Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots De seksuele ontwikkeling van jongeren Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Sex trafficking Prostitutie PornografieIncididunt nisi non nisi incididunt velit cillum magna commodo proident officia enim.
Natasha WALTER[Eerst weer allemaal dankbetuigingen. Waarom doen mensen dat toch?]
Haar ervaringen met een totaal roze speelgoedafdeling voor meisjes.
"Many feminists in the past argued that girls and boys should be encouraged to play across the boundaries laid down by their sex, and that there was no reason for girls to be confined to this pastel sphere. But not only does this division between the pink girls’ world and the blue boys’ world still exist, it is becoming more exaggerated than ever in this generation." [mijn nadruk] (7)
"The brilliant marketing strategies of these brands are managing to fuse the doll and the real girl in a way that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
This strange melding of the doll and the real girl can continue way beyond childhood. Living a doll’s life seems to have become an aspiration for many young women, as they leave childhood behind only to embark on a project of grooming, dieting and shopping that aims to achieve the bleached, waxed, tinted look of a Bratz or Barbie doll. The characters they watch in romantic comedies are women who make such exaggerated femininity seem aspirational, and the celebrities they read about in fashion and gossip magazines are often women who are well known to have chosen extreme regimes, from punishing diets to plastic surgery, to achieve an airbrushed perfection." [mijn nadruk] (8)
[Precies, zie daar de gevolgen van het kapitalisme.]
"For more than 200 years, feminists have been criticising the way that artificial images of feminine beauty are held up as the ideal to which women should aspire. From Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in 1949, to Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970, to Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth in 1991, brilliant and angry women have demanded a change in these ideals. Yet far from fading away, they have become narrower and more powerful than ever." [mijn nadruk] (10)
"What’s more, throughout much of our society, the image of female perfection to which women are encouraged to aspire has become more and more defined by sexual allure. Of course wanting to be sexually attractive has always and will always be a natural desire for both men and women, but in this generation a certain view of female sexuality has become celebrated throughout advertisements, music, television programmes, films and magazines. This image of female sexuality has become more than ever defined by the terms of the sex industry." [mijn nadruk] (10)
[Vraag is dus: hoe kan dat? en wat doe je eraan?]
"The fact that women can now be sexually active and experienced without being condemned is a direct result of second-wave feminism. And this is clearly something to be celebrated. But it is strange that all aspects of the current hypersexual culture are often now seen as proof of women’s growing freedom and power. So the renaissance of glamour modelling is seen by many who participate in the industry as a marker not of persistent sexism, but of women’s new confidence. (...) Even occupations such as lap dancing and prostitution are often now surrounded by this quasi-feminist rhetoric. (...) This means that rather than being seen as negative for women, the mainstreaming of the sex industry is now often presented as a culmination of the freedoms that feminists have sought. (...) This equation of empowerment and liberation with sexual objectification is now seen everywhere, and is having a real effect on the ambitions of young women." [mijn nadruk] (13-15)
"The rise of a hypersexual culture is not proof that we have reached full equality; rather, it has reflected and exaggerated the deeper imbalances of power in our society. Without thoroughgoing economic and political change, what we see when we look around us is not the equality we once sought; it is a stalled revolution." [mijn nadruk] (19)
[En volgens haar ook op vlak van politiek, economie, het opvangen van kinderen, en zo, waar alles zich even zo goed leek te ontwikkelen. ]
"The reality is that although girls still do as well as boys at every level of education, the workplace has not seen the changes that were once expected. While men and women with young children have the right to request flexible working, for women the decision not to work full-time still carries a huge penalty."(21)
"It is time to make the links between the cultural changes we have seen over the last ten years and this stalled revolution."(23)
"What’s more, alongside the links that are made between this kind of exaggerated sexual allure and empowerment, we have recently seen a surprising resurgence of the idea that traditional femininity is biologically rather than socially constructed. A new interest in biological determinism now runs throughout our society. Indeed, the association between little girls and everything that is pink and glittery is being explained in many places not as a cultural phenomenon, which could therefore be challenged, but as an inescapable result of biology, which is assumed to be resistant to change." [mijn nadruk] (23)
"These beliefs have now penetrated much of the culture that surrounds our children. The educational establishment often reproduces them uncritically, so that, for instance, the website of the Girls’ Schools Association states that ‘Research in the last 10 years or so on brain development suggests that gender differences are as much to do with the chemistry and structure of the brain as the way in which girls and boys are raised. The tendencies of girls to be more contemplative, collaborative, intuitive and verbal, and boys to be more physically active, aggressive, and independent in their learning style seems to stem from brain function and development." [mijn nadruk] (26)
"There is science on either side of this debate, yet it is often the case that the media will rush to embrace only one side."(28)
[Ja, ook weer typisch, de media die alleen op sensatie uit zijn. De mannenwereld van de tabloids.]
"But we should be looking for true choice, in a society characterised by freedom and equality. Instead, right now a rhetoric of choice is masking very real pressures on this generation of women." [mijn nadruk] (29)
[Ja, precies, dat eeuwige gemakzuchtige gezeur over de vrije keuze. 'Ik draag een hoofddoekje omdat ik er zelf voor kies.' 'Ik ben huisvrouw omdat ik er zelf voor kies.' En zo verder. ]
"This book does not attempt to cover such ground; here I stay not only within Western culture, but also primarily within British, heterosexual experience. In doing so, I am not suggesting that other experiences are not just as valid and vital."(30)
[ Nee, stel je voor dat je zou durven zeggen dat 'andere ervaringen' niet deugen, verboden zouden moeten worden, of zoiets. Altijd weer dat postmoderne gerelativeer van waarden en normen, van maatstaven, van de waarheid.]
[Volgen soortgelijke verhalen voor de UK als bij Levy voor de USA, over vrouwen die voortdurend bezig zijn met hun uiterlijk en die het mannen naar de zin willen maken en die dat met gemak 'seksuele bevrijding' of 'empowerment' zouden kunnen noemen.]
