On Friday, I got a wonderful Happy Mother’s Day wish from Fem2.0 in Twitter.  Of course, that meant that some random man asked in a mean-spirited tweet whether the wish included “abortive pro-choice mothers of dead babies.”  I didn’t respond, because, well, why would you respond to a person who rudely interrupts, willfully chooses to ignore reality and is an arrogant jerk with what appear to be controlling tendencies. What people like this person refuse to acknowledge, indeed probably simply cannot afford to for a whole host of reasons, is that being a good mother includes not only knowing when you are capable of bearing and caring responsibly for children but, as importantly, when you are not.

Fully six in 10 American women who have abortions already have at least one child, and more than three in 10 already have two or more.  Being able to regulate our fertility and manage unwanted and unplanned pregnancies means being responsible people and, for the majority, responsible mothers. It may be the difference between completing our educations and seeking better lives for ourselves and our families.  It may be the difference between being safe from abusive spouses and physical trauma.  According to multiple Guttmacher Institute surveys:

• Three-fourths [of women who have abortions] cite concerns for or responsibility to other individuals, including children;

• Three-fourths say they cannot afford a child;

• Three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents;

• And half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

Just because some women think rationally and decide quickly about the right course of action doesn’t meant they’re callous idiots.  Just because women don’t suffer as a result of their decisions doesn’t make those decisions ethically wrong.  The only people in this equation who seem incapable of rational, unprejudiced and realistic thought are those, often with power, who refuse to consider and respect the nuances of lives being lived on earth as human women.  Women understand life and compassion and responsibility.  When girls and women get pregnant the profound responsibilities of parenthood and the lifetime consequences of early childhood and family life are clear to them.

Women having abortions, it turns out, are religious people, too:

More than seven in 10 U.S. women obtaining an abortion report a religious affiliation (37% protestant, 28% Catholic and 7% other), and 25% attend religious services at least once a month. The abortion rate for protestant women is 15 per 1,000 women, while Catholic women have a slightly higher rate, 22 per 1,000.

These facts – you know, based in empirical, observable reality – are true of all women, regardless of race, ethnicity, social class.

No racial or ethnic group makes up a majority of women having abortions: 36% are non-Hispanic white, 30% are non-Hispanic black, 25% are Hispanic and 9% are women of other races.

It is true that people who need to have abortions are the poorest.

Women with family incomes below the federal poverty level ($18,530 for a family of three) account for more than 40% of all abortions.[32] They also have one of the country’s highest abortion rates (52 per 1,000 women). In contrast, higher-income women (with family incomes at or above 200% of the poverty line) have a rate of nine abortions per 1,000, which is about half the national rate.

And, apparently, as a society, we want to make sure that stays the case, since the cost of contraceptives is higher in many poorer neighborhoods than in wealthy ones.

I imagine that Mother’s Day is especially poignant for the small percentage of women do have abortions very late in their pregnancies. In the United States, only about one in 10 abortions happens during the second trimester of pregnancy, whereas more than nine in 10 take place in the first 12 weeks, and more than six in 10 during the first eight.  The circumstances tend to be complicated, difficult, sad and often dangerous. So, what is the “pro-life” movement doing, state by state? Making them more complicated, more difficult, sadder and even more dangerous.

Patriarchal fuzzy thinking is particularly bad for girls and women. Why patriarchal and not religious or ethical thinking?  Well, just a simple example: if this weren’t a matter of control over women, their bodies and reproduction we would have a well developed and commonly used male contraceptive that wasn’t based on 12,000 technology by now.

People like this man need to stop talking about things they don’t understand and find another hobby or expression of power and  identity – one that doesn’t hurt girls and women and their families and futures. Too bad legislatures don’t have a “Block User” feature.

So, in closing, Happy Mother’s Day to women who think for themselves and make decisions about what is good for them and their families!

It’s hard to accept that sexism is alive and well and that it undermines virtually everything we believe about equality, fairness, and justice.

“Am I doing an injustice to the female members of this school?”

This is the question 16-year old Junius Onome Williams, running in an election for his school’s student body president asked himself recently when confronted with the reality of gender imbalances in leadership at his high school. Williams attends Phillips Academy Andover, in Massachusetts. A New York Times article, “School Vote Stirs Debate About Girls’ Leadership,” threw the campus into heated controversy and forced discussions about why girls don’t think of themselves as leaders, why boys do think of themselves as leaders and systemic sexism. It won’t win us any popularity contests, but some of us call what they are talking about misogyny.* The problem identified by this group of students, a tip of the tip of the iceberg, is male power that excludes females. The hallmark of misogyny, besides gross pandemic violence against women, just happens to be women’s marginalized access to decision making and institutional power.

A letter written by twelve seniors, in Andover’s newspaper explained in an understated way, “Having four female school presidents since the 1973… is embarrassing.” This is, of course, better than our national or state records. The Andover imbalances are just visible outcomes of largely unchallenged and embedded norms in our mainstream culture… globally. It’s unfashionable to say, I know, but this is just Patriarchy 101. Worldwide, women — still more than 50 percent of the population — make up roughly 18 percent of legislators. Earlier today, writing in Foreign Policy Magazine, David Rothkopf described sexism as civilization’s greatest shame: “The underrepresentation of women in positions of power is proof not so much that men still dominate the top of the pyramid as it is of a system of the most egregious, widespread, pernicious, destructive pattern of human rights abuses in the history of civilization.”

And, if you think this is a problem in the Mythical Land of Over There, Warren Buffet took some time out of his busy schedule this week to explain how this works in the United States, “Despite the inspiring
‘all men are created equal’ assertion in the Declaration of Independence, male supremacy quickly became enshrined in the Constitution.” The United States ranks 77th for women in legislatures.

And Rothkopf and Buffet are talking about the obvious things, not the insidious marginalization and small violences that permeate life. According to Miss Representation, 61 percent of students surveyed report seeing or hearing derogratory comments or images of women. In the one year since its inception, the Everyday Sexism Project has been flooded with women’s stories describing daily encounters with sexism. More than 85 percent of women globally report street harassment that inhibits their movement in public space.

