Category Archives: sexism
Yeah, I’ve Asked Men Out
Guys sometimes wonder why women don’t ask men out. Plenty of women don’t. But it turns out that many have — and do. Here’s what students from one of my women’s studies classes had to say. (My method was discussed in another post.)
Out of the 26 women who responded to my survey, 17 had actually made the first move at some point. So many more had than hadn’t.
Here’s what they had to say: Read the rest of this entry
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Rapists Don’t Know Damage They Do
By Adorina Betgorgiz
“Hannah” seemed off-kilter.
She was dating a friend of mine in high school. They fought constantly and it was always ups and downs, always on and off.
Her personality swang widely, too. She went from hyper to depressed and back again. And her clothing seemed to fit her depressive mood: sweatpants and t-shirts. Maybe they expressed her sad life. Maybe they made her feel safer, making her invisible. Sometimes she hid in her own bubble, cutting everyone off.
I think she was also a cutter.
She never talked about her family and I wondered why. But over time she opened up to me. She had never felt loved by her mom or dad. Especially her dad. That’s all she said at first. Read the rest of this entry
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Why Women Don’t Ask Guys Out
Guys sometimes ask why women don’t ask men out. Some suppose they can’t take rejection.
I teach women’s studies so I asked my students to write down what they thought on the topic.
I asked:
Have you ever asked a guy out? If not, why not? If yes, why? Were you nervous? How did he respond? Should it be socially acceptable for women to ask men out? Would making a move make you feel more empowered? Or would you rather not have to face rejection?
This is an intro to women’s studies class in the Bay Area, so the women may be more liberal than most.
I got 26 responses. Interestingly, most had asked a guy out at some point. But over a third (9) had not. Why not? Here’s what they said: Read the rest of this entry
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Too rich, too thin, too in control of women’s bodies
A rich Wall Streeter looks in the mirror and sees someone at the cusp of poverty.
An anorexic looks in the mirror and sees someone who is fat.
One is addicted to money. The other to starvation. As each grasps for power.
Enter Mike Huckabee.
***
In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough.
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Women Get All The Good Emotions, Says Cross-Dresser
I think it’s quite hard for men today, because there’s an increasingly narrow bandwidth of behaviors which are seen as exclusively masculine. As women have quite rightly encroached on what used to be seen as male territory, all that’s left is the negative things. There’s less scope for a sensitive man to feel at home. What kind of men do we actually want boys to become?
That’s British artist and cross-dresser, Grayson Perry. We met him earlier in a discussion on “Men Who Wear Frocks.” He wears dresses, he says, because they help him get in touch with the feminine side of his humanity, which is blocked by a culture that suppresses male emotion.
Here’s how Perry explains that process of female “encroachment” into (so-called) male territory:
Until the later part of the 19th century, cross-dressing in ordinary life was an overwhelmingly female to male activity. Typically it tended to be a woman just trying to get on in a man’s world. But in the Victorian age, the traffic started to switch direction. Since then transvestism has become an overwhelmingly male to female behavior.
As the Victorians increasingly corralled all the softer emotions, vulnerability, innocence, gentleness, beauty into an exclusively feminine realm, men were cast as stoical, butch, practical providers, and dressed accordingly. Is it any wonder that some men started to want to cross over? For me, what the Victorians wore is the most striking example of how clothes can come to symbolize complex emotions.
So women started out more apt to mimic men in order to grasp greater opportunity and self-expression. Not to mention, gaining the status and privilege of the masculine world.
These days, women commonly express a whole range of so-called masculine traits and activities without being seen as crossing gender boundaries. They’re just doing “people-stuff.”
But men have not taken on feminine traits and activities to the same degree. Not because they can’t, but because they mostly won’t.
Why not?
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Girls Get Friend-Zoned, Too
Think only guys get friend-zoned?
Well, I’ve been interested in men who saw me as “just a friend,” too. One particularly can’t-take-my-eyes-off-you gorgeous man comes to mind. It’s not that I asked him out and got rejected. He just never asked me out. So we stayed friends when I wanted more. Leaving me in the friend zone.
So even women who don’t ask men out get friend-zoned. Unless every man they are interested in asks them out–which is hard to imagine.
Yeah, being “friended” in a not-so-wanted way happens to women, too.
True, the friend-zone is more in-your-face for guys since they’re expected to make the first move. So it may be more hurtful for them in that way. But we all end up in the same place: outside the arms we want to be in.
Of course, it’s possible that some of the men that women are interested in simply don’t make that first move because they are shy or don’t realize we find them attractive. So that brings up another topic. Girls often don’t feel like they can ask guys out. Read the rest of this entry
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Selling Daughters into Slavery is “Baad”
Aisha
The word itself suggests evil: baad, the practice of making daughters pay for others’ crimes. A young girl becomes a slave and target for the rage that one family feels toward another. In the end, greater wrongs are committed than the original crime.
Baad is practiced in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The most well-known case is Bibi Aisha whose disfigured face shocked the world on an August 2010 cover of Time.
Aisha had been forced to marry at age 13 in retaliation for her uncle’s crime. Read the rest of this entry
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Why is Lena Dunham Naked on GIRLS?
Why is Lena Dunham constantly naked on HBO’s Girls?
Well, not constantly. It just seems like it to some folks. A ruckus broke out last week when The Wrap reporter, Tim Molloy, asked Girls creator, Lena Dunham this question:
I don’t get the purpose of all of the nudity on the show, by you particularly, and I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you go, ‘Nobody complains about the nudity on Game of Thrones,’ but I get why they are doing it. They are doing it to be salacious and, you know, titillate people. And your character is often naked just at random times for no reason.
It’s a question that has stuck in my mind.
Artists say they only do nudity for artistic reasons, not prurient purposes. So why is titillation the only legit rationale for Mr. Molloy?
Ms. Dunham says,
It’s because it’s a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive.
Alive, and not ashamed of your body, it seems to me.
Lena does not have what’s considered the ideal body type. But her obvious comfort has made me aware of my own discomfort. Read the rest of this entry
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It’s Not Easy Being A Man
![self-madeManCoverweb[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/self-mademancoverweb1.jpg)
Norah Vincent passed as a man for a year and a half. She wrote a book about the experience, Self-Made Man, which was published in 2006. When one gender visits the world of another it can be eye-opening, so let’s take a peek at one part of the woman-turned-man experience.
Turns out, it’s not easy being a man.
Norah had thought she’d love joining the privileged man-club that, until her transition, she had only glimpsed from the outside. Instead, she felt strangely inadequate.
For instance, as a lesbian, she’d expected dating to be the fun part. But it was arduous. One of the most difficult parts of her research. In her new man-role she felt an expectation to lead, take charge. This made her feel small in her costume. Read the rest of this entry
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Women as Prey, Men as Predator
Women are expected to attract, men are supposed to be attracted. Men want, women want to be wanted. Metaphorically, this is a predator/prey type relationship. Women are subject to the hunt whether they like it or not, so men’s attention can be pleasing, annoying, or frightening. It all depends.
Accordingly, women know what it feels like to be prey.
That’s from Prof. Lisa Wade of Occidental College and the popular blog, Sociological Images (where I got the great cartoon, too.)
Not all men make women feel this way, she says, and probably most don’t, but we’ve all pretty much had this experience, whether it’s,
The leering guy on the street, the heavy hitter in the bar, the frotteurist on the subway, the molesting uncle, the aggressive fraternity brother, etc.
Does homophobia arise partly from being demoted on the food chain and feeling like prey, she wonders? Read the rest of this entry
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