Naomi Wolf is a bestselling American writer. She is known for her advocacy of feminism and progressive politics and became the youngest literary star of what was later described as the third-wave of the feminist movement. Wolf was born in San Francisco in 1962 and studied at Yale (B.A. 1984) and New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar.

She became famous because of her first book The Beauty Myth (1990), which became an international bestseller. In the book, she attacked the exploitation of women by the fashion and beauty industries. Wolf argued that women deserve “the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women’s appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically.”

In 2004, Wolf became involved in scandal by accusing renowned Yale professor Harold Bloom of sexual harassment in 1983 when she was a 20-year-old undergraduate at Yale.

Following is her article that appeared in New York Magazine on May 24, 2004.

(more…)

By Prof Lynn Weber
(more…)

The Plurality of Today’s Feminist Movement One Purpose From Many Voices: The Plurality of Today’s Feminist Movement

by Heather Eaton

www.feminista.com/v4n8/eaton.html (See also www.feminista.com/v4n8/index.html)

Search four different dictionaries and you will find four different interpretations of feminism. Webster’s, for example, defines feminism as first, the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes and second, as organized activity on the behalf of women’s rights and interests. The American Heritage College Dictionary replaces theory with belief. A Web-based dictionary presents yet another explanation of feminism: a doctrine that advocates equal rights for women. The distinctions between these definitions may seem slight, but the subtle differences in meaning of theory, belief, and doctrine are great enough to warrant wars of words and picket lines among those who call themselves feminists. Doctrine, for example, is akin to dogma, a word mired in negative connotations of religion, morality, and authoritarianism. Theory, on the other hand, suggests speculation. Belief rests somewhere between the others, denoting truth and actuality.

One final dictionary definition of feminism best represents the struggle to define the “ism” that so polarizes women. The first entry for feminism in The Oxford English Dictionary is the qualities of females. If we accept this definition then all things female, feminine, womanly, and girlish are feminist. All women are feminists. But here again we must quibble over meanings of meanings. What exactly are the qualities of females? Does the OED refer to physical qualities or personality qualities? What are the personality qualities of females? Are women inherently caring, nurturing, cooperative, and self-giving, as advocates of a woman-centered ideology insist? If so, then we must agree with New York Times contributor Jenny McPhee (1997, p. A23) who insists, “the word feminism is rooted in the concept of the feminine.” (more…)

Alright group! Here is to refresh the past sessions. For those of you who have not attended any of them, please let us know and have the necessary handouts for reference. Check every link for further details… Thanks!

Movies:
Dreamworlds (Media Education Foundation) —On social construction of gender roles, economic hierarchy of men and women, types of jobs males and females do in the dream worlds, ownership & control vs display & diversity, how media normalizes mass perceptions, MTV versus alternative media, who gets to tell stories and who don’t—through music videos, why visual communication most effectively influence us today, women in mainstream media.

Please read the detailed study guide for more details on the film here.

Activities:
1. Social Identity Groups
Systems of Oppression
Race, Gender, Class, Ability, Religion/Spiritual Orientation, Age
Your social identity group membership profile (Membership and Status)

2. Social Identity Groups
Target Groups
Agent Groups

3. Heterosexuality Questionnaire

4. Forced Choice Questionnaire

5. Social identity Wheel

6. Circles of My Multicultural Self

7. Crosswalk Prompts

8. Facilitators perception and assumption making

Readings and texts:

1. White Privilege and Male Privilege

2. If men could menstruate

3. Listening with empathy: taking the other person’s perspective

4. Sexual identity and Gender Identity (plus, terminology)

5. Comparing Dialogue and Debate

6. Women workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity

7. Rape is Normal

8. Women and Science: The Real Issue and two Debates

Large group Dialogues on:

Syllabus outlines

Ground Rules

Debates versus Dialogue (Dialogues are open ended, without value judgments, listening with respect, words for emotions, admission to flaws is fine, learning in a relaxed setting)

Expectations Setting

Glossary/definitions of gender and sexuality

Social Justice-terminology

Consumerism and freedom of choice

Do stars on stage sell Lifestyles?

Women’s Lib Movement and three waves of feminism

Social locations

Essentialism

Pornography

Nuclear family and social impacts

Hate parents and Americanism

Conditioning and mediated behavior (no yelling policy)

Psycho-demographics

Justice and idealism

Communication and understanding

Social construction of gender and sexuality

Internalization of behavior, practices and prejudices

Women and Science

Small Group Dialogue:

1. Who makes better stay-at home parent and why:
More connection for one parent
Economic factor
Change in traditional roles
Individual personality and gender neutrality
In turn
Whoever is considered fit

2. Forced Questions Dialogue
Which was the most difficult to attempt
And the easiest
Does it make sense at all
Is it comfortable to have forced choices
Do people you know often confront such choices?

Homework:
Deliberate acts of different gender roles: (you are doing the following in a month’s time! By Nov. 15th?)

Meredith –treat a guy by paying for him
Laura—fix the headlight of boyfriend’s car
Hatsume—travel alone
Ebony—Drink Guinness bear
Phil—Bodywash
Theresa—Help someone move
Shanita—Ask a boy out

bell hooks / Buddha Belly / November 1998

Rebel’s Dilemma by bell hooks

From childhood on I have had to struggle to break from the impositions of images that don’t represent me accurately or well. Even though this is a drag, it too is part of the struggle, part of the process of decolonization.

The lights are low in my place and I am listening to Brandy sing: I’d like to get to know if I could be the kinda girl you could be down for. Tonight, I am sitting alone. The last time I was listening to this song I was with my honey. We were just talking, conversation in the best sense of the word, continuing an ongoing dialogue about artistic production, about working overtime to create decolonized images of black folk when so often the means of production are in the hands of those who ain’t even thinking about decolonization. We are stealing a feel or two and sharing our dreams about the work we do, where we want to see it go.

We are talking about Fanon and the issue of whether or not black folks have any ontological resistance to the white gaze. Sometimes we stop our talk to watch the light in the room, the shadows. He makes films and is into thinking about light.
His work is always so way out there he does not have to struggle to get folks to take him seriously, to see him as someone who thinks deeply about the world, whose vision moves with and beyond the need for political justice. Even though much of his work deals with radical black subjectivity, he is not seen as hung up about race. In my critical essays I am always talking about white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Nobody accuses him of lingering too long on the feminist trip. Me, I’ve grown accustomed to being looked at through a narrow lens by most folks.

Whether it’s the black women who trash me for folks giving my work just too much play (even though these same folks rarely talk about the significance of the work or why lots of readers are into it and never trash black male peers who get mega-bucks and mega-play) or those who have read one of my fifteen books and think they know everything there is to know about me, from childhood on I have had to struggle to break from the impositions of images that don’t represent me accurately or well. Most folks don’t seem to want to believe that one can be struggling for justice and into nuanced cultural perspectives, aesthetics, and the vernacular at the same time. I have to constantly resist the censorship and silencing that my self-declared enemies hope will be the outcome of attacks and dismissals. Even though this is a drag, it too is part of the struggle, part of the process of decolonization.
(more…)

By Helen Keller

Many declare that the woman peril is at our door. I have no doubt that it is. Indeed, I suspect that it has already entered most households. Certainly a great number of men are facing it across the breakfast table. And no matter how deaf they pretend to be, they cannot help hearing it talk.

Women insist on their “divine rights,” “immutable rights,” “inalienable rights.” These phrases are not so sensible as one might wish. When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim to them. Men spent hundreds of years and did much hard fighting to get the rights they now call divine, immutable and inalienable. Today women are demanding rights that tomorrow nobody will be foolhardy enough to question.

