In conclusion: Men. It is men who are more likely to be victims of violent crimes, particularly from strangers; AND men are far more likely to be the perpetrators of those crimes. So if we want to really address these problems, men need chaperones and curfews, not women.
I just want to add to this that the research on psychopathy ties into this. Psychopaths as a group are more likely to kill or attack people impulsively and they are also more likely to attack males than other violent offenders. So that's one reason behind the numbers.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
The Dissolve, home of refugee AV Club film writers, has been getting some attention for it's list of questions to ask of your Strong Female Character. Some of them get redundant about the middle of the list, but I'm particularly fond of this one.
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Could your Strong Female Character be seamlessly replaced with a floor lamp with some useful information written on it to help a male hero?
All of this has gotten me thinking of Maleficent again. Which maybe I should move to the movie thread but I think it fits here. Is Maleficent a reverse Bechdel film? The only conversation the old king has with other men is telling them to go kill Maleficent. I think the only conversations King Stefan has are about fortifying against her.
Also, as I was reading that list of Strong Female Character traits, I started to think that Stefan only exists as a one-note obstacle for Maleficent to overcome in her development. The crow, and forgive me for forgetting his name, clearly and deliberately fits this portion of the list, "Basically, does she only exist to service the male hero’s needs, development, or motivations?" So, rape metaphor aside, Maleficent really is the most woman-friendly film I've seen in ages. It completely flips the script, with the women having all the best bits, being the ones to grow and develop and even the meta-script of being the big stars.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I gotta say, though, I love this the most. You can see how young some of the girls everyone's talking about are, and you can also see how effortlessly these baby faced children dismantle the arguments of the shitty parents and administrators.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it was braless teenage girls in hotpants that kept me in high school. They weren't a distraction, the were the attraction that kept me coming back to school day after day.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I don't think anyone yet mentioned the story of Cambodian anti-sex trafficking activist Somaly Mam, who has been determined to have completely fabricated significant portions of her background. I was distracted at the time because, if memory serves, the Isla Vista shooting had just occurred and I was too busy gathering up links about that, but it's worth discussing. Melissa Gira Grant has a discussion of the story, as does Lawyers, Guns & Money.
It's worth pointing out that a lot of women in the third world actually want to be doing sex work. This should probably be obvious, but it often gets lost in the patriarchal assumptions that everyone who does sex work must be psychologically damaged or being forced into it or something else horrible. The simple fact is that most of these women have choices between working in sweatshops for shitty pay or being sex workers, which often pays a living wage and is probably on the whole a lot more pleasant. The fact that companies like Nike with horrible labour rights records have underwritten foundations like Kristof and Mam's has not gone unnoticed:
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Most women in Cambodia live under conditions of poverty and desperation, and the garment industry’s insistent refusal to meet living-wage standards ensures this will continue for some time. Still, garment workers know an entire international trade system relies on their willing participation, which was how they built such a strong showing in the last elections. The big brands know it too, which is why the Nike Foundation funds Half the Sky — as do other multinationals that both enforce, and rely on, women’s desperate poverty around the world.
What anti-trafficking NGOs are saving women from, in other words, is a life outside the international garment trade, which, according to folks who sell us our clothes, is no kind of life at all — even though folks in those jobs tell me they can barely survive. About one-seventh of the world’s population of women works in the garment industry, which very rarely pays more than half a living wage (including to folks who work fast fashion retail in U.S. urban centers). This helps keep women in poverty around the globe.
In short, anti-trafficking organizations tend to be against all sex work, not just trafficking (forced sex work) and when they report global numbers for sex trafficking, which tend to conflate consenting sex work with forced, their statistics reflect this.
What harm has this caused? When consenting sex workers are arrested or “rescued,” their children suffer. With their mothers gone and no money or food coming in, they must find work, even though they are children. Anyone who has spent time in Cambodia is well aware of children wandering through tourist areas begging and selling trinkets for money.
(Much of this I've discovered via comments at LGM).
None of this to say that sex trafficking isn't a serious problem, but some of the people crusading against it are doing more harm than good.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
This is sadly pretty common with the Anti-sex-work groups. Most are anti-women hiding behind "think of the children" claims of forced child prostitution (which does happen and is almost never actually targeted by these groups). While the news loves to report on the police "saving" women from prostitution, they almost never mention that they are "saved" by being arrested, processed and spit back out on the street with zero real help. The idea being that now that they are in the system, they will be forced into a new line of work.
Here in SF there have been at least two sex-work related scandals recently. In one a women known as the "cupcake lady" claimed to provide assistance to sex workers, like jobs, housing, money etc. and would lure sex-workers to her with cupcakes and promises. She gained attention for her selfless acts and her non-profit raked in donations for sex workers... which she then embezzled. As far as many sex-workers have reported they saw none of the donations beyond a smile and a cupcake. A few months ago after an audit her non-profit collapse and she fled the area. Sweet Nothings: A Crusade to Help Sex Workers Crumbles | SF Weekly
In another case, NCSF (National Center for Sexual Freedom) has doubled down on protecting rapists and abusers while trying to silence victims because admitting sexual assault exists will hurt their cause of getting donations and butting into court cases where they aren't wanted.
Can one of you lovely people explain to me the pro side of trigger warnings? I have a draft resolution against them that will be discussed at ALA Conference. I knew a little of the controversy from postings here, but I'd like to be clearer on my thinking before heading into my meetings.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
The pro-side is well, a warning of what you are writing about might be a trigger to the readers kind of like rating systems are supposed to tell you what things you might expect in a movie. The slightly more complex version is that they acknowledge that different people have different experiences and thus different things that bother them and that as the writer you are mindful of their different experiences, acknowledge that they actually do happen and care enough to give them a heads up to allow them more control over what they consume and when.
