Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can be respected with difficulty.

The school’s so-called “deference” to women sounds like the condescension that says women are inherently delicate and shouldn’t be allowed to do things like play sports. It’s the same attitude that makes it difficult for women to break into traditionally male spheres. It’s same men-only attitude that contributes to the low number of women as Fortune 500 CEO’s and members of Congress.

If Our Lady of Sorrows were indeed instilling in their students “a profound respect for women and girls,” they would view them as equals and play ball.

See Sultzbach’s interview on PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton.

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[GQ Correspondent] Chris Heath: What can you tell about a man by the type of pizza that he likes?

Herman Cain: [repeats the question aloud, then pauses for a long moment] The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.

Chris Heath: Why is that?

Herman Cain: Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. [laughs]

[GQ Senior Editor] Devin Gordon: Is that purely a meat question?

Herman Cain: A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.

Another GOP candidate touted their manliness as a qualification for office on Nov. 16.

From CNN.com:

“If we want to change this country up…I’m your man,” [GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele] Bachmann said in Webster City, Iowa, on Wednesday. “When people think of the president, they think of who is that individual. And I’m willing to ‘man up,’ so to speak, for the job and do what needs to be done… I’m a very strong woman.”

So, it’s started. The candidates are beginning to man up for the election.

All of this may be moot. Bachmann has been down in the polls for weeks, and Cain may drop out by the end of the week. But these probably won’t be the last flexing their manly muscles. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t matter if the candidate is a man or woman. For some, manliness is a qualification for office.

Which of the pizzas served at the GQ interview did Cain like the most? It shouldn’t be a surprise: “The man pizza!” he said. “The manly pizza! That was great.”

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One might think that when it came to governing, the public might actually like the idea of someone who portrays himself as rational, deliberate, attentive to opposing points of view — a conciliator rather than a head-banger. But Americans have always thought of themselves as tough and uncompromising — able to beat their problems or enemies into submission. Older white men, a key part of the Republican Party base, seem particularly to want their politicians to be heroic and full of bluster — just like Schwarzenegger.

Not coincidentally, this is also the very thing that Americans, again especially men, have always loved about their movie heroes. Our most popular films are predicated on a bold individual who, usually without much outside assistance or much internal reflection, vanquishes everything before him. Our heroes get the job done, whatever it takes.

And again, not incidentally, they also get the woman, who swoons in the cloud of his testosterone. We all know that female subjugation is one component of the American male power fantasy.

It is no wonder, then, that our movies and politics would become conflated, especially in California, home of the motion picture industry. Schwarzenegger’s appeal in the gubernatorial race was that he came on like a hero, the un-Gray Davis, California’s then-governor, who seemed aptly named. Davis appeared wimpy. Arnold seemed … like Arnold. He was everything that a movie hero and a governor ought to be: a real man’s man.

But that sense of untrammeled masculine power is also embedded, in politics as in the movies, with a certain attitude toward women. Our film heroes aren’t gauzy romantics. They are sexual swashbucklers who often have little use for women — or, more accurately, have one use for women.

Though he had tempered his public misogyny since his bodybuilding days, Schwarzenegger wasn’t elected in spite of his disregard for women. Insofar as it informed his machismo and demonstrated his masculine power, he was elected because of it.

This goes back to what I wrote last year about politicians who insult their opponents by saying they should “man up.” The phrase implies that manliness and machismo are requirements to hold elective office. It’s not a big leap between that attitude and the lack of female elected officials in this country compared to the rest of the world.

Gabler analysis of how voters feel about politicians gives insight into how some voters feel about women and their role in politics. Macho heroes in films, he writes, don’t have any use for women except one. The implication is that one reason is sex. The female character can’t do anything else for the macho hero – not help him, not work with him, not take the lead as the hero. If sex is the only thing the macho hero needs from women, and voters look at their political candidates and movie heroes in similar ways, is sex the only thing those macho-loving voters expect from women?

This is more than just what voters want from their candidates. It’s about the public’s expectations for women.

Gabler takes an odd turn at the end. He surprisingly – and wrongly – excuses Schwarzenegger’s actions:

But you can’t really blame Schwarzenegger for hitting on women, even his own housekeeper. He was simply acting out the male fantasy that men had already imposed on him.

Schwarzenegger is a grown man with free will. He made bad choices and needs to own them. Don’t blame society. Giving Schwarzenegger and other politicians a pass is what allows sexism in politics and everywhere else to continue.

Read Gabler’s entire piece here.

UPDATE:

I just found the following bite from a January article in the New York Times Magazine. I set it aside for a post I was trying to write earlier this year that never came together (which just proves it’s a good idea to save those unfinished ideas and occasionally go back to them!).

In the Times piece, Rebecca Traister, who authored “Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women” about the 2008 presidential election, wrote:

The mythos of our founding revolves entirely around fathers, save for the seamstress Betsy Ross and the querulous spouse Abigail Adams.

