Feminist Law Professors

“The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2005 is a grassroots media monitoring, research and advocacy project which aims to promote the fair and balanced representation of women and men in news media worldwide.” It’s full report, entitled “Who Makes the News?” is available here. An Executive Summary is available here. Among the report’s findings (extracted from the Executive Summary):

There is not a single major news topic in which women outnumber men as newsmakers. In stories on politics and government only 14% of news subjects are women; and in economic and business news only 20%. Yet these are the topics that dominate the news agenda in all countries. Even in stories that affect women profoundly, such as gender based violence, it is the male voice (64% of news subjects) that prevails.

Women make the news not as figures of authority, but as celebrities (42%), royalty (33%) or as ‘ordinary people’. Female newsmakers outnumber males in only two occupational categories – homemaker (75%) and student (51 %). It is often said that news provides a mirror on the world. But GMMP 2005 shows that it does not. The world we see in the news is a world in which women are virtually invisible.

Only 21% of news subjects – the people who are interviewed, or whom the news is about – are female. Though there has been an increase since 1995, when 17% of those heard and seen in the news were women, the situation in 2005 remains abysmal. For every woman who appears in the news, there are five men.

As newsmakers, women are under-represented in professional categories such as law (18%), business (12%) and politics (12%). In reality, women’s share of these occupations is higher. For instance, in Rwanda – which has the highest proportion of female politicians in the world (49%) – only 13% of politicians in the news are women.

Expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male. Men are 83% of experts, and 86% of spokespersons. By contrast, women appear in a personal capacity – as eye witnesses (30%), giving personal views (31 %) or as representatives of popular opinion (34%).

Men go on making news well into their 50s and 60s: nearly half (49%) of all male news subjects are aged 50 or over. But older women are almost invisible: nearly three quarters (72%) of female news subjects are under 50.

19% of female news subjects, compared with 8% of males are portrayed in this way. News disproportionately focuses on female victims in events that actually affect both sexes – accidents, crime, war. Topics that specifically involve women – sexual violence, domestic violence, cultural practice – are given little coverage.

In stories on crime, violence or disaster, pictures of women are frequently employed for dramatic effect. In newspapers and on television, the female body is often used to titillate. Women – 52% of the world’s population – are barely present in the faces seen, the voices heard, the opinions represented in the news. The ‘mirror’ of the world provided by the news is like a circus mirror. It distorts reality, inflating the importance of certain groups, while pushing others to the margins. When it comes to reflecting women, women’s viewpoints and women’s perspectives on the world, this mirror has a very large and enduring black spot.

Female news subjects are more than three times as likely as males to be identified in terms of their family status: 17% of women are described as wife, daughter, mother etc.; only 5% of men are described as husband, son, father and so on. Even in authoritative functions such as spokesperson or expert, women do not escape this identification with family. So while men are perceived and valued as autonomous individuals, women’s status is deemed to derive primarily from their relationship to others.

“Amber’s Story” is a very culturally subversive account of weight and body acceptance. Below is an excerpt:

… “People who have known me for years always knew me as the girl who goes to the gym or the girl who doesn’t eat potato chips. My family, all of whom are thin and athletic, do not understand me now and I think it has much more to do with my accepting attitude toward my fat body than anything related to my mental health. My mom and I used to be quite close but my”refusal to be healthy”has strained our relationship. She even organized an intervention for me over Thanksgiving last year. A professional counselor, my brother, my grandparents, my mom, and my step father sat in my parents’ living room and read me letters about my”addiction to food.”They gave me the choice of attending a month-long inpatient treatment program somewhere in California, attending a workshop on gastric bypass surgery (with the intention of having the surgery), or continuing on as I have been but giving up their”support.”Well, with support like that I decided to cut my losses and say good-bye. It was really, really painful. Hearing your little brother tell you he’s embarrassed to have people know you’re his sister hurts a lot. Hearing your mom say that she raised a daughter who cared about her appearance and that I had let her down hurts a lot. Hearing your grandpa say that he expects better from you and that he won’t take your phone calls unless you”get help”hurts a lot.” …

The book “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters” by Joan Ryan (Amazon.com link) put many people off figure skating almost a decade ago. Here’s a post from Dr. Violet Socks entitled, “Just in case you still had questions about where women’s figure skating fits in the grand scheme of things”:

“From an actual article today by an actual newspaper reporter: “The Olympic women’s figure skating competition, which concludes Thursday night with the long program and the adornment of a new gold medalist, has the required elements of beauty, style, seductiveness, skill and tension.”

“Seductiveness? Seductiveness is a requirement now?

“And Slate’s article today on women’s figure skating is headlined, “Sexy Gypsies on Ice : Russian dynamos and American flirts fight for Olympic gold!” Yeah! Fight for that gold, you sexy gypsies and flirts! The article is by Meghan O’Rourke (Slate’s”culture editor”), who seems as interested in the women’s lip gloss as in their skating routines.

“But what about the seductiveness of men’s Nordic combined? Or the sizzling sexual energy just under the surface of the men’s curling competition?

“And by the way, Apollo Ohno is wearing way too much blush.”

This WaPo article is kind of stomach-turning too.

“Inspired by the Blog Against Racism Day in December, it was decided that for at least one day we would try to focus the blogosphere on another evil: sexism. While those that write about sexism on a regular basis are gladly asked to join in, we enourage those that never or rarely talk about this important topic to join in. There are no guidelines. All that is asked is that you write at least a little something against sexism. We especially encourage men to challenge themselves and write about the topic.”

More here.

Lakshmi Chaudhry published an article in In These Times called “Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?” In it she asked whether blogging can become a legitimate grassroots movement if it’s primarily a white male enterprise. In reference to Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zúniga she wrote:

… “In [Moulitsas’s] view, it’s simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an”affirmative action of ideas”within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere:”I don’t see how you can say, ‘Well, let’s give more voice to African American lesbians.’ Create a blog. If there’s an audience, great. If there isn’t, not so great.”Besides, he suggests, if a Salvadoran war refugee:in his words, a”political nobody”:like him can make it on the Internet, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same.

As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent:”I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like.”It’s an odd and somewhat disingenuous response from an advocate of blogging as the ultimate tool of democratic participation.” …

Kos responded as follows:

“Another article with tedious whining about the supposed lack of diversity in the blogosphere. Fact? The top five progressive blogs, per TTLB’s ecosystem: Daily Kos, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars, Washington Monthly, and Firedoglake. (John Aravosis’ AMERICAblog would be in there if they had public stats.) Daily Kos, the largest political blog in the world by a factor of five, is run by a Latino and currently has five guest bloggers — four of them women. Firedoglake, dominated by two women, is the hottest and fastest growing progressive blog at the moment. AMERICAblog, among other things, ably represents gay issues. Two more women-run blogs round out the top ten.

“The blogosphere remains the most meritocratic media in the world, no matter how much people qvetch about “the A-list” this, and the “A-list” that. No one on the so-called “A-list” started there. They all earned their prominence. And blogs like AMERICAblog (just over a year old), Firedoglake (9 months old), and Glenn Greenwalk (5 months old) all are proof positive that talent can still rise to the top. The “A-list” looks a lot different today than it did two years ago.”

Chaudry’s reply to this is here.

At least $363.8 million dollars between 1994 and 2003, according to this study.

From The Greenville (SC) News:

“As of Tuesday, Starbucks coffee will no longer be served as wake-up juice at Greenville’s Bob Jones University.

“Pait said saying Starbucks coffee “was banned” is too strong. He said it’s permissible to bring the coffee on campus.”

Laurelin in the Rain offers a “dictionary of Commonly Used Phrases of Patriarchal Lackeys.”

From Shark-Fu at “Angry Black Bitch,” who notes: “In my few years as a volunteer my ass has seen the good, the bad and the ugly. For every success story there is one of a continued struggle, and for every one of those there is the possibility of success, however it is defined.”

Update: If you venture over to the Angry Black Bitch blog read this post too.

