Tag: Gender

Liked Is Martha Stewart’s turn on the cover of Sports Illustrated really about the male gaze, or is she chasing something else? (abc.net.au)

When we get fit and put on good clothes, even sexy clothes, we’re hoping our girlfriends greet us with shrieks of delight at our well-toned arms and how well our jeans fit. Martha may have been on the cover of a men’s magazine, but almost all the discussion since her appearance has been by women.

Liked Ibram X. Kendi on His New Book and Why Kids Today Need the Kinds of Books Being Banned by Zan Romanoff (Reader's Digest)

These diverse stories don’t just help us better understand ourselves, though. They also help us understand and empathize with people of different backgrounds.

“It is a huge loss for people to not be able to find themselves in books, particularly if they’re a person of color, if they’re queer, if they’re women or trans,” Kendi says. “And it’s a huge loss for people who are not trans and people who are not queer and who are not people of color. It’s a loss because they’re not able to learn about others.”

Liked The dimensions of hybrid equity (alexandrasamuel.com)

It’s time to pay attention to who has access to remote-work flexibility, how that flexibility affects advancement opportunities, and how we are building relationships between on-site and hybrid teams. The most successful organizations—the ones that will deliver great customer experiences, and attract and retain great talent—will be those that develop strategies, tools and rituals that connect on-site and hybrid employees, and build a common experience of hybrid inclusion.

Because bringing people back to the workplace can only go so far if we fail to think about those who have been there all along.

Liked Sexism Is Built Into Our Homes by Divya Subramanian (theatlantic.com)

Working from home can dissolve the boundaries between leisure and work. But it can also reinforce existing binaries. The study, or home office, has traditionally been the domain of men. According to one survey, men working remotely are 60 percent more likely than women to have a designated home office, and report higher levels of satisfaction with their work-from-home setup. If one partner doesn’t participate in the workforce, they may lack a room of their own altogether—spending their time, in Francis’s words, in “spaces that service the family.” Many homes can’t accommodate one home office, let alone two, but more flexible design might include roomy closets that can function as “cloffices,” small workspaces outfitted with desks and lighting.

Replied to

Naomi, I recently read Clinton Walker’s Stranded, unpacking the Australian music scene between 1972 – 1992. I kind of knew/guessed it was wild, but not sure I really appreciated how wild it was and all so very male. Can only imagine UK was even more so.
Bookmarked AFLW’s Kirsten McLeod wants to raise awareness about the ongoing symptoms of concussion by Kate O’Halloran (ABC News)

AFLW premiership player Kirsten McLeod faces 12 months on the sideline due to the ongoing effects of concussion. Emerging evidence suggests that women’s experience of concussion differs from men’s, with the reason lying at the intersection of the biological and political.

Kate O’Halloran reports on Kirsten McLeod’s challenges with concussion. Whether it be balancing two jobs or the short length of the season, she explains how it serves as yet another point of inequity associated with AFLW.

Women are more likely to report concussions than men. But in a sporting environment where you have a short season — so NRLW is six weeks and AFLW isn’t significantly longer — women may not wish to report their symptoms.

Beyond the differences, this situation poses many questions that it does not feel have clear answers, especially in regards to the long term ramifications of head knocks.

Bookmarked The Fellowship of the Rockers (NPR)

The new documentary Get Back, cut from 50-year-old footage of Beatles recording sessions by director Peter Jackson, offers a chance to look at one moment when the myth of the “band guy” took shape.

Ann Powers uses Get Back to reflect upon the myth of ‘band guys’.

The band guy’s footprints forged the genre’s path from the early 1960s onward, from Liverpool’s grubby Cavern Club to Seattle’s dingy Dutchman rehearsal space, in leather boots and Converse sneakers. Blending Hobbit-like charm with Aragorn-ish glamor, this figure took shape within the dreams of countless men following in the wake of John, Paul, George and Ringo teaming up as the Fab Four. The romance, familial connection and creative exchange that sparked for The Beatles in their Cavern Club days grew mythic as they became the biggest act rock ever produced, pulling rock’s ring from the hands of solo artists and duos and making fellowship the primary energy empowering rock’s quest. Over the decades, band guys traded leather for Spandex for skateboarder shorts, blew up the genre like punks and reassembled it as grunge; but what bore repeating was that story of men growing up together through music, turning into a family and finding glory on the battlefields of rhythm and noise.

Associated with this is the irony that as the world was becoming less segregated, music was become more so with the appropriation women and culture. In particular, “The Beatles brought white America a sense of relief.”