Anyone that reads intelligently knows that some of our old ideas are up a tree, and that traditions are scurrying away before the advance of their everlasting enemy, the questioning mind of a new age. It is time to take a good look at human affairs in the light of new conditions and new ideas, and the tradition that man is the natural master of the destiny of the race is one of the first to suffer investigation.
(more…)

A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies

Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials and perspectives from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged in the curriculum, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon with a life of its own, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected, but alive and real in its effects. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. This paper is a partial record of my personal observations and not a scholarly analysis. It is based on my daily experiences within my particular circumstances.

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks. (more…)

For classroom administration only. Do not answer here.

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?

2. When and how did you first decide you were heterosexual?

3. Is it possible heterosexuality is a phase you will grow out of?

4. Is it possible you are heterosexual because you fear the same sex?

5. If you have never slept with someone of the same sex, how do you know you wouldn’t
prefer that? Is it possible you merely need a good gay experience?

6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexuality? How did they react?

7. Why are heterosexuals so blatant; always making a spectacle of their heterosexuality?
Why can’t they just be who they are and not flaunt their sexuality by kissing in public,
wearing rings, etc?

8. Most child molesters are heterosexual men. Do you consider it safe to expose your
children to heterosexual males? Heterosexual male teachers particularly?

9. How can you have a truly satisfying relationship with someone of the opposite sex,
given the obvious physical and emotional differences?

10. Given the problems heterosexual’s face, would you want your children to be
heterosexual? Would you consider reparative therapy?

Note: You have received this questionnaire to help you to recognize what it might feel like to be asked the
following questions and hear the following comments about your sexuality.
(Office of Human Relations programs, University of Maryland)

By John Hennessey, Susan Hockfield and Shirley Tilghman | February 12, 2005

HARVARD PRESIDENT Lawrence Summers’s recent comments about possible causes
of the under-representation of women in science and engineering have generated
extensive debate and discussion—much of which has had the untoward effect of
shifting the focus of the debate to history rather than to the future.

The question we must ask as a society is not “can women excel in math, science, and
engineering?”—Marie Curie exploded that myth a century ago—but “how can we
encourage more women with exceptional abilities to pursue careers in these fields?”
Extensive research on the abilities and representation of males and females in science
and mathematics has identified the need to address important cultural and societal
factors. Speculation that “innate differences” may be a significant cause for the
under-representation of women in science and engineering may rejuvenate old myths
and reinforce negative stereotypes and biases.

Why is this so important? Our nation faces increasing competition from abroad in
technological innovation, the most powerful driver of our economy, while the academic
performance of our school-age students in math and science lags behind many
countries. Against this backdrop, it is imperative that we tap the talent and perspectives
of both males and females. Until women can feel as much at home in math, science,
and engineering as men, our nation will be considerably less than the sum of its parts.
If we do not draw on the entire talent pool that is capable of making a contribution to
science, the enterprise will inevitably be underperforming its potential.

As the representation of women increases in every other profession in this country, if
their representation in science and engineering does not change, these fields will look
increasingly anachronistic, less attractive, and will be less strong. The nation cannot
afford to lose ground in these areas, which not only fuel the economy, but also play a
key role in solving critical societal problems in human health and the environment.

Much has already been learned from research in the classroom and from recent
experience on our campuses about how we can encourage top performance from our
students. For example, recent research shows that different teaching methods can lead
to comparable performance for males and females in high school mathematics. One of
the most important and effective actions we can take is to ensure that women have
teachers who believe in them and strong, positive mentors, male and female, at every
stage of their educational journey—both to affirm and to develop their talents. Low
expectations of women can be as destructive as overt discrimination and may help to
explain the disproportionate rate of attrition that occurs among females as they proceed
through the academic pipeline.

Colleges and universities must develop a culture, as well as specific policies, that
enables women with children to strike a sustainable balance between workplace and
home. Of course, achieving such a balance is a challenge in many highly demanding
careers. As a society we must develop methods for assessing present and future
productivity that take into account the long-term potential of an individual and
encourage greater harmony between the cycles of work and life—so that both women
and men may better excel in the careers of their choice.