At Reclusive Leftist, Dr. Violet Socks has an amusing post about Olympic figure skating here, below is an excerpt:

“This is the first Winter Olympics since the skating poobahs dropped the rule that women had to wear skirts. That’s right, it used to be in the rulebook that female figure skaters had to compete in skirts : no trousers, no unitards. …

“Now the dress code has been relaxed, and women can wear skirts, trousers, or unitards. … Alas, a similar choice of attire is not available for the guys, who are required to wear trousers. Unitards and skirts are not acceptable for skaters of the masculine persuasion. Personally I don’t see the problem with an occasional dudely bulge, but I’m obviously not in tune with the Glorified Patriarchy that is figure skating.

“Of all the sports (ahem) in the Olympics, none is more slavishly devoted to the cult of traditional gender roles than figure skating. In what other sport are the women athletes officially referred to as”ladies”? As a matter of fact,”ladies”figure skating was created because the first woman ice skater to compete beat all the men except one, thus winning a silver medal. Oops! Can’t have that! So a special”ladies”figure skating division was created.”   …

Arse Poetica draws attention to this NYT article: “VW’s Quirky Campaign to Revive U.S. Sales” which states in pertinent part:

“…The Volkswagen campaign…introduces a new slogan, “Make friends with your fast,” along with a brand icon called the “fast,” a gremlinesque character that issues commands to Volkswagen drivers in a deep, robotic voice. …

“The target audience for the GTI is undeniably male: Volkswagen chose to unveil the new campaign on Thursday by holding a news conference at the office of Playboy magazine in New York. Print ads for the GTI are scheduled to run in magazines like Maxim, Spin, ESPN, Wired and Autoweek.

“Beyond the leggy German-accented Helga in a skintight dress, the other women in the ads are typically portrayed as nagging girlfriends who interfere with the male drivers and their “fasts.”

“In one television commercial that is running during the Olympics, a female passenger asks the male driver, presumably her boyfriend, to roll up the windows because her hair is getting tangled by the wind.

“He responds by saying, “Sweetie, it’s really hard for me to enjoy the sound of the engine with all that yakking.”

“Another commercial depicts a man refusing to let his girlfriend enter his car because he does not want to “carry the extra weight.”

“It is a point that is not lost on Alex Bogusky, the chief creative officer for Crispin, who said he considered the car and its driving experience masculine.

“There are obviously women who will buy the GTI,” he said Thursday, but the main emphasis of the ads was the car’s performance. …”

Arse Poetica’s wonderful response was as follows:

To: Crispin Porter & Bogusky

Re: New VW Ad Campaign

Dear Sirs,

Your new ad campaign is so shockingly immature and misanthropic that I felt compelled to check a calendar. Has the creativity so dried up at Crispin Glover Whoziwhatsit that you had to go the take-my-wife-please route? While I applaud your doing your part to hire the elderly, maybe it’s time you hired staff less enamored of Henny Youngman’s gender politics, and, in the interest of half of the humans on the planet, hightailed it to join us in the 21st century.

As it does not seem that your market analysis registered anyone in the “actualized human being” category, might I give you some free advice: a whiny, self-absorbed, toy-focussed adolescent carping about his girlfriend is unattractive. And “unattractive,” last I checked, did not rank high on the hit list of desirable traits in product promotion. Please reconsider your advertising strategy.

I hope you’ll come to your senses, or, failing that, come to mine.

Newly embarrassed to be driving a VW,
I remain,
Anti-patriarchally yours,
ae

Update: See also Echidne of the Snakes on “Volkswagen – The Sexist Car”

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“Grbavica” is a neighborhood of Sarajevo, and also a film about the aftemath of the Balkans conflict by Jasmila Zbanic that just won an award at the Berlin Film Festival. Below is the synopsis from the movie’s website:

“Single mother Esma lives with her 12-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo’s Grbavica neighborhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the 1990s Yugoslav wars. Unable to make ends meet with the meager government aid she receives, Esma takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub. Working all night is difficult for Esma physically and it also forces her to reluctantly spend less time with her daughter. Still haunted by violent events in her past, Esma attends group therapy sessions at the local Women’s Center. In addition to relying on her best friend Sabina, Esma also finds a kindred spirit in Pelda, a compassionate male co-worker from the nightclub.

“Confused Sara becomes violently upset when some classmates tease her for not being on the list of martyrs’ children. Realizing her mother has paid full price for the school trip, Sara aggressively demands the truth. Esma breaks down and brutally explains how the girl was conceived through rape in a POW camp. As painful as their confrontation is, it is Esma’s first real step toward overcoming her deep trauma. Despite Sara’s hurt, there is still an opening for a renewed relationship between mother and daughter.”

Ariel Levy in the 2/17/06 Guardian:

“A few years ago I noticed something strange was happening in my native US. I would turn on the television and find strippers in nipple-tassels explaining how best to lap-dance a man to orgasm. I would flip the channel and see babes in tight, tiny uniforms bouncing up and down on trampolines. Britney Spears was becoming increasingly popular and increasingly unclothed, and her undulating body ultimately became so familiar to me that I felt like we used to go out.

“In my own industry – magazines – a porny new genre called lad mags were hitting stands and becoming a huge success by delivering what Playboy had only occasionally managed to capture in the past: greased celebrities in little scraps of fabric humping the floor.

“Some odd things were happening in my social life too. People I knew (female people) liked going to strip clubs (female strippers). It was sexy and fun, they explained; it was liberating and rebellious. My best friend from college, who used to go to Take Back the Night marches on campus, had become captivated by porn stars. Only 30 years (roughly my lifetime) ago, our mothers were supposedly burning their bras and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we were getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as symbols of our liberation. How had the culture shifted so drastically in such a short period of time?

“What was even more surprising than the change itself were the responses I got when I started interviewing the men and – often – the women who edit magazines such as Maxim and produce reality television series about strippers. This new raunch culture didn’t mark the death of feminism; it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We’d “earned” the right to look at Playboy; we were “empowered” enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes. Women had come so far, I learned, that we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny. Instead, it was time for us to join the frat party of pop culture where men had been enjoying themselves all along. If male chauvinist pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would beat them at their own game and be female chauvinist pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.

“I tried to get with the programme, but I could never make the argument add up in my head. How is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavoured to banish good for women? Why is labouring to look like Paris Hilton empowering? And how is imitating a stripper or a porn star – a woman whose job is to imitate arousal in the first place – going to render us sexually liberated?” ….

Read the whole thing here.

“Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science” is an essay written by Peter A. Lawrence, and published in the January 2006 issue of PLoS Biology. Below is an excerpt taken from a section near the end subtitled: “Job Searches in Academia.” Essay via Rox Populi.

….”About 100 years ago, Ibsen shed light on the secrets of contemporary life, and in doing so, championed women’s rights. But since then, the feminist campaign for equality has helped build the belief that men and women, on average, have exactly the same aptitudes. It is time we exorcised this particular ghost, and if we do, it will help put more of the less aggressive members of society, most of whom are women, into positions of power. For example, in job searches and in considering people for promotions, we have been asking women to take tests, largely devised by men, that tend to overvalue masculine characteristics. If men and women on average were identical, no one would see fault in this, but if it is agreed that they are not, these tests become discriminatory:for they favour those many men and those few women with masculine behaviour.

“At present, in the competition for academic posts, we expect our candidates to go through a gruelling process of interview that demands self-confidence. We are impressed by bombast and self-advertising, especially if we don’t know the field, and we may not notice annexation of credit from others, all of which on average are the preferred province of men. But we should also seek out able scientists who would care well for their groups, those who would mentor a distressed student and help her or him back into productive research. And if we did, we would choose more feminine women as well as more feminine men.

