Manspreading

As a psychology undergrad I was sent out to record the sitting postures of men and women.  The theory, generally supported by this new data, is that men are more likely to sit with their legs spread apart, and women with them together or with legs crossed. These days spread apart legs can cause issues in places like a train where it leads to guys taking up more than their fair share of he seating (a.k.a. manspreading)

Then, as now, I think it is incorrect to treat seating posture as purely a matter of gender-conditioning.  Dudes do have some stuff that can more easily get squished in a closed or cross position, especially in tight trousers.  While women are more likely to be wearing shirts and need to avoid giving the person sitting opposite a show. These things are gender-related but in a physically tangible, way not a purely psychological one.

That said, dudes who think sitting cross-legged is unacceptably ladylike need to take a lesson from he bad-ass Victorian naval officers shown below.  Totally rocking the cross-legged look and also somes beards modern hipsters only aspire to in their wildest dreams.

In Praise of "They"

While I am indifferent about The Oxford dictionary choosing an emoji as word of there year, I whole-hearted support the runner up: "they" as a gender neutral singular.  This use of "they" is common across most of the world and needs to also be adopted by US style guides.  It is functional, sleek, simplifies phrasing, and has a long lineage of being used to refer to an individual without specifying gender.

They: "Used to refer to a person of unspecified sex," according to Oxford Dictionaries.

We continue to not know how to deal with domestic violence against men

A recent story about the Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk presents very common scenario.  I have seen this happen myself, first hand, and over and over. A statement is made about domestic violence.  A comment is made that the statement or initiative embraces only female victims.  Adjustments are made, but very shortly afterwards the gender bias of the DV community reasserts itself.

Domestic violence is, as Palaszczuk notes, one area in which gender is relevant in that there is often a dynamic where the  "issue is the attitude men have to women as their possessions". But gender is also at play when men are victims and the seriousness of their situation is not respected, their experience is not validated, and there may be little of no help available to them as male victims because services and shelters in the area accommodate only females.

Palaszczuk's argument seems to be that we should essentially ignore, or resist paying undue attention, to male victims because they are a minority.  When Australia long history of discrimination should sure teach us that ignoring the plight of vulnerable minorities is a mistake that the government just keep on making. Any initiative to address domestic violence must accommodate male victims as equally 'valid' victims of this crime with equal access to assistance.

UN Commission Report on Online Violence Against Women

Like any space on this planet, the internet contains violence, including violence against females.  So the report CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS (shouty ALL CAPS from original) certainly has a valid subject.

The report itself is steeped in sex-negative assumptions that are not made explicit.
For example:

•  Referring to "revenge porn" (posting explicit material about a woman without her permission) simply as "porn" as if these are interchangeable things. 
• Sexting is discussed only as a risk, not a positive and deliberate expression of sexuality between competent and consenting individuals. 
• "Mainstreaming" of the pornography is treated only as a problem.
• Pornography is characterized as inherently abusive in content and damaging to male viewers.
• Non-heterosexual content and female consumers of pornography are not acknowledged to exist.

Many women I know have been effected by threats, stalking and various kind of online harassment (including group attacks) that were gender-based. And I do think the overall goals of this report to increase women's' access to online opportunities is a good one.  But the implicit assumption that this will not include any kind of sex-positive material (a.k.a "pornography") is self-defeating.

The report has a pervasive assumption that sex work and pornography of any kind is only damaging, and not a realm in which opportunity can also exist.  The very choice to refer to pornography as "porn" strikes me as telling. As it the choice to cite alarming statistics about how most porn depicts abuse and turns men into abusers without ever defining what is being counted as porn (in a document where almost every other repeatedly used term is explicitly define, porn is still "I know it when I see it"?).

What I think is missing is that online opportunities for women include the ability to explore and express their sexuality and take part in creative activities and exchanges about sexuality. Fostering, as much as possible, a safe environment online does not meant rendering the online space neuter and completely asexual. (Indeed, even the exploration of asexual identity requires being able to explore responses to sexualized material and discuss sexuality and asexuality freely).

In summary: Addressing the problem of cyber-violence against women requires that women's sexual and gender identities must be addressed positively. Sexuality cannot be framed only as a danger to women from which they must be protected, and never as a trait to be celebrated and expressed. This sex-negative approach effectively silences women on an important subject, one of the core subjects that is being used to restrict and victimize them.

Workout Suppliment Use: A Male Eating Disorder?