It’s not a coincidence that the music industry itself became more segregated during a period when civil rights defined the spirit of protest in America. The Beatles and the other English soul transformers/appropriators that quickly followed in their wake, from The Rolling Stones to Joe Cocker, personally protested the divisions that greeted them on tour and sometimes in the recording studio; yet as they became rock’s norm, they allowed white fans to enjoy what the late great music writer Greg Tate identified as a pasteurized form of Black culture: “everything but the burden.”

Women of any race were also pushed out of the band-guy narrative, despite the very real roles they played in the British Invasion, from Tina Turner teaching Mick Jagger how to move to The Shirelles inspiring The Beatles’ harmonies.

This is an insightful piece. It had me thinking about the balance of guys and girls in Dave Grohl’s autobiography. Although there was discussion of Joan Jett, this was wedged in-between living in the van and Pantera’s strip club.

It also had me thinking about Damian Cowell’s discussion of white male rock in his podcast. What is intriguing is how the group may change, but the myth carries on.

The group sound doesn’t always feed the myth of the band guy, but as water tends to find its own level, it’s become intertwined with it. It’s not imaginary, this sense that musicians making music together over time produce something that both enhances and exceeds each participant especially when they are composing together. This is one way to understand jazz, for example. But in rock the fascination with “the group sound” melded with a romantic view of masculine freedom and prowess that made the band not just a conduit for artistry, but a way of life. Even as the multiracial revolution disco wrought overtook it in the 1970s and, simultaneously, punk’s antics knocked it down a peg, the band lived on as the most potent signifier of rock’s ability, in the words of its post-1970s high priest Bruce Springsteen, to “bust this city in half.”

Liked Loki Has Always Been Marvel’s Most Queer Character by Angela Watercutter (WIRED)

Throughout Marvel history, Loki has taken many forms: snakes, women, Captain America. According to the original Norse myths, he once turned into a mare and mothered an eight-legged horse that became Odin’s steed. In the comics, the trickster god became Lady Loki following Ragnarok, essentially taking Lady Sif’s body. There’s no telling how much, if at all, the new Marvel show will investigate Loki’s many identities, but the appearance of Lady Loki—along with a small tease in one promo noting that Loki’s gender is “fluid”—is a deliberate nod to the God of Mischief’s past.

Liked Sex, schoolkids and where it all goes wrong by David Leser, Natassia Chrysanthos (The Age)

Privilege. Porn. Parent-free parties. An alcohol-fuelled climate in which being nice to girls is considered uncool. A wave of sexual assault allegations involving students from some of our top private schools underlines the need to foster a healthier brand of manhood.

Liked There’s an urgent need to teach empathy but not everyone will connect or care (EduResearch Matters)

Teaching for empathy in gender transformative ways is discomforting because it is focused on unsettling taken-for-granted and deeply embedded views, emotions and actions (Zembylas, 2014). It involves inviting boys and men to critically reflect on their gender privilege and their complicity in reproducing gender inequality. It involves difficult and confronting conversations.

Liked M/F/X 
 why converting gender into data is more complex than often presumed by Neil (data-smart-schools.net)

The main issue here from a ‘critical data literacies’ perspective is why data about gender or sex are even being generated during the course of our everyday technology use in the first place – is this data that reallyneeds to be generated? Why exactly do system developers and software designers need to know this information 
 and what is likely to be done with this data?

Bookmarked Why bizarre milkshakes will never replace world-class consent education (aare.edu.au)

The Government would only have had to go as far as Victoria to do better, writes Amanda Keddie.
Education academics, women’s rights campaigners and many in between have criticised some of the material in the government’s new respectful relationships resource for schools.
Particularly controversi…

Amanda Keddie discusses the Australian Government’s resource developed to help schools address the challenge of educating young people about respectful relationships.

The Good Society resource is part of the Australian government’s Respect Matters program, which aims “to support respectful relationships education in all Australian schools” and to “change the attitudes of young people towards violence, including domestic, family and sexual violence”. The Respect Matters program itself is part of the government’s National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. 

The resource includes more than 350 videos, podcasts and activities for children in the foundation year of school, up to year 12. 

Approaching the resource and the furore around the discussion of consent from a gender-justice perspective, Keddie highlights two particular issues:

  • Nothing on gender-based violence for young children

  • Young women presented as sexual gatekeepers

Responding to the Milkshake video, Myf Warhurst and Zan Rowe talk about the strange association with Kelis’ Milkshake:

They wonder whtehr something like the British tea campaign might be clearer?

