Women's Issues

Middle aged woman kick out of swimming pool for wearing same sort of bikini all the teens around here were wearing. Because it's only ok to show skin if you're conventionally young and attractive.

How are you unconventionally young?

She doesn't even look bad, regardless of the morality of it.

That kind of circumstance reveals a lot about the mindsets of the people responsible.

The unstated implication being, "The purpose of a bikini is not to be a comfortable and effective article of clothing while enjoying the hobby of swimming. A bikini is a sex implement, meant to enhance a woman's attractiveness. Any woman who would wear a bikini must be presenting herself for judgment as a sex object."

Here's a question: why is it unacceptable for overweight women to wear bikinis on the grounds of being undesirable sexual partners^HEY! Which is another issue all on its own, I'll note, yet it IS acceptable for children?

edited 24th Jul '14 11:02:26 AM by TobiasDrake

Morality my ass.

A woman's body is not a sex toy yet that seems to be all we are treated as.

Between bikinis and birth control its enough to make you rip your hair out.

Arrgh. Google "NPR teenage songwriters take on bro country". Related to the bikini comment.

edited 24th Jul '14 11:10:49 AM by Cyran

Children Are Innocent, so they can get away with more stuff than adults or older teens can.

Remember, women wearing bikinis cause men to become unfaithful, which results in earthquakes.

Being a woman in public seems to invite people to comment. A lot of times it seems like people are offended if you aren't looking pretty for them.

Women must be pretty. All the time. Or else...

So why do Michelle Rodriguez's characters usually die in films? Oh, right, "conventionally". Such a useless guideline.

Women against feminism seems to be trending

Vasquez Always Dies.

Oops. Missed that one. My mistake.

edited 24th Jul '14 12:05:05 PM by Cyran

While it's probably more common with women, I have seen people express the opinion that overweight men shouldn't go around shirtless at beaches/pools, either.

X3 Or as I call it, "Women failing to show even a basic understanding of what feminism is about".

edited 24th Jul '14 12:01:09 PM by Silasw

I think that highlights the lumping and generalisation tendencies people have. Those anti-feminists apply the ideas of the bad feminists to apply to all feminists, while the feminists responding to it apply their idea of feminism as being the one, true definition, which would exclude the part of feminism that the anti-feminists are rebelling against.

Yes, that's specifically what I was referring to, since that was the pothole in the post above mine.

That, and that being in public at all invites comments.

I suspect it is because feminism has been discredited to a high degree, in the last years.

Take all the rape figures that were touted for decades and the number of people who pointed to the methodological flaws in pertinent studies in the last decade.

Or the figures about domestic violence, and the growing numbers of studies showing that it is much more symmetrical than touted by women's rights advocates.

And then there is the matter of equality. I honestly believe that most feminists are for gender equality, but which kind of equality do they mean?

For example with the gender pay gap. The way it is usually taught, people get the impression that if a man works for a time, he gets 1€, if a woman does the same work for the same time she only gets 0.77€. That would be an outrageous inequality. Then you go into details of the study and notice that , due to socialization, gender roles, different wiring or whatever, men do on average much more overtime, take less maternity/paternity leave, which leads to greater seniority and so on. Suddenly the cleaned figures show not the outrageous 23% from the equality sale, but something between -2% to 8%, and people ask why they were fed misleading numbers.

Now of course we want equality. But do we mean equality where women get the same money per hour in the same job and where typical women's jobs are payed closer to typical men's jobs? That can be done with adequate legislation and marketing for the women's jobs.

Or do we want equality where the woman and the man carry the same amount of money home at the end of the year, despite the different amounts of work they have done? This can be done by for example gender specific tax exemptions and subventions. And it would be in the spirit of the equality sales and the usual feminist rhetorics.

Both are equality....kind of. The latter one would be equality by privileging women.

Take to this the still prevalent second-wave demonization of men as dangerous oppressors, when most of us are actually really nice and egality-minded, and conversely the depiction of young and capable women as victims, when they know very well that they can do it.

With all this, I am in no way surprised, that more and more people don't believe that feminism in western cultures is a good idea or aren't inclined to listen to feminists.

The problem is not that people don't understand feminism. It is that they think feminists are liars.

Irregardless of the situation of women in other cultures of course.

edited 24th Jul '14 1:30:50 PM by blauregen

Citations, please?

From what I can tell, the "debunking" of the one-in-four rape statistic is based mainly on the supposed flaws in Mary Koss's study, namely how many of the women interviewed did not actually see their experience as rape. I disagree with this interpretation since the study's aim was to find out if an experience was legally classified as rape, not what the victims thought about it, so this is a moot point. The wage gap thing is something I've researched before, but I don't have the links ready so I'll just go right ahead and say that I don't believe it's as much of a "myth" as others claim.