“And most important of all, could we try to select for the one characteristic we need most, scientific originality? Originality and creativity are all too rare, and I know of no evidence that these traits are more frequent in one sex [13]. As we busily compare candidates, adding up their papers and calculating impact factors, do we remember to look for these qualities? Instead of reading the papers, we count them. Counting rewards those who have had many papers accepted, and those who have worked their names into the author list. But is the editorial process of selecting papers an objective one? Certainly not; in the jungle where we fight to publish, salesmanship and pushiness pay off [14], and these tend to be masculine characteristics. Thus, if we were to read the papers of candidates and search for originality and insight, I believe we would select more women, as well as more men with feminine qualities. So I am not advocating overt positive discrimination; instead, I suggest we consciously try to see through showmanship and select the qualities we actually need.

“I have argued that reducing the premium we give to aggression would, in several different ways, lead to more women in science and also to better science. Even so, in this Utopia, I think that far less than 50% of top physicists would be women (and far less than 50% of top professors of literature would be men). But I don’t think that would matter:we would be making better use of the diverse qualities of people. Both women and men might accept that although there is much overlap in the two populations, we are constitutionally different:a diversity we should be able to celebrate and discuss openly. Both women and men should be leading such discussions with pride.” ….

Below is an excerpt from a provocative post by Mandos at Politblogo:

“…Someone pointed out earlier that women’s rights are a point of conflict between the West and the Muslim world. I’d like to emphasize that this is very much a two-way street. Hypocritical Western powers/media/etc use women’s rights as a bludgeon against extraneous interests of the Muslim world. This has caused a lot of the Muslim world to regard women’s rights as an instrument of Western domination—a totally predictable effect. A lot of progress that might have been made has been retarded by this perception.

“In the media, women’s lives in the Muslim world are treated like some form of prurient horror show—in relation to the lives of Western women. I mean, we see an unrelenting parade of misery. All of my family comes from that part of the world, and, truth be told, there isn’t much more misery there as far as I can tell as there is here. Not THAT much more misery, that’s for sure, and in some cases perhaps less (options for women vary a lot by class and geography). And, unfortunately, even Western women who consider themselves feminists contribute to this, such as, for instance, people like Irshad Manji.

“What it does is provoke resentment about the West, even for women. Women in my family can do nothing but shout at the TV in frustration when the plight of women in their countries is used essentially for propaganda. I remember in a CBC TV report about Pakistan (perhaps more than one), some of the women were speaking Urdu, but the translation captions were deliberately skewed to make things sound much closer to Western stereotypes than what was actually said, and some important sentences were simply glossed over. It’s hard to see this as anything but propaganda, and a lot of the Muslim world resents the hypocrisy and associates feminism with it. And, in any case, it necessarily obscures the search for solutions.

“Of course, I am not denying that there aren’t problems. Big problems. But I can presently count few successes brought about by foreigners, even women, in addressing these concerns. The best successes are typically brought about by the women who live there, on the ground. That doesn’t mean necessarily that successes can’t come from outside, or at least support and honest advice can’t come from outside. But we haven’t really seen it that often.”

Read the whole thing here.

…”Brian Peyton, the president of Western’s Alpha Gamma Rho chapter, said the goat was brought in as a prank, to make some pledges think they would have to have sex with it, WBKO reported. But Peyton told the TV station that the incident wasn’t related to hazing. He said that nobody actually was going to have sex with the goat, the TV station reported.” ….

The entire article is available here, though feeling like you’ve already received too much information is entirely understandable. Via Pam’s House Blend.

Helen Thomas writes:

“Is the United States ready for a woman president? Yes, of course. The only superpower in the world is lagging behind many countries that have ended the male monopoly on political leadership.

“Even Democrats who would gladly support her for the presidency tend to pin a “can’t win” label on her. But they are wrong. …”

Read the rest here.

–Stephanie Farrior

Below are some photos and captions copied from the blog “Go Fug Yourself” which I learned of via the blog “Feministe,” see e.g. this and this.

“You’re at the Grammy Awards, honey, not the gynecologist. Put your peaches back in the can, stand up straight, and stop visually begging people to use their trophies as a speculum.”

“The Go Fug Yourself Celebrity Terror Watch squad is commencing a Sternum Watch for Sheryl Crow: It doesn’t help that this dress is enforcing a high waistline on her that gives her lower half a bizarre dumpyness, but that torso is a frightening thing. Dating a professional and highly competitive cyclist probably sent her over the fitness edge; now we’re worried that breaking up with said professional cyclist might have driven her away from the fridge. That’s not cleavage — that’s a cutting board.

“We consider this a high alert situation that needs to be monitored and, as quickly as possible, repaired. Somebody please make her some fried chicken, or take her to Jack In The Box for some meat and cheese between slices of butter-soaked sourdough. Britney? Where are you, dear? You’re needed. Sheryl can hold Sean Preston on her lap (if she has the strength) while you take her through the drive-thru.”

If you follow the first link to “Feministe” above and skim the comments, you will see that I had a brief exchange with “Feministe” blogger “Zuzu,” who says (about my reaction to yet another “Go Fug Yourself” post that troubled me), “Cripes, Ann. You’re taking this way too seriously… It’s supposed to be funny. And it is, if one unclenches one’s sphincter.”

One of the many reasons I’m glad that I am a law professor rather than an actor or musician is that I don’t have to worry much about my hair, make-up or clothes; I’d be unemployed if I did. I grieve for the talented performers who spend inordinate time and money on dieting, plastic surgery, hair styling, and cosmetics applications, and still fall short of “the celebrity look” that must be portrayed before their acting or musical abilities will even be considered by their industries. The most I have to fear is “feedback” on my appearance by students who make observations about my legs, hair and sartorial selections in their course evaluations. Occasionally harsh and inappropriate, none has risen to the level of abject meanness and misogyny I perceive at “Go Fug Yourself,” although the goal of putting the dumb girl in her place is probably the same. I just don’t understand how anyone who identified as a feminist could endorse “Go Fug Yourself” even as a “guilty pleasure.” Maybe this is evidence of my own internalized biases and intolerance, I don’t know. Has my sense of humor atrophied?

–Ann Bartow

From Yahoo News: “Stiletto workout: part of the heeling process,” below is an excerpt:

“The gym that brought New Yorkers “Cardio Striptease” has dreamed up “Stiletto Strength,” a workout to get women in shape to wear the highest of heels. At a recent lunch-time session at Crunch gym near Times Square, dancer Amber Efe demonstrated how to strut like a cat-walk model, pivoting on six-inch heels that would challenge even the most ardent follower of shoe king Manolo Blahnik.

“Imagine you’re at the bar, raise one hand high like you’re holding your drink,” she told the class, music pounding as she acted the part of a club-goer working through a crowd. “Don’t spill the drink,” she told the group, a mix of women who clearly had plenty of experience and others still tottering on shoes that didn’t show much wear.“Crunch’s class list includes “Circus Sports” and “Cycle Karaoke” and national fitness director Donna Cyrus said the most popular nontraditional class in recent years was “Cardio Striptease,” aerobics with a sexy twist.

“Stiletto Strength” was launched in January in response to client griping about getting back into high heels for winter.

“They’re businesswomen and they have to wear heels so they want to understand how to look better in them and feel confident,” Cyrus said.

“Participants wear running shoes for the first part of the class, which focuses on strengthening lower body and abdominal muscles and improving balance and posture. The heels come out for the last 15 minutes.

“I came at the beginning just because I was curious,” said Andrea Kussack, 27, who isn’t required to dress up for her job but needs practice wearing “going-out” shoes.

“I recently bought for my boyfriend’s Christmas party these really high heels. I made it through the night but it wasn’t the most enjoyable thing and I haven’t worn them since,” she said.

“So what is the secret to walking tall?

“Your abs and don’t look down. Look where you’re going,” said instructor Kafi Pierre. “And your ankle strength, if you have weak ankles you’ll tend to roll inward or outwards.”

“Cyrus called in a podiatrist to assess the class, which has been launched in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. “He said ‘You know, the answer is women shouldn’t wear heels,'” Cyrus said.

“But she said women will wear them anyway.

“Your feet will probably never recover because it’s not a position you’re meant to be in all day long,” she said. “This class will strengthen your legs and your core, it will make it less painful, but it will never be pain free.”

Via I Blame the Patriarchy.