Anne-Marie Slaughter has job in DC, son and husband live in Princeton

Decided to return home to family and leave gov’t job—still has full time job as professor at Princeton

2 reactions from other women: disappointed and condescending

Women from her generation have held on to the feminist beliefs raised with b/c are determined not to drop the ball for the next generation—different reaction than younger generation

Believes women can still “have it all” but just not today with America’s economy and society

Crazy long days in DC working for Clinton, equivalent of one vacation day a month

Having it all meant what kind of job she had

Other females high in gov’t over past years have also stepped down to be with family

In Washington, “leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired

“Although women as a group have made substantial gains in wages, educational attainment, and prestige over the past three decades, the economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson have shown that women are less happy today than their predecessors were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men” (5)

Best hope and closing that “new gender gap” is to close leadership gap: elect a woman president and 50 women senators—ensure women are equally represented in the ranks of corporate executives and judicial leaders

Cliches:

it’s possible if you are just committed enough

very few women in leadership positions—pool of female candidates for any top job is small, and will only grown smaller

every male supreme court justice has a family; 2 of 3 female justices are single with no children, Ruth Bader Ginsburg began career as judge when child was almost grown

It’s possible if you marry the right person

men seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family and women vice versa

It’s possible if you sequence it right

People tend to marry later now—but if have children earlier may be more difficult to get graduate degree, good first job, and opportunities for advancement in crucial early years of your career

Also less income while raising children and then can’t hire help

Being able to work from home can be the key to carrying full load vs letting a team down at crucial moments (11)

“According to the Women’s Business Center, 61% of women business owners use technology to ‘integrate the responsibilities of work and home’” (11)

Comparison to marathon runner—discipline, organization, and endurance it takes to succeed at top levels with young children at home is comparable to running 20 to 40 miles a week but rarely how employers see things

Comparison to Orthodox Jew taking off Friday afternoon and Saturday

Redefining the arc of a successful career

Makes sense for women to peak in late 50s and early 60s

Female role model: Michelle Obama

“When the choice is whether to hire a man who will work whenever and wherever needed, or a woman who needs more flexibility, choosing the man will add more value to the company

the more often people with different perspectives come together, the more likely creative ideas are to emerge

“If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal” (20)

May need to put a woman in the White House before we’re able to change the conditions of women working at Wal Mart

Possible Questions:

Do you think the only solution is electing a woman as President?

Are there any movies that have a strong female lead in a position of power where she is not seen as the antagonist?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/do-male-feminists-get-free-drinks#217b9jl

Found this article earlier today on Buzzfeed, as satirical as it is I found it interesting just to go along with the many conversations we’ve had about feminism this semester and was wondering what people in our class, especially the boys, thought about it.  Also the “are you a feminist” quiz link at the end is funny and definitely work checking out.

Bit of a rant but so be it. i just got around to watching the new version of Carrie, for those who aren’t aware its a remake of a 70’s film based on a Stephen King short story about a girl who gets bullied and then develops psychic powers and kills everyone (a very, very sparse summary). My main problem with the remake is the casting choices around the main character. I simply found the new one to be utterly unbelievable.  Carrie is supposed to be an awkward bullied girl who quite frankly isn’t very attractive.  And in the 70’s version this was believable and the casting choice was on point.

However in the new version the actress playing Carrie is quite good looking and the poster itself is extremely sexualized. Somehow making being drenched in pigs blood sexy. In this case however the sexualization of a character takes away from the film and makes the characters less believable. If the film is about an awkward girl who gets bullied cast someone who is even slightly  believable in that role.

In summation Carrie and its remake are a perfect example of the increasing sexualization of hollywood and the increasing desire to use women as marketing ploys through sexuality and forced gender norms around both male and female sexuality.

When Virginia Woolf first penned Orlando: A Biography she did not think to consider who might be chosen to play Orlando in a film adaptation and if it would be the same person to play him/her as both a man and a woman.  It is very interesting that Sally Potter chose to you one actress to portray Orlando in both sexes.  Tilda Swinton did an astounding job of playing both genders, convincing me that she was a man for the first half of the film so much so that I was almost surprised when she revealed her female body.

I think this casting choice only added to the film because it really drove home the point of how easy it is sometimes to overlook gendered differences and then how obvious it is when you’re confronted with it like when male Orlando tells Sasha that she has to stay with him because he loves her and then female Orlando is propositioned the same offer and finds it repulsive.

The film would have been drastically different if a man had been cast to play Orlando in both sexes.  A male actor portraying a woman would not have been very convincing to viewers and probably would have been laughed at and not taken very seriously.  Swinton’s androgynous look accounts for how easily she could play a convincing man and woman.

Although casting choices are usually not something that add much to the context of the film, Orlando would have been a much different movie if two actors had split the role.