Male beauty ideals used to be far less extrem

e

I don't know about you, but the behavior even of rank-and-file body builders and muscle enthusiasts has struck me as increasingly bizarre for some time.  Not those people who just want to be healthy and have a nice physique, but the superstitious, protein-powder-swilling, orange-painted men who end up looking frankly weird.  But they don't notice because they hang out exclusively with other member of their body cult. And if they were doing no harm to themselves, I would shrug and say: whatever floats you boat.

But there is increasing evidence that even those who avoid steroids are pursuing unusual and disordered patterns of eating and exercise they may actually be cause them harm.  For example, a recent study showed that a a relatively large proportion of people taking part in these activities may have some awareness that they have crossed a line. Specifically when it comes to the consumption of body building supplements.

"Achiro and co-author Peter Theodore, PhD, also at the California School of Professional Psychology, found that more than 40 percent of participants indicated that their use of supplements had increased over time and 22 percent indicated that they replaced regular meals with dietary supplements not intended to be meal replacements. Most alarming, said Achiro, was that 29 percent said they were concerned about their own use of supplements." 

The presentation of impossible or unhealthy ideals for the body occurs for both men and women, but it is not surprising resulting behavioral disorders express themselves differently when the focus is on body building. And the makers of these supplements are very much implicated in their improper use by the consumer: many of them actively spread food myths, extreme messaging, misleading nutritional description and sometimes outright fake products.

Both man and women, average and advanced athletes and body builders, need to stay tether to a norm that says we all gain most of our sustainable from food, and that taking something one step more extreme is not always a good idea. If they way you eat means your are skipping necessary nutrition and meals of ordinary food, you have gone to far.  And if the way you look wins competitions but makes people in the street flinch away if they catch a glimpse of you spray-tanned vein-roped calf, you may have gone to far in your pursuit of more and more, rather than matching an achievable and healthy ideal form of some type.

How can you spot a female construction worker?

According to BestLock, a maker of construction sets, there are two ways.

1) Everything they build is pink

2) They come to work in a pretty tank top, full make-up, and no hard hat.

Cloche

A cloche or bell jar is basically a way to protect a delicate item, or can be used as a terrarium.

What I don't understand is why it is necessary to point out how non-gender-specific this thing is?

Simple

I am not entirely sure what is happening to the word "Simple", at least in relation to women.

Real Simple magazine seems to be mainly about making pointless things, buying pointless things, and following trends. And men, well, they are actively dis-invited from reading it.

And Simple cleansing comes in wipes in a plastic container.

That said, I have them because I used Klout and got offered them as a free "perk"--which isn't actually very simple to begin with.

And I kind of liked them, and I liked the idea of simple natural ingredients.

Above the fold is says: vitamins, alcohol (no oils), no perfumes or dyes.

Then, under the fold of the packaging seal I read the ingredients:

• water (okay)
• cetearyl isononanoate
• panthernol, 
• glycerin, 
• glyceryl stearate, 
• cetearyl alcohol, 
• ceteareth-20, 
• ceteareth-12,  
• sodium citrate, 
• 2-bromo-2-nitroprpane-1,3-diol, 
• disodium EDTA, 
• phenoxyethanol, 
• methylparaben, 
• propylparaben (what?)

If that's simple, I'd hate to see complicated.

Hoodies=Mini-Skirts for Men

Think about it.

The old stupidity was that:
1) If a girl wears a mini-skirt (about to be banned in Indonesia BTW)
2) she is gagging to have sex with anyone (slut)
3) so it's okay to rape he no matter what else she does or says.

Now we have a new stupidity so men also get to experience victim-blaming clothing-based excuses for violence:
1) If a boy wears a hoodie
2) he is a violent criminal (thug)
3) so it is okay to report, follow, harass and ultimately shoot him no matter what else he does or says.

JCPenney and what little girls are made of

The first two pictures from JCP's new 're-branding'

Girls are made of:
pink, high heels, romance, jewelry, pussy cats

Boys are made of:
blue, uniforms, noise, outdoors, happy

The more things change....

In 1941 people preferred having a son to a daughter 38% to 24% and now in much more enlightened 2011 they prefer having ... a son to a daughter by 40% to 28% [Gallup poll]. With younger people being more prejudiced against girls than older people.

I wish Peapod would hurry up and deliver my vodka.

The Smart Girls Guide to Porn--book review

I was pleased to get hold of a review copy of The Smart Girl' Guide to Porn. I doubt I am the only woman out there with no conceptual problem with porn, but not a lot of success in finding anything worth watching either.I figured a smut pundit like Violet Blue might be able to point me in the right direction.