"The growth of a culture in which so many women feel that their worth is measured by the size of their breasts rather than by any other possible yardstick arrived in the UK apparently out of nowhere.(...) But the revitalisation of glamour modelling has become the symptom of a wider change in our culture, in which the images and attitudes of soft pornography now come flooding in at young women from every side of the media: monthly magazines, weekly magazines, tabloid newspapers, music videos, reality television, and almost every aspect of the internet, from social networking sites to individual blogs." [mijn nadruk] (41-42)
"Although dissent is now being articulated in some quarters, it is easy for many people in this culture to dismiss such dissent entirely."(44)
"This emphasis on choice is key. Anyone who would like to criticise this culture that sees women primarily as sexy dolls will find themselves coming up against the constantly repeated mantra of free choice."(46)
"This emphasis on choice allows people such as Hilton to sidestep any sense of responsibility for the culture they have helped to create. So although Hilton was the editor of Nuts as it moved decisively into this semi-pornographic incarnation, he says the move was decided by readers, not by himself. At first the magazine sold a less sexualised culture – it didn’t show nipples and it kept the sex talk less explicit. But gradually the editors found they could increase sales by pushing at boundaries, and since this is a world in which value is determined by sales, they went with the tide." [mijn nadruk] (49)
[Die nadruk op 'hun keuze' gaat dus samen met de houding dat je geen oordeel hebt over het gedrag van anderen, zo blijkt verderop. Zoals een interviewee zei: 'It’s their choice. A lot of them have huge ambitions, or they just want to be in a magazine. Who are we to judge them?'(54) Alle keuzes zijn goed, iedereen heeft gelijk. Totdat iemand er voor kiest om je vrouw te versieren en zij er in mee gaat, dan is het huis te klein natuurlijk. Een houding van 'Ik ben tolerant zolang ik er zelf geen last van heb en er goed geld mee kan verdienen.' ]
"Both Hilton and Edgar-Jones are clearly right about one thing. As they say, this culture can no longer be seen as one purely created by men for men.(...) We cannot pretend that this is all about women as victims, when many women are deeply complicit in creating and selling this culture.
These are the kind of women that the American writer Ariel Levy has called Female Chauvinist Pigs – the women who are happy to work alongside men to promote this waxed and thonged image of female sexuality." [mijn nadruk] (52)
"This idea that the growth of glamour modelling and its effect on women’s ambitions is all down to the operation of free choice seems to have silenced many potential critics. I can certainly understand why it is that many people would like to believe that the changes we have seen in our culture are a marker of women’s increased liberation.(...) But for the last few years, I have been watching this hypersexual culture getting fiercer and stronger, and co-opting the language of choice and liberation, and I realise that I was wrong to be so nonchalant about it ten years ago.
It is time to look again at how free these choices really are. After all, real, material equality still eludes us. Women still do not have the political power, the economic equality or the freedom from violence that they have sought for generations. This means that women and men are still not meeting on equal terms in public life. And the mainstreaming of the sex industry reflects that inequality. It is still women who are dieting or undergoing surgery on their bodies; still women stripping in the clubs while the men chant and cheer; still women, not men, who believe that their ability to reach for fame and success will be defined by how closely they conform to one narrow image of sexuality. If this is the new sexual liberation, it looks too uncannily like the old sexism to convince many of us that this is the freedom we have sought." [mijn nadruk] (54-55)
"The effect of these choices, when we look across society, is now to reduce rather than increase women’s freedom. And it is not just the women who are directly involved who find their individuality threatened by the glamour-modelling industry. The marketplace is taking up and reinforcing certain behaviour in a way that can make it hard for many young women to find the space where other views of female sexuality and other ways for women to feel powerful are celebrated. By co-opting the language of choice and empowerment, this culture creates smoke and mirrors that prevent many people from seeing just how limiting such so-called choices can be. Many young women now seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having, and that sexual confidence can only be gained if a young woman is ready to conform to the soft-porn image of a tanned, waxed young girl with large breasts ready to strip and pole-dance. Whether sexual confidence can be found in other ways, and whether other kinds of confidence are worth seeking, are themes that this hypersexual culture cannot address. While no one would express unease if there were a few women expressing their sexuality in this style in a society which was also happy to celebrate with similar verve and excitement the myriad other achievements of other women, the constant reinforcement of one type of role model is shrinking and warping the choices on offer to young women." [mijn nadruk] (61-62)
Over 'lap-dancing'.
"The way that lap-dancing clubs are now seen so much as part of the mainstream has also filtered through to the new popularity of pole-dancing."(65)
"While stripping has become more mainstream through the rise of lap-dancing clubs, there are also much more upmarket strip shows, including burlesque, which cater to a more middle-class audience."(68)
" .. burlesque is often seen as a truly creative way for women to take their clothes off. No wonder, then, that this is where the undressing-as-empowerment rhetoric really seems to come into its own." [mijn nadruk] (69)
"It has now been shown over and over again that, as Ellie says, many lap-dancing clubs do not keep to the purported rule of no touching. And it has become increasingly clear that some lap-dancing clubs are straightforward routes to prostitution."(75)
"The expansion of these clubs throughout many town centres and their increasing acceptability among men of all ages and occupations have changed cultural attitudes to the objectification of women."(76)
"Ellie feels that dissent is being muffled by the identification of sexual liberation with this hypersexual culture." [mijn nadruk] (79)
"While prostitution has always been with us, this casualness about what it means to work in the sex industry is an unexpected development." [mijn nadruk] (82)
[Het is die 'casualness', die nonchalance die samenhangt met normatieve onverschilligheid die weer samenhangt met postmodern denken / het relativeren van alles.]
"It would be naive to assume that the promotion of such a view of prostitution in the mainstream media does not have an effect on the real-life behaviour of men and women."(83)
"The matter-of-fact way that some women enter prostitution is also connected to the way that many men are now much more open about buying sex."(86)
"Some research suggests that this casual attitude to shopping for sex has now become very widespread."(89)
"This cultural shift which has made prostitution more acceptable has, in some places, been seen as an advance for women. This is understandable. There are sex workers who insist that they have chosen the work they do and that they would like to be given the rights and protections that any other workers enjoy. Many people, listening to those arguments, shy away from sounding too judgemental about prostitution in case they are seen as condemning women’s choices. But the casual attitude towards prostitution that suggests it can be an aspirational occupation for women glosses over much of the reality of this work." [mijn nadruk] (90)
[Het punt is dat mannen nooit veroordeeld worden voor het kopen van seks terwijl vrouwen die het verkopen wél veroordeeld worden en nooit kunnen rekenen op respect. Vrouwenhaat alom bij mannen, gewelddadig gedrag ook. Vaak een misbruikachtergrond bij de vrouwen, alcohol en drugsgebruik, schulden.]
"Despite the fact that they have not necessarily been forced into this work, these women are not exempt from levels of abuse that make a mockery of the normalisation of prostitution."(95)
"The ease with which prostitution is presented as an acceptable choice for women dismisses the psychological trauma that actually seems to be not the occasional, but the inevitable, result of selling sex."(99)
[Slaat Walter niet een beetje door, hier? ]
"This culture has even affected the lives of very young girls, from the heroines they look up to, to the clothes they wear, the way they see their bodies, and even the toys they play with. The look of a popular brand such as the Bratz dolls exemplifies the new expectation that young girls will be seen as sexy early in their lives."(103)
[Het verhaal over seksualisering van jongeren.]
"But there aren’t many adventures on offer in this part of our culture, in which the main journey for a young girl is expected to lie along her path to winning the admiration of others for her appearance. Despite the limitations of the narrative, I was struck, during the film [Bratz: the Movie - GdG], to hear a strong rhetoric of independence and self-expression running throughout. The song performed at the film’s denouement, ‘Express Yourself’, tells girls to be independent and think of themselves, because it is ‘your time’ and ‘you are first in line’: ‘Baby live your life, ’Cause now we’re here to remind you, That no one lives life twice … just express yourself.’
It is modern feminism that created this rhetoric that foregrounds self-expression. Feminists encouraged women to cease seeing the good woman’s life as defined through service to others, as it had been throughout the nineteenth century, and instead encouraged them to focus on their own desires and independence. But that focus on independence and self-expression is now sold back to young women as the narrowest kind of consumerism and self-objectification." [mijn nadruk] (105)
[Ja, het is puur cynisme van de makers van dat soort spullen. De devaluatie van taal, woorden betekenen praktisch niets meer, er wordt maar wat geroepen dat goed klinkt. Het is zoiets als: je hebt de vrije keuze zolang je maar voor mij kiest. Toch is me nog steeds niet duidelijk hoe het nu zo ver heeft kunnen komen. De macht van mannen is tijdens de seksuele revoluties blijkbaar helemaal niet aangetast, de waarden en normen van mannen zijn nog steeds heilig. En nu is het zelfs zo dat vrouwen zich als mannen willen gedragen.]
"The imperative is to better oneself not through any intellectual or emotional growth, but through physical remaking. Such media encourage young girls to believe that good looks rather than good works are at the centre of the good life." [mijn nadruk] (107)
"The power of this body project is clearly tied to the sexualisation of women. Of course, young girls as well as mature women are sexual beings, and it is great that young girls need no longer experience the shame and embarrassment that girls felt in the past about their sexual feelings. But the liberation that feminists once imagined as involving an honest acceptance of girls’ sexuality has now morphed into something altogether less enabling. Although there is now a genuine and understandable taboo around the idea of underage sexual activity, there is paradoxically a real pressure on girls to measure up as sexually attractive at a young age." [mijn nadruk] (111)
[Merkwaardige tekst. Ze spreekt tegelijkertijd van een eerlijke acceptatie van de seksualiteit van meisjes dank zij het feminisme en van een 'oprecht en begrijpelijk taboe op de seksuele activiteit van minderjarigen'. Wat wil ze nu? Dat heeft trouwens verder niets te maken met de seksualisering door de industrie waarbij de norm zoals vroeger in de 19e eeuw van buiten wordt opgelegd, al is het dan een andere norm. Ze beschrijft die norm in films, games, tv, muziekvideo, sociale media, kleding, etc.]
"But although we hear sporadic effusions of concern about what this pervasive sexualisation is doing to young girls, concerted dissent is absent. I think this is because, just as with the sexualisation of women, these developments are often assumed to be the result of choice rather than exploitation. But when it comes to the sexualisation of young girls, the language of choice seems particularly misplaced."(119)
"Such evidence suggests that the sexualisation of young women is taking place in a world in which old imbalances of power still operate, often harshly." [mijn nadruk] (129)
"The confusion between sexual liberation and the sexual objectification of young girls means that there is a danger that young girls might not be seen as in need of protection from unwanted attention and even assaults." [mijn nadruk] (130)
"If this early sexualisation of young women was all about their liberation, and they were in control of it, we would not see large numbers of women saying that they regretted their first sexual experiences. But just as the number of girls having sex early has grown, so has the number of girls who look back with regret. Eighty per cent of girls who had sex aged thirteen or fourteen said they regretted it in a survey carried out in 2000, compared to 50 per cent in 1990. Since one in four girls has sex below the age of sixteen, that’s a lot of regrets." [mijn nadruk] (131)
[De vraag is alleen wat Walter er mee wil. Het lijkt er op dat ze inzet op 'bescherming' in plaats van 'weerbaar maken' en van 'geen seks voor je 16e of zo (nee, geen 'abstinence' maar 'delaying sexual activity' - wat een huichelarij) in plaats van 'goed voorlichten over seks voor alle leeftijden' en het aanpakken van de rolverdeling. En ik zie niets over maatschappelijke actie tegen de industrie en de media. ]
"This is not just about giving children more and more sex education, as some feminists argue. Knowledge of the nuts and bolts of sex is important, but we also need to give our children the tools to challenge the culture around them. That will need a change not just in factual messages given in a classroom or by an individual parent, but a more widespread questioning of why we are encouraging our daughters to feel that their worth is so bound up with their physical allure at such an early age, and why there are so few alternatives on offer. It may not be easy for feminists to accept that liberal messages have not always been empowering for young women on the cusp of exploring their sexuality, but it does seem that what was once seen as sexual liberation has become, for young girls, more like sexual imprisoning." [mijn nadruk] (135)
[Dit lijdt weer aan die eenzijdige gerichtheid op meisjes. Het moet een gerichtheid op jongeren worden, waarbij juist ook jongens aangepakt worden op hun gedrag en opvattingen. En wat met al die media en de industrie? Die verdwijnen niet door deze aanpak.]
"Even if not all writers who are associated with feminism’s second wave had quite Greer’s [Germaine Greer The female eunuch - GdG] cheerleading tone when talking about promiscuity, this was a time when women who had more than one sexual partner were often seen as necessarily more honest and braver than those who chose monogamy. Marriage, which had been sold to so many women for so long as their ultimate ideal, now came under serious questioning."(138)
"Female sexuality was now discussed with an honesty that had never been seen before, as writers detailed orgasms, masturbation, periods and positions without shame. And alongside this defiant reclaiming of sexual pleasure there was clearly, at that time, a moral charge in the new imperative not to be locked into monogamy."(140)
"But just as in Austen’s time the promiscuous woman was presented in the dominant culture as marginal and to be condemned, so now a girl who has decided to delay sexual activity until she finds a true emotional commitment can be pushed to the margins and silenced."(141)
[Er is nogal een verschil. Ik denk dat die vroegere afwijkers meer zelf kozen voor ander gedrag dan die meisjes die vandaag de dag zogenaamd hun seksuele ervaringen willen uitstellen. Is dat laatste dan een vrije keuze? Ik geloof er niks van, zeker niet bij meiden met een religieuze achtergrond.]
