Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Men as wimps or vicious villains, women as innocent victims

Below are the first two paragraphs of a paper written by Swedish academic Lennart Sjoberg. The full paper can be found here.

Gender-based prejudice is an important factor in human misery. Its roots are manifold, but one is found in media, in particular in entertainment movies. In the present paper, several movies, conceived in a misoandric mood, are discussed. Women are depicted as victims and good, men as perpetrators and bad. This stereotypical theme is so common that it is not even noticed and it is commonly accepted without reflection. Causes of contemporary misoandry are discussed and it is suggested that they reside in the economic and political conditions, together with the basic psychobiology of love and sex, which have fundamentally changed the conditions of family life in most of the USA and Europe. Reflection on these conditions will not change anything but understanding prejudice is better than not even recognizing how prevalent it is.

The stereotypes of men and women are factors in gender-based prejudice. They are present everywhere: in media, in common-sense thinking and talk, in schools, homes and places of work. In the present paper I focus on the movies where the stereotypes are, at the same time, obvious and invisible. The invisible messages are particularly persuasive and therefore dangerous. The much-celebrated Dutch movie Antonia (1995), which won an Oscar for best foreign movie in 1995, is a very cleverly done piece. Here, women are strong and very clever, even brilliant, and men are either brutal criminals, stupid wimps or mentally disturbed. Marriage is out of the question, of course, and the male role in reproduction, while unfortunately still necessary, is minimized. The movie is extremely clear in its prejudices, so very obvious in its distortions of how real men and women are - yet it was given great praise by critics. On the web site www.imdb.com we read that it is "An immensely charming tribute to life". More examples will now be mentioned, their structural causes and effects discussed.....



Conservative Books Equate to 'Sexual Harassment'

A "sexual harassment" investigation is ongoing at an Ohio college after the school's librarian suggested that students read a few books from a conservative perspective. According to the Alliance Defense Fund -- a legal alliance that aggressively defends religious liberty -- a librarian at Ohio State University at Mansfield has been slapped with a "sexual harassment" charge after he suggested that freshmen read four best-selling conservative books.

Scott Savage is a reference librarian at OSU Mansfield and a member of the school's First Year Reading Experience Committee. After suggesting that students read "The Marketing of Evil" by David Kupelian, "The Professors" by David Horowitz, "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" by Bat Ye'or, and "It Takes a Family" by Sen. Rick Santorum, Savage was put under "investigation."

The Alliance Defense Fund reports that three professors filed a complaint of discrimination and harassment against Savage because the list of books he suggested made them feel "unsafe."

"Universities are one of the most hostile places for Christians and conservatives in America," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David French, who heads ADF's Center for Academic Freedom. "It is shameful that OSU would investigate a Christian librarian for simply recommending books that are at odds with the prevailing politics of the university." The Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter to school officials informing them of the librarian's constitutional rights -- just in case they forgot. But, according to the ADF, the university is proceeding with its investigation saying it takes "any allegation of sexual harassment seriously."

Even more troubling, this ridiculous "sexual harassment" claim was supported by the school's entire faculty as they voted without dissent to file charges against Savage. Later they voted to allow the individual professors to file charges, according to the ADF. "The OSU Mansfield faculty is attempting to label a librarian as a `sexual harasser' because they disagree with his book suggestions," said French. "It is astonishing that an entire faculty would vote to launch a sexual harassment investigation because a librarian offered book suggestions in a committee whose purpose was to solicit such suggestions."

Curious as to which chapter of the Nazi Party was running this university, "the Dean" of Human Events U visited the school's website and found the following statement on "diversity" -- ".we celebrate and learn from our diversity and we value individual differences. Academic freedom is defended within an environment of civility, tolerance, and mutual respect." But, apparently, this policy doesn't extend to conservatives.

I also found an incomplete list of the "Top Ten Reasons" why someone should attend OSU Mansfield. I say "incomplete" because while the school listed such attributes as "student tickets to OSU athletic events," "housing on campus" and "convenient location with free parking," the school didn't mention its most attractive feature: vilifying conservatives

Source



SLURS AGAINST OLDER WHITE MEN OK

Post lifted from Resisting Defamation -- who have set up a "Julius Streicher Award" to protest defamation of whites and compare it to Nazi defamation of Jews

Julius Streicher occupies an unusual historical position in recent European history, having been hanged in October 1946 for the crime of publishing a newspaper, Der Stuermer, which was relentlessly critical of a particular ethnic group in Central Europe from 1923 until the end of World War II. His role did not include, according to Wikipedia, military activities or the Holocaust. Still, he was convicted of "crimes against humanity" and executed. This is an adequate precedent for legal actions against those elements in the dominant media culture and the corporate entertainment culture which, like the San Jose Mercury News, promote a relentless agitprop against European Americans, their children, their cultures, their histories, and their diversities

Leo Burnett, First Award (16th Edition)

Our first winner of the Julius Streicher Award is Leo Burnett, a well known advertising expert, who developed a campaign to smear "old white men" in television ads for Washington Mutual. Older European American men are portrayed as greedy, ugly, and stupid, much like Streicher's depictions of the ethnic group he disliked. His advertising firm and Washington Mutual have a joint web page here which shows his racist and sexist video spots which easily qualify Leo Burnett for the Julius Streicher Award.

His minions include Mary Kelly at Washington Mutual and Karlyn Nelson at the Leo Burnett Agency. (Click on names for email addresses to send them messages about Leo Burnett and his Washington Mutual ads).

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