PJM Lifestyle
Who’s to Blame for Fueling Pop Culture’s 5 Worst Female Stereotypes?
Poor Seth MacFarlane. The guy sings one song about boobs and suddenly he’s #1 on the Hates Women List with a Steinem next to his name. (That means if they capture him, she gets to rag on him incessantly. Who wouldn’t want a bullet after that?)
It’d be too easy to join the chorus singing, “MacFarlane hates women.” As a woman, I despise the cop-outs women often take, chiding every man as being both the desired master of her universe and the despised crafter of her fate. If we really believe in Girl Power, what’s our responsibility in all of this? Are we allowing the fate scripted by guys like MacFarlane to come true?
It took about 10 minutes to pull video for the following five most common stereotypes about women portrayed in Family Guy. The sad news is that it took about 15 to pull five examples of the same behavior from the most popular Girl Power reality television show out there: The Kardashians. Praised by some feminists as career women comfortable in their own skin, it has been observed that “50 years ago, the Kardashians could never live the way they do. It’s all thanks to the Feminist movement that they are who they are – and they embrace every benefit from it fully.”
So, culture judges that you are, tell me: Is the evidence compelling? Is MacFarlane a He-Man Woman Hater, or do the Kardashians prove that girls finally busted through the glass ceiling in the tree house and joined the club?
Totally Petarded: The Top 5 Masculinity Myths on Family Guy
Watch out, ladies in the dating world: Family Guy’s prized demographic is totally Petarded.
According to the show’s creator, Family Guy’s target audience is men ages 18-34. This happens to be one of the most desirable demographics for advertisers and women looking to eventually get married and settle down.
Who hasn’t dreamed of a life with Peter Griffin?
Obviously, not all men between the ages of 18 and 34 are going to find the humor of Family Guy appealing. Yet a growing majority of them do. I long ago learned as a woman not to attempt to comment on the male psyche; why these men find Family Guy so appealing is not in my realm of interest. However, the message Family Guy sends about masculinity is so apparent that I can’t help but laugh at this not-so-subtle irony: Most women looking for men, the ladies trolling the clubs and hitting Happy Hours at the bars, are the ones who tend to stereotype men exactly the way they are portrayed on the show.
Is American Life Really Slanted in Favor of Women Over Men?
It would be hard to argue that, one hundred years ago when women couldn’t vote or hold the same careers as men, our society wasn’t tilted against the fairer sex. However, those days are long dead and gone, and women have largely achieved the sort of parity with men that the feminists of the sixties were demanding. In fact, we’ve gone beyond that point now and what we’re finding is that many women want to have it both ways. They want to be thought of as just as strong, tough, and capable as men while simultaneously demanding all sorts of special protection. In fact, it’s considered bad form to even suggest that men aren’t privileged and that, yes, in some cases, women are the ones who have an advantage because of their gender. We’re not even supposed to ask the most basic questions about the terrible trials women supposedly face because of their sex.
For example, it’s fine to complain that women earn 76 cents for every dollar that men earn, but any reasonable person should agree that’s not sufficient to show that there’s a problem. To prove there’s a real imbalance, you need to ask tough questions. Are women working the same long hours that men do week in and week out? Why should the woman who only works 40 hours so she can have a “balanced” life make as much as the man putting in 60 hour weeks to get ahead? Along similar lines, if a woman takes three months off to be with her child after she has a baby, while a man whose wife has a child just takes a weekend, isn’t he more dedicated to his job and thus more worthy of a promotion? What about a female secretary and a male coal miner with the same skill level? Even if their education and level of ability are the same, shouldn’t the one doing the dirty, dangerous, unpleasant job make more money? Moreover, from a common-sense perspective, if you could actually get by with paying women 76 cents on the dollar to do the same work that men do, wouldn’t all-female firms dominate every field because of the reduced overhead? You don’t hear people who complain about women making less discuss relevant questions like these because when you compare apples to apples, that pay gap disappears. That’s why on average you find that a never-married, college-educated woman actually makes more than a never-married, college-educated man.
