Category: Gender Equality

The totally normal, completely unsurprising lack of women at CES

~ mcequality

For many women at CES, the lack of female representation in the keynote wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t even solely the CTA’s fault. A 2016 study by the National Center for Women and Information Technology found women held 57 percent of all professional occupations yet only 25 percent of all computing jobs. These figures were even lower for nonwhite women: Asian women held 5 percent of jobs in the computing industry, black women held 3 percent and Latinas held just 1 percent.

via The totally normal, completely unsurprising lack of women at CES

MeToo feminism is victim culture, not courage | Comment | The Times

~ mcequality

Moreover, modern feminism has put the Victorian sexual double standard into reverse. Tearing up the old sexual order, women liberated themselves to behave with as much sexual licence as men. Yet when men now misinterpret the signals because there are no longer any rules, women accuse them of failing to treat them with sufficient respect. And even when men grossly misbehave or even attack them, some women choose to remain silent and use such men for their own advantage.

Female emancipation was all about giving women control over their own destinies. Now they have that control, they are presenting themselves once again as powerless victims of male oppression, even while benefiting from being presented as sexual objects. In 1995, Thurman was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 sexiest stars in film history, in 2004 she featured in Maxim magazine’s “Hot 100” and in 2013 was named one of the “100 Hottest Women of the 21st Century” by GQ magazine.

Millicent Fawcett and even Emmeline Pankhurst would surely not have said to Thurman: “me too”. They would have said: “not in our name”.

via MeToo feminism is victim culture, not courage | Comment | The Times

Suffragettes 100 years on: Meet the women fighting for females in 2018 – BBC News

~ mcequality

Officers in the city now define misogynistic hate crime as “behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman”.
That includes things like wolf-whistling and cat-calling.
“I think it’s very easy to say this is the end of flirting, but I don’t think that’s true,” says Martha.
“I think if you’re flirting in a way which you feel might be touchy ground, then you’re flirting in the wrong way.”
Martha ran around 40 training sessions for police on misogynistic harassment and now wants the rest of the UK to follow suit.

via Suffragettes 100 years on: Meet the women fighting for females in 2018 – BBC News

Unused ticket: The suffragette story in seven objects – BBC News

~ mcequality

Under the slogan “deeds not words”, some activists smashed windows, threw stones and burned buildings. Once imprisoned, they would go on hunger strike.
Their refusal to eat led to force-feeding – where a tube was forced up a striker’s nose and down the throat before food was poured in. Sometimes the feeding pipe was put in incorrectly and food would be forced into the lungs, which can be fatal.
Force feeding attracted public disapproval – and eventually the government brought in a bill known as the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed seriously ill hunger strikers to be released until they regained their strength, when they would be re-arrested and jailed again.

via Unused ticket: The suffragette story in seven objects – BBC News

We Harpies Want More

~ mcequality

Scores of women have felt raw, disheartened, and fatigued by the #MeToo news cycle over the past months for the obvious reason that these are transmissions of suffering and for many, reminders of exclusion. But the relentless news coverage is further disconcerting because these tales of horror are making some companies a lot of money, often by allowing one writer to dismiss and denigrate accusers in the same pages where another writer first broke the allegations.

via We Harpies Want More

Philosopher Kate Manne on ‘Himpathy,’ Donald Trump, and Rethinking the Logic of Misogyny

~ mcequality

Manne posits that sexism and misogyny are distinct from one another. “Misogyny is law enforcement; sexism is justificatory,” Manne argues. “Sexism wears a lab coat; misogyny goes on witch hunts […] Sexism is bookish; misogyny is combative,” she writes later in the book. Sexism is not the “cudgel” of misogyny, instead, it’s a set of beliefs that work to naturalize the existing order.

via Philosopher Kate Manne on ‘Himpathy,’ Donald Trump, and Rethinking the Logic of Misogyny