Sexism

It all started with the empty fruit bowl on a stark kitchen bench in Altona. The Fairfax profile of Julia Gillard in her first early days of prime ministership was a sign of times to come. Being Australia’s first female PM was going to be far from easy.

From grooming, decorum and the sound of her voice, to the appropriateness of her relationship with de facto partner, Tim Mathieson. To the lack of emotion displayed on cue from the devastation of the Queensland floods. 

When it comes to scrutiny of the personal nature, as a politician Julia Gillard has copped more than most.  As a prime minster it’s been unprecedented. The only real question is why.

Continue reading "Is it sexist? We’ve got nothing to compare it to" »

“I enjoy pussy on a night out sometimes with cucumber as they go hand in hand…”

“Pussy is great by itself, but you know sharing with friends, it’s nice to experiment and I would recommend sharing pussy with friends…”

Where did I find these quotes? Comments posted on a porn site? Men discussing their sexual preferences perhaps?

Continue reading "The marketing campaign that’s totally below the belt" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit. Yesterday, F1 racer Nico Rosberg was flogged with limp lettuce for bracketing women’s soccer in with watching the Paralympics.

Rosberg was pinned down in an interview about his level of interest in the women’s World Cup, and said he’d probably just watch the finals. “Then you have the Paralympics, which people also watch on TV,” he said.

German defender Saskia Bartusiak was among those who disapproved of his comments.

Continue reading "ICB: Women’s soccer up there with the Paralympics?" »

Some might be wondering why two days of our national media cycle have included debate over a man miaowing like a cat and the appropriate level of offence it should or shouldn’t cause. While we’d like our parliament to set a standard for the rest of the community, the truth is we often fall well short - in terms of behaviour and sexism.

There has been progress but it is still a parliament dominated by men in suits. Women here, like women in any workplace, are entitled to enjoy equal treatment in all senses. No-one is asking for favours or complaining about the hustle and bustle that accompanies hard-fought debate but there is just one request - maybe we could treat members of both genders equally.

There were howls from the Opposition when the Government described the noise that was made towards Penny Wong as sexist. The reality is that not only was it sexist but it also pointed to a pretty unpleasant pattern of behaviour, which has flourished under the leadership of Tony Abbott.

Continue reading "How a 19th century leader sets a tone of sexism" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit. Nonsensical headline. Sorry. Now, to the point.  Amid debate on trifling topics such as the future of the nation and the world, the most robust conversations at the moment are centering on a single “meow”.

More accurately it was a sort of “reeeeee-ow” that Liberal Senator David Bushby uttered when Finance Minister Penny Wong (justifiably) snapped at him for interrupting.

And so the crowd was heard to shout “sexism”! Well, I call bullshit. It wasn’t sexist.

Continue reading "ICB: To bitch is human, to meow feline" »

A funny thing – actually, make that a frilly thing – happened on the way to the feminist revolution.

Just as women started to get a better deal at home, at school and in the boardroom, our girl children have been hijacked by a foe more flouncy than any which has come before.

It is the colour pink and it is being worn – probably in frothing tutu form – by a micro-Cinderella near you.

Continue reading "That old pink stereotype just won’t fade to black" »

As Season 5 of Mad Men approaches with the promise of more excoriating social commentary, it’s fitting to reflect on the media, gender roles and misogyny. Especially when we have Sky Sports (UK) commentators making sexist gaffes about female referees. But good thing those mad men, Andy Gray and Richard Keys did, or else we wouldn’t know we were still living in the decade of Don Drapers.

If you’re unfamiliar, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is the central character of Mad Men – a series about Madison Avenue’s elite 1960s admen. Draper, creative director of fictional Ad agency Sterling Cooper, is a figure of philandering, pinstriped machismo. In short, he is at the heart of the Mad Men phenomenon.

The title of a recent op-ed by magazine jezebel.com said it all: ‘The Don Draper Effect: Why Do Feminists Still Love Assholes?’ The operative word, some might argue, is still.

Continue reading "Misogyny didn’t end with the era of Mad Men" »

Ugh. I can barely be bothered raising the requisite outrage to talk about the latest sexism in sport scandal.

