Seeing women like objects

Apropos our earlier post regarding what it would be like if every Olympic sport were photographed like beach volleyball, some new findings from social psychology:

‘Local processing underlies the way we think about objects: houses, cars and so on. But global processing should prevent us from that when it comes to people,’ Gervais said. ‘We don’t break people down to their parts — except when it comes to women, which is really striking. Women were perceived in the same ways that objects are viewed.’

In one experiment, women’s (and not men’s) sexual body parts were actually recognized better when presented in isolation rather than in the context of an entire body.

Science Daily piece here, and study abstract here.

Reviews of Bic for Her

Beautiful.

Wow!! Where do I start?! I just can’t believe that I somehow managed to get by my whole life using boy-coloured pens which are made for boy hands! The BIC For Her Amber Medium Ballpoint Pen (in pink) has made such a difference to my life. Just last week I had to sign my name, but I had one of those regular boy pens, and I got all the letters muddled up and they weren’t even all on the page! LOLs! But when I tried writing my name today it was just incredible!!! All the letters were in the right order, The first letter was bigger and capitalised, they sat neatly on the line on the page, and they all fitted on the page! It took me a whole 12 minutes less too, and now I can dedicate all this spare time to cooking, hoovering, ironing, and vajazzling my noo-nah *giggles*.

Oooh a really cool thing that happened that I just must share with you all – I used to write the letter “m” all kind of jaggedy, like mountains that big strong boys climb, but now with the BIC For Her Amber Medium Ballpoint Pen (in pink), it’s more curvy, like my lady bosom. I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I am about that!

Thanks, R!

World Philosophy Congress

The World Philosophy Congress is happening next August in Athens. While feminist philosophers work in all areas of Philosophy, I’m posting to draw your attention in particular to Section 29 of the program, Philosophical Approaches to Gender. Papers are due October 1, 2012. See you in Athens!

The XXIII World Congress of Philosophy (WCP 2013)
August 4 (Sunday) – August 10 (Saturday) 2013
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Philosophy

English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Greek

www.wcp2013.gr

Our Bodies Our Selves: In need of help!

First, the good news: the feminist classic has been listed as one of 88 books that shaped America by the Library of Congress.

Now the bad news. They’re facing financial difficulties, and as a result have got in touch with us to spread the word. They’ve got some fabulous campaigns going, like Our Bodies Our Votes. So please do consider giving them whatever help you can (which you can do here).

(Thanks, S!)