"Because they had so successfully subtracted emotion from their sex lives, these young women were perfectly in tune with the culture around them." [mijn nadruk] (146)
[Daar gaat het dan een tijdje over: geen gevoelens van 'commitment' willen, geen intimiteit, alleen maar koude seks tijdens 'one night stands'. Lijkt me geen vooruitgang en bevestigt alleen maar 'mannengedrag' (ook door vrouwen dus). Maar het alternatief is niet het huwelijk. Waarom niet promiscue zijn mét gevoelens en zonder anonimiteit? Denk aan goede relaties met een paar anderen, polyamorie, denk aan 'friends with benefits', en zo verder. ]
"This new celebration of promiscuity in our culture exists alongside a continuing attachment to monogamy; we live in a society that still celebrates the big wedding, and the stable family as the place to bring up children. But for women who are not married, having many sexual partners without much emotional commitment is often seen as the most authentic way to behave. What’s more, women who celebrate promiscuity are often seen as the true feminists." [mijn nadruk] (156)
[Dat klinkt nu al alsof ze het er niet mee eens is. Is zelf waarschijnlijk getrouwd.]
"This connection that is often made between the liberated and the promiscuous lifestyle tells us not only that women can choose to have uncommitted sex in which both individuals refuse to invest in emotional closeness, but that they actually should choose to have sex in this way. Once upon a time many feminists enunciated the opposite idea; they talked of the idea that women and men should meet equally in the bedroom, but rather than seeing this as an equality founded on lack of feeling, they idealised freely chosen sex characterised by intimacy and emotional connection. Unemotional sex has not been seen by feminists as a source of power and liberation for very long." [mijn nadruk] (157)
"To be sure, in previous generations many women writers had to repress their physical needs and experiences in order to fall in with social conventions, and feminism was needed to release women from that repression. This meant that women clearly needed to break the cage of chastity, but what I heard from some women is that they feel there is now a new cage holding them back from the liberation they sought, a cage in which repression of emotions takes the place of repression of physical needs.
Many young women I spoke to seem to feel that their lives have been impoverished by the devaluation of sex into exchange and performance rather than mutual intimacy."(165)
[Dat is begrijpelijk, maar ik hoop dat dat niet betekent dat monogamie het enige alternatief is voor die mensen, of nog erger: het huwelijk. Het is zo gemakkelijk om de hang naar ouderwetse opvattingen te rationaliseren. En dan natuurlijk doen alsof het huwelijk een vrije keuze is. Jaja.]
"Or as Rachel Gardner, the youth worker who was quoted in Chapter Three, said to me, ‘Feminism is now seen as sexual promiscuity, which is such a narrow view of empowerment. Liberation isn’t just about promiscuity. For some women liberation may be about having a new sexual partner every week, but for a lot of women it will be about finding someone to be with for your whole life, growing together over the years, and you never hear about that any more. What liberation means to me is that in any sexual relationship you are cherished, and you cherish.’" [mijn nadruk] (166)
[Die laatste zin is niet zo raar: respect en intimiteit willen met iemand. Maar de zin ervoor is dus dat terug laten keren van oude opvattingen - monogamie, die Ene vinden, je hele leven bij hem blijven - onder het mom van dat je dat ook moet kunnen 'kiezen'. Hoeveel vrouwen zouden op die manier 'kiezen' voor een huwelijk met verkeerde mannen en op die manier de rolverdeling in stand houden, mannengedrag goedkeuren dat niet deugt? Hoe gelijkwaardig zijn al die relaties? Laten we daar eens onderzoek naar doen. Het is kenmerkend voor Walter dat ze met dat citaat dit hoofdstuk over sexuele relaties afsluit, vind ik. Wikipedia zegt: "Natasha Walter lives in London with her partner and their two children." Ze heeft vast een monogame relatie.]
"Many women who would call themselves feminists have come to accept that they are growing up in a world where pornography is ubiquitous and will be part of almost everyone’s sexual experiences. Anna Span is the most famous and prolific female porn director in the UK, and she believes that positive effects have arisen for women in the way that pornography has now moved into the mainstream. In her view, this development has encouraged women to be more honest about their own sexuality." [mijn nadruk] (167)
[Er is pornografie en pornografie. Waarover hebben we het precies? ]
"So we now live in a world in which even many feminists have stopped trying to condemn pornography. This has been a huge turnaround in feminist thought. At one point in the 1980s it seemed that the primary energy of feminists was directed against pornography. The classic feminist critique of pornography saw women only as victims of a male-dominated pornography industry that was based on the degradation of women and encouraged violence against them. As Robin Morgan put it in 1974, ‘pornography is the theory, and rape the practice’ and as Andrea Dworkin said in 1981, pornography makes men ‘increasingly callous to cruelty, to the infliction of pain, to violence against persons, to the humiliation or degradation of persons, to the abuse of women and children’." [mijn nadruk] (169)
[Dat zijn voorbeelden van 'maar wat roepen' en van het neerzetten van oorzaak-gevolg-relaties die er niet zijn of waar minstens eerst eens onderzoek naar gedaan zou moeten worden.]
"As more feminists with differing views joined the debate, it became clear that the classic feminist critique of pornography had left something very important out: it assumed that women never take any pleasure in pornography. This is clearly wrong. There are intelligent women, choosing and thinking for themselves, who do enjoy watching pornography, and some enjoy making it and acting in it too; we can no longer deny the intense sexual power of pornography for women as well as men."(171)
[Blij dat we het daar in ieder geval over eens zijn. Maar nog steeds: welke porno? geef eens een definitie?]
"But it is the prevalence of pornography consumption among children that is most striking. While 25 per cent of children aged ten to seventeen in a study carried out in 2000 had seen unwanted online pornography in the form of popups or spam, the numbers of children who see pornography this way is rising quite quickly, and in 2005 a similar study found that 34 per cent had seen unwanted pornography when they were online. In this survey, 42 per cent of the 10- to 17-year-olds had seen pornography, whether wanted or unwanted – but this has been dwarfed by results found in other surveys. In another study in Canada, 90 per cent of 13- and 14-year-old boys and 70 per cent of girls the same age had viewed pornography. Most of this porn use had been over the internet, and more than one-third of the boys reported viewing pornographic DVDs or videos ‘too many times to count’. While once someone could live their whole lives without ever seeing anyone but themselves and their own partners having sex, now the voyeur’s view of sex has been normalised, even for children. For an increasing number of young people, pornography is no longer something that goes alongside sex, but something that precedes sex. Before they have touched another person sexually or entered into any kind of sexual relationship, many children have seen hundreds of adult strangers having sex." [mijn nadruk] (174)
"Now that the classic feminist critique of pornography has disappeared from view there are, as this teenager noted, few places that young people are likely to hear much criticism or even discussion about the effects of pornography. But this massive colonisation of teenagers’ erotic life by commercial pornographic materials is something that it is hard to feel sanguine about. By expanding so much in a world that is still so unequal, pornography has often reinforced and reflected the inequalities around us.
