Gendered images, the history of marriage and bromance

[greenie_breizh]

A couple of serious links for tonight:

Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 3 about images of women in advertising - it's worth watching even if there are no groundbreaking points that are being made in there, and there's some funny. :)

The one quote I really liked was one when Jean was talking about the fact there's been a rise recently in images that objectify men, as well. And how sometimes that's used to say, look, men are treated just as badly as women.

The problem? Apart from the fact it doesn't happen with as much frequency, it is that the structure doesn't work the same for men and women. "There are no consequences to men for being objectified." The images that we circulate that perpetuate an image of masculinity as necessarily violent and unemotional have much more power, and are much more dangerous.

--

An interesting post, An exegesis on same-sex marriage, in particularly because it goes over the history of marriage as an institution.

--

And I'll throw a lighter link in there, Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon being adorable together. RL bromance FTW. :D

Comments

[terra-placidus.livejournal.com]

The last couple things I wanted to add were that domestic violence is an interaction pattern. You can't have an interaction with only one partner. Both partners are responsible for the way they relate to one another. An author (whose name is probably in my notes) who wrote a number of books about violence against women was embraced by the feminist community until she wrote a book about the dynamics of violent relationships, talking about these interaction patterns. She was totally shunned by the so called feminists, because she suggested that both partners have a role in the patterns that lead to violence. Never once did she say that violence was an acceptable response in any way - all she said was that abused women were not passive entities in these relationships.

Stats and numbers do not, to me, erase meaning, they erase bias, and they erase excuses.

Also, it's important to note that over many studies, gender is not a predictor of violence. Personality disorder is the main predictor of violence, and overall, I think the gender rates are similar. There are gender differences for specific personality disorders - men are more likely to have anti-social personality disorder, whereas women are more likely to have borderline personality disorder, but in sum, they're pretty equal.

Okay. Off to the lab.