From the amazing blog Cake Wrecks, which I found via this F-Word post, recommended by Stoat. Lots of good use-mention stuff in there for my fellow nerds out there, too. (And of course some pretty amazing objectification examples, and well, lots of others.)
Wow. H/T Hilde Lindemann on the FEAST mailing list.
“He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word,” she earlier told the court. “I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.”
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.
Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.
According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.
Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.
To hold the judge’s view, you’d have to think (among other things) that no woman would willingly have sex with a man. One can only surmise that, rather unsurprisingly, this has been his experience.
Those who know me might be surprised to learn that I have a delightful calendar showing topless ‘glamour’ models on my kitchen wall. What, they might wonder, is a self-proclaimed feminist doing with such offensive material on public display? Well, my friends, it was a present from my partner, who was gobsmacked to discover the local builders merchants giving them away, and thought I might be amused. In a grim, ironic sort of way. I put it in the kitchen to remind me that Building Stuff is for Men. Real Men. With red blood and lots of testosterone*, who like looking at pictures of naked, oiled-up, surgically-enhanced ladies. Don’t you forget it.
*Actually, women have red blood and testosterone too. So do men who aren’t into naked glamour models.
Feminists say that sexual harassment in academia is underreported, but do we know it is?
I do not know if rigorous research on this issue has been done, but Nature reports today on scientific research integrity and some of the lessons revealed suggest something we feminists have long know: whistle-blowers can have a very tough time. Scientific misconduct and sexual harrassment are very different, but the report suggests academic cultures do not encourage the reporting of bad news and they can fail miserably in self-regulation.
First of all, the conclusion:
Nearly one generation after the effort to reduce misconduct in science began, the responses by NIH scientists suggests [sic] that falsified and fabricated research records, publications, dissertations and grant applications are much more prevalent than has been suspected to date. Our study calls into question the effectiveness of self-regulation. We hope it will lead individuals and institutions to evaluate their commitment to research integrity.
And one of the researchers’ recommendation described against a background of concealment:
Protect whistleblowers
Careful attention must be paid to the creation and dissemination of measures to protect whistleblowers. Responders to our survey said that reporting would be most likely to improve if institutions and the federal government increased the whistleblower protection. Indeed, more than two-thirds of whistleblowers, in a Research Triangle Institute study, experienced at least one negative outcome as a direct result of their actions. Plus, 43% reported that institutions encouraged them to drop the allegation.
The article is fully available online.
This was posted a few hours ago with the associated press:
Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday that it has uncovered evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of peacekeepers and international aid workers in war zones and disaster areas.
The report said more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of coerced sex and improper sexual touching, and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.In some cases, children as young as 6 years old were abused, the report said.
The study is based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year in three places with a substantial international aid presence: southern Sudan, Haiti, and Ivory Coast. The group said it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to prove that the problem is severe.
“The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward,” Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television News. “A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It’s despicable.”
…
The threat of retaliation and the stigma attached to sex abuse were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.
Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to quantify rates of child abuse, said the report does not produce comprehensive, statistical data about sexual abuse.
She said the topic is so taboo that it is virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers, but she said the new report provides a useful starting point.
“Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it’s not something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel terrible shame and are afraid to say what’s happened to them,” she said. “Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would say this report is probably true. They’ve gone about it as sensitively as you can.”
…
U.N. officials in New York said the study shows the effort to combat sexual abuse is falling short.
…
Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at London’s Chatham House, said there is no “magic bullet” that can solve the problem quickly.
He said the United Nations is beset by a number of bureaucratic and legal problems when it comes to investigating abuses committed by peacekeepers.
“The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states,” he said…
The felt shame is such a common reaction to abuse, and it is something seemingly nearly incomprehensible to too many people making decisions in legal and related contexts.
Thought those days of being sacked because you were pregnant were long gone? Think again. A new report on sexism in the workplace revealed that over 30,000 women each year lose their jobs because they become pregnant. The report also reveals that 18 per cent of sex discrimination awards are for sexual harassment, two-thirds of low paid workers are women, and that women working full-time are paid on average 17% less than men. Here’s the Guardian article.
Rest assured that you can now have your taser in leopard print:
And if you’d like music to drown out the sounds of pain you are causing, what better than the Taser Music Player holster?
Or maybe the Tampon Taser is still your choice?
We’re grateful to Slate Magazine for keeping us up to date on our personal protection devices. The pictures are from the Taser Company.
UPDATE: A letter today to SWIP-L calls attention to this article, which is about the use of tasers and other security measures on US ‘homeland security campuses.’
One of our blog readers in Australia, Roz, drew our attention to this and this. At the recent Summernats car festival in Canberra, a drunken mob of between 100 and 200 men roamed around yelling “rubber or tits” and generally harrassing women to show their breasts. (There’s a picture link on the second web-page where you can see pictures, including a young guy and his frightened girlfriend surrounded by men heckling him when he tried to defend her).This whole thing is, I think, obviously pretty distasteful - a family event with pre-printed “get your tits out” banners. But in some ways, the stunted neanderthal sexuality that surrounds this kind of car rally, with its accompanying machismo and its love of large breasted “spokesmodels” is, sadly, mundane. Worrying, however is the fact that the mob harrasment of women - whether they tried to laugh it off or not - drew no response from the police. Absolutley zip. The ACT Police Minister, Simon Corbell, suggested that organisers declined police help. Nonetheless, police were on hand to issue 500 or so traffic tickets. This must have been a daunting and even terrifying experience, and the lack of police response is pretty poor. The organisers, of course, saw no real issue describing the mob as “a happy crowd” and seemed content that no police action was required since there had been “no official reports of damage” (clearly missing what seems to be the main worry - the harrassment and abuse). More worrying from my point of view though is that the Police Minister seems impervious to the thought that the police should have done anything, or could do anything in the future - from his point of view, the sexual harrasment simply “highlights the need for Summernats organisers to continue to improve the environment at Summernats so it is a tolerant and respectful environment.” That’s right, its down to the organisers.So why do I think the police should have done something to protect women from this? Well, Australia certainly has an image as a “macho society”, and some statistics bear out the thought that being a women there is not an altogther easy experience. For instance, a recent study at Griffiths University suggests that as many as 45% of women between the ages of 18 and 41 were the victims of child sex abuse (see here for a news report). Of course, child sex abuse isn’t precisely the same as abuse of women, but as the authors of the report point out, the trauma follows these children into woman-hood and victims suffer divorce and domestic abuse at twice the rate of the general population.Similarly, according to a 2002 International Violence Against Women Study, 1 in 3 Australian women have been subjected to sexual or physical violence from a partner, and 1 in 5 have experienced some form of sexual violence. A 2003 study from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commision found that 28% of women had been sexually harrassed in the work place. And speaking of the work place, women in full time employment earn 16% less than male counterparts, and in part time work, 34% less. There is no legislated paid maternity leave system, and only a third of pregnant women manage to take some form of paid maternity leave. I could go on, but you see the point.This alone makes the police inaction at the Summernats rally all the more pressing. However, what’s worse is that the Australian police and legal system have recently come in for some criticism at their often baffling attitude to abuse against women, and if anything, they ought be trying to counteract that. For example, recently, between eight and twelve youths sexually assaulted, taunted, and abused an autistic girl, raping her, spitting and urinating on her and setting light to her hair whilst recording it for a DVD which they later sold around their schools in Melbourne for $5 a pop. Eight were tried, seven were convicted, non were given custodial sentences. It was generally felt that this might have been light and more than a little dismissive of the victim’s experiences. (see here). Similarly, (and as reported on this blog) a judge in Northern Queensland described the gang rape of a nine year old as “naughty” and suggested the girl may well have consented (see here ). Again, I could go on. The point is merely that the law seems to be failing to protect women and girls.Don’t get me wrong, sexism, abuse, and legal systems which are indifferent to victimised women are not peculiarly Australian. Neither is the kind of thing experienced at Summernats, but, given some context, maybe it seems obvious that police action was all the more pressing, and simply shrugging shoulders at “high spirited” bawdy rev-heads is the kind of thing which, perhaps unwittingly, sanctions a lot of sexism.
Abby O’Reilly of The F-Word has set up a new blog, Don’t Look Don’t Touch devoted to discussing women’s experiences of harassment in public places.
In December 2007 I wrote a post about an experience I had on the London underground. I was followed by a man at King’s Cross station, and although he did not physically or verbally attack me, he stalked and glared. We were surrounded by other commuters and it was the middle of the day, but he looked at me with such intensity that I was intimidated and scared.At first I dismissed the incident. Women get stared at everyday, it was not a big deal. I thought I’d go home and forget about it, accepted it as nothing more than part of being a woman, and hoped that I wouldn’t feel discouraged from using the Tube alone again or at night. I didn’t plan to tell anyone else, thinking that no-one would care; if anything, I thought, they’d think I was over-reacting. Did this anonymous man reflect on his behaviour? It’s doubtful, why would he? He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. I was too nervous to tell him. If he had, would he have been so confident? It was then I realised that whether this is considered a common part of social interactions or not, it’s not right, and it needs to stop. There are a lot of issues affecting women in modern society, and although this may not be the most significant we need to realise that any form of intimidation is wrong, and however trivial we may feel a situation is, we should still feel able to speak out, and be taken seriously. This was why I chose to write about it.I received an overwhelming response to my post from other women in the UK and abroad, sharing their experiences of harassment in the public forum, be that on transport, in the professional environment or when walking home.