This means that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure. No wonder we have seen the rise of the idea that erotic experience will necessarily involve, for women, a performance in which they will be judged visually." [mijn nadruk] (176)
[Dit gaat de verkeerde kant op. Welke porno, nogmaals? Waarom is porno per definitie dehumaniserend hier? En waarom is het alleen dehumaniserend voor vrouwen? En wat betekent het dat 'mannen vrouwen als object zien'? En wat maakt dat zo veel vrouwen moeite doen om te lijken op de dames in de pornofilms, zoals het scheren van hun doos, schaamlipcorrecties, en zo meer. Ja, ze willen blijkbaar mannen pleasen en hebben een bepaald beeld van wat mannen leuk vinden. Maar waarom? En wat denkt ze dat de gevolgen voor mannen zijn? En zou er misschien een samenhang kunnen bestaan met het totaal onbevredigende seksleven van veel stellen, vooral als ze kinderen hebben? Zou er misschien zelfs een relatie kunnen bestaan met monogamie als de enige vorm van hoe je een relatie kunt hebben Te veel vaagheden en eenzijdigheden.]
"This idea that there is one correct way for female genitals to look is undoubtedly tied into the rise of pornography."(178)
[Zonder twijfel en het is belachelijk. Maar waarom willen die dames dat dan zo graag? Waarom lees ik zo weinig over die vreselijke drang om 'er bij te horen', 'je te conformeren aan je vriendinnen en aan wat de media bieden'? Waarom zijn die vrouwen niet kritischer en eigenwijzer en waarom weigeren ze niet om mee te gaan in die trend? Hoezo 'girl power'? Hoezo 'sterke vrouwen'? Hoezo 'vrije keuze'?]
"Lara has looked at pornography with her husband, but just like Ali, she can’t enjoy it, because of the dehumanisation which seems inherent in it." [mijn nadruk] (185)
[En één man interviewen en twee vrouwen, en je op hun verhalen baseren is niet erg wetenschappelijk verantwoord. Ik vind de voorbeelden nogal suggestief. Er zijn genoeg vrouwen die wel genieten van porno, er is porno waarin mensen in hun eentje masturberen, etc.]
"I do not believe that all pornography inevitably degrades women, and I do see that the classic feminist critique of pornography as necessarily violence against women is too simplistic to embrace the great range of explicit sexual materials and people’s reactions to them. Yet let’s be honest. The overuse of pornography does threaten many erotic relationships, and this is a growing problem. What’s more, too much pornography does still rely on or promote the exploitation or abuse of women. Even if you can find porn for women and couples on the internet, nevertheless a vein of real contempt for women characterises so much pornography."(186)
[Tegenstrijdige berichten. Ok, dan stoppen alle vrouwen vanaf nu met de deelname aan professionele of amateuristische porno, dan is het probleem uit de wereld. Walter zit hier meer vanuit gevoelens te schrijven dan de zaken te analyseren. Als je dat echt wilt doen moet je het perspectief van 'vrouwen' overstijgen en verder kijken dan je neus lang is.]
"Because the old feminist position against pornography has been so discredited, it often feels as though few people are ready to speak out against pornography. I picked up a real sense of hopelessness from those women who have experienced its negative effects in their intimate lives."(189)
[Ja, heel zielig, maar dat is geen analyse van het probleem. En de geboden 'oplossingen' zijn dan ook nietszeggend: ]
"And even if we cannot censor pornography and shut down the internet, perhaps we have to try again to make spaces that are free from pornography, both public and private. (...) If we are ready to start to challenge the creeping pornification of our culture, this will range from preventing the sale of pornographic images at child height in newsagents to challenging those media outlets which rely on semi-pornographic images in other contexts.
It will also mean believing that we can reclaim a view of sex that is about intimacy rather than exchange. Of course any number of people are creating this experience of sexuality in their private lives, and we can also draw inspiration from those writers and artists who are reimagining sexuality as emotional connection rather than performance, whose acts of imagination can have surprising resonance even in this cynical world." [mijn nadruk] (191-192)
"The hypersexual culture is not only rooted in continuing inequality, it also produces more inequality."(194)
"How can young women feel confident about entering public life when they know they are likely to be judged not for their competence and skills, but on how closely they resemble a porn star? Yet the sexual bullying of women in public life now often goes almost unnoticed, it is so taken for granted."(196)
"This assumption that a woman should be valued primarily for her sexy appearance is having a real effect on women’s visibility in our culture."(198)
"There has been little questioning of this culture for many years. The tenor of so much of our society has been to exalt the role of the market. If certain magazines sell, if certain clubs make money, if certain images shift products, then dissent about their values is effectively silenced.(...) To judge any aspect of our culture or behaviour is now often seen as impossibly elitist; the market is the only arbiter. Television producers and publishers have told me the same story: that in this society they cannot make decisions based on quality or morality, they must make decisions based on sales. Throughout our society, any attempt to complain about or change this culture is often met by fatalism: if the market is so powerful, then how can any individual stand against it?" [mijn nadruk] (202)
[Precies, daar moet je de oorzaken en oplossingen zoeken.]
"What should be the freedom to choose a bit of pink often feels more like an imperative to drown in a sea of pink. My daughter is growing up in a world predicated on medieval values, with every girl a princess and every boy a fighter, every girl with fairy designs on her lunch box, and every boy with a superhero on his. This new traditionalism does not just affect what toys children are expected to play with, it also extends to expectations about many other aspects of children’s behaviour, from how they will dress to how they will talk, from how they will learn to how they will fight. And what seems strangest of all to me is how few questions are being asked about this return to traditional expectations." [mijn nadruk] (204)
"Pink girls, blue boys. Princesses, fighters. Shy girls, grunting boys. Good girls, aggressive boys. That’s what we want to see, so that’s what we see. Even if our children so often diverge from expectations, and the princess becomes the puncher or the fighter wants to chat, this hardly seems to dent the strength of the stereotypes."(207)
[Welke rol spelen de beschreven ouders daar in? Ze blijken de bekende vooroordelen over meisjes en jongens voortdurend naar voren te brengen, willen uit alle macht dat hun kinderen 'er bij horen', kortom: het zijn vaak de opvattingen en de keuzes van de ouders die de kinderen in die rollen en dat gedrag bevestigen. En ja, de commercie doet niets anders dan dat. Maar al die verhalen zijn al zo lang bekend! De vraag is gewoon: wat doen we er aan? Dat betekent minstens dat wwe de commercie, dat we het kapitalisme aan banden moeten leggen. Regulering, niet: alles overlaten aan de 'vrije markt', lees de bedrijven.]