Although we have a long way to travel in terms of recruiting, retaining, and promoting
women faculty in scientific and engineering fields, we can also point to significant
progress. According to the National Science Foundation, almost no doctoral degrees in
progress. According to the National Science Foundation, almost no doctoral degrees in
engineering were awarded to women in 1966 (0.3 percent), in contrast to 16.9 percent
in 2001. And in the biological and agricultural sciences, the number of doctorates
earned by women rose from 12 percent to 43.5 percent between 1966 and 2001.

Our three campuses, and many others, are home to growing numbers of women who
have demonstrated not only extraordinary innate ability, but the kinds of creativity,
determination, perceptiveness, and hard work that are prerequisites for success in
science and engineering.

These figures demonstrate the expanding presence of women in disciplines that have
not, historically, been friendly to them. It is a matter of vital concern that the future
holds even greater opportunities.

John Hennessey is a computer scientist and president of Stanford University. Susan
Hockfield is a neuroscientist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Shirley Tilghman is a molecular geneticist and president of Princeton
University.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Classroom use only. Do not answer here.

I have nothing against interracial dating, but I would prefer to date someone of my own race. OR
I would never want to overtly prohibit interracial dating, but deep down I don’t think people should do it.

If my roommate “came out of the closet as a gay or lesbian person,” I would probably move out. OR
I do not support discrimination or violence against lesbian or gay people, but I do believe they are sinful and going to hell.

I have nothing against Arabs, but after September 11, I am somewhat uncomfortable and suspicious around them.

I believe that immigrants need to learn to speak English to be successful in this country. OR
I believe that immigrants have a moral obligation to learn English if they move to the United States.

I believe that Affirmative Action unfairly discriminates against white people.

I feel that the Elderly get a disproportionate share of our country’s resources.

People can escape poverty by working hard.

I believe most people who go before the criminal justice system are probably guilty.

I can respect other people’s religious beliefs, but I truly believe that my religion is correct and true.

When it comes to “women’s liberation,” I think women “want it both ways.” They want men to treat them as equals, but at the same time want men to be chivalrous (opening doors, paying for dinner, etc.).

According to my religious beliefs, ideally husbands would be the sole provider to a household.

I think people of color take advantage of their “minority” status when it’s convenient.

I believe that People of Color would change their physical appearance to match a more “White” standard of beauty if they could.

I believe people with disabilities get unfair advantages, despite wanting to be treated equally.

(Office of Human Relations Programs, University of Maryland)

If Men Could Menstruate

by Gloria Steinem

Living in India made me understand that a white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking a white skin makes people superior, even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and wrinkles.

Reading Freud made me just as skeptical about penis envy. The power of giving birth makes “womb envy” more logical, and an organ as external and unprotected as the penis makes men very vulnerable indeed.

But listening recently to a woman describe the unexpected arrival of her menstrual period (a red stain had spread on her dress as she argued heatedly on the public stage) still made me cringe with embarrassment. That is, until she explained that, when finally informed in whispers of the obvious event, she said to the all-male audience, “and you should be proud to have a menstruating woman on your stage. It’s probably the first real thing that’s happened to this group in years.”

Laughter. Relief. She had turned a negative into a positive. Somehow her story merged with India and Freud to make me finally understand the power of positive thinking. Whatever a “superior” group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever and “inferior” group has will be used to justify its plight. Black me were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be “stronger” than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be “weaker.” As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, “Oh no, that’s women’s work.” Logic has nothing to do with oppression.

So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:
Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.

To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali’s Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields- “For Those Light Bachelor Days.”

Statistical surveys would show that men did better in sports and won more Olympic medals during their periods.

Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (“men-struation”) as proof that only men could serve God and country in combat (“You have to give blood to take blood”), occupy high political office (“Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?”), be priests, ministers, God Himself (“He gave this blood for our sins”), or rabbis (“Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean”).

