Category: misogyny and gender discrimination

Progress in women’s equality

August 28, 2019 • 9:00 am

I have two letters that I’ve combined into one post, both showing the progress in women’s rights since I was an adolescent. I hope they are heartening in showing that sexist attitudes prevalent when I was a boy have substantially eroded. Neither of the letters below (stemming from Richard Byrd and J. Edgar Hoover) would be considered acceptable today.

The first comes from reader Jane Phillips, who sent me a screenshot of a letter she wrote to the New York Times about Admiral Richard Byrd. As Jane told me, she’d dreamed of being on an expedition in the Antarctic, envisioning guiding sleds drawn by hardy dogs. She sent me the note below as well as her 1990 letter to the New York Times, which includes the dismissive response of one of Byrd’s flunkeys to her dreams of being an Antarctic explorer.

Jane’s cover email:

When you go to Antarctica, I hope you will think of me because of this: a response to my letter to Admiral Byrd  volunteering to go on an Antarctica expedition:
Jane’s letter to the NYT:

A version of this article appears in print on , Section 7, Page 30 of the National edition with the headline: No Women Allowed.

How snotty can you get? Well, consider J. Edgar Hoover’s reply to my old friend Betsy, who, in 1963 at age 14, wrote to the FBI asking how she could become an FBI agent. J. Edgar Hoover, the Director, answered her personally.

As Betsy notes, “There were 5 enclosures; I can remember only 3: secretary, stenographer, and lab technician. The enclosures themselves have long ago vanished… too bad.”

Well I’m happy to report that although there isn’t 50/50 gender parity in the FBI, as of 7 years ago 20% of FBI agents were women (this could in part reflect a difference in preference rather than pure bias, though there are still reports of anti-woman bias in the agency). But at least the “glass ceiling” is gone—as is the odious Hoover.

I don’t know the proportion of researchers in the Antarctic that are women, but from reading about the stations there I gather the proportion is substantial. The “Women in Antarctica” article on Wikipedia says this:

There were approximately 180 women in Antarctica in the 1990-1991 season.  Women from several different countries were regularly members of over-wintering teams by 1992. The first all-women expedition reached the South Pole in 1993.  Diana Patterson, the first female station leader on Antarctica, saw a change happening in 1995. She felt that many of the sexist views of the past had given way so that women were judged not by the fact that they were women, but “by how well you did your job.”

Social scientist, Robin Burns, studied the social structures of Antarctica in the 1995-1996 season. She found that while many earlier women struggled, in 1995, there was more acceptance of women in Antarctica. Also by the mid 1990s, one of the station managers, Ann Peoples, felt that a tipping point had been reached and women on Antarctica became more normalized. There were still men in Antarctica who were not afraid to voice their opinion that women should not “be on the ice,” but many others enjoyed having “women as colleagues and friends.” Women around this time began to feel like it was “taken for granted now that women go to the Antarctic.”

Studies done in the early 2000s showed that women’s inclusion in Antarctic groups were beneficial overall. In the early 2000s, Robin Burns has found that female scientists who enjoyed their experience in Antarctica were ones who were able to finish their scientific work, to see through the project into completion.

I trust that equal opportunity will continue and increase, so that there are no more sex-based barriers to getting either of these jobs—or any job.  While residual bias may remain, at least women are no longer patronizingly told that, on the basis of sex alone, they aren’t qualified to be FBI agents or Antarctic explorers and researchers.

One more for the road: the impossibility of raising a non-sexist male

November 14, 2017 • 2:30 pm

From PuffHo, which is converging with Everyday Feminism (click on the screenshot to see)

I’ll just give quotes:

Of course, we all want to raise feminist sons. I wrote an article a few months ago detailing the ways I try to do just that. But my efforts are starting to seem like grains of sand against a steady wave-crash of misogyny and rape culture.

In my previous article, I wrote, “In my sweat-soaked, sit-straight-up-in-bed feminist nightmares, I can imagine a future in which my own spawn makes some woman feel as voiceless as the boys in my high school once did, a world in which he blithely argues against the existence of male privilege and shit-talks the latest all-female remake on Twitter.“  Lately, I can imagine it even more clearly.

and

Children never fully belong to their parents. I started losing mine to the world of men years ago. My voice is strong, but what chance does it have against the chorus of voices ready to drown me out every time he steps out the front door or turns on the TV? Being told to “raise a good man” is starting to feel like the devil is telling me to keep cool while steadily raising the thermostat in hell.

and the kicker (my emphasis):

Worse, when I look around at the adult men I know, I’m not sure exactly who I’m supposed to be raising him to emulate. Even the men whom I love and trust seem tied up in knots about this gender business ― one gets the impression they are constantly fighting against their instincts, carefully choosing their words while I carefully arrange my face to receive them so that we can all feel good about remaining friends. To be intimate with these men is to always be waiting, a little, for the microaggression that may or may not come.

