Let’s not even go into the attacks on reproductive freedom or all the violence against women, or even the Aaron Sorkin characters who set your teeth on edge. Let’s just talk about the ways pop culture can chip away at the soul, the ways a jokey demonstration of a game or an imaginary Twitter fight or yet another celebrity explaining that she believes in equality but don’t call her a feminist or the sound of that song that just wouldn’t go away can make a person realize how far we still have to go. There were truly far too many contenders to choose from this year, but these were the sexist lowlights that raised our blood pressure most.

Elan Gale

It turned out “Diane,” the huffy airline passenger in the medical mask, never even existed. What Buzzfeed dubbed an “epic” encounter that “won” Thanksgiving was instead merely the “Bachelor” producer’s stunt to “entertain some people” with “a cautionary tale.” Gale’s “entertaining,” “cautionary” message? You can pretend to send a strange woman a note saying, “Eat my dick” and be lauded as a champion of civility. Got it.

Bustle

In an inadvertently revealing feature on Bleacher Report co-founder Bryan Goldberg’s attempt to “redefine what ‘women’s interest’ looks like,” the New Yorker showed the world a man who’s disappointed. Disappointed, because “Honestly, nothing would have been more helpful here than for some highly regarded feminist writers to say, ‘Bryan’s a good person.’” A man who explains, “I am a dude. I don’t have a lot of overlapping interests with most women my age. I’m really into history. I’m really into markets and finance. I don’t know a damn thing about beauty, but I don’t need to.” Because those unhelpful feminists wouldn’t be into history or finance. And the photo accompanying the whole thing? It was of a thoughtful Goldberg sprawled on the floor and surrounded by a gaggle of female employees, tapping away on a laptop perched on a high-heeled, short-skirted woman’s lap. Who says it’s tough for women to find desk jobs?

Goodness, where to begin? James Taranto boo-hooing over a “war on men” and “an effort to criminalize male sexuality” in a story on military sexual assault? Richard Cohen’s bizarre Miley Cyrus-centric complaining about “the so-called Steubenville Rape” (an odd term for a crime that has so far led to two rape convictions)? How about CNN’s pity party for the rapists? Maybe a Fox News guest’s assertion that women should “thank men” for freeing us up “to embrace that side of yourself that isn’t about work”? We could list all the ways the media gave a platform to Dark Ages ignorance, but we’d be here till 2015.

A woman masturbates, has erotic feelings towards numerous men and women, and an “excessive” desire for sex. Is she a nymphomaniac?

Filmmaker Lars von Trier is reigniting debate on the subject with his controversial new film, Nymphomaniac.

The story of a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac who recounts her erotic experiences, the film consists of four hours of explicit sex. Publicity posters depict the naked A-list cast in orgasmic release, ensuring controversy prior to its Christmas Day release in Copenhagen.

This controversy is bad for women.

Labelling a woman with active sexual desires a nymphomaniac continues an age-old tradition of pathologising women’s sexuality – a tradition that needs to be discarded.

Leeches, borax and bed rest

Descriptions of nymphomania first appeared in the 1700s. But it wasn’t until the late 1800s that the label was made into a psychiatric diagnosis and widely applied to overly sexual women.

“Symptoms” included sexual insatiability, lewd advances to men (or women), and most abhorrent of all, the practice of self-pleasure through masturbation.

More
http://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-woman-a-nymphomaniac-20306

Little somethin for my godson Elijah and a little girl named Corinne

[Verse One:]

Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots
I give a holler to my sisters on welfare
Tupac cares, and don't nobody else care
And uhh, I know they like to beat ya down a lot
When you come around the block brothas clown a lot
But please don't cry, dry your eyes, never let up
Forgive but don't forget, girl keep your head up
And when he tells you you ain't nuttin don't believe him
And if he can't learn to love you you should leave him
Cause sista you don't need him
And I ain't tryin to gas ya up, I just call em how I see em
You know it makes me unhappy (what's that)
When brothas make babies, and leave a young mother to be a pappy
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up

[Chorus]

Keep ya head up, oooo child things are gonna get easier
ooooo child things are gonna get brighter [2x]

[Verse Two:]

Aiyyo, I remember Marvin Gaye, used to sing ta me
He had me feelin like black was tha thing to be
And suddenly tha ghetto didn't seem so tough
And though we had it rough, we always had enough
I huffed and puffed about my curfew and broke the rules
Ran with the local crew, and had a smoke or two
And I realize momma really paid the price
She nearly gave her life, to raise me right
And all I had ta give her was my pipe dream
Of how I'd rock the mic, and make it to tha bright screen
I'm tryin to make a dollar out of fifteen cents
It's hard to be legit and still pay tha rent
And in the end it seems I'm headin for tha pen
I try and find my friends, but they're blowin in the wind
Last night my buddy lost his whole family
It's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insanity
It seems tha rain'll never let up
I try to keep my head up, and still keep from gettin wet up
You know it's funny when it rains it pours
They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor
Say there ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is
it ain't no hope for tha future
And then they wonder why we crazy
I blame my mother, for turning my brother into a crack baby
We ain't meant to survive, cause it's a setup
And even though you're fed up
Huh, ya got to keep your head up

[Chorus]

[Verse Three:]

And uhh
To all the ladies havin babies on they own
I know it's kinda rough and you're feelin all alone
Daddy's long gone and he left you by ya lonesome
Thank the Lord for my kids, even if nobody else want em
Cause I think we can make it, in fact, I'm sure
And if you fall, stand tall and comeback for more
Cause ain't nuttin worse than when your son
wants to kno why his daddy don't love him no mo'
You can't complain you was dealt this
hell of a hand without a man, feelin helpless
Because there's too many things for you to deal with
Dying inside, but outside you're looking fearless
While tears, is rollin down your cheeks
Ya steady hopin things don't all down this week
Cause if it did, you couldn't take it, and don't blame me
I was given this world I didn't make it
And now my son's getten older and older and cold
From havin the world on his shoulders
While the rich kids is drivin Benz
I'm still tryin to hold on to my survivin friends
And it's crazy, it seems it'll never let up, but
please... you got to keep your head up

So basically, patriarchy represents the preference of men as a group over women as a group, especially in terms of power and authority. When we look at history, it’s hard to argue against this being an element of most if not all of the civilizations referenced commonly used as inspiration in fantasy games and literature. For instance, in many sects of Christianity women are often forbidden from holding leadership positions, especially over men. We talk about founding or town fathers but rarely founding or town mothers. Until relatively recently, male heirs were preferred over female heirs when it came to succession for the British throne, and other titles still follow that preference structure.

From Wikipedia

However, it is also easy for it to be argued that this view is incomplete. The English didn’t go through every living man before settling on a woman as regent, women were still allowed to rule. Better someone with royal blood rule than a commoner after all! Likewise, African-American males in the US often had a lower social status than white women, especially white women of the upper class. That is why it’s important to look just beyond gender, which is part of the concept of kyriarchy.

Examples of the influences of a patriarchal system
Now, for me, it’s quite obvious that we have lived, and continue to live, in a patriarchal culture. Take, for instance, the founding of a city. A group of people, often lead by one person or a small group of people, travel from one place to another and decide to set up a community. Many times the leader or leaders are married men and their wives perform duties expected of them due to their status as spouse of a founder. However, the history books often don’t record what both of them did, but rather record the man’s name as the founder. Both of them were there at the same time. Both of them were often instrumental to the success of the endeavor, and yet the man is the person who gets the credit, the statues, etc.

Likewise, if you ever do genealogical research, especially in the US, you’ll see that it is often difficult if not impossible to trace female lines. Wives often were referred to only by the husband’s name. I have one obituary for my great-great-grandmother and her surviving family is listed as follows: “She is survived by a sister, Mrs. Frederick Westphal and three daughters and one son: Mrs. Herman Schnoor; Miss Dora Gandesbergen, of Bremen, Germany, and Mrs. William Puetz and William Fillmer of Newburgh Gardens, also by three grandchildren.“

There are corners of the internet that are shady and mysterious - you never go there for fear of what you might find.

It is worse if you dare to be noticeably female while exploring them. Your user name, your avatar, anything could lead to unwanted advances, or unwarranted abuse.

A recent survey by Girlguiding, a charity for girls and young women, found that 54 percent of girls aged 11-21 had received some form of electronic harassment, whether receiving sexist comments or having embarrassing photographs of them distributed online.

But online feminist movements are fighting back.

When FemSoc at Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Services heard about a campaign called Who needs feminism, in which people from all sections of society hold up cards reading "I need feminism because…" they decided it would be a good way to spread their message.

FemSoc general secretary DurreSameen Mirza said the group decided to take part in the campaign despite knowing they would receive some negative responses. "We realised that by going public we would open ourselves up to harassment and abuse," she told Al Jazeera "We also realised that this was why the project was important. There are so many misconceptions of feminism and women in Pakistan; we felt it was important to get this discussion started."


http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/12/online-feminists-are-taking-trolls-20131217143852329370.html

The newest cause célèbre for men's right activists (MRAs) has nothing to do with divorce law, "false rape allegations", or the dangers of "sperm-stealing" feminists. It's about the C-word. No, not the ladybusiness one. We're talking about "creep."

As Jessica Wakeman discovered last week when she wrote about a first date gone wrong, the MRAs are up in arms about "creep-shaming." "The ability to label men as ‘creepy' is just one privilege that women enjoy, and a constant source of fear of ostracizing that all men must fear in our society," says one apparently anguished man on Reddit. Creep is "the worst casual insult that can be tossed at a guy" claims Jeremy Paul Gordon at the Hairpin. "Douchebag," "asshole," and "pussy" can't compare, Gordon insists, largely because the charge of "creep" is so much more difficult to disprove. These guys argue that "creep" has a greater power to wound than any other word, and yet it's tossed around with cavalier impunity by cruel women who ought to know better. Thus the campaign (particularly big on Tumblr, apparently) to bring awareness to the ongoing tragedy of creep-shaming.

The word creep has a long history, first as a verb and only much later as a noun. Dickens gets credit for first using "the creeps" in its modern sense in 1849, but the use of the word to refer to someone disgusting or frightening is, surprisingly, less than 100 years old. (Interestingly, while the term "creeper" today is a hipper synonym for a creepy person, its use as a noun is actually much older, dating to the 17th century, when it referred to a stealthy thief.) As an adjective, it shows up regularly in headlines here on Jezebel, most recently in coverage of the dating-spreadsheet finance guy.

Wakeman isn't the only female writer to wrestle with the politics of creep-shaming. Clarisse Thorn has suggested that the use of the word "demonizes men who are honest about their sexual needs," while Amanda Marcotte argues that "creepy" is a "useful, commonly understood term for a set of behaviors that absolutely are a problem." At the Good Men Project, Lu Fong noted that while in her mind, "the weight of the word was never heavier than any other insult I'd shoot back at the boys," she accepted that men found it exponentially more hurtful.

http://jezebel.com/5903883/why-guys-really-hate-being-called-creepy

TOMBALL, Texas—When Rachel Bradshaw-Bean claimed she had been raped in the band room of her high school in Texas, school officials sprang into action—and kicked her out of school.
"I felt like a criminal," she said, describing the December 2010 incident in her first extended interview on the crisis and aftermath. Accused of "public lewdness," she was sent to a special school for students with discipline problems, along with the boy she said had assaulted her. "I saw him there all the time," she said.