"There must be hardly a little girl alive in Britain today who doesn’t have some possession stamped with the brand [Disney - GdG]. If I go into my daughter’s bedroom I will see it on a music box, miniature dolls and medium-size dolls, a wand, a cup, a necklace, crayons and stickers. When I open her dressing-up box, I see the crackly nylon Cinderella dress, and the Snow White dress that is so worn it is falling apart, and the Sleeping Beauty shoes with their little pink heels."(209)
[Maar wie heeft die dingen voor haar gekocht of aan haar gegeven? Precies.]
"We can see why it might be tricky for a girl like Miranda to find a way through contemporary culture, but it can be equally tricky for boys who do not fit the mould."(214)
[Nee maar ... Echt? Natúúrlijk raakt die typische nadruk op de tradtionele rolverdeling ook jongens.]
"This is a generation in which many boys are encouraged into a stereotyped masculinity at an early age; for those who resist, life can be uncomfortable." [mijn nadruk] (216)
[Zo is het maar net. En 'uncomfortable' is bijzonder zacht uitgedrukt. En die Fenella kan beter gaan scheiden als haar man dat stereotype gedrag zit op te leggen aan zijn zoon met de woorden 'waarom gaat ie niet voetballen?'. Maar nee, ze houdt zeker zo veel van hem ... ]
Hierna terug naar het eerder aangeduide idee dat dat gedrag van mannen en vrouwen biologisch en evolutionair gedetemineerd is.
"In the 1970s, during the heyday of second-wave feminism, biological explanations for behavioural differences between boys and girls were often questioned, and explanations from social influences became more popular. It became generally accepted among educationalists then that Simone de Beauvoir had a point, and that if we wanted to move towards greater equality we had to be prepared to challenge the ways that femininity and masculinity were encouraged among girls and boys by the influences around them."(218)
['Het zit in de genen', wat een kreet is dát! ]
"Biological explanations are currently squeezing out other explanations for differences between boys and girls, and contributing to a fatalism about sex inequality.
In the educational world, biological explanations for differences between the ways that girls and boys play and learn have become ubiquitous." [mijn nadruk] (227)
"This interest in biology – ‘something neurological’ or the ‘effects of male hormones’ – as the explanation for differences between girls and boys means that far from exploring how social factors might create these differences, and how they could therefore be challenged, many people are retreating into fatalism about the innate and inescapable nature of these differences. Parents and teachers are now encouraged to avert their eyes from the influences of consumer marketing, parental reinforcement or peer-group pressure on children’s behaviour. Instead, we are asked to believe that the exaggerated femininity and masculinity that we often encourage in our children is simply a natural result of their biology."(228)
"If these biological explanations for the differences between men and women rested on the best evidence, then it would be futile to question them. But as I saw when I looked more closely at the science that is supposed to underpin this narrative, it is far more complicated, nuanced and subtle than we are often led to believe."(241)
Het debat met Lawrence Summers over waarom vrouwen ondervertegenwoordigd zijn in topnatuurwetenschap. Hij gooide het eerst op de biologie, maar kwam er op terug. Dat laatste gaven de media niet weer.
"Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the first and one of the leading critics of Lawrence Summers. She had been present at his talk and had left the room during it.(...) Another of Summers’s critics was Elizabeth Spelke, one of the world’s leading experts in child cognition, professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and director of the Laboratory for Developmental Studies. Over the last thirty years she has designed a series of experiments that study the innate abilities of young babies to assess their surroundings, to perceive objects and to make inferences about how objects behave."(245-246)
"These scientists still feel frustrated by the way this debate was reported. When I spoke to Nancy Hopkins in 2008, she said that looking back she felt that much of the reportage had been extremely biased."(247)
"Journalists often get in touch with her [Melissa Hines - GdG] when they have been commissioned to write stories in support of the popular narrative of biological determinism. When they hear her views, which do not discount the contribution of biology entirely, but look carefully at the full spectrum of evidence and the interplay between innate and environmental factors, sometimes they stop writing the piece, sometimes they ignore the dissenting evidence, and very occasionally they struggle with their editors to get these more nuanced views into print."(249)
"Having heard these scientists saying that they felt the media were often misrepresenting the state of the debate within the academy, I realised how important it has become to look more closely at these possible misrepresentations. If we are only hearing one side of the story when it comes to differences between men and women, it is time to ask what the story would sound like if we were able to hear the dissenting voices as well."(250)
"Given this long history of study of boy and girl infants over the years, Elizabeth Spelke has said this with confidence: ‘Hundreds of well-controlled experiments reveal no male advantage for perceiving objects or learning about mechanical systems.’26 The male and female babies in the three decades of research before Jennifer Connellan and Simon Baron-Cohen’s experiment have engaged equally with objects and people."(259)
"Those writers who believe that girls are born with a greater interest in people than boys also often say that from birth you can see easier relationships between baby girls and their carers than between baby boys and their carers. This is now a view that you often hear from parents in everyday life ..."(261)
"This assumption that femininity is based on a greater ease with language is often presented as fact in the media ..."(264)
"Funnily enough, there is no solid evidence for the idea that women’s verbal skills are so much better than men’s, although it has become such a touchstone of our current culture. On average, girls do develop language skills slightly earlier than boys, and so differences can be seen within age cohorts at school, but boys can catch up. Even if boys do not, on average, now perform as well as girls in some exams in the UK, there is no evidence that this is a biological and unchanging difference rather than one produced by a particular culture at a particular time when many boys are encouraged to believe that reading and homework are not cool."(268)
"Even if we could shrug off the myths that women talk better than men or talk more than men, we are likely to be left with the persistent view that women talk differently from men. This is the most recalcitrant belief of all when it comes to words: that women are good at cooperative, supportive talk, while men are good at point-scoring and logical argument."(271)
"This suggests that much so-called research on this subject is not actually testing innate differences, because it fails to screen out the way we try, maybe without even consciously knowing we are doing so, to conform to social norms."(275)
"Another key theme of the new biological determinism when it comes to differences between the sexes is that while women may excel at empathising, they are deficient in systemising skills, or in logic as against intuition, or reasoning as against feeling. Above all, one key theme that emerges in this new biological determinism is that despite our decades of equal opportunity, men are still so much better at certain areas of maths. The theory that men have a biological superiority at maths is now often used to explain why many fewer women go into careers that require mathematical ability."(278)
"The only area of maths that consistently throws up a moderate or large difference in favour of men is their ability for spatial visualisation."(280)
"What’s more, there is a growing and fascinating literature which suggests that differences between men and women on basic tests of spatial awareness can be reduced or wiped out by practice."(281)
"Evidence that the gap is closing between men and women in many maths tests has begun to make some writers rather wary about citing ‘intrinsic aptitude’ when explaining the lack of women in certain occupations. We have therefore seen a shift in the argument, from the idea that there are innate differences in aptitudes, to the idea that there are innate differences in aspirations."(285)
"In this narrative, it doesn’t matter how much you encourage women to do maths, they will never choose to be scientists or engineers or computer programmers in the same numbers as men. And it’s true that at the moment more men than women clearly do aspire to these fields: women do not go into higher level maths courses, do science degrees or take up work in science, engineering and maths at the same rate as men, and this is not just about raw ability."(285)
"For instance, studies have shown that mothers overestimate the maths abilities of their sons and underestimate the maths abilities of their daughters, and that male high-school students in the US are aware that their teachers, mothers and fathers have more favourable views of their maths abilities than those of female high-school students. Psychologists have also found that mothers’ perceptions of their children’s abilities influence those children’s beliefs about their abilities even more than the children’s own grades, and that parents’ low expectations for their daughters are related both to the girls’ lower expectations of their own performance, and to their intentions not to do so much maths at school." [mijn nadruk] (287)
[Zo typisch, dit. Het zijn zo vaak de vrouwen zelf die aan de basis staan van de standaard rolverdeling en ideeën over hoe mannen en vrouwen zich horen te gedragen. En de wereld maar denken dat vrouwen van nature de beste opvoeders zijn ... ]
"The next chapter will look in much more detail at the way that stereotypes influence even women’s performance in supposedly objective tests and even their choices in apparently unconstrained situations."(287)
"Writers who look to biological explanations for all sex differences tend to see hormones as having an irresistible power to mould our behaviour. Hormones are indeed what make us male or female."(288)
"But if you search for the evidence to prove that higher levels of oxytocin are behind women’s greater investment in their social and family lives, you will be a long time looking."(293)
"It is often assumed that typical femininity is created not just by the presence of some magical pink elixir, but also by the absence of a magical blue elixir. As we all know, the hormone testosterone is thought to create the mythical masculinity of aggression and competitiveness, and women’s low levels of testosterone are often assumed to lie behind their poor showing in masculine traits."(295)
"Far from bringing us a clearcut story of how testosterone sets up stereotypical masculinity, we find a very muddled picture about how this hormone affects behaviour. Some studies go in the right direction for the biological narrative.(...) These are two studies that do show a role for testosterone in creating masculinity along the expected lines, and you can find others. But as I trawled through some of the literature I found there is also a lot of research that has failed to reinforce the expected narrative, and that gives us a much more complicated picture of the effects of testosterone in the womb."(298-299)
"One of the most commonly expressed ideas about men’s and women’s brains is that women use the left brain more, and men use the right brain more, and that the right hemisphere processes space and systems while the left processes words and emotions."(304)
"The reality is that there is no proof that femininity is laid down for women in the structure of their brains."(306)
"The preference for research on the brain that seems to back up traditional sex differences over research that does not is not only seen in the media; some scientists have suggested that it occurs earlier on in the research food-chain, in the very decisions about which studies actually get published. Some have pointed out that, while a vast number of studies of brain activation are currently being carried out, those that show sex differences are much more likely to be published than those which fail to prove sex differences."(311)
"The complicated story of how the brain we are born with develops in response to our life’s experiences cannot be summed up by a narrative that seeks to reduce it to a rigid stereotype laid down at birth."(314)
"When you read those writers [evolutiepsychologen en zo - GdG] who seem to think that our responses to the contemporary world were decided for all of us millions of years ago, a creeping fatalism often takes over which makes it impossible for us even to imagine the possibility of creating further social change. In this fatalistic world view, the desires we have to create a better and more equal society will founder." [mijn nadruk] (318)
"The nature–nurture divide is a false one, since the experiences we have in our lives will change the physical structures of our brains or our production of hormones. There is no unchanging biological reality, free from history, just as there is no blank slate on which the finger of experience writes. Our genetic inheritance helps to determine how we filter and respond to experience, and our experience modifies how our genetic inheritance expresses itself. If we have the will and the desire to create social change, we should not be held back by the false belief that such change will necessarily founder on the rock of innate differences. There is a way beyond this fatalism."(319)
"But even where average differences can be observed between men and women in cognition and emotional aptitudes, these average differences are tiny compared with the vast differences among individuals of the same sex."(321)
"Although there may be small average differences in the intellectual and emotional capabilities of men and women, to express these as truths about all – or even almost all – men and women is nonsense. But in so much of the work done on sex differences today, instead of a recognition of the true variability of men and women, we are presented simply with stereotypes. This is partly the fault of some scientists."(322)
"The spread of biological determinism through the media during recent years has been linked to the rise of politically conservative views. This makes sense, since those who have lost faith with the possibility of creating egalitarian social change are obviously likely to be attracted by apparently scientific theories that back up their feelings that the unequal status quo is only natural." [mijn nadruk] (328)
[Uiteraard. ]
"But the spread of these ideas has now gone well beyond obviously conservative realms. In the UK, these ideas are now found frequently in, for instance, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the BBC, as well as, say, in the Daily Mail and the Financial Times. These ideas have taken up residence throughout the political spectrum, and are promoted not just by people who would never call themselves feminists, but also by many people who do call themselves feminists, such as Rosie Boycott, who co-founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib, or Helena Cronin, the Darwinian philosopher who says, ‘in talents men are on average more mathematical, more technically minded, women more verbal; in tastes, men are more interested in things, women in people; in temperaments, men are more competitive, risk-taking, single-minded, status-conscious, women far less so.’
