media

I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of the media. Television in particular. But not just television. Commercials.

I recently saw two commercials in a row that deeply disturbed me. True, I was watching reruns of CSI on a channel that is geared towards older men, but still. Businesses and television stations alike need to learn when to draw the line.

Commercial One: It's advertising a summer sale at a local matress store. Rather than images of beds and lots of graphics and emphasis on prices and things like that, every time the commercial mentions the summer's "HOT" deal, the commercial flashes to a woman with huge breasts getting out of a pool, dripping wet, in a red one-piece. I was just happy she wasn't naked.

I saw the documentary Jesus Camp on A&E last night. This part really got to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mefXbLXlRpw

Later in the film the children stand in front of the capital with the word "Life" taped over their mouths.

I'm not against children being in political rallies or being involved in political action. If my daughter asked me at young age what abortion was I would explain it to her. This kind of propaganda is dangerous. The way in which the woman says "don't be a promise breaker" is scary. Such a small sentence, but it could have a huge impact for the girls that are in that room and then young boys that are "warriors for Jesus".

Thomas Beatie is legally married, legally male and pregnant. His pregnancy has caught the attention of numerous media outlets, even Oprah and People magazine. Originally thought to be a hoax, his ultrasound on Oprah along with an interview with him and his wife, seems to have convinced the public that this man is pregnant.

Thomas Beatie is transgendered man. The biology behind is pregnancy is pretty simple. By stopping testosterone injections Thomas Beatie was able to get pregnant through artificial insemination. It's hard for me to believe Thomas Beatie is the first pregnant man for this reason. Some websites claim the first pregnant man was a transgendered, homosexual man about 20 years ago. Some intersex individuals who live as men can also have children, so it's very possible Thomas Beatie is not the first pregnant man.

With the exception of my books, I have a very modest media collection. I just don't spend that much time watching television and movies or listening to music. However, I am interested in women and supporting us in every way I can. So, given my commitment to women and feminism, how is it that my modest media collection is primarily composed of men's works?

I'm not trying to argue that men aren't worth watching, reading, listening to, or otherwise supporting; men do create some wonderful things, worth the investment of my time and money. I'll never be willingly separated from East of Eden, and my love of Tom Petty appears to be limitless, but how have men and their creations taken up so much more of my shelf space than women and our creations?

At Scarleteen I routinely hear from young women who are feeling insecure about their boyfriend's use of porn. For me, what stands out about these women is the pressure they feel to satisfy every one of their partners sexual needs. That pressure appears to be internal - their partners are described as quite comfortable with an independent sexuality, e.g. their use of porn and masturbation. I've always thought of these women as unnecessarily jealous, making a big deal out of something relatively minor. It's not like they were taking a feminist stand against porn -- they just didn't want their partners using it.

I keep meaning to write an article about the election and my opinion on Sen. Clinton. I will get around to it, too. In the meantime, there's this:

Grave of Pregnant Marine Found

The North Carolina police found what they believe to be the body of a female marine that had gone missing in Deccember - shortly after reporting that she had been raped by a fellow Marine. Who is now, to the surprise of no one, the prime suspect for her murder.

What I found even more disgusting (and what, curiously, isn't discussed in the article) is that, after reporting the rape, Marines scratched up her car, called her names, and one even punched her in the face. Got that from the CNN news on TV just now.

No single news item has dominated the German media landscape over the past few months like the case of Marco W. The 17-year-old was detained in Turkey in April on the charge of statuatory rape. The charges had been brought force by the mother of the 13-year-old Britisn girl, Charlotte, who had apparently spent a night with Marco.

The story didn't make the news until around June, but then it hit with a vengeance. Though Marco was at that point charged with statuatory rape, it didn't come across that way on the news and in the papers. The reason for that is the relative ignorance of Germans regarding the concept of Age of Consent. Though we do have them, legally, few if any teens are aware of them and they are rarely enforced. Consequently, it soon became public opinion that Marco was charged with sexual abuse and attempted rape.

Today, as I was walking across the parking lot to the mall, a man who was cruising for a parking spot looked out of the window of his car and followed me with his eyes. I noticed and grinned at him. When the car had passed us I turned and said to my mother, "This is one of those things I sometimes miss when I'm in Germany. No one ever stares at me". She asked, "Why only sometimes?" and I told her, "There are times when it crossed the border from somewhat cute to downright offensive".

I don't know if it is really a cultural difference and if yes, what the reasons for it are, but while I turn heads almost everywhere I go when I am in Italy, hardly anyone gives me second glance in Germany. It was literally the first thing I noticed when we moved to Italy: we were standing in line to cross the Swiss-Italian border at Como-Chiasso and a car full of (male) Italian soccer fans in their 20s kept passing us. Every time they came level with us, they hooted and honked and winked at me. During the half hour we stood in that line, I went from feeling surprised and incredulous to feeling flattered to feeling mildly annoyed.

