Archive for the 'Woman-Hating' Category

Why so angry?

Published at December 16, 2007 in work work work, I see fat people, Anxious masculinity and Woman-Hating. 8 Comments

So I’m reading this piece in Broadsheet the other day about a new paper on a study demonstrating that white women are most affected in terms of salary and promotion for being fat,* and against my better judgment, I looked in the comments. As you might expect, the usual suspects brought up the usual moral panic about fat people and healthcare (as do the commenters at a posting on the New Economist’s blog about the study, and their comments are even worse), but one person made an interesting observation:

In addition to the “you can if you really WANT to,” the “prove yourself” and all the other self-help that is more useful and more kindly meant, people have bought up the insensate, profane and semi-literate rage that is often expressed by men and women alike when the subject of obese white women is dragged into editorial columns yet again.

From the especially vitriolic women, I think it’s a way of women establishing superiority over other women while expressing fear of losing status in their subtext. “I’m not like that. I’m not fat. I’m not disgusting. I’m special — but, oh God, what happens if I gain weight? No, I’ve got to hate this so I won’t and can maintain my special perfect thinness.” Barf. And many of them do.

From the especially vitriolic men, it’s “how dare these THINGS not do everything they can to ‘prove themselves’ in our eyes, but instead OFFEND those eyes. They’re not LISTENING TO US.” These characters, especially the semi-literates, seem to think it’s the right of every man, regardless of how he looks, to have arm candy of his very own and to judge women who don’t meet that standard for whatever reasons. Thyroid, anyone? Water retention? How about pregnancy? Want a woman with a big belly to hide out lest your eyes be offended? Repeat after me, and without four-letter words, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.

I really wonder if this is the extent of it. The gibbering and incoherent rage that comes up when this subject is raised is really astonishing, especially that from men, and especially men who seem to think that they’ll be FORCED to find fat women attractive if fat somehow becomes acceptable.

Which I always think is rather revealing, because who’s to say fat women think you’re attractive, punkin?

But I do think this status thing ties into this terror of having to accept fat people, particularly fat women, and especially particularly fat white women. It’s like some kind of advance case of cooties or something, where the very idea of being seen as accepting a fat person as a human being might contaminate that person. And I’m sure a lot of it is simple social anxiety and far too much emphasis on status and the “market value” of one’s mate (which seems to be a big thing in libertarian circles these days). Because you might secretly be attracted to fat women, but you wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it, so you have to loudly proclaim how disgusting they are.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a significant feeling that fat women — you know, the kind of women who are supposed to be unattractive and unsuccessful at love — are getting away with something by having sex and relationships and being seen as attractive while not in possession of a body that shows proper conformity with the prevalent standards of beauty and the time, money and energy required to achieve them.

Thoughts? Why do you think there’s so very, very much anger and seething rage directed towards fat people, and especially fat women?

________

* There was no effect on the wages of white men, and black men actually benefited from gaining weight (probably because they were seen as less sexually threatening or something). Black women had an interesting wage progression: the thinnest black women made less than average-sized black women, but wages declined if they got heavier (though not as significantly as they did for white women). One commenter suggested that part of the disparity could be explained by white women getting a premium for being thin.

Another 20-year-old who thinks he’s got it all figured out

Published at November 23, 2007 in Lousy hypocrites, Religious nuts, Pantysniffing, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 16 Comments

Time to create a “fuckwit college columnists” tag. Because, really, who deserves it more than Ryan Haecker, writing for the Daily Texan?

Ryan certainly starts with a bang:

Dresses epitomize womanhood in the Western world.

Grab the popcorn, kids! There’s gonna be a show!

Such has been the case since the western man adopted pants to replace the tunic in the sixth century (an aspect of the West’s Germanic barbarian heritage). Dresses allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. Dresses are the indelible image of womanhood because of the symbolic nature of pants and dresses. If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable. We all tacitly reaffirm these attributes in our attempts to find a partner. Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

Wow. Just…wow.

Dresses are the epitome of womanhood because they allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. That’s deep, man.

Really, you have to love a guy who switches from immutability to change back to immutability all within a couple of sentences. Dresses have been the epitome of womanhood, but only since the sixth century. Yet they’re an immutable sign of femininity, because pants — which have only been around since the sixth century — are an immutable sign of masculinity. Dresses symbolize fucking and piety all at the same time — maybe nun’s habits get this guy hot.

But that last sentence really amuses me. Let’s see it again:

Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

I dunno about you, but I can flirt just fine in pants. But this whole “obligations of our form” business makes me chuckle — because I can’t help thinking of that scene in The King and I where the children of the court keep trying to look up Anna’s dress because they think English women must be shaped like their dresses since they don’t wear pants like other women.

