Put them in burkas

Seriously?

The latest statistics show that 29 per cent of men admitted being distracted by short skirts and low-cut tops in the Summer weather, leading to record numbers of accidents on the roads.

And according to car insurance company Sheilas' Wheels, the summer smash phenomenon is getting worse each year - in 2009 men made 16.4 per cent more claims during the Summer than in any other month.

Behavioural psychologist Donna Dawson explained: "Research shows that men are far more easily distracted behind the wheel than women.

"Men are more visually orientated and so distractions such as an attractive woman walking down the street can quickly take their attention away from driving and the job in hand.

Ah yes. If it's not those ''women drivers'' it's those ''women pedestrians.''

But what's this?

"Testosterone also plays a part, as it makes men more prone to aggression, especially when frustrated by a confined space such as a car - and men are quicker than women to expose such irritability in hot weather." 

Except, of course, if it's a woman's ''time of the month,'' of course.

Photo Credit: © Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GFDL

H/T Hysperia

Dear John

Found on Imageshack, via PopUrls:

Does God hate women?

I have to say I, like others, was somewhat underwhelmed by the book Does God Hate Women? which I'd been looking forward to reading since first blogging about it during the summer.

That despite its title being a question I have asked myself since being kicked out of Sunday school for not buying the lines about how women are supposed to behave.

This is not because its co-authors Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom seem obsessed by the grievous sins against women in many Islamic cultures.

Those are fair game, very fair game. There's nothing defensible about treating women like chattel, punishing them for being raped, marrying them off as children to old men, forbidding them from working or driving, restraining their movements, keeping them illiterate -- not to mention all those stoning, female genital mutilation and so-called honour killing horrors.

This is not to say that it's worse than say Christianity since Christianity has its own revolting record of witch-burnings, slavery, genocide in the Americas and such. It's just that Christianity managed to mostly climb out of the Dark Ages, eventually, although it took women's rights several more centuries to catch up.

As for the Catholic church, well, you know there's a reason why AIDS is the number one killer of women today, as reported by a just-published and sickening World Health Organization study (PDF). It doesn't help that the Vatican won't approve of condoms.

(And, as we saw last week, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops stuck its nose in the healthcare reform debate and had a major influence on its outcome: the effective end of government funding for abortion except in cases of rape and incest or to save the life of the living incubator unit.)

Which is why I was disappointed by the book. It doesn't mention much about the crimes against women committed -- still -- by the Church. And it barely touches on those whacked out fundamentalist outfits in North America.

But I liked the title.

So I picked up the phone and called Stangroom to get more from him.

Today's treeware effort was the result:

Does God Hate Women? is the bordering-on-inflammatory title of an examination of how religion and culture combine to control and oppress women – even unto the 21st century.

Co-authors Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, both editors at London-based The Philosophers' Magazine, are politically incorrect in their criticisms, which is why they received an "implicit death threat'' in the U.K. after a recent review.

I reached Stangroom at his home in Toronto. This is an edited version of our conversation.

Q: The book almost completely focuses on Islam: stonings, so-called honour killings, female genital mutilation. Why?

A: That isn't what we set out to do. We set out to look at how various religions treat women. We do talk about Catholicism, the fundamentalists, Mormons and so on. They were all originally developed within social structures that were patriarchal. But our judgment is that Islam has more negative things associated with it than any other religion at this time in history.

Q: You don't write much about the Catholic Church, nothing on contraception for example, nor on AIDS in Africa. You mention abortion, but only briefly.

A: Maybe we should have done. Our basic point is that religion, including Catholicism, makes a claim over a woman's body that not only is an imposition on individual freedom but it can also play out in ways that have horrific and tragic results for health.

Q: What about how religions define the roles of men and women?

A: Catholicism says that men and women are equal before God, but different.

Q: That's what feminism says!

A: But it's a different kind of different. The "equal in the eyes of God" – spiritually equal, of equal worth, but nevertheless different – turns out in religious terms to be who has final say and what the roles are within the family. Ultimately, what it comes down to is that the man decides. That's the common line in Islam and in Catholicism.

