Why are you all so afraid of raising the standard in our society? Likening a request to have a retake on the way we present female sexuality in the media and advertising to the Taliban is ridiculous.

Yes women take responsibility for what they wear and how much we drink but we, as a part of our society should also take responsibility for how women are depicted.

If you fail to see anything wrong with the current depictions of women in advertising then obviously you fail also in your moral obligations to the coming generations of women and to yourselves

"raising the standard in our society"

Rose who is afraid of raising the standard?

The problem may be that there are disagreements about what that standard should be. I'm for standards that respect individual choices, that minimise the ability of the wowser set to control other peoples lives. For standards that let both men and women make their own choices about who and what they are as responsible human beings despite the efforts of politicians, advertisers and preachers.

There will be rough patches along the way and clearly there are rearguard actions by those who don't cope with others freedom.

R0bert

It is not that simple RObert. If you had a society that depicted women only as sexual objects how do women live within that culture without being harrassed on a daily basis. The standards in the media have to be acceptable within that 'greater good' parameter. I agree that those parameters are debatable.

In the old days (gosh I am getting old) people worried less about these sorts of depictions in the media because there was a natural sense of social responsibility. I don't know what happened to it along the way, now it is a bit too open slather, and while my line in the sand might be more generous than MTR and less generous than yourself, these discussions need to be had.

Of course most people are of the view that personal liberties are important but not always and not at the expense of the greater good. We have forgotten we are a world made up of not only adults but children as well, and it is the influences and culture that affects the way young people are raised.

It really comes down to respectful transactions.

JamesH
This thread is about women so I mentioned women, but I agree that inequality had a lot more to do with class structures and landowner disparities than gender at various times throughout history. Women did not have many rights either, but in context of class, richer women in general were better off than peasant men and women or serfs. Neanderthal man and woman did not think too much about rights, that is a modern phenomenon, they just did what they needed to survive but I reckon you would have seen a natural altruism even in those social groups in terms of protecting the tribe.

I wonder where the post by James is that pelican responded to.

Briar,

'Feminism is a white middle class ideology.'

Well, that's inevitable. White middle class women have a platform and a voice, the rest are running around working to keep their head above water. I must admit the constant CEO/Gender pay gap stuff makes my blood boil.

a) It is illegal for women and men to be paid different for the same job, and the small discrepancies found when you take into account how hard it is to compare two employees, can be explained away by negotiating attitudes. Some discrimination is no doubt there in some industries, but what employer would employ a man at 17% more for the same job. It just doesn't make economic sense.

b) What if, and I know it's radical, more men than women WANT to be CEOs. It would make sense to find out how many women are applying. Now the retort of course would be my favourite 'societal expectations'. These women who would rather have kids and do without the stress (as would I) don't know what they 'really' want, but a middle class feminist knows better.

c) Breaking down gender roles takes a few generations, and happens slowly. Baby boomer chauvinist pig mad men clones will leave the workforce and be replaced by waxed chested cosmetic wearing metrosexuals brought up by feminist single mums.

d) It is inconsistent for a movement to say they are all about breaking down gender roles and then complain 'women's jobs' are paid less than 'man's jobs'. It drives me batty that nobody notices this contradiction. People know the relative salaries of different jobs before entering the workforce and can choose accordingly.

e) Sometimes I suspect the whole CEO issue is an exercise in propaganda, with the aim of representing men as CEOs and women as aged care workers. We never hear about doctor's wives, ladies who lunch, HR 'professionals', garbage men, cleaners, abattoir workers etc.

Pelican, re your "old days" reference, in those old days the type of media coverage that exists today was unheard of.

There wasn't the possibility of the saturation there is today, so it's hard to compare the situations. Maybe that's why people worried less - they weren't assailed at every turn, and had more control over what they'd look at, hear read etc in public spaces as well as at home.

There wasn't as much flesh around to aggravate everybody, though the young have always been set upon by older generations for their sartorial choices, no matter what they were.

I'm not offended by how people dress on any grounds other than the aesthetic, so my standards would be a lot more liberal than those who are disgusted by cleavage and short skirts.

If dress choices are to be the benchmark for determining who is and isn't a sex object, I don't know how we'd arrive at a standard.

I also wonder what part class plays in the judgements about who is a sex object. The semi naked woman in Vogue is more acceptable than the semi naked girl from the working classes? I don't know, just throwing it out there.

Pelican

As your drink spiking anecdote illustrated, alcohol is the most commonly used drug and the main culprits are friends, usually as a prank. The stereotype of drink spiking is that it is done by rapists, so people put false hope in having female friends watch drinks and women often unfairly accuse any men who went near them.

Houllie

I have also noticed the way that drink spiking has become a general purpose cop-out. When I started drinking, it was understood that some nights people could handle alot and some nights, a few would go straight to people's head. About ten years ago, people started pretending that the nights when they handled alot were the norm and the other nights were attributable to drink spiking.