Re: Engineering and Science positions

I can't speak for science jobs - I've heard tales of actual misogyny there and won't try disputing that claim. Academia is a cruel world indeed.

But in Engineering and especially Computer positions, at least in private companies/labs I've worked for, I would put the cause of not sharing information more with overcaution than misogyny. No one ever (to my knowledge) got sued for sexual harassment for talking to someone of the same gender. With the big push to make workplaces women-friendly, all too often the guys I see will be "strictly professional" to the point of avoiding all unnecessary communication with women in the workplace just to avoid potential repercussions if they're accused of anything.

I'm not trying to put the blame on either side of the argument, nor am I trying to claim that the steps that have been made forward in combatting sexual harassment in the workplace are at all a bad thing - just that the 'inside communication networks' the article blasts may be the result of fear, not hatred.

Thanks so much for the Rosetta Tharpe post! I've never heard of her until now. She's awesome!

Re: Bonnie Richardson:

I nominate her for replacing Captain America. Rock on woman!

Re: Missouri:

WTG! A Take ownership of your legislature!

Re: Venetian fanny-fan:

FAIL! Taking pictures is just tacky. Glancing at a nice heinie might slide, but photography is right out.

Re: Cussing Canuks:

If he had offered an apology for just the "bitch" part I would have respected this a lot more. If you thinks someone is dumb, then stand behind it.

About the plus size model article... while I do think that the commenter Ennui is a jerk, I think he made a valid point in his original post. Hayden did not look starved in that picture, she looked perfectly healthy. Yes, she's skinny. But we can't hate on skinny girls while expecting respect for larger women. It doesn't work that way. If we're going to say that people should be respected despite their clothes size, that goes for skinny women as well as larger women.

That article about what makes a movie misogynistic actually does a good job of showing why it's usually a futile effort to determine if an individual piece of art/statement/etc... is racist or sexist.

All of her criteria besides #4 are implicitly or explicitly statistical, which is a problem since movies have a small number of major characters-all sorts of discrepancies can pop up through random chance.

When we look at all of the media produced and see that these negative characteristics overwhelmingly tend to be associated with women, we can obviously see that sexist bias is causing it.

But if there is an individual film where most of the women characters are lame, this could be due to random chance. Necessarily, this won't be so for most such movies, but those who make it could always claim so and it's not that easy to discern which movies are using a sexist bias and which not.

In regards to the essay on same sex marriage: There is minor potential fallout, BUT as we have seen in Massachusetts, this is a fabulous step for California law, not just in terms of marriage, but in terms of schools who have up to now been able to ban books that depict homosexuality. If the law considers homosexuality on the same level as heterosexuality, it pulls the rug out from under those who would bring lawsuits for, say, a pre-school showing books that depict households with two daddies or whatever.

GaelicGirl1983: I agree. I'm a personal trainer, nationally certified and college-educated, and the hate that fit people get is kind of ridiculous - believe it or not, not everyone hits the gym because they are just desperate to have men check out their size 0 ass. Hayden Panettiere is not a starving twig. She has a rather athletic figure, actually. And a lot of those comments are incredibly ignorant. A size 14 can be perfectly fit; a size 14 can also be obese. It depends on the body composition of the individual. (And BMI is not a reliable measure - it will place athletes with body fat percentage in the single digits as "overweight" because muscle weighs so much more than fat.) The alleged plus-size model is obviously not a big girl either, but there's no reason to act like anyone smaller than her is an anorexic. Panettiere's quite a bit shorter than she is, for one thing. Believe it or not, I often see Hollywood blogs refer to Panettiere as "dwarfish," "dumpy," "mannish" and "thick," and of course, "no boobs." Poor girl can't win.

And yes, it is in fact possible to be too fat. Women should be around 22-25 percent body fat. Not because the fashion magazines say so, not because of what's attractive or sexy, but because that's what's healthy. The human body is not designed to be half made up of fat. The heart and the joints are not equipped to handle it. It's sad to me that feminism concerns itself with so many aspects of women's health, but often refuses to touch the issue of weight - unless of course the woman's judged to be "too skinny." Calling normal women fat is not good. Calling normal women starving and skinny is also not good. Our national sense of body image is warped on both ends of the scale.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women in America right now. 1 in 3 women die from it. More women die from it than breast cancer, and it kills more women than men. There's this attitude that any weight is just yay-okay and that obesity is just something looks-based constructed by the media. And that attitude is killing us.