The other day I read an article about a beach in Italy, in Riccione, that is for women only. There were pictures of women sitting happily together, wearing skimpy bikinis and expensive sunglasses, sipping colourful drinks and reading glossy magazines. The tone of the article suggested that the women of that region had demanded a beach of their own, where they could spend time enjoying the sun away from the lustful gazes of males.

The article went on to list the services the beach offered: you can get massages and facials and manicures; you can even get your hair done for the night on the town to follow the day at the beach. All these services were provided by women, even the bar was run by women. No men allowed.

Yesterday I had the radio on while I was in the car waiting for my boyfriend to get some groceries for our 4th of July party. The DJ came on the radio and started talking about how more beer is consumed on the 4th of July then any other holiday. Instead of talking about the serious dangers of drinking, such as drinking and driving...this guy decided to make a joke about domestic violence. He said that in some state a woman was arrested for hitting her boyfriend in the head with a telephone after he had said the names of other women in his sleep. The DJ linked the two together by commenting that men should be careful where they fall asleep after becoming completely obliterated on the 4th of July. He then continued by saying how the guy had gotten really messed up, blood was coming out of his ear...on and on while LAUGHING.

I don't have that much of a problem with a sexualized society. My problem is with a sexualized society that refuses to deal with the aftermath of sex, namely, STDs and pregnancy and its prevention.

Recently, in an action alert, Planned Parenthood stated that several major networks like FOX refuses to air commercials for contraception. What? These are networks that air sex all day, but somehow think it isn't family friendly to air condom commercials? It totally makes sense to me. Expose impressionable youth to sexual content through pop culture, because they'll understand the difference between celebrity and real life. But tell them about safety and pregnancy prevention? Give them vaccines to prevent sexually transmitted diseases? Goodness gracious, then the kids will be having orgies all over the place!

I don't tend to watch a whole lot of TV most of all because I just don’t have that much time or attention for it, and most of the time when I turn it on there is something there that will trigger me so I tend to just avoid it as much as I can. But the other night while trying to wind down after work, I saw a show on TV that has been running in New Zealand for the last few weeks. It is a documentary on the difference's between the sexes, I started to pay some attention to it at the beginning but was not surprised to find that it was nothing really informative or interesting, but was mostly just the stereotypical "differences" such as women love to shop and men love to drink beer.

(Apologies for the lousy title; it's a direct translation from German and the original sounds better.)

I saw a commercial on TV today where, when it was over, I stared at the screen with my mouth open, wondering if I was supposed to laugh or cry.

It went something like this:
We have not been able to determine yet if God is male or female. But we know that the first human was a man. And the first woman? She was made from his rib. Men are the founders of Philosophy. They were the ones who discovered new countries. They were the big inventors - the printing press. The car. The lightbulb. Even the washing machine. 96% of all Nobel winners are male. (Another statistic that I can't remember.) They have all the winning sports teams. They make the best jewelry and the best make-up, and they get all the sexy millionar-daughters. (One more thing I can't recall.) So, really, men are the better people. And their best friend in the world - is the TV. It is about time there is a TV channel just for them.

Tonight at work we were even more dead than we normally are on a Tuesday night in the bar, so I found myself pretty bored after cleaning everything twice and decided to chill for a while and read our local newspaper. I don't often read the newspaper anymore simply because some of the things in it trigger me badly and because some of the other things, like today's event, just irritate me to no end.

Flicking through the first few pages of depressing news and junk advertisements, I found myself faced with the huge bolded title "Buck the trend, guys" which then read in larger letters underneath: "Men are being bombarded with images of the perfect physique, causing the same pressure to conform that women have long been used to, and bringing similar harm". Intrigued I read on... "Men spent 50,000 years advancing from bare skins and bearskins to the impeccably tailored suit... Twentieth century bloke had every reason to hope that personality and brains (or failing that, a fat wallet) would count for more in his sophisticated modern world than a caveman physique. But in the past 20 years civilisation has crashed into reverse gear". By this time, all I could think was boo effing hoo, guys. But I read on... "Not only has the modern girl become ludicrously intolerant of her mans flabby physique, and far more vocal about expressing her impertinent displeasure, but men also find themselves confronted at every turn by images of other men... godlike hunks. What has that done to the male self esteem, already reeling from the relentless advance of women in society?”

There's something that's been going on that's been making me slightly uneasy, and yesterday I finally put my finger on it.

Towards the end of last summer, while I was in Italy and working on my termpapers, a media war broke out in Germany between the 'housewives' and the 'career women'. It was sparked by the publication of the book "Das Eva Prinzip" by Eva Hermann, which I'm sure I've mentioned in a previous blog. I was aware of the publication of the book and outraged by the implications of it (feminism had not helped women but only made their situation more desperate as it had led them to act counter to their biological destiny - that of being a wife and mother exclusively), but too far away to really follow the arguments that followed it.