Category Archives: psychology
From Being Bullied to Being a Star
Young Brittany Mason was bullied relentlessly. And then she grew up to become a star. And an anti-bullying advocate.
Her torment began her first year of high school. Kids teased her, slashed her tires, and threw Barbie doll heads, or red paint, all over her yard.
Homecoming week was the worst. Some students created a giant poster with her picture on it, took it to a pep rally and chanted, “You are ugly.” Afterwards, they chased her from the bleachers and drenched her with water guns.
Britney tried to kill herself, but failed. Thinking back, she adds, “Thank God.”
After the suicide attempt she chose to do home schooling.
She says the experience was scarring and still haunts her.
But since then she has worked to make the best of her life, and that experience.
Kids said she was ugly?
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How To Suppress A Woman’s Desire
Man As Object, Karen Zack
Women typically have lower sexual desire and drive than men in our society, according to both sex surveys and statistics on sexual dysfunction. Our culture may be largely to blame. Consider this:
We are bombarded by “sexy women” but not “sexy men”
Whether on billboards, TV ads, Dancing With The Stars, Olympic ice skating, or professional football, women are half-dressed and men are fully-clothed. The camera hones in on women’s breasts and butts and ignores men. Sure, we are seeing more hot men these days thanks to Taylor Lautner and Ryan Gosling. But People’s “Sexiest Men” typically portrays gorgeous faces, loose T-shirts and few bods. Even the clothing that women and men walk around in show off women’s bodies and, more often, hide men’s
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Doing Dumb Stuff to Prove Manhood
By Alexander Ghanma
When David Wexler’s wife asked him to hold her purse for a moment he was suddenly filled with shame, seeing his masculinity at risk:
Loaded down with shopping bags, my wife asked me to grab her purse and carry it across the plaza. That’s all. Yet even though I knew I was being stupid, I couldn’t do it. The 15 seconds being seen carrying a purse were beyond my capacities as a card-carrying male…
Shame may be the least understood dimension of men’s inner experience — by both men themselves and the people who live with them.
Shame-o-phobia is what therapist, David Wexler calls the sort of thing that leaves men questioning their manhood over stupid stuff. Like The Freezing Water Test:
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Flaunting It: Damned if Do, Don’t
Dear girls,
Last night, as we sometimes do, our family sat around the dining table and looked through the summer’s social media photos.
We have teenage sons, and so naturally there are quite a few pictures of you lovely ladies to wade through. Wow – you sure took a bunch of selfies in your skimpy pj’s this summer!
I get it – you’re in your room, so you’re heading to bed, right? But then I can’t help but notice the red carpet pose, the extra-arched back, and the sultry pout. What’s up? None of these positions is one I naturally assume before sleep.
That post doesn’t reflect who you are at all! We think you are lovely and interesting, and usually very smart. But, we had to cringe and wonder what you were trying to do?
Girls, if you think you’ve made an on-line mistake (we all do), RUN to your accounts and take down the selfies that makes it too easy for friends to see you in only one dimension.
You are growing into a real beauty, inside and out.
Act like her, speak like her, post like her.
Those are a few lines lifted from a Given Breath blog post that went viral. To read the whole thing, unedited and intact, go here.
Kyoto Redbird responded, focusing less on the girls’ behavior than on our society’s messages. To see her full response, unedited and intact, go here.
Kyoto Redbird is a college-educated 20-something who finds navigating around a contradictory — and too often hostile — view of women difficult and frustrating.
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When Playboy Pushes Consent It’s Cool
You’ve probably heard about Playboy’s new and revised Top 10 Party Commandments for the ultimate guide to a consensual good time.
Because without consent, “party times are under serious threat” by rape:
A good college party is all about everyone having a good time. Consent is all about everyone having a good time. Rape is only a good time if you’re a rapist. And f— those people.
You’ve probably also heard that these revised commandments are a hoax unleashed by college feminists.
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My Boyfriend, the Objectifier
![playboy-bunny-manual-main[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/playboy-bunny-manual-main1.jpg)
When I first heard feminists complain about sexual objectification I didn’t get it. Why didn’t they want women to be sexy?
Turns out, I didn’t understand what objectification was.
Put simply, it is about seeing someone as nothing but an object – one that is sexual in nature – that exists for someone else’s pleasure. Objects don’t have feelings, thoughts or life goals, so you needn’t worry about hurting them.
So I finally got it intellectually. But I didn’t fully get how it played out until I met “Mike” (that’s what I’ll call him). And years later saw Mike’s way of seeing in a Ms. Magazine article discussing objectifying ads.
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GIRLS “On All Fours”
If we started saying, “It ain’t sex unless everyone enjoys it” would rape and “gray-rape” (where consent is unclear) become less common? And might we all enjoy sex more?
An Emmy-nominated episode of “Girls” sparks the question.
“On All Fours” finds “Natalia” ready to have sex with “Adam” because, “You’ve been really nice all week.” And then she tells him what she likes and what she doesn’t as they indulge.
The next time is very different.
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Guys: Romantic? Or Just Want One Thing?
Some reports say guys are getting more romantic. Others say they just want one thing, preferably from celluloid porn stars.
Which is it?
On the one hand guys are getting sexually addicted to their computer screens. Davy Rothbart explains that the “fireworks and whiz-bangs” of extreme porn is to real women what an Imax 3-D movie is to a flipbook. (Though he thinks it’s a problem.)
And after a tour of college campuses, Naomi Wolf concluded that far from turbocharging women’s objectification and turning men into wild, raping beasts, Internet porn is turning men off real women.
But others have found young men becoming more romantic than their older brothers and fathers. Ninety-five percent of whom would prefer to have sex with someone they love over sex with a “hot” woman. Over half only want sex with someone they love.
What’s with the conflicting data?
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Turning Indian Girls Into Boys
Indian parents are paying to have their daughters turned into sons through sex-change operations that cost about 145,000 rupees ($3,200). Up to 300 girls have been surgically turned into boys in one city.
The procedure involves fashioning a penis from the little girls’ female organs. Afterwards they are injected with male hormones, which they will need to take throughout their lives. The procedure will leave these children impotent and infertile in adulthood. No sons or daughters for them.
The Madhya Pradesh government is investigating.
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Scrutinizing My Body Takes All My Time
On a typical day, you might see ads featuring a naked woman’s body tempting viewers to buy an electronic organizer, partially exposed women’s breasts being used to sell fishing line, and a woman’s rear—wearing only a thong—being used to pitch a new running shoe. Meanwhile, on every newsstand, impossibly slim (and digitally airbrushed) cover “girls” adorn a slew of magazines. With each image, you’re hit with a simple, subliminal message: Girls’ and women’s bodies are objects for others to visually consume.
So says Caroline Heldman, Assistant Professor of Politics at Occidental College, in a piece for Ms.
This notion of bodies for consumption leaves us constantly judging ourselves and others. How do we stack up? How do “they”?
Our friends declare someone too fat or too thin, sitcoms quip on body weight or shape, tabloids spot celebrities’ flaws, men bluster about big boobs, Howard Stern picks women apart while Rush Limbaugh insists feminism was established “to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” (Yes, really, Rush and Howard think they are in a position to make unkind remarks about other people’s appearance.)
All this leads women to “self-objectify” so that we see and judge ourselves through others’ eyes, and especially, the male gaze. Women live in “a state of double consciousness … a sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others,” says Heldman.
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