How do you think the film would have been different if Orlando was played by a man throughout the film? Or even a less androgynous appearing woman?

• Cooper articulates in her essay that the film is an investigation of heteronormativity through a narrative that privileges female masculinity in four ways:

1. by dismantling the myth of “America’s heartland”- Brandon going against the norm of America’s heartland
2. problemizing heteromasculinity- John and Tom portray masculinity but the film shows that in a twisted way, making it seem bad
3. by centering female masculinity- Brandon idolizes John and Tom in the beginning of the film but once he becomes infatuated by Lana, he realized he can put his own spin on masculinity
4. by blurring the boundaries of female masculinity-Lana refuses to acknowledge that Brandon is biologically female but identifies as a female, which is where the boundaries got blurred

• Cooper said the director of the film, Kimberley Peirce didn’t want to just re-tell the “sensationalized” murder story of Brandon Teena.  She wanted to reclaim why a girl would want to identify as a boy in the first place
• The media coverage on Brandon’s death focused almost exclusively on the fact that he was a girl passing as a boy
• New York Times film critic, Janet Masin, said “tabloid-ready tale attracted the kind of omnivorous media attention that distorts the truth beyond recognition and milks reality dry”
• Heteronormativity is constantly reinforced by the media, which depicts characters who transgress from heterosexuality as “comic, weak or evil” linking those characteristics with “criminality”
• Varied forms of female masculinity, including trans-sexuality have been seen in an unfair way
• Even scholars have shown no interest in masculinity
• The media illustrated Brandon as a threat to traditional family values, to innocent women, but most aggressively portraying him as a threat to America as a whole
• Perice captures Falls City, not as a town with hard working, simple, religious folk but rather as a dismal place with dysfunctional families, dead-end jobs, and abundant alcohol and drug use to pass the time hoping one day to escape.
• Characters surrounding Brandon in the film are alcoholic, depressed, violent and promiscuous, showing Brandons normalcy and good nature
• The film suggests Brandon as the one who isn’t “sick”

Questions:

Does Brandon being transsexual change the way we view rape?

Do you think it would’ve added to the story if we got a chance to see what Brandon was like when he was a girl? How might it have changed the film?

I noticed how much the film stayed aware of the two genders throughout the story. Assumptions about the male and female genders were made often and very directly (i.e. things were not being slyly implied to viewers, but rather directly stated). For example, when Orlando says “There are three words I could use to describe the female sex, but all three are not worth expressing.” Similarly, when Orlando looks in the mirror at his new, female body and says “Same person, different sex,” statements like these leave little room for interpretation.

I wanted to point out one of the many androgynous moments in the film. It is at the beginning of the film before the Queen dies, and she tells Orlando: “Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old.” In the Queen’s advice for Orlando, sex is irrelevant. She does not say, “Be the best man you can be,” but rather gives a life lesson that could be taken by either a man or a woman.

I think the film also emphasizes how if a person could experience what life is like from the perspective of both sexes, they would become a much more sympathetic (or rather empathetic) person.

This is the article I was talking about the other day in class!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/distracting-yoga-pants-banned-officials-north-dakota-high-school-article-1.1962380
After re-reading this article and watching the video, I did a little bit of research. I discovered that this is a major issue amongst many high schools around the country. I feel its ridiculous that adults are blaming men for “not being able to control themselves”, and women for “dressing provocatively.” I know this is on a much smaller scale, but stories like this are still a reason for rape culture today. Instead of understanding the victim, and simply stating that rape is not ok, we spend our time analyzing the situation in order to find a reason why it may have been the woman’s fault. What else would you expect when you are starting this belief from such a young age?

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/niles-schools-new-dress-code-cracks-down-on-leggings-yoga-pants/28392360

When Sam mentioned this article in class I was immediately reminded of a moment that my senior class had in high school. In high school we had assemblies almost every other day in which the whole school would gather in the gymnasium for what we called chapel. But, there was one day in particular when my class, the seniors, were asked to stay after chapel because our deans wanted to talk to us. This class meeting began with our dean reprimanding us for a prank in which some kids stole a street sign from the neighborhood near our campus, but then something interesting (and related to this article) happened. The deans asked the all of the male students to leave because there was something they wanted to talk to the girls about. A little bit confused, but more than happy to get out of the endless assembly, all of the guys left. Not long after when the girls were released, we found out that the the girls had been told that they were dressing too promiscuously and needed to wear clothing that was more appropriate because they were supposed to be role models for the underclassmen. At the time I remember laughing with my friends, male and female, about the absurdity of having being held into our lunch period to tell the girls in the class that they were dressing inappropriately. Looking back on the class meeting, it applies quite nicely to the discussions we’ve been having in class regarding rape culture.