The author seems to believe that there really aren’t any good men out there. But if she can find one—just one—that’s who she should use as a role model. I guess most of us don’t qualify.

She hasn’t considered that perhaps she’s looking for offense or, worse, wanting it so she can confirm her biases.

It’s not, of course, that I object to a woman trying to raise a non-sexist son. That’s a great thing to do. It’s that Ms. McCombs sees all men as sexists, and so has no good goal for her childrearing. Chalk one up for #YesAllMen.  The attitude that all men are misogynists, with the “good ones” simply better at hiding it is, of course, sexism.

Trump jumps the shark on Twitter

June 29, 2017 • 2:00 pm

Yes, this is a tweeticle, but what else are we supposed to do when the President of the United States makes policy statements and also insults newspeople using Twitter? I’m starting to believe the man has a diagnosable case of narcissism.

He has no idea how a President should comport himself, and that’s most easily evinced by looking at Twitter. Can you imagine any other President, including George W. Bush, Nixon, or Reagan, going after people like this if they had had access to social media?

Here. according to CNN, is what our “President” had to say about the co-hosts of MSNBC’s “The Morning Show”. He resorts, like a schoolyard bully, to hurling insulting nicknames:

CNN reports:

The president’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended the tweets by saying Trump was responding to the “outrageous attacks that take place” on “Morning Joe” and other shows.

Trump refuses to be “bullied,” Sanders said on Fox News. “This is a president who fights fire with fire.”

Has Sanders ever heard of “taking the high road”? CNN continues:

Trump’s tweets in the 8 a.m. hour on Thursday said that “Morning Joe” is “poorly rated” (it’s not) and that the hosts “speak badly of me” (that’s true). He called both hosts disparaging names.

Trump claimed that Scarborough and Brzezinski courted him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago around the New Year’s Eve holiday.

“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the president wrote.

He actually said yes, according to accounts of their meeting. Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski mingled with guests and had a private chat.

For the record, photos from Mar-a-Lago do not show any blood or bandages on Brzezinski’s face.

Stunned commenters on social media noted that Trump targeted both hosts with his barbed tweets, but only opined on the physical appearance of the woman involved.

Democratic commentator Maria Cardona, speaking on CNN, said it was part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior by Trump. “We should not normalize this,” she said, calling it “unacceptable and unpresidential.”

And Republicans aren’t having it, either. Those who have condemned Trump’s outrageous behavior include Republican lawmakers Lindsey Graham, Mike Coffman, Lynn Jenkins, Ben Sasse, and Adam Kinzinger (Democrats have piled on as well, but the Republican sentiments are telling).  Here are two of the GOP tweets:

https://twitter.com/RepLynnJenkins/status/880433829856542721

MSNBC’s response was simple: “”It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

And here’s the response from the head of public relations for NBC News and MSNBC:

“We’re still waiting for a march against honor killings”: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani in NYT on religion and women’s rights

June 22, 2017 • 12:45 pm

Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty! (Is that ableist?) I was astounded to see that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani, both feminist Muslim reformers, were given a whole op-ed in the New York Times to testify about women’s rights vs religion (click on screenshot to see it):

As I wrote five days ago, when Hirsi Ali and Nomani testified about terrorism (along with two men) before a mixed panel of Senators at the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, the two women were allowed to speak, but the Democrats ignored them during questioning (see the four-hour hearing at the link at the beginning of this sentence). In fact, as Hirsi Ali and Nomani write in their op-ed, the one male and three Democratic Senators didn’t ask either of them a single question. Why? I explained that in my earlier post:

I don’t think the behavior of those Democrats has anything to do with deference to men; rather, they shied away from indicting religion as a cause of terrorism, and that’s precisely what Hirsi Ali and Nomani were trying to say.  The male witnesses, in contrast, avoided religion and dealt with other solutions to terrorism.  Democrats, it seems, studiously avoid mentioning religion or Islam, taking a cue from the Obama/Hillary Clinton playbook.

Hirsi Ali and Nomani agree in their NYT piece:

This wasn’t a case of benign neglect. At one point, Senator McCaskill said that she took issue with the theme of the hearing itself. “Anyone who twists or distorts religion to a place of evil is an exception to the rule,” she said. “We should not focus on religion,” she said, adding that she was “worried” that the hearing, organized by Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, would “underline that.” In the end, the only questions asked of us about Islamist ideologies came from Senator Johnson and his Republican colleague, Senator Steve Daines from Montana.