How Modern Life Transforms Men into Wussies
Most people think Marv is crazy, but I don’t believe that. I’m no shrink and I’m not saying I’ve got Marv all figured out or anything, but “crazy” just doesn’t explain him. Not to me. Sometimes I think he’s retarded, a big, brutal kid who never learned the ground rules about how people are supposed to act around each other. But that doesn’t have the right ring to it either. No, it’s more like there’s nothing wrong with Marv, nothing at all — except that he had the rotten luck of being born at the wrong time in history. He’d have been okay if he’d been born a couple of thousand years ago. He’d be right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an ax into somebody’s face. Or in a Roman Arena, taking a sword to other gladiators like him. They’d have tossed him girls like Nancy, back then. — Sin City
Manly Activity
Ever watched a classic action flick? Of course you have. Movies like Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, and 300 have become fixtures in the American psyche. All these movies feature either a lone man or a small group fighting in a desperate, violent struggle and yet, somehow, coming out on top. Throughout most of America’s history, the average man could more easily relate to the experiences in those movies the way someone who shoots hoops at the park could relate to watching an NBA game. Sure, they might not have been able to do what they were seeing on the screen, but they were well-acquainted with violence. Either they had inflicted it, suffered it, or seen it up close and personal. We’re a nation that was birthed in a bloody revolution, where feuds and dueling were frequent occurrences, where intermittent battles with Indians occurred until the twenties, where roughly twenty percent of the male population served in WWII, and where fist fights and brawling were relatively common.
Today?
The average man may have seen hundreds of thousands of murders on his TV screen and committed tens of thousands more playing video games, but he has also probably never struck another human being in anger in his entire adult lifetime. In other words, he may be captivated by the imagery he sees at the movies, but he goes home knowing that he will never even live out a pale imitation of what he’s just seen.
Bridget Jones III
Bridget Jones will write a third diary for a movie. This diary will start 13 years after Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason. The Telegraph speculates about what this fortysomething diary might involve:
In the first diary, Bridget was in her thirties, so the new material should make her in at least her late forties. We can only speculate then how Bridget’s new diary – or more likely blog – would start: Inappropriate tweets 10, followers 95 (down five following yesterday’s said inappropriateness), hours wasted on match.com 7. 2012′s Bridget would surely be an avid Internet dater, going after the younger men. She’d be sniping about ex-boyfriends – perhaps ex-husbands – not over cocktails, but on Facebook, and debating the trials of parenthood on a Mumsnet forum. Yep, Fielding can have a lot of fun with 4G-enabled Bridget, but you can bet the bits that will stay the same.
Sally Newell has good instincts. While the naive antics and mishaps of this ditzy single woman in her thirties entertained in part because she was only a little bit pathetic, if fortysomething Bridget still hasn’t gotten her act together, then there will be no entertainment, just pity. But Newell’s conclusion caught my eye. Bridget Jones first appeared in a running column in The Independent in 1995. From one of those first columns:
Bridget’s friend Jude said: “We women are only vulnerable because we are a pioneer generation. In 20 years’ time, men won’t even dare start with F***wittage because we will just laugh in their faces.”
Well, here we are, almost 20 years on, and according to the dispatches from the hook up culture, men regularly dare to start not with just sex wittage but straight up propositions. Women don’t laugh at them but sleep with them. Women are still vulnerable, but you are a patronizing jerk if you say so. And according to the feminist orthodoxy, this is progress.
Lady Gaga: ‘I Quite Like the Transference of Strength I Feel By Submitting To a Man – Being Under Him.’
via Lady Gaga Has Even More Weird Thoughts On What It Means To Be A Feminist | The Jane Dough.
You know what’s so funny is, I actually think there’s a new feminism that is completely different and I don’t think either is better or worse. Any kind of feminist has valid views for herself about what it means to be a feminist, but, as a new-age feminist, I would say I quite like the transference of strength I feel by submitting to a man – being under him. I actually wrote a song about it on my album, it’s called GUY and it stands for Go Under You. So wearing make-up, smelling delicious and having suckable, kissable, edible things between your limbs is something I find strengthening because I know that when I pick the right guy, I can let him have it. Some women feel oppressed by make-up and clothing, and here’s to them, they have every right to feel that way as well.
***
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
How Today’s Young Women Learned To Sing The Truth About Hookup Culture
‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’
Sen. Bob Menendez. Prostitutes. Dominican Republic
via Women: Sen. Bob Menendez paid us for sex in the Dominican Republic | The Daily Caller.
Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.
In interviews, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000 acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.
The women spoke through a translator in the company of their attorney, Melanio Figueroa. Both asked that their identities remain obscured for fear of reprisals in the Dominican Republic.
When shown a photograph of Sen. Menendez, the women said they recognized him as the man with whom they’d had sexual relations at Casa de Campo this spring. Both said they were brought to the resort with the understanding they would be paid for sex.
****
Related at PJ Media:
Andrew Klavan: Three Things We Can Learn From the Menendez Sex Scandal
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Wayne Brady: Bill Maher Likes His Black Men Violent and His Black Women Prostitutes
Uma Unsimulated?
Why I’m Worried About Raising a Son in Our Upcoming Brave New World of Android Prostitution
How Today’s Young Women Learned To Sing The Truth About Hookup Culture
On the Rise: Islamists Scapegoating Children for Blasphemy
The latest Muslim mob violence mobilized by religious clerics over the video Innocence of Muslims was indeed disturbing. However, the more troubling issue that merits true outrage is the uptick of Islamists targeting children with charges of desecration or blasphemy as a means to intimidate local non-Muslims.
The shocking October 9 attack on Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani 14-year old girl, sparked worldwide outrage. Islamist militants came to her school and shot her in the head and neck for “promoting Western culture”; several of the girl’s classmates were injured in the attack. Al-Qaeda’s media arm publicized its reasoning for the need to kill Malala, claiming it was not her educational activism, but rather that she “had denounced jihad” and thus insulted Islam. Young Malala was airlifted to the UK for treatment, and for fear of further harm to her and her family.
The zealotry of these defenders of the Muslim faith extends to all who would defame their prophet, including young children. One would think that children, in some cases illiterate, could never be judged responsible for such heinous acts, punishable by death according to sharia (Islamic law) and Pakistan law under Section 295-C. Unfortunately, poor Malala is not alone in being a young child targeted for the crime of insulting Islam.
Perhaps October was “Defile the Quran month,” as a number of cases have appeared recently of non-Muslim children in Muslim countries accused of desecration or blasphemy against Islam.
Binders Full of Women: A Meme to Defend Women’s Psyches
Throughout this election cycle, ever since that Halftime in America commercial during the Super Bowl, I have worried about how much people, especially women, want to vote for Obama despite their disappointment. They want to believe him. They want to have hope. And they certainly don’t want to be lumped in with those cruel-hearted women of the Right. Giving up on Obama is a potential political Dark Night of the Soul.
In their resistance, I’ve seen and heard much twisted reasoning in the past months. They look for any ray of light in Obama’s abstract musings. They recoil from any concrete good done by Romney. So it is with the “binders full of women” meme. They are punning to avoid a positive fact about Romney: he has a standout record of seeking and appointing women to his Massachusetts administration.
To illustrate: if Romney had said “stacks of applications from women,” there would be no meme. The press and defensive women, afraid of the polling data that women are breaking for Romney, have seized upon the omission of the word “application” and the connotations of “binder”—not just the plastic-ringed notebook but also the notion of restraining—to pretend that a Romney administration bodes ill for women in government.
In truth, the binder meme says the opposite. Romney’s choice of words illustrates a concrete memory. He remembers someone bringing him a binder full of applications from women. Romney went through that binder and appointed many of those women to office. It all happened. It is all part of his record. Not only does he remember the physical binder, but he also remembers the women, not merely the applications on paper. But for silly wordplay, we would be talking about Romney’s impressive record for women in government.
Of course, if we did that, then we might need to talk about Obama’s history of women in government, and that’s complicated. Obama answered Romney’s memory of appointing women to his administration with an abstract and off-point thought about his future hopes for his daughters: may they have the same opportunities as men. Obama often answers in abstracts because the facts are not in his favor. Obama’s record with women in his administration is dark and murky. Just this week, he threw Hillary Clinton under the bus as damage control for the debacle in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack. Last summer, in Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, Obama faced criticism that his administration was a hostile work environment for women. When the book came out, the women who were quoted accusing the administration claimed that they were misquoted, and women’s groups, usually quick to pounce upon any allegations of hostile work environment, refused to comment.
Another Democratic president with a murky history with women. There was certainly ample evidence that President Clinton might have meant "binders full of women" in a women-as-mere-objects sort of way, but there is nothing in Romney's past to suggest that he sees women as mere objects.
Women of the left are so well-trained by the conventional wisdom that they reflexively reject promising evidence on the right and prop up weak evidence on the left. They will believe what they want to believe, regardless of the evidence. Hopefully independent women are more astute.