Male liberals and radicals, however, would insist that women are equal, just different; and that any woman could join their ranks if only she were willing to recognize the primacy of menstrual rights (“Everything else is a single issue”) or self-inflict a major wound every month (“You must give blood for the revolution”).

Street guys would invent slang (“He’s a three-pad man”) and “give fives” on the corner with some exchenge like, “Man you lookin’ good!”

“Yeah, man, I’m on the rag!”

TV shows would treat the subject openly. (Happy Days: Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still “The Fonz,” though he has missed two periods in a row. Hill Street Blues: The whole precinct hits the same cycle.) So would newspapers. (Summer Shark Scare Threatens Menstruating Men. Judge Cites Monthlies In Pardoning Rapist.) And so would movies. (Newman and Redford in Blood Brothers!)

Men would convince women that sex was more pleasurable at “that time of the month.” Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself, though all they needed was a good menstruating man. Medical schools would limit women’s entry (“they might faint at the sight of blood”).

Of course, intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguements. Without the biological gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets, how could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics—or the ability to measure anything at all? In philosophy and religion, how could women compensate for being disconnected from the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death and resurrection every month?

Menopause would be celebrated as a positive event, the symbol that men had accumulated enough years of cyclical wisdom to need no more.

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind. The fact that “these people” have no gift for measuring life, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine right-wing women agreeing to all these arguements with a staunch and smiling masochism. (“The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month”: Phyllis Schlafly)

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here’s an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.)

The truth is that, if men could menstruate, the power justifications would go on and on.

If we let them.

(c) Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. NY: NAL, 1986.

Published on Sunday, September 1, 2002 in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

By Robert Jensen

It is not surprising that we want to separate ourselves from those who commit hideous crimes, to believe that the abominable things some people do are the result of something evil inside of them.

But most of us also struggle with a gnawing feeling that however pathological those brutal criminals are, they are of us—part of our world, shaped by our culture.

Such is the case of Richard Marc Evonitz, a “sexually sadistic psychopath,” in the words of one expert, who abducted, raped and killed girls in Virginia and elsewhere. What are the characteristics of a sexually sadistic psychopath? According to a former FBI profiler who has studied serial killers: “A psychopath has no ability to feel remorse for their crimes. They tend to justify what they do as being OK for them. They have no appreciation for the humanity of their victims. They treat them like objects, not human beings.”

Such a person is, without question, cruel and inhuman. But aspects of that description fit not only sexually sadistic psychopaths; slightly modified, it also describes much “normal” sex in our culture.

Look at mass-marketed pornography, with estimated sales of $10 billion a year in the United States, consumed primarily by men: It routinely depicts women as sexual objects whose sole function is to sexually satisfy men and whose own welfare is irrelevant as long as men are satisfied.

Consider the $52-billion-a-year worldwide prostitution business: Though illegal in the United States (except Nevada), that industry is grounded in the presumed right of men to gain sexual satisfaction with no concern for the physical and emotional costs to women and children.

Or, simply listen to what heterosexual women so often say about their male sexual partners: He only seems interested in his own pleasure; he isn’t emotionally engaged with me as a person; he treats me like an object.

To point all this out is not to argue that all men are brutish animals or sexually sadistic psychopaths. Instead, these observations alert us to how sexual predators are not mere aberrations in an otherwise healthy sexual culture.

In the contemporary United States, men generally are trained in a variety of ways to view sex as the acquisition of pleasure by the taking of women. Sex is a sphere in which men are trained to see themselves as naturally dominant and women as naturally passive. Women are objectified and women’s sexuality is turned into a commodity that can be bought and sold. Sex becomes sexy because men are dominant and women are subordinate.

Again, the argument is not that all men believe this or act this way, but that such ideas are prevalent in the culture, transmitted from adult men to boys through direct instruction and modeling, by peer pressure among boys, and in mass media. They were the lessons I learned growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, and if anything such messages are more common and intense today.