Q: One provocative chapter title is "Honour is Between the Legs of Women." It's not just  honour. It's the biggest battle ground in society. Take abortion, for example.

A: The religious rhetoric around the "unborn child'' is incredibly significant. Obviously, it suits the idea that only God has the power of life and death. The reason women may have a different perspective is because the intersection between self-interest and control of what happens to their own bodies undercuts the religious imperative. This is not the case with men. Women have a much more personal investment in this than men do.

Q: But religion goes beyond abortion, all the way to control of women's sexuality.

A: Yes, absolutely. The Darwinian view is that men don't want to expend energy looking after other men's children. Religion has been co-opted in the service in that evolutionary dynamic. That's one explanation. There's the Marxist perspective, which has to do with ensuring lines of descent. Basically, men are the owners of private property and they want to ensure they're not passing down their property to somebody else's children. The only way they can do that is by confining women and controlling their sexuality. So religion is used for that control.

Q: What is it about women that makes us so devoted to God although God may not be so devoted to us?

A: There are psychological benefits to belief and, I suspect that if you have those, together with the fact that people find it very hard to escape their cultural, political and social milieus, you probably have an explanation, even though, if you're looking from the outside, it seems so bizarre.

Q: Why would you even want to ask if God hates women?

A: It's a metaphor for "Does religion subjugate and, in various ways, denigrate women?" The obvious reason, if you look around historically and cross-culturally, is religion is implicated in an awful lot of stuff that would be considered to be horrendous. People don't talk about this because they don't want to be seen to be making judgments about other cultures.

But Ophelia and I are committed to universal values. We're not ashamed to say that some cultural practices are worse than others.

And neither am I, although the Muslim-bashers are constantly asking where the feminists are on these matters. That's just their own twisted way of denigrating women, but accusing feminists of not standing up for their own while these guys are trying to use the oppressed women of other places to advance their own political agendas.

As if they actually cared about women in these truly God-forsaken places...or anywhere else for that matter.

Someday my prince will come 2.0

Further to this, this:

Funny that none of them have names, not unlike Sex and the City's Mr. Big.

Ah yes. The perfect guy. Rich, famous, good-looking.

Strictly in fairy tales, of course.

Via reddit.

Cycle of Violence

November is Women Abuse Awareness Month in Canada, and already I am receiving news releases from social service agencies, police forces and community groups.(Note that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the US.)

Of course, men are occasionally the victims of violence by their partners but the latest statistics prove once again that women by far are the victims, and are at much greater risk of being killed or seriously injured by their partners.

True, 65 Ontario men died between 2002-2007 in domestic violence incidents -- but the vast majority killed themselves after killing their partners and, sometimes, their children.

The irony is that, as some UK research shows, men abuse more but women are more likely to be arrested.

Men were significantly more likely than women to use physical violence, threats, harassment and to damage the women’s property, while the women were more likely to damage their own. Men’s violence tended to create a context of fear and control, whereas women were more likely to use verbal abuse or some physical violence. However, women were more likely to use a weapon, although this was at times in order to stop further violence from their partners.

In terms of arrests, there were more arrests overall of men than of women. All cases with seven or more incidents, most of which involved men, led to arrest although women were three times more likely to be arrested. During the six-year period men were arrested once in every ten incidents and women arrested once in every three incidents.

Cases involving men as sole perpetrators were those most likely to result in intense fear and control of partners, while many cases where women were recorded as sole perpetrators were characterised by the police as the women being alcoholic or possibly as mentally ill.

Canadian spousal violence stats also show that women were more like to commit ''major assault'' than men but, given the absolute numbers, nearly three times as many women were victims of ''major assault'' than men.

With the current economic situation affecting so many jobs held by men, the risks for women are increased. Research indicate that men who are depressed are more likely to lash out, especially if their partners are leaving or threatening to leave them.

This is not a knock on men, although some readers will see it that way. I acknowledge that only a teeny tiny fraction of men in North America think it's acceptable to hit women and probably even fewer do. And sure, there have been many false charges of abuse. But that doesn't diminish the reality of the situation.

The truth is, violence against women should also be a men's issue. 