You might say these things were once true but times have changed. Not so. The nature of sexual attractiveness in women is objective, immutable and incontrovertible because it is directly related to the constant and unchanging physiology of men and women. What men find attractive in women is fixed because the physiology of humanity has been relatively unchanged. In this way, the ideal form of femininity is also unchangeable and without regard for cultural context or time period. What men find attractive in women - the form of a true lady - is objectively identifiable, just as it was in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. In short, femininity is sexy, and sexy is timeless and universal.

Um, Ryan? Women’s bodies may very well be the same as they’ve ever been, but it doesn’t follow that a) what men find attractive in women is immutable and unchanging; or b) that therefore dresses are the only thing that’s feminine and/or sexy. Because, as you’ve stated in paragraph 1, in the West, there’s only been a pants/dresses distinction since the sixth century, and even if you’re a Young Earth Creationist, that’s just a drop in the bucket, history-wise.
Like all opinion pieces, there must be someone whose opinion Ryan is implicitly if not outright refuting — the villain of the story, so to speak. And this is where he busts out the villain. Who could it be?

Wait for it…. wait for it….

What’s not sexy is feminism (not to be confused with femininity), which is directly responsible for the disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants by the “new woman.”

That’s right! You can blame ANYTHING on feminism! Continue reading ‘Another 20-year-old who thinks he’s got it all figured out’

Gosh, I’m sorry you don’t feel special anymore

Published at November 3, 2007 in Sports, I see fat people, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 10 Comments

From the “Everything can be blamed on a woman” files: Oprah Winfrey is single-handedly responsible for ruining the marathon.

The piece is an extended, and dishonest, whine about how they let just anybody run marathons nowadays, instead of special, dedicated men who did it for the thrill of competition and the frisson of self-denial — oh, and Americans aren’t winning marathons like they used to, which is Oprah’s fault.

The American runners of that era were propelled by a “double wave” of self-abnegating philosophies, theorizes Tom Derderian, who trained with Rodgers and Salazar at the Greater Boston Track Club. They were “heirs both to the warrior mentality of their World War II fathers and the new consciousness of the 60s and 70s,” he told author John Brant for the book “Duel in the Sun,” an account of the 1982 Boston Marathon, considered the last great American distance race.

And did I mention the generous helping of fat-shaming?

I had to give up marathoning just as everyone else was getting into it. Not just the rest of the running world. Everyone. The mid-1990s gave us two new long-distance heroes. The first was Oprah Winfrey. If Frank Shorter inspired the first running boom, Oprah inspired the second, by running the Marine Corps Marathon. And it was a much bigger boom. This was not a spindly 24-year-old Yalie gliding through Old World Munich. This was a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia. If Oprah could run a marathon, shame on anyone who couldn’t. . . .

Once the supreme test for hardened runners, the marathon became a gateway into the sport. Soon, gravel paths were crowded with 5-mile-an-hour joggers out to check “26.2 miles” off their life lists. Team in Training, which raises money for leukemia research, promised to turn loafers into marathoners in 20 weeks. I met a lawyer who started running because, “They say if you can run a marathon, you can do anything!” The marathon was no longer a competition. It was a self-improvement exercise. . . .

Like Oprah, Bingham deserves praise for luring insecure, overweight novices off their couches and into running shoes.

God forbid those flabby, overweight loafers everybody’s always after to exercise might just do so, and do it in public. I mean, don’t they know that *real* runners are trying to get past their fat asses on those gravel paths in public parks?

In the last 15 years, the Chicago Marathon field has increased tenfold, to 45,000. But with this change in the running culture, the average finishing time for men has dropped from 3:32 to 4:15 — not far from the Oprah Line, or my own performance.

Note that he’s conflating a few things in the piece: the lack of American men winning marathons and the average time of American men running marathons. Yeah, if you get a bigger field, with more first-time runners, you’re going to get slower average times, for a couple of reasons: one, more first-time runners means more slower runners, which will bring down the average; and two, in a gigantic field, it’s very hard to run at any sort of pace until the field starts breaking up; it could take you half an hour just to reach the starting line. If you’re in the back of the pack, you’re not going to be setting any world records. However, that’s why they start the elite runners up front — and those elite runners continue to set world records, course records and personal records even as the average finish times of the overall field get slower. That more American men aren’t at the top of the heap of elite runners has a lot less to do with the democratization of the marathon in America and a lot more to do with the quality of international runners, particularly the Africans. Who, after all, weren’t running the Boston Marathon much in the 70s.

