Sexism you have personally experienced or have heard of? *READ POST 1*

py2006

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Here's another link. The Mirror are on it now:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/aborting-baby-because-boy-felt-5144235?ICID=FB_mirror_main

Now that's when abortion becomes murder.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/11/improving-campus-rape-policy-some-men-have-it-tougher

tritium

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/11/improving-campus-rape-policy-some-men-have-it-tougher

I was expecting lots of emotionally loaded language, questionable statistics and dubious interpretation of same in that. It certainly didn't disappoint on that score. The worrying thing is when you can trace the links in it back to papers that are referencing stuff like the Koss study in the eighties as though that has any credibility.

Kind of worrying how papers like the guardian seem to want to be the cheerleaders for importing a lot of the bat **** crazy US college stuff into Europe.

Henry9

tritium wrote: »

I was expecting lots of emotionally loaded language, questionable statistics and dubious interpretation of same in that. It certainly didn't disappoint on that score. The worrying thing is when you can trace the links in it back to papers that are referencing stuff like the Koss study in the eighties as though that has any credibility.

Kind of worrying how papers like the guardian seem to want to be the cheerleaders for importing a lot of the bat **** crazy US college stuff into Europe.

You should always read the comments under a Valenti article, she gets absolutely torn to shreds. I'm sure the Guardian only publish her as a wind up merchant.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

Henry9 wrote: »

You should always read the comments under a Valenti article, she gets absolutely torn to shreds. I'm sure the Guardian only publish her as a wind up merchant.

It's good to be reminded that the Guardian's readers are more often than not smarter than their "columnists".

Playboy

No

Henry9 wrote: »

You should always read the comments under a Valenti article, she gets absolutely torn to shreds. I'm sure the Guardian only publish her as a wind up merchant.

She has plenty of supporters on there too, about 50/50 in my book. She is a dangerous woman imo. She knows exactly what she is doing when she presents false or debunked statistics but she does it anyway to make her misandrist points. I used to like the Guardian but in recent years I just cant bear to read it knowing they provide people like Valenti with a platform to spread their vitriol. The independent (uk) has gone down the same road too and I can only assume they allow it because its great clickbait for the website which helps generate advertising revenues.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

Playboy wrote: »

She has plenty of supporters on there too, about 50/50 in my book. She is a dangerous woman imo. She knows exactly what she is doing when she presents false or debunked statistics but she does it anyway to make her misandrist points. I used to like the Guardian but in recent years I just cant bear to read it knowing they provide people like Valenti with a platform to spread their vitriol. The independent (uk) has gone down the same road too and I can only assume they allow it because its great clickbait for the website which helps generate advertising revenues.

I was never too keen a reader of the Independent but it looks like there's been a drop in quality there as well. Valenti works for the Guardian US according to Wikipedia so the bile she comes out with isn't surprising. I used to have a very high opinion of the paper and was even considering subscribing to help it stay paywall free at one stage.

Henry9

I haven't counted but it always seems the comments are very anti Valenti. There's always a few supporters and some of those 'the comments prove the need for feminism' types. Plus her comments sections are always very heavily moderated, there's a huge number deleted.
I'd say she's more a figure of fun amongst the online readership.

Seriously?

Its so mad you would be forgiven for thinking its a wind-up.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413978/student-banned-areas-campus-resembling-classmates-rapist-katherine-timpf

Sleepy

Your username captures it all...

That's utterly terrifying stuff.

Pawwed Rig

Ok the last time maybe there was alot of other news that buried the kidnapping but this time there will surely be international outrage. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31567130

Waiting with bated breath

GalwayGuitar

Seriously? wrote: »

Its so mad you would be forgiven for thinking its a wind-up.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413978/student-banned-areas-campus-resembling-classmates-rapist-katherine-timpf

Hope he sues them for a fortune.

LostinBlanch

maybe

This is a particularly sad case. Another case of a false accusation resulting in spending a year on bail, vigilante attacks and miscarriage due to one attack.

Who was it that said such accusations are not a big deal and that only a few guys might get unfriended on Facebook?

The perpetrator got 20 months.

Carlos Orange

No

Nobody even needs to make an accusation for lives to be ruined.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2908537/Boy-15-hanged-teachers-grilled-sexual-encounter-girl-feared-d-sent-prison.html

ancapailldorcha

maybe

"Yet men will only stop killing, raping, injuring and oppressing women if they change."

