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Weiye Loh

Need to Know: PostGlobal on washingtonpost.com - 0 views

newsweek.washingtonpost.com/...ing_legalized_prostitutio.html

Prostitution

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 18 Apr 11
     
    10 Reasons Why Non-Sex Workers Should Not Write Papers About Sex Work 1. The only people truly qualified to speak to the experiences of sex workers, are sex workers themselves. 2. Basing a theory on myths and stereoypes and then 'proving' that theory using other myths and stereotypes is not a study - it's a creative writing exercise. 3. Sex workers are living, breathing human beings with hearts and every time you describe them as something other than living, breathing human beings, their hearts break. 4. By far the most 'degrading' aspect of sex work is the associated stigma, discrimination and vilification - a direct result of the disempowering misinformation propagated by the media and the anti-sex work lobby. 5. It is exceedingly arrogant to assume not only that you understand the intricacies of an industry you don't even work in, but that you have the right to speak for those who do. 6. Contrary to popular belief, sex workers are perfectly capable of putting pen to paper and telling their own stories. 7. By denying sex workers the right to have their voices heard in the political arena, and attempting to limit their sexual and financial independence, anti-sex work feminists make a mockery of the fundamental principles of feminism. 8. You don't see sex workers writing papers on the work practices of marine biologists or the psychological wellbeing of accountants. 9. The portrayal of sex workers as degraded victims is, in itself, a form of degrading victimisation. 10. You risk looking like a fool who wrote a paper on a topic you quite obviously know nothing about.
Weiye Loh

Sex Workers: We're Not a Rescue Project, Not Trafficking Victims | Bustle - 0 views

www.bustle.com/...roject-not-trafficking-victims

Sex Sex Work Trafficking

shared by Weiye Loh on 01 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • #NotYourRescueProject helped sex workers across Twitter voice their opinions. But soon enough, a counter-hashtag was trending: #RealJobsNotBlowjobs. It wasn’t coordinated specifically by the rescue industry but rather by a loose group of anti-sex work feminists. 
  • Weiye Loh on 01 Feb 14
     
    "Rhee says too often, people assume sex work cannot be the result of a conscious decision. She is very sympathetic to the plight of trafficked individuals - particularly underage youth - and advocates intervention for them. But the purpose of #NotYourRescueProject was to make a distinction between who needs intervention and who doesn't. "Every time someone talks about human trafficking, many conflate human trafficking with sex work…When you say sex work is all violence against women or is all sex trafficking, it really ignores agency for women who chose sex work," Rhee says. "I didn't fall into sex work. It was something that I chose out of my own volition." Desi, who works as an escort, is highly critical of anti-trafficking NGOs.  "I believe it is very important for sex worker voices from the emerging world to be heard unmoderated by any special interest," Desi says. "I believe enabling sex workers with rights and especially the right to organize their own resistance is what is most needed.""
Weiye Loh

Sex selection and the shortage of women: is science to blame? - Richard Dawkins - RD.ne... - 0 views

richarddawkins.net/...e-of-women-is-science-to-blame

Sex Gender Children Gender Equality Economics Bioethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • what if we are dealing with a human society in which cultural traditions over-ride the genetic imperatives (yet another example, this time not necessarily a benign one, of ‘rebelling against the selfish genes’). What if the religion of a country fosters a deep-rooted undervaluing of women? What if there is an ancient culture of despising women, whether for religious or otherwise traditional or economic reasons? In past centuries such cultures might have fostered selective infanticide of newborn girls. But now, what if scientific culture makes it possible to know the sex of a fetus, say by amniocentesis or ultrasound scanning? There is then an obvious temptation selectively to abort female embryos, which could have far-reaching and probably pernicious social consequences. I'll refrain from gloating over the possibility of Taliban-inspired woman-hating societies going extinct for lack of women.
  • The Guardian has a report today on ‘sex selection of babies’, which is described as a ‘scourge’ of the developing world.
  • Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl charts how the trend towards choosing boys over girls, largely through sex-selective abortions, is rapidly spreading across the developing world. While the natural sex ratio at birth is 105 boys born for every 100 girls, in India the figure has risen to 112 boys and in China 121. The Chinese city of Lianyungang recorded an astonishing 163 boys per 100 girls in 2007. The bias towards boys has been estimated to have caused the "disappearance" of 160 million women and girls in Asia alone over the past few decades. The pattern has now spilled over to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, the Balkans and Albania, where the sex ratio is 115/100. The unnatural skewing towards male populations has become so pronounced in recent decades that Hvistendahl, a writer for Science magazine, says it has given rise to a new "Generation XY". She raises the possibility that with so many surplus men – up to a fifth of men will be single in northwestern India by 2020 – large parts of the world could become like America's wild west, with excess testosterone leading to raised levels of crime and violence.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • t is she right to blame Western science and governments for making sex selection possible? Why do we blame science for offering a method to do bad things? Science is the disinterested search for truth. If you want to do good things, science provides very good methods of doing so. And if you want to do bad things, again science provides the best practical methods. The ability to know the sex of a fetus is an inevitable byproduct of medical benefits such as amniocentesis, ultrasound scanning, and other techniques for the diagnosis of serious problems. Should scientists have refrained from developing useful techniques, for fear of how they might be misused by others?
  • Even sex selection itself and selective abortion of early embryos is not necessarily a social evil. A society which values girls and boys equally might well include parents who aspire to at least one of each, without having too large a family. We all know families whose birth order goes girl girl girl girl boy stop. And other families of boy boy boy boy girl stop. If sex selection had been an option, wouldn’t those families have been smaller: girl boy stop, and boy girl stop? In other words, sex selection, in societies that value sexual equality, could have beneficial effects on curbing overpopulation, and could help provide parents with exactly the family balance they want.
  • Weiye Loh on 19 Jun 11
     