By the way, did you happen to notice that there’s a sizable gap between 1982, when the “last great American distance race” happened, and the mid-90s, when Oprah supposedly ruined marathoning by making it accessible to middle-aged flabsters? Yeah, I thought you would. In a case of burying the lede, McClelland acknowledges that maybe Oprah and the Penguin Brigade aren’t actually primarily responsible for the decline in American (men’s) marathon times that began long before they got involved:

You can’t just blame the Penguin Brigade for messing up the curve. The last year an American-born man won a major marathon? 1983. (We have produced one first-class female marathoner — Deena Kastor has won in Chicago and London — although we’re still waiting for another Joan Benoit Samuelson, gold medalist at the first Olympic women’s marathon, in 1984.) The running bum — that post-collegiate dropout who works in a shoe store so he can train 100 miles a week — has almost disappeared. Despite the fact that marathon fields are the size of Sauron’s host, more guys broke two and a half hours in the 1980s.

It could just be that the running bum has moved onto other sports, or has figured out that if just anybody can run a marathon, why not up the ante and get into triathalons, particularly the Ironman, which has not just a marathon, but challenging swimming and biking components? Or it could be that, what with the professionalization of the sport, those running bums have sponsors. Plus, it ain’t as easy to live on a shop clerk’s salary anymore, what with the cost of proper equipment, travel and race fees.

Oh, and McClellan shows his ignorance in another way: his assumption that last month’s Chicago Marathon was stopped because of novice runners:

Last month’s Chicago Marathon had to be shut down mid-race, because undertrained five- and six-hour marathoners couldn’t handle that much time in the 85-degree heat.

Actually, that kind of heat is a danger to *any* runner, no matter how well-trained, as Frank Shorter discussed in this piece (and since McClelland mentioned the 1984 Olympic Women’s marathon, he can’t possibly have forgotten Gabriela Andersen-Schiess, who staggered into Olympic Stadium, dehydrated and suffering from heat exhaustion, and literally fell across the finish line. I’m still a little traumatized by that). The issue with Chicago was not that novice runners couldn’t handle the heat because they were untrained; it was that they were still on the course after the temperature began to climb. The elite runners finished well before it became 85 degrees.

Dear Heineken,

Published at August 28, 2007 in Advertisers want to suck your brains, Marketing mania!, Anxious masculinity and Woman-Hating. 12 Comments

Women drink beer, too.

If you’d like women to drink your beer, perhaps you should rethink ad campaigns like this one:

That’s right up there with those Volkswagen “Fast” commercials. Remember them?

Count me as one consumer who will not be buying either a Volkswagen or Heineken.

Love,
Zuzu

Visible bra straps = jerking off in public

Published at August 24, 2007 in Pantysniffing, I see fat people, Anxious masculinity, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 5 Comments

At least, that’s what a city councilman in Atlanta thinks.

ATLANTA - Baggy pants that show boxer shorts or thongs would be illegal under a proposed amendment to Atlanta’s indecency laws. The amendment, sponsored by city councilman C.T. Martin, states that sagging pants are an “epidemic” that is becoming a “major concern” around the country.

“Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it’s the in thing,” Martin said Wednesday. “I don’t want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future.”

The proposed ordinance would also bar women from showing the strap of a thong beneath their pants. They would also be prohibited from wearing jogging bras in public or show a bra strap, said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

The proposed ordinance states that “the indecent exposure of his or her undergarments” would be unlawful in a public place. It would go in the same portion of the city code that outlaws sex in public and the exposure or fondling of genitals.

si_cover_july_1999_brandi_chastain.jpg

Felon!

Melissa McEwan did a brilliant post at her now-down site, Shakesville, which illustrated the white male privilege that a similar ban in a town in Louisiana demonstrated: she not only noted that visible underwear never seemed to be a problem before it was displayed by young black men and young women rather than white men, she illustrated it, IIRC, with a photo of, essentially, white man’s plumber’s crack and boxers peeking over the top of a young black man’s pants. One was not the subject of legislation, the other was. Guess which was which.

I have to be honest — I find it endlessly amusing when I see young men with their pants belted around their thighs. Because, seriously, it’s just stupid, and doesn’t seem very practical. Though, frankly, I haven’t seen that going on for a while. Maybe it takes a little longer for these things to filter down to Atlanta or something.

Even though this is cast as some kind of neutral thing, it’s clearly targeted to certain populations. I even got a taste myself of the kind of selective enforcement of these things when I went to Louisiana to volunteer after Hurricane Katrina. I stayed in a camp run by FEMA and staffed with armed Wackenhut guards. We were not to cuss, or fuck, or do anything that might offend the sensibilities of the churchy folk who comprised most of the camp. And one of those things that offended the sensibilities of the churchy folk was low-riding pants and visible underwear.

