Tag Archives | Gender

Olympics Struggle With ‘Policing Femininity’

By on June 12, 2012 in News 12

In a potential move which seems both startlingly futuristic and archaic, the Olympics may require some of the world’s top female athletes to alter their natural bodies through surgery or hormone therapy to become more similar to what the Olympics imagines a “woman” is, if they wish to compete. Time to scrap the outdated two-gender sporting system and experiment with three or more classes? The Toronto Star writes:

There are female athletes who will be competing at the Olympic Games this summer after undergoing treatment to make them less masculine. Still others are being secretly investigated for displaying overly manly characteristics, as sport’s highest medical officials attempt to quantify — and regulate — the hormonal difference between male and female athletes.

Caster Semenya, the South African runner who was so fast and muscular that many suspected she was a man, exploded onto the front pages three years ago. She was considered an outlier, a one-time anomaly.

… Read the rest

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Man Goes To Hospital For Kidney Stone, Finds Out He’s A Woman

By on May 31, 2012 in News 14
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Photo: thirdrail (CC)

What surprises life will spring upon you? ABC News reports:

A Colorado man who was admitted to the hospital for a kidney stone received surprising news when the nurse came back with test results revealing he was actually a woman. Denver photographer Steve Crecelius said he’s felt a little different all his life.

He was intersex, meaning he had both male genitalia and internal female sex organs. “The nurse is reading the ultrasound and says, ‘Huh, this says you’re a female,’ Crecelius said. “It was very liberating.” Steve, who now goes by “Stevie,” said his wife and their children accepted his new identity right away.

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Study: People See Sexualized Images Of Women As Objects, Not People

By on May 21, 2012 in News 26

adCritiques of popular media as “objectifying” women are dead on — both males and females have been found to  subconsciously process sexy women as being inanimate objects, yet recognize sexy men as human beings. Via Psychological Science:

Perfume ads, beer billboards, movie posters: everywhere you look, women’s sexualized bodies are on display. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.

Psychological research has worked out that our brains see people and objects in different ways. For example, while we’re good at recognizing a whole face, just part of a face is a bit baffling. On the other hand, recognizing part of a chair is just as easy as recognizing a whole chair. One way that psychologists have found to test whether something is seen as an object is by turning it upside down.

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Female Terrorists Contradict Stereotypes

By on May 18, 2012 in News 2

BalaclavasVia ScienceDaily:

Much like their male counterparts, female terrorists are likely to be educated, employed and native residents of the country where they commit a terrorist act, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

The findings contradict stereotypes presented in previous studies that describe female terrorists as socially isolated and vulnerable to recruitment because they are uneducated, unemployed and from a foreign land, psychologists reported in a study published online in the APA journal Law and Human Behavior. These assumptions are not supported by evidence, according to the study authors.

“We discovered that some of the popular notions about female terrorists do not reflect what has occurred in the past,” said the study’s lead author, Karen Jacques, PhD. “A more realistic description is helpful because it provides insights into the social dynamics that might promote an individual’s involvement in terrorist activities.”…

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Holding Hands As We Forge The Chasm

By on April 27, 2012 in News 6

Suffrage UniverselNatalie Solidarity writes at Diatribe Media:

According to the Women’s Law Center, women face unequal pay for equal work, earning on average only 77¢ for every dollar earned by men, with African American and Latina women faring even worse. Legislative bills to strengthen the laws against discrimination are still in urgent need. Furthermore, depending on industry, women earn significantly less than the 77/100 that their male counterparts for working the same jobs.

Inequality is not a new trend. A comprehensive study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the gender wage gap can only be partially explained by human capital factors and so-called “work patterns.” The GAO study, released in 2003, was based on data from 1983 through 2000 from a representative sample of Americans between the ages of 25 and 65. The researchers controlled for work patterns, which include years of work experience, education, and hours of work per year, as well as differences in industry, occupation, race, marital status, and job tenure.… Read the rest

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Earliest Painting of Transvestite Uncovered in British Gallery

By on April 24, 2012 in News 40

Chevalier D'EonJeanna Bryner writes on LiveScience:

An 18th-century portrait sold in New York to a British gallery as a “woman in a feathered hat” turns out to actually portray a man dressed as a woman, becoming the earliest known painting of a transvestite.