Just as we are invisible to the mullahs at the mosque, we were invisible to the Democratic women in the Senate.

How to explain this experience?

. . . . what happened that day was emblematic of a deeply troubling trend among progressives when it comes to confronting the brutal reality of Islamist extremism and what it means for women in many Muslim communities here at home and around the world. When it comes to the pay gap, abortion access and workplace discrimination, progressives have much to say. But we’re still waiting for a march against honor killings, child marriages, polygamy, sex slavery or female genital mutilation.

. . . . when we speak about Islamist oppression, we bring personal experience to the table in addition to our scholarly expertise. Yet the feminist mantra so popular when it comes to victims of sexual assault — believe women first — isn’t extended to us. Neither is the notion that the personal is political. Our political conclusions are dismissed as personal; our personal experiences dismissed as political.

That’s because in the rubric of identity politics, our status as women of color is canceled out by our ideas, which are labeled “conservative” — as if opposition to violent jihad, sex slavery, genital mutilation or child marriage were a matter of left or right. This not only silences us, it also puts beyond the pale of liberalism a basic concern for human rights and the individual rights of women abused in the name of Islam.

There is a real discomfort among progressives on the left with calling out Islamic extremism. Partly they fear offending members of a “minority” religion and being labeled racist, bigoted or Islamophobic. There is also the idea, which has tremendous strength on the left, that non-Western women don’t need “saving” — and that the suggestion that they do is patronizing at best. After all, the thinking goes, if women in America still earn less than men for equivalent work, who are we to criticize other cultures?

This is extreme moral relativism disguised as cultural sensitivity.

We all know that they’re speaking the truth. But it’s an inconvenient truth to many on the Left, even when voiced by two “women of color”. And they’re both doubly marked in the oppression scale—triply if you count that Nomani is a practicing Muslim and that Hirsi Ali was genitally mutilated in the name of Islam. They bear all the merit badges of people who should be heard. Instead, they’re demonized, with Hirsi Ali even characterized as an “anti-Muslim extremist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (They clearly haven’t read her latest book.)

There’s more to their piece, and it’s all good, but I don’t want to reproduce it in toto. Let me just reprise their main point: “The hard truth is that there are fundamental conflicts between universal human rights and the principle of Shariah, or Islamic law. . . ”

We all know that, too, and so does anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. But universal human rights somehow vanish when religion is on the table. As the odious Morgan yelled, “Show some damn respect for people’s religious beliefs!”

It’s damn well time for Leftists to stop osculating a faith that’s not only scripturally odious and oppressive, but is practiced widely in that way.  Democrats, and the Left in general, need to absorb the simple lesson that Ali Rizvi pressed on Piers Morgan in the tw**t below:

h/t: Grania

What a world!: UN elects Saudi Arabia to its Commission on the Status of Women

April 23, 2017 • 1:00 pm

Here’s a case where the fox has been chosen to guard the henhouse. The website for the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women outlines its mission:

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. A functional commission of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), it was established by Council resolution 11(II) of 21 June 1946.

The CSW is instrumental in promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women.

One would think, then, that the member states of this organization would be those with a track record of promoting gender equality.

Wrong. According to several sources, including UN Watch (the link keeps disappearing!), the UN has just elected (wait for it) Saudi Arabia as a member of that commission. In fact, the vote, made by the UN’s Economic and Social Council was by secret ballot (why?), and 15 EU countries voted for the Saudi membership (see below):

Saudi Arabia is a country where women can’t drive, must appear fully covered in public, cannot go out unless accompanied by a male guardian, need permission from a guardian to travel, marry, or do business, and weren’t allowed to either vote or run for election until just two years ago. It’s a horrible place to be a woman if you have any aspirations toward equality.

Further, according to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Rating, Saudi Arabia ranks 134 out of 145 countries assessed—right at the bottom. Here are the top nations:

. . . and the bottom (note the predominance of Muslim-majority countries):

Iceland, showing the indices used:

 

Saudi Arabia, whose low score is due largely to reduced “economic empowerment and opportunity” and “political empowerment”:

We don’t know who voted for Saudi, but, according to this tweet from a UN Watch official, lots of EU countries gave an “aye”:

And a response from a Saudi woman (clearly living elsewhere!):

Others have said this, and I agree: the United Nations has become a joke.

h/t: Lesley

Every sperm is sacred: satirical Texas anti-masturbation bill moves through legislature

April 10, 2017 • 1:00 pm

The “Men’s Right to Know” Act, a bill introduced in the Texas state legislature by Representative Jessica Farrar (a Democrat, naturally), has had its first reading in the Texas House. It’s a satirical bill that mocks the Texas legislature’s constant attempts to control the bodies of women. As The Independent reports,

Under section 173.010 of House Bill 4260, the Man’s Right to Know Act, Texas men would only be allowed to masturbate under supervision, inside approved health care and medical facilities.