There have been a lot of other alternatives suggested, such as the Victorian Government’s Respectful Relationships:

​​​​Respectful Relationships is an initiative to support schools and early childhood education settings promote and model respect and equality. It also supports educators to teach our children how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence.

Deanne Carson shares a ‘consent continuum’:

Bookmarked Blokes Will Be Blokes (Meanjin)

The suggestion seems to be that at some level, Grimshaw—and all Australian women—should apologise for their experiences because it puts them at an advantage. How, these men might ask, are they meant to know this has been happening if they are not themselves subject to repeated acts of assault from the time they are children? Very unfair.

This is the evolution of ‘boys will be boys’. Society broadly excuses aggressive behaviour by young men as though it is biological impulse. Cisnormative gender stereotypes reinforce the notion that boys are only hitting girls because they like them. The same little boys who whack a girl with a toy truck become the young men who cat-call women on trams become the parliamentarians who smirk in the face of sexual assault allegations.

How dare women expect better from men? When were they supposed to learn how to treat us, between being on the rugby firsts and drinking middle-shelf whisky with their uni mates? It’s not their fault. They didn’t have time before now. This is the absolute first opportunity they have had in their whole lives to try to learn the absurd language women are speaking. It’s not their fault no-one has ever taught them otherwise. They’re just blokes doing bloke stuff!

Anna Spargo-Ryan discusses the current crisis unfolding in Federal politics. Some of the issues include Queensland MP Andrew Laming online harrassment,
Attorney-General Christian Porter’s historical rape allegation and
Brittany Higgins’ rape in Parliament House. In response, Scott Morrison has provided a swath of mixed messages, on the one hand recognising the place of women in his life and the fear and inequity lived out every day, while also suggesting that sometimes “blokes don’t get it right all the time” and that maybe women protesting need to be grateful that they are not “met with bullets” like other places in the world. Spargo-Ryan suggests that in the end, Morrison’s actions have been akin to “bringing home a bunch of flowers because you worked late again.” Ryan elaborates further, raising particular problems with parliament house being a “training group to learn about women”.

In neglecting to protect the women in his workplace, Morrison acts as though he has forgotten to take out the bins or pick up the kids from sport. The Prime Ministership cannot be a training ground to learn about women. Federal Government is not a postgraduate program for private school boys who never learned to take care of themselves. The men defending these allegations cannot be allowed to hold up their hands and say, ‘It’s my first day!’

Annabel Crabb explains how this current situation represents a change in power:

In this instance, there is opportunity for women to seek justice, to speak out, to demand restitution in this new environment which suddenly gives a damn about what’s happened to them. But there’s opportunity for strategically-minded blokes, too. For some, the emergence of a cool new way to bring down their enemies is exciting, a brand-new update to the first-person shooter game called Political Ratf**kery.

While on The Minefield podcast, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens explore the difficulties of justice and change. Aly even wonders if Morrison’s failure to adequately respond to the situation is actually what is needed to achieve the change required?

Bookmarked Consent app proposed by NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller to address growing rate of sexual assaults (ABC News)

An app for partners to register their consent before having sex has been proposed as a way to address the growing sexual assault problem in NSW, but critics say it is “naive” and could easily be manipulated.

In response to concerns around sexual abuse, the NSW ,

Commissioner Fuller acknowledged the app might be “the worst idea I have all year”, but said COVID-19 had shown the importance of adopting technological solutions.

Dee Madigan explains why maybe an app is not the answer for everything.

Bookmarked Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ Changed Political Pop Forever by Spencer Kornhaber (theatlantic.com)

The past decade has provided plenty more examples of that dynamic. The language of oppression, self-acceptance, and individuality has been misused time and again, whether you look to Rachel Dolezal or wellness bloggers embracing QAnon. Progressive culture’s internal tiffs have largely centered on the fear of such hijackings. Intersectionality—a framework showing how different forms of oppression overlap and accumulate—has pushed back against supposedly color-blind liberalism. Heightened scrutiny of cultural appropriation would ding Gaga today for the Mariachi cosplay of “Americano.” The emboldened left would question Gaga’s portrayal of marginalization as a mindset rather than a material condition.

You can look to other instances of white divas singing would-be savior songs in recent years for signs of how times have changed. Taylor Swift’s 2019 queer-pride anthem, “You Need to Calm Down,” still feels tinged with awkwardness for the way it equates virulent homophobes with the mere haters of Swift’s music. Katy Perry drew more skepticism than applause from queer audiences for employing drag queens in the promotion for her 2017 album, Witness. Madonna’s 2019 track “Killers Who Are Partying” presents the Queen of Pop as relevant to the plights of gay people, Africans, Muslims, Israelis, Native Americans, and rape victims. She’s lucky the song wasn’t catchy enough to spark controversy.