Ultimately, this would cause a shift in male culture such that some men’s sexist abuse of women and girls would be regarded – by other men -- not only as distasteful but as utterly unacceptable. In this new climate, individuals would be strongly discouraged from acting out in abusive ways because of the anticipated negative consequences: loss of respect, friends, and status, and greater likelihood of facing both legal and non-legal sanctions. In fact, if men’s violence against women truly carried a significant stigma in male culture, it is possible that most incidents of sexist abuse would never happen. This is because contrary to popular myth, the vast majority of boys and men who assault, harass and bully girls and women are not sociopaths. They are average guys. Many of them see the sexist treatment of women as normal. They behave toward women the way they think men are supposed to. If the example and the expectations of the men around them changed, they would be likely to adjust their behavior accordingly.

Which brings us to this harrowing story today:

A 15-year-old girl leaving early from the homecoming dance at Richmond High School was enticed into a darkened alley just off campus to hang out with as many as a dozen young men who were drinking.

When the girl joined in and became drunk herself, police say, the men attacked her.

One after another, as many as six men raped the girl, police said Monday. Others watched. For more than two hours, no one tried to stop the attacks, and no one called police.

"What's shocking about it is there were so many people willing to involve themselves in such a serious crime," police Lt. Mark Gagan said.

Equally shocking, he said, was "the number of people who witnessed it and who were in the area of it occurring who did not take steps to stop it, report it or help our victim."

Isn't there something really really wrong with the culture when 15 boys stand around and do nothing but gawk? How many of them had cell phones? How many of them could easily walked away and called 911?

And yes, usually when I raise these kinds of questions, my comments threads fill up with the usual suspects defending the indefensible. Or pretending there is no problem. Or blaming the victims.

Finally, just to show that I am an equal opportunity basher, I was surprised but not thrilled to see what Joan did to her boorish husband-rapist on the most recent episode of Mad Men. 

After Greg, or Dr. Blockhead as I've come to think of him, the thumb-fingered surgeon who wants to be a shrink, blows his psychiatry interview despite Joan's shrewd advice, he's breaks out his bottle of whine.

"Stop acting like you know everything. You don't know. You don't know what it's like to want something your whole life, and to plan for it and count on it and not get it."

Since she most definitely does, she bashes her very own Exhibit A over the head with a vase of flowers.

But I was disappointed for all the reasons Deeply Problematic outlined.

Joan has been a victim of this man's violence, and that complicates this act. What Joan did to Greg was nowhere near the same; Greg's act of violence and entitlement was one of the most horrific scenes of the entire series, barely approached by any other acts of violence or cruelty on the show. I can understand that urge to applaud her for kicking his ass - it's delayed justice. But she actually hasn't gotten justice from one awesome scene, and Joan being kickass doesn't mean that it's okay for her to be physically violent to Greg (outside of of self-defense, of course). And this is particularly striking and unsettling because of Mad Men's habit of ignoring this serious, contemporary (in the sense of 1960s and today) issue.

So, what else is new?

Consider: The YWCA just published a report Life Beyond Shelter which calls for the coordination of policies between all levels of government. It's available here.

As Dammit Janet! notes, it received little notice in the corporate media. That's because it wasn't about so-called ''honour killings.''

Woman abuse. Ho-hum. Old news.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: About that two hour-long gang rape of the San Francisco teen, read the comments here.

We're all waiting for the inevitable cell phone videos to turn up online.

I touch, u score?

Another one picked up at Sociological Images:

This one's about PepsiCo's iPhone/iTouch freebie app that advises users -- men-- on how to ''score'' with one of 24 types stereotypes of ''girls.''

You meet one of them, you classify her (cougar girl? political girl? women's studies girl? oooh and even twins girls!) and then you tap for tips on how to pick her up.

Oh but it gets better.

After you ''get lucky,'' you can add her to your ''Brag List'' and include her name, phone number and ''whatever details you remember.''

And then?

You got it? Flaunt it. keep your buddies in the loop on email, Facebook and Twitter.

Sure, broadcast the score.

And, while you're at it, add her name and number to the bathroom wall, why don't you?

