I'm seeing sexism everywhere.

[elephantandcastlel]

I'm beginning to feel very sad for the society and culture that we live in.

I don't know whether I'm just getting old, but I'm seeing so much casual sexism that I just didn't notice before.

For example I ended up having a huge row with dp at the weekend and I'm seeing him in a totally different light.

We were watching xfactor and I noticed that a lot of the male acts had female dancers, barely dressed dancing around them as if to make out they are done kind of stud.

Then we got onto the subject of the Moto go and how they have women standing there with high heels, short skirt and low cut top holding a fucking umbrella for the sportsman. I just think it's crazy and that these young women are being paraded like show horses.

Dp said that I was being daft and that they obviously enjoy it and get well paid, and I argued that most don't get well paid and are doing it hoping to hit the big time, most don't and have chucked away their youth parading around like pieces of meat.

I asked him how he's feel if we had a dd and she wanted to do this for a living and he said that he'd support her 100%, I then asked how he'd feel if ds wanted to do that and he burst out laughing and said "as if he'd do that", to me that was very telling. He wants ds to have a career if course, a respected career, use his brains, but it's good enough for a woman.

There are so many accepted acts of sexism, men beeping at women from their cars and vans. I stood in a bus stop about a year ago and I couldn't about 5-6 beeps and things shouted at me from vans. Dp thinks that this is life and men are aroused by women and it's normal.

I then mentioned the inequality in sport, the fact that we have an excellent women's football team who get barely any airtime, and women don't even get a look in with other sports. Dps response was that they're not very good and if they were they'd be on TV because what men wouldn't want to watch good looking women running around in shorts and riding a motorbike.

I felt like banging my head against the wall by this point.

Films I used to watch and enjoy are becoming unwatchable due to the sexist undertones.

I might feel a little like this because sexism has had an adverse affect on my life, I suffered from it from my father, my ex partner, I get it at work.

I hear men at work slating women who are overweight or who dress gender neutral or have their hair short despite then being no male model themselves.

It's making me miserable and I wish that I was blissfully ignorant to it.

Also boomtown I do not believe for a single second that these women are uneducated.

Many are in fact at university and use the money to help them through, some go on to give it up eventually, others give up their education to try to make it big.

But, even if you are an intelligent young women which many are, it's still the case that once those pictures or videos are out there, there's no going back, is it worth it for a few quid to get you through uni?

And even if the woman is happy with her choices then that's fine for her, but it's still the case that many won't be, and it's still the case that it all falls under the horrible 'women are birds to be ogled at'.

Does your DH shout at women from his car OP?

If so, what does he think those women think? How does he think it makes them feel? And how does he feel while he's doing it, why does he do it?

If not, why not, if it's so natural?

Voyager you've put it so much better than me.

It's all little parts of the bigger picture.

And decorative is the word I was looking for, women are often expected to be there for decorative purposes.

Ah of course. Now I'm not a feminist. Now I must be naive.

You're the ones using standard patriarchal insults to belittle perfectly fine women but I'm the idiot?

Maybe you're not the feminists you think you are.

Askbasil, he was basically saying that there's no point in trying to have any influence over ds and how he will treat women/the role he will play in society because he will be what he will be and all men are the same.

So I asked him whether he beeps at women from his van and he frowned and said no and that it wouldn't cross his mind. So I pointed out that in that case not all men are the same and explained how as a women I would often have to put up with men beeping and shouting things from cars even when with my son. At first he tried to deny that it even happens, then he said it's rare that it happens.

He also said that for example with page 3, men don't even look at it and don't buy the paper for the page 3 but for the other stuff, I then asked him how he would feel if it was his mum or sister on page 3, and he kind of shrugged and said it would be up to them, then I asked if he'd be ok with me doing it and he looked horrified and said no because I'm his girlfriend.

Anyone see the irony?

Boomtown nobody has called you an idiot or tried to belittle women.

The point is not whether that woman is happy or made a choice or gets well paid (though that might be also a sexist issue if she gets shit pay when a man wouldn't, but it's an aside).