Any “unregulated masturbatory emissions outside of a woman’s vagina, or created outside of a health or medical facility, will be charged a $100 civil penalty for each emission, and will be considered an act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life.”

The bill, created by state representative Jessica Farrar of Houston, would also promote “fully abstinent sexual relations” and create a “Hospital Masturbatory Assistance Registry” to “provide fully-abstinent encouragement counselling, supervising physicians for masturbatory emissions, and storage for the semen.”

Allowing Texas men only “occasional” masturbatory emissions inside the approved facilities, the bill would insist that the resulting semen be “stored for the purposes of conception for a current or future wife.”

Although the bill stands ZERO chance of passing, or even getting to a vote, it’s a hilarious commentary on recent Texas legislation—the kind of ingroup humor one rarely sees in American politics except at the White House Correspondents’ Dinners. The article continues:

Her bill, Ms Farrar has claimed, “mirrors real Texas laws and health care restrictions faced by Texas women every legislative session.”

Emphasising the need for full male abstinence, it comes three months after Republican Tony Tinderhold proposed criminalising abortion in Texas, arguing it would make women “more personally responsible” about their sexual behaviour.

Ms Farrar’s bill also insists that any doctor providing a vasectomy or prescribing Viagra must first read a ‘Man’s Right to Know’ booklet with the patient.

This, Ms Farrar has said, is a response to current Texas law which obliges doctors to give women considering an abortion a “Women’s Right to Know” booklet.  Ms Farrar has criticised this as a “guilt mechanism” to get the woman to change her mind.

She has also criticised the Texas law requiring a woman to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound before she can have an abortion as an “invasive, medically unnecessary procedure [where] one of the state’s objectives is to guilt her into changing her mind.”

So her bill also insists: “An attending physician must administer a medically-unnecessary digital rectal exam and magnetic resonance imagining of the rectum before administering an elective vasectomy or colonoscopy procedure or prescribing Viagra.”

You can see the full bill here; I’ve taken a screenshot of the introducton (below):

 

Farrar: a Texas hero

h/t: Robert N.

 

Muslim teenager filmed dancing in Birmingham gets vilified and threatened; feminists refuse to condemn the threats, but Maajid Nawaz does

March 13, 2017 • 9:00 am

As we know, much of the Left (the “nonliberal” or “authoritarian” or “regressive” Left) has made concessions to illiberalism. When a religion whose members are mostly “people of color,” like, Islam, then it’s considered judicious to ignore the oppressive beliefs of that religion: homophobia, misogyny, censorship, demonization and calls for the murder of cartoonists, nonbelivers and apostates, corporal punishment, and so on. In other words, when pigmentation conflicts with oppression, this part of the Left favors pigmentation. The color of one’s skin takes precedence over the content of one’s character.

Here is a case in point.  A 17-year-old Muslim girl was filmed with a cellphone “twerking” (dancing in a provocative manner while wiggling the butt) in the streets of Birmingham. The film was put on YouTube; have a look (it may disappear soon):

Guess what happened?

Yep, you’re right. She was vilified. As News.com.au reports:

Footage of her dancing was later uploaded online, and attracted a barrage of hateful comments.

One wrote: “That’s so disrespectful is you are wearing hijab you are representing Islam respect dignity so how to act like a fool that is a big disrespect.”

Another said: “Truly disgusting.

“Some people don’t understand the meaning of the veil.”

One even said she “needs to be killed”.

The “hijab” comment shows what we all know: it’s not just an “empowering” article of clothing, but a symbol of oppression—something that, when you wear it, mandates that you must behave in a certain way.

The comments also included these:  “F*****g s**t someone give me her address I will kill her”. Another man seconded: “Stupid b****h needs to be killed”. It’s not clear how many of these comments came from Britain versus Muslim-majority countries, but given that many were in English, they certainly reflect the sentiments of some British Muslims.

Of course to avoid vilification or even murder, the twerking girl had to express contrition in public. From News.com.au:

She later gave an emotional interview to Muslim YouTube star Ali Dawah.

The teenager, who has not been named, told him during a phone interview: “To all the girls that wear hijab and wear abayah, I’m sorry for disrespecting it.

“I’ve learnt from my mistake.

“It’s gone viral and I’m just hurt, I just want everybody to leave it alone and keep everything away, I don’t want it to be how it was and I am not going to do anything like that again.

“I am sorry for disrespecting it and thank you to all of you that helped, it’s up to Allah to judge, at the end of the day I will be judged for it, not you guys.”

She also says that she has “problems”, “didn’t think straight,” and was suffering from depression that began when she was 13.  No wonder she was depressed, growing up in a culture like that!

Dawah’s Video of Shame and Contrition is below; the girl’s groveling and apologies begin at 5:29, accompanied by her crying, and it’s ineffably sad. To his credit, Dawah rejects the vilification heaped on the girl, and says the video should be taken down, but he also heavily criticizes her behavior, calling it “really bad,” “inappropriate,” “sinful”, and even “the work of the devil.” He offers to put the girl in touch with “some good sisters in Birmingham” to help her. (Read: to make sure she henceforth stays in line.)

Dawah’s job here is to reinforce the standards of sharia law, and he and his co-broadcaster blame music as being partly responsible for the girl’s “grave sin”. As he says, “This is why music is harm. . . it’s the work of [inaudible, but probably the Muslim Satan].” But they express hope that the girl will shape up, get married and “wear niqab.” Niqab! (That’s a face covering, in case you’ve forgotten).

The two guys, for all their pretend compassion, are really trying to keep women in line and recommend appropriate rehabilitation. They are—and I say this without irony—instruments of the Muslim patriarchy. They’re young, but when they grow up they’ll enforce the same oppression that this woman experienced—and in Britain!

Maajid Nawaz on LBC radio (“Leading Britain’s Conversation”) didn’t pull any punches. He’s a Muslim, but abhors these threats and calls out feminists for not joining him (click on the screenshot to go to his 3½-minute video.)

Part of the transcript, which you can see here:

“What happened next [after the video was posted] is chilling. It will freeze the blood within your very body. Amid threats in YouTube comment threads, such as ‘effing, swear word, someone give me her address I will kill her’ and ‘stupid, swear word, needs to be killed’, the young girl was dragged onto a page by a pair of religious fundamentalists, who at first posted a picture in disgust at her dancing, and in a recorded audio, was forced into an online repentance.

“A public, tearful, apology, repentance and retraction, merely for dancing. Welcome to the United Kingdom in 2017. We may have just witnessed our first online religious fundamentalist inquisition.

“Initiated, conducted, and concluded, all online. And the worst part of this? Is it happened a couple of days before International Women’s Day, and you’d be forgiven for not having heard of it.

“Not a single global, nor national, feminist movement adopted this as a cause. Not a single mainstream, left wing nor liberal, media outlet reported on this.

“And I am wondering whether feminists are too busy picking first world fights while neglecting the minorities within minority communities. Like women within Muslim communities, who face a triple threat, who are discriminated from three different directions.

“One for being people of colour. Two, for being women within patriarchal communities that tell them they can’t work, or they can’t leave the home, or they have to submit to arranged marriages, or FGM, or any other form of oppression.

“And three, because they are Muslim, they’re also suspected by the outside world. The triple threat that women within Muslim communities face is heavy as a burden.

“And I think feminists are too busy picking first world fights while under their noses, within their own country, things like this are happening.”

Nawaz is of course correct; you won’t find mention of this incident in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Jezebel, or Everyday Feminism. No, those sites are devoted to glorifying the hijab, the very symbol of this kind of oppression (see here and here, for instance). You’ll find this news only on the conservative websites and British tabloids, like the Sun, the Daily Fail, Breitbart and Heat Street. Such is the unholy agreement between true liberals and bigoted conservatives. But even conservatives can be right about things, even if for the wrong reasons.

Some people say, “There’s no such thing as the Regressive Left. It’s a fiction—a strawman.” It isn’t.  The Regressive Left are those who refuse to condemn the oppression of women when it’s done by Muslims. That’s regressive by any definition, for it takes us back to the bad old days when women were considered second-class citizens and their opportunities were limited. You would think that feminists, especially in Britain, would decry this kind of oppression: amidst their own struggles and protestations of victimhood, that they could spare a word or two for their Muslim sisters. If a woman can wear what she wants, shouldn’t she be able to dance if she wants? And if she does, she shouldn’t get death threats, shouldn’t be vilified, shouldn’t be forced to apologize in tears and promise to repent. Isn’t that behavior that feminists should call out? But we know why they don’t.

One person who did is Maryam Namazie, spokesperson for Iran Solidarity, One Law for All and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.