The Success Myth And The Female Gaze
Noah Brand
Noah Brand, a mysterious figure with a very nice hat, tells of his greatest professional failure, explains his theory of “The Success Myth,” and introduces the idea of the female gaze, for the Good Men Project:
The masculine equivalent to what Naomi Wolf called The Beauty Myth is The Success Myth. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe said, “A man being rich is like a girl being pretty” and everyone nodded their head, recognizing and endorsing the sentiment. When a rich guy marries a slim young “trophy wife” we all nod our heads again, recognizing that, like it or not, this is a match of two high-value people, a conventionally-successful man and a conventionally-beautiful woman. It would take way too long to get into all the horrible things that arise out of these paired myths, from “gold-digger” stereotypes to men who kill themselves for being “failures”; for now let’s just…
Santorum Denegrates Sexual Morals of 99% of Women Between Ages of 15 and 44
The women in Rick Santorum's life: wife Karen and daughter Sarah Maria. Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
Rick Santorum doesn’t like the way you have sex. Dan Amira explains at New York Mag’s Daily Intel:
When it comes to the life choices married women make, Rick Santorum does his best to portray himself as a crusader for tolerance. A passage in his 2005 book It Takes a Family — supposedly co-authored by his wife, although we have our doubts — famously blames “radical feminists” for shaming women who decide to raise their children full-time instead of pursuing a career. “All I’m saying is both decisions should be applauded and affirmed, based on the choice the woman wants to make,” he said in a primary debate last year. “That’s the point I made in the book.”
But Santorum has no problem calling out married women (and married men, and unmarried people of both genders) who make…
Universe’s Biggest Mystery: Women
According to British scientist Stephen Hawking, anyway. From Reuters:
The biggest mystery in the universe perplexing one of the world’s best known scientists is — women.
When New Scientist magazine asked “Brief History of Time” author Stephen Hawking what he thinks about most, the Cambridge University professor renowned for unraveling some of the most complex questions in modern physics answered: “Women. They are a complete mystery.”…
[continues at Reuters]
The Glaring Omissions Of iPhone’s Siri
Apple’s new iPhone 4S has made waves for its voice-commanded virtual assistant, personified as “Siri”. However, users have noticed that Siri seems to have a blackout concerning certain topics — is Apple pandering to the Christian Right? Via Amadi Talks:
The recent illustrations of Siri, the iPhone 4S voice-recognition based assistant, failing to provide information to users about abortion, birth control, help after rape and help with domestic violence has gotten a lot of notice.
Siri can answer a lot of health related questions perfectly well, why shouldn’t we expect it to be able to answer reproductive health related queries too? Why treat reproductive health as a walled-off garden that the general public can’t or shouldn’t be exposed to?
Thai Elects Yingluck Shinawatra As First Female PM
Thai lawmakers have voted in their first female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, whose political career began just a few months ago. The Bangkok Post reports:
Pheu Thai Party list MP Yingluck Shinawatra was elected Thailand’s 28th prime minister by a majority vote in the House of Representatives on Friday morning.
A total of 296 MPs voted in support of Ms Yingluck, the country’s first female prime minister, while three Democrat MPs voted against her, with 197 abstentions – including Ms Yingluck, the new speaker and one of his deputies, and most members of the main opposition parties, the Democrat and Bhumjaithai parties, and the four members of the Rak Thailand Party led by Chuvit Kamolvisit.
The three Democrat lawmakers who voted against Ms Yingluck were Boonyod Sukthinthai, Watchara Phetthong and Attaporn Ponlaboot.
The four MPs who did not attend the House meeting today were Ratchadaporn Kaewsanit, Khanchit Thapsuwan, Yukol Chanawatpanya and Sathit Pitutaecha, all Democrats.
U.S. Approves Free Birth Control For Women
Photo: Ceridwen (CC)
It’s a good time to be a woman. Via Reuters:
U.S. health insurance companies must offer women free birth control and other preventive health care services under Obama administration rules released on Monday, a historic decision supported by family planning groups and opposed by conservative groups.
The rules from the Health and Human Services Department are part of the nation’s healthcare overhaul and largely follow recommendations from an advisory group released last month.
The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, commissioned by the Obama administration, recommended that all U.S.-approved birth control methods — including the “morning-after pill,” taken shortly after intercourse to stop a pregnancy — be added to the list of preventive health services.
[Continues at Reuters]
Women Are Better At Everything
Really?!? Meredith Melnick explains for TIME:
Recently in the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch columnist David Weidner noted that women “do almost everything better” than men — from politics to corporate management to investing.
Weidner cites a new study by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research, which found that women were more likely than men to make money in the market, mostly because they didn’t take as many risks. And why are they risk-averse? Because they’re not as overconfident as men, the study found.
The study’s findings backed up those of previous research on the topic: in a 2001 study [PDF] of 35,000 American households with an account at a discount brokerage, financial scholars Brad Barber and Terrance Odean found that women’s risk-adjusted returns beat men’s by 1% annually. A 2005 study by Merrill Lynch found that 35% of women held an investment too long, compared with 47% of men. More recently, in 2009, a study by…
Kansas: The First Abortion-Free State?
Kansas is apparently set to become conservative Christianity’s Mecca. Via Mother Jones:
If new guidelines from the Kansas health department are enforced, the last three abortion clinics in the state could be forced to shut their doors this summer. A court fight over the rules is almost inevitable. But anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue are already claiming success in making Kansas “the first abortion-free state.”
The state’s latest approach—with its remodeling requirements and so forth—is often referred to as “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” TRAP laws are intended to make it difficult, if not impossible, for clinics to operate, and they have become increasingly common around the country.
The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor’s closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule,…
Wal-Mart Rolls Back Discrimination Law Suit
Photo: Joey Caputo (CC)
Is Wal-Mart too big to sue? How will this and previous law suits against Wal-Mart effect the future of how other businesses deal with discrimination? Via MSNBC:
If you’re part of a group of employees working for a major U.S. corporation with a gripe about unfair treatment, your collective voices were potentially muffled Monday.
A key attempt to tackle inequality in the U.S. workforce suffered a major blow when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Wal-Mart — with its thousands of stores and millions of employment decisions — was too massive for a group of employees to sue for discrimination using class-action status.
Wal-Mart, according to a 5-4 decision by the high court, is just too big to sue. The court’s decision is a direct hit to women seeking parity in particular. Women now make up about half the U.S. workforce and that means no other minority group seeking a…
Women Like Pink Because Of ‘Berry-Picking’ Past And Boys Like Green Because Of Their Hunting Ancestors
Do pinks and purples remind you of gathering berries? Do greens and blues remind you of hunting in the forest? Finding a reason other than cultural influence as to why genders seems to lean towards specific colors, scientists look to our past. Via Fiona Macrae at Daily Mail:
Girls really do prefer pink – and not just because it is pretty.
Scientists have shown that females are drawn to pinks and reds and men to blues and greens – and they believe the explanation lies our hunter-gatherer past.
As the gatherers of the operation, women’s brains became fine-tuned to the purples and reds of ripe fruits and berries.
The men, meanwhile, developed a preference for the clear blue skies that signaled good weather for hunting.
The theory comes from Chinese scientists who asked more than 350 students to study 11 colours for three minutes and then rank them in order of preference.
The students also underwent…
Libyan Woman Who Was ‘Gang-Raped By Gaddafi’s Troops’ Gets Charged With Slander
Photo: Ted (CC)
The Daily Mail reports:
The Libyan woman who was arrested after telling foreign journalists she had been gang-raped by Gaddafi’s troops has been charged, a government spokesman said today.
In a chaotic press conference, the official said Iman Al-Obeidi was being questioned by police – despite a promise that she had been returned to her family.
‘The accuser has now become the accused,’ he added, accusing her of a ‘grave offence’.
The spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said the men accused by Iman al-Obeidi are now suing her. A son of a high ranking Libyan official was among those she claimed had raped her, he said.
‘The boys she accused are bringing a case against her because it’s a very grave offence to accuse someone of a sexual crime,’ he told reporters in the Libyan capital.
Miss Al-Obeidi was taken into custody after bursting into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli in a dishevelled and desperate state.
[Continues at The…
Egyptian Women Forced To Take ‘Virginity Tests’
Women in line to vote at 2011 Egyptian constitution referendum. Photo: Mona (CC)
Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.
After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.
‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.
“Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women,” said Amnesty International. “All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such…
Study Claims Ogling Women Makes Them Worse at Math
I wonder what the first person to win two Nobel prizes, Madame Curie, would make of this study. Oh, I know the answer from a classic Simpsons episode … Stephanie Pappas writes on LiveScience:
Getting the once-over from a man causes women to score lower on a math test, a new study finds.