As Gwen at Sociological Images notes,

Women as sex objects? Check. Depiction of sex/relationships as a game where it’s acceptable for men to manipulate women so they can “score” with them? Check. Stupidity? Check.

Oh and let's not forget the part where, as my mother used to put it, he ''adds a notch to his gun.''

According to NPR, Pepsi, which launched the app to promote a new energy drink aimed at young men, was mildly apologetic.

It seems like an odd mistake for a company like PepsiCo. It has a female CEO and major products like Quaker Oats and Tropicana orange juice that appeal to families and moms.

<SNIP>

On Tuesday, Pepsi sent out a tweet that said, "We apologize if it's in bad taste & appreciate [your] feedback." Many men on Twitter defended the humor of the app, and many women said they wouldn't be buying Pepsi products anytime soon.

PepsiCo did not respond to NPR's request for a comment.

The app is still available over at iTunes.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: How's this for meta?

I was just about to tweet this post when I found this, a Powerpoint slide show on this marketing campaign.

#PepsiFail fer shure.

And seriously, did Pepsi create that #PepsiFail tag?

Extreme menz

Via Sociological Images, this recent ad for Wrangler Jeans, part of the award-winning ''We are animals'' campaign.

It's message? ''Stop thinking'' 

Referring to how men, these days, are less likely than women to enroll and graduate from college, Lisa ar Sociological Images writes:

One theory for why involves an anti-intellectualism that is specifically male. That is, many men learn that to be a real man means rejecting prissy intellectual pursuits.Thinking is for chicks (and fags).

I think this ad goes a step beyond that. It reinforces the male stereotype of testosterone-charged pursuits and promotes the idea that real men should be out there bashing their brains in.

Which, I suppose, is one way to stop thinking.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: On a somewhat related note, looks like Toronto is going to be opening at least one boys-only public school.

"Boys thrive in environments that are hands-on and where there is opportunity to move around," he said, citing portable desks that let children be more mobile, and clipboards rather than notebooks so students feel less tied to a desk.

"When every bone in a boy's body says `Move!' we're (usually) saying `Sit down.'."

The Toronto board has a handful of single-sex classrooms and an all-girls high school for students at risk, but Spence wants to expand the model, which he promoted at two schools in Hamilton.

"Male teachers would be value-added," he said, citing the importance of male mentors for boys, particularly in communities where father figures are absent.

"They say a boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map," said Spence, who has pioneered mentoring programs for boys.

"One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school rests on a single question: does he have a man in his life to look up to?"

Bawdy blow

I don't often take on op-eds in rival papers but this one -- "Legalizing the purchase of women for sex won't make them safe'' -- just begged for a takedown. Authored by Janine Benedet of the University of British Columbia's law faculty, it is both misleading and inaccurate.

Right now, the sex trade is in the headlines because of the constitutional challenge to Canada's Criminal Code by three Ontario pros. Here's my take from yesterday -- and here's The Star's Rosie DiManno's coverage of the first day of the hearing.

Needless to say, we see it quite differently from most doctrinaire feminists.

So, anyway, Benedet...

Supporters of the prostitution industry want us to believe that women would be safe if men's purchase of women for sex is legalized.

Wrong. First off, they don't want the business ''legalized'' -- it already is legal -- but they want the right not to get killed while plying their trade. There's a distinction.

In the name of women's security, they are arguing in an Ontario court this week that male johns and pimps have a constitutional right to buy and sell women. 

Wrong again. They are arguing that they have a constituional right not to get killed on the job. They are arguing that, among other things, they should be able to have safe houses in which to operate, hire bodyguards and security or be able to put their live-in kids through school without their being busted for ''living off the avails,'' and that they be able to communicate with clients without getting into dangerous situations like some stranger's truck cab where they can be hauled off and murdered.

They are claiming that prostitution is women's work and that legalizing it would advance women's liberty. 

Wrong again again. There are male prostitutes too. And these guys have every right to do their thing as well without getting slaughtered, beaten up or busted for a legal act.

A closer look at the violent reality of prostitution exposes the utter fallacy of these claims.

First clause correct. Second clause, yes, well we just proved how fallacious they are, didn't we?

