This Election "Undecided" = "Doesn't Like Clinton but Probably not a Racist", or "A Idiot"

I understand not liking the Clintons (not Hillary in particular who I think is better than Bill), but there is no world in which voting for Trump is acceptable to anyone who isn't a racist, misogynistic, sexist, xenophobic ass hole.

If you are voting for Donald Trump you are at least one of those things.  If you are a "liberal" and not voting for Hillary you are probably "a idiot" (if you are a "liberal" and voting Trump see the previous assessment).  I like the idea of viable Green and Libertarian parties for local politics and the US House.  There's really no way that works in this country for president (and really even for US Senate), so if you vote Jill Stein in most places you are a idiot.  If you are "conservative" and vote Gary Johnson, then that is probably the best sign that you are in fact conservative and not a racist ass hole pretending conservative means something it doesn't.

So undecided voters are a bit of a mix.  Some are "a idiots" certainly, but a large fraction are probably Republicans (nominal or de facto) who understand that supporting Donald puts you in league with racists, sexists, bigots and one yuuuge misogynistic authoritarian demagogue (who may or may not be a racist bigot, but that doesn't matter...no, it really doesn't).

Really?!?

I'm not very surprised to hear that more men than women have major parts in movies, but I am surprised that it is as dramatic as it is.  

...In the 120 films the MDSC analyzed, only 30.9 percent of speaking and named characters were women......The United States is far from a leader: Of the 11 most profitable film-producing territories, the United States ranks near the bottom in allocating speaking roles to women.The MDSC, which studies the portrayal of women and minority groups in film, also found that women were more than twice as likely as men “to be shown in sexually revealing attire.”

Unlike the plight of minorities in film--which does make some sense from a pure marketing standpoint--that women would be so dramatically underrepresented is very odd. 50% of the population is female, and so 50% of your potential ticket buyers are female, and so it seems that more female characters and leads would mean more potential revenue.

That women are more sexualized in film: also not surprising.

Must Read

Infuriating and disturbing, but everyone should read this.

Not Sure Things Are Getting Better for the Womenfolk

There's the Plan B fiasco, wherein our "most liberal president evah" has overruled science (love this Regan appointed judge's diatribe, but it isn't enough).

North Carolina trying to make sure that girls who get STDs don't get any treatment for them.

And we have slut-shaming going viral at high schools.

LGBTQ Moving Up, Women Still Second Class

More and more, gay marriage is being seen as perfectly acceptable, and it is legal in more and more places.  That's great, and about time (things are actually moving faster than attitudes toward interracial marriage which didn't gain majority approval until the mid 90's). Yet it's still ok to treat women as second class in far too many ways and places.

Articles like the wank-tacular Dylan Byers piece effectively shortened at Lawers Guns and Money are still being published, and reading the comments (actual piece and a few other sties that commented on it) it is clear that many people think the treatment is exactly the same as men get because, I presume, they had a boss sometime that was a man that they said mean things about.

You see similar things with respect to equal pay.  Equal pay day was a couple weeks back.  Go to any (popular) blog or news site that has an article talking about gender equity largely on the basis of the pay gap, and read the comments.  It so frequently turns into a discussion about whether the pay gap is "really" that big, and what other things are going on, and "women are really advantaged because...[preferential hiring or something]", and "men are the only ones you can reject/fire/not promote without consequences", and lots of other, often spite filled commentary.

I myself complain just about every time the pay gap is released/pointed to.  I do this because 1. I find the statistics problematic and 2. use of it tends to shut down or sidetrack conversation. Really, though, I probably shouldn't harp on people who get into this, not the least because I actually am aware that a serious problem exists and I understand why the pay gap number is useful in many/most cases.

For all the complaining that [right-wing] white men do about how they are the only people that are discriminated against anymore, in the real world about the only -ism that you can use in public without being shunned/shamed is sexism.  It happens in newspapers, on tv, in workplaces, in academic environments...everywhere.

Um...K

So the contraception "compromise" is in and so what? Doesn't change the outcome (women will still get contraception coverage) so it really isn't any different. The cost shifting is more-or-less meaningless as the church still pays for insurance, and that insurance will still have coverage, the church is, effectively, going to be paying for coverage. The insurance companies may redistribute the cost so that other people will pay more and the church pay less, but really, so what?

Mysteriously, however, the compromise made some people (well, pundits) happy. That really doesn't make sense. I'm happy, because, basically nothing changed, and similarly the bishops [should be] unhappy because...basically nothing changed. Their complaint wasn't that the cost was too much but that they oppose contraception (a patently stupid position, particularly for the anti-abortion crowd...who actually object to unapproved fucking and don't really care about women's or children's health at all). They oppose contraception, and were being forced to buy plans that provide contraception. Nothing changed except they pay a little less.

Meanwhile this bullshit problem would never exist if we had done health care properly (Medicare for everyone!) instead of enacting GOP health care reform.

Frustrating...More so if True

I understand why [feminists] get a bit bristly about shit like this. Sexual assault and rape are pretty damned big problems. Unfortunately, many trials come down to "he said - she said" arguments with little in the way of physical evidence (that can't be discounted by that argument). This means that the credibility of the parties becomes very important. Coupling this with a historical notion that erring on the side of caution means not sending a person to jail that is only "probably" guilty, means that it is very difficult to successfully prosecute even credible accusations of sexual assault.

Reading through the reader comments, however, is depressing. There is a very obvious bias that can be boiled down to a "sluts can't get raped" mentality that makes it remarkably easy for people in power, and people with wealth to abuse those who are without. It would be a shame if she was really peddling false accusations for some profit, because by and large accusers have more to lose and less to gain by their accusations than perpetrators of rape and assault do by their actions.

Chamber of Commerse is Full of Idiots

At least that's the rough reading of this post.

The very frustrating aspect of reading through is that he isn't entirely wrong, but he fails to address the latent bias that produces the various choices men and women make differently. It is stated as though it is just the status quo and tough shit.

First, while it is not entirely clear, it does not seem the post is talking about women choosing low paying fields (like elementary school teacher) while men choose high paying ones (like rocket scientist) which would be a really bad argument, and is the tack taken by some of the critics I read. Rather, it is alluding to women making "life choices" that reduce their pay--like fewer working hours due to children.

I'll admit I mostly agree with that sentiment, particularly as someone who has made job choices not designed to maximize my earning potential. I think that men are more fixated on making money than are women. I think that fixation (or "fetish") does lead to making more money. I also think that we live in a society that discourages women from fixating on making more money. There are a whole slew of ways to look at this and to approach it.

The Chamber Post is essentially saying that the choice is wholly owned by women and men and that if women make less it is the fault of the women. I think that the choice is foisted on women (and men) by societal norms and that women make less because our society has deemed that women shouldn't be the moneymakers.

So long as all people are happy with whatever result may be I don't see as how it matters much. But some people are really unhappy with the status quo. Others don't care so much. My problem is that it becomes extraordinarily difficult to price out the type of choice I am referring to, and, even more difficult to figure out how to price that out in such a way that we can still factor in women and men whose choices are in larger part owned by societal norms.

The closest I've seen was something I discussed a while back. The paper concluded (among other things) that the "real" pay gap was ~$0.05. That is women make $0.95 for every $1.00 men make if the playing field is completely leveled--including choices like who works more hours and first choice spouse...at least as I understand it.

So there is only one pay number that can be generated without much extra effort (the 77 cents on the dollar one) and without charging into controversy headlong. The problem is that the controversy avoided still exists and is real.

I do not believe that a woman's pay aggregate number will ever be equal to a man's for the simple reason that women and men will never have identical roles in society. I could be wrong, I would like to be, but I don't see the perception of women having a more important role in the family and household going away any time soon.

To restate: it doesn't matter if men and women have full equality, and are perceived entirely as equals in the workplace, women will not ever make as much as men if women are yet perceived as more important than men at home.

Sentence Failure

In the effort to condense complex ideas and thoughts into something for this blog I (often) end up with impossible to decipher sentences. There were a few in the gender discrimination article. Mostly what I wanted to say is that the pay gap is a symptom of gender discrimination, but not in a "evil sexist companies" way.

Evidence to my perspective popped up on CNN today in this article on women making more money than their (male) spouses. Until that article is not newsworthy, or even odd seeming to many people, there will be a pay gap. That has less to do with evil sexist hiring/salary practices and more to do with the way that we perceive roles for men and women as a society. That the article is news is still a problem, but what it says indicates that things are getting better.

This perception issue resonates across all gender issues (including the violent/angry sexism which is still around).

Super Bowl Ads: Misogyny is Cool Again!

So it seems that the folks at CBS hate gay people (apparently money is tainted by the gay and so no commercial for gay dating sites), but they are cool with the creepy anti-choice folks, oh, and they also detest women.

Super Bowl ads have never been the stuff that gender equality are made of, but I don't remember seeing quite so much hating on women in the past. I will never buy a Dodge anything (not sure that I would have anyway, but that commercial was just vile). I'm pretty sure that whatever the mobile tv thing was will never be something I own either.

From watching Super Bowl commercials one would get the feeling that women are evil and out to destroy the happiness of men. What. The. Fuck?!?

Now, I don't doubt that there are women who would kill to get their very own vagina dentata, but the real data out there says that women have it much harder than men: higher rates of depression, lower pay, more likely to be abused (physically, verbally, sexually). And you don't hear much about successful men feeling like their success has made them bad fathers, or that they must chose. Men can have both. Women get either or.

This isn't all to say that men don't have our own areas of excessive misery, but I'll take being more depressed about a layoff over more likely to be beaten by my significant other any day.

Women have far more freedom and opportunity today than they did 50 years ago, but that the most watched television event in the US (with ~50% female viewership) can be so obviously and painfully misogynistic is depressing and frightening.

I have read several comments about the voice actor for the Dodge commercial being Dexter and that has lead to several...jokes?...along the lines of "I put up with your shit so let me drive a Dodge or I'll kill you." Is it any wonder that Chrysler is dying? What dinosaur thought this commercial was a good idea?