Also read: Binder Politics: GOP Fires Back at Dem Push Against Romney Quote
VIDEO: Jesse Jackson in Defense of Polygamy During Gay Marriage Discussion
via Jesse Jackson Says He‘s Not Convinced ’Gay Marriage’ Is Wrong | Video | TheBlaze.com.
Of particular note, though, was a separate response that Jackson gave about homosexuality as a societal norm. Holmes pointed out that the central tenets of the Christian faith point out that “homosexuality is wrong.” The host then asked if Jackson agrees with this sentiment.
“I’m not all-together convinced of that,” the civil rights leader responded, going on to claim that marriage has “blurred” definitions. “King Solomon had many wives in that culture. Then David had many wives of that culture. The Muslims today have three or four wives of that culture.”
Rather than focusing upon a defense of traditional marriage as a central component of the faith, Jackson said he sticks to the “moral imperatives” that Jesus described in the Bible.
***
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
8 Ways Blacks Perpetuate Racism and the Only Way to Thwart It
Jay-Z: 99 Problems and Gay Marriage Ain’t 1
The Sex Bots Have Arrived
Wayne Brady: Bill Maher Likes His Black Men Violent and His Black Women Prostitutes
The Difference Between Sexy Bikinis and Slutty Thongs — And Why Little Girls Should Wear Neither
As Barry Rubin wrote about this week at his blog, we’ve reached an age where to state what used to be common sense about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will get you labeled a bigot. To acknowledge that the Palestinians do not want peace with Israel and have rejected every very generous deal put in front of them means you’re “racist against Muslims.”
But just as cultural Marxists invested decades in obscuring the reality of Palestinian intransigence, they also worked to confuse people about the sordid reality of unrestrained male sexual nature. State what used to be common sense for women to avoid sleazy men and all of a sudden you’re the American Taliban blaming women for provoking their rapists.
In my blog post yesterday – What Father Would Permit His Young Daughter to Wear a Bikini? — I knew what paragraph would provoke the most anger and confusion, the one that simply restated the conventional wisdom we all know to be true but don’t like to acknowledge:
But let me spell it out for those who want to deny it: when a woman wears a skimpy swimsuit, she is sending off the signal to every man and boy that she is a self-proclaimed slut and the most interesting thing about her is her body. If a woman didn’t want a man to look at her breasts, if she did not want to use them to attract the kind of men who have no self-control, she would not flash them around.
This provoked a worried reaction from Vesta Vayne, the blogger I appreciate whose post had inspired mine. She feared I was an insane prude who was calling all women who ever wear bikinis sluts:
I find this statement to be a huge over generalization, to put it kindly. Look, I am married, in my 30s, educated, and I wear a bikini. I’m not a slut, and I don’t think my choice of swimwear projects that to anyone. Bikinis are worn all over the world, by all sorts of women. I doubt all of us believe the most interesting thing about ourselves is our body. I certainly don’t.
In the passage you quote I didn’t say “bikini” I said “skimpy swimsuit.” Not every bikini is going to make the woman wearing it look like she’s offering herself up for the world. I’m not saying that every time a woman wears a bikini she’s telling the world she’s a slut. That would be nuts.
Don’t some bikinis scream “I’m a tramp looking for attention from the wrong kind of men” more than others? As a man I certainly see the ones that do versus those that are tasteful. For little girls though I don’t think they should be wearing 2 piece swimsuits at all, though, but maybe I’m being too harsh?
[... A second comment from me later following up...]
And further:
“she is sending off the signal to every man and boy”I am not saying that you or anyone who wears a bikini is a slut. What I am saying is that when a woman wears a sexy, skimpy swimsuit she is giving off the hint to the men around her that she is more sexually liberated than a woman who is not showing off her body. Again: I’m not making a moral judgment with the observation here, just stating what should be common sense. Wear a sexy swimsuit, and men will think that you’re more interested in sex than a woman who wears a modest swimsuit. Girls need to know that when picking their swim wear.
Vesta could tell that I had a moral objection to promiscuity hiding behind my argument, but the point I was trying to make remained out of view when she responded. She was still thinking about the real world — instead of the male world.