Since the NYT‘s article there have been ongoing conversations about gender, off and on line, in school meetings, at dinner, with speakers on Andover’s campus. The overall result, despite frictions, has been a good one: people are talking about sexism and intersectionality, which was not the case before and they are confronting surprising opinions about things we take for granted or assume “everyone” agrees on… like whether or not we live in an unbiased meritocracy.

We do not live in a meritocracy, not even in the most privileged corners of the country where diverse, academically driven kids enjoy access to what might legitimately be seen as unlimited opportunities. This idea deeply disturbs people. Sexism — which is the focus of this article — is a difficult idea to come to terms with if you’ve grown up being told it doesn’t exist. Sexism affects everything: from classroom interactions to gendered safety gaps, from hook-up culture to the pay gap; from parenting to health and bodily autonomy. To some, it is shocking, saddening and enraging. To others, it is unbelievable, uncomfortable and conflicting.

Students have created a group, Feminism=Equality, a Facebook page, and they are organizing speakers and discussion groups. This, of course, means that they are encountering a whole new level of casually accepted everyday sexism and backlash, but (don’t say anything) what critics who say things like, “You’re a girl, and the teacher is a feminist, so it’s an easy A,” perversely don’t seem to realize is that sexism isn’t actually a disincentive to feminists.

“We have three goals,” explains M. J. Engel, 17, a senior from Wisconsin who ran for president last year and is a founder of Feminism = Equality. “One, to raise awareness that sexism is an issue at all at Andover; two, understanding why it’s an issue of systemic oppression and not a girl versus boy thing; and three, cultivating overall gender equality through social and cultural change, not just leadership positions, but in campus life.”

The question posed by the young man above was a good one, but it needs tweaking. “Am I doing an injustice to all the members of my community?” is the question we should be asking, because, without a doubt, the gross underrepresentation of women in leadership — whether in government or business or religious life, negatively affects us all. It is revelatory though. His question shows a laudable concern with others as individuals. It also demonstrates his grappling as an individual with how to manage privilege. But, it highlights a serious and recurring problem: when people talk about systemic injustice — which is what feminism’s fight against sexism and misogyny are — those who benefit from that injustice often feel that are being blamed as individuals. As one student interviewed in the Times said, some boys “felt attacked for simply being boys.” Instead of hearing, “Our systems are prejudiced,” people hear, “You are prejudiced.”

Consider what these studentsare saying because, frankly, it’s far more nuanced and deeply thought out than ideas I’ve heard expressed by much older people:

“The access has been achieved, but the equality in terms of roles has not,” said Jing Qu, 18, a senior from Illinois. “Girls are scared to be overly ambitious because they’re scared of the potential backlash.”

“I find it shocking that this is still an issue,” said Daniel Feeny, 16. “I’ve grown up with feminist values. It’s surprising to me to get here and see women say they are still treated unfairly.”

“Fewer girls try to get ahead because of a mentality in our culture that says boys have better leadership skills,” said Farris Peale, 17, who ran for office. “But you have to put yourself out there.”

This controversy at Andover, now played out in national media coverage, has transpired during the same month in which a new study designed to investigate why a gender gap in political ambition exists, and how large it is, Girls Just Want to Not Run, was published. Among the study’s most telling findings were that twice as many boys as girls envision themselves as leaders and that boys are seven times as likely to plan to run for office by the time they get to college.

“Right off the bat, it’s not a meritocracy for girls,” said Maia Hirschler, 19, a senior told the New York Times. “They’re starting behind because we don’t associate leadership qualities with them.”

Role models are important. This isn’t even a remotely controversial fact, just a conveniently ignored one. In terms of leadership, a study released, also this month, documented how significant even just seeing a woman in power is to inspiring self-confidence in other women. Our traditions, media, education system and language, if left unexamined and unchanged, will continue to teach our children that only men, usually straight, white ones, can lead and make decisions on behalf of everyone else. That’s who “gets” to lead.

Take public life alone: in the U.S., there are 5,193 public, outdoor statues. Guess how many of those are of men? 4,799. We have no women on our everyday currency, no public holidays marking any significant effort made by any woman in this country. We have no visible, national, public acknowledgement of the fight for women’s rights, equality, parity, liberation — name your term. In schools, women’s activist and feminist movements are briefly mentioned in core curricula, marginalized in “women’s history months” and usually framed along the lines of “the vote was given to women,” like a nicely wrapped gift instead of something they marched, starved and went to jail fighting to get. Imagine not knowing who Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King are. Our kids learn about John Adams, but not about Abigail Adams‘ entreaties that he “remember the ladies” when considering voting rights. They learn about Thomas Paine, but not about Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. They grow up to be people who don’t know Ada Lovelace, but can’t wait to see the upcoming Linda Lovelace biopic. When President Obama mentioned the Declaration of Sentiments in his inaugural address, most people probably wondered if he’d been paid by Hallmark. Sojourner Truth? Is that an indie band? What we don’t teach children about what women have done in our past is ridiculous.

But, it’s more than reassessing history and storytelling. Ileana Jiménez teaches feminism at the high school level. She works to engage kids not just with history and theory, but with everyday activism. “Why don’t we talk to primary school children about gender roles and gender expression at a time when these roles are first reinforced?” she explains, in an article that includes a terrific list of suggestions for educators and parents. “Why not teach middle school students to be more mindful about the sexualization of women and girls in the media and how these images prime their buying habits and influence how they eat (or don’t eat)? Why aren’t educators teaching high school students how men can stop rape?”

Once you start thinking about these topics you realize that the unbalanced power is inseparable from the violence that permeates women’s lives and defines the insouciance and casual acceptance of everyday sexism.

In Andover senior Madeline Silva’s words: “This is about how sexism is ingrained in the attitudes of students. A marker of successful change would be that a girl running for president wouldn’t have to think anymore, ‘I should run with a guy, because I can’t run for office with another girl, because I’d never win,’ or ‘I shouldn’t be too aggressive, or someone will think I’m a bitch.’” She knows exactly what she’s talking about considering that last year, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was called “a man’s bitch,” by a political opponent, of who then went on to lecture her on sexism and misogyny. Gillard responded with a speech that changed the dictionary definition of misogyny to include “entrenched prejudice against women.”

It sounds strange, right, to associate the idea that an imbalance in leadership as the visible symbol of pervasive oppression and hatred with students in a pristine, bucolic corner of North America.

We better start. While our boys and girls may lack role models, students like these, Jimenez’s and others like them, are filling our void and I am grateful for their work.

* According to The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, Misogyny is defined as: “a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies.”

Cover Photo credit: Tumbrl And You Have to Give Them Hope

This post was cross-posted with permission from Huffington Post

Where do you begin to tackle a culture where a school mascot is a popular rape meme and the campus television station airs a video for an campus safety hot-line that features a “howler monkey bitch” who is “crying rape”?

Two days ago, Carolyn Luby, an undergraduate at University of Connecticut published a remarkable open letter to the school’s president,  Susan Herbst, in The Feminist Wire.  In the letter she made her case and argued persuasively that the school’s new mascot and branding should be reconsidered. The school had decided as part of this visual identity revamping to change its Husky Dog logo from the current mascot to a more “powerful and aggressive” looking logo. She was polite, deliberate and thorough in her analysis and reasoning. So, of course, people are harassing her, belittling her and violently threatening her with rape. Oh, and the campus police told her to “wear a hat.”

As part of this anti-feminist backlash targeting a female student daring to speak in defense of safety for women, the site, Barstool Sports reposted her letter, which generated the predictably violent and misogynistic gender based comments. A second site was created just so people could make rape jokes against her.  On campus people are harassing her and she is receiving hate mail.  Even Rush Limbaugh has weighed in to mock her, minimize the real threat and actuality of violence against women, and mumbled in his tired old Patriarhal patois about Feminazis and cartoon characters.  I will not link to anything he says or does because it is usually infused with a mean-spirited, dangerous ignorance and darkness and I like information that rooted in truth that sheds light and makes the world a better place.

To put her letter in context, University of Connecticut was under a similar spotlight because of an ad that aired on the campus TV station last year. The ad was for a GPS-equipped emergency phone system on campus. According to a Huffington Post report the ad showed a woman escaping from an assailant, “But when the woman tries to use the emergency system to summon help, it misunderstands her words and a robotic voice calls her a “cock gobbler” and “howler monkey bitch” who is “crying rape,” which gives the attacker enough time to catch up and strangle her in the parking lot.” The station apologized. Is anyone in the administration awake over there?

You can read her letter, as well as a Change.org petition in support of her efforts.

Here is all you have to know to decide for yourself.

This is UConn’s new mascot.

These are popular rape memes that circulate on line and are commonly posted and shared:

UConn did not, obviously, create the wolf, or the meme. However, the meme exists and the use of the wolf attests to the very points being made by Luby. As the petition explains, she was correct – this is a threatening image, used to trivialize rape and mock rape victims, and it communicates the wrong message to both men and women trying to live in a less violent society. The response against her attempts to speak civilly in public about a serious topic attest to why her speech is necessary to begin with.

Any young woman with even a passing familiarity with the web has probably seen these images. I’ve only posted a couple here, just go google ‘wolf rape meme’ for yourself and then think “Go! UConn! Go!!” This is beyond ridiculous.

What people don’t know kills girls and women everyday. #NowWhatUConn?

Portions of this piece cros-posted with permission of The Feminist Wire.

Note: A) This post contains strong language and graphic descriptions. B) This is long, because this topic is complicated and difficult and cannot be reduced to 800 words. C) There is not “overkilling” this topic.

There is a photograph being shared in Facebook of a woman cowering in a corner, eyes downcast, as large man standing in the foreground swings his fist at her head. The caption reads, “Women deserve equal rights. And lefts.”

AT&T, American Express, Cubesmart and Ancestry.com are among the page’s sponsors today.

This image has been reported to Facebook repeatedly. Their response is: “Thanks for your report. We reviewed the photo you reported, but found it doesn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standard on hate speech, which includes posts or photos that attack a person based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition.”

The “joke” isn’t offensive.  What is offensive is fact that the infliction of pain on girls and women –pain inflicted because they are female – is entertaining and acceptable. As with rape humor, domestic violence humor reduces girls and women to their body parts and communicates that we are violable for other people’s purposes and entertainment.  Helpless and full of shame. At the same times, this content perpetuates harmful stereotypes about what makes men “real” – violence, control, infliction of pain on others, lack of empathy, never weak or helpless.  This is our culture of cruelty and domination.  Its how we teach boys and girls to be.  Not Facebook’s problem, I know.

But, imagine a photograph of a gay or African American man standing under a tree with noose hanging from a branch and some white guys standing nearby laughing with the caption, “Hanging out!” Because I don’t know how this is different.

A few months ago, a Facebook spokesperson explained that, “Having the freedom to debate serious issues like this is how we fight prejudice.” Maybe this images and others like it are biting social satire? An entrée into incisive debate about a controversial social problem.  Here are parts of the debate (let’s call it, “When is raping, beating and brutalizing girls and women funny?”) over this image taken from more than 300 comments (photo has more than 5,000 likes).

• “I don’t care what anyone says if a woman deserves to be hit than hit her. there a difference from being a beater and slapping a bitch when she needs it. there probably wouldn’t be some many loud mouth bitches or sluts if they got slapped up when needed.and keep in mind I’m a woman saying this.

• “And same goes for a man.sometimes people need to be hit.”

• “It’s a joke. Everyone knows beating up a wife/husband is wrong.”

• “Stop with this shit Women already have more rights then men so stfu.”

• “Feminism at this point is the fat kid who wamts both cake and pie and can choose one so they cry and whine till they get both. Its to support women to the equal status as men yet they treat guys as unequal. Want to be equal then treat both sides the same.”

• “im not a girl… but they deserve = rights.. if i known that guy id kick hes ass…”

• “Equal rights are equal rights, bitches can’t be picky about what they want and don’t want for them.”