I'm kinda interested in hearing the arguments against them, in part because I get the feeling it's some variation of "we didn't do that in my day, so I don't like it!"
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"There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian."(Murray N.Rothbard)
"Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue."(Ayn Rand)
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"(Margaret Thatcher)
Well, I am not allowed to disseminate the draft because it's just a draft and might not be adopted. The gist is that providing them in classrooms prioritizes possible discomfort over intellectual freedom and challenge. Also, real PTSD should be addressed by medical professionals and dealt with through accommodations like any other disability rather than general warnings. Also, and I don't know how accurate this is, by being alerted to the possible triggering event, readers may focus only on that and ignore other important factors in the text.
This is strictly dealing with having them in the classroom, by the way. And, for the record, the ALA is also opposed to ratings. I also reviewed proposed wording changes to that document today, so it's fresh in my mind.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Interesting, I can kinda see them causing students to focus more on the warned items (although in the case of adopting it as a rule I would like to see actual studies that bare that out). The idea of impeding intellectual freedom is bogus as a warning in no way prevents the reader from reading and the only freedom it prioritizes over is the 'freedom' to purposefully discomfort sensitive individuals. It could also be argued that a lack of warning in clearly triggering text prioritizes inexperienced privileged (*cough* white male) readers over those with negative world experience, which are a group that are already prioritizes as a general rule in society. Thus warnings are leveling the playing field. IMO warnings go beyond basic clinical things like PTSD to general mental preparedness. As an example, say some evil test requires the reading of a rape scene before answering questions because rape scenes are almost always male against female it is prioritizing the male test takers who will breeze through the reading compared to the female test takers who may be even slightly shocked or dare I say emotionally triggered which could then cause them to stumble on the test more often than males. At the very least a trigger warning could reduce this stumble, again leveling the field, not prioritizing one group over another.
Generally, the arguments I've seen fall along the lines that certain types of triggers are common enough, in people both diagnosed and undiagnosed with PTSD, and the effects severe enough, that they merit a general warning. I too read the type of blogs and forums where trigger warnings have gotten ridiculously out of control, such that you get trigger warnings for things like 'slavery' and 'derogatory language.' However, when they're limited to a few common types of trigger such as rape and suicide, they just serve as warnings for students who want to either avoid that material or prepare themselves.
In that sense, they're actually sort of a prophylactic against censorship, as they acknowledge that that sort of material does have a place in the classroom.
AML: lol u r not smart and do not read good. Do not pass reddit. Do not collect $200.
One point I do like from some of the anti-trigger warning pieces I've read is the concern that universities will use this as a band-aid solution to claim they are addressing sexual assault and discrimination rather than actually doing something to stop it. I'm cynical enough to think that's pretty likely.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
As opposed to what colleges and universities are doing now to combat sexual assault and discrimination?
Honestly, the anti-trigger warning arguments are generally specious, and often boil down to "I'm not bothered by it, so you shouldn't be either". The claim that it will lead to censorship is an absurd one because if you know enough to put a trigger warning on a syllabus or book, then you already know enough to ban the book if banning it were the end goal. It's not like Jude the Obscure, for example, would be passed by ignorant censors who have no clue that it's triggering for suicide unless there were a sticker to tell them. It's a paranoid flight of fancy unless you think there's already a major movement afoot to censor books, but all the calls from censorship usually come from the far-right wackaloons who couldn't care less about whether a book is triggering.
Also, real PTSD should be addressed by medical professionals and dealt with through accommodations like any other disability rather than general warnings.
Because the onus should always be on survivors to inform the powers that be of their circumstances and beg for special dispensations.
I would suggest being very skeptical of this argument and asking which mental health professionals (not merely "medical" non-specialists) were consulted and what their advice was.
People with mental health issues have the right to choose their treatment or lack thereof, and who they disclose highly personal and potentially stigmatising information to.
As opposed to what colleges and universities are doing now to combat sexual assault and discrimination?
Honestly, the anti-trigger warning arguments are generally specious, and often boil down to "I'm not bothered by it, so you shouldn't be either". The claim that it will lead to censorship is an absurd one because if you know enough to put a trigger warning on a syllabus or book, then you already know enough to ban the book if banning it were the end goal. It's not like Jude the Obscure, for example, would be passed by ignorant censors who have no clue that it's triggering for suicide unless there were a sticker to tell them. It's a paranoid flight of fancy unless you think there's already a major movement afoot to censor books, but all the calls from censorship usually come from the far-right wackaloons who couldn't care less about whether a book is triggering.
Pretty much this. Rape victims, as far as I know, have PTSD at rates similar to, if not greater than, combat veterans. PTSD is reliving the experience, not "remembering" it.
For mental health issues - is it really so hard to believe that reading a text from the point of view of a suicidal character might trigger an actual suicidal person?
"I'm not bothered by it, so you shouldn't be bothered by it either. Trigger warnings are for sissies" is generally what it boils down to. YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE STFU. Why is the onus on the victim of whatever? It takes approximately two seconds for a professor (or whatever) to say that "this text might be triggering to victims of sexual violence." Triggering is RELIVING. As if it was happening all over again. If you're not bothered by the idea of possibly causing mental harm, you are a dick. <--speaking generally here.
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Last edited by Anastasia Beaverhausen; 06-27-2014 at 08:55 AM.
Everyone is confused about Flappers.
An interesting post by a vintage clothing shop owner. The Misconception about Flappers | concettascloset
What everyone thinks a Flapper looks like,
What Flappers really looked like,
In other words, what started as women saying 'fuck you I'ma do my own thing' to the establishment became a sexy costume to match what men wanted.
Re: Return to Gender 101
Linear Mode
