Ah, Comcast, you know just how families work

This commercial for Comcast Digital Voice has been on the air in the weeks before Mother’s Day, and it’s been driving me fucking crazy.  Below, you can view the commercial (first half of the video; the second half is a just-as-annoying song commercial):

For those of you who don’t click the video, the ad shows various women picking up the phone, saying a male name in a hopeful, “Is it really you?!” voice, and then fainting.  What on earth is going on?  I’ll tell ya what’s going on.  If you get Digital Voice in time for Mother’s Day, you’ll be able to CALL YOUR MOTHER, which apparently you do so infrequently that if you do so, she’ll react in the same way as if she got a call saying that she’d won the lottery/something else that’s good and ridiculously shocking.

Because nothing says, “I appreciate that you’re my mom,” like never, ever, ever calling to the point where she might think you are dead/don’t love her.  And, of course, you’re only calling because Digital Voice is so cheap.

There are two reasons why I find this commercial sexist and obnoxious, and one way that I actually think Comcast did something kind of good (I say “kind of” because one good thing doesn’t cancel out the rest).  First of all, we live in a society where the care of children is relegated to the mother; she is held responsible for how her children turn out, and anything that really happens.  And yet after working so hard to raise their children, these Comcast mothers barely even hear from their kids.  They get such little affection that when their kids finally call on Mother’s Day, they pass out.  This commercial is meant to be humorous; what does that say about our culture?  One where we consider it normal and funny when people distance themselves so greatly from their mothers that this commercial can exist.

I keep saying “children” and “people.”  What I real mean would be “sons” and “men.”  After all, when the mother’s pick up, are they saying female (or even unisex) names?  No; they’re saying the names of their sons.  It’s the sons that cut off communication with their mothers; it’s the sons that fulfill Freud’s ridiculously unfounded ideas about family relationships and gendering.  It’s the sons who don’t seem to appreciate the role of the mother.

Excuse me while I puke all over Comcast.

What does the commercial include that I found positive?  There’s a shit-ton of diversity, compared to most other commercials.  But this isn’t enough to make me forget the rest of the commercial.

The far end of the sexual violence continuum is murder

On May 6th, Stephen P. Morgan shot and killed Wesleyan University student Johanna Justin-Jinich in a popular bookstore right off campus.  He turned himself in last night; in the interim, Wesleyan’s campus has practically been in lock-down.  A lot of fear has stemmed from Morgan’s journals, where he discussed targeting Jews in sprees.

It’s scary enough as a college student to learn about any such violence on campuses, where we’re supposed to feel safe (granted, this murder took place off campus, but to me, that’s like having a Tufts student murdered at a Boston Ave. restaurant).  It’s also alarming to hear of continued anti-Semitism.  But what struck me the most was the following:

Authorities have said Morgan and Justin-Jinich have known each other since at least 2007, when Justin-Jinich filed a harassment complaint against him while they were enrolled in a summer class at New York University.

The continuum of sexual violence is a very wide one.  One one end are things such as rape jokes, and other social attitudes that perpetuate a culture where sexual violence is okay.  On the other end is murder (whether it’s a rape and murder, relationship abuse ending in murder, stalking ending in murder, or harassment ending in murder).  While a 2007 complaint does seem like long ago, what’s important to me is that this man had harassed this young woman in the past, to the point where she filed a complaint; clearly, there was something wrong.

And I might have just been able to leave the harassment revelation and move on, except for this:

When police confiscated Morgan’s car they found a journal in which he spelled out a plan to rape and kill Justin-Jinich before going on a campus shooting spree, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is under investigation.

This new information sounded startlingly familiar.  It reminded me of the case of Amy Boyer, who was killed by her stalker Liam Youens.  While the cases are obviously not exactly alike (although, admittedly, many details about Morgan’s journals have yet to be released), both are examples of young men planning to kill young women, with sexual violence in the picture.

I consider this crime to be a sexually violent one, although Morgan did not rape Justin-Jinich (in the same way that Youens did not rape Boyer).  It’s the incorporation of sexually violent attitudes that places these murders on the end of the sexual violence continuum, instead of off the continuum altogether.

We will update you if there any more related information from this case is publicized.

NB: I chose not to discuss the anti-Semitic issues present in this case not because I don’t consider them pertinent, but because I wanted to specifically focus on the sexual violence and related attitudes.  I’m aware of the anti-Semitic issues, and you all should be, too, but that ain’t the point of this here blog entry.

Friday reads

Sorry posting has been slow these past few days… It’s been a busy week, especially with packing up and moving out.  But here are a few good reads to catch up with:

Is there really a credible correlation between body measurements and mortality?

“Mad pride”?  People are rejecting pills and other prescriptions in our hyper-medicalized society.

Former soldier Steven Green is found guilty for premeditating and carrying out a gang rape of a 14-year old Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her family.

Done asking, done telling, and now done serving? The first Arabic linguist was dismissed from the Army for coming out on television.

More barriers to health care for same-sex couples.

Racially charged images in Gisele Bündchen’s latest photo shoot.

Dick Cheney, we are done with you. For the last time, please shut up.

An interactive map of hate groups active in the United States, as compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

No, we are still not a “post-racial” nation.

Happy Mother’s Day Michelle Obama! (And mothers everywhere!)

An interview with Kathryn Joyce about her new book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

An interview with Kim Longinott, feminist documentary filmmaker.

America is NOT a Christian nation despite what the Christian right wingers keep saying.

A female celebrity has gained weight?!  Gasp!  How dare she!!  Unsurprisingly, more fatism in the media.

42% of homeless youths are LGBTQ identified.  More on why/how homelessness is a critical LGBTQ issue and what can be done.

Follow-up on “We aren’t exactly closing the gap …”

About a month ago, I blogged about an article in the Tufts Daily about the employment gap, and how during the recession, women appear to be closing the gendered employment gap that we’ve seen for years.  In my blog post, I commented on how men disproportionately losing jobs during the recession was not actually improving gender equality in employment.  I expressed my concern about how the Daily was reporting this narrowing of the gap in a positive light, without problematizing specific issues, such as the fact that women tend to work more lower-paying jobs in lower-paying industries than men do, and that more women work part-time than men (and part-time and full-time are extremely different in more ways than just hours worked).  I finally agreed with one person who was quoted in the article, who explained that simply because the numbers are changing and appear to show equality, women are still treated much differently (in a negative way) than men are in the hiring process.

Why am I repeating myself?  Well, I found this article today through Shakesville (available through a link on the right side of our blog).  In it, the author explains more fully the gendered aspects of the recession, going into great detail about the ways in which this recession is claimed to hurt men more than women.  Some highlights from the article:

So just to be clear: we’re neatly bypassing the facts that more men than women work, that women’s work tends to be part-time, and that it also tends to be lower-paid, and surmising that women are coming out on top in this economic crisis because fewer of them are losing their part-time/occasional, low-paying jobs.

We seem to assume that women’s response to economic hardship (moving or changing to find work) has little or no cost, whereas men’s reality (lost employment) does. There is a cost associated with this perceived flexibility, that may involve education, transportation, shifts in family care arrangements, or increased care burdens within the home.

And if the response is to invest in those industries with the highest losses, where men are more heavily concentrated, then at best, the post-recession economy will position men and women exactly where they were before: with women earning much less. What is required is not just worker protection laws to eliminate discrimination and create equal employment in those sectors without regard to sex, but also more jobs in women-dominated sectors, with higher, living wages and increased benefits.

This is an excellent blog post, with quotations and information that wasn’t present in the Daily’s article.  I highly recommend it.

Do we really need more fatism and fat shaming?

Women’s Entertainment Television (WeTV) has a new show called I Want to Save Your Life in which nutrition and public health advocate, Charles Stuart Platkin, aka the Diet Detective, intervenes in the lives of “fat” women to help “save their lives.” Because you know, they need saving from fatness.

Feministing has the promo video where you see several white women walking around or sitting down eating unhealthy foods, like ice cream sundaes, pizza, etc. and Platkin creepily watches from a distance and narrates, “I investigate people. I spy on them. I watch their every move. I dig through their lives. I look inside, so I can help them change the outside.” (Stalker much?) At the end of the 46 second promo video, a woman walks home where her husband and Platkin are sitting at a table and Platkin rises and says to the woman, “I’m here to save your life.”

There are several things problematic with this show (or at least the promo for this show since I haven’t actually seen it):

1. It assumes that women’s bodies are public property and that by not doing femininity “right”, like by being fat, it is completely acceptable for her to be shamed, harassed and stalked for the “error” of their ways. It goes back to policing femininity where women are supposed to conform to a certain (typically white) standard of beauty, otherwise they deserve to be picked on.