What we do have, to serve as the foundational fantasy of female strength and individualism we’ve agreed upon as embodying American power, are cowgirls: Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, the outlaws, frontier women and pioneers who pushed West, shot sharp, talked tough and sometimes drew blood. Frontier womanhood has emerged as one of the only historically American models of aspirational femininity available to girls — passive princesses and graceful ballerinas not being native to this land — and one of the only blueprints for commanding female comportment in which they are regularly encouraged to invest or to mimic.

Compared to male leaders, Traister wrote in the piece, “We have made considerably less imaginative space for ways in which women can persuade us of their ability to lead.”

So, women must have that macho swagger for elective office, too. But if they made the same sexual transgressions as some male politicians have, I don’t think the public would be as forgiving of them and as forgetful of the sexual wrongdoing.

See Also:
Man Up And Cry

Photo Credit: NOVAOnline/Flickr

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It probably would be.

If the genders were reversed, would it still be offensive?

Check out TubeCrush.net to find out. It’s a UK site in which pictures are taken of men – without their knowledge - on the London Underground. The photos are submitted to the site and then the folks at TubeCrush write captions like this:

Let’s play a game shall we? It’s similar to Simon Says, but this one is called Jack Will. Basically you stay stuff that you think he should do, and he’ll do it. I’ll go first…

Jack will…make my jaw hit the floor because he’s so hot.

Next up…

Jack will…take his top off….(well, we can dream can’t we?)

Kind of cute? Kind of cheesy? Yes. Offensive? Not to me. None of the pictures I’ve seen go down shirts or up shorts. They don’t show anything explicit.

The viewing and consuming a male body by a woman is different than a man looking at a woman’s body. The nature of what makes a man physically attractive is easier to talk about in polite conversation. “Take off his top” from the caption above, is a lot different than “Take off her top.” Men are generally more sexually aggressive and perceived as more sexually threatening than women. And a man gawking at a woman – especially without her knowledge or consent – can be threatening.

We’ve reached the point where if you’re in public, anything you do is up for grabs by a camera. (So, be aware what you’re doing.) When non-consensual photographs are taken for sexual titillation, though, and regardless of the shooter, viewer or subject, the whole endeavor still gives off a whiff of creepiness.

But it matters who the shooters, viewers and subjects are, I wouldn’t say there’s a double-standard when it comes to TubeCrush. A website with pictures of women for a male audience wouldn’t be the same situation.

What do you think?

H/t: Salon. See also: Good Men Project

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..put two or more headstrong African-American women in the same room, and let the fireworks begin. From Oxygen’s Bad Girls to Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, the small screen is awash with black females who roll their eyes, bob their heads, snap their fingers, talk trash, and otherwise reinforce the ugly stereotype of the “angry black woman.”

In her Newsweek piece “Reality TV Trashes Black Women,” Allison Samuels singles out the feud on this season’s Celebrity Apprentice between Real Housewives Of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes and Star Jones, the former co-host of The View. It’s an example of a “catfight” between two black women that’s “had viewers glued to their sets.”

But Samuels concedes that reality TV is “an equal-opportunity offender when it comes to stereotyping,” citing MTV’s hit Jersey Shore as an example. So, where’s the problem? Samuels quotes Celebrity Apprentice alum Holly Robinson Peete who may have the answer.

“Listen, there are plenty of white women acting a fool on television every night…But there’s a balance for them. They have shows on the major networks—not just cable and not just reality shows about them running companies, being great mothers, and having loving relationships. We don’t have enough of that.”

It’s the lack of a complete and diverse picture of black women – and I would add black men – on television that’s the problem. Showing people acting like fools on TV is fine. It can often be great television! But if a group of people is portrayed only one way across multiple channels without showing the diversity and depth of who they are, then TV as an industry, and not just one genre, is what’s really trashing them.

Read the entire article here.

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But what got my attention was the part about employment and income. Kerner cites a study that indicates a high-salary job correlates to increased likelihood of cheating:

While there aren’t any hard statistics on female infidelity, most experts agree that it’s on the rise, especially among women who have their own careers and a degree of financial independence. A University of Washington study found that people who earned $75,000 or more per year were 1.5 times more likely to have had extramarital sex than those earning less than $30,000. And with so many women in the workplace, it’s no surprise that among the spouses who cheated, 46 percent of women and 62 percent of men did so with someone they met through work.

I’m not suggesting that women – or men, for that matter – with high paying jobs aren’t marriage material because they’re going to cheat. The University of Washington study makes sense, though. If someone has a job and is able to support themselves financially, but is in a bad marriage and has the opportunity to meet someone who makes them happy, it makes sense that person will be more likely to cheat, or at least get out of that unhappy marriage.

It doesn’t make cheating right, but it makes sense.

Do you think female infidelity is on the rise because, as the post suggests, more women are in higher positions in the workforce?

As the number of women in the workforce catches up with the number of men – along with their salaries – will infidelity rates between the men and women begin to equal out as well?