As for other common anti-feminist arguments, I'm going to go ahead and play devil's advocate as to why they'd think such a thing. Most of it has to do with a general frustration at feminism's disinterest in male issues or anger at the certain instances where feminist organizations actually do hurt men, such as trying to lower the amount to $5000 before a man is guilty of a felony for not paying child support (which could be devastating to fathers who lose their jobs) or testifying in opposition to a bill which would have repealed an old law stating that, if a woman cheated on her husband and had a child, then the biological father would have no rights to that child. This includes women who are anti-feminist, and this is usually what they mean when they say "I don't blame men for my problems."

While I personally wouldn't call myself anti-feminist because I do agree that feminism has its place, a few people want to distance themselves from the label because they have enough evidence to believe that feminism is hurting men in some ways. That frustration is usually amplified when people say "that's not representative of feminism" or "not all feminists", because it's usually seen as an attempt to make excuses for the problematic elements (and also quite hypocritical.)

Again, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. These are not my words so much as they are a generalized impression of how anti-feminists view these issues.

edited 24th Jul '14 7:59:37 PM by Zennistrad

"plus sized" model posts unedited pic

When Aprilla told me about this story my first question was, "Who is calling this woman plus sized?"

From what I have gleaned from the sources I looked at the model chose to be categorized as plus sized. Not her agency, not a client, her.

To me this is very important.

First, I know the fashion industry has some really horrible people in it. But not everyone. By Abercrombie and Finch yeah, she maybe plus size. But Mossimo would consider her average and Lane Bryant would call her tiny.

I can't boycott or lobby the fashion industry. I can target specific entities like agencies and designers. But if no one but herself is labelling her or forcing her, then there is no boogyman. She chose it. I respect her free choice even if I disagree with her.

Second, she can gain a lot of work calling herself plus sized. She was already a cover model and will be sought out more due to the growing pressures on the fashion industry to have a stronger variety of representation. She is making a good business decision. I don't knock her that at all.

Third, an image doesn't have to be touched by a computer to be misleading. Lighting and posing go a long way. That pic isn't anything revolutionary and she is positioned in such a way you still see only good things. Again, very smart business move.

I'm not bashing this girl. I don't think she has done anything wrong. But I do feel that some of the knee jerk controversy over this move is misplaced. As a former model, I know first hand there are jobs for every body type. I wish this was more known.

The fashion industry and the modelling industry aren't perfect. But this really isn't anything special and I feel it is seriously distracting from solving other more legitimate problems.

That's pretty much what people are talking about in the comments to it. "Where's the plus-sized model?"

If it's respectful for being a "smart business move", I don't think it would've matter if it were her agency who put her up to it, or any other company.

Citations, please?

For the general opinion they have about feminism, here is an opinion piece that gives an, in my opinion, good overview.

Regarding the gender pay gap: My german sources allow for an average of 8%. For the United Kingdom the ONS finds an average of 10%, and they are aware enough that they put in a disclaimer

in case anyone wants to use it to make politics.

For the rest: This guy gives a good explanation about how it comes to pass, and adds a bunch of sources.

The argument was not that the gender pay gap does not exist, or that nothing should be done about it. It is that the adjusted numbers are a far cry from the simplistic big numbers people see so often from feminist side, and that because explanations like this showed up over the years in popular media, it has cost feminism credibility.

For the symmetry of domestic violence: Go crazy. And again I saw such studies pop up in regular mass media frequently in the last years, as well as battered husband stories. The fact that domestic violence was mostly portrayed as nearly exclusively male on female, and that consequently nearly all funding for those problems is directed exclusively towards helping women, is something people have become aware of. A recurring topic in the women against feminism complaints is that feminism doesn't help men too, and that they are rather equalist than feminist.

As for rape: Thank you Zennistrad. But the point was not to convince any feminists that the study is invalid. People tend to stick to their ideology, and defend it. The point was the perceived image of feminism. Again together with the painted male perpetrator/female victim dichotomy, that isn't supported by the numbers, it looks to neutral and feminist critic people as if feminism has instrumentalized the suffering of people over decades through biased reporting.

What I was trying to say, is that the simplistic 'They have no clue what feminism is about' is wrong. The feminism-critical people did something right by pointing out discrepancies like the above again and again, until they left the blogosphere, and thereby discredited feminism.

A lot of those people know very well what feminism is about, they just don't buy the old rhetorical trick of 'But don't you want equality?' anymore. They have reasons to consider feminists liars. And consequently, throwing the dictionary definition at them, looks like being an overbearing git.

edited 25th Jul '14 7:19:55 AM by blauregen

Do we always have to have the "define feminism" debate? -_-

As long as some people say, "Screw feminism!" and others respond with, "That's not true feminism!"

It is more the 'you misunderstand anti-feminism'-debate, but no, I think I made my point clear.

edited 25th Jul '14 7:15:40 AM by blauregen

On IPV. Even Richard Gelles, one of the co-creators of the Conflict Tactics Scale, which is used in most of the studies suggesting a narrower gender gap in IPV, says that it should not in fact be used to suggest gender parity.