Spencer Kornhaber discusses the legacy associated with Lady Gaga’s track Born This Way and the criticism raised about the song.
Listened Male Loneliness — And What Men Can Do About it | Art of Manliness from The Art of Manliness

Show Highlights

  • Men and suicide — unique risk factors and why men have higher rates of death by suicide
  • How Dr. Joiner defines loneliness
  • What does it mean to be alone but oblivious?
  • The value of social redundancy
  • The biological detriments of being lonely
  • Is the feeling of loneliness rising in America?
  • Social media’s double-edged sword
  • How are young people spoiled when it comes to relationships?
  • Why relationship maintenance is more valuable than new relationships
  • Why you should reconnect with friends from high school and college
  • Is therapy the right solution for men struggling with loneliness?
  • What can men do start investing more in relationships today?
  • How does this work in the age of COVID?
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett McKay speaks with Dr. Thomas Joiner about his book, Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men’s Success. They talk about the male tendency towards loneliness, even if they are somewhat oblivious to it.

This has me again returning to Austin Kleon’s depiction of ‘increased complexity‘ and the challenges associated with balance as life becomes more and more complex. As I wrote in the past, I wonder if it actually takes a family for such interventions to occur?

I wonder then if the greatest challenge we face in regards to leadership is realising we cannot do it alone and recognising those who help out to make it possible?

Bookmarked ‘Predators can roam’: How Tinder is turning a blind eye to sexual assault (ABC News)

In an investigation, the teams at 4Corners and Hack unpack the way in which Tinder responds to claims of assault. Even with the billions in revenue, Match Group has done little to adequately support users. What makes things worse,  is that the platform seems to protect the perpetrators more than victims through the use of the ‘unmatch’ function.

Tinder allows offenders to use the ‘unmatch’ function to block their victims after a rape to delete any trace of their prior communication.

The problem with banning and blocking is that ease of functionality that makes the platform so enticing also makes it a challenge to manage.

They said they couldn’t completely ban someone from a dating platform because it involved banning a user’s IP address, a number assigned to each device or network, and the number would only last for up to 90 days before changing.

Avani Dias, Ange McCormack and Ali Russell have report that Match Group have since responded and are making improvements to the way in which they support victims.

Match Group said it has updated reporting functions within their apps so that users receive a response and are directed to support services.

However, as with Facebook’s backflip on Holocaust denial content, these responses are too often reactive and seem to be about public relations more than anything else.

Bookmarked Can a Budget shaped by male leaders hope to deliver for the women hit hardest by this recession? by Annabel Crabb ([object Object])

Indeed. Just like men work in the arts and at universities, and in child care centres and in tourism and health services.

But the gender trends in this Budget are very clear. To argue otherwise is not credible.

Annabel Crabb unpacks the budget and the impact on feminised work.
Bookmarked What Is It Like to Be a Man? (hedgehogreview.com)

There are two senses, both far more meaningful than the Harvey Mansfields of the world can afford to realize, in which men actually are failing to protect the people around them. One, many of us commit violence against women and each other, and the rest of us stand accused, with more or less justice depending on our individual circumstances, of letting those guys get away with it. (Feminists sometimes seem to me to exaggerate the amount of power men have over each other. If you’ve marked yourself as the sort of man who objects to casual rape or wifebeating, the men likeliest to do those things tend not to invite you over—but most of us could do more than we do.) Two, we sit around too much. Nothing has informed my understanding of my own maleness—or my fears about what it might allow me to get away with—than chancing to look through the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s The Second Shift when I was in my twenties, and seeing clearly laid out the total combined hours of precious life the average woman loses to home and office.

Phil Christman’s lengthy piece on being a man is a fascinating read alongside Annabel Crabb’s The Wife Drought. Cory Doctorow suggests that,

There’s been an ocean of ink spilled over “toxic masculinity” but until I read Phil Christman’s “What It’s Like to Be a Man” in the Hedgehog Review, I couldn’t crisply define it.

Liked Background (Music for Deckchairs)

The reality of our working from home experience is that it’s cramped and improvised, and I think it gives students a chance to see something about us that they may need to know.

When we come back from this, let’s remember that we learned that having lives beyond our work is neither distracting, ludicrous or embarrassing. Our lives are just what they are. And if we can continue to see the impact of this, we can really start to think about rebooting a much fairer and more inclusive university system, including for our students.