The point is that people see the scenario with the half-dressed woman twirling around the high-achiever man. And every time they see it, whether they are male or female, they get that message again, one of 10,000 times a day they get it, that women matter less. Women are there to look nice for and titillate men. Men are in the middle. Women are on the sidelines. It doesn't matter what women think or how they feel, as long as they look sexually available and kowtow to the man. The man is it. He just won a race and gets to squirt the champagne. And so on/ And so on.

If the world was fair and we all reproduced this kind of scenario a million times over with a fair share of men and women in both roles there wouldn't be such a problem (OK it would be naff and unnecessary, but not sexist). The problem is the message that sinks into everyone's subcosncious and then comes out and gets replicated in a million more ways - ways that lead to women suffering more, getting hurt more, getting rewarded less.

Boomtown people are trying to explain why the feminist view is the exact opposite of what you've said, trying to explain that clearly and calmly. If you can only respond by getting shouty and sarcastic and not addressing any of these pojnts, of course you'll appear naive and like you're not using your brain.

Why don't you address the points we're making and tell us why you don't agree?

it is in athletics too, where men run in vests and shorts, women in bra and knickers. Don't tell me that women can't perform properly in slightly more clothes..

... or men could perform equally properly in slightly fewer clothes, i.e. in just shorts.

Agreed Voyager. It perpetuates the notion that yes, women are less than men. There is a point to the women being young and beautiful - come on, they're not chubby, short and middle-aged. If they were they wouldn't be there - it's effectively using women for window dressing. It's misogynistic and says a lot about society when no matter where the race is in the world, it still happens after every single one.

Dancers don't generally bother me (although MC went far too far), there are plenty of fit male dances on
TV too.

It's promo girls and podium girls I'd like to see removed from the face of the planet. Those in high heels and short skirts first and then those in daft outfits at every medal ceremony. If the VIPs are too stupid to be trusted with a medal and a bunch of flowers, let someone in a normal stewards tracksuit help.

I want to thank you, OP, for this thread. And to apologize to everyone else for my half-formed thoughts as it's my first post here (though I've been reading for quite a good while).

I, too, see sexism everywhere. Everywhere. My DP is an excellent man from a working class family with a son he started raising before I came along. The son is just eleven, and the two of them enjoy lots of boyish things and I get that. But why, for example, does there need to be a close up of a woman's ass in the Transformers movie? I'm not mom, so I can't say what movies are appropriate and believe me when I say, my DP really IS one of the good guys. He always teaches his son "respect women, don't demean them, never harm them or their reputations" but...still there is this "us" and "them" tone which I don't like.

But not to get too much into my own life, there are other things all around us. Whyyyyy?!? is it okay all the time for men to comment on women's looks? Women comment, too. The outrage over Renee Zellweger illustrates this.

But my biggest problem is with the fact that all of this us vs. them stuff keeps society from advancing at the pace it could be advancing at. I want to bang my head against the wall, too.

And I apologize if my post is too navel gazey. I just had to break the seal and post something already.

I would say though that the RZellweger thing was more of the complete shock because no one recognised her. Would be the same for a man - i.e. if George Clooney took a break and came back looking like a completely diff. person. I think the underlying issue with RZ, is that she felt she had to completely change the way she looked to survive in the industry. A male actor wouldn't have to do that. It makes me sad.

But you are not reading what is written. I agree there is inequality, There is sexism in much of the entertainment industry.

What you are failing to note is the way this is being written in both the op and in various comments. Cheap insults to allegedly cheap women. Insults themselves perpetuated by men and constantly parroted, swallowed and used by women also to subjugate and belittle and keep women down.

That's every day sexism. Which the feminist board seems to not notice, not comment on or astonishingly here agree with.

Debate the industry that could be very interesting. But the rest? Not so much.

It sad that women have been conditioned by men to slagging off women who are overweight/dress gender neutral, have their hair short etc.

Remember how in Britains Got Talent it was ok for scantily clad women to dance around but Simon Cowell buzzed when those three french guys in heels essentially simulated the same.

female dancers, barely dressed dancing around them as if to make out they are done kind of stud

"women standing there with high heels, short skirt and low cut top holding a fucking umbrella for the sportsman*

I don't see this as slagging the women off for these outfits. The OP is pointing out the discrepancy between the male and female roles, and how the scantily clad women are being used as decoration and to big up the man, and in the case of the umbrella, required to be scantily clad and "sexy" to do a job that you could do in any clothes, a stewards tracksuit as someone else said.

would having 'buff' guys in budgie smugglers balance it out or should there be none of it to begin with?