The problem is that the unquestioning dissemination of such views can itself strengthen the persistence of stereotypes about how men and women should behave in everyday life. To state this is not to suggest that therefore we should shut down discussion of such theories, but it is to argue that we should be careful that the dissenting voices are heard as well. Because the strengthening of such stereotypes matters." [mijn nadruk] (329-330)
"Such research shows that poor use and reporting of science matters more than we might think; it’s not just that bad science gets things wrong, but that it can affect our beliefs and therefore our behaviour. What is fashionably called stereotype threat we might call social conditioning, or sexism, but whatever words we use to describe this phenomenon, it is time to become more alert to the impact the new fashion for biological determinism might have on strengthening stereotypes in everyday life and therefore on holding back the possibility of greater equality."(335)
"In the eyes of those who subscribe to biological determinism, there is a good fit between the world as it is today and the innate aptitudes of men and women. There is no dissatisfaction, there is no frustration, there is no misfiring between our desires and our situations. Every aspect of inequality that we see today can be explained by the different genetic and hormonal make-up of men and women; if women earn less, if men have more power, if women do more domestic work, if men have more status, then this is simply the way that things are meant to be. In this way the biological determinism of the twenty-first century works in the same way as the biological determinism of the nineteenth century, which told women who sought change that they were entirely unsuited to higher education or physical exertion. In Victorian Britain dissent was nevertheless voiced by a small but determined minority, which created real social change for women that proved the fatalists wrong. If we are to move forward towards greater freedom and equality in this generation, we would need to overcome the influences of these stereotypes, which currently affect our expectations of our children and our expectations of our partners and ourselves. We would need to ask again why it is that we are allowing the stereotypes of the nurturing, empathetic woman and the powerful, logical man to be seen as natural and inevitable and look instead at how these assumptions have been constructed, how they are maintained and how they can be challenged." [mijn nadruk] (337-338)
"In the eyes of some of those who subscribe to biological explanations for sex differences, the pursuit of power is seen as peculiarly male."(339)
"One characteristic of the new biological determinism is that it promotes a zero-sum view of masculinity and femininity, in which the more masculine you are, the more you are assumed to be lacking in feminine traits, and vice versa.(...) The way that masculinity and femininity are now so often seen as mutually exclusive, so that the more masculine you are the less feminine you are, operates against women who seek power. Because in the eyes of those influenced by traditional stereotypes, a man seeking power enhances his masculinity, but a woman seeking power reduces her femininity."(339-340)
"This imbalance, when played out in everyday life, may go to the heart of why some women may feel that seeking leadership roles in society is just too stressful, and why it is that women sometimes can’t understand why men are drawn to those roles. Is it that women just don’t receive the payoffs that men do in terms of positive reactions from colleagues and peers, however competent they are? After all, even if we were to get equal pay or equal promotion, this would be dust and ashes in our mouths if we weren’t to get that great feeling that having peer approval gives you – that warm sense of being liked and admired, of being a valued part of a team. Successful men may be able to count on that in a way that successful women cannot. And why should anyone want to be a loner even if they are at the top?" [mijn nadruk] (349)
"The narrative of biological determinism not only includes sweeping rhetoric about women’s lack of aptitude for high-intensity careers, but also moves into grand claims for men’s lack of aptitude for empathy. This stereotype can be seen to operate at a very early age, when little boys are expected to be aggressive and uninterested in social interaction. In later life it operates against men’s further movement into the domestic world, and is just as dangerous as the stereotype against authoritative women, because there can be no further progress towards equality unless men are prepared to do their fair share of home-making. A woman’s attempts to take a greater part in the world of paid work can so easily founder if there is nobody who will work with her to create a full and rewarding homelife. And as long as employers can assume that the typical worker is prepared to work any hours at any intensity while his wife picks up the slack at home, there will not be sufficient pressure to reshape the workplace in the way that is essential not just for greater equality, but also for greater happiness."(351-352)
"The narrative of biological determinism is often intensely idealistic about women’s natural bond with their children. But let’s be honest: although they are biologically fit for bearing children, not all women slip entirely easily into caring for them. Women learn to care, and for some of them that entails a real struggle. Although women often keep this struggle to themselves, sometimes their frustrations, and their desire to have their male partner alongside them in the struggle rather than pushed out to work, can be clearly heard."(356)
"This investment in an almost kitsch domesticity runs alongside a new glorification of the image of the perfect wife, who enables the powerful man next to her to consolidate his status through her physical beauty or her domestic perfection, or, ideally, both."(361)
"The narrative of biological determinism fits this new wife culture very well, and by suggesting to us that nurturing and domestic work comes more naturally to women than to men, it obscures the fact that nurturing behaviour is learned and reinforced for women in our culture, and that in fact men can and do learn this too when the situation is right."(363)
"Feminism is all about choice, but at the moment the language of choice is used almost always in relation to those women and those men who choose to follow traditional patterns of behaviour."(369)
"When we hear these automatic responses about choices, we have to remember the situations in which those choices are made. Given our unequal society, it is much too early to make the assumption that the choices we see today are free."(370)
Wat te doen?
"Here are ten initiatives among so many that have started in the last ten years which have broken through the complacency around us."(375)
1/ Een actiegroep die de regulatie van lapdanceclubs aanpakt.
2/ Een actiegroep die mannenblaadjes, advertenties voor cosmetische chirurgie aan de kaak stelt.
3/ Nieuwe reclaim the Night - marsen.
4/ Een forum voor feminisme.
5/ Een organisatie voor de rechten van vrouwelijke vluchtelingen van de auteur zelf.
6/ De instelling van een fonds voor vrouwen dat organisaties ena cties van vrouwen financieel ondersteunt.
7/ Een speciaal filmfestival voor vrouwen met films door vrouwen.
8/ Een actie en organisatie tegen 'sexual bullying' op scholen.
9/ De ondersteuning van centra die verkrachtingsslachtoffers opvangen
10/ Actie tegen de 'culture of pink'.
"And of course it is not only women who are seeking greater equality and freedom, there are men working in all these campaigns and on all these issues, both publicly and privately."(382)
[Dat is een goed ding, maar in de kern zijn dit allemaal aardige ondersteunende acties van vrouwen voor vrouwen. Waar blijven bijvoorbeeld de acties van vrouwen die nadrukkelijk gericht zijn op mannen met als doel hun gedrag aan te pakken en de rolverdeling te veranderen? Waar wordt de mentaliteit van vrouwen aangepakt die zich allemaal zo gemakkelijk conformeren aan die seksistische cultuur en die ouderwetse rolverdeling. En waar wordt hun slachtoffergedrag keihard bekritiseert? Verder vind ik het allemaal maar symptoombestrijding waarvan ik me niet kan voorstellen dat die trend kan keren. Waar worden het kapitalisme en de media aangepakt? ]
"Despite all the disappointments of the last few years, there is no reason to give up hope or to stop believing that one day the future we desire could become the present we inhabit. There is no need to think we must start from scratch; the feminist foundations in our society are strong. We can be aware of and grateful for previous feminist successes while building upon them towards a better future. Because the dream that feminists first spoke about over two hundred years ago is still urging us on, the dream that one day women and men will be able to work and love side by side, freely, without the constraints of restrictive traditions. This dream tells us that rather than modelling themselves on the plastic charm of a pink and smiling doll, women can aim to realise their full human potential."(383)
[Hoopvol en positief eindigen, ik vind het prima, maar dit lijkt me toch niet erg realistisch als je naar de getallen kijkt. De grote massa is waarschijnlijk nooit 'bekeerd' tot feministische idealen, vrouwen niet, mannen al helemaal niet. En ook nu volgen die voornamelijk wat de media en domme politici allemaal roepen. Ik zie het een stuk somberder in.]