• “Not the worst thing I’ve seen on the internet. Pretty silly tho. Domestic violence happens to men too, and pretending it’s just a female problem furthers the stigma men have in speaking out against the violence they experience. So for all the guys who are like “Hyurr durr, this is funny, feminists can gtfo”, remember: you are entitled to equal rights, lefts, and up-one-side-down-the-others, too.”

• “Dont hit women. Ignore them. Its a lot worse then hitting them.”

• “You know… not all women are whores, I mean you’ve got to know that because abusing women or children is not right!”

• “You ‘feminists’ need to pull your heads out of your asses and accept that you deserve a beating if you fucking provoked it, stop acting like such victims all the fucking time.”

• “IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP and you are reading this: Don’t worry, you are not alone in believing that this is false and horrible. If Facebook had a “DISLIKE” button, there would be far more dislikes than likes. Abuse is always wrong. Demand better of yourself and others. Love, forgive, and don’t accept violent behavior in others.”

What is interesting is that rape and beating women up is controversial, normalized and “debatable,” in a way that targeted violence against other marginalized and minority groups no longer is to most “reasonable” people. That’s why I keep making the point that this isn’t about censorship or law, but about norms. Pro and anti comments were fairly equally split between self-identified male and female commenters.  That’s why I keep making the point that this isn’t a battle of men versus women, but worldviews.

People are so inured to images, tv shows, movies, music, memes and advertising that use violence against women for entertainment that most people don’t even think about it as real. And while maybe 12 celebrities today can make pointed rape jokes in ways that reveal the horror of rape’s reality or the ugliness and pain of living with daily domestic violence, most people can’t. Instead, content like this usually mocks victims and glorifies abusers and violence in general. Facebook makes no such distinction.  So here, as elsewhere, violence against women and girls becomes a fiction, a fantasy, something they watch as they rack up points in a game, enjoy a drink or eat dinner.  This isn’t “offensive,” it’s an atrocity.  While we do everything possible to hunt down two violent young men terrorizing a city, we willfully ignore the daily violence that people are subjected to in their own homes every day in acts of individual terrorism.

The only way to tear this culture down is to object to it every time you encounter it.

Facebook moderators contact authorities about real instances of violence and crime every day.   As others and I have written before, “Not real” content depicting rape and the physical abuse of girls and women is often categorized by Facebook as [Humor] and frequently surfaces in the news. For example, a recent photograph of a man carrying a limp girl with the caption, “ Rohyphnol: When Traditional Dating Methods Just Aren’t Cutting it!” or the page “I Love the Rape Van.” Facebook has a detailed and thorough process for handling complaints about this sort of material and is on the record saying that it is not in the business of defining and changing culture, or interested in policing free speech. This is false. Facebook does both of these things simply through the process of reviewing and editing pages created and by having a reporting structure for complains. The company has actually been lauded for its approach in other situations.

Of course, it may simply be that objectionable pages and content appear in Facebook in proportion to the rate of their production by users.  The point remains however:  Facebook has terms, conditions and guidelines.  By default that makes Facebook and arbiter and interpreter of norms whether it cares to be or not.

Last week I wrote a piece in the Guardian, Facebook’s Big Misogyny Problem, about what has been happening to the administrators of a page called Rapebook, and an Everyday Sexism Project initiative to raise advertisers’ awareness that their ads are showing up in Facebook on pages featuring violence against women. What happened after Rapebook perfectly illustrates why it was created in the first place.

“At first, people started posting pictures of women and young girls being raped or beat up and commenting on the page saying things like, “I will skull-fuck your children,” explains Trista Hendren, one of the page’s founding administrators, who became the target violent threats and daily graphic abuse on the site.

Within days of its creation, the site was the target of trolls, Facebook users themselves, posting crude commentary, links to violent pornography and rape, Facebook pages depicting rape, including of babies, rape “humor,” malicious software links, and rape and death threats (for example, “ fuck that. hit that hoe,” and “Domestic violence is a 2 way street you hypocritical cunt.”) Personal information was shared online. Hendren’s picture was used to create rape memes.  After months of working closely with Facebook, to mixed results, Hendren stopped using Facebook and Rapebook admins have shut the page down.  She is now working with the FBI.  This is not about “debate.” It is about silencing. Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher and professor of law at University of Chicago, squarely identifies similar incidences as gender-based hate crimes.

As I wrote last week, a common retort to all of this is, “This is the Internet. It’s offensive. If you don’t like it, leave.”  But, Facebook is NOT “the Internet.” That’s why it fascinates me – because it illustrates how norms work and how they can be challenged. Facebook has principles and community standards that create a reasonable expectation in users that it will enforce rules it itself has established in an unbiased manner.

In summary, what I said last week is this:

First, Facebook’s guidelines prohibit hate speech review process that does not recognize sex-based hate speech and its case-by-case approach cannot assess how an overall hostile environment (treating rape and violence against women literally as a joke or ignoring content that is viscerally threatening and desensitizing) is threatening, unsafe and harmful to users (male and female).

Second, girls and women, acculturated to a world where one in three women will be sexually assaulted (in the US, that number is one in five; for men, one in 77), cannot separate this reality from their online experiences. Domestic violence and homicide statistics reflect a similar epidemic.  This dynamic is reflected online, where more than 75% of targeted online abuse is aimed at women. Women experience and assess safety differently from men and Facebook’s policies do not take this into account.

Third, users employing sex-based hate language and images manipulate Facebook’s system and lack of introspection regarding sexist norms. Over and over images and language reducing girls and women to their body parts, their appearances, their pornographic and rape potential are deemed not credibly harmful and threatening, when studies demonstrate repeatedly that they are. In addition, almost all of the content related to rape and domestic violence jokes features women as victims, which perpetuate rape myths and deny the reality of male victims of abuse.

Fourth, what people like Hendren are protesting is not the result of easily mocked “hurt feelings” or “offensiveness,” but systemically tolerated hate, degradation, objectification and marginalization of girls and women, behind which loiters actual violence.  Minimizing their concerns (i.e. “they’re only trolls, it’s not a credible threat”) is a symptom of the very problem they are challenging. Threats provoke anxiety and change behavior – which makes them credible.

