably are paying a lot less attention to the movement. Their voices are going to be heard a lot more by casual news consumers and people who are less informed."
Mainstream news outlets accounted for a larger share of retweets and references during periods of street protests, but the reports often linked to activists' or protesters' social media posts showing pictures and video from the scene. "So those perspectives get imbedded in that way as well," Freelon says. Some of the most widely shared posts were simply photos of the victims of police brutality. And the posts shared within the Black Lives Matter community often linked specific cases of police brutality to systemic racism.
"What social media and new media have allowed us to do is to control our own narrative instead of relinquish that power to other people—other people who don't live in our communities, who weren't on the ground in Ferguson, who have not faced these challenged," Brittany Packnett, an organizer with Campaign Zero and a member of President Obama's police reform task force, told me. That "is significant not only in the actual resulting narrative but in what it says about what this movement stands for: self determination—not just controlling our own narrative but controlling our own destiny."
Tweets containing BLM-associated keywords spiked during related protests. In between the dust-ups, the online activity subsided, although the killings of unarmed black people did not. It's unclear why some cases received more social media attention than others.
Not the world's biggest Apple fan, here. Just pointing out that the FBI wouldn't need to ask for the key for even the one phone if they weren't completely incompetent in the first place. Beyond trusting their intentions in asking for this, remember that we need to question their ability to responsibly handle what they are asking for.
I absolutely do. As long as she follows through on them.
The Daily Show's Trevor Noah took a few digs at Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night, saying the presumptive Democratic nominee was perhaps herself "feeling the Bern." But to Noah, Sanders supporters shouldn't be mad that Clinton has co-opted his ideas. "The Hillary Clinton who sucked up to Wall Street and voted to invade Iraq is running on a platform of equality, love, and kindness," Noah said. "And that, my friends, is thanks to Bernie Sanders." He added, "If Hillary Clinton is going to be president, don't you want her to steal his ideas?"