I've a very high opinion of Owen Jones and it's really depressing to see his work drop to this sort of US third wave feminist drivel.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/24/men-women-masculinity-feminism

iptba

psinno wrote: »

Nobody even needs to make an accusation for lives to be ruined.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2908537/Boy-15-hanged-teachers-grilled-sexual-encounter-girl-feared-d-sent-prison.html

Yes, an example of one sort of problem that can arise when one treats male teenagers as sex offenders for having "consensual" sex with teenagers of a similar age.

Could happen in Ireland also.
Romeo and Juliet clauses could help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Juliet_laws

ETA: But it also illustrates a possible problem with false accusations more generally as you say.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

tritium

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Not sure this is quite discrimination. I think there's just differing ages for men and women to qualify for this ( whole separate question there, that's being addressed after a lot of campaigning) and so this birth date wouldn't apply to men

ancapailldorcha

maybe

I think I may have jumped the gun here.

ThunbergsAreGo

The Hotels Combined ad again shows a man out to be a complete idiot

newport2

naughtb4 wrote: »

The Hotels Combined ad again shows a man out to be a complete idiot

That ad is the most annoying one running at the moment, I'm switching over from Sky Sports when it's on.

lazybones32

naughtb4 wrote: »

The Hotels Combined ad again shows a man out to be a complete idiot

A friend of a friend was tasked with booking a room for a few nights during the Galway Races a few years ago. He booked it for the week after the Races...

mrkiscool2

lazybones32 wrote: »

A friend of a friend was tasked with booking a room for a few nights during the Galway Races a few years ago. He booked it for the week after the Races...

So because your friend did something idiotic, all men are idiotic? That's awful logic.

newport2

mrkiscool2 wrote: »

So because your friend did something idiotic, all men are idiotic? That's awful logic.

An elected woman in our Dail drove her car down the concrete steps outside right in front of the press afterwards, therefore it's ok to make ads implying all women are terrible drivers? Eh, no...

lazybones32

mrkiscool2 wrote: »

So because your friend did something idiotic, all men are idiotic? That's awful logic.

Yes, that is 'awful logic' and you should not use it again.

How did you come to the conclusion that the man in the Ad represents all men?

ancapailldorcha

maybe

lazybones32 wrote: »

Yes, that is 'awful logic' and you should not use it again.

How did you come to the conclusion that the man in the Ad represents all men?

Is he the only one in the ad? Does he need his attractive, intelligent and independent wife/partner to handle this for him?

lazybones32

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Is he the only one in the ad? Does he need his attractive, intelligent and independent wife/partner to handle this for him?

He can afford to fill their living room with PC's that he knows how to operate: that suggests financially viable and technologically intelligent. He also goes through multiple sites to find the best deal: that shows prudence, persistence and critical evaluation.

newport2

lazybones32 wrote: »

He can afford to fill their living room with PC's that he knows how to operate: that suggests financially viable and technologically intelligent. He also goes through multiple sites to find the best deal: that shows prudence, persistence and critical evaluation.

You can come up whatever indirect explanations you want to justify it, but why doesn't that work when women are portrayed like this in ads? Because they aren't. The ad's message is "Man stupid, woman clever", rinse and repeat, ad after ad. I get it, the white male is the only group in society that it's acceptable to rip the p1ss out of and ridicule without consequence. It just gets annoying after a while. It also cannot be good for young boys growing up to be consistantly being indirectly told how stupid they are, useless around the house, can't handle children, etc.

Potatoeman

Ill have to look up where I read it but women make up 80% of overall spending so many products are aimed or marketed at women.

newport2

Potatoeman wrote: »

Ill have to look up where I read it but woman make up 80% of overall spending so many products are aimed at women.

Yes I get that. But if things turned it wouldn't be acceptable to ridicule women just because your target market was made up of men. Nor should it be.

newport2

newport2 wrote: »

You can come up whatever indirect explanations you want to justify it, but why doesn't that work when women are portrayed like this in ads? Because they aren't. The ad's message is "Man stupid, woman clever", rinse and repeat, ad after ad. I get it, the white male is the only group in society that it's acceptable to rip the p1ss out of and ridicule without consequence. It just gets annoying after a while. It also cannot be good for young boys growing up to be consistantly being indirectly told how stupid they are, useless around the house, can't handle children, etc.

Sadly the white male is being ridiculed by other white males by and large, since that's the demographic that makes up the very vast majority of ad agency creative directors.

newport2

Candie wrote: »

Sadly the white male is being ridiculed by other white males by and large, since that's the demographic that makes up the very vast majority of ad agency creative directors.

I'd like to see stats on the breakdown of people in advertising, I find it hard to buy they're all white men.