But of course, this was not enforced in any kind of even manner. Personally, I’d bought pants that were a size too big because I thought I was that size, they were on sale, and what the hell, not gonna try on pants that were five bucks. So on the job site, I used duct tape to make a belt. But at the camp, I used shoelaces or nothing, which meant my old, fat ass hung out with visible undies for all to see. Did anyone care? No. Or, not that anyone told me.

But my 18-year-old, thin, blonde teammate? I was following maybe 10 feet behind her as she walked by an armed guard while wearing pants that were slightly loose and a top that showed a slight bit of her midriff. And he admonished her for her temerity at showing flesh. I walked by not five seconds later, showing even more flesh if you’re going to measure by the square inch, and nothing.

Gosh, could it have the slightest bit to do with who makes white guys uncomfortable, whether racially or sexually?

Might.

Titsling!

Published at August 15, 2007 in Corporatocracy, Female trouble and Woman-Hating. 5 Comments

What is there to say about this article (via) that hasn’t already been said better by Lauredhel?

So, I think I’ll just give you a video that seems quite apropos:

The girl’s guide to hunting and fishing

Published at August 12, 2007 in Hear me roar, Female trouble, Anxious masculinity, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 9 Comments

Well, not that girls in one municipality in Nova Scotia will get a chance to fish during their day camps this summer:

HALIFAX – Nine-year-old Lydia Houck was looking forward to a day of fishing, hiking and golfing when she browsed through a list of summer day camps offered near her Nova Scotia home.

But the only option that fit her interests was just for boys.

In contrast, the only all-girl camp, dubbed Glamorous Girls, offers jewelry-making and a trip to the spa for manicures and pedicures for girls aged five to 12.

Lydia says she’d rather be fishing.

“It was really frustrating that they were being discriminatory and they were saying that boys should look forward to doing this and that girls shouldn’t do this,” Lydia, who will be entering Grade 4 in the fall, said in an interview from her home in Windsor.

“My brother and I go fishing a lot and I enjoy going outside a lot, and this camp seemed to fit that description and it was pretty much the only day camp that did.”

The Municipality of the District of West Hants offers three other day camps that are co-ed – a trip to an amusement park, a day at the waterslides and a pirate-themed excursion into Halifax – but Lydia said none of them sounded as fun as the camp for boys.

The municipality says the idea for next Monday’s spa day came from similar all-girl day camps elsewhere in Nova Scotia, with at least one Halifax-area community staging its own spa event for young girls this summer.

West Hants recreation director Kathy Kehoe denied the camp lineup is discriminatory and said there are no plans to reverse the decision before the event for boys takes place on Tuesday.

Oh, no! It’s not at all discriminatory for a municipality to officially enforce gender conformity. Girls just naturally love spas, and boys just naturally are inclined to fish. It’s just The Way Things Are. Continue reading ‘The girl’s guide to hunting and fishing’

More on the pay gap

Published at August 5, 2007 in work work work, Hear me roar, On the horns of a dilemma, Anxious masculinity and Woman-Hating. 3 Comments

It’s not just getting married and having kids that’ll cost you pay if you’re a woman — being perceived as “angry,” especially if you’re an executive, will get you penalized:

[Researcher Victoria Brescoll] conducted three tests in which men and women recruited randomly watched videos of a job interview and were asked to rate the applicant’s status and assign them a salary.

In the first, the scripts were identical except where the candidate described feeling either angry or sad about losing an account due to a colleague’s late arrival at a meeting.

Participants conferred the most status on the man who said he was angry, the second most on the woman who said she was sad, slightly less on the man who said he was sad, and least of all by a sizable margin on the woman who said she was angry.

The average salary assigned to the angry man was almost $38,000 compared to about $23,500 for the angry woman and in the region of $30,000 for the other two candidates.

In a second experiment, the script was similar except that the job applicant also described his or her current occupation as a trainee or a senior executive.

“Participants rated the angry female CEO as significantly less competent than all of the other targets, including even the angry female trainee,” Brescoll wrote. She said they viewed angry females as significantly more “out of control.”

That impacted salaries. Unemotional women were assigned on average $55,384 compared to $32,902 for the angry ones. Male executive candidates were assigned more than trainees, regardless of anger, with an average $73,643.