On another topic, good for Venice for busting the perv. It's a nice change from my home state of Oklahoma, where they've apparently decided that men are entitled to take pictures up your skirt whenever you venture out in public.

LottaTroubleBaby:

The issue causing bad health is not fat. The issue causing bad health is lack of exercise and not eating properly. And both fat and thin people are guilty of that.

I'm fat. 5-10, 210. But I eat good, balanced meals, avoid processed sugars and carbs, and I bike to work, walk, hike, and ride horses.

I'm in pretty darned good shape. I have no trouble climbing stairs. The woman in the cube next to me is thin (about 5-8, 130). She dosen't eat as well as I do. She doesn't exercise. She gets winded climbing stairs.

I'm healthier than she is, and weight has nothing to do with it.

The problem is not obesity. The problem is the American lifestyle, and that lifestyle affects folks of all sizes. To pretend it does not is quite silly.

By the way, the issue with the "Fetal Personhood" Initative is a really important one. Colorado is a battleground state this year, and the anti-choicers have already declared that they will be focusing money, time, and energy getting this thing passed, and it's a nasty amendment. If it passes here, they're gonna use the experience and momentum to get it on the ballot in other states, so this isn't just about Colorado.

Please, feministing, if you could, do a seperate post on this issue, I'd really appreciate it, as would all of us pro-choice activists in Colorado. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is the head of the Protect Famlies, Protect Choices colition which will be fighting this thing. If anyone can, please donate:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/defeatballotinitiative

or here

http://www.protectfamiliesprotectchoice.org/

Please. We really need all the help we can get.

And if you wonderful feministing readers can spread the word to family and friends, that would be super.

Cheers!

I'm surprised this didn't make it on here:

http://scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/2008/05/isef_2008_the_science_that_won.php?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=sublink

I mean, everybody loves awesome science, ya?

I'm in the health field, so I'm well aware of the various types of unhealth out there. There are many issues causing bad health. Fat IS one of them. WEIGHT does not actually matter - like I said, muscle is both heavier and more compact than fat, so athletes weigh a lot. Too much FAT matters. There are many components to fitness, and proper body fat percentage is one of them. Lack of exercise is bad; poor diet is bad. Those things of course affect things like stamina and cholesterol. Nowhere did I make the case that people who appear thin are automatically more fit than everyone larger than they are (or vice versa - some of those big muscle guys that do nothing but pump iron would keel over if they had to run a mile).

But obesity is also bad. Obesity forces the heart to work harder, making it grow thicker, making it more difficult for the heart to contract, which can lead to heart failure. More fat tissue requires more oxygen, which requires increased blood circulation and an increased workload for the heart at rest. Increased circulating blood creates more pressure on artery walls, which increases blood pressure. Extra weight on the joints contributes to osteoarthritis. It increases the risk for CVD and diabetes. All medical fact. Period. People can draw conclusions based on their own experiences all day, but the science says what it says. All of these things are obesity-related, not just due to diet or how much one exercises. I work with cardiac rehab patients every day, as well as a host of people referred to me by doctors for various weight-related health issues, and saying that obesity is irrelevant is very misinformed and does people a disservice. Obesity is a huge risk factor for CVD.

"Fat IS one of them. WEIGHT does not actually matter - like I said, muscle is both heavier and more compact than fat, so athletes weigh a lot. Too much FAT matters."

It also depends on *which* fat...

But obesity is define by BMI, which doesn't take into account body composition or fat distribution.

"But obesity is also bad. Obesity forces the heart to work harder, making it grow thicker, making it more difficult for the heart to contract, which can lead to heart failure."

While it's impossible to take seriously arguments that fat isn't unhealthy, this is just wrong. You're a personal trainer, surely you've heard of cardiovascular exercise? Which is god for your heart? Which makes the heart grow larger, stronger, and more efficient BECAUSE you are forcing it to do strenuous work?

"Kill a sex worker, get a two year prison sentence? (Cara has more.)"

BTW, did seeing this remind anyone else of http://feministing.com/archives/009185.html#comments ?

"But if there is an individual film where most of the women characters are lame, this could be due to random chance."

There is no "chance" involved. A person (or people) write those movies, and their biases and beliefs are reflected in the characters they create. If all the women in a movie are stupid/clumsy/slutty/whatever, that's not "chance"; that's a writer (or writers) with serious issues with women. And unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of those in Hollywood.

Also, re: the women artists article, I studied Gentileschi this semester and there is some controversy over whether she was actually raped by Tassi or not. Our modern definition of "rape" and the 17th century one are not necessarily the same.

"While it's impossible to take seriously arguments that fat isn't unhealthy, this is just wrong. You're a personal trainer, surely you've heard of cardiovascular exercise? Which is god for your heart? Which makes the heart grow larger, stronger, and more efficient BECAUSE you are forcing it to do strenuous work?"
No, it's not wrong, but thanks for talking to me like I'm an idiot. I've more than "heard of" cardiovascular exercise, my degree is in exercise science. The "hard work" that I was referring to is not just the pumping of the heart that occurs in exercise, it is an increased blood volume that the heart has to deal with. It's different from the normal exertion of the heart under exercise. Strenuous work because of physical exertion and strenuous work just to stay alive are two very different things. Give me a break.

Here's a pretty straightforward link.
http://www.fairview.org/healthlibrary/content/ca_fatheart_car.htm

As far as BMI, it's just an estimate. Every hospital-affiliated facility I know of uses body comp to determine obesity.

You might have a point about BMI if we were only addressing hospital-affiliated facilities. We're not. We're addressing society in general, doctors and other HC workers, insurance companies, etc.

I've never once had someone measure body comp. Not once.

"There is no "chance" involved. A person (or people) write those movies, and their biases and beliefs are reflected in the characters they create. If all the women in a movie are stupid/clumsy/slutty/whatever, that's not "chance"; that's a writer (or writers) with serious issues with women. And unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of those in Hollywood."

I don't mean that movie characters are generated by drawing lots or anything. I 'm probably using the wrong mathematical terminology here, but the distribution of outcomes can be random even if the factors determining each individual outcome aren't. Look at "streakiness" in sports. The streaks players have are very well predicted by statistics, but commentators and players attribute it to various "intangibles" and semi-mystical phenomena because whether a basketball player (say) makes an individual shot is clearly not random.

Hypothesize a world where no one has any sexist biases regarding what attributes people have. Then in movies as a whole men and women would be equally likely to be portrayed negatively, but in some movies there would be more negative female characters.

Since movies as a whole are overwhelmingly sexist, I don't think randomness plays much of a factor compared to sexism. But it always gives an out which the people who make or defend any movie can take. I've never heard someone explicitly invoke random chance, but its implicitly invoked when someone says the decisions they made in writing their characters weren't sexist, but just happened to have a sexist distribution for whatever reason.

Despite the validity of everyone's comments - which I applaud - I think the focus of the piece isn't now we determine fat/obesity, or the validity of BMI. It's that on television, there's a pressure to abnormalize a size 8 which I think we can all agree is not fat. The size isn't fat, the girl it's attached to in the post isn't fat.

The crazy commentor (Ennui or something) seemed to think that "feminists" (always the guilty culprit) are "normalizing" her huge size-8 frame. While I'm willing to observe and appreciate a whole spectrum of discussion on body definition, I think we need to step outside of petty argument to state that, as the original piece wanted to emphasize, aint nobody gonna convince me that size 8 is fat, including Ennui or whoever.

Of course, we could examine why we're linking "plus-size" with "fat." I mean, I get it, but I think there is a possibility to expand or at least explore those definitive relationships. Not that we have to change them, but that we're establishing "fatness" by size, or by regular/plus(extra) size, is in itself defining bodies by industry standards, rather than health, BMI, fat percentage, or any of the other (better) measurements that posts have been discussing.

LottaTroubleBaby--
I wish my doctor would use body comp. I'm a thin person, but I eat what feels right for me (ie, I eat when I feel hungry and I stop when I'm full...what I'm guessing most people do) and I feel healthy, not starving. Is my BMI below the 'healthy' range? Yes. But I have muscles, and I feel fine. Yet whenever I see my doctor, it's always: "you don't weigh enough. You're 80th percentile height and 5th percentile weight. Your BMI is too low. Eat more."
It ain't that simple. It's no more simple for me to gain the weight than it is for a naturally-bigger person to lose it.
And people need to get it into their skulls that people come in different sizes, and that telling all of us we need to change our bodies only makes us miserable.

"Strenuous work because of physical exertion and strenuous work just to stay alive are two very different things. Give me a break.

Here's a pretty straightforward link.
http://www.fairview.org/healthlibrary/content/ca_fatheart_car.htm"

Well now I'm very confused. It makes sense that short bursts of extreme exertion would have a different effect than constantly having a slightly higher level of exertion. However, you and the link you posted claim that this is harmful because it makes the heart muscle increase in size. Isn't this the same effect cardiovascular exercise is supposed to have? Is it that in the case of a person with too much body fat the heart enlarges in a different manner than from cardiovascular exercise.

...

The BMI is a useful tool that is just used improperly way too much, even (especially?) by people who should know better. Over a large enough group of people, the average BMI is a great predictor of average body composition. For some types of research, it is more sensible to use this proxy than bother measuring body composition.

UneFemmePlusCourageuse: I would actually guess that if someone is too small, the more muscle skeletal muscle you have, the worse. I know that in terms of body composition, you can have too little fat (I've heard 5% but I don't know if this is for everyone or just men or even correct) because some body fat is used for absolutely vital functions, but becomes mostly superfluous above that level.

Re: sexism in engineering and technology fields

The sexism encountered after graduation is bad enough. But what's really sad for me is that the percentage of women who complete a computer science degree has gone *down* since I got my BS/CS degree in the 1980s. Here's a link to a table by the National Science Foundation (PDF file):

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabc-4.pdf

What societal factors could be causing this continued downward trend?

It's very strange to me. Of course, I was naive enough when I graduated that I truly believed that sexism would be a thing of the past by the time I was in my 40s.

The article about the ballot in Colorado said they needed 76,000 signatures by May 13, does anyone know if they got enough? It's my home state, and I can't find any follow up articles...If I find out first I'll repost :)

In my experience, about 99% of catcalling is obnoxious at best and frightening at worst. The other 1% (maybe 2%, maybe 5%, still the huge minority) is not really "catcalling," and can be sweet.

Maybe I've overly easygoing, but when a man approached me in San Fran and said, "Ma'am, I hope I don't offend you, but you have beautiful legs," I did not feel threatened. (My legs were mostly hidden under a seersucker skirt that goes to below the knee, so I'm pretty sure he was complimenting my calves.)

I've had WOMEN "cat-call" me, and, in my world, it's kind. "Beautiful hair!" Or, my all-time favourite, a woman yelling out her car window, "I LOVE LOVE LOVE your skirt!"

Problem is, the 99% who are creepy hide behind the ones who are kind (or just dense). The difference is readily apparent: men who are out to pay you a compliment are gentlemen about it. They usually preface their remarks with a qualifier - "I hope I'm not upsetting you," or the like - make their statement, and then go on with their lives, so you can go on with your life.

The jerks leer, usually have the word "baby" in there (or explitives), and make some totally general comment or comment on body parts.

That is my best articulation of the difference between paying someone a compliment (IMHO, not something to get worked up about, although your mileage may vary) and harassing and intimidating them.

Re sexism in engineering and the sciences: Scarily true, about how women start out and where they end up. In my experience, the vast majority shift over to, say "Quality" groups in their mid-30s cause they finally start to spawn and then they just can't pull the 24/7 requirements these jobs have. Yes, they almost all have husbands, but somehow usually it's THEY who end up accomodating the kiddies.

Staar84: They got 131,245 signatures.

Here's the DP coverage:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9246298?source=bb

As for declaring a fertilized egg to be a person, that is horrifying and not scientifically based. My reproductive physiology professor in medical school said that less than 10 % of fertilized eggs implant anyway in the best of circumstances. There are so many ways for these ridiculous people to reduce abortions if they so desired - universal access to free birth control and accurate sex ed, for a start. They just want to control women's sexuality.

Tiberius- Talking to a woman will not get you sued for sexual harassment and any man who feels that threatened by reasonable sexual harassment precautions in the office is being delusional. This is most likely due to the fact that they and/or the other men creating the culture which they have been spoonfed have been so sure for so much of their lives that they have every right to sexually harass every woman they see that they actually feel threatened and upset when this "right" is taken away and must imagine a giant conspiracy of lying man-haters in order to justify their feelings of persecution.

Also, the line between sexually harassing someone and treating them like a human is extremely fucking clear and anybody who is so unaware of where that line is that they choose not to talk to women rather than risk it is sexist, knows they are sexist, and is trying to cover up their sexist behaviors. Period.

Finally, not acknowledging either of these facts means that you are in fact blaming one side. You are blaming the victims of sexual harassment by implying that many of them are liars who have cowed perfectly harmless men into fearful untalkative submission.

Dude, I think on someone tall enough to be a model, an 8-10 is not even "average",

I'm 5'10, 8-10 sized, and people usually think I'm thin, if not /too/ skinny. (of course, I have kinda big hips which bumps up my pant size, but still... a lot of models are fairly curvy)

I think if that model who won the contest had flatter breasts (like me) she'd look pretty svelt too...

oh, and btw, I think there /are/ a good number of non-plus-sized fashion models who are a size 8. Most are like 2-6, but whenever I've read stuff on "what are the requirements" for fashion modeling, 8 is usually listed as the largest possible size.

So I don't know what's up with the Top Model stuff. Maybe for very high-end fashion modeling, 8 is too big. Maybe it's just the particular way this woman is built, and if she was a size 8 but built differently it might work. Just some guesses.

Ah, cool. Mina didn't have enough fun in the original thread, so she's harping on how bad prison abolition is while having obviously never read any of the literature again.

Your very basic question seems to be "What do we do with the people who need to be restrained/commit violent crimes?" My position, and that of many prison abolitionists, is that we eliminate patriarchy along with other coercive hierarchies in order that the privileged don't feel empowered to destroy those they view as "lesser" and that the underprivileged are no longer desperate and angry. Those who continue to behave in a sociopathic manner would go to local institutions which offered them mental help, which is something that you can't get in a maximum-security prison in a different state. Even the ones that nominally offer counseling rarely actually have it, and anyways counseling is impossible and ineffective in a traumatizing environment.

Bear in mind as well that the majority of people in prisons are there for nonviolent crimes and that the majority of violent sociopaths never get caught or go to jail. Also bear in mind that even people who commit awful crimes rarely serve life sentences and that prison is a well-documented way of making a violent criminal worse.

Which brings us back to this post. Yes, it's shitty that someone gets punished less for killing a prostitute because the lack of punishment is obviously motivated less by the fact that our society would ever want to abolish prisons and more by the idea that prostitutes are somehow subhuman. But, if rapists/murderers go to jail for longer periods of time, they just get released angrier and more brutalized.

Resources are better put towards researching and implementing ways of teaching men not to rape and kill than towards incarceration, which actually increases violence.

re: Engineering etc., my observation is that women get tired of working the ridiculous hours without equal pay, and without the prop of having someone at home to take care of everything to enable them to work the insane hours. Many of the project managers at my company work 50+ hours a week by default and 80-120 hours a week at certain points in their projects. They almost all have multiple children. How many women could pull off that kind of schedule and still keep their relationship with their partner intact, much less raise children? How many of us are willing to only parent on the weekend, and miss out on the rest of the week?

On another note...I've noticed that every time we have one of these Readers lately, the discussion about body image has precluded pretty much any discussion about anything else. Why is that? 15 out of 33 comments have been in response to the article about the model. I guess I just believe that if we can gain leverage in the other issues discussed here....Positive depictions in movies and TV, employment in the technology and science fields, and control over our reproduction, then maybe the body image thing will correct itself in the next couple of generations.

A while back, another commenter pointed out the problem with using pervert as a pejorative term. I'd really appreciate it if the bloggers at feministing could take that to heart. It seemed that Jessica did in this post where dykelawyer brought it up, but apparently that hasn't been taken up blog-wide because I've seen it used many times since then. To me that sort of thing is a necessary element of attempting to address a larger audience that may well include a wide variety of people. Perhaps I'm mistaken and there's a post I've missed explaining why, even given its history, the bloggers here have a rationale for continuing to use it. But it really seems to me like it's just not seen as that big of a deal here. Say it's not so!

I think so many people comment on body-related stories because it's the one topic that has affected nearly all women personally.

Re: the health thing. I think we get caught up in the middle range of weight. It's easy to use terms like "healthy" and "unhealthy" or "normal weight" and "overweight" without backing those terms up with numbers. It's not necessarily unhealthy to be moderately overweight if one exercises and eats well, just as it's not necessarily healthy to be a "normal weight" but never exercise and eat junk food all the time. But it is necessary to define your terms. There's a difference between being a size fourteen and weighing four hundred pounds, and I think that's a difference that gets lost in the shuffle.