Yes it would balance it out, but not just a few buff guys here and there! Half and half m/f, and also half and half m/f of the high achieving person in the middle.

Hard to imagine isn't it?

Boomtown you might want to ask yourself why you perceive what the OP wrote, as insulting the individual women themselves, rather than commenting on the actual existence of the phenomenon of women being used as pretty objects.

No-one here can see where she has insulted the actual women. Only you seem to believe that is the case. Can you actually quote where the OP has insulted women themselves?

Because anti feminists often do this. They pretend feminists have said something they haven't and criticise them from a pretended more progressive angle than the feminist and actually, it's based on bollocks because she never said the thing they're criticising in the first place.

I'm not sure if you're aware that it looks as though you're doing that, or if you've genuinely misread the OP's posts.

OP the fact that your DH thinks he has the right to tell you you haven't experienced what you in fact have experienced, tells me that he doesn't have much respect for you and I suspect that one of the reasons you're so pissed off atm, is because your new-found consciousness has highlighted that. It's fucking upsetting and I'm not surprised you're upset. You have a right to be.

I also think it's interesting to imagine a leading sportsman, like say Lewis Hamilton, in this situation if he was surrounded by scantily clad, young, gorgeous men, prancing about and holding his umbrella for him. There's absolutely no reason that shouldn't happen, if the situation is not sexist and these women are merely choosing to do it. So why doesn't it?

I think it doesn't because the message it's designed to send is "Alpha male gets all the women attending to his every whim" which is a sanitised version of "Alpha male can shag any woman he likes." It's a depiction of the man achieving success and leadership and getting sex as a reward. (Which is what actually does happen in society at many levels, and also happens with chimps and suchlike.)

Ask basil, funnily enough dp tried to do exactly the same thing to me. He said "so what you're basically saying is that all these women are thick and stupid", even though I hadn't actually said that.

Personally I think that having half naked people male or female, gyrating around a 'star' is tacky and unnecessary. However if there were as many males in such roles then yes it would be more balanced, however I'm not talking about a handful I'm talking an equal split.

But that will never happen, as my dp rightly laughed out loud when I suggested that our son might go into a career holding an umbrella for a man whilst standing half dressed in uncomfortable clothes.

The role of umbrella holder might be a necessary one, but if it's raining enough for the motorcyclist to need a brolly then perhaps the umbrella holder needs a raincoat and wellies?

There was a very funny version of that ghastly Blurred Lines video where the men were almost naked and pouting at the camera but the women were fully dressed in trouser suits. It looked utterly ridiculous, but reverse the genders and it is seen as perfectly normal.

But that will never happen

There's no reason why it shouldn't one day. As a feminist I hold a vision of equality in my head and that's what I compare things to. Even if 100%, absolute equality is hard to reach, I like to see it as a goal and try to keep moving towards it. With this, I'd just keep pointing out the inequality to DP, just the way you are on this thread. I'd openly tell my DS of course he can do that job if he likes. I'd tell my DS and my DD that it doesn't have to be that way around.

Your DP can laugh but that's one of the many, many methods people use to belittle feminism and try to stop the status quo from changing.

younerr just re the women not caring about women's sport i think there are a number of things that contribute to a relative lack of women supporters, mainly of course socialisation from a very young age, but also turning up to sports matches week in week out takes a lot of time that many many women don't have. think about how acceptable it is for a man who has children to take up a full day off work travelling across the country to see his football team, and how many women can do the same thing unless they support the same team as their partner? women are not socialised to have hobbies and interests that take them out of the house for long periods of time unless it involves taking the children with them. women are socialised not to take an interest, and the traditional family setup is not one that makes it easy for thsoe women who do take an interest

Interest in the women's team is picking up:

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29789889

It helps that they actually have a chance of being the best in the world, unlike the men's team!