Page 3 -Smut Or A British Institution?

My most dedicated student is female and she throws down HARD!!! In fact anyone taking it easy on her because of her gender tends to regret the decision within seconds because she gives no quarter

I have a group of like minded people - nothing counts but your level and ability when you walk onto the mat. I am happy that I am not alone in this regard as pretty much every school under my Association does the same and we are not unique

However, I have learned that this approach needs gently introducing to many female participants because there are many layers of societal conditioning to cut through before you hit a comfort level so as frustrating as it is there has to be a level of accomodation in some cases

 

I think this varies from person to person. Personally I'd see it as a sign that the gym's encouraging of women training hard and being proficient fighters, but then I know many girls who'd feel too much pressure - the "I have to get fit to start training" type . I don't think it has anything to do with women in particular.

 

oh for gods' sakes guys. read some sport sociology, theres a deep rooted cultural and social problem leading to why women dont participate in male dominated sports. its the same for science.

this is a wiki link to youth sport participation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_youth_sports

we've been telling people that there is such thing as a girls and boys sports for generations and that attitude filters down and will take some time to disappear.
for the longest time, even now, we tell women and young girls that some sports are "boys sports" either openly or by the way we dont publicise women in "boys sports". same with science

up until the 70's schools were advising girls to not go into science (my younger female cousins were recently told by their teachers that it was strange that they liked physics)
advertising still pushes the cardio bunny idea towards women which is why they dont go in the weight room.

 

I listen to a great podcast called "The Life Scientific" where Jim Al-Kalili interviews prominent scientists about their life and work.
You don't have to listen to very many of the female interviews before you hear some sort of sexism or other, they had to overcome, rearing its head.
And these are some of the top people in their field!
Just listen to what Jocelyn Bell-Burnell had to go through for example.
God knows what it's like for "lower level" female research and lab assistants.

 

Yes, I meant that a woman thinking like that is going to avoid all mostly male environments anyway, no matter how friendly the environment is to women. I agree with everything you've said.

 

Have you read about the fallout of the scientific America scandal in 2013?
So many women talking about the issues they've had in STEM recently.

It's funny, in all issues discussed in this thread, the shirt, page 3 etc, if we traded gender for race, everyone in this thread would be condemning the sun and Taylor.

 

Here's a cool paper on sexism in the STEM fields, believe it or not, it genuinely is a problem.

http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset/article/viewArticle/205

 

I've brought up the sun in a previous post:

Say if mat Taylor's shirt had cartoon images of a bunch of black guys in hip hop clothing holding guns. Not blatantly racist but in view of young black kids trying to get into science seeing a famous scientists only interaction with anything resembling a black person being him wearing a tshirt of "thugs" they would be weary.

 

What if it was a t-shirt with golliwogs on?
You know...harmless old images of black people that aren't intended to be racist?

And while you are nit-picking the actual content of the half naked women you are forgetting that a large part of annoyance with the shirt was the context it was being worn in.

 

i dont know how to explain it anymore clearly. im not trying to be sarky, genuinely, read some literature on inequality in gender and race (history, books and journals)

its about context. its the context that sun only shows women in one role regularly while they regularly show men in a variety of roles - that is inequality.

if they showed black people only ever in one role in a regular feature but white people in a variety of roles then that would also be inequality and im sure that we on MAP would be complaining about it.

my view is that its not even that the girls are being sexualised. its the fact that it regularly shows girls doing one role.

but for many people complaining, the way society already sees women as sexual objects just makes the issue of page 3/women only regularly in one role which happens to be titillating men, is a compounding issue

say it wasnt a single gangsta rapper, it was just generic "gangsta" images? it wouldnt be racist explicitly but the context of how american media views black people as thugs, the shirt would be an issue.

in society we view women as sexual objects (we do as a society, if you want evidence i can provide it) and having generic sexy women on a shirt in a press meeting about science is feeding into that societal view when we really shouldnt be.

 

But the context is key.
You don't object to sexual imagery of women.
Neither do I believe it or not.
I'd be a big ol' hypocrite of I did. I think we can discuss good and bad within that (some images offer a more positive message than others) but I don't want to "ban" sexual imagery of women (or men) per se. That's a futile aim.
Where the forefront of the debate is where this imagery ends up (in a gobal science presentation, on the third page of a newspaper, on TV at 4 in the afternoon, etc) and the message that context presents (to both men and women).

I thought we'd established what he got falls under the "internetz gonna internet" category?

 

actually its not.

being a pin up/glamour model can be seen as taking back one's sexuality from oppressive and traditional gender roles (like religious ones). thats fighting sexism

but the use of that image by other people to push the idea that women can only be in one role (to please the male eye) which is what the sun does is sexist.

for example bojangles was an african american who started dancing to show that black people were talented and could interact well with whites in theatre. he was fighting racism.
but the media used bojangles image and only showed black people dancing as the only role for black people which was racist.

not main point - yes, matt taylor got a lot of schtick he didnt deserve but its hard to explain discrimination with the importance of context to people who rarely experience such things and at least people understand now.

 

I'll put it another way.
I am banned from punching you in the face Lefty.
BUT...if I change the context (join your MMA gym and we end up sparring, you attack me) it's now OK. Encouraged even. But that doesn't change the basic principle that in normal daily life and discourse people don't punch each other in the face (apart from in Newcastle).

If Matt Taylor was in a nightclub in that shirt I'd think he was a tool but as far as I'm concerned he's mainly damaging himself (giving people a handy signal he's a tool). I'd rather he didn't wear it but wouldn't exactly complain.
If he was walking down the street at 4pm I'd think it was less acceptable. Now I have to explain to my daughter why a man is wearing naked women in his shirt and what that means to her as a female.
When he wears it to front one of mankinds greatest scientific achievements? Woah dude what are you thinking?!?! Get that shirt off!

 

im a D student so dont worry! i decided i'd start reading on topics i disagreed with at uni (feminism, conservative policies etc) and found that i actually agreed with them a lot more than i thought. its worth reading all sides of the issue.

this actually was super informative, i was wondering why the models interviewed kept talking about nudity being okay while the social activists talked about the roles of women. they essentially agreed on the same thing they just saw different points of contention.

 

That is exactly the nub of the issue.
You seem to think images and such don't have any impact and so don't effect people or help form opinion and self identity and our sense of standing in a wider society.
I (and others) think images (and a whole host of other inputs) do exactly that.

You have to talk to kids about EVERYTHING. Sometimes they bring up the most obscure stuff that barely even registered with you as an adult.
I know if my daughter noticed the shirt and what was on it she'd say "Daddy why does that man have nudey ladies on his shirt?".