The predictable result of this state of affairs is a culture in which sexualized violence, sexual violence and violence-by-sex is so common that it should be considered normal. Not normal in the sense of healthy or preferred, but an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not violations of those norms. Rape is illegal, but the sexual ethic that underlies rape is woven into the fabric of the culture.

None of these observations excuse or justify sexual abuse. Although some have argued that men are naturally sexually aggressive, feminists have long held that such behaviors are learned, which is why we need to focus not only on the individual pathologies of those who cross the legal line and abuse, rape and kill, but on the entire culture.

Those who find this analysis outrageous should consider the results of a study of sexual assault on U.S. college campuses. Researchers found that 47 percent of the men who had raped said they expected to engage in a similar assault in the future, and 88 percent of men who reported an assault that met the legal definition of rape were adamant that they had not raped. That suggests a culture in which many men cannot see forced sex as rape, and many have no moral qualms about engaging in such sexual activity on a regular basis.

The language men use to describe sex, especially when they are outside the company of women, is revealing. In locker rooms one rarely hears men asking about the quality of their emotional and intimate experiences. Instead, the questions are: “Did you get any last night?” “Did you score?” “Did you f—- her?” Men’s discussions about sex often use the language of power—control, domination, the taking of pleasure.

When I was a teenager, I remember boys joking that an effective sexual strategy would be to drive a date to a remote area, turn off the car engine, and say, “OK, f—- or fight.” I would not be surprised to hear that boys are still regaling each other with that “joke.”

So, yes, violent sexual predators are monsters, but not monsters from another planet. What we learn from their cases depends on how willing we are to look not only into the face of men such as Evonitz, but also to look into the mirror, honestly, and examine the ways we are not only different but, to some degree, the same.

Such self-reflection, individually and collectively, does not lead to the conclusion that all men are sexual predators or that nothing can be done about it. Instead, it should lead us to think about how to resist and change the system in which we live. This feminist critique is crucial not only to the liberation of women but for the humanity of men, which is so often deformed by patriarchy.

Solutions lie not in the conservatives’ call for returning to some illusory “golden age” of sexual morality, a system also built on the subordination of women. The task is to incorporate the insights of feminism into a new sexual ethic that does not impose traditional, restrictive sexual norms on people but helps creates a world based on equality not dominance, in which men’s pleasure does not require women’s subordination.

____

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

By Sheila Gibbons - WeNews commentator

Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women’s Enews.

(WOMENSENEWS)

Women usually are a minority of the mentions in television newscasts and daily newspapers.

But in the case of Hurricane Katrina and later, Hurricane Rita, they were front and center for days.

There is currently no count of the gender mix of images, but for anyone leafing through half a dozen major newspapers and visiting their Web sites during the first half of September, the attention given to women was striking.

Most dominant were the images of mothers holding their children, providing comfort even as they lived through the least comfortable time of their lives.

There were a variety of other images that helped show women in all their diversity.

Flip through The Atlanta Journal-Constitution during the week after the storm, and there they all are, the real women of the world.

There was the female paramedic tending to a man and his dog in St. Bernard Parish, La. A woman with her arm around her baby daughter fills out a job application after being evacuated. The owner of a ruined janitorial business discusses her strategy to restart it. A caretaker pleads for assistance for her elderly patient. A weary woman pushing a shopping cart of belongings stops to rest, her head in her hands.

Farmers, Scientists, Sailors

In USA Today, farmer Patty Vogt was keeping a calf’s head above water as it was towed by boat to higher ground. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist Micah Milton is portrayed interviewing a survivor.

Among the photos moved by The Associated Press, a female sailor from the USS Tortuga helps a woman on crutches fill out relocation paperwork. In one of the most famous, shot by AP photographer Eric Gay, 5-year-old Tanisha Blevin, an African American, holds the hand of a white woman in a wheelchair, Nita LaGarde, who is exactly 100 years older than the little girl at her side.

The humanity of these images, and the news reports that fleshed them out with important details and context, constitute some of the most remarkable depictions of women we’ve seen in a long time.

