Tag Archives: Sexist

#DressLikeAWoman: Trump Causes Twitter Storm With Sexist Dress Code

News website Axios were informed by an anonymous source that women who work for the Trump campaign feel pressured to wear dresses. Mike Allen cited this claim in Axios newsletter.

According to the report, male employees “need to have a certain look”, but Trump didn’t really like the suit his press secretary, Sean Spicer, wore for his first briefing, and expects his male employees, according to the same source, to wear a tie, either a Trump one, or try to get away with Brooks Brothers and Armani.

Well, you can also get away if you’re Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

As we read in Allen’s citation, women who work for Trump are supposed to “look neat and orderly” even if they’re in jeans, even if they’re not in positions that are going to get much coverage or have to attend “glitzy events”.

Michael Allen refused to give further details when he was asked to this Friday.

But whether “dress like a woman” were Trump’s actual words to refer to him expecting more feminine attire by his female employees or not, it’s quite safe to assume that it very clearly characterizes his overall view when it comes to women and their reduction to their appearance.

After all, he does have a history of rating them on a scale from 1 to 10, of insulting women who criticized him based on their appearance, and of hurrying to get back to people who used arguments against his own appearance, like his hair or the size of his hands.

Everybody knows that he also happens to be an openly sexist bigot, working actively to ruin the lives of whoever is not a cis straight white Christian man, so yeah.

It makes much sense that uproar was caused on Twitter after the news for the White House dress code instructions became known, especially after 8 years of Barack and Michelle Obama establishing a more relaxed attitude towards the dress code that people in the White House were supposed to follow.

Twitter Users used the hashtag #dresslikeawoman to go a step further from the problematic character of narcissistic Trump directing extremely important real life issues based on appearance as if he’s still part of a glamorous reality show. Women on Twitter tried to question what it means to dress like a woman.

According to Maddie Soper (@misformaddie), a handy guide on how to #dresslikeawoman includes: “1. Identify as a woman” and “2. Get dressed”.

People posted pictures of accomplished women, such as astronauts, politicians in the parliament, pastors, judges, and Olympic champions, in the attire of their work.

Feminists from the navy or the army in camo suits, firefighters, surgeons and racecar drivers, all in their according suits, flooded the internet, accompanied by sarcastic comments directing Trump’s sexist, demeaning behaviour towards women.

https://twitter.com/TaraWildes/status/827374961631305728

https://twitter.com/Eve_Silver/status/827335248476258304

https://twitter.com/sdsunset_3/status/827919492525105152

As Erin Coulehan writes, even the mainstream, high fashion the rules of which Trump believes he leads his life by, considers such notions about women and their appearance outmoded.

I could gush about how it’s men’s fashion week in New York right now, and designers like Alejandro Gomez Palomo are challenging masculinity in sartorial form through androgynous genius to showcase the myriad facets of menswear to include looks distinctly feminine. I could discuss how forward-thinking it is the 24-year-old designer doesn’t really see the point in going along with gender binaries because that would be boring and it’s way more fulfilling to shake things up.”

Unfortunately, it is up to a man of priorities much more ridiculous and problematic than those that of my horny, paw-licking cat has at the moment, to govern the country that influences the entire planet more than any other. And I wish I could finish this article with a note of optimism, but I have no more left.

So the only thing I can remind myself and everyone reading this, is that we need to stand in absolute solidarity with all our sisters (and not just cisters) in the US, and take in mind not only their gender, but all different intersecting oppressions they might be facing through dark times.

The Love Of Political Correctness

In Greece where I live, there is a Facebook group called ‘Ancient Memes’, which has grown really popular during the last years, since it started off as particularly funny.

Its point is to write ridiculous meme phrases on historic pieces of art, something like ‘Classical Art Memes’, with usually absurdly hilarious results.

That until lately, when their submissions have started getting wildly problematic, many of them with sexist, homophobic, with transphobic content that makes me cringe.

Here is the translation of a letter I had to write them recently, due to the extreme discomfort they’ve started causing, as well as a response to a debate that has risen on the ever so discussed issue of political correctness:

I used to love Ancient Memes, I truly did. I have spent hours scrolling down on their page and just laugh on my own. My Facebook wall was used to delirious binge-sharing. Ancient Memes are – or used to be – my favorite kind of humour because they achieved something majestic: to show that we can just as easily die laughing at a silly, absurd joke, without being macho twenty-something dudebros whose mom still brings them a glass of water, while jerking off to rape jokes.

I used to love Ancient Memes. Although some of their posts had started becoming disgusting, I kept giving the page second chances with the thought that the submissions are made by different people, and that some of them are still funny. Until a post two days ago that made me feel physically sick and I immediately reported it not to punish or to take revenge as the Black Widow of Social Justice, but mostly in case it gets deleted by Facebook so that people close to me don’t have to see it and have their day instantly ruined.

I won’t repeat the exact content of the post. The point was that, for yet another time, trans people became the butt of the joke, with the use of the T word that I refuse to write here, not because I’m scared of saying Voldemort’s name, or because ‘political correctness’ is controlling my life, but because I’ve learnt that with our language we confirm, deny or erase the very existence of a group of people, and we’re not even talking about dignity here, about mental balance, or the right to demand everything that you already have as a given in order to be laid back and make jokes on Ancient Memes, like that where a sculpture of Zeus threatens Hera with death because she hasn’t cooked yet, like every female who is inferior to your Neatherdal self should, amen.

To be more precise, Facebook deleted that post, and Ancient Memes uploaded a toddler-like “mum-the-mean-teacher-scolded-me-for-calling-my-classmate-racist-slurs” reply. They sarcastically called my report a “love attack”, they called people who “ridiculously screech for respect without being able to respect themselves” idiots, they said that people like me report things because our little brain can’t understand shit, and that memes and comedy will die because of people like us and our political correctness, that will lead us to even censor ourselves.

And at this point I’ve got to admit that I’ve never been a prouder receiver of internetic flame. You can barf in your bib all you want, I don’t give a damn, the thing continues to be as follows: my report was exactly a “love attack”. You couldn’t have fallen more to the point even if you tripped into it. And for this “love” attack you can chase me with your medieval pitchforks, for all I care. My report was an attack of even problematically overprotecting love for all the trans people I know, have into my life, and associate with every day. What you call political correctness and feel so oppressed by it, is not simple respect of some odd abstract idea. For me it has a name – names – and it might not be the case, but it could potentially have my name as well apart from those of my friends’. Some of my most beloved people in the world could have seen this meme and lock themselves into the bathroom with a panic attack, cry themselves to sleep, or think for their wonderful selves things I wouldn’t even want to know.

I don’t vouch for all these because they’re not things they’ll let me witness, but I can imagine them because they are pretty plausible reactions when someone shows you for one more time with their language and behavior that they don’t even consider you enough of a person, that they don’t give two shits for your life and existence.

And do you know what’s the most interesting thing in this equation? That the trans people I know are a hundred times cooler than you, pitiful transphobic person. Some of the cleverest people I can think of are trans, some of the sweetest and kindest and most tender and funniest (more than you and your oppressed sense of humour) are trans, activists with organizational and management abilities you’d be jealous of, students with remarkable performances and persistence who will one day become your professors at the university and your kids will nervously bite their nails about whether they’ll pass their class, musicians, artists, fashionistas, life partners of cats and dogs, people surrounded by people who love them like nothing in this world, and people so multi-dimensional that in fact it seems utterly ridiculous to me that I am still trying to explain to someone like you that they are multi-dimensional.

And maybe at this point you’d like to step back and wonder what the actual hell is going so wrong with you when your lament for your First Amendment Right that is somehow threatened because it’s not ok anymore to contribute so obviously actively in the oppression of a person who might already have been kicked out of their home, beat up on the street, have the police called when they went to get the order of their last Harry Potter book from the mail because the data on their ID doesn’t match their appearance, a person whose degree will have the wrong name on it and they’ll probably have a really hard time finding a job, a person who – to make their lives slightly easier in some occasions – allows people around them to refer to them wrongly, to talk to them wrongly, to offend – deliberately or not – every inch of their being and identity, to ask questions about their body we wouldn’t even ask our pets and to demand answers that they think they deserve, making the other person feel like garbage.

So if you have some soul left and not all of it is dedicated to the noble cause against political correctness – aka in favor of your right to make someone feel like a piece of shit whenever you want – imagine how you would feel, a cis man who whom they called with the wrong pronouns on the phone once because your life happens to be a little high-pitched, and you spent an entire day measuring your fragile masculinity on the mirror. Imagine how you would feel with this post if your life was already founded on draining fights to be accepted by a hostile shitty society, to which you offer things in any case. Think how tragically funny you considered this post, and weigh the immense loss of the internetz after it got taken down, with a less horrible day for a trans person who has already faced problems you were lucky enough to not even need to ever imagine. Do you still feel like a noble avenger of the freedom of speech – the way you define it – and a true descendant of John Stuart Mill – who probably turns in his grave with the thought of your post?

If yes, then I pity you, and I wish for you to never feel this kind of love, the love that makes you want to render the day of a person that you care off slightly easier, slightly more painless. The love that teaches you how to get in the other person’s shoes step by step, in the shoes of a person who didn’t have everything as easy as you do, the love that teaches you to acknowledge your privilege and apologize every time that you fuck up. I wish for you to never love a person so much that you shudder at the possibility of them seeing something triggering online without ever letting you know because they don’t want to ruin your day.

I wish for you to always stay such an antisocial, individualist misanthrope, so that you won’t ever need to feel the love of political correctness.”

Norway Women’s World Cup Team Satirizes Sexist Attitudes to Women in Sports (Video)

Earlier this month, ESPN talking head Stephen A. Smith joked on SportsCenter that a Women’s World Cup player failed to defend a goal because she was afraid to “mess up her hair.”

Smith was received media backlash and quickly apologised, but his failed attempt at humour showed the type of sexism that

female athletes have to put up with everyday.

The Norwegian team at the Women’s World Cup, however, is having none of that.

Three members of the Norwegian team worked with journalist Nicolay Ramm to produce a video, which brilliantly satirises the

belittling criticisms and complaints, many women’s sports and female athletes get from male sports fans.

I tend to pick up the ball with my hands. Suddenly, I forget myself and…’Oh crap. Handball.’”

The Norwegian team takes on England today in its first knockout-stage match after finishing second to Germany.

‘Orange is the New Black’ Response to Sexist Interviewer Deserves a Standing Ovation (Video)

In an ideal world, reporters would stop objectifying actresses altogether. But alas, it is an age-old problem in we witness every day.

This week, Orange is the New Black stars Uzo Aduba, Natasha Lyonne and Samira Wiley, shut down Brazilian reporter Rafael Cortez when he asked a series of bizarre questions.

Natasha Lyonne and Samira Wiley 03

 

Lyonne and Wiley were asked whether as beautiful women, it’s hard to act.

Wiley responded:

I think there are some stereotypes maybe, that women are, you know, very catty on set with each other, but that doesn’t really happen on our set.”

While Lyonne said:

I feel like it’s accidentally maybe a little bit misogynistic, because it’s like “You’re so beautiful! What’s it like having to do all that acting?” I can’t tell if that’s the question, but if it is it’s insane.

Despite the great beauty on the show, everybody is, you know, professional and talented and very capable so I don’t think that anybody’s thinking about anything as meaningless as their beauty when they’re at work, or certainly at this show.”

Watch the interview below:

Women Disclose the Sexist Questions They’ve been Asked at Job Interviews

Employment law firm Thomas Mansfield asked graduates from 20 British universities to share the most bizarre and offensive things they’ve ever been asked whilst applying for jobs.

Many of the women’s responses show that sexism is very much alive some workplaces.
sexist questions 05

'Do you get PMT?'

sexist questions 01

'What do you think about dating someone in the office?'

sexist questions 02

'Are you planning on having children soon?'

sexist questions 03

'Can you wear more make up next time?' 

sexist questions 04

'Can you flirt with the customers to make them stay longer?'

Julie Goodway, a lawyer at the firm, told The Independent: “Unfortunately the experience of those surveyed are not one-offs. We are often asked how interviewees should respond to questions like these.”

She says that such questioning can amount to sex discrimination if it is unlikely that male candidates will be asked such questions.