Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
Unmanned Commonsense at NPR
Sally Pipes has an article on gender neutral language — which isn’t a bad idea but, like all things, gets absurd when taken to extremes — that begins with this hilarious anecdote from a recent National Public Radio broadcast,
Last month NASA ended the career of the Galileo space probe by smashing it into Jupiter. As a reporter on National Public Radio noted, Galileo was an “unpersonned” space craft. Only language was injured.
An “unmanned” spacecraft would, of course, be accurate but not politically correct. This sort of nonsense proceeds from militant feminism, which sees gender bias lurking on every hand, and regards the English language as an instrument of repression. The extent to which this ideology has permeated educational institutions is evident in The Language Police, a recent book by historian Diane Ravitch.
Source:
Language Police Brutality. Sally Pipes, Pacific Research Institute, October 2003.
Are Bikinis Just as Bad as Burkas?
In an op-ed for the Boston Globe historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg and women’s health advocate Jacquelyn Jackson argue that while women in Afghanistan are celebrating the demise of the Taliban by removing their burkas, women in the United States have yet to fully realize how oppressed they are by the wearing bikinis and other cultural phenomenon that distort women’s body images.
According to the duo, “our war against the Taliban … highlights the need to more fully understand the ways in which our own cultural ‘uncovering’ of the female body impacts the lives of girls and women everywhere.” Their op-ed continues,
Taliban rule has dictated that women be fully covered whenever they enter the public realm, while a recent US television commercial for “Temptation Island 2″ features near naked women. Although we seem to be winning the war against the Taliban, it is important to gain a better understanding of the Taliban’s hatred of American culture and how women’s behavior in our society is a particular locus of this hatred. The irony is that the images of sleek, bare women in our popular media that offend the Taliban also represent a major offensive against the health of American women and girls.
Whew. Who knew the Taliban were on to something in their extreme misogyny? Islamist parties in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have often demanded the abolition of women’s sports on the grounds that sports are unfeminine and tend to showcase women’s bodies in a lurid manner (Muslim extremists in Kuwait, for example, were horrified at the sexually provocative outfits worn by women’s soccer teams during the 2000 Olympics). Many women’s activists in the Middle East pay a high price for fighting such views, only to have feminists like Brumberg and Jackson mimic the conservative argument that, as they put it, “…American girls and women have been stripped bare by a sexually expressive culture…”
Brumberg and Jackson go on to indict media images for contributing to “eating disorders, teen smoking, drinking, and the depression and anxiety disorders that can occur when one does not measure up…” For good measure they also endorse the American Medical Association’s unwarranted assertion that there is a link between “violent images on the screen and violent behavior among children.”
Brumberg and Jackson’s finish their op-ed with a flourish that is as absurd as it is audacious,
Whether it’s the dark, sad eyes of a woman in purdah or the anxious darkly circled eyes of a grail with anorexia nervosa, the woman trapped inside needs to be liberated from cultural confines in whatever form they take. The burka and the bikini represent opposite ends of the political spectrum but each can exert a noose-like grip on the psyche and physical health of girls and women.
Source:
The burka and the bikini. Joan Jacobs Brumberg and Jacquelyn Jackson, November 23, 2001.
Tags: Afghanistan
Does a Genetic Disorder Cause Some Anorexia Cases?
A claim popularized by feminists is that anorexia (and other eating disorders) are caused by unhealthy media images of thin women. In the past decade this claim has been undermined by cross-cultural studies of societies with very different ideal female body images, but a recent Dutch survey is the first to provide any evidence that anorexia may have a genetic as well as psychological component.
American researchers began by studying mice who experience an eating disorder similar to anorexia. Research determined that the mice were deficient in a protein called agouti, which was involved in the formation of skin pigment. The substance had a second use, however — its presence in the brain was necessary to stimulate the mice to eat. Those mice who produced too little of this protein suffered from an anorexia-like eating disorder.
Dutch researchers then turned to human beings. Taking blood samples from 145 patients diagnosed with anorexia, the researchers found that 16 of the patients had genetic mutations of the gene that produces the agouti protein in human beings.
This follows up on earlier research that found high risks of anorexia in people whose relatives also suffered from the disorder. According to the BBC, studies of twins have shown that when one twin suffers from anorexia, the other twin has an extremely high 50 percent risk of suffering from anorexia as well. Having a family member who suffers from anorexia increases the risks of suffering from the disorder from 1 in 200 to 1 in 30.
Rather than being simplistically caused by images of thin females in the media, anorexia is turning out to be a very complex disorder with a number of likely factors contributing to its development.
Source:
Anorexia ‘has genetic basis’. Marlene Smits, The BBC, October 7, 2001.
Protesting Panty Raider
For whatever reason, Simon & Schuster agreed to publish computer game developer Hypnotix’s latest game, Panty Raider: From Here to Immaturity (the first time I read an announcement of this game, it was so bizarre I was convinced it was an April Fools-style joke). Apparently in the game the player strips a model down to her underwear and then takes pictures for aliens, of all things.
Hypnotix games tend to be attempts at parodies of traditional games or genres. After the success of the various Deer Hunter computer games, for example, Hypnotix developed Deer Avenger in which the deer turn the tables and hunt humans who were stereotypical rednecks. Panty Raider appears to be a lame attempt to spoof the “Mars Needs Women”-style B movies.
Unfortunately, that’s got the usual suspects all uptight (Naughty game has knickers in a twist). According to Diana Zuckerman of the National Center for Policy Research for Women and Families, Panty Raider is not just going to be a stupid game, but is “extremely negative and dangerous to girls and women” because of the behavior it will encourage in young boys. Zuckerman’s complained to Simon & Schuster about the game. So has the group Dads and Daughters, which sent an email to Simon & Schuster urging the company to pull the game.
Simon & Schuster maintains that the game will have an M rating, meaning it is intended for mature audiences only, but that’s not good enough for Zuckerman and DADS. According to Zuckerman, the simple fact that the game involves aliens is proof positive that the game is being marketed to kids, while DADS resident expert Joe Kelly told USA Today that if it were really marketed only to adults, the models would strip to the nude (apparently the only sexually oriented content adults are ever interested in must contain full nudity.)
I’ve never understood why executives give the go ahead for crap like Panty Raider while other worthy games never get close to market (or why studio executives green light Danny DeVito movies for that matter), but the idea that this game is “dangerous” to women is beyond absurd. The only danger this game poses is to the suckers who waste their $19.95 on probably one of the most moronic computer game concepts ever.