Read all about it here. Salient point: UK Sky Sports commentators Andy Gray and Richard Keys have been stood down after they joked a female linesman (woman?) wouldn’t know soccer’s offside rule.

What dinosaurs.  Sure, it was meant to be off air. Sure, jokes among friends and all that. Reality: What they said both reflects and perpetuates ridiculous myths that exist in society. Which is why it still deserves a response despite being tiresome and predictable.

Continue reading "More men saying women are crap at stuff" »

I enjoy Two and a Half Men. Does this make me a failed feminist?

Feminists make a great deal of noise when it concerns America’s #1 hit sitcom. Charlie is labelled as misogynist and sexist under a thin veneer of “comedy”.

I understand people’s concern with its 7pm timeslot, but what I don’t understand is why people are so angry. Especially women.

Continue reading "Confessions of a failed feminist" »

Lost jobs, failing economies, broken marriages. Now you can add a massive upsurge in the level of sexism in ads as one of the GFC’s effects.

The way people are portrayed in advertising has never been what you could call enlightened. But now advertisers are pitching lower than ever before.

Look at these images from Dutch Fashion Label suitsupply’s “Shameless” fashion campaign. The images caused a huge outcry when displayed in a Westfield shopping centre in London. The picture of a man looking disinterestedly up a woman’s dress while she leans back over a stairwell and writhes in ecstasy makes you wonder what urge exactly advertisers are trying to appeal to.

Continue reading "No power in the boardroom? Try the bedroom instead" »

There is a new dog whistle in Australian politics and it is being blown in sections of the media, in the Liberal Party and most devastatingly, by a traitor inside the ALP.

The encrypted message it carries? That Julia Gillard is a childless, career-obsessed feminist, unmarried by choice, and uninterested in the normal things such as children and families and the elderly.

In an election-heated political climate in which showing empathy with the suburban mainstream is everything, this finely honed message is designed to seep almost unnoticed into the public consciousness and once there become politically lethal - to leave an impression without ever owning up to it.

Continue reading "Rank sexism behind the persecution of Gillard" »

Timana Tahu should be incredibly proud of himself and his family incredibly proud of him.

Not many people are prepared to put their money where there mouth is on issues of discrimination, and the impact of a player of Tahu’s stature taking the stand he has might mean something in the NRL actually changes.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if a player such as Tahu took a similar stand when instead of calling someone a “black c***”, like Andrew Johns did, a senior figure in the League calls someone a “dumb slut”?

Continue reading "Bravo for dealing with racism, now for sexism" »

It’s time to put our “I Heart Germaine” t-shirts away for another year now International Women’s Day has passed. For some women it’s a day that fills their hearts with pride as they fondly reminisce about the marches and the combustibility of their C-cups, for other women it’s a day they cower nervously lest anyone slings the ‘F’ word their way- feminist.

Nearly 40 years after Germaine published The Female Eunuch and the second-wave rolled into town, how has feminism’s image slipped from that of a relevant, mainstream social justice movement to a of a blurry cultural reference point?

Gloria Steinem commented recently that feminism “is a revolution, not a public relations movement”.

Continue reading "How feminism became the dirty new f-word" »

So I’m watching a replay of this year’s Lingerie Football League Lingerie Bowl between the Los Angeles Temptation and the Chicago Bliss. Didn’t watch right till the end, but I’m pretty sure the final score was Butt Cheeks 32, Dignity 0.

Later, without flicking the remote, I watched Bikini Beach. Whoa. This lascivious grey-haired, stubbled-faced dude was “interviewing” bikini-clad women in a booty-shaking comp that was like pole dancing, minus the pole. At one point, he actually felt the contestants’ breasts to test their firmness, or silicon content, or lactative potential, or whatever the hell.

Both of these shows were on Fuel TV, the action sports channel which is beamed into 26 million American households and plenty here too. Switch to Channel 516 on your Foxtel at any given moment and you’ll likely see one of three things: snowboarding, motocross or boobs. Probably all three.

Continue reading "Action sports and sexism: a match made in stupid heaven" »

UPDATE: Toyota has just pulled the ad.