Fifth, it’s important to note that people who supported Rapebook’s efforts were unwilling to publicly show their support in Facebook, for fear of similar targeting and abuse. Hendren’s leaving Facebook, Rapebook’s closing and the hesitancy of people to support them publicly are actual losses of free speech for these users (overwhelmingly women) as the result of bullying, harassment and misogyny. Women and their male allies who are are disproportionately negatively harmed.

A new Facebook page was recently created, Sheryl Sandberg Lean-In And Remove Misogyny from FB. This page, like Rapebook, is an example of individual women doing exactly what Sandberg prescribes in her new book, Lean-In, but encountering overwhelming systemic obstacles and biased norms that prevent them from succeeding. It is not Sheryl Sandberg’s job to purge the world of misogyny or to singlehandedly equalize cultural norms being employed at Facebook. However, she is at the center of a perfect storm: In addition to being Facebook’s COO, and the author of Lean In, a corporate-power-feminist manifesto, Sandberg is on the board of VDAY. V-Day’s intent, ending violence against girls and women globally, is seriously undermined by Facebook’s unbalanced approach.

Individuals can communicate directly with Facebook by registering complaints using the Facebook option on every page, by engaging in “debate” when they encounter content that is hateful and by writing and speaking openly about these topics.  Facebook, I’d like to think, is doing the same.

Cover Photo via Memegenerator

What would happen Facebook stopped allowing images like the ones used in this post and characterized them as hate speech? This is a screen capture taken for an article about misogyny in Facebook. When people protest images like these, they often become targets of rape threats.

It’s become rote it happens with such regularity.

Trista Hendren is a woman protesting rape humour and similarly themed material in Facebook. Hendren is one of six founders of a page created last Fall called Rapebook. Trolls targeted the page, which sometimes received between 100-500 messages, links, comments a day. Content that featured the very material,including child porn, cannibal porn, graphic rape, that the page was established to eliminate. I have seen some of these threats and cannot even begin to describe them or the images accompanying them. The site, filled with horrifying comments, is the best example of why it exists. The administrators worked with Facebook on a case by case basis as comments, posts and threats occurred, some days at the rate of anywhere between 100 and 500 times a day, according to the administrators. As is often the case in these situations, these interactions were very gendered. On one hand, a group of primarily men attacking, on other hand, a group of primarily women.

Facebook’s reporting structure is designed to assess whether or not threats are “credible” and if content violates the company’s terms. As this situation escalated, there several disagreements between Facebook and the women about both.

Setting aside for the purposes of this post the details of what Facebook’s role was or wasn’t in the build up of what is happening, the situation is that the purpose of threats is to provoke anxiety and change behavior and the threats the women received, particularly given the subject matter, did just that, even if Facebook did not find them credible.

People who objected to her activism and were comfortable violently attacking and threatening Hendren and other administrators in contravention of Facebook’s terms by claiming free speech rights. The definition of hate speech becomes important. Eventually they created a page called RapeRapeBook where they published at least two of the womens’ names, addresses, phone numbers and family details. Facebook took this down quickly, but the damage was done. Hendren and others kept a blog recording these events.

In addition to genuinely horrific and frightening threats, Hendren has gotten a constant stream of harassing calls at home, and assailants have moved to writing bad reviews of her book in Amazon. She has left Facebook in protest and taken security measures. Rapebook announced last night that the “Rapebook page will no longer be active on Facebook. This page has achieved what it was set up to do. It has shown that Facebook?s terms and conditions are null and void.” They believe that Facebook’s passive approach towards applying their own terms and conditions renders them useless.

The important thing to note is that what the trolls have done has been effective in many ways. One, they bullied their way into dominating the public space that is Facebook. People are hesitating to support Rapebook or even comment on related posts for fear that they will become targets themselves. Some of the admins no longer have Facebook accounts or are blocked.

“I don’t find jokes about raping and beating up children and women to be controversial. I don’t think there is that big of a gap between men who laugh about those things and men who beat and rape women,” explains Trista Hendren.

By it’s actions, or lack thereof, Facebook has made itself a space left more rape tolerant than rape intolerant as a result of her leaving.

The irony is not lost on people who note the theme and intent of Sheryl Sandberg’s, Facebook’s COO, recently released book, Lean In, advising women on how to not “leave the table.” Last week, this page was created: Sheryl Sandberg LEAN-In And Remove Misogyny from FB.

Here is Hendren explaining what happened. You can tweet in her defense using #SupportTrista and #LeanIn.

Some things you just have to laugh at, because, really…

I realize that I should not be surprised by this, but even the Fox News anchor haltingly continued her broadcast as the pictures appeared on the screen. As she said words like “Women’s History Month,” “women’s accomplishments in Connecticut,” “Young Women’s Leadership Program,” a constant stream of women’s breast shots accompanied her narration.

Can’t make this up.

Credit for the cover photo Stephan Baudy via Creative Common

Of the estimated 61 million children deprived of basic education globally, 60 percent are girls.  But, that’s just the beginning of a dramatic gender gap. According to the Global Campaign for Education: “An additional 100 million girls worldwide that begin primary school do not finish [school]. The numbers are even starker for secondary education, which is unavailable to more than 200 million children and in which we see even more extreme disparity in enrollment.”

Today, International Women’s Day, a movie called Girl Rising, is being released nationwide. It tells the stories of nine girls from around the world who’ve fought for the right to be educated. This is no small thing in countries where girls fight poverty, unsanitary conditions, homelessness, child marriage, sex slavery and other forms of culturally sanctioned violence against girls and women. In her own right, each one of them, and tens of thousands more, are like Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani education activist who was shot in the head as she rode her bus to school. The girls featured in the film demonstrate the tremendous barriers to girls’ universal education and also what happens when these barriers are overcome.

The film was produced by 10 x 10, a social action project, created by former ABC News journalists who collaborated with The Documentary Group and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions to produce the film.  It is one of many organizations working to make sure the world’s girls are educated.

Why focus on girls? When I write about girls’ rights the question I hear most is “What about the boys?” This particular knee-jerk, backlash response against girls equality is old but has a long life. It’s wearisome and wastes a lot of time will don’t really have to waste.  No one is suggesting that boys be ignored or hurt. Quite the opposite, as Because I am a Girl: What About The Boys illustrates. The problem is, however, that a boy preference in education, as in other things, hasn’t historically proved to be particularly positive for the other half of humanity, which has an equal right to be educated. Nor has it yielded satisfactory results in terms of national development or international peace and security.  I’d add that the boy preference is significantly bad for boys. The fact that boys are more valued and educated in greater measure is a symptom of larger problems that contribute to slavery, poverty, the spread of disease, and pandemic violence. As USAID put it in a report Education from a Gender Equality Perspective, “Educating females and males produces similar increases in their subsequent earnings and expands future opportunities and choices for both boys and girls. However, educating girls produces many additional socio-economic gains that benefit entire societies.”

Educating and empowering girls breaks cycles of generational poverty. Crop yields rise when female farmers are educated. Educated mothers are 50% more likely to seek health care and to immunize their children. And when more girls are educated, HIV rates and malnutrition decline. In addition, educating girls is a security issue. Democracy finds fertile ground where girls are educated and empowered and conditions that cultivate extremism are reduced.

When you educate a girl, as a viral Girl Effect video continues to so compellingly explain, good things happen for the girl, her family, her community. The Girl Effect web site has remarkable resources illustrating the profound impact that empowering girls with education and economic independence can have: personally, socially and globally. And, if you understand the work of the researchers who recently wrote the important and amazing book Sex and World Peace, for their countries and the rest of us.

But, this isn’t only a matter of large-scale organizations like Nike’s Girl Effect or 10 x 10,  dedicated to global change. For years remarkable people have, as individuals and in small groups, sought to do what they can to change life for millions.

In 2000, for example,  Barbara Lee Shaw started the Masai Girls Education Fund in order to provide scholarships for girls in Kenya, less than 20% of whom were educated. Their goal continues to be educating girls and women so they can gain economic independence.  “In 2003, Kenya instituted free public primary school education, and enrollment now has increased to 48 percent for girls,” explains Shaw on their website. “However, only 5 percent of those who enroll will make it to secondary school primarily because of forced marriages, but also because of teen pregnancy, circumcision (female genital mutilation), or HIV/AIDS.”  Since its founding, the fund has educated hundred of girls through the dedication and hard work of a handful of people here and in Kenya devoted to this cause.

Shaw, who has been immersed in these issues for decades, makes this correct assessment in describing the primary challenges in closing the education gap: “Since cost is not a factor in primary school enrollment, poverty alone cannot be preventing 52 percent of the school-age population from completing primary school.  Poverty and the high cost of secondary school certainly explains the large enrollment drop at that level, but primary enrollment should be much higher.  It is our belief that there will be no further advances in education for girls until there is a change in the way the culture values girls and an end to the cultural practices that prevent girls from completing their education.”

To this end, MGEF’s Community Education Program holds community workshops and meetings to discuss the greater economic benefits of educating a daughter than the one-time dowry received from her marriage; the harmful consequences of FGM and teen pregnancy, and how to protect against HIV.

Here are some resources to look into if you are interested in supporting efforts to make education universally available.

• Masai Girls Education Fund
• Florence Nightingale Girls Foundation
• Girls Education Challenge
• Basic Education Coalition
• Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund
• Global Campaign for Education, U.S. Chapter
• The Coalition for Adolescent Girls
• Global Fund for Women
• United Nations Millennium Campaign
• Because I Am A Girl
• UNICEF Country Statistics
• United Nations Girls Education Initiative
• RESULTS’ Education for All
• School Girls Unite

photo credit: Thai Jasmine via Creative Commons

Or Why a “Small” Consent Revolution Needs to be a “Big” Consent Revolution

The idea of consent, in terms of how we think about sex, sexual abuse, and power, is fairly new and historically radical. Laurie Penny, describing shifting attitudes about these topics, called it a “small revolution,” earlier this week in The New Statesman. A lot of people, especially those with power, are reeling from the unsettling idea that every person, including those without traditional access to power and status, can claim their bodies as their own — maybe even legally and without shame. Maybe in offices. At parties. On school buses. In bedrooms and sacristies. Everyday we hear stories about institutions, places and people surprised to be caught in the crosswinds of this evolving understanding.  It’s hard to cede power.  But, consent is a basic prerequisite to preventing and ending violence against women and the principles behind it far exceed “just rape.”  Consider this list:

• The Catholic Church
• Casa Pio
• Penn State and Jerry Sandusky
• The BBC and Jimmy Savile
• The Boy Scouts

These are with little exception examples of men, operating in virtually all male power structures, not respecting the idea of consent and the rights to bodily autonomy of those without. I know that saying “men rape” is disturbing. So is saying that communities, filled with women, support them. But, this is, as we keep seeing, an overwhelmingly gendered crime. Not saying it out loud will change nothing. And, while women do abuse children sexually, they do not have the power to do it systematically, in groups and behind the cover of institutions.

For this to end, men, who tend to be those with greater power in families, businesses, religions, government and in public space in general, need to actively engage in building cultures of respect and consent.

These cases, involving the widespread sexual assault of girls and, most frightening to many, boys, jolt sensibilities because they put into stark relief power differentials that are the scaffolding of rape and abuse and they rudely belie comforting rape myths. Rape myths that say, for example, that violent strangers rape women; that girls ask for it by the way they dress; or that we all lie anyway. They show that rape isn’t just “something that just happens” because poor, or dark, or mentally ill men can’t control themselves. They demonstrate the predatory nature of rapists who target their victims and depend on social and institutional tolerance to rape again and again. Now add these, which aside from Steubenville you may not have heard about, to the list:

• The Steubenville Rape Crew
• The Cleveland, Texas gang rapists
• The New Orleans gang rapists

Or in “other places,” where names are publicized:

• Jyoti Singh Pandey in India
• Isha Nembhard in England
• Anene Booysen in South Africa
• Nevin Yildirem in Turkey

Instead of little boys and girls, these are teenage girls and young women, targeted and raped.  Also graphic, jarring and myth-shattering. These women were targeted because of vulnerability and their cases also demonstrate power differences and institutional enabling.  ”Private matters” spilling graphically into public spaces. Yildrem’s case tidily disposes the idea that women with victim mindsets, implied apparently by just pointing out crimes against them, must “want it” or they’d put up a fight.