The racial element that’s been discussed for weeks in the aftermath of Katrina was apparent.

Two-thirds of the New Orleans population is not white and minority neighborhoods were most hurt by flooding in the city. But knee-jerk stereotyping of the needy and the needed was undercut somewhat by scenes of who was doing what for whom.

George Will, for instance, in his Sept. 13 syndicated column, saw Katrina as an opportunity to write disapprovingly about the number of black women “with children but not husbands” affected by the disaster. Yet these women—whose single motherhood he blamed for crimes committed by black males—were keeping families together under excruciating circumstances.

Refreshing Realities

Why didn’t Will instead choose to talk about the women in the photographs? This would have given him a chance to talk about refreshing reality versus the overplayed fixation on black women as single mothers.

Such as the young African American female sailor from the USS Tortuga who helped a middle-aged white woman fill out forms. There was the photograph of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist Micah Milton, an African American, taking information from a male, and the black female caretaker trying to get help for her white patient.

Other realities were less pleasant. With the cameras rolling and reporters peppering him with questions, then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael Brown revealed himself to be out of his depth, while the uber-boss, President Bush, took his sweet time extricating himself from his vacation and arriving in the devastated areas.

The widespread anger at the administration’s sloppy response, along with the fact that Bush buddy Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, had early and regular access to the president while Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, didn’t, added to many people’s disgust and distrust.

The performance of journalists in bringing us so much real-time information about unfolding events—including the fury of those who felt abandoned—must be commended.

A Pew Research Center Study of 1,000 Americans Sept. 6-7 found that 65 percent rated news coverage of Hurricane Katrina good or excellent. Female journalists brought a tremendous amount to the table, taking enormous risks in the winds and the rising water, and delivering the goods, although their efforts weren’t in the limelight as much as those of their male colleagues.

Network TV Guys Get Attention

Network TV guys got most of the attention in prime time and credit in print.

USA Today, in a Sept. 12 analysis of Katrina coverage (“News Media Are Heeding a ‘Call to Arms’”), included photographs of four TV reporters who covered the story. All of them were men (CBS’ John Roberts, ABC’s Brian Ross, and CNN’s Jeff Koinange and Anderson Cooper). Nine people were quoted in this story, but only one woman, CBS News executive Marcy McGinnis.

So permit me to hand out some “attagirls” to a few of the windswept, waterlogged women who reported from the scene for days.

CNN’s Jeanne Meserve and Mary Snow and NBC’s Campbell Brown worked incredibly hard, reporting from destroyed communities along the Gulf. Meserve’s telephone commentary from a drowning New Orleans hotel was particularly gripping.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, a veteran war correspondent, pitched in to describe the horrors unfolding in New Orleans’ flooded and re-flooded streets.

Houston Chronicle photographer Melissa Phillip spent a week in New Orleans, photographing survivors who were pleading, praying, celebrating—and yes, marrying—and recorded her thoughts for the Chronicle Web site.

Natalie Pompilio of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who had worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune for six years, returned to her old city to see friends before the hurricane struck. She lost her car, her money and her ID, but spent two weeks there covering the story, including the sacking of a Wal-Mart, during which she watched police take T-shirts, DVDs and dog food, and saw firefighters help themselves to fishing rods. Like Phillip, she recorded her harrowing experiences for her newspaper’s Web site audio feed.

The women’s stories inside the larger story are powerful. Well told and well photographed, they show what women can and will do in times of adversity, sending outdated notions about women’s capabilities off with the vanishing hurricane winds.

Sheila Gibbons is editor of Media Report to Women, a quarterly news journal of news, research and commentary about women and media. She is also co-author of “Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism” (Strata Publishing), which received the “Texty” Textbook Excellence Award from the Text and Academic Authors Association, and of “Exploring Mass Media for A Changing World” (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers).