Besides, I don't really get your point. If some social group is being treated badly by people of the same social group they should just suck it up? They've only themselves to blame because they share a common trait with their abusers?

newport2

newport2 wrote: »

I'd like to see stats on the breakdown of people in advertising, I find it hard to buy they're all white men.

Besides, I don't really get your point. If some social group is being treated badly by people of the same social group they should just suck it up? They've only themselves to blame because they share a common trait with their abusers?

I read it here:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3006255/where-are-all-women-creative-directors

Every once in a while at Fast Company, we come across a statistic so counterintuitive, we need to investigate further. Like this one: Despite the fact that women control 80% of consumer spending, only 3% of creative directors (and we're not talking about celebrity CDs) are female.

I'm not saying anyone should suck it up, just that it might be harder to have objections heard by one's own gender, something I suspect happens from time to time from my own experience. There's a large contingent of men who would have the attitude that it's very trivial to be upset about male portrayal in advertising, which perhaps mutes the voices of those who feel otherwise.

The problem with lazy ads is that when they're used in the same way for so long, it's assumed they work. I'm pretty sure women don't buy Flash because men 'can't' wash floors, they buy it because they need floor cleaner and Flash is mentioned often enough to be a brand that sticks in the mind. Perhaps that translates to the adverts working and the CD's are reluctant to break what they see is a winning formula.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

newport2 wrote: »

I'd like to see stats on the breakdown of people in advertising, I find it hard to buy they're all white men. =

The ones calling the shots will be.

mrkiscool2

lazybones32 wrote: »

Yes, that is 'awful logic' and you should not use it again.

How did you come to the conclusion that the man in the Ad represents all men?

I never said it did though did I? But when multiple ads are making men seem like idiots and women seem like the clever ones, you have to say there is a hint of "we think all men are idiots". Ad ideas don't come from thin air, they are taken from the perspective of what society believe at the time.

lazybones32 wrote: »

He can afford to fill their living room with PC's that he knows how to operate: that suggests financially viable and technologically intelligent. He also goes through multiple sites to find the best deal: that shows prudence, persistence and critical evaluation.

What has that got to do with sexism? How do we know he isn't after wasting a shed load of money on it and putting them into debt just to find a hotel? Why would he go through all that effort when there is something easier? It does portray him as stupid.

Candie wrote: »

Sadly the white male is being ridiculed by other white males by and large, since that's the demographic that makes up the very vast majority of ad agency creative directors.

Citation please. And I mean a proper citation, not an article that does not have a link to a peer-reviewed paper, you know, the sign that the statistic isn't just being pulled from the person making the claims ass! And sexual stereotypes can be thought of by both genders!

Potatoeman

Candie wrote: »

I read it here:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3006255/where-are-all-women-creative-directors



I'm not saying anyone should suck it up, just that it might be harder to have objections heard by one's own gender, something I suspect happens from time to time from my own experience. There's a large contingent of men who would have the attitude that it's very trivial to be upset about male portrayal in advertising, which perhaps mutes the voices of those who feel otherwise.

The problem with lazy ads is that when they're used in the same way for so long, it's assumed they work. I'm pretty sure women don't buy Flash because men 'can't' wash floors, they buy it because they need floor cleaner and Flash is mentioned often enough to be a brand that sticks in the mind. Perhaps that translates to the adverts working and the CD's are reluctant to break what they see is a winning formula.

I've heard before that women are more likely to act collectively as a group for what’s best for women where men are far less likely to and more likely to act in their own interest rather than what’s best for other men. It's supposedly rooted in mating where men compete against other men. I would say that feminist action groups looking for things to campaign against today would be a pretty big disincentive though.

Standman

No

It's been said before but I'll say it again, it's not necessarily the portrayal of men as idiots that bothers me personally,(although I am pretty tired of it, but I'm tired of ads & crappy movies in general so..) it's the general acceptance of it with many other people when these same people would be much more critical were the genders reversed.

I saw this on facebook the other day and I think it illuminates perfectly the kind of attitude I'm talking about:



It's simply not taboo to talk this way about men, but it is about women. Whether or not it should be taboo is another question. Perhaps we can all have a joke at each others expense every now and again without getting our pitchforks out?

The point is though, that there's a glaring double standard.

Carlos Orange

No

Candie wrote: »

I read it here:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3006255/where-are-all-women-creative-directors

Where possible people really should use stats for the country they actually live in, that are relevant to the culture being discussed.

http://iapi.ie/census/

newport2

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The ones calling the shots will be.