2. It assumes and disseminates the idea that people are fat because they secretly stuff their faces with junk food all day long and therefore need to be “saved”. This ties into a lot of fatist stereotypes, like that fat people are lazy and don’t try hard enough. And of course Platkin is portrayed as the hero, the kind and selfless man coming to “save your life” because of course women, especially fat women, need men to intervene and help them control themselves and what they put into their mouths. The title of the show in itself, “I Want to Save Your Life”, is so sensationalizing. Obviously it is important to live a healthy lifestyle and take care of yourself and your body, but really?

More women looking dead in advertisements

Sociological Images has a new post up featuring advertisements for Jawbone noise canceling headsets where (shockingly) women are objectified and presented as helpless, lifeless dolls:

The women in these advertisements are obviously very made up and have blank expressions on their faces, making them seem like mere dolls or objects to be looked at.  They are passively laying down in a position of vulnerability and subordination.  While sexist advertisements that objectify women and present them as dead are not new or surprising, they continue to be disturbing and contribute to rape culture by dehumanizing women and reducing them to mere to-be-looked-at things.

Heinous and unforgivable, NOT “awesome.”

Needless to say, the military is the bastion of patriarchy and violent masculinity.

Last week 23-year old US soldier Steven Green’s trial began at a U.S. District Court in Paducah, Kentucky.  He is charged with premeditating and leading the gang rape of 14-year old Iraqi girl Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi and then massacring her family.  In March 2006, a group of drunk soldiers dressed in black with their faces concealed went to a farmhouse around 20 miles south of Baghdad, gang-raped Abeer and shot her in the head.  They then murdered her younger sister and her parents as well.  They tried to burn the dead bodies and set the house on fire.  After all this, Green was bragging about how “that was awesome.” (VOMIT!)

Initially insurgents were blamed for committing the atrocious crime but three months later, a soldier admitted the truth to a combat-stress counselor.  This brutal attack was carefully premeditated.  The soldiers were stationed at a traffic checkpoint near a town close to Abeer’s home, Mahmoudiya, and often went to the house to ogle at her.

A 2006 article in TIME magazine says:

Her mother, who grew concerned enough to make plans for Abeer to move in with a cousin, told relatives that whenever she caught the Americans ogling her daughter, they would give her the thumbs-up sign, point to the girl and say, “Very good, very good.”

Abeer’s brother Mohammed, 13, told TIME he once watched his sister, frozen in fear, as a U.S. soldier ran his index finger down her cheek. Mohammed has since learned that soldier’s name: Steven Green.

This is absolutely disgusting and shows how Green and the other soldiers felt the male sense of entitlement to and ownership of a woman’s body and sexuality.  It is disturbing and sickening the degree to which Green and his cronies sexually harassed Abeer and then planned to gang-rape and murder her.  I can’t imagine the horror and fear that the soldiers must’ve instilled upon Abeer, her mother, her brother, and her entire family.

Shortly after the brutal killings Green was discharged with a “personality disorder”.  Since people discovered that he was one of the main perpetrators after he was discharged he is being tried in federal court instead of military court.  Apparently he is the first former soldier to be tried in civilian court for conduct during war.  He is being charged with conspiracy, rape, murder, unlawful use of a weapon and obstruction of justice.  Even though he confessed to an army investigator that he was responsible for the crime, he is pleading not guilty.  If convicted, he will get the death penalty.

Green’s attorney Patrick Bouldin, a public defender, said “You have to understand the background that leads up to this perfect storm of insanity.  They couldn’t tell the village people and the farmers from the insurgents and the terrorists.”  Lies.  And more lies.  Besides, this statement implies that it is completely acceptable to commit this heinous violence on insurgents and terrorists.  Gang rape and violent murders should never be acceptable.  It’s appalling that attorneys defend sick people like Green who commit heinous crimes and then brag about how “awesome” it was.

Let’s see how this case pans out.

The Secrets of a Happy Marriage

So apparently childhood and high school photos are indicators of whether or not a married couple will stay happily married or get divorced.  According to a study done at DePauw University’s psychology department, you can look through someone’s photo albums and assess his/her “smile intensity score” to determine whether or not s/he will stay married or get divorced.

The CNN article says:

The less intensely the subjects smiled, the more likely they would be divorced later in life, while the biggest smilers had lower divorce rates, according to a study published online this month by the journal Motivation and Emotion.

Scientists don’t know what accounts for the link, but say a smile may indicate higher levels of positive emotions and signal other traits, said co-author Matt Hertenstein, associate professor of psychology at DePauw University and head of the school’s Touch and Emotion Lab.

“People who smile a lot may attract happier people and maybe happier marriage partners,” Hertenstein said. “It may be that people who smile in response to a photographer are more obedient people and obedience may help in a marriage. I really don’t know the explanation.”