My main problem was that I didn't really need most of the book.  The first chapter is about how women do have sexual fantasies, thank you very much (I know). The second worked through a lot of the objections people have to porn (not me). The third chapter helped to prime a woman for her first purchase and viewing (been there and done that). So fifty pages into a 130 page book and I haven't really learned anything except that I apparently don't have the hang-ups that woman are "supposed" to have.

Chapter Four was a bit more helpful in helping explain why porn contains things that had been putting me off.  Although I had already discovered the answer to where the hot guys are: "gay porn" (p.57).  But a bit more insight into mainstream and indy porn making does help explain why certain tropes are repeated over and over, production values generally aren't great and BDSM has--until recently--been pretty rare.

Chapter Five gives some general hints about finding porn you'll like, and Chapter Seven covers some common categories and genres.Then we get some very basic info on internet porn and a chapter on watching porn with your heterosexual partner--because strangely the author doesn't seem to consider there might be some other possibilities. The web resources at the end have stood up really well given that the book came out in 2006, I only found a couple of broken links.

If you are in the early stages of timidly thinking that you might like to watch some porn, this may be the book for you.  If you are ready to get down to the nitty-gritty and stock up on all your favorite fetishes, I guess there's always Google.

Disclosure: Free review copy provided by Eden Fantasys, purveyor of fine erotic books and adult toys.

Grammys go Unisex

In a bold move the Grammy music awards are doing away with gender-specific categories. This is part of a move to drop the number of categories and perhaps increase the prestige of the award. Responses to the announcement have been fairly ambivalent.  It will be interesting to see what happens to the gender balance of the winners of the top awards.  I suspect they will be carefully managed to stay roughly 50/50.

A Quick Reversal

"God has no sex," he said. "He is mysterious..."

"He" is neither male nor female,

says Rev. Sean Kealy

Thank God for the 80s ;)

Everyone else in the Blogoverse has been having fun with Google Ngram.  This program tracks the relative rate at which different words are used in all of the books scanned by Google Books.  So here is one of my searches for the relative mention made of men, women, children and animals.  Only since the 1980s has it actually been 'women and children first'.... (Click figure to enlarge).

Thank you, Agmo & Ellingsen

Over the years I have heard the data repeated many times.  Based on a surveys men have more lifetime heterosexual sex partners than women.  For the United States it is reported as 12:3, for Norway 13:5 and for Britain 10:3.

Whenever this data is quote we are reminded that man are meant to want to spread their 'genome' as widely as possible, females are meant to try and bond a longer-term partner to get them to help raise the kids.

The only problem is that this data doesn't make sense.  As Agmo & Ellingsen (2003) writes "Under the condition that the population consists of 50% of each sex..." (which they established is largely the case) "...the number of partners must inevitably be exactly the same for men and women."

So we don't need 'just so' theories about why men have more sex (with women) than women have (with men)--because that flat out cannot have happened.

Of course there are lots of theories to be made about how they misremember, differently categorise and flat out lie about it... but that's a whole 'nother thing.

I am Sexist

I really am; I honestly think we all are to some extent both against woman and men.  We marinade in our culture and no matter what you want to think or feel, it does get in. 

For example this morning I was scanning the middle of an article about a member of congress being quizzed on possibly breaking ethics rule.  This was the picture. I caught myself making an assumption about which one was a member of congress.  (Hint, it's the one on the left.)

In one of those stabbing little ironies the story on the facing page was about how San Francisco ban on affirmative action was upheld.  Specifically that to return to an affirmative action program one would have to show that the city "purposefully and intentionally discriminated."  The problem being that you don't have to be purposeful or intentional to discriminate--and those who do discriminate overtly are usually smart enough to lie about it.

Single Breasted Jacket

I beg to differ....

Turning the Page: a Bettie Page Obituary

I was going through some of my posts on Today.com, a company I parted ways with some time ago. However a few of the posts I did for them are well worth recovering. including this one from December 12, 2008.

In a previous post I wrote about the difference between a sex object (like a pinup) and a person (like a model). I have been thinking about this again as I read the notices posted after the death yesterday of Betty/Bettie Page from a heart attack.

“Bettie” was the name she used as a model during the very early years of pinup and fetish photography (throughout the late 1940s and the 1950’s), and that became even more famous as an icon in the mainstream pop culture pinup revival that began in the late 1970s and continues today. And it is because of this, and under this name, that she her loss is most often lamented.