Sandra Fluke Speech Full Text and Video: ‘Many Women Are Shut Out and Silenced’
****
Some of you may remember that earlier this year, Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception. In fact, on that panel, they didn’t hear from a single woman, even though they were debating an issue that affects nearly every woman. Because it happened in Congress, people noticed. But it happens all the time. Many women are shut out and silenced. So while I’m honored to be standing at this podium, it easily could have been any one of you. I’m here because I spoke out, and this November, each of us must do the same.
During this campaign, we’ve heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women—and how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past. Warnings of that future are not distractions. They’re not imagined. That future could be real.
Is It Time We Stopped Saying ‘Feminist’ and Started Saying ‘Eugenicist’?
Image via Dana Loesch at Breitbart.com
From my friend Bethany Mandel at Commentary, “Dems See Women as Objects, Not Voters”:
At the Democratic Convention this week in Charlotte, we’ve learned what mainstream feminism has become. What was once a movement to fight for equality for women in every sector of society has somehow turned into a parody of itself. Since the feminist movement began in the mid-1800s, feminists strove to move past the era where women were seen merely as sexual and reproductive objects. These feminists fought for women to have roles outside of their marriages and their homes, to have equal opportunities in education, the workplace and the political arena.
Cut to Charlotte in early September 2012 and these “feminists” are representing themselves solely as human beings with female reproductive organs. At the DNC this week, women are promoting the Democratic agenda by walking around the convention wearing pins that read “I’m a slut and I vote” in addition to dressing up in costume as birth control dispensers and vaginas. These female reproductive organs, devoid of any other identifying characteristics, are duty-bound to vote for Democrats in order to protect themselves from government (while simultaneously demanding governmental involvement in their reproductive choices).
Read the whole thing. And be sure and follow Bethany and her husband Seth on Twitter here and here.
I thought to just instant message Bethany to tell her about this book that I started reading the other day, but then it seemed to make sense to just throw it out as a blog post instead because I’m sure there are commenters much more versed in this subject than I am who can provide their own recommendations:
I used to think it strange that my leftist friends who were the most outspoken about abortion “rights” and their own promiscuous sex lives were also loud about worrying about overpopulation and the proliferation of unwanted poor babies cursed to miserable lives. But when we understand Margaret Sanger’s ideology as institutionalized within the platform of the Democratic Party then suddenly it comes into focus how the two subjects of hedonism and eugenics would be related in today’s progressives. “Feminism” and “women’s rights” and “coat-hangers” were just the cups of the shell game distracting guilty, do-gooder “liberals” from Sanger’s eugenic utopianism. Here’s an excerpt from page 14 that seems relevant today:
Hmm… “Thus the working classes are pressured to copy the particular reproductive choices of society’s elite.”…
VIDEO: Should Women Have ‘Equal Rights’ to Go Topless in Public?
****
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Fighting the Battle for Sluts Everywhere
Cohabitation: How to Become a 21st Century Concubine
Wayne Brady: Bill Maher Likes His Black Men Violent and His Black Women Prostitutes
‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’
From my friend Emily Esfahani Smith over at Acculturated, a new group blog that’s providing engaging cultural commentary week after week with one interesting piece after another, “Is the Hook-Up Culture “Empowering”?:
In 2010, Hanna Rosin wrote a pretty devastating feature article in The Atlantic titled The End of Men, which argued that women are outpacing and outperforming men in the postindustrial economy. That article has since been transformed into a book by Rosin that will be coming out next month.
Her most recent article in The Atlantic, Boys on the Side, is adapted from this forthcoming book. In the piece, she takes up what are, to her, the merits of the hook-up culture. That the hook-up culture is thriving on college campuses–thanks, in large part, to the women who drive it–is another sign that women are replacing men as the alphas of society. So Rosin’s argument goes.
She writes:
But this analysis [Caitlin Flanagan's in Girl Land] downplays the unbelievable gains women have lately made, and, more important, it forgets how much those gains depend on sexual liberation. Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-school party—are for the first time in history more successful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
Kanye West Declares Girlfriend Kim Kardashian ‘The Perfect Bitch’ on Next Album
via Kanye West Calls Girlfriend Kim Kardashian The ‘B’ Word In New Song – Starpulse.com.
Kanye West announced on Twitter today that the song he debuted last weekend in a New York City club was about his girlfriend Kim Kardashian.
The rapper tweeted, “I wrote the song Perfect Bitch about Kim.”
“Perfect Bitch” is expected to be included on his new album “Cruel Summer,” which is set to drop on September 4.
***
Related at PJ Lifestyle: