Claire Danes Running, and Sexism

A link to a cool pictorial article here at the blog Buzzfeed, originally from the feminist blog called Vagenda, which dismantles 13 media headlines/captions that demean women....and offers an improved version of the offending headline.

Caution.  If drinking coffee, you are likely to blow it out your nose.

I like all the items--well, not actually like, but rather, am amused while at the same time being infuriated.  It was #13 particularly tickled me, as a fan of Claire Danes in the TV show Homeland.  The Vagenda comment:

Is she ‘displaying her fit figure’, or is she just running?

[image credit Buzzfeed]

If the image and captions are a bit to too small to see, the original stupid caption on the left says:

Catch Carrie if you can! Homeland star Claire Danes displays her fit figure in tight exercise gear as she sweats it out during a grueling run.

The improved caption on the right says:

Woman runs in appropriate exercise clothing.

I can't add anything to this, other than this public service announcement:

Guys, despite photos and captions like that above, reminder that woman do not exist upon the earth to only serve as your eye candy.

Women in the Olympics: Separate and Unequal...and Ultrarunning

This is worse than I thought.  It's morally and physically egregious, and is solely a sad and disgusting legacy of our male-dominated society.  Via Slate, here:

On Tuesday [11 Feb 2014], Germany's Carina Vogt became the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in ski jumping. Ninety years after men jumped at the inaugural Winter Games in Chamonix—and five years after female jumpers unsuccessfully sued the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the right to join them—women were finally allowed to jump from the same hill that men do. Except that the men are also allowed to jump from a bigger hill. And then teams of four men can all jump off the big hill together. Women still aren’t allowed to do that stuff.

Now that ski jumping has gone (partially) co-ed, only one winter Olympic sport still completely bars women from competition. (That’s the Nordic Combined, which incorporates both a ski jump and a 10 kilometer cross-country race.) But across Sochi,women are still skiing shorter distances, launching from more diminutive hills, and competing on teams of smaller sizes. In cross-country skiing, men can race up to 50 km, but the female courses top out at 30 km. The women’s long-track speedskating event is 5,000 meters, half that of the men’s race. Distances in the women’s biathlon are similarly stunted. Though female bobsledders made their Olympic debut in 2002, they’re still limited to a two-person contest, while male bobsledders compete in a four-man race as well. And while women have been luging in the Olympics since 1964, there’s still no doubles event to match the men’s.

Let me pull out one quote above--and, by the way, PLEASE go and read the whole Slate article:

In cross-country skiing, men can race up to 50 km, but the female courses top out at 30 km.

In Ultrarunning, the "women's barrier" was shattered long ago.  I don't know of any sentient Ultrarunner who seriously believes that women are incapable of running the kinds of distances we run.  So why in the Olympics do we still treat women as second class citizens?

Barbie Without Makeup

[image credit here]

I've long been of the opinion that if men don't "need" makeup--which most people would probably tend to agree with--then women don't either. 

Yet the use of makeup by women has become the default in our society so that if a woman opts out of makeup, her appearance is almost seen as abnormal.

But it's devil's advocate time.  I don't wear a beard, I pluck errant eyebrow and ear hair, I use deodorant...so much for me being "natural."  Thus natural is more of a continuum than a discrete black/white distinction.  And so it could be argued that my appearance is no more natural than the Barbie on the right.

This goes along with the perennial discussion we have on the perimeter about Survivor.  I think that the woman on the island look better au natural.  When they reconvene back in civilization for the results show, and the woman are all glammed up, it somehow seems like a step backwards (but do I notice whether the men are also glammed up...hmmmm?).

So let's boil the discussion down to what is relevant.  The overriding principle is that I am a staunch advocate for women's agency and freedom.  Thus my particular preferences in what I happen to find attractive are irrelevant: a woman can opt in or out of makeup as she wishes because it's her body...just like she should have the agency and freedom to decide whether or not to be pregnant.  It's just another facet of human female existence.

Actually this entire discussion could be considered as inappropriate, as it is none of my business how a woman elects to present. 

But I found the Barbie images interesting and wanted to put them out there.

 

Powerful Men Do What They Want

The bride and I have been long-time watchers of NBC’s Today Show for decades, a habit that dates back to the day when the only TV channel we could pick up in our rented trailer from a rooftop antenna was the local NBC affiliate, WHAG in Hagerstown, MD.  So to this day part of our morning routine is to tune in to the Today Show to see what’s happening in the world.

On Tuesday, Bill O’Reilly (a conservative talk show host and political pundit on the Fox network) was a guest, promoting his new book on the real John F. Kennedy.  I do give Bill some credit, for even though our politics are largely diametrically opposed, and he can be a bombastic, pompous a-hole, he is in fact one of the saner members of the Fox news stable.  I actually find myself agreeing with him occasionally (perhaps under the theory that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then).

At any rate, in discussing Kennedy and his romantic dalliances, O’Reilly observed, “Powerful men do what they want.”  Now, this is not an earthshaking proposition, but hearing it spoken aloud just reminded me again of how much of a man’s world it remains.  Women don’t earn as much for the same work; their actual bodily autonomy is increasingly being controlled by old men in suits;  if they work outside the home they are castigated for neglecting the kids to promote their careers, but if they are stay-at-home moms they are not working hard enough to provide income.

From mundane, social interactions (expecting special and preferential treatment because of who they are) to world stage actions (starting or continuing wars), powerful men do what they want. 

Another nugget from Tuesday’s show: they showed a clip where former Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway introduced Mitt Romney at some campaign appearance in Colorado.  Elway revs up the crowd and introduces Romney as “…the next President of the United States!”

The bride laconically observed, “Well, he’s not as smart as I thought he was.”

 

 

 

Bodily Integrity and Pregnancy

I may as well complete the trifecta of ranting about people trying to control other people's lives (going along with my Galileo post (Thurs 15 April) and my post on Jesus' comments about gays (Sat 17 April).

Women should have an absolute right to control their bodily integrity.  We may not like their decision, but it is and must always be their decision.  I'v collected a couple of analogies that make perfect sense to me.

Check out an excellent article here.  Excerpt:

Our courts have always held that the government cannot compel an individual to use his or her body as an instrument for preserving people who are already born, much less for preserving a fetus in the womb. For example, the government cannot force a relative of a child afflicted with cancer to donate bone marrow or an organ to the child, even if the child is sure to die without the donation.

Obviously, if the state cannot force someone to undergo a bone marrow or organ transplant for a person already born, it cannot force a woman to continue a pregnancy that might entail great health risks for the sake of a fetus. As the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stated in a 1989 decision, "surely a fetus cannot have rights superior to those of a person who has already been born."

Another thoughtful article is here.  Excerpt:

A second account of the abortion right, however, is the very different idea that no person should be forced to sustain another living creature with her body. The experience of pregnancy, on this view, is far too intimate and demanding for the law to mandate it of women, particularly when no similar physical altruism is generally required of men, who can choose not to donate blood or organs to relatives (or others) in need.

Far from demanding blood and organs from its citizenry, moreover, the law in this country protects even a dead person from compulsory organ donation. And this is true notwithstanding the fact that such organs - which will otherwise decompose in a graveyard or go up in flame -- could be used to save and preserve many lives.

When bodily integrity is so (perhaps excessively) prized, it must not give way just because it is the bodies of pregnant women at issue. If it does, then the law engages in invidious discrimination against women.

The connection to UltraRunning?  I value my personal freedom beyond measure--the freedom to live my life as I choose, the freedom to engage in leisure pursuits such as UltraRunning, and--if I were a woman--the freedom to control my own body.  It's all one logical whole.

A Feminist Perspective

One of my (almost) daily reads is Echidne of the Snakes. I consider myself to be a feminist, and strive to improve my understanding of women's issues by reading some feminist blogs such as Echidne's.

When I went there on Wed after not having visited the site since last week, I found not only 1 post that I thought was worthy about sharing with the Mister Tristan audience, but 4 such posts. Note: the blog is continuous, sequenced by date, so you'll just need to scroll down to see the separate posts mentioned below:

1.  Repentance During The Holy Week of Christianity (30 March): about the Pope's complicity in covering up the rape of children. 

They tell us that they are speaking on behalf of a divine source, after all. They tell us how we should live our lives, what is wrong and what is right. For all this they get freedom from taxes, lots of kowtowing and respect. Something has to be given in return, and at a minimum that something should be higher ethical standards of personal behavior.

2.  The Black Widows (also 30 March): about the recent Russian female suicide bombers.

"While there is no single reason women decide to give up their lives, experts say they have usually suffered a traumatic event that makes them burn with revenge or question whether they want to live. This can be the death of a child, husband or other family member at the hands of Russian forces or a rape. Russian authorities have said the women are sometimes drugged."

And why do men become suicide bombers or terrorists? What drives them to do that? That question is not asked as often which is insulting to men. It's as if all men could just become suicide bombers and we don't really have to wonder about the reasons they have, however distorted they may be.

3.  Stripped Bare (29 March): about banning strip clubs in Iceland, and particularly the variations in how newspapers covered same.

That's where we stand: The Icelandic ban on strip clubs is under lifestyles/women and the U.S. coverage is a concern about spending tax money on the titillation of men who work for the Republican party.

4.  A Small Corrupt Clique of Men Shouldn’t Rule Anything by Anthony McCarthy (27 March): another about the corruption in the Vatican hierarchy (and, I hasten to add, NOT against the rank and file ordinary Catholics who do good work from within the church).

The use of scripture to explain things is a sometimes thing and, at times, a two edged sword. The vast variety of texts by different authors writing in various conditions and of varying experience passed down to us in copies of varying textual quality and authenticity, lends itself to contradiction. But I don’t believe the text in which Jesus said that people who corrupted children would have been better of drowned with a millstone around their neck is really ambiguous. Pope Benedict has had a hand in corrupting children. Many Cardinals such as Bernard Law have permitted the abuse of children...But this pope, who has been among the greatest proponents of the revival of confession, is stonewalling on his own, disqualifying, sins. The hypocrisy of the conservatives in control of the hierarchy doesn't seem to have a bottom.