Bettie Page was a popular model because of her willingness to pose naked and in fetish scenarios at a time when erotic photography was legally suppressed and vehemently condemned by mainstream culture. Her distinctive appearance. versatility and the prolific availability of her work through several prominent early pin up photographers and magazines meant Bettie became a preeminent pinup model. She epitomised the suggestive, playful and occasionally kinky quality of early pin ups photography and colored the first commercial photo-fetish material. And it should not be overlooked that Bettie’s work in collaboration with these photographers was excellent. It stood out from the run of the mill material of the era–Bettie’s photographs show a woman at ease, often looking directly at the camera with an arch and unapologetic gaze.

In later years, when legal limits lifted and almost any kind of explicit pornography could be made and marketed many models and photographers looked back to the 50’s to try and recapture an age where an image could be both sexual and innocent, where it could be non-explicit and also extremely erotic. The pinup aesthetic was revived first in counter-culture album covers, tattoo and car art, and fine and fetish art homages–moving into the mainstream through kitch revival and now appears on everything from Christmas light to aprons. Right on the forefront of this revival was Bettie Page–her diverse and extensive modeling made her the perfect model for retrospective books and documentaries and the most recognisable model of her era to reference in a derivative work.

The Bettie images were powerful, sensual and had an wholesomely shamelss air that moved the pin up into the mainstream and opened the door to respectable careers in erotica. There is someone, however, who seems to slip between the cracks of our remembrances–and that is Betty. Betty was a girl who experienced state care, child abuse and rape. She grabbed the modelling opportunities she was given and excelled in that role. Despite strong education in art and acting, pin up modelling was her best option. She never really had access to ostensibly respectable career paths. Betty she crafted her excellence out of pragmatic necessity, and given other options, would likely have made different choices.

Betty was paid poorly for her work and some of her most iconic shots made the (male) photographer wealthy while she earn only a small flat fee–and modern collections of her work were mostly made without paying her even the courtesy of getting in touch (let alone money). Her pictures are of a powerful woman, spanking another girl, draped over wild animals, her eyes always dark and challenging–as she was simultaneously being manipulated and literally exploited by those standing behind the camera whose gaze we take on every time we look at one of her pictures.

Betty was a woman of strong Christian faith who married her school sweetheart, but divorced him. She left modelling and for many years tried to pursue missionary work, repudiating her former career and remarried her husband partly to remove the obstacle a divorce represented in pursuing her religious calling. Betty was a woman who divorced her husband again, went rhough marraige and divorce with another man, and came to be at peace and unashamed of her re-surging pinup celebrity. She had done it for the money, she said, and she eventually embraced the security it gave her throughout life that no husband ever did. In her later years she said: “God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds.”

Betty was a woman best known as jungle queen and dominatrix–embodying extreme self-confidence–who almost never allowed herself to be photographed or filmed in her later years, embarrassed at her weight and the normal effects of aging. Speaking of her modelling years she always seemed bemused at her fame, citing average looks, unattractive skin and perceived dependence on heavily make up. Betty never thought of herself as beautiful. But she left a legacy of interviews that put her work in the context of her life and those times. She ensured that her voice and her story has also been preserved.

Pictures of Bettie from the 50s are iconic, historical, and pivotal artifacts in our culture–touchstones of the new feminism where sexuality is part of female character and female power. Sexuality without sin–sensuality with style–and girl-next-door normalisation of fetish. But the life of Betty is in many ways greater than that legacy. She struggled to reconcile faith with erotic employment. She would wield a whip and take part in the most exotic scenarios, but never showed her vagina and never took part in intercourse. Betty apparently struggled with mental illness, experienced poverty and had few enduring friends to offer support when it was need most. Every single relationship in her life was changeable and ambiguous–with her father, her husband, her God, her photographers, with money, with her siblings and even her own image.

Bettie is an icon. All across the media Bettie is being eulogized, appreciated and mourned–and that is as it should be. But Betty was a woman, and a lesson. She struggled, she was exploited, she excelled, she faced many challenges and she is in many way an archetype of normal female existence, albeit one writ large. She did her best and her best could damned good. But she experienced equal amounts of the worst in life, giving and receiving betrayal, violence and despair. Through sheer tenacity and talent Betty made it through all this over 85 years of an extraordinary life; a life that also deserves to be celebrated as much as the photographs taken during less than a decade of modelling work.

Rest in peace, Betty. A candle that flickered but burned right down to the base before it went out.

Earth to Schleich

I confess, I like Schleich toys. Or as I prefer to call them Schleich plastic vinyl scale models.

But, anyway. I have one message for Schleich.

You see this figure depicting a woman who is apparently married to a farmer, jointly owns a farm with him, lives on that farm and is doing farm work? This is not a "farmers wife", this is a farmer who just happens to be female.

Wake up and smell the equality.