Continue reading ‘More on the pay gap’

Honor killing, apparently a scream

Published at July 24, 2007 in Religious nuts, Crime, Anxious masculinity and Woman-Hating. 0 Comments

So details have started coming out about the “honor” killing in London of a Kurdish woman, Banaz Mahmod, by her father and uncle and three other men. Her crime? Daring to reject the man she was forced to marry, who raped and beat her, in favor of one she chose.

But apparently, murder is a real gas:

Hama, who prosecutors said had been a ringleader in the murder, was caught by listening devices talking to a friend in prison about the murder.

In the recordings, transcripts of which were relayed to the court, Hama and his friend are hearing laughing as he described how she was killed with Banaz’s uncle “supervising”.

“I was kicking and stamping on her neck to get the soul out. I saw her stark naked, only wearing pants or underwear,” Hama is recorded as saying.

Yeah. Real funny, the neck-stomping.

A queasy hat tip to Julia.

Show us yer tits! On second thought, don’t!

Published at July 20, 2007 in On the horns of a dilemma, Political theater, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 7 Comments

It’s damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t time!

It’s not just on the issues that Hillary Clinton can’t cut a break. Now we’ve got reporters wondering why she won’t she can’t be like those hot-blooded Latinas and show us her tits:

When Argentina’s foxy first lady and fashionista Cristina Kirchner announced July 2 that she would run for president, she allowed her long, black hair to cascade over a plunging neckline.

But America’s first lady of politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton — who has often been compared to Kirchner — opted for a solid black pants suit during her recent presidential debate.

Other international women with brains and power, such as France’s Ségolène Royal, flaunt their sexuality. But Americans prefer to play the dowdy card.

In a pragmatic nation with Puritan roots, “no nonsense” and “professional” get more votes than “sexy,” say experts in both fashion and politics.

And when she dons a deep v?

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable. . . .

The cleavage, however, is an exceptional kind of flourish. After all, it’s not a matter of what she’s wearing but rather what’s being revealed. It’s tempting to say that the cleavage stirs the same kind of discomfort that might be churned up after spotting Rudy Giuliani with his shirt unbuttoned just a smidge too far. No one wants to see that. But really, it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!

Not so long ago, Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, spoke before the House of Commons showing far more cleavage than Clinton. If Clinton’s was a teasing display, then Smith’s was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn’t as unnerving. Perhaps that’s because Smith’s cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly. Smith’s fitted jacket and her dramatic necklace combined to draw the eye directly to her bosom. There they were . . . all part of a bold, confident style package.

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding — being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

Ready for that shocking, unsettling display of Senatorial ta-tas? Don’t say I didn’t warn you:

Put those away!

I don’t think anyone’s going to be throwing beads at her, Robin. As Steve said, you probably have half a dozen women in your office showing more cleavage than that, and you probably don’t even give it a second thought.

In any event, you know why Hillary adopted the uniform of slightly boxy black pantsuits? Because she didn’t want it to be about her appearance. And given how often the press scrutinized her look while she was First Lady — am I the only one who remembers the breathless reporting of every change in hairstyle, and the focus on her circa-1992 headbands? — why the hell wouldn’t she want to standardize and professionalize her image as she was moving into her own political career?

Interesting, too, that this is the issue the press latches onto with her to suggest phoniness or flightiness or whatever they’re deciding to focus on this week. Male Democrats always get criticized about the price of their haircuts, and now it turns out Mitt Romney drops a shitload of money on professional makeup artists before big TV appearances. I mean, haven’t we known the value of makeup in TV appearances since at least the Kennedy-Nixon debate? But there’s no traction to be gained with going after a female candidate on hair and makeup — the reaction is likely to be, “Yeah? So?” because women are supposed to wear makeup and care about their hair. Men have to be Manly.

And women have to be Womanly, just not very much in politics, thank you. It seems pretty clear that Hillary is softening her image in response to some of the she’s-really-masculine chatter going around (like this execrable Salon piece, which position Hillary as the “male” candidate and Obama as the “female” candidate, and ended with “May the best woman win.” You also have to read the author’s idiotic explanation, in response to letter-writers who accused him of being a Karl Rove plant trying to discredit Obama. Not too many people were upset that “feminine traits” were considered bad, or that the author considered Hillary’s strongest traits to be “masculine” ones, though a lot of people pointed out that Obama had to work against a stereotype of black men as threatening.  He also is on the horns of a dilemma).

But she can’t soften it too much, or she’d be seen as frivolous (”feminine” being synonymous).  She’s been accused of being an ice queen, but being too warm or loosening up a bit gets articles in the freaking Washington Post about how upsetting it is to see her cleavage, that slut.

Nope, she can never win.