    In nature, the balance of males and females is maintained by natural selection acting on parents. As Sir Ronald Fisher brilliantly pointed out in 1930, a surplus of one sex will be redressed by selection in favour of rearing the other sex, up to the point where it is no longer the minority. It isn't quite as simple as that. You have to take into account the relative economic costs of rearing one sex rather than the other. If, say, it costs twice as much to rear a son to maturity as a daughter (e.g. because males are bigger than females), the true choice facing a parent is not "Shall I rear a son or a daughter?" but "Shall I rear a son or two daughters?" So, Fisher concluded, what is equlibrated by natural selection is not the total numbers of sons and daughters born in the population, but the total parental expenditure on sons versus daughters. In practice, this usually amounts to an approximately equal ratio of males to females in the population at the end of the period of parental expenditure. Note that the word 'decision' doesn't mean conscious decision: we employ the usual 'selfish gene' metaphorical reasoning, in which natural selection favours genes that produce behaviour 'as if' decisions are being made.
Weiye Loh

delanceyplace.com 9/21/12 - obsessing about sex - 0 views

www.delanceyplace.com/view_archives.php

Sex Animal Human

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • "No animal spends more of its allotted time on Earth fussing over sex than Homo sapiens -- not even the famously libidinous bonobo [one of our closest primate relatives]. Although we and the bonobo both average well into the hundreds, if not thousands, of acts of intercourse per birth -- way ahead of any other primate -- their 'acts' are far briefer than ours. Pair-bonded 'monoga­mous' animals are almost always hyposexual, having sex as the Vatican recommends: infrequently, quietly, and for reproduction only. Human beings, regardless of religion, are at the other end of the libidinal spec­trum: hypersexuality personified.
  • Weiye Loh on 30 Sep 12
     
    ""Does all this frivolous sex make our species sound 'animalistic'? It shouldn't. The animal world is full of species that have sex only dur­ing widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more 'human' than animal. Strictly reproductive, once-in-a-blue-moon sex is more 'animal' than human. In other words, an excessively horny monkey is acting 'human,' while a man or woman uninterested in sex more than once or twice a year would be, strictly speaking, 'acting like an animal.'"
Weiye Loh

New Statesman - Inside the mind of a man - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...sex-differences-gender-brain

Neuroscience Gender Equality Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 10 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • When scientists conduct studies on the nature of the male and the female brain, they put people into two groups, based on their sex.
  • sex refers to your chromosomal status: whether you have one or two X chromosomes.
  • We know that the male brain is on average 8 per cent bigger than the female brain, even at as early as two weeks of age. But probably more important is that girls' brains tend to develop faster than boys'. We know from studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that girls peak about four years earlier than boys in terms of when they reach their maximum total brain volume and about two years earlier in terms of when they reach their maximum amount of "grey matter" in the brain. This important discovery tells us that, on average, girls mature at very different rates from boys.Using MRI, you can find sex differences in other regions of the brain, too - a notable one being the amygdala (the "emotion centre"), in both size and activity. In addition, one of the language areas (the planum temporale) is, on average, larger in the female brain. Such findings say nothing about whether the differences come from biology or learning but, from everything we now know, it is a safe bet to say that they come from both.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Throughout this article I have used the phrase "on average", because sex differences cannot be extrapolated to individuals but emerge only when statistical averages of two groups (males and females) are compared. This small caveat is hugely important if stereotyping generalisations are to be avoided, as individuals may be typical or atypical of their sex.
  • It is equally important not to confuse science with politics. The science of sex differences was once feared, as if even asking the questions was part of a conspiracy to repress women and perpetuate inequalities. Like most conspiracy theories, this one is mythical. The scientists I have met who conduct these experiments are of every political hue.
  • Knowing a person's sex tells you nothing about his or her abilities, aptitudes or interests and making any assumption about that person on the basis of their sex would be sexist, scientifically inaccurate and morally wrong. But science helps us to uncover the mysteries of nature, including the nature of sex differences. Handled sensitively, it can teach us a lot about why we turn out the way we do.
  • males alone have a Y chromosome. Situated on the Y chromosome is a cri­tical gene called SRY (shorthand for the "sex-determining region Y") that tells the embryo to either grow a pair of testes (and thus become male) or not (and thus remain female).Once the testes start to function, they pump out the hormone testosterone. There is a surge in the production of this hormone by the foetus from the 12th to the 20th week of pregnancy. The baby's testes are not the only source of testosterone: it is also made from the adrenal glands, which explains why females also have some testosterone but males produce at least twice as much.
  • Animal experiments have shown that how much testosterone a foetus produces influences the "masculinisation" of the brain and (post-natal) behaviour. This is also true of human beings. We measured hormone levels in the amniotic fluid (the liquid in the womb) during pregnancy and found that the higher the baby's testosterone is pre-natally, the less eye contact the child makes at 12 months of age and the smaller the child's vocabulary is at 18 and 24 months. The puzzle of why, on average, girls talk earlier than boys and spend more time looking at people's faces is solved by this uni­que experiment. As a psychologist, however, I acknowledge that the influence of testosterone is only part of the explanation, as the more a child looks at faces or talks, the more such behaviour will be reinforced by the reactions of others - nature and nurture interacting.
  • many genes that are "sex-linked". Finding hormonal or genetic effects also says nothing about where in the brain these effects take place.
  • Hormones are not the only biological factors that contribute to observed sex differences in the brain and behaviour
  • When psychologists such as John Money first separated the notion of biological sex from that of gender in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, a consensus quickly emerged that gender was a social construct. Differences in the abilities of men and women were the product of social pressures and expectations, rather than innate, biological differences.
  • In recent years, however, gender has been pulled back again from the social to the scientific. Biological determinists contend that, far from being a cultural construct, the distinctions between the minds of men and women are innate.This discourse, however, does not go unchallenged. Writers such as Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender contend that the evidence put forward is flawed
  • What this teaches us is the same thing that Hegel taught us; nature and nurture are concepts and realities that are symbiotic. How could we possibly have nature without nurture, how could be possibly have nurture without nature?
Weiye Loh

