Top 10 Ways Sports Illustrated Disrespects Women

10. Sports Illustrated disrespects women through sex-discriminatory coverage of women's sports. (Fewer than 10 percent of Sports Illustrated pages are devoted to women's athletic achievements.)


9. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by displaying demeaning stereotypes of female sexuality. The swimsuit issue features women models posed not as athletes of strength, skill, and endurance but as playthings--in costumes no one could possibly swim in competitively.


8. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue disrespects women by showing women's primary value to be their value as sex objects.


7. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by photographing their bodies as if they are merely body parts--breasts, buttocks, and crotches.


6. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by encouraging boys and young men to view women as sex toys and by turning voyeurism into a sport.


5. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue disrespects women by imitating an idea of women that originates in pornography. Mimicking magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, Sports Illustrated spreads out women's bodies on the page for male "readers" to ogle at.


4. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by numbing men to women's humanity.


3. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by exhibiting women to men as the "other"--as if women were a different species from the "real" athletes who are men.


2. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by sending a message to girls and young women that no matter how much they excel in athletics, all that matters is how they look to men.


1. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue disrespects women by directly contradicting Time-Warner's corporate hype, which claims the magazine stands for serious sports journalism and respects the ability and dignity of women and girls in athletics. If that were true, where is the magazine with all the scantily clad men wearing nothing but Speedos?

Women and Sports:

Sport in A Masculinist World

Gender Biases in School Sports

You Throw Like A Girl!

Woman Rescues Two in House Fire

CANADA - A Toronto woman is being considered for a fire service award after she rescued a 19-year-old disabled woman and the woman's brother from a house fire in the city's northwest yesterday.

Natalia Harispuru, 29, a special education teacher at Msgr. John Corrigan Catholic School, was in the school's office at 4 p.m. Monday when a colleague burst into the room and announced that a house across the street was on fire.

Together with principal Blanka Matulic, education assistant Anna Marincola, and day care supervisor Karen Leroux, Harispuru raced across the street where smoke and flames could be seen pouring out from the backyard of a neighbouring home.

"I jumped up onto the fence to see over, and saw that fire had engulfed the entire back of the house. There was smoke and flames everywhere," Harispuru said. "Then I heard the brother yelling 'Help! Help!'"

Harispuru and colleagues then ran around the front of the house, and while some ran to phone 9-1-1 and warn neighbours to evacuate, Harispuru went to the front door and kicked it in.

Harispuru rushed in, found the two injured people and pulled/carried them to safety. The female was on the top floor of the semi-detached home when the fire started and her brother, who is in his early 20s, was on the main floor.

"She put herself in a life-threatening situation to assist with this rescue," Toronto Fire Capt. Mike Strapko said. "She put her life in peril and went above and beyond. There's nothing official, no paper work yet, but the firefighters have been talking and she could be recognized with a civilian citation at our annual Rescue and Merit Awards."

"There was heavy smoke and a lot of heat," Mike Strapko said, explaining the severity of the fire. "Even the fire alarm was mostly melted, the kitchen was completely gutted and the fire spread throughout the attic."

Still suffering a pounding headache, sore chest and raspy voice, Harispuru has taken the rest of this week off to recover. The reluctant hero was quick to credit her co-workers for their lifesaving teamwork today.

"I want to stress that even though I was the one crazy enough to go into the house, it was a team effort. Being such a small school, it really does feel like a family and we always work together. We wouldn't have been successful without everyone's cooperation," she said.

"Everyone's calling me a hero, but I don't see it that way. I saw the need, I was in the right place at the right time, and I had a lot of help. I was glad to help the family."

"They would have died for certain had she not been there," said one of the firemen on the scene.

PERSONAL NOTE: Normally I don't cover topics like this, but I found it interesting that she just kicked in the door and saved them both from the fire.

Lesbians Attacked in Hate Crime

A lesbian couple in Oshawa were brutally assaulted in front of their six-year-old son and his classmates on November 3rd by a stranger. Mark Scott, 43, also of Oshawa has been charged with two counts of assault causing bodily harm. He was released and is scheduled to appear in court on Dec 16. Police are also deciding whether to charge him with a hate crime.

CANADA - Anji Dimitriou and Jane Currie were picking up their three children up from Gordon B Attersley Elementary School when a fellow parent attacked them.

Currie says they had just parked their truck and Dimitriou had gotten out when she saw Mark Scott — who has verbally harassed them in the past — approaching.

"Out of the corner of my eye I saw this man whom we've had run-ins with in the past. He made a beeline straight for Anji. I can see him getting him angrier and angrier. He said to Anji, 'Which of you two men spoke to my kid? Fucking dyke lesbians.' I jump out and just as I come around he spits right in her face. She wiped the spit off and he punched her in the face and hit her again in the back of the head."