I like the idea of a forum for discussing these experiences. Among other things, it could be a very useful resource for both thinking about and teaching about sexual harassment. There are really difficult issues to be had here. ‘Staring’ and ‘looking’ are really problematic terms to write into a sexual harassment code. Whether or not a look is a harassing one seems a deeply subjective thing. That leads one to think it’s crazy to try to regulate it. And yet most of us know from first-hand experience what it feels like to get the sort of look in question, and when we reflect on that it seems clear we’ve got to take it really seriously, and recognise its potential for intimidation. Anyway, excellent food for thought.
Presenting Negro Scenes Drawn Upon My Passage
Through the South and
Reconfigured for the Benefit of
Enlightened Audiences Wherever Such May
Be Found,
By Myself, Missus K.E.B. Walker,
Colored
January 12 – February 23, 1997
Picture and Text from The Renaissance Society, the University of Chicago.
Walker has an exhibit at the Whitney, in NYC, through Feb. 3. The art is often beautiful despite its exceptional portrayal of very ugly racist and sexist stereotypes. The picture above was intentionally chosen (at least in this context) to leave to readers the decision of whether to view some profoundly challenging work. Thus:
Walker’s work is often said to appropriate and subvert stereotypes, but that might be a little misleading. She herself at least at times takes her art to present stereotypes as they infect us all. She is quoted by Newsday as saying, “I want people to respond and to be aware that if a goody-two-shoes like me can have all of this going on her head, then nobody’s safe.”
She has been very controversial; though she has been awarded a McCarthur “genius” award, she was sharply criticized by some African Americans as promulgating negative stereotypes, perhaps even to get money from bigots. Her comments on presenting positive images of black people are again quoted by Newsday:
Walker, for her part, questioned the very notion of a positive black image: “Every image produced of ‘us’ is mediated - filtered through the grounds of years of misrepresentation, bitterness and suspicion,” she scrawled on one of the beautifully illustrated diary pages on display at the Whitney. She doesn’t think it’s possible to mold new, untainted forms. We can only deconstruct those that already exist and uncover their ongoing corruption.
She’s a feminist you might want to know more about.
1. On punishing the victim: Saudi King Abdullah has pardoned the woman who was gang raped 14 times, in a Wonderland case where it is one crime for a woman to be alone with a male non-family member and another one to protest a harsh sentencing.
2. On consent of ten year old to sex with nine: Nine young men who confessed to having sex with a ten years old were allowed to walk free since the prosecutor decided that it was probably consensual. That prosecutor has now been suspended.
More on both stories at Ms’s Feminist Daily Wire.
Brownfemipower has a powerful post comparing the feminist energy devoted to the porn industry with the lack of feminist energy devoted to the farm industry.
I know that there’s more than one way to get fucked.And I only hope there will be a time when feminists fight for thirty years about the best way to end violence against farmworkers.
A vending machine disguise, by the brilliant Aya Tsukioka. Unfortunately, the accompanying NYT article can’t quite make up its mind whether this is art or one of those crazy things that those wacky Japanese get up to. Thanks for the tip, Kate!
Now that the Carnival’s over, I’m of course finding things I wish I could have put in it!
Top on that list is a really impressive brand new blog that I’d like to have told you about, Girl Sailor. It’s written by a female ensign on active duty in the US Navy. Only 2 posts so far, but both excellent. There’s one here about ‘coming out’ as a feminist in the navy, after an evangelical upbringing; and another here about why, despite his important role in giving Democrats the Senate, feminists should really not be so keen on Jim Webb (former Navy Secretary).
Next on the list is one that actually couldn’t have been in the Carnival, since it’s a response to the Carnival! Rachel McKinney has written an excellent post on ‘gray rape’, that raises lots of interesting epistemological and language-related issues.
Now I shall attempt to get myself out of that Carnival frame of mind and resume more normal service.
So I mentioned this in comments, but I think it’s worth a post of its own: the Sun reports on the televised bum-pinching incident, in which Ch4 news reporter Sue Turton was sexually assaulted by a passer by.
The article by Zalesne talks of the way that ‘the press reinforces the notion that the whole idea of sexual harassment is silly’. She claims that one way in which they do this is report, inaccurately, about cases in which seemingly small or silly offences (an inappropriate joke, a slightly raunchy picture) have been, via sexual harassment law, punished seriously; cases in which the law has been used by employees to get back at their employers, and so on.