The transvestite painting, now called the “Chevalier D’Eon,” is currently hanging in the Philip Mould Ltd. gallery in London and will possibly become a permanent feature in the British National Portraits Gallery, said art dealer and art historian Philip Mould, director of Philip Mould Ltd.

“We spent 30 years honing our skills at looking at British portraits, and you begin to spot anomalies,” Mould told LiveScience. “Portraiture, despite the diversity of odd-looking people in the world, particularly in the 19th century, before advances in cosmetic science and dentistry and medical advances had taken place, but portraiture is always extremely straight-laced.”

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Sweden To Use New Gender Neutral Pronoun, ‘Hen’

By on April 16, 2012 in News 20

A70-13940If the language and words we use determine the frameworks within which we think, the newest edition to Swedish may have an enlightening effect. Slate explains:

For many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal, but gender-neutral. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels.

Earlier this month, the movement reached a milestone: Just days after International Women’s Day, a new pronoun, ‘hen’ (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the country’s National Encyclopedia. The entry defines hen as a “proposed gender-neutral personal pronoun instead of he [han in Swedish] and she [hon].” The announcement came amid heated debate that has been raging in Swedish newspaper columns and TV studios and on parenting blogs and feminist websites. It was sparked by the publication of Sweden’s first ever gender-neutral children’s book, Kivi och Monsterhund.

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The Women Who Named The ‘Big Mac’ Received A Plaque

By on April 13, 2012 in News 10

Big MacHere’s the inside story behind the woman who came up with the name “Big Mac” for McDonald’s. Despite coining what could be the greatest marketing name in history, she never received any money for it. As Alan P. Henry wrote in the Glenview Lantern:

The next time you prepare to chomp into a Big Mac, take a moment first to thank Esther Glickstein Rose of Glenview. She’s the one who named it, and without her dogged persistence, the iconic sandwich may never have become a McDonald’s product.

The story begins 45 years ago on a snowy winter day in downtown Chicago in 1967. With ten dollars to her name, the 17-year-old Von Steuben High School graduate saw an ad for a secretary at McDonald’s corporate headquarters. Poorly dressed and soaking wet from the commute into the LaSalle Street office, she was spotted in a hallway by a company official, who promptly hired her.

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Are Women as Violent as Men?

By on April 6, 2012 in News 19

From A Voice for Men:

Men, the politically correct narrative tells us, are the abusers, the predators, and the violent. Women, that same narrative states, are the victims. This is the message repeated both subtly and blatantly by professionally produced public service announcements filling media channels on television, radio, magazines, public print advertising, and everywhere else advertising can be found. Men are violent! Women are victims!This is the message drilled into us until it occupies the totality of our conception of what domestic violence is – just that, men beating on women – and sometimes, men also beating on children.

This message is false.

The majority of valid peer-reviewed research on domestic violence indicates that sexually directional violence, from men to women, or indeed, violence from women to men is false. Domestic violence is not sexually specific.

In domestic violence, women are as violent or more violent than their male spouses or partners.

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Female ‘Sperm Hunter’ Gangs Prey On Men In Zimbabwe

By on March 24, 2012 in News 18

women_2175454bA bizarre new crime wave. Via the Telegraph, in Zimbabwe’s underworld, gangs of women have been kidnapping and raping men traveling alone, for the purpose of harvesting their sperm:

Local media have reported victims of the highway prowlers being drugged, subdued at gun or knife point – even with a live snake in one case – given a sexual stimulant and forced into repeated sex before being dumped on the roadside.

The sperm’s exact use is not clear but is thought to be intended for “juju” or traditional rituals to bring luck – enhancing good fortune, boosting business or preventing a criminal from being detected. It is also not known why the semen is taken forcibly from strangers.

“It’s really an issue which is mind boggling,” said University of Zimbabwe sociologist Watch Ruparanganda, who believes it is a lucrative business. Ruparanganda said he was astonished to discover [the matter] seven years ago, while doing research for his doctoral thesis among Harare street youth.

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