It’s easily the worst ad of the year, one of the worst ads ever made, and while it’s obviously an attack on the dignity of women it does men a major disservice too by suggesting they’re so screwed-up that they actually say disgusting s**t like this.

The people at Toyota have besmirched their brand with this squalid effort, featured above, which revolves around a creepy play on words in which a father discusses her daughter’s virginity and sexual prowess with her young boyfriend.

It almost defies belief that a major company would associate itself with this garbage. It’s offensive on so many levels - the kids in the ad look really young, the idea of a father discussing his daughter in such a fashion is a total gross out, there’s a stupid hubba-hubba tit joke, the “give her a pounding in any direction” line, the girl at the end saying she’s ready to blow. In a perverse way it’s a credit to the creators that they managed to jam so much tasteless and desperately unfunny crap into just one minute and 14 seconds.

Continue reading "Toyota: Oh what a creepy feeling" »

Colleges are being blamed for a culture we didn’t create. The focus is always on our worst behaviour. That’s understandable – it can get very bad, as events at Sydney University have shown.

But you can’t blame “college culture” and “tradition” - this is a youth culture which extends far past these privileged quadrangles.

The ‘tight and white’ wet t-shirt party could have been held at any backpacker hostel or suburban pub.

Continue reading "Colleges don’t cause misogyny in young men" »

Each year during Orientation week at Sydney University, boys from St Paul’s invite women from the all-female colleges to their bar, the Salisbury, for the “Tight and White” party.

The night pretty much does what it says on the tin. The tighter and whiter the clothes the better. Especially when the girls are soaked in water on arrival, their clothes now transparent and sticking to their bodies.

And even more so when they lie down on the bar while men drink shots of spirits off their bodies, off their bare stomachs, breasts and thighs.

Continue reading "Inside our sexist college culture, and how to fix it" »

Perhaps the elite all-male college at Sydney University, St Paul’s, needs to get some rugby league players to talk to its members about respecting women.

The ranks of the elite who would decry league players as “boofheads” and would have been most vocally repulsed by the exposure of player attitudes to the opposite sex have been revealed as nurturing a virtually identical culture of the sexual objectification of women.

Rugby league teams aren’t known for being overrun with players who are also top-flight academics but they could probably teach the boys at St Paul’s a thing or two. The students are supposed to be high achievers but for outright misogyny it’s pretty hard to beat setting up a Facebook group that basically endorses rape.

Continue reading "League players might teach rich boys a thing or two" »

In his deservingly scornful review of the book Iron John, Robert Bly’s absurd bible of the men’s movement in the United States, British author Martin Amis describes the comical pilgrimage made by maladjusted men into the American woods to sniff each other’s armpits, channel negative energy into circles of hate and howl at the moon at the fact that mum had them circumcised.

Happily, this quest to unleash what Amis ridicules as “the hairy satyr within” does not appear to have any formal and organised equivalent in Australia.

This is probably because most Australian men have nothing of any real magnitude to get off their chest, or simply find that the odd night at the pub or the occasional fishing weekend provides ample therapy for any lingering sense of gender injustice. That, and the fact that we’ve got too wry a sense of humour and too much self-awareness to engage in anything that silly.

Continue reading "Angry boys club needs a Bex and a good lie down" »

My name is Yvette and I am a Masterchef addict. Not since Charlene married Scott on Neighbours have I looked forward so eagerly to my nightly fix of commercial TV.

Masterchef has been a revelation. With gripping culinary challenges, genuine emotion and insightful tips on cooking techniques it has become must watch TV. The prospect of its conclusion on Sunday night fills me with despair.

The show has also changed my mind about the culinary industry which up ‘til now I believed was full of offensive, egotistical, sexist chefs who thought it was OK for women to cook as long as they weren’t paid for it.

Continue reading "Macho-man chefs are now stuffed and skewered" »

Here’s an oldie but a goody: Why do women wear makeup and perfume? Because they are ugly and they stink.

Some would say that joke, like Gordon Ramsay’s behaviour in recent days, is pretty offensive. But that personal favourite differs from the celebrity chef on two important fronts.

The first difference is arguably it’s funny. The second is obviously it’s sexist.

Continue reading "Ramsay’s attack was many things, but it wasn’t sexist" »