While these are sad and fatiguing itemizations, they are not “new.” These are “extreme,” well-publicized cases of daily events. Many “everyday” assaults, say on U.S .college campuses where 28 percent of women are assaulted, take place because of of people’s differing understandings of consent and their expectations regarding who says “yes” and what “no” means. The point of consent as a norm is to make these situations unambiguous and rare. This means we have to accept that telling rapists not to rape, or to face real consequences, works. As it clearly does.

What IS relatively new is that we know about these cases, and more about rape rates everywhere, and we are not tolerating this manifestation of abusive power and entitlement as we used to. A central part of this intolerance has to do with how we’ve changed ideas about consent.  This change is destabilizing because the idea of consent far exceeds “just” how we think about sex and forces us to think about power. Which means that now people with power, that would be mainly men, who before may have dismissed rape have to pay attention.

This idea that consent and respect for boundaries is necessary is as “unnatural” and alien to some people as bathing would once have been. The same people who are mystified are also anxious because what an insistence on consent does is reverse the traditional trajectory of blaming victims as individuals for their rapes and assaults and puts the responsibility on the people with power and the structures that protect them.

In the U.S., we have a long and rich historical tradition of the appropriating of people’s bodies by the uncontested powerful.  In our near history, where black women were raped day after day after day,  rape was an integral part of social and economic order.  The legacy of this bubbles occasionally erupts.  Similarly, in many contexts still the ability to assault someone sexually is a benefit that comes with a job, a title, a marriage, or simply being a certain kind of man in a deeply misogynistic culture.

I genuinely understand the violence against women varies across nations and problems with sliding up and down scales, but each person experiences their assault as a violated individual whose consent is disregarded. That’s why, while the rank injustice of a seven-year old Thai girl being forced to have sex with more than 20 men a day might make you shake if you stop to really think about it, it doesn’t diminish the inhumanity of an Irish boy forced to endure regular assault at the hands of his priest or gang-rapes of young women and sexual assaults of very old ones in Texas or New York.

A culture of consent, recognizing this fact, is based on the rights of potential victims instead of on the rights of potential rapists.  Which would you prefer? Because now, locally and globally, what we have are traditional, religious, legislative, judicial and cultural rape tolerances built into our systems that protect the rights of rapists and abusers. Those who rape and sexually assault count on these disparities and take calculated risks because culture has historically rewarded or favored them.

Things DO change.  Rape rates in the U.S., while still absurdly high, have declined steadily – 60 percent in the past 20 years. The less we tolerate it, the less it happens. Still though, today in the U.S. someone is raped or sexually assaulted every two minutes. Globally the numbers are the same or worse. And, of course, this is where I have to say false accusations in rape cases are no more likely than they are in any other type of crime.

Last year, as the result of years of feminist activism, the FBI changed its 80+ year definition of rape to reflect consent (as in unconscious people cannot consent) and include men.  And, while it made this change, consent as a legal standard is still a very difficult one for most people to grasp and employ.  For a good overview of what affirmative consent in the law means read Thomas MacAulay Millar’s excellent and comprehensive piece on the topic at Yes Means Yes.

We are in the early, early, early days of what consent represents. Today is the opening day for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. As Michele Bachelet, head of UNWomen, said only moments ago while addressing the Commission, “We have made progress in norms and standards. Now we must talk on the challenge of implementation and accountability.” And for that, we need men do it with us.

I talk to people all the time who refuse to acknowledge that rape and sexual assault are abuses of power.  If you still doubt this, think about why a man took the time to carve the words “mine.”  In North Carolina. Not New Dehli. People are not born to rape other people. We teach them that it’s defining, useful and acceptable. We can teach them them that it is none of those things. Misogynistic custom, culture, religion and so-called honour are not worth preserving.

Resources

YOU CAN LIVE STREAM THE UN COMMISSION’S WEEKLONG EVENTS HERE. or follow on Twitter at @UN_Women.

UNWomen
Men Can Stop Rape
Bell Bajao
Say NO – Unite
White Ribbon Campaign
No More

This post is originally published on Huffington Post . It is cross-posted with permission.

Photo credit Szagi via Creative Common.

Dear Academy,

I love the Academy Awards. Along with millions of other people, I wait for the annual ceremony, yell at the screen when I disagree with winners, pick my favorite dresses and cheer for people whose work I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying.  Like my parents before me, I fight with my kids about bedtime on a school night.

This year, however,  not that it matters to you, I realize, I will boycott the Academy Awards and encourage others to as well, because you managed to nominate exactly NO women for Best Director.

In the entire 85-year history of the Academy Awards you have only nominated four women as directors.  I know that just saying this makes some people think I’m being all victimy.  But, in reality, it’s just me, random critic, saying, “It’s 2013 and this discrimination needs to stop,” in a distinctly un-whiny tone of voice.   Having sat through several encyclopedic “History of Film” sagas with my equally film-buffy husband, I know that there have been at least, say, five qualified women in the history of Hollywood, and that’s from the 20′s alone - prior to your award’s inception. Your industry may have actually gone BACKWARDS over time from the perspective of women’s power.  The early history of Hollywood is filled with pioneering and influential women.

Why would I say this is discrimination? Maybe women’s movies just aren’t that good? Maybe women just can’t direct movies? Maybe they don’t like this kind of work – it’s all so hard and technical? I mean, there aren’t that many of them, after all.  Maybe, women just need to understand the complex and nuanced sociology of overwhelmingly male constructed workplaces that subtly and not so subtly excludes them? In any case, you give the words “boys’ club” new depth and meaning.

Hollywood, which you control, both reflects our culture and is disproportionately responsible for shaping it with the stories you tell.  You are the actual cross-roads of our chicken and egg problem regarding the invisibility of women in the public imagination. An imagination that informs aspirations and confidence.  As girls and boys become adults they absorb the gradual erasure of women in virtually every aspect of public live, where, thanks in large part to your industry, they most often appear in marginal and sexualized roles.  Any alien intelligence being bombarded in space by our media emanations would think, based on your work, that women are outnumbered 8 to 1, most are white, do everything half naked, are the cause of male vulnerability, and don’t live past the age of 28. I know – sounds like Entourage to me to. And I loved Entourage. It’s so irritating.