It's not an isolated incident. The events at Henderson High School in East Texas demonstrate the obstacles girls sometimes face when reporting sexual violence in schools. "High schools across the country are failing to live up to their responsibility to address sexual assault and harassment," said Neena Chaudhry, an attorney with the National Women's Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "There's no excuse."

Bradshaw-Bean and her family fought back, sparking a Department of Education probe into whether the school had violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in education. Under the law, schools must follow specific rules when a student reports sexual violence; those rules include launching an internal investigation separate from any police inquiry. Henderson High School relied solely on a police investigation that deemed the sex consensual.

Today, with reports of teen sexual assault making national headlines, Bradshaw-Bean, now 20, said she is speaking out so that girls know their rights and schools properly address reports of sexual violence. "I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I did," she said. Her battle to clear her name, while navigating a disciplinary school that treated her "like a prisoner," she said, changed the course of her life.

As feminist popular culture critics emerge, so does the use of the term in regard to areas such as comic books and video games. Indeed, it is from one of those areas that we can find a clear example of the male gaze in action:




The above image, which is a panel taken from the comic All Star Batman And Robin, the Boy Wonder juxtaposed with the script written by author Frank Miller (released in the director’s edition of the comic), illustrates the way that the male gaze works in a concrete way. When Miller says, “We can’t take our eyes off her” he is speaking directly of his presumably male audience, and the follow up (“Especially since she’s got one fine ass.”) says loud and clear that her sexualized portrayal is for the pleasure of the envisioned heterosexual male viewer. In essence, Viki Vale’s character is there to reassure the readership of their hetero-masculinity while simultaneously denying Vicki any agency of her own outside of that framework. She is the quintessential watched by male watchers: the writer/director (Frank), his artist, and the presumed male audience that buys the book.

As illustrated in the above examples, the term has applications outside of the framework that Mulvey initially imagined. Although it is most easily illustrated in places where creator intent is clear (or, in Frank Miller’s case, blatantly stated), creator intent is not actually a prerequisite for a creation to fall under the male gaze. Nor does the creator and/or the audience have to be male, nor does the subject of the gaze have to be unhappy with the result. In the end, the simplest way to describe the male gaze is to return it to its roots of the female model/actress/character being looked at by the the male looker.

And, well, if you’re still confused you can go read this Dinosaur Comic about it. It gives an overview of the subject in 6 panels, placing it in the humorous context of talking dinosaurs! And everyone knows things always make better sense when they’re put into context by talking dinosaurs.

Pink crap-drunk America was busy Racing For The Cure for the last 30 years, one race has been left behind in the fight against breast cancer: black women. In 2013, black women are still twice as likely to die from the disease than their white counterparts. Twice. As. Likely. That's a fucking disgrace.

The New York Times features an examination of the racial disparity in breast cancer deaths today, citing several reasons black women have been left behind, and the years-too-late steps breast cancer charities and community organizations are taking to address the problem.

The long and short of it, according to hospital officials and researchers, isn't that cancer interacts differently with the cells of women with African heritage; it's that black women aren't as likely to catch cancer early as white women. They're not as likely to go to the doctor, because black women are less likely to be able to afford the doctor, and more likely to distrust a medical system that hasn't exactly proven itself trustworthy to the African American community.

For years, America's piss-poor for-profit healthcare system that kept preventative care out of reach of people who needed it to live. Prior to the Affordable Care Act's inroads into decoupling insurance and employment (or extreme poverty), black women, statistically, were less likely to work jobs that came with cushy health insurance that would pay for mammograms. To paraphrase the Times, the poor are also less likely to work jobs that afforded them the time off they'd need for medical care, even if they did qualify for Medicaid. (Say what you will about the "rocky" rollout of Obamacare or pajama boy or whatthefuckever smarmy political Twitter is beating to death today; at least Obamacare is making progress toward a country where people don't die of cancer they could have cured had they caught it early.)