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As far as I am concerned, the epidemic of gaslighting is part of the struggle against the obstacles of inequality that women constantly face. Acts of gaslighting steal their most powerful tool: their voice. This is something we do to women every day, in many different ways.
I don’t think this idea that women are “crazy,” is based in some sort of massive conspiracy. Rather, I believe it’s connected to the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as “crazy.”
"— Yashir Ali, “A message to women from a man: You are not “Crazy.”
(Source: thecurrentconscience.com)
"Women may make up 51% of the population, but actresses nabbed only 29.9% of the 4,379 speaking parts in the 100 top-grossing films of 2007, or so says a new study released by University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, which was conducted by professor Stacy. L Smith."
— Rachel Abramowitz, “Memo to all women: No half for you in Hollywood”
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
"Characters matter to a great extent, and novels that involve parents and young children seem at first glance to be considered the potentially sentimental province of women. Except, of course, when those parents and children are male, as is the case in “The Road” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” both of which feature father-son duos and have been praised enthusiastically by men and women."
— “The Second Shelf” - Meg Wolitzer
(Source: The New York Times)
"A woman’s worst nightmare? That’s pretty easy. Novelist Margaret Atwood writes that when she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women, he answered, “They are afraid women will laugh at them.” When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, “We’re afraid of being killed."
—
http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/nightmare.html (via alullaby)
That sums it up
(via erikawithac)
This reminds me of a discussion we had in school, and one girl was talking about living in fear of her safety because she is a girl, and this guy chimed in and was all “It’s hard for guys too! I’m so awkward around girls! It’s embarrassing!” Yeah, not the same thing, exactly?
(via tulletulle)
Wow.
(via kittencoaster)
This reminds me of an article about online (heterosexual) dating that I read a while ago. It listed men’s and women’s worst fears about meeting someone from online. The highest ranked fear that men had was that their date would be fat, whereas the highest ranked fear that women had was that their date would turn out to be violent and kill them.
I think that says a lot.
(via kaitg)
(via gynocraticgrrl)
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What men mean when they talk about their “crazy” ex-girlfriend is often that she was someone who cried a lot, or texted too often, or had an eating disorder, or wanted too much/too little sex, or generally felt anything beyond the realm of emotionally undemanding agreement. That does not make these women crazy. That makes those women human beings, who have flaws, and emotional weak spots. However, deciding that any behavior that he does not like must be insane– well, that does make a man a jerk.
And when men do this on a regular basis, remember that, if you are a woman, you are not the exception. You are not so cool and fabulous and levelheaded that they will totally get where you are coming from when you show emotions other than “pleasant agreement.”
When men say “most women are crazy, but not you, you’re so cool” the subtext is not, “I love you, be the mother to my children.” The subtext is “do not step out of line, here.” If you get close enough to the men who say things like this, eventually, you will do something that they do not find pleasant. They will decide you are crazy, because this is something they have already decided about women in general.
"— Lady, You Really Aren’t “Crazy” (via crookedindifference)
(Source: sparkamovement, via feministquotes)
"Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women, but the relationship of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman herself is male; the surveyed female. Thus, she turns herself into an object – and most particularly on object of vision; a sight"
— Berger in Mason
(Source: chel-danielle, via sociolab)
PROBLEM: Women’s bare bodies are on display in billboards, movie posters, and many other kinds of ads. Though plenty of studies have looked at the ramifications of this pervasive sexual objectification, it’s unclear if we see near-naked people as human beings or if we really do view them as mere objects.
METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Philippe Bernard presented participants pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing a swimsuit or underwear, one by one on a computer screen. Since pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but images of objects don’t have that problem, some of the photos were presented right side up and others upside down. After each picture, there was a second of black screen before each participant was shown two images and was asked to choose the one that matched the one he or she had just seen.
RESULTS: The male and female subjects matched the photos similarly. They recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they saw the sexualized men as persons. On the contrary, the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they appeared upside down, indicating that the sexy women were consistently identified as objects.
CONCLUSION: People objectify women in sexualized photos, but not men.
SOURCE: The full study, “Integrating Sexual Objectification With Object Versus Person Recognition: The Sexualized-Body-Inversion Hypothesis,” is published in the journal Psychological Science.
(via gynocraticgrrl)
"While we need not diminish the severity of the problem of male violence against women or male violence against nations or the planet, we must acknowledge that men and women have together made the United States a culture of violence and must work together to transform and recreate the culture. Women and men must oppose the use of violence as a means of social control in all its manifestations: war, male violence against women, adult violence against children, teenage violence, racial violence, etc."
— bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (via humanformat)
(Source: themagicpomegranate, via sociolab)
"I seldom raised my voice in protest [while my friends sexually harassed women] because I didn’t want to be uncool, to be perceived as ‘less of a man’ or challenged on why I found it necessary to defend women. This is what sociologist Michael Kimmel identifies as a deep form of homophobia: the fear that other men would challenge me, question my manhood, or even call me gay. This very fear led me to silently harass women and allow the others to vocally harass. I now realize that my worries of being pushed out my peer group could be tied to multiple forms of violence against women - when we create conditions where young men are constantly fighting other men to prove their manhood, what they will do to get props or accepted can escalate to dangerous levels. Ending gender-based violence is not about telling our sisters and daughters how to protect themselves, it should be about talking to our boys and men about we say to each other, what we allow to be said, and why we don’t stop when someone is being put in harm’s way."
— DR. L’HEUREUX LEWIS (via msandrogynous)
"There’s something interesting about the rate at which men in prison are raped: it’s lower than the rate at which women are raped in the culture at large. Most studies suggest that 25% of women in the United States are raped during their lifetimes, and another 19% have to fend off rape attempts. I suppose you could say that for women—and not just those in prison—rape is “a fact of life.” When a man goes to prison, everyone seems to think: “Oh, shit, he’s going to get raped.” But every day, women walk down the streets, or stay in their homes, and face that same possibility."
— Derrick Jensen: The Culture of Make Believe (via emerycatt)
"My point is that feminists are not biological determinists. Feminists are the least likely people to say ‘all men are bastards’. Some of them might say ‘many men behave like bastards’. But they don’t imply that such behaviour is acceptable because its genetic or ‘natural’ for men to behave that way, like those arguments defending rapists which imply that men are really all just stupid cavemen who can’t be blamed when they rape because, hey, men just can’t help it when they see someone in a mini skirt. Feminists don’t write books about how men are genetically incapable of picking up an iron. Feminists don’t write books about how men are from another planet, one where men have to be left ‘in their cave’ because they just don’t have proper emotions like women do. That’s because actually, feminists think men should be treated as fully functional human beings with brains and morals who should be held responsible for the choices they make."
— ‘Feminists are Sexist’ - Features - The F-Word (via learntoofly)
(via finchleerat)
