Mat Bowles

Did someone throw a bloggers gender awareness week thing and I missed the notification? Maybe I'm just noticing it a bit more, but discussions on objectification, stereotypes and dodgy attitudes seem to be everywhere I look at the moment. andrewducker reposted The Rules yesterday and the comment thread at that link is worth reading. Following that, SB made a comment to my post and expanded on it at Steve' s about the sexism of the vid I posted yesterday. She's followed it up with two posts today, asking Ever Wish You Could Switch a Part of Your Personality Off? and then as a Follow-on from the previous post:

Men are biologically designed to look upon women's bodies as sexy = men are biologically designed to look on women as things, not people?

y/n?

The latter being in response to Steve's follow on post:

these days I find myself being offended at it for all the wrong reasons. Adverts for random things that feature bikini-clad Barbie dolls and “oooh!” music don’t make me think “I really wish they’d stop objectifying women, because it’s detrimental to women’s rights and society.” They make me think “I wish they’d stop being SO STUPID and assuming I am also very STUPID and why do they think a bored-looking model can make sink cleaner sexy anyway?”

And that, essentially, is as close to my take on it as I can manage to enunciate.( I'm aware that I'm priviledged )( and that some issues, even ones I care about, don't always cross my radar )( but we all look at things through prisms, mine is governance, not sexism )( The video yesterday was all about stereotypes, that's one of the reasons the comedy worked )( and the argument for gender equality has, essentially, been won, the pay gap has lessened in most like-for-like comparisons, etc. )( besides which, sometimes it's the men who face discrimination )( and this sucks, besides, outdated societal notions were bad for all of us )( and I like that these days I can be out-geeked by female friends )

I'm not deluding myself, I've not got on rose tinted goggles; I know that discrimination exists, that sexism exists, that we're Not There Yet.

But ultimately I'm an optimist. Things are getting better, people are treated better, women in the workplace are just accepted now, and attitudes that they don't belong there are, culturally, seen as unacceptable by the overwhelming majority of the people that I come into contact with.

But then, I mostly come into contact with young(ish) professional(ish) educated types. The so-called opinion formers. something which leads me to believe that things will continue to get better, that society will continue to improve. We've got to monitor, we've got to watch, we've got to be vigilant, to make sure it doesn't regress, but the world today has changed fromt eh world in which my mother left school at 14 to become a shop girl.

And that's a damn good thing.

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OK, that was about three times longer than planned, and I rambled, and I need to tidy it up. Gah!

OK, the other part of the post becomes a separate post. Later. Possibly. And I was going to throw in more links to studies and stuff, but, y'know, Google is your friend. Or Yahoo if your name is Iain.