Despite this drop in performance, women were more motivated to interact with men who ogled them, perhaps because they were trying to boost their sense of belonging, psychologists report in the February issue of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly.
“It creates this vicious cycle for women in which they’re underperforming in math or work domains, but they’re continuing to want to interact with the person who is making them underperform in the first place,” study researcher Sarah Gervais, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, told LiveScience.
Who’s Afraid of a Beautiful Woman?
Via the First Church of Mutterhals:
There’s some exhibit at a museum in Pittsburgh featuring never before seen photos of Marilyn Monroe. Now, I’m not some retrograde star fucker who pines for the golden age of Hollywood when all the men were either latent homosexuals or confirmed rapists and all the women were hopped up on pills. But seeing Monroe’s ethereally beautiful mug plastered all over this city quickly became one of a few bright spots on my otherwise dreary morning commute.
To my horror, this morning I saw that someone defaced one of the billboards touting the exhibit. Under the copy, in awkward, sloppy lettering, stood the hastily spray painted profundity ‘women are not objects’ followed by some bastard amalgam of an anarchy sign and the symbol for female. I guess the self defense class let out early last night and someone was feeling frisky.
I’d like to address the trog that…
Collective Intelligence: Number of Women in Groups Linked to Effectiveness in Solving Difficult Problems
I must admit, I considered facetiously titling this “Women Are Collectivists, and Collectivism Works.” From ScienceDaily:
Many social scientists have long contended that the ability of individuals to fare well on diverse cognitive tasks demonstrates the existence of a measurable level of intelligence in each person. In a study published Sept. 30, in the advance online issue of the journal Science, the researchers applied a similar principle to small teams of people. They discovered that groups featuring the right kind of internal dynamics perform well on a wide range of assignments, a finding with potential applications for businesses and other organizations.
“We set out to test the hypothesis that groups, like individuals, have a consistent ability to perform across different kinds of tasks,” says Anita Williams Woolley, the paper’s lead author and an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. “Our hypothesis was confirmed,” continues Thomas W. Malone, a co-author…
The Drug Industry Conspired to Pathologize Low Sex Drive in Women for Profit
From ScienceDaily:
Drug companies have not only sponsored the science of a new condition known as female sexual dysfunction, they have helped to construct it, in order to build global markets for new drugs, reveals an article in the British Medical Journal.
Researching his new book ‘Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals’ Ray Moynihan, journalist and lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia, discovered that drug industry employees have worked with paid key opinion leaders to help develop the disease entity; they have run surveys to portray it as widespread; and they helped design diagnostic tools to persuade women that their sexual difficulties deserve a medical label and treatment.
He believes that “drug marketing is merging with medical science in a fascinating and frightening way” and he asks whether we need a fresh approach to defining disease.
He quotes a company employee saying that her company was interested in “expediting the development of a disease”…
Inside Story: Delightful Deliveries
[disinformation ed.'s note: the contributor dug deep in the crates for this 2006 story]
Giving birth was an orgasmic experience for one woman, says Anastasia Stephens, writing in the Times:
For Katrina Caslake, 44, giving birth was not the terrifying, painful ordeal most women experience. Far from it. The midwife, from Wallington, South London, says she found it blissful, even orgasmic.
“I found giving birth very sensual,” says Caslake, who didn’t take painkillers for the birth of her two sons, Aaron, 18, and Tomas, 17. “All my erogenous zones were stimulated. And I had a definite climax. I was doing the most feminine thing a woman can do and it felt fantastic.”
It was her “pleasurable experience” that led her to train as a midwife. “I knew I wasn’t unique,” says Caslake, who helps to run Yours Maternally, an independent midwifery service. “By encouraging women to trust and relax in their bodies during birth, I…
Dirty Girls Who Are Addicted To Porn
Not quite your average New York Times story:
LENEXA, Kan. — It was the final session for the women at Westside Family Church’s Victory Over Porn Addiction group, and the youngest member, a 17-year-old named Kelsie, had not had a good week.
“I slipped two nights this week,” she said, to nods of support from the other women in the group.
“I decided that every time I’m tempted I’ll just let everything out to God,” she said, “then pray specifically for someone else, do selfless acts, to get away from being selfish.”
The group’s leader, Crystal Renaud, offered gentle counsel. “Pray for yourself, too,” she said.
To the wide array of programs offered by evangelical megachurches like Westside, the group adds what Ms. Renaud says is something long overdue. While churches have addressed pornography use among the men in their congregations and among the clergy, a group for women who say they are addicted to pornography is…