Now, obviously, Benedet, who writes from the murdered prostitutes capital of Canada, is much closer to the situation than I. So it's kind of strange that she spends the next 11 paragraphs on one isolated case without ever mentioning, oh, um, Robert Pickton.

Instead, she focuses on the recent conviction for second-degree murder of Andrew Evans, guilty of the 2007 killing of Nicole Parisien, 33, whom he hired via Craigslist.

It should be noted here that Parisien, like hundreds of other missing women in Canada, was aboriginal -- and that the Aboriginal Women's Action Network opposes decriminalization. (Read more here.) No question that most of these women would benefit far more from strategies that would keep them from harm from the moment they are conceived. Too many aboriginal women suffer from alcohol and abuse even before they have a choice in the matter.

But it does not seem that Parisien was one of these street women. Here's Benedet again:

Mr. Evans was by all accounts a regular guy – a former member of his university rugby team who had volunteered as a peer counsellor. But he was possessed of a sense of male sexual entitlement that led him to believe that he should be able to buy a woman who would meet his sexual demands and that she was worth so little that she could be physically assaulted when she failed to do so.

(And people accuse me of misandry?)

The guy was an alcoholic who admitted to heavily drinking plus taking drugs that night. This does not excuse him of course, particularly, as Benedet notes, Evans blamed his victim for his inability to sustain his erection.

That's why he blew up, beat and strangled her, wrapped up her body in the bedding, dragged it out of the apartment building through the rear and dumped it in the bushes.

Now, do you think Evans would have managed all that had there been some beefy security type standing outside the bedroom door? But that beefy security type is ILLEGAL because he (or she) would be ''living off the avails.''

Oh sure, as Benedet writes, there was a security camera, but was it monitored in such a way to do the victim any good?

Which brings us to her sloppy conclusion:

We need laws that support the abolition of prostitution rather than its normalization. But if the courts strike down the prostitution laws because they find that men have a Charter-protected right to buy women's bodies, it will become much more difficult for Parliament to enact a law that recognizes prostitution as fundamentally contrary to women's equality.

Yeah. because prostitution is a declining business we can legislate away. Because clients should have a Charter-protected right to beat and kill women -- which is how the law is now structured. Because we need laws to tell us how to manage our bodies without giving us the right to protect ourselves from those who want to destroy our bodies.

Oh lady.

Give us a break.

Like father, like son

The guy emailed a few minutes ago to tell me that, during the east coast feed of Jeopardy, he saw an ad urging fathers to show their sons how to respect women. (Click here for Quicktime video.) He says he was ''floored'' by how good it is, and how it gets its message across so simply. 

It's part of a campaign by Newfoundland and Labrador which is the only Canadian jurisdiction where spousal violence  is increasing.

That's why it is investing $12 million in an education campaign to raise awareness of violence against women, show how to get help, how to help victims and, most important, what it means to be a respectful man and boy.

The website acknowledges that women can also be abusive -- but it recognizes that there is a huge disparity in the frequency and severity of that violence.

Which, cough cough cough, some regular readers here never do.

Walk a mile in her shoes

The other day, I posted about men who want to help prevent violence against women.

Since then, there's been yet another femicide in the GTA.

Well guys, it's time to step up.

If you can.

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes from Walk A Mile Toronto on Vimeo.

Heh.

This fall, thousands of men will take over the city’s business core in high-heeled shoes to raise awareness – and funds – for the White Ribbon Campaign: the world’s largest effort of men working to end violence against women. 

On Thursday, October 1st 2009, from noon to 2 p.m. at Nathan Phillips Square, men will participate in Walk a Mile in her Shoes®; an event during which men will literally walk one mile in women’s shoes. It's not an easy feat, but it’s a fun way to get people talking about something that’s often difficult to discuss: gender relations and sexual violence.

“We know that 75% of Canadian men feel it is important that men speak out about violence against women,” says Todd Minerson, Executive Director of the White Ribbon Campaign. “The Walk gives men the opportunity to do just that”. 

But the Walk isn’t limited to men alone. Men, women and kids can register online to take part at www.walkamiletoronto.org. 

If you can't do it -- either because you have neither the time nor the tootsies -- please volunteer, donate or sponsor!