Paris Review - Coitus More Ferarum in Game of Thrones (NSFW), Carmen Maria Machado - 0 views

www.theparisreview.org/...erarum-in-game-of-thrones-nsfw

Sex Intimacy Visual Representation Power

shared by Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 12
     
    Doggy style-coitus more ferarum, or "sex in the manner of beasts"-needs no real introduction. Regardless of actual doggy style as it is performed by actual people, we can agree that it's less visually intimate than other sexual positions in which partners are able to gaze into each other's eyes. (I'm not going to touch on fellatio here, but fellatio has a similar problem in that it's visually nonintimate, and like male-on-female doggy style, is never reciprocated in GoT.) Doggy style seems to be part of a larger sexual coding in this universe. Transgressive sex-an extremely wide category in this case that includes sex with prostitutes, sibling incest, rape, pseudo-lesbian sex lessons-happens in the form of doggy style. Even the scene between Theon Greyjoy and a woman he does not yet realize is his sister involves Theon riding behind her, groping her breasts and sliding his hand down her pants. Not doggy style per se, but a similar expression of physical domination. (And the most awkward family reunion ever.) Though she holds the metaphorical ace in this scene, the code still exists and is only overturned when the truth is revealed. The reasons for this coding system (whether it's intentional or not) seem obvious-doggy-style sex is, visually, all about power-one figure (male) "taking" another (female). Several excellent articles have talked about how Game of Thrones manages all sex as an expression of power on behalf of the female characters, but the immediate visual cue is one of no intimacy, love, or pleasure for the receiving partner.
Weiye Loh

Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long - 0 views

www.eurekalert.org/...osu-sds112811.php

Gender Stereotype Sex Sexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 29 Nov 11
     
    Men may think about sex more often than women do, but a new study suggests that men also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleep, more frequently than women do, as well. And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men's thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day. As a group, the men also thought about food almost 18 times per day and sleep almost 11 times per day, compared to women's median number of thoughts about eating and sleep, at nearly 15 times and about 8 1/2 times, respectively.
Weiye Loh

Poverty in US Lesbian and Gay Couple Households: Feminist Economics: Vol 0, No 0 - 0 views

www.tandfonline.com/...13545701.2018.1441533

Poverty LGBTQ

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 19 Apr 18
     
    "Poverty is a widely researched topic in economics. However, despite growing research on the economic lives of lesbians and gay men in the United States since the mid 1990s, very little is known about poverty in same-sex couple households. This study uses American Community Survey data from 2010 to 2014 to calculate poverty rates for households headed by different-sex versus same-sex couples. Comparing households with similar characteristics, the results show that those headed by same-sex couples are more likely to be in poverty than those headed by different-sex married couples. Despite that overall disadvantage, a decomposition of the poverty risk shows that same-sex couples are protected from poverty by their higher levels of education and labor force participation, and their lower probability of having a child in the home. Lastly, the role of gender - above and beyond sexual orientation - is clear in the greater vulnerability to poverty for lesbian couples."
Weiye Loh

Forget love, biological sex is a battlefield - Boing Boing - 0 views

boingboing.net/...et-love-biological-sex-is.html

Sex Gender DNA

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • There’s a genetic factor, present in male mammals, that is vital to making sure those mammals develop male sex characteristics. But it’s not only important during embryonic development. Oh, no. Turns out, this factor must be active in order for a male’s gonads to stay 100% male. Turn it off, even in an adult male, and the cells in his testes will start to take on more feminine characteristics. The genetic factor is called DMRT1, and it is not the only thing responsible for maintaining a mammal’s biological sex throughout life. There’s another factor, called FoxL2, that does the same job in females. Scientists already knew about the lifelong necessity of FoxL2. This new research, performed by a team led by Drs. David Zarkower and Vivian Bardwell of the University of Minnesota, confirmed that DMRT1 is FoxL2’s male counterpart.
  • Turns out, biological sex determination in mice is kind of an ongoing battle. It doesn’t end during fetal development. It doesn’t even end at birth. What’s that mean for humans? This part isn’t really clear yet. Naturally-occuring DMRT1 deletions are rare, but they do happen. They can end in a range of effects. Some genetic males born without DMRT1 have small or underdeveloped testes. Others are born with indeterminate physical sex. About 30% of the time, Zarkower said, a natural DMRT1 deletion leads to an XY female—someone who looks physically female on the outside, but who has male genes and nonfunctional gonads instead of either testicles or ovaries. Usually, nobody notices the difference until the person doesn’t experience a normal female puberty.
  • the main thing we can take away from this discovery is a gentle reminder that our bodies really are weird and wonderful. Even if you’re already used to thinking about gender as a fluid concept, it can be strange to realize how flexible biological sex is, as well. Don’t get too hung up on the idea that “male” and “female” must be set-in-stone categories. Nature certainly doesn’t treat sex that way.
Weiye Loh

There's a de facto 'sex partition' in the workplace | Kim Elsesser | Comment is free | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...social-networks-gender-pay-gap

Gender Equality Wage Gap

shared by Weiye Loh on 01 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • I call the problem the "sex partition", and here's an example of how it plays out at work. A senior executive, let's call him Ben, has an extra ticket to tonight's Yankees baseball game. Two junior employees, Anita and Allen, are both free this evening. No surprise, Ben asks Allen to join him at the game. Why choose Allen? Because inviting Anita is complicated. She might think Ben is hitting on her, or since Ben is a senior executive, she might even see it as sexual harassment. And, what about other employees – what would they think if word got out that Ben took Anita to a baseball game? It's not worth the risk. Over hot dogs and beer, Ben provides Allen a tip on how to deal with a difficult client that helps Allen gain a higher profile within the firm. A mentor relationship develops, and Ben continues to provide Allen with valuable advice and information.
  • Weiye Loh on 01 Mar 14
     
    "The sex partition limits the number of friends everyone has at work, and research clearly indicates that better networks result in bigger paychecks and faster promotions. So, if the sex partition limits everyone's friends, why is this a women's issue? Since men still typically run most corporations, the most valuable friends and mentors are men. Due to the sex partition, senior male employees prefer to stick with other men when it comes time for dinners, drinks, late-night meetings or business trips. When it's time for promotions or pay raises, these same executives are more likely to show preference to the employees with whom they feel most comfortable - other men. Not all employees fall prey to the sex partition, but one study (pdf) reports that 64% of senior executive men are reluctant to have a one-on-one meeting with a junior woman at work. If women can't even get a meeting with a senior executive, how are they supposed to find mentors or establish networks that are critical for career success?"
Weiye Loh

Sex, Money, Lies and Punishment - 0 views

www.lawgazette.com.sg/...845.htm

Age Sex Gender Equality Gender Stereotype Law Singapore

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 30 Oct 13
     
    "The timeline of the sexual milestones in a law-abiding young person's life in Singapore could, therefore, be conceivably presented as follows:   Age Permissible Activity 16 Engage in consensual sex without remuneration 16 Engage and pay for the services of a sex worker 18 Become a sex worker and engage in consensual sex for remuneration 21 Watch a film containing explicit depictions of sexual intercourse"
Weiye Loh

'I'm not just doing sex work to get through uni' - 0 views

m.dailylife.com.au/...rough-uni-20151018-gkc47o.html

Sex Work Prostitution Gender Stereotype Power

shared by Weiye Loh on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 27 Oct 15
     
    I've never had a bad reaction to what I do, but my job is more easily digestible to other people because I'm white, educated, I come from a middle-class background, and I'm a student. Sex workers like me are often critiqued for erasing the stories of workers who don't have as much privilege. I know that many sex workers; women of colour, trans women, street-based workers - don't have the same intersections of privilege. But although that is a reality for some, it's not the only reality. For those of us who've actively sought this industry out, it's not about 'erasing' those other experiences, it's just about creating a wider range of experiences that are visible.
Weiye Loh

No means no. But what about yes? | Herald Scotland - 0 views

www.heraldscotland.com/...o-but-what-about-yes-1.1039025

Consent Rape

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A man can never claim he’s too much the worse for wear to elicit consent from a sober woman. This legislates that a drunken man is accountable for his deeds, but a drunken woman is not, thus negating even the presumption of equal rights before the law. Of course, responsibility for rape will always lie with the rapist, but absolving women who engage in drunken sexual liaisons of responsibility for their actions is not liberating; it’s demeaning.
  • There is no doubt that if you are very drunk, you might well wake up the next morning with a whole series of memories of regretted actions. Did I really say that to my boss? Did I honestly dance on the table? Even, perhaps: oh no – I didn’t sleep with him, did I? It sometimes feels as though rape-awareness activists are over-keen to encourage women to automatically label the latter error of judgment as rape; to incite women to regard ­themselves as violated and abused victims for having regretted sex. Of course, women can be raped when they are drunk, but an unwise sexual liaison while you are drunk is not the same thing. By muddling this up, perhaps it is unsurprising that those polled in surveys think women who drink excessively have some responsibility if they are raped. It’s a category error created by rape-awareness campaigns rather than reactionary victim-bashing.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Jan 13
     
    "Consent is a thorny issue. Of course "no" means "no", but sex is an act that rarely has an explicit "yes" attached to it. Sometimes a lack of consent means we're not sure - not because we're weak, vulnerable or under male pressure, but for our own reasons: "I shouldn't stay as I've an early work meeting but I'm tempted"; "I should say no as I'm married but I really like him"; "I'm tired but I love him"; "I'm drunk and might regret it, but what the hell". Surely women and men need space for such ambivalence, to negotiate the delicate ins and outs of interpersonal and sexual relations? In truth, sex and relationships are often a tangle of false starts, uncertainties and messy complications; active consent is no guarantee of romantic or sexual bliss. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the new Act is that it sets out ­situations where there can be no free agreement, such as where someone is deemed to be "so drunk they are unable to give any meaningful consent to sexual activity". The Not Ever literature emphasises: "The message is clear - if there is any doubt about whether or not someone is too drunk to consent to sex, assume that they are unable to give consent." So "yes" doesn't always mean "yes", according to the new law. Does this mean that a man should wait for a woman to sober up before taking her at her word? Is it in women's interests to have an official ban on sex while drunk?"
Weiye Loh

Atheists have 'better sex than religious followers who are plagued with guilt' | Mail O... - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...s-followers-plagued-guilt.html

Sex Religion Education

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 May 11 - No Cached
  • followers of religion did not enjoy the experiences as much due to the stigma created by their belief systems, the study found. It left them with intense feelings of regret after they had climaxed.
  • devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88 . In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively.
  • the stronger their religious beliefs were the more powerful their feelings of sexual regret.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents.
  • Weiye Loh on 25 May 11
     