Photo credit: Rushell070/Flickr

See also:
If Wives Make More, Could They Cheat More?
Wives Make More.. More Often

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That’s according to a survey of 1000 people conducted by Avalon Funeral Plans in the U.K.

The NY Daily News reports women in the survey say they feel old at age 29. (That’s right, 29! Jeez!) The age men say they’re old is 58.

What made the men and women in the poll think their youthful days are in the past? For women, more than half said it’s their “assets heading south.” For two-thirds of men, it’s “decreased libido/not as ‘able’ in the bedroom.”

Interestingly, both men and women said 29 is the age when women “don’t have ‘it’ anymore.”

Alice Newsham, an Avalon spokesperson said, “We wanted to look at the perceptions of age, especially looking at men and women and the differences between them.”

What do you think? Why do you think there’s such a huge difference – twice the age – between when men and women perceive themselves as being old?

What about you? Are your assets, mojo or something else making you feel old?

Photo: Rebeca Cygnus/Flickr

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Earlier this month, educator Tony Porter made a presentation at the TEDWomen conference and told his audience, “Without a doubt there are some wonderful, wonderful, absolutely wonderful things about being a man. But at the same time, there’s some stuff that’s straight-up twisted.”

He was talking about the Man Box: The way boys and men are socialized into certain behaviors that are ultimately harmful to themselves and to women. Things like not showing weakness or fear, not being compared to a woman and viewing women as property or objects.

Porter talks about some mistakes he made and learned from as he raised his own son, as well as a horrible story from his childhood about being pressured to have sex with a mentally-challenged teenaged girl.

Porter said, “My liberation of a man is tied to your liberation as a woman.”

The speech is worth your time.

H/t to Ellen for sending me the link.

She said, “You guys are all about who has the biggest swinging dick.”

From VentureBeat:

Huffington said that’s a dumb, very male way to look at the world, when in fact both the Journal and the HuffPo can flourish, and a bunch of new publications can take off too.

Huffington also rejected the idea that the HuffPo is in a rivalry with Tina Brown’s site The Daily Beast, especially now that The Daily Beast has merged with Newsweek. Whenever two women are involved, people assume “there must have been a catfight somewhere,” Huffington said, but she isn’t thinking about any rivalry, because her company is doing just fine.

Huffington added, “That’s an old-fashioned guy game…We women just need to resist participating in it.”

The question about which media company will be more profitable in five years is a bad one. The respondents were executives, not fortune-tellers. Huffington is also right in that there’s room for multiple profit-making organizations in media. There can be more than one winner. The catfight statement is also true. Countless reality TV shows are based on getting women together and then turning them against each other.

But is there anything wrong with competition? Competition can keep products and services fresh, new and appealing to consumers. For individuals, it can be used a motivator to achieve their goals on the playing field or in life. It’s when a person or company becomes obsessed with their competitors that problems develop. Focus is lost on the job or life in front of them and turns to their competitor’s “swinging dick.”

It’s about balance.

Do you think men generally focus too much on who is the best or the biggest? What are examples of how men and women compete differently? Is one way better than the other?

Leave your comments below.

Kotex is coming out with a new tampon line called U by Kotex. The original ad for the campaign used the word “vagina.” It turns out, using the proper word for female genitalia in a commercial was too much for three broadcast networks. So, they rejected it. Kotex came up with another version of the ad that replaced the v-word with “down there.” That was still over the line for two of those networks because they rejected the revised spot, too. (The networks involved weren’t disclosed.)

It’s bad enough that these corporations rejected the vagina version. It’s not like it’s inappropriate. The ad is for a tampon! But “down there” didn’t make it either? It’s vague, playful without being dirty, and relevant when talking about stuff that happens Down There. (Maybe they should’ve used vajayjay.)

So, after two strikes, here’s the sanitized version Kotex came up with:

Melanie Harris from JWT who made the ad is quoted in the New York Times saying:

It’s very funny because the whole spot is about censorship…The whole category [of commercials] has been very euphemistic, or paternalistic even, and we’re saying, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tampon is not a dirty word, and neither is vagina.

Elissa Stein, co-author of “Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation” was also quoted in the article.

Fem-care advertising is so sterilized and so removed from what a period is…You never see a bathroom, you never see a woman using a product. They never show someone having cramps or her face breaking out or tearful — it’s always happy, playful, sporty women.

You’d think we’d have come farther than this, not just in tampon advertising, but talking about sex in general. Since the national freak-out over the Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction a few years ago, though, the broadcast networks have been very worried about about offending the public. They’re afraid to treat us like adults, which is ironic because these products are for adults. If you’re buying tampons, let’s hope it’s not the first time you’ve heard of a vagina.

It’s as if just because sex happens Down There, body parts used during sex can’t be mentioned in a network commercial. If we can’t talk like adults about periods and tampons, how are we supposed to talk openly and honestly about other sex issues like teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases?

What do you think? Is it silly for the networks to reject the versions with “vagina” and “down there” in them? Were they being sensitive to the public or fearful of it?