Here’s an example which doesn’t quite fit the models of media reporting she offers, but is clearly a case of the press failing to take sexual harassment seriously: the Sun report has a tone which suggests the whole matter is just hilarious. They provide a ‘bum pinch’ video of their own, and a ‘Pre-rumptial agreement’, which one can get would-be pinchees to sign so as to avoid standing accused of harassment. Ok, so it’s not like you’d expect great reporting on this from the Sun, but this is just depressing.
Interestingly selective reporting (admittedly, I’m making something of an inferential leap here) from the Sun: note that most of the comments that they include in the main article are mostly pro-bum-pinching, e.g.:
‘I didn’t see the news reporter who got her bum pinched but it sounds to me she shouldn’t get so upset. These things are just a bit of fun most of the time.’
But then if you scroll down to the comments section, some of the attitudes expressed there are much more critical.
That’s what the headline says. But it’s actually not that at all. A man with a pattern of cycling up to women he doesn’t know, grabbing their bottoms, and hurling abuse at them has been banned from approaching women he doesn’t know, in the open air, unless he has good reason for it. But you can bet this story will get reported as something much more dramatic, based on the headline, and used as an example of feminism gone mad. This sort of sloppy reporting (and headline writing) has played a really important role in convincing people that laws against sexual harassment are ridiculously restrictive. (For more on that, see this excellent article by Deborah Zalesne.)
From The F-Word, I’ve learned of an interesting campaign:
Based on similar campaigns in India we are launching an “I DID NOT ASK FOR IT UK” campaign. We are asking women to send us garments they were wearing when they were sexually harassed, in any way. We would like you to add the message “I Did Not Ask For It” to the garment, sew it onto a tee-shirt or marker pen it onto a pair of jeans, embroider it onto a dress or boiler suit… Or draw, paint or digitise the message “I Did Not Ask For It” and then pin the drawing onto your chosen garment, photograph it and send it to us at our e.mail address or send with a comment to our myspace. Feel free to add other messages of your choice, be as creative as possible.We are going to make the pictures and garments into a washing line exhibition of art. The washing line will contain all types of clothing, therefore illustrating that sexual harrassment has nothing to do with what we wear, and everything to do with male power. From boiler suits and baggy jumpers to short skirts, this exhibition will say loud and clear that whatever we wear, we do not ask for sexual harassment. The washing line will march with us on this year’s Reclaim The Night march 07 and will then be exhibited at our rally. It will then appear at various other exhibitions across the UK and it will grow and grow. At the moment we are working on getting a po box or friendly postal address for women to send garments and designs in to us. Watch this space and see our website.LFN website here, MySpace here, email address londonfeminist@yahoo.co.uk.
Women who are harassed often feel silenced and unable to respond, and this offers a way to give them a voice. Hopefully, it will also get some press and help to communicate the important message that we’re not sending coded “harass me” messages with our choice of outfits. Another great way of speaking out is of course the old favorite Holla Back.Lots of interesting stuff on harassment today, actually. Feministing discusses some here: a woman’s diary of her harassment and what she was wearing, interviews with street harassers, and much more. It sounds a bit like nobody comes off too well (the woman sounds pretty racist and blames this on her harassment experiences), but still interesting.
The NSPCC and Sugar magazine have conducted an online survey on teenage girls unwanted sexual experiences. I can’t find the survey details (they were printed in Sugar magazine last week) but the NSPCC press release with details is here. Highlights (if you could call them that) are:
45% of teenage girls have had their bottoms or breasts groped against their will.
56% of unwanted sexual experiences occurred for the first time when the recipient was under (yes under) 14. (30% aged 12 or under, 26% aged 13).
44% were made to feel guilty for saying ‘no’.
Check out the rest of the statistics, including 51% felt as though the incident was at least partly their fault, and 7% thought there were some reasons for forcing a girl.
Anyway, I thought this was interesting because I find that students often respond to articles about sexual harassment or the silencing effect of pornography etc, by saying “well, girls are more assertive and in control nowadays, this article was probably right in the seventies, but things are different now”. Indeed, I’ve heard students raise the age of the statistics used by Rae Langton in “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts” as a reason for maybe rejecting Langton’s argument. If this survey is right, “no” isn’t any closer to meaning no now than it was twenty or thirty years ago.
Ann at Feministing has a nice discussion of a really interesting sounding study, which seems to show that sexual harassment (at least in certain settings) is caused more by non-conformity to gender stereotypes than by sexual attraction. This fits most obviously with a stereotype approach to sexual harassment, but can be accommodated by the dominance approach as well (and perhaps by the difference approach, with sufficient care). For more on these approaches, a nice overview can be found in Crouch’s _Thinking About Sexual Harassment_ (OUP 2001).
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