    Atheists have far better sex lives than religious people who are plagued with guilt  during intercourse and for weeks afterwards, researchers have found. A study discovered that non-believers are more willing to discuss sexual fantasies and are more satisfied with their experiences. Both groups of people admitted that they carried out the same activities such as masturbation, watching pornography, having oral sex and pursuing affairs.
Weiye Loh

Gifts of Speech - Camille Paglia - 0 views

gos.sbc.edu/paglia.html

Academia Liberal Conservative Feminism Science Nature Rape Victim

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Jun 11 - Cached
  • if people are trying to critique from within the academic establishment, and they're getting tarred with the word "neoconservative," you keep on doing that long enough, people will get used to hearing it about themselves, and they will become conservative
  • a lot of people have been driven toward the neoconservative side by the failure of the liberal academic establishment to critique itself. So rather than blaming The New Criterion or Roger Kimball for all the problems of the world, it's time for the liberals of academe to critique themselves, to reform it from within.
  • my career has been a disaster. And before my book was finally published at Yale Press, it was rejected by seven New York publishers, I could not get published throughout the Seventies and Eighties, I was completely poor. For the first time in my adult life I'm out of debt as of three months ago. I've been on the unemployment line. I have taught in factories. I'm probably the only major voice right now in academe who's actually taught factory workers. As opposed to these people who are the Marxists [makes prancing, dancing, hair-preening gestures], oh yes, these Marxists, like Terry Eagleton at Oxford. Do you know what he makes? Do you know the salary that man makes? Oh, it just disgusts me. This is why he has to wear blue jeans, to show, "Oh, no, I don't have the money." These people are hypocrites! They really are. It's all a literary game. There's no authentic self-sacrifice, no direct actual experience of workers or working-class people. It's appalling, the situation. It's everywhere, it's everywhere in the Ivy League.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • You know, I'm really happy there wasn't all this talk about sex changes back then, since I probably would have gotten this fantasy that I was a man born wrongly in a woman's body, and I think I might very well have become obsessed with the idea of a sex change, which would have been a terrible mistake. Because I think I absolutely am a woman, but I was just a woman born ahead of my time. I was a kind of pioneer, and decade by decade I've acclimated myself to my sex role--thanks to my friendships with gay men and drag queens! Drag queens have influenced me enormously. Their analysis of the mythology of male and female, and the theatre of gender and so on,
  • My sense of time-frame is so vast compared to that of people in English departments. When I think about sex, when I think about anything in culture, I'm thinking about a 10,000-year time span, you see, and this is what causes a communication problem with feminists, because most of them, as far as I can see, tend to have their specialties in the late eighteenth century or following. There are a few who have training earlier, but they tend to be very narrowly focused even in that one area. I think my broad expanse of learning and my already world-consciousness
  • There was a point where feminism and I agreed. I was thirteen though. It was 1960, okay? That was a time when I said, "Men are terrible. The sexes are the same. Men must change. Society must change. And all the problems between the sexes are coming from the fact that men are so awful."
  • That's an unevolved position. It's thirty years later, girls! Let us move on! Oh, God! So I continued studying and, at this point, I became notorious in Syracuse, New York, where I was going to high school, for my Amelia Earhart obsession. The newspaper actually reported this. For three years--this looks forward to Sexual Personae--for three years, I did this Amelia Earhart research. The biographer of Amelia Earhart told me I had done more research in the primary sources than he had! I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime. Amelia Earhart to me was an image of everything a woman should be. It remains that for me. Amelia Earhart, my obsession. She is woman alone. Not woman hand-holding in a group and whining about men. Woman alone! Okay, all right? Woman goes up in a plane. If she crashes, she doesn't go, "You men did this to me!" She knows that she is responsible. It's her skill, her preparation. And then nature. Something that's not in her control can be her opponent: nature!
  • No one wants to talk about nature now. Meanwhile, the entire student population of the world is thinking about nature, the environment, they're thinking globally, but our faculty are off in their little corners talking about social constructionism. They haven't thought about nature in twenty years, okay, they are so behind. You mention the mere word "nature"--"Essentialism!" That's it. What--? I mean--! The thing about the Sixties is that we had a comprehensive world-view. We saw the injustices of society, and we wanted to remedy them. We focused our negative energy against society to change it. At the same time we saw the enormity of nature. And we honored the enormity of nature. It is appalling, the situation now, that you could think about talking about sex without thinking about nature. That you could claim that you are an expert in gender without knowing about hormones!
  • The contempt for science that's going on among humanists is contemptible.
  • It's this combination of the sciences plus the arts. "Impossible," you say, today? "Impossible--we're too specialized for that, we're too expert." No, this is exactly what we need. We have to bring this back, this idea of all of culture integrated. This is what we must do for the next generation of students. We must do this. We must make radical reforms of undergraduate and graduate education, to give students this kind of comprehensive vision of culture.
  • . When you destroy young people's ability to take pleasure in beauty, you are a pervert! So I stood up, I was very agitated--and she was such a good sport. I mean, here was this maniac she never heard of, my book had just come out, and I was waving my arms around. I said I didn't mean to condemn her, because I understood that what she was doing was the result of ten years of feminists doing this. But nevertheless, I asked, why is it, why is it that feminists have so much trouble dealing with beauty and pleasure, I said, to which gay men have made such outstanding cultural contributions? Why--if gay men can respond? This is why I get along so well with gay men, and I don't get along with lesbian feminists. This is why my sexuality is a complete neuter! I don't fit in anywhere! I'm like this wandering being, the Ancient Mariner--it's just awful.
  • You cannot just suddenly open a magazine and look at a picture of a nude woman and then free associate, using Lacan. You cannot do that! Because fashion magazines are part of the history of art. These are great photographers, great stylists--and gay men have made enormous contributions to fashion photography. Anyway, I made a huge statement that night--the whole audience gasped. I went, "The history of fashion photography from 1950 to 1990 is one of the great moments in the history of art!" And everyone went, "How can you say that?" Because obviously fashion is an oppression of women.