Oh, please!  Who honestly believes that you can predict success at matrimony based on your childhood pictures or your high school yearbook photos?  I know that as a child, I hated being photographed and rarely ever smiled in pictures.  And in my high school photos I just looked awkward.  I suppose this means that I’m destined to be divorced later on in life.  Darn, I should’ve smiled in those photos then!

And “a smile may indicate higher levels of positive emotions and signal other traits”?  That’s not really rocket science, to conclude that someone is happy or experiencing positive emotions because s/he smiled.  It’s also inaccurate to declare that there’s a link between being super smiley when you’re younger and staying happily married later on in life.  There may be a correlation but not necessarily causation – smiling in photos from your childhood or teenage years does not mean that you will remain in a happy marriage when you’re older.

Hertenstein’s claim,”It may be that people who smile in response to a photographer are more obedient people and obedience may help in a marriage”, is also problematic.  While he isn’t making this comment gender specific, I read: the marriage has a better chance if the wife is obedient.  Obedience is an archetypically feminine characteristic.  How often do people tell boys or men to be obedient?  It’s definitely something said to girls and women more because women are supposed to be subservient and obedient.

Finally, this smiling study essentially does not show us anything.  In order for a scientific study to be valid it needs to be able to be easily replicated and the findings have to be reproduced.  Most people with enough sense in their heads will look at this study and be skeptical, because it even just sounds ridiculous!

LOL. What a tool!

Roy Den Hollander, a self-professed antifeminist. aka a TOOL.

In August 2008, Roy Den Hollander, a New York based lawyer and self-professed anti-feminist, sued Columbia University for being discriminatory against men by not offering Men’s Studies classes while they offered Women’s Studies classes.  In July 2007 sued Manhattan night clubs before for having ladies’ night free admission or discounts because they apparently violate the 14th Amendment which guarantees equal protection under the law.  In February 2008 he sued the federal government claiming that parts of the Violence Against Women Act were unconstitutional.  He’s proud of his “trilogy of antifeminist lawsuits”.

About the Columbia case, Hollander said that Women’s Studies is a “bastion of bigotry against men” and “demonizes men and exalts women in order to justify discrimination against men based on collective guilt.”  Columbia’s Women’s Studies program and Women’s Studies programs nationwide are “spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust toward men with the result of the wholesale violation of men’s rights due to ignorance, falsehoods and malice.”  He accused Columbia of using federal funding to preach and spread a “religionist belief system called feminism.”

All I have to say is LOL.  Really?!!!

This suit was thrown out of court on April 23rd by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who wrote,“Feminism is no more a religion than physics, and at least the core of the complaint therefore is frivolous.”  Indeed.  This was nothing more than a stupid, frivolous lawsuit.  Again, LOL.

Don’t call yourself feminist if you are transphobic and can’t see past your cisgender privilege!

I linked to this story earlier today, but I think it needs to be addressed more thoroughly. The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter recently won a court case which granted them the right to refuse to hire a counselor, Kimberly Nixon, because she is a trans woman. Their reasoning? Because she is a trans woman she is not truly a woman and therefore not woman enough to be a counselor at a battered women’s shelter.

Rape Relief spokesperson Suzanne Jay denies that this case is, or ever was, about discrimination and transphobia. Instead she says, “For us, the struggle was about allowing a women’s group to organize as we saw fit.” She claims that Rape Relief needs counselors with similar shared life experiences in which they’ve been oppressed by men “since the day they were born female”. So according to her logic, since trans women are not born with female genitals they simply cannot have these “shared life experiences” of patriarchal male oppression.

This obscures the fact that trans people often are victims of violence, including sexual violence, and it is unfortunate that violence against trans people is too often overlooked. The Gender, Violence and Resource Access Survey preliminarily reports that 50% of individuals in the intersex and trans community have been raped or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner. Rape Relief cannot operate as a feminist organization if it fails to include trans women, if it fails to provide employment and counseling/relief services to trans women. Rape Relief is not truly an all-women space if it operates under such a narrow definition of woman.

And then, to add more insult to injury, Jay speaks of how happy and relieved Rape Relief is that the case is finally closed after eleven and a half years. No, it’s not a matter of human rights violations, discrimination, and transphobia. It’s not about how Kimberly Nixon, and the trans community as a whole, has no legal protection from discrimination or human rights violations, lack job security, and cannot feel safe navigating around in public spaces. Instead, it’s about how poor Rape Relief had to spend more than $100,000 on this court case and how they’ve “endured almost 12 years of attack on Rape Relief’s reputation and resources.” Boo Hoo. Way to displace accountability and paint yourself as the victim.

Excuse me while I vomit

Two teens accused in the death of a Mexican immigrant received not-guilty verdicts on their most serious charges Friday. Derrick Donchak (19 years old) and Brandon Piekarsky (17 years old) were acquitted of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and ethnic intimidation for the death of Luis Ramirez.  Piekarsky was also acquitted of third-degree murder charges.  The two high school football stars were both found guilty of aggravated assault.

Last summer in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, Ramirez was confronted by the teens while walking down a residential street with a friend.  The teens had been drinking earlier in the night.  Prosecutors allege that the teens began the fight with racial slurs, and ended the fight with Ramirez fatally injured.  Piekarsky was accused of delivering the fatal kick to Ramirez’s head after he had been knocked to the ground. Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said:

The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted.  In this case, the message is that a person who may not be popular in society based on their national origin or certain characteristic has less value in our society.

The acts here were egregious in brutality and it’s just outrageous and very difficult to understand how any juror could have had reasonable doubt, especially as to the aggravated assault and the reckless enganderment charges.

The extent of Ramirez’s injuries had left his brain literally oozing from his skull, and should warrant a stricter penalty than aggravated assault.  The teens do not deny that the altercation occurred.

“In my mind it was the lack of evidence to tie these kids to the serious charges that they brought,” defense lawyer Frederick Fanelli argues.

The murdered man, 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, had just moved to the town a year before his death with his wife and young children.  His life was cut short, and his friends, family’s, and community’s lives have been disrupted irreparably.  The jury is not only sending the wrong message with the conviction, but is also implicitly condoning violence and racism with their lack of action.

At one Kentucky high school, gay students are not allowed to pee?

From Pandagon:

Fifteen high school students protested outside Franklin County High School in Kentucky on Friday.  The protest was in response to an alleged email sent to teachers by the high school assistant principal that instructed them not to allow homosexuals to leave the classroom to use the restroom.  The email was allegedly sent in response to two lesbian students caught kissing in one of the school bathrooms.

The Kentucky Equality Federation is concerned that the Superintendent will not address the student protesters’ concerns properly.  There have been similar reports of discrimination against LGBT students in Casey, Pulaski, and Powell counties as well.  Kentucky Equality Federation Managing Director Laura Reed stated:

I’d like to know what level this mentality, that gay and lesbian students should not be treated equally is coming from. An incident in one county could be called an isolated incident, but we now have similar reports in three other Kentucky Counties.

While the incident has not been proven, the alleged banning of LGBT students from restrooms is really shameful.  But besides being homophobic, unhealthy, and downright cruel (are people supposed to just go in their pants?), the assistant principal has absolutely no right to keep anyone from doing anything that the rest of the student body is entitled to do.  And I could venture a guess that if a straight couple was found kissing somewhere, the entire straight student population would not be banned from entering that space.  The email would also assume that the teachers can tell who is homosexual in their classes, and enforces discrimination based on physical appearances and stereotypes of gay behavior.

As Pandagon points out, the word for the month of April at Franklin County High School is “tolerance.”  Perhaps the school officials who were allegedly involved need to pick up a dictionary?

Sunday Blogaround

Here are some interesting things to read this week.  Enjoy!

On Thin Privilege: A Harder Kind of Privilege to Discern

Blogging Against Disabilism: “I wasn’t going to do this…”

Sexism still exists

Oh no, what about the white men?

Geez, did he really think he had a case? (This is why you don’t sue Columbia University or any other university for offering Women’s Studies courses because it discriminates against men.)

On cis gender privilege: Bigotry masking behind feminism in Vancouver

“Rights Versus Rites”: Culture can’t be used as a scapegoat, but it can’t be used to justify human rights violations either

“Will Public Media Survive Where Mainstream Media Failed?”

You can’t be serious.

While trying to wind down for the evening and getting my fill of celebrity gossip on ONTD, I come across a horrific image:

under the photo there is a small “disclaimer”: This CD is not in any way racist or intended to imply racial beliefs or affiliation to any racist organization including the Ku Klux Klan. All imagery is fictional and presented for the sole purpose of humor and entertainment. Please do not take this imagery seriously and we apologize if anyone takes offense or is indeed offended by the imagery portrayed henceforth.

…ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

“The taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican”

Burger King has done it again.  After the Mexican government complained about an ad campaign that ran in Europe for Burger King’s new “Texican” Whoppers, Burger King has decided to remove ads which have been considered racist, stereotypical, and offensive.