Monday, September 29, 2014

Can Women Park?


On Wednesday the 24th of September, Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld, co-hosts of “The Five” on Fox news, insulted Maj. Mariam Al Mansouri, who was the first woman to be a member of the United Arab Emirates Air Force as well as squadron leader of F16’s that bombed ISIS. They Stated, “Problem is, after she bombed it, she couldn’t park it," Gutfeld said. "Would that be considered boobs on the ground, or no?" Bolling followed up. As if one comment was not bad enough Gutfeld found the need to also harass a war hero and a female role model for all of America and the world. In the following repercussions, both Bolling and Gutfeld apologized twice on national  TV, but still to the dissatisfaction of many, including the armed forces a public letter was sent to Fox News. It followed the lines of ”... your remarks were immensely inappropriate...You are not Funny. You are not clever. You are not excused... We issue an apology on your behalf to Major Al Mansouri knowing that anything your producers force you to say will be contrived and insincere”

(If you are interested in reading the rest of the letter which I definitely recommend the link is here  http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/an-open-letter-to-fox-news)

To continue this theme of women's rights, quite recently actress Emma Watson has been voicing her opinion of Feminism and the rights of women. She has most notably, been raising support for the feminist movement and ridding the movement of its negative connotations that it has had in the past. In addition, she is also bringing to light the support of men on this issue, showing that it is not a single sex fight and many more than a few clichéd radical women stand for their mission.

What connotation does Feminism have for you?
How large of an issue do you think Feminism is if at all?

How prevalent is Sexism in your life?

7 comments:

Murray Sandmeyer said...

Oh come on, that's funny.

People often forget the point of humor; it's not to perpetuate a certain idea, but rather to reveal an underlying absurdity about that idea. Jokes are funny because there is a collective understanding that what is being said is wrong.

To give you an example, I highly recommend watching the following video (featuring late comedy legend Joan Rivers, no less): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fby8dcSOtU.

To summarize, Joan (who is Jewish) commented on Heidi Klum's impeccable fashion and said "I haven't seen a German this hot since they were pushing Jews into the ovens." People were up in arms but she firmly stood on her joke, since it got people talking about the Holocaust.

I would have to agree with Joan that jokes allow us to express uncomfortable ideas with a lighthearted approach. And yes, I'm aware of the argument that comedy might serve to lessen the severity of issues, but I completely disagree because it's better to stir up the topics of women's rights and the Holocaust rather than never talking about them at all.

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with Murray on this one. Talk shows can go either way in terms of being completely serious about a certain subject or just being humorous. Murray makes a good point on the "collective understanding" that the subjects of certain kinds of jokes are more often than not purposely satirized and are just plain wrong, and more often than not, that's what makes them funny. Recall that when you start to pick apart the meaning of a joke, it's no longer funny, everyone's serious, and the entire purpose of the joke - to point out the idiocy in a certain viewpoint - has fallen flat.
The connotation of feminism is predominantly negative, thanks in part to the group of semi-serious women who claim feminism is about equality and then demand that women have higher pay wages than men and expect to retain the same special treatment that has become the status quo for chivalry, such as holding open doors and paying for the meal on a date. Emma Watson has begun a revolution of sorts in terms of spreading the word of what feminism is really about, which is EQUALITY, as well as bringing men into the fight, which is helping to banish the idea that only women suffer from gender inequality (think about it - how many times do news sources report on men being raped? It happens more often than you'd think). It really should be called equalism or something similar to help clear up the meaning and rid us of the negative connotation. To me, feminism isn't just about changing how women are viewed in everyday life; it's about raising up the idea of real equality and equal treatment of both sexes, no matter which one is allegedly weaker.

NickK said...

Well, I thought, it was funny.

To answer your questions though:

I view modern feminism extremely negatively. Honestly, it isn't even a stretch for me to say that I view fascism far more favorably. Modern feminism claims that women should get loads of privileges, even preferential treatment, and then calls that equality. A truly equal society is one which applies laws indifferently- skin color or gender of the person would not matter, as the law would treat everyone the same. Anything which treats people differently isn't equality, that's "social justice", which seems to be almost inseparable from feminism nowadays, and even more toxic. Social justice is a "special" kind of movement: it has absolutely no basis in logic, and seems to be propped up solely by people with victim complexes. The "tumblrisms" that the social justice group believes in are absolutely absurd, and if such a group was to start dictating policy for any nation, it would be the end of that nation. For they would create a more "perfect" world, one where your freedoms really do end where others feelings begin, one where there is absolutely no freedom of speech, one where anyone without the "acceptable" opinion is branded a hateful misogynistic racist bigot, one where all people who are white, male, straight, (or even worse, all three, they must be literally hitler, HITLER) are persecuted under the pretext of equality. TL;DR: I can't think of a movement more toxic and cancerous than modern feminism.

The issue with feminism is that it was hijacked and twisted into what it is today. I can't think of a real Women's rights issue in America (insane leftists screaming about tech company diversity numbers is just that, insane leftists screaming about a non issue). Feminism could be important in the middle east, but I think that's more of an Islam issue.

To ask how prevalent sexism is in anything at all, we must first ask: how are we going to define sexism? I refuse to use any of the misinformed, biased. self serving social justice definitions, so I'll be going with a dictionary definition. I can't say that sexism is prevalent in my life outside of driving.

Unknown said...

I would like to disagree with all three of my classmates above me and argue that this issue is far from funny. Not only does this trivialize the issues of what feminists are fighting for again, but this invalidates everything that we are fighting against. We are in the midst of a struggle for equality, and sure we never had it as bad as African Americans or Latinos but we are still fighting. When people make jokes degrading women and brush them off, it subconsciously makes people believe that it is okay to say these things about women, and it is not. People cannot make jokes about race or LGBTQ+ without being extremely politically incorrect; why is it any different for women?

To address Murray: Joan was a comedian who said some highly controversial, quite inappropriate jokes/comments at times, and who I do not believe should be referenced as a respectable comedian. After all, she was the one who approved of the Palestinian genocide, even straight up telling them that they deserve to die. Even if she apologized for this comment, does that make it okay? Also, it is very important to "stir up the topic women's rights"; however, we should be stirring up that topic in a much more positive light then what Bolling and Gutfeld did.

To address Nick (and a little bit Oma): this is the thing with feminism. We get so much flack due to this small group of outspoken females who fight for women dominance and call that feminism. However, this is not to be confused with what the rest of us are fighting for. The way we view these radical "feminists" (I put quotes because I would never in a million years approve of their feminist title) is the same way that most everyday Christians would view the Westboro Baptist Church. It's also a long standing joke with any feminist that "Tumblr feminists" do not count by far. Other than a few radial posts about the downfall of men, they aren't considered to be prominent members of this equality movement.

Real feminism, however, does focus on equality between all genders. We fight for huge issues like the closing of the wage gap for women, as well as smaller ones like installing changing platforms in men's bathrooms. We do not discriminate as to which gender we are "equalizing," as long as the end result is more equality. Please, please do not confuse real feminists with the radicals, because that is a complete misjudgment.
As for real Women's rights issues, I could go on for hours about those, but instead I will just shoot you some links: sexism of the dress code, gender wage gap, unaddressed campus rapes, etc. There are so many more issues that we have to deal with, but this should get you started!

Finally, for the definition of sexism, I agree that it is very hard issue to define, which is why we're tackling it one step at a time. The first step could be to rid the objectification of women in media, since this is one of the biggest forms of sexism we face. Baby steps will always prevail!

Murray Sandmeyer said...

Vivian, I agree that gender equality is a serious issue. However, I implore you to reconsider your take on comedy.

Comedy is good. It's healthy. It's our social immune system. We need to laugh once in a while, both at people we hate and people we love.

Yes, 9/11 jokes might be plane wrong, but Anne frankly it's no Sophie's choice whether or not to convey humorous ideas in an ironic form.

Alex Medwid said...

To be honest, I wouldn't have even gotten the joke had it not been for me seeing a movie made before I was born. (The movie quote was something like "if women are going to drive motorcars they should at least know how to do it correctly").The amount of harm a joke does is directly tied to how similar the joke is to the discrimination recently faced by the target group.

By this logic, a joke about lynching black people is extremely harmful and unacceptable now, but would have been worse 20 years ago and even worse 20 years before that. A joke about Irishmen being drunk has decayed so much over the past two centuries (mostly due to the extinction of that particular flavor of racism) that it is now acceptable in almost any context, even with Irish immigrants.

Analyzing it this way, we can conclude that, seeing as the type of sexism underlying the joke is basically extinct, the joke was about as harmful as it was funny (not very). The people who are so angry about this are being a bit excessive.


On feminism and its connotations:
If someone were to describe themselves as a feminist in the first 10 words of their self introduction, I would most likely believe them to be radical and malicious. If someone were to call themselves a feminist in the middle of an hour-long of conversation, I would not. Hateful "feminists" tend to identify with the label more strongly than rational feminists, who hold the ideology more like a set of political views than a single life-defining identity.

How large of an issue is feminism?

It's a big issue, but every day it is a smaller issue than the day before. I consider the institutional injustices against men and women to be roughly equal in magnitude (women get paid 78% of what men get paid, men get sentenced 163% of what women get sentenced). Rational, egalitarian feminism is without a doubt worth fighting for.

Unknown said...

@Vivian When the word "liberal" came to mean "authoritarian" and the word "anarchist" came to mean "communist," pro-liberty folks started using the word "libertarian."

All three of the above words can be synonymous-- yet nobody spends serious time arguing the definition of "anarchy:" this is a waste of time. Perhaps "feminists" should learn a similar lesson. If you care about policy more than semantics, I would suggest using the term gender equality. It has a clear and positive literal meaning, unlike the word "feminism."

On the subject of the joke, Gutfeld is the group comic. He explained himself as mocking a mindset-- not the pilot, and this explanation is believable given his comic style. Murray's right on this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phZhRi3ZYn4