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Sexual Identity and Gender Identity are similar in some ways and very different in others. Both refer to how one thinks of a person. The existence and perpetuation of gender and sexual identities is based in the historic and continuing oppression (systematic mistreatment condoned by society as a whole) of people do not conform to certain aspects of society’s gender roles. Gender roles refer to the clothing, behaviors, thoughts, feelings, relationships, etc., that are considered appropriate or inappropriate for members of each sex.

However, sex, gender identity, and sexual identity refer to different aspects of oneself. Therefore, one may be any combination of sex (male/female), gender (masculine/feminine), and sexual identity (straight, bisexual, lesbian/gay.) In recent history, people oppressed on the basis of different sexual identities (bisexuals, lesbians, gay men) and people oppressed on the basis of gender identity have formed communities which are partly separate and partly overlapping with one another. Because of this historic separation, someone who is a member of one of these communities does not necessarily understand and prioritize the issues of others of these communities. One who belongs to more than one of these communities may feel welcome in both, but usually neither addresses all one’s needs or the way that one’s needs from different communities overlap or interact.

Gender identity refers to how one thinks of one’s own gender: whether one thinks of oneself as a man (masculine) or as a woman (feminine.) Society prescribes arbitrary rules or gender roles (how one is supposed to and not supposed to dress, act, think, feel, relate to others, think of oneself, etc.) based on one’s sex (whether one has a vagina or a penis.) These gender roles are called feminine and masculine. Anyone who does not abide by these arbitrary rules may be targeted for mistreatment ranging from not being included in people’s circle of friends, through the cold shoulder, snide comments, verbal harrassment, assault, rape, and murder based on one’s (perceived) gender identity.
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EDPL 338: Intergroup Dialogue on Sex and Gender
Course Syllabus – Fall 2005
4:00 – 6:00 pm / 0117 FS Key Hall

Office of Human Relations Programs (OHRP), University of Maryland, College Park
Co-Facilitators: Barbara Goldberg / Saswat Pattanayak
Office: Counseling Center /OHRP Shriver Lab
Office Hours: After Dialogue and by Appointment
Phone: 314-7693 / 405-8190
E-Mail: goldb@umd.edu / saswat@umd.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In a multicultural society, discussion about issues of conflict and community are needed to facilitate understanding between social/cultural groups. In this intergroup dialogue, you will participate in semi-structured face-to-face meetings with your own and other social identity groups.

Students will discuss relevant reading material and will explore your own and other group’s experiences in various social and institutional contexts. Participants will examine narratives and historical, psychological, and sociological materials that address each group’s experience within a U.S. context. Students will participate in exercises that will be debriefed in class and in learning journals.

Students will learn about pertinent challenges and inequities facing the participating groups on campus and in society. The goal is to create a setting in which students engage in open and constructive dialogue, learning, and exploration concerning challenges of intergroup relations, conflict, and community.

The Men / Women intergroup dialogue is structured for participants who are interested in engaging in dialogue on sex and gender issues. Though the primary focus of this dialogue will be on issues of gender, dialogue need not exclude conversations related to race, ethnicity, language, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, ability status, spiritual affiliation, age, appearance, geography, environmental concern, etc.

COURSE GOALS
Students who critically engage, challenge, and apply themselves in the course will be able to
1)raise their level of critical consciousness relating to their role(s) in promoting diversity and/or perpetuating discrimination by reflecting upon, understanding, and discussing sex and gender and other social identities including cultures, values, customs, traditions, as compared and contrasted with those of other diverse populations.
2)identify, discuss, and write about topics and issues that face us in preparing to become diverse learners and professionals for a democratic society.
3)critically examine, discuss, apply, and write using concepts, theoretical frameworks, and research on personal and social identity, oppression/privilege, and social justice in society.
4)discuss the influence of schools, families, churches, the media, and other societal or systemic foundations have on us, focusing on how societal systems; as institutional agents of learning, socialization and institutional discrimination, can influence and shape social practices, and policies on issues of sex/gender and other social identities.
5)develop and demonstrate intergroup dialogue skills for engaging within and across social identities as active participants in our diverse democracy.

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