Women are constantly exposed to contradicting messages of sexuality, and none of these messages allow women freedom of expression to be exercised without extreme scrutiny. On one hand there are people, as in the article and even at my own high school, who tell young women that their dressing promiscuously has a direct correlation to how they are treated by men. And on the other hand there is the media which has an amazing ability to perpetuate the sexualization of women. i.e. Women are told not to dress promiscuously in order to avoid enticing sexual harassment by men, but media conversely depicts an unrealistic and overtly sexual image of how women should look in order to be successful.

When dealing with a rape, or sexual assault, there is terrible habit that people fall into of blaming the victim. When a woman is raped the mentality that “she was asking for it” is all too often used as an excuse to justify the rape, and this excuse is further defended with examples of how slutty she was dressed or how intoxicated she was. However, this excuse just isn’t fair no matter how you look at it. The “she was asking for it” excuse unjustly teaches girls that it is their fault they are sexually harassed by men because of some misconceived notion that men cannot control themselves. Not only can this be detrimental to a woman’s self-image, as she may simply be dressing up for herself (I mean who doesn’t like to look good?) not because she’s asking for it, but can also be harmful to how women view themselves in relation to men.

There is an interesting social construct which I have found comes up from time to time that highlights one of the issues being brought up here. The construct is that women who are sexually active are seen as being slutty, but women who aren’t sexually active are perceived as prudish, whereas men who are sexually active are seen as players verses men who are not sexually active are considered to be not masculine. For women this social construct is a no win scenario and for men there is immense pressure to be overly sexual.

To connect the dots… Women are told from a very young age that their sexuality is something that needs to be hidden or repressed through messages that often manifest themselves in seemingly benign moments such as a high school asking the girls to dress more appropriately. These messages of sexual repression are then confirmed when a woman is sexually harassed by a man and the instigator tries to place blame on the victim through some ill-conceived rational regarding his belief that she was asking for it. And to further complicate things, the rational of the instigator is perpetuated by the very social construct that defines sexually active women as slutty and non-sexually active men as emasculated. Because male fear of emasculation exists, men are pressured into fulfilling the ‘macho man’ stereotype which includes the objectification of women as a means of sexual pursuit. However, the pressure to fulfill the ‘macho man’ stereotype is often overlooked in the wake of sexual assault, and in many cases is mistaken for, or replaced with, the “she was asking for it” excuse. Although both are undeniably poor justifications for sexual assault, one reason the macho man excuse might be mistaken for the “she was asking for it” excuse is because the macho man is going to look for and pursue a woman who is dressed provocatively, regardless of the woman’s intention behind said attire, because she is aesthetically sexually stimulating (think male gaze) and therefore she can more easily be targeted as an object of sexual desire. Now a woman who dresses up to look good is not necessarily asking for men to sexually objectify her, but it is an unintended consequence when taking into consideration the societal construct which pressures men to be more masculine. These unintended consequences are then used to justify the messages of sexual repression women are so often exposed to.

All of this bring us full circle – The media perpetuates women’s desire to assert sexuality as means of personal expression > men succumb to fear of being emasculated as a side effect of social constructs > instigators of assault justify their actions by deferring blame onto victims > women are presented with messages of sexual repression > wash, rinse, repeat.

What do all of you think about this? How do we deal with the constant bombardment of contradicting messages of femininity and masculinity in our lives and in the media? What can we do to break this vicious circle?

Since we’ve touched in class on issues surrounding gender and gender identity and the sometimes tragic ramifications of society’s lack of acceptance I’d like to recommend a film that expands on the topic and would help if anyone was doing a paper on the subject.

priscilla queen of the desert follows a band of Australian cross dressing performers as they go on a road trip through the outback. It’s directed by Stephen Elliot and stars Hugo Weaving and Guy pierce.

The film touches on issues of acceptance of lifestyles, transsexuality and gender issues in general.

The film was also adapted to a broadway play and if you like ABBA the soundtrack is mostly ABBA, its a comedy so it’s fairly light though it does touch on a lot of the issues that have come up in our discussion of Boy’s Don’t cry.

Below is a link to the trailer:

I have very similar thoughts regarding the endings of both Where Should the Birds Fly and Boys Don’t Cry. I appreciate both films and their endings as they each illuminate the circumstances and stories that many people live and have lived. As Fida Qishta said, it is important to tell these stories for the people who cannot tell it themselves. As these stories are told, more hearts are touched so that the people who are represented in these stories have a moment where their voices are heard, and a chance for change is created. It becomes up to the audience to internalize the messages that have been shared in these stories to make a difference for the future, because these problems and injustices will persist until these voices are heard.  I believe many of the injustices that people face will be adopted into the generations to come unless their is a change in the way we think about ourselves and each other (not us as a class, but us as a whole). For me specifically, one of the  messages that stuck with me and inspired me to look into the issue further from Where Should the Birds Fly is that war leaves some people feeling as though the rest of the world has forgotten about them. I’m sorry that this is such an abrupt ending.