I expect the ones in boardrooms might be, but they don't decide on the details of ad contents. Considering about 80% of advertising is aimed at women, I find it hard to believe that a lot of the people involved in what to target them with are not women.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

newport2 wrote: »

I expect the ones in boardrooms might be, but they don't decide on the details of ad contents. Considering about 80% of advertising is aimed at women, I find it hard to believe that a lot of the people involved in what to target them with are not women.

I'm not sure about that. Responsibility will ultimately fall to the executives. It's not an area I'm well versed in so I could well be wrong.

Maguined

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I'm not sure about that. Responsibility will ultimately fall to the executives. It's not an area I'm well versed in so I could well be wrong.

Responsibility yes, direct input is far less likely though. Executives rarely make such direct decisions as they leave that up to the managers below them which the executive is responsible for.

Wibbs

maybe

I've had some dealings with advertising/marketing people over the years and in that small experience I found there are slightly more women involved(higher again in marketing) and at all levels too. Dunno how that translates to the real world mind you.

I would reckon that this double standard while irritating is more about the audience targeted. Women are far more targeted by advertising than men. So this "you go guuurll" and "men are so silly tee hee" stuff comes out of that. If anything it's a worse reflection on how advertisers see women. They're consciously or not seen as malleable and easily swayed by such tropes, even gullible. I mean when anti wrinkle cream and diet cereals are being advertised by 16 year old models and hair products are advertised by women wearing hair extensions that kinda says it all. I mean you wouldn't use William Shatner as a spokesman for shampoo for men, but they had Cheryl Cole fronting hair dye ads with a head full of other women's hair. Women's advertising is more than a little surreal, so TBH I can't really take the "men are so silly" cliches too seriously.

newport2

Wibbs wrote: »

...so TBH I can't really take the "men are so silly" cliches too seriously.

I don't take it too seriously or find it offensive, I just find double-standards annoying. That and it genuinely does concern me about the effect this has on boys consistently seeing men portrayed as idiots.

ancapailldorcha

maybe

It's an industry I've a huge amount of contempt for in general. All it seems to do is to corrupt the media and damage enjoyment. It makes TV and radio free but look at what's on compared to subscription channels like HBO in the US.

Regarding men, it's so commonplace that I don't get upset anymore about it. If I say something I'll just get told to "man up". Thank Christ for Adblock Plus.

LostinBlanch

maybe

Not sure if this should be in this thread or in the Children with two fathers thread, but Alan Shatter was on Pat Kenny tearing Frances Fitzgeralds Children and Family Bill apart. He was asking how come certain protections for fathers he had put in when he was Minister for Justice have now been taken out? Things like measures forcing recalcitrant parents to abide by court orders on access etc by giving them community service or fines. Of course, as this will impact women moreso than men, Frances Fitzgerald has taken them out.

Even Collette Browne in the indo highlighted the lack of rights that unmarried fathers have. Especially with Regards to the guardianship for unmarried fathers. She has ignored the Law Reform Commissions rulings in 1982 and 2010 saying that automatic guardianship for fathers should happen.

iptba

Wibbs wrote: »

I would reckon that this double standard while irritating is more about the audience targeted. Women are far more targeted by advertising than men. So this "you go guuurll" and "men are so silly tee hee" stuff comes out of that. If anything it's a worse reflection on how advertisers see women. They're consciously or not seen as malleable and easily swayed by such tropes, even gullible.

If there were ads that were aimed mainly at white people which had particular groups e.g. black people, Asian people or whatever, looking bad, it might mean one thinks white people are malleable/gullible/whatever but the primary problem is that the it makes black people/Asian people/whatever look bad.

I don't like how sexism against men is sometimes turned around that it is really sexism against women.

Carlos Orange

No

I think advertising inherently assumes that people are malleable.

BrianD3

There is a thread in the work forum about Executive Officer positions in the civil service, the first stage of the process was an aptitude/personality test with:
Online Questionnaire
Verbal Reasoning
Numerical Reasoning

There is a minimum "pass" score that has to be achieved in all three tests yet when the marks are added up to determine Order of Merit, Numerical Reasoning is left out. Posters in the thread are saying that this is to favour female applicants.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94460880&postcount=633

ahnowbrowncow

No

I was directly affected by that Brian. I got 526/800 in the questionnaire, 643/800 in the verbal reasoning and 760/800 in the numerical reasoning.

So I'm at a huge disadvantage as theyre not considering my numerical reasoning score, because males were more likely to have sat higher level maths.

Even the pass rate for numerical reasoning was the lowest of the three tests. You only had to get 238/800 to pass the numerical reasoning, meaning that people who scored more than 3 times lower than myself were placed higher in the order of merit.

Pawwed Rig

I have heard that so often now that I fear it is true