"She was yelling obscenities and another father tried to shoulder him out of the way. Then he smacks me. My cheek burst with the force of the impact. He's about 6'4" or 6'5" and 250 pounds and we're both about 5'2". His fist was probably half the size of my head."

"My face was bleeding profusely everywhere. All these children who had just finished school had to see all this blood. They were screaming, including my own son who was up close and personal. They were devastated, hysterical. His own child saw this."

Currie says their two daughters, ages six and seven, came out in time to see their parents' bloody faces. "They were terrified. They didn't know where to go."

Currie says Mark Scott was collecting his children and preparing to leave when the principal came out and told him to wait in her office until the police arrived.

"He said, 'Fine.' He didn't think he had done anything wrong."

Currie says she and Dimitriou were taken to the hospital and the man was arrested by Durham Regional police based on eyewitness testimony from teachers, students and parents present. "But the worst is the mental side and the children. We took them to see a therapist on the Wednesday."

"We have to show them every night how the alarm will go off," she says. "We went to Zellers and they didn't want to get out of the truck. 'What if he's in Zellers?' they asked. 'What if he comes back to the school and comes after us?'"

Dimitriou says the assault has also been devastating for other children at the school and parents. "The principal says he's done more damage than just beating us," she says. "Parents and students are terrified."

The Oshawa school has placed Mark Scott under a no-trespass order which requires him to stay 200 metres away from the school. The police have also obtained an order requiring him to stay 500 metres from Dimitriou and Currie.

Dimitriou says she and Currie have each had a previous encounter with the man, in which he has blocked their access to a parking spot and called them "fucking dykes." She says the man has also been verbally abusive to other parents, but that everybody has let it slide.

"Teachers know about him," she says. "Nobody wants to talk to him because he's a psycho. This is a town of soccer moms and nobody wants to open their mouths."

Sgt Paul McCurbin, the media relations officer for Durham regional police, says the police will ask the Crown attorney to approach the case as a hate crime.

"If the evidence shows that the only reason these two ladies were attacked was because of their gender or sexual orientation that evidence will come forward," he says. "We don't appreciate anybody being assaulted in our community. The police did what they're supposed to do, we arrested the bad guy."

But area residents say the police have been useless in helping to stop homophobic incidents in Durham region.

"My partner and I actually had to sell our house because we were being discriminated against so much," says Udana Muldoon, the chair of Durham Queer Parenting. "We had poo thrown at our house, water in our gas tank, we were called names all the time. The police officers said, 'If it's such a big deal, you should probably stay in your backyard."

Muldoon says she, her partner and their three-year-old are moving from Oshawa to a smaller town on the outskirts.

Peter Richtig, the executive director of the AIDS Committee of Durham Region, says the assault is not isolated. He says there have been homophobic assaults in the past.

"There have been other incidents, some even more violent. We have clients who have been forced to move out of the region, who have lost their housing after they were outed. Some have been outed by the police, some have ended up in psychiatric wards because of psychological harassment."

"Because of situations like this people are very closeted. They're afraid to be out."

"I'm angry," she says. "I just moved up here two years ago. I lived in Toronto my whole life. I never had anybody call me a dyke or make remarks to my children."

She says the couple is considering a civil suit against Mark Scott.

About Lesbianism and Feminism:

Lesbianism and Feminism

The Woman Identified Woman

1970s Lesbian Feminism

Big Dyke on Campus

Sarah Palin sour over election results

POLITICS - In an interview aired today Sarah Palin tried to blame other reasons for her party's defeat:

"We didn't get the Hispanic vote." (After all why would Hispanics vote for a party that is so anti-immigration? They didn't get the black vote either as less than 4% of black males voted for McCain/Palin and 0% of black women.)

"We were outspent so tremendously." (Not true, the Republicans spent just as much.)

"The anti-incumbency sentiment that was spread across the land and our ticket representing the incumbency." (In other words, the Anti-Bush effect.)

Sarah Palin is trying to keep the focus off how she is the #1 reason the Republicans lost so dramatically. She was quite simply a scandal magnet. Palin's various gaffes, her daughter Bristol's pregnancy and shotgun wedding, the prank call from two Quebec comediens, the Saturday Night Live spoof, Troopergate, the Hustler spoof, and a slew of other scandals.

McCain's loss to Barack Obama last week was an Electoral College landslide that dramatically reorders the divided political map that's been the norm during the last two U.S. elections. Obama even won in traditionally Republican states like Indiana and gained ground in just about every demographic group, including the fast-growing Hispanic bloc that Republicans have courted.

Asked about rumours of problems between herself and running mate McCain toward the end of the campaign, Palin said: "We had a great relationship ... There was never any inkling of tension between the two of us."

Amid speculation she'll run for president in four years, Palin said she prayed she wouldn't miss "an open door" for her next political opportunity.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said. "And if there is an open door in O-twelve or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

Palin also said it wasn't fair for people to suggest she brought the ticket down.

"I think the economic collapse had a heckuva lot more to do with the campaign's collapse than me personally," Palin said. "Sure, I'm upset that people are blaming me, but I'm trying not to let it bother me."

See Also: Sarah Palin is NOT a Feminist

Is Gay the new Black?

UNITED STATES - Now that America has elected Barack Obama President, who happens to be an African American, many believe we’re well on our way to moving past the struggles of the civil rights era. It appears the egalitarian democratic republic our Constitution hoped we would someday become has arrived.

Except it hasn’t.

Across the nation homosexuals (and single parents for that matter) took a hit on November 4th. Proposition 8 - which bans gay marriage in California - and similar initiatives in Florida and Arizona have dampened the mood. America can rejoice that President-elect Obama embodies all that it has become since the arrivals of settlers in Jamestown and Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock - the good and the bad - but even he has faltered on the topic of homosexuality. While perhaps necessary for election, toeing the line on gay rights is a sham and a shame. Full rights should be granted to all law-abiding members of the United States of America.

Full, unalienable rights.

Marriage and the option to adopt a child in need of a caring home should one be mentally, emotionally, and economically fit for the task - notice I didn’t say straight or married - are two of these rights. They are not privileges granted to the elite or the predominant. They are unalienable. Just as we now look back at slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized, tolerated, widespread racism, we will look back at these acts of hatred just the same when times change.

Just as we cringe when our grandparents show the ignorance of their day by using offensive or hateful words such as "Chinaman" or "Colored," our children and grandchildren, ashamed, will look at us in disbelief for allowing this mistreatment of American citizens. Next time you hear a friend or even yourself calling something or someone "queer," "homo," "butch," or worse, think about that.

Barack Obama can win the presidency as a biracial man, but rest assured he would not have won as a homosexual.

It’s time the call for equal rights for all Americans takes center stage. Gay is the new black.

---

And don't think for an instant that George W. Bush hasn't been pushing gay rights too.

Bush was the first Republican president to appoint a gay man to serve in his administration, Scott Evertz as director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and he also nominated Michael E. Guest as ambassador to Romania, who became the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. ambassador.

And lastly, whats with all the kissey faces with the Saudi Arabians? Don't forget Bush kisses men regularly as part of his job. He also kisses Saudi butt too, but thats because they invested money in his oil company Arbusto years ago... but that is another story.

See also: TheCall to stop Homosexuality

Abortion or Single Motherhood?

FEMINISM - Some women are up to the task of single motherhood and on the other hand some women are not financially capable of taking care of a kid (or another kid). In the United States:

66% of women who have abortions are not married.

60% of women who have abortions already have 1 or more children.

73% of women who have abortions are living below the poverty level (earning $9,570 or less per year).

Black women are three times more likely to have an abortion and Hispanic women are twice as likely to have an abortion.

75% of women who have abortion cite lack of money to raise a child as one of their reasons for having an abortion.
I respect women who choose to become a single parent. It is a difficult task, no doubt about it and they deserve that respect. But at the same time we also have to respect the wishes of women who due to poverty reasons decide to have an abortion.

Choosing to have an abortion is a difficult task, for many women they don't really have a choice. They simply can't afford another kid. There is this stereotype that women who get abortions are "rich, upper-class and white", but in reality the statistics show that its impoverished people, often black or Hispanic women.

THUS the anti-abortionist lobby should really be discussing the issue of poverty amongst women.

"IF ANTI-ABORTIONISTS SPENT HALF AS MUCH TIME GETTING RID OF POVERTY AS THEY SPEND TRYING TO GET RID OF ABORTION POOR WOMEN WOULDN'T NEED ABORTIONS AS OFTEN ANYWAY."

See: Open Letter to Anti-Abortionists

Iron Jawed Angels

FEMINISM - Iron Jawed Angels recounts for a contemporary audience a key chapter in U.S. history: in this case, the struggle of suffragists who fought for the passage of the 19th Amendment. Focusing on the two defiant women, Alice Paul (Hilary Swank) and Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor), the film shows how these activists broke from the mainstream women's-rights movement and created a more radical wing, daring to push the boundaries of political protest to secure women's voting rights in 1920. Breathing life into the relationships between Paul, Burns and others, the movie makes the women feel like complete characters instead of one-dimensional figures from a distant past.

Although the protagonists have different personalities and backgrounds - Alice is a Quaker and Lucy an Irish Brooklynite - they are united in their fierce devotion to women's suffrage. In a country dominated by chauvinism, this is no easy fight, as the women and their volunteers clash with older, conservative activists, particularly Carrie Chapman Catt (Angelica Huston). They also battle public opinion in a tumultuous time of war, not to mention the most powerful men in the country, including President Woodrow Wilson (Bob Gunton). Along the way, sacrifices are made: Alice gives up a chance for love, and colleague Inez Mulholland (Julia Ormond) gives up her life.

The women are thrown in jail, with an ensuing hunger strike making headline news. The women's resistance to being force-fed earns them the nickname "The Iron Jawed Angels." However, it is truly their wills that are made of iron, and their courage inspires a nation and changes it forever.

Women who marched for the right to vote were arrested, starved, force-fed, beaten, tortured.

This is the kind of thing they endured. It comes from an email about the movie:

Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When I talk with women who say they can't be bothered to vote, or they don't know enough about the issues, I wish they were more aware that all this happened less than a century ago.

Again: Many battles have been won but the war for equality is not yet over.

Women Voters Proved YES WE CAN

FEMINISM/POLITICS - In yesterday's presidential election women turned out to vote and what is interesting is that there was more female voters (53%) than male voters (47%). Whats more, 56% of women voters cast their vote for Barack Obama.

According to exit polls black women in the USA voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, with a total of 96%. 68% of latino women also voted for Barack Obama, along with 46% of white women and 63% of women of other races. 53% of white women voted for McCain/Palin. 1% of all female voters voted 3rd party.

This says something about democracy and feminism. Women value their power to vote. Men, apparently, do not value their own vote and don't care about politics as much as women do.

It also bodes well for the future first female president. While we may be disappointed by Hillary Clinton's failure, we have to admit Barack Obama's win is a momentous occasion.

See Also:

Sarah Palin is NOT a Feminist

Obama is the new US President

Congratulations to Barack Obama!

Lets all hope he works to help further women's rights and feminism around the world and also at home. God bless Obama! God bless Feminism! God bless America!

(I'm not even religious, but I'm very happy right now!)

Sexually Active Teens watching racy shows

SEX/ENTERTAINMENT - Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behaviour than among those who have tamer viewing tastes.

Sex and the City was one of the shows used in the research.

The new study is the first to link those viewing habits with teen pregnancy, said lead author Anita Chandra, a Rand Corp. behavioural scientist. Teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.

Previous research by some of the same scientists had already found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages.

Shows that highlight only the positive aspects of sexual behaviour without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex "before they're ready to make responsible and informed decisions," Chandra said.

The study was released Monday in the November issue of Pediatrics. It involved 2,003 12- to 17-year-old girls and boys nationwide questioned by telephone about their TV viewing habits in 2001. Teens were re-interviewed twice, the last time in 2004, and asked about pregnancy. Among girls, 58 became pregnant during the follow-up, and among boys, 33 said they had gotten a girl pregnant.

Participants were asked how often they watched any of more than 20 TV shows popular among teens at the time or which were found to have lots of sexual content. The programs included Sex and the City, That '70s Show and Friends.

Pregnancies were twice as common among those who said they watched such shows regularly, compared with teens who said they hardly ever saw them. There were more pregnancies among the oldest teens interviewed, but the rate of pregnancy remained consistent across all age groups among those who watched the racy programs.

Chandra said TV-watching was strongly connected with teen pregnancy even when other factors were considered, including grades, family structure and parents' education level.

But the study didn't adequately address other issues, such as self-esteem, family values and income, contends Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a teen sex education program based at Rutgers University.

"The media does have an impact, but we don't know the full extent of it because there are so many other factors," Schroeder said.

But Bill Albert, chief program officer at the nonprofit National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, praised the study and said it "catches up with common sense."

"Media helps shape the social script for teenagers. Most parents know that. This is just good research to confirm that," Albert said.

Still, U.S. teen pregnancies were on a 15-year decline until a 3 per cent rise in 2006, the latest data available. Experts think that could be just be a statistical blip.

And Albert noted that the downward trend occurred as TV shows were becoming more sexualized, confirming that "it's not the only influence."

Psychologist David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, cited data suggesting only about 19 per cent of American teens say they can talk openly with a trusted adult about sex. With many schools not offering sex education, that leaves the media to serve as a sex educator, he said.

"For a kid who no one's talking to about sex, and then he watches sitcoms on TV where sex is presented as this is what the cool people do," the outcome is obvious, Walsh said.

He said the message to parents is to talk to their kids about sex long before children are teens. Parents also should be watching what their kids watch and helping filter messages sex-filled shows are sending, he said.

The national average for American teen pregnancy is 23%.