Now, I know it’s not your job to fix our problems with parity, equity, equality and liberation.  It’s your job to make money by entertaining us. And fly your kids to Las Vegas for their 10th birthday parties. And we are, apparently, willing to pay to be entertained to sexist death and pay for the helicopters. You are not alone, of course. In Cannes last year, women directors faced similar problems in terms of the acknowledgement of their work.

As the Los Angeles Times reported last year, “Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male… Blacks are about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%.” This just goes to prove that the Guerilla Girls are right: you are even less diverse and more conservative than Congress and THAT is saying a whole lot given how pathetic Congress is.  They have been pointing this out for WAY TOO LONG.

Statistics from Women and Hollywood, based on studies conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, reveal that in 2011:

• Women directed 5% of the top grossing films.
• Women wrote 14% of the top grossing films.
• Women comprised 18% of all executive producers.
• Women comprised 25% of all producers.
• 20% of all editors were women.
• 4% of all cinematographers were women.

Do these women have equal opportunity. I suppose technically, yes. Do they have equal access to money, marketing, investments of time, people and resources? Who are you kidding?

There are talented, competent women making films.  But, it is insanely difficult for them to find money and resources, whereas any idiot with XY chromosomes can apparently make a film.

According to additional studies, last year, women made up less than 10% of all directors of the top grossing 250 films. This is a four percent increase from the year before…but, that’s not saying much since that brings us level with 1998. In 2009, the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis , noted that “Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers Pictures, meanwhile, did not release a single film directed by a woman. Not one.”  Quite frankly, as a lifelong movie fanatic who enjoys going to the movies with kids, I’m hoping against hope that you simply age out. That, and I make sure more than half of our media budget is spent on films that support women’s work and stories.  In addition, given the fact that these numbers are so low today, it seems you are also self-selecting for sexist, racist and misogynistic continuity.

Your gender, age and lack of diversity are marginalizing women and people of color and impairing the ability of young, talented women to envision these careers and succeed in this industry.  And that means, in circular fashion, that we will keep getting self-fulfilling stories primarily about the trials, tribulations and successes of white boys and men. Do you guys even know who Alison Bechdel is?  Because if not, you should meet her. Long ago she came up with some great ideas about what you do. As Anita Sarkeesian points out so eloquently, year after year after year you fail her test for the most basic assessment of fairness in representation.  But, of course, what do you care, people keep buying tickets.  But, again, of course, the investments you make in which movies to spend money on and market aggressively make a huge difference in what people gleefully anticipate and then spend money seeing. This is important, because while women filmmakers are being celebrated for their work at festivals like Sundance, where women had a “breakthrough year” this year, and The Athena Film Festival, which held its third awards ceremony this month, their work does not get the kind of widespread distribution and marketing that it deserves and that we would all benefit from in multi-dimensional ways. This is our fault.

Every time you “take a chance” on movies with female ensembles, or movies with female directors and writers and producers, and they do phenomenally well, you are “surprised.” You’re like well-groomed fish with seven second memories.  Hopefully, recent examples of successes involving women are altering your capacity for being repeatedly shocked.   Even you must note the riotous absurdity of the fact that the one movie in which a woman has won for best director – Katherine Bigelow’s  The Hurt Locker – was a paean to all-male, testosterone fueled violence and maladaptation.  I mean, really, how many boys’ coming of age/quest-for-father/band of brothers stories can you make?  Isn’t therapy, albeit expensive, cheaper for you and all of us?

In case you missed them, there were movies made by women last year, some of them about women even, that deserve to be included and considered.

Often, I ask myself, don’t these guys have daughters? Are their imaginations so limited that they really cannot understand what it is like for girls, and boys, to grow up with the images and stories they promote in such narrow and unbalanced ways? Boys, of course, don’t have to go out of their way to put themselves in girls’ shoes, but media portrays are equally limiting for them. For a while there, I thought that maybe Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg – whose work I grew up loving in the hero-cross-gender-empathizing way of all girls -  might create a girl coming of age franchise, at least one. But, no. This year, I held out a slim hope that Brave, one of the only girl/woman quest stories I have ever seen, also directed by a woman, would be noted by your Academy. But, no. You just don’t get it. This too, will pass.

I imagine, if you do have daughters and granddaughters, you think your success and wealth will make it possible for them to overcome any biases that you yourself perpetuate. That may be somewhat true, but, it is fundamentally wrong and they, too, will live in a less just world because of it. As will our sons and grandsons. You are our storytellers. Epic fail on our part.

As was said in classic film She’s the Man,  ”Here in Illyria, we don’t discriminate. Based. On. Gendah.”  Illyria, of course, is a fantasy land. Some say Hollywood is to. But, it is not. Hollywood is a very real, very important, money-making, culture-shaping place and you are discriminating against girls and women every time you make these choices not to include their stories and their work.

So, for now, I live with the naïve faith idea that you will age out and that younger men of another generation, and with story-telling currency, will assess their own privileges and decide – as you haven’t – that they would rather live in a more just world where people’s work is respected and acknowledged regardless of how they look. Ha! It’s even funny to write that last bit, considering the history of photography and film and its pivotal role in the rise of the dumbed-down visual on our culture. I know, I should just go feed by magical unicorn.

I love movies and I spend a disproportionate amount of money consuming them. I admire much of your work and do everything I can to personally and professionally support efforts to change this dynamic. But, I also know that your brilliantly creative and innovative industry relies mostly on conservative, risk-averse and formulaic stories to survive. But really? Can’t you do better than this?

In a 2012 New York Times piece called Our Entire Belief System Must Change, film director Martha Coolidge made excellent, tangible suggestions for tackling entrenched sexism in our culture, many of which directly relate to you. You should pay attention.

Sincerely,
Soraya Chemaly

PS – Before you say the words “lean in” consider “leaning out” a bit.

photo credit: lincolnblues via photopin cc