  • And beauty, according to, um, Miss, um, Naomi Wolf, is a heterosexist conspiracy by men in a room to keep feminism back
  • We had this huge fight about the song "Under My Thumb." I said it was a great song, not only a great song but I said it was a work of art. And these feminists of the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band went into a rage, surrounded me, practically spat in my face, literally my back was to the wall. They're screaming in my face, "Art? Art? Nothing that demeans women can be art!" There it is. There it is! Right from the start. The fascism of the contemporary women's movement.
  • What I identify with is the prewar feminism of Amelia Earhart, of Katherine Hepburn--who had an enormous impact on me--that period of women where you had independence, self-reliance, personal responsibility, and not blaming other people for your problems.
  • I don't feel less because I'm in the presence of a beautiful person. I don't go [imitates crying and dabbing tears], "Oh, I'll never be that beautiful!" What a ridiculous attitude to take!--the Naomi Wolf attitude. When men look at sports, when they look at football, the don't go [crying], "Oh, I'll never be that fast, I'll never be that strong!" When people look at Michelangelo's David, do they commit suicide? No. See what I mean? When you see a strong person, a fast person, you go, "Wow! That is fabulous." When you see a beautiful person: "How beautiful." That's what I'm bringing back to feminism. You go, "What a beautiful person, what a beautiful man, what a beautiful woman, what beautiful hair, what beautiful boobs!"
  • We should not have to apologize for reveling in beauty. Beauty is an eternal human value. It was not a trick invented by nasty men in a room someplace on Madison Avenue.
  • I say in Sexual Personae that it was invented in Egypt. For 3,000 years at the height of African civilization you had a culture based on beauty. We have two major cultures in the world today, France and Japan, organized around the idea of beauty. It is so provincial, feminism's problem with beauty. We have got to get over this.
  • Obviously, any addiction--like if you're addicted to plastic surgery--that's a problem. Of course it's a problem. Addiction to anything is a problem. But this blaming anorexia on the media--this is Naomi's thing--oh please! Anorexia is coming out of these white families, these pushy, perfectionist white families, who all end up with their daughters at Yale.
  • All this "Let's unmask Big Daddy"--this obsession with the weaknesses of big figures. This is infantile. It's infantile. You read major figures not because everything they say is the gospel truth but because they expand your imagination, they expand your I.Q., okay, they open up brain cells you didn't even know you have.
  • a politics which blames all human problems on white male imperialists who have victimized women and people of color. This view of history is coming from people who know nothing about history. Because when you think of the word "imperialist," if you automatically just think "America," then you don't know anything. Because someone who's studied the history of ancient Egypt knows that imperialism was practically invented in Egypt and in the ancient Near East. If you want to talk about imperialism, let's talk about Japan or Persia or all kinds of things. It's not just a white male monopoly.
  • we cannot have this scenario being projected of male rapaciousness and brutality and female victimage. We have got to make women realize they are responsible, that sexuality is something that belongs to them. They have an enormous power in their sexuality. It's up to them to use it correctly and to be wise about where they go and what they do. And I'm accused of being "anti-woman" because of this attitude
  • people say to me, "Oh, you're always talking about feminists as if they're monolithic. We're not monolithic. We're very pluralistic. We have so many different views." No, excuse me: the date-rape issue shows that I am correct. Because there is one voice speaking about date rape from coast to coast, one voice, one stupid, shrewish, puritanical, sermonizing, hysterical voice. And where are all these sophisticated feminists supposedly out there? Where are they? Totally impotent, locked in their little burrows wherever they are, whether they're in the East Village or Harvard. Wherever they are, they're impotent. There's not one voice raised to bring some sense into this hysteria. Now, I am an experienced teacher. I sympathize with the problems of freshmen, and so I believe that date-rape awareness is an excellent thing to do when students arrive, not only for the men, to warn the men that breaches of civilized behavior will not be tolerated, but also to warn the women, because unfortunately to me what's happening is that we have a white middle-class problem. I don't notice so many Hispanic women and African-American women going around and carrying on like this.
  • The girl has met the guy once before, this is the second time she met him, they were at a party, she invites him back to her room, its three A.M., she falls asleep, and then suddenly something happens, and she charges him with rape.
  • We cannot have this, these white middle-class girls coming out of pampered homes, expecting to do whatever they want. They don't understand what's going on, that there's a sexual content to their behavior, that maybe there's a subliminal sexuality, a provocativeness in their behavior. "Don't say 'provocative'! Because then you're blaming the victim!" Well, women will never be taken seriously until they accept full responsibility for their sexuality.
  • the sexual ideology of current feminism is reactionary and repressive and puritanical and phobic. And it's being produced by many of these women who have succeeded, you see, in the women's studies programs and who don't understand the degree to which their own careerism, their own opportunism is enwrapped with these ideas. They don't understand. They're not sophisticated women, many of them. They're not. They're not cosmopolitan women. To talk about sex, you have to know about literature and art. Literature and art are the best way into the psychology of mankind, because of the ambiguity and mystery. Because that is where you feel the flux, the flux of our sexual desire, the way our spirit is not in these rigid categories of oppressor and victim. Everything is flowing. Fantasy and imagination and all these things, they're always flowing. That's why Freud has been so useful for me, because of the way he is able to study the dream process and to find words to articulate these ambiguous nonverbal phenomena. It's a very, very good exercise for anyone trying to talk about sex. So the present situation is just appalling--just appalling. The language that is being used by these people, the way social-welfare issues have taken over the agenda. We cannot have this.
  • what's so ridiculous about this is that these people want "multiculturalism," they want to talk about various ethnic groups. At the same time they want to deny there's any difference between those ethnic groups.
Weiye Loh

Paris Review - Why Write About Sex?, Lorin Stein - 0 views

www.theparisreview.org/...why-write-about-sex

Writing Sex

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • I’d answer, first, that not all writing about sex is meant to titillate. There are other reasons to describe what people do in bed. Not all of these reasons are vulgar or crass. To my mind, a conventional sex scene, say in an airplane novel (“as she raised her hips and guided him into the hot wet center of her,” etc., etc.), is indeed crass. But is it crass—is it meretricious—to write honestly about the mess and complexity of the individual libido? Not to me. What’s vulgar is an airbrush. What’s really vulgar is a sex scene in borrowed language, where the characters are stripped of individuality and the situation has no moral depth.
  • More generally, it strikes me that fiction and poetry are especially good at dealing with sex—are in some ways designed for handling subjects that are private or shameful or deeply subjective—and that sex is inherently interesting (maybe especially to readers of fiction?). Of course it is boring, plus creepy, to hear someone drone on and on about sex in general. What’s wonderful is how the particulars keep appearing, out of the fog of daily life, to seize our attention. Like faces we’ve never seen before—and could never have imagined, before we saw them. As Samuel Delany told our interviewer in the current issue: “I shall always be able to come up with new fantasies. As long as there are people walking around in the street, as long as I have books to read and windows to look out of, I’m not going to use them up.”
  • Weiye Loh on 24 Jun 11
     
    I'd be interested to hear your opinion on why so many contemporary writers, when dealing with sexual content, veer towards explicitness instead of subtlety. I just don't understand why the crass language is necessary; delicate hints and suggestions of such acts are usually more titillating anyway.
Weiye Loh

Barbara Kay: Women are not always the 'gentler sex' | Full Comment | National Post - 0 views

fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...are-not-always-the-gentler-sex

Rape Gender Stereotype Feminism Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • McGill professor of Social Work Myriam Denov, who did her Phd thesis on female sex offenders, notes, as recently as 1984, a study proclaimed that “pedophilia does not exist at all in women.”
  • According to a 2004 U.S. Department of Education mass study of university students, 57% of students reporting child sexual abuse cited a male offender, and 42% reported a female offender. Interestingly, 65% of the survivors of female abuse who opened up to a therapist, doctor or other professional were not believed on their first disclosure. Overall, 86% of those who tried to tell anyone at all about their experience were not believed.
  • According to a 1996 report from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN), about 25% of child sexual abuse is committed by women, but that figure may be low, because survivors are far more conflicted and shamed in admitting abuse by their mothers than by fathers.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In one study of 17,337 survivors of childhood sexual abuse, 23% reported a female-only perpetrator and 22% reported both male and female. A U.S. Department of Justice report finds that, in 2008, 95% of all youths reporting sexual misconduct by staff member in state juvenile facilities said their victimization experiences included victimization by female personnel, who made up 42% of the staff.
  • Dr. Paul Federoff, a forensic psychiatrist and Co-Director of the Sexual Behaviors Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, says that “there are a lot of women who do sexually abuse children, but they get away with it.” Daycare centres, schools and homes make propitious terrain for predators. One study found 8% of female perpetrators were teachers and 23% were babysitters.
  • There are three types of female sex offenders: those who are predisposed to it and will abuse very young children, exactly like men; those who are “male-accompanied,” like Karla Homolka (alive and well, and the mother of three children in Montreal); and the “teacher-lover” type, like the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau, who seduced and, after a stint in prison, married her former student.
  • Victorian chivalry and 21st century feminism would seem to make strange bedfellows, but in their equally unrealistic characterization of women as the always “gentler sex,” they condemn both male and female victims of female-perpetrated abuse to silence and second-class social status. To err is human. Are women fully human? Then stop treating them like saints or permanent moral infants.
  • While the first two types are universally detested, the third type is problematic, because it is often assumed, even by law enforcement, that older women cannot coerce sex, or that teenage boys are flattered and empowered by an older woman’s sexual mentorship. Boys do act out their confusion and anxiety differently than girls do, but that doesn’t mean many of them aren’t damaged by the relationships, or that the law should be applied to women abusers with any less rigour.
  • Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 12
     
    Most rapists were subjected to some form of sexual abuse in childhood. A startling amount is perpetrated by females. Peer-reviewed studies conclude that between 60-80% of "rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men" were sexually abused by a female.
Weiye Loh

Conscience and cake | UK Human Rights BlogConscience and cake | UK Human Rights Blog - 0 views

ukhumanrightsblog.com/...conscience-and-cake

Business Politics Discrimination Homosexuality Religion Marriage Law Ireland Human Rights

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 15
     
    the judge's findings in relation to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation do not make much sense. One key misstep appears to be that she conflates support for same-sex marriage with a homosexual orientation, when they are clearly different things. Many people who are not gay (including the Prime Minister) support same-sex marriage. Some people who are gay (including Rupert Everett and Dolce and Gabbana) oppose same-sex marriage. It is very odd that the judge felt able to tell the Defendants that they were not being asked to promote or support same-sex marriage, without properly explaining why and despite their deeply held view that they were. This completely fails to understand the nature of conscience, which is unique to each individual. Many people may have been happy with baking the cake, even if they personally opposed gay marriage, but the McArthurs weren't. Unless the judge doubted their sincerity (which she didn't), there is no reason for her to have completely dismissed their conscientious objection. As it stands, this judgment leaves little or no room for freedom of conscience in business. The analysis used by the judge would mean a Muslim baker would have to bake a cake with a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed on it and the slogan 'Je Suis Charlie'. An atheist printer would have to print leaflets proclaiming 'the fool says in his heart "There is no God"'. A gay graphic designer would have to accept a contract to design a flyer saying 'why sodomy is a sin'. None of those situations seem right. Couldn't the courts simply ask the following question: would the service or product which you are being asked to provide involve promoting, supporting or participating in a cause you do not agree with? If yes, you should be able to refuse on grounds of conscience. If no, you should provide the product or service, regardless of who the customer is.
Weiye Loh

How same-sex marriage could ruin civilisation - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...iage-ruin-civilisation-science

Satire Homosexuality Marriage

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Jul 15
     
    Clearly LGBT people have the power to overrule nature to suit their own needs. While we can hope they restrict this ability to things like increasing the number of rainbows, there's no guarantee of this. What if some careless homosexual is struggling with a heavy suitcase and decides to lower the mass of the planet to reduce the strength of gravity? We'd all be flung out of the atmosphere without warning. This wouldn't be a problem if same-sex marriage were natural, like opposite-sex marriage. Opposite-sex marriage occurs all the time in nature. Numerous species are regularly seen in naturally occurring registry offices signing naturally occurring forms to ensure their marriage is recognised by naturally occurring legal frameworks.Penguins are especially known for this, which is why they look like they're wearing suits.
Weiye Loh

What's more terrifying than sex? Family « Yawning Bread on Wordpress - 0 views

yawningbread.wordpress.com/...ore-terrifying-than-sex-family

Censorship Singapore Homosexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • There are several scenes with naked bodies, consumed with lust. In every one of them, it was a male shagging a female. The Board of Film Censors (BFC) seemed to have no problem with that, not mentioning these scenes as among the reasons for the extra-restrictive condition they imposed on the film The Kids Are All Right. Not only did they rate the film R21, they confined it to one print for the whole of Singapore, effectively making it impossible to screen the movie at more than one cinema at a time.
  • There’s even a scene where two women were having sex, but under a duvet. You don’t see any skin. The BFC seemed not to have any problem with that either, not mentioning it as among the reasons for their decision.
  • Instead, they reason they gave was that the film “normalised” the “homosexual lifestyle”. Actually, the film contained no hint of the “homosexual lifestyle” as commonly signified by this strange term so beloved of Christian fundamentalists. It’s fantastic how the BFC considered the film could normalise the “lifestyle” when the “lifestyle” was not in evidence at all.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Lisa Cholodenko’s family comedy won praise from the New York Times
  • The point of departure from conventional family comedies comes from the tiny fact that the family in the film is headed by two women:  Nic, a lesbian doctor (Annette Benning) and Jules, a bisexual homemaker and now landscape designer-wannabe (Julianne Moore). They have two children, 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson), from the same anonymous sperm donor.
  • All the other characters around the family, including Laser’s friend Clay (Eddie Hassell) — the two boys snoop around Nic and Jules’ bedroom, finding porn — have no negative reaction to a same-sex household. It’s treated in a matter-of-fact way. The BFC and its Consultative Panel  were probably outraged that such a family is premised as sober reality — which tells you nothing about such families, but a helluva lot about the closed minds in the BFC and the Consultative Panel.
  • Presenting it as sober reality won’t do. The BFC requires that Singaporeans be judgemental about it
  • There was a time when even the depiction of any less-than-completely-heterosexual character was taboo for Singapore. That was an even slimmer reading list; homosexuality was supposed to remain unspeakable, and therefore unrepresentable. When it became too hard to deny, a concession was made. Yes, it can be represented, but only in ways that reinforce the moral and social superiority of heterosexuality. The homosexual character had to live the “homosexual lifestyle”: He or she had to be promiscuous, sex-obsessed, self-destructive, irresponsible to family and society, better yet criminal, drug-addicted and infected.
  • And that was what our R21 rating was supposed to be — an isolation chamber to hold the infectious antigen that was homosexuality and its degenerate “lifestyle”. It could even hold a bit of its wanton sex (so long as it was not explicit, as our censorship guidelines say).
  • Thus, Brokeback Mountain was rated R21 and given wide release, but then its gay characters ended up unhappy, so that’s all right. I Love You, Philip Morris was rated R21 and given wide release too, but then its gay characters were criminals.
  • now comes a film that depicts a different reality, though one that has always existed: gay parents raising children well. Nic and Jules are occasionally floored by difficulties in maintaining a relationship and a household, and are sometimes flummoxed by growing teenagers and their unpredictable ways, but in the end, they apply common sense and manage to cope. Joni and Laser are well-adjusted kids, doing well in school and (most of the time) able to resist peer pressure. There is no “homosexual lifestyle” in sight. No promiscuity, sex-obsession, self-destructiveness, irresponsibility to family and society;  no criminality, drug-abuse or lethal infections. Oh wait, I take it back. The heterosexual characters in The Kids Are All Right have (some of) those traits. There is Paul who is screwing any female who sashays by. There is Clay who introduces Laser to cocaine, and so on. In the midst of all that, the core family stays level-headed. Damn!
  • This won’t do. The R21 isolation chamber is not designed for this: a “gay” film that is not sordid. It’s terrifying. This film subverts the belief that heterosexuality has a monopoly on the moral and the good, thus it is even more threatening than gay sex. It upturns the notion that having an adult dick and an adult pussy together surely makes for a happy family by advancing the heresy that parenting skills are more important. The entire premise is an outrageous oxymoron: conservative homosexuality. Indeed, as the BFC said to Straits Times, it’s already a huge concession that the film was rated R21 and allowed one print for circulation. They should count themselves lucky the distributors do not face charges under the Sedition Act for undermining our national ideology.
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