—
33. In the past 20 years, the world has seen an explosion in the field of communications. With advances in computer technology and satellite and cable television, global access to information continues to increase and expand, creating new opportunities for the participation of women in communications and the mass media and for the dissemination of information about women. However, global communication networks have been used to spread stereotyped and demeaning images of women for narrow commercial and consumerist purposes. Until women participate equally in both the technical and decision-making areas of communications and the mass media, including the arts, they will continue to be misrepresented and awareness of the reality of women’s lives will continue to be lacking. The media have a great potential to promote the advancement of women and the equality of women and men by portraying women and men in a non-stereotypical, diverse and balanced manner, and by respecting the dignity and worth of the human person.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
Over time, the technological & information revolutions built into the field of communications and its associated disciplines, which expanded the possibility of human expression into new media; where even several decades into this progression, we do not have an answer as to the best means by which to have these communications technologies work best for us, as a whole. In part, it seems due to the rapid change of the technology curve with its attendant innovations.
The participation of women in media has been non-trivial, and more and more substantial as time progresses. Because women have begun to agitate and demand in not only the public and political arenas but also in the world of media, their voices continue to emerge without the adulterated input of men in media. Of course, 1995 is not late 2018. However, some of this seems to develop more rapidly in the era of justice for legitimate cases of sexual misconduct and violence against women, whether in liberal-progressive bastions including Hollywood or in traditionalist-conservative edifices such as the Roman Catholic Church.
Being heard matters, especially for the, at times, least among us, in vulnerable positions with career-or-not decisions in the hands of Hollywood magnates or holy-or-heathen status in the Caesarian choices of abusive priests, bishops, deacons, archbishops, and, at least, one eventual Pope. The knowledge about women in statistics helps, which speaks to the statement in 1995. Women’s difficulties were more known at the time.
The stories and narratives continue to deluge the airwaves and computer screens in the 2010s. This amounts to an international social cleansing through deliberate cover-ups and conspiracies of silence about the abuse against women. Vigilance in moral uprightness – so not losing sight of the ethical objectives of a fairer and more just society – through these movements can lead to better institutions, whether popular media or religious (also happens in secular communities too). Women have been stereotyped, as noted in the paragraph. Indeed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is quoted as saying, “The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”
That seems true, even self-evident; furthermore, one can extend this to its women in areas where women disproportionately become disadvantaged or mistreated, which functions across political lines and throughout religious-secular communities. Take, for example, the rampancy of abuse of women: psychologically, physically, and sexually – for starters.
The “global… stereotyped and demeaning images of women” impact their accurate representation to the rest of the world. Women, for one obvious example, will lack agency in some way. Then they can fall into a number of tropes. Some minority groups within North American and Western European societies continue to speak out about the problems of the offensive representations.
The expectations for women and the legitimate wants and desires of an individual woman may be isomorphic, with, furthermore, the representations in media reflecting both of the former referents. This would be legitimate. However, with demeaning images and stereotyped portrayals, this reflects a pathology within the media systems akin to the social and structural pathologies in human institutions built and in operation “across political lines and throughout religious-secular communities.”
The purpose, as frankly noted by paragraph 33 of the Beijing Declaration, is “narrow commercial and consumerist purposes.” The tropes, objectification, sexualization, and 2-dimensional depiction of women becomes worth a pretty dollar and garners the attention of advertisers and the audience gobbles it up. It also lies with us, too, in that last point. We purchase and with monetary valuation support it.
The emphasis, in 1995 and still to this day, is the increase in women for technical areas and decision-making in communications and mass media. This includes the arts. Canadians think Margaret Atwood or Lee Maracle; Americans think Joan Rivers or Beyonce. If other people tell the stories of individuals and identifiable groups, then these individuals and identifiable groups do not own the narrative within their legitimate slice of the story of the nation; they, in essence, live represented in ways worse than non-existence: inaccurate existences in the popular minds. This can become the basis for extensive misrepresentation and stereotypes over time.
The lack of proper representation of women with the mass media of the nations of the world continues to be an issue in equality for women because the expectations and demands of women become reinforced in these media outlets; not always malicious or benevolent, the mass media can play an important role in the accurate representation, where accuracy is a necessity, of the lives of women.
With the continued lack of proper representation of women, the media will lack a wider variety of voices from a broader set of backgrounds. The portrayal of women as 3-dimensional and fully-fleshed-out human beings with vices and virtues, as with any particular man, would be integral to the advancement and empowerment of women. Why? As a first thought, this would be in the interests of many women, to not have to fight against the stereotypes, on the one hand, or need to live to – often – unattainable ideals of virtuous conduct and beauty, on the other hand.
However, the battle against this onslaught comes with the difficulties of market forces, historical inertia, and the varieties of purported verities working to prevent women from entering into the professional arenas of the world. These self-same faux and peculiar truisms amount to the roles imbibed by generations of women and taken as matter-of-fact to be imposed by the men.
It comes reflected in much of the religious mythologies with, for a stark example, women as property or chattel to the men in their lives. These have been greatly diluted, for the better, especially with advances in the sciences and implementation of gender equality policies. These have innervated the general culture to create a more pervasive sensibility of the rights of women.
And it shows. Women represent larger swathes of the workers of the world and the educated of the world in spite of the restrictions placed on them from a variety of domains. This should not come without backlash but should also not be done without taste. I see no need in diminishing respect or dignity of others in the work for women’s equality, especially men, or women, who may want this least – whatever the precept is taken as the basis for the disagreement.
But the inclusion of women from a variety of backgrounds within the media is a good means by which to promote “the advancement of women and the equality of women and men.” It does so through the accurate portrayal of the lives and the flaws of women. It can be quite striking, and interesting, as this is the way in which women become perceived more humanely as they achieve more status in the world.
It is an intriguing global development with the broader horizons for women mirroring but not necessarily being causally linked with the more varied definitions of women through mass communications technology. The most important statement within this paragraph may, in fact, come from the final sentence about the “non-stereotypical, diverse and balanced” presentation of men and women with the recognition of the respect, dignity, and worth of each individual as a human being.
These representations may come with arguments about statistics or the impacts of women, so for those who want more quantitative data. Those same individuals, respectfully, may direct attention to conservative sources of information about violence against women. As a class without distinction by nation-state identification, or nationality, we can target the United Nations Women statistics cataloging the disproportionate impacts on women compared to men.
That is to say, the violence against men exists but not even close to the number of women subject to this violence – far more often committed by men against women as well. This becomes a men’s issue, as they are the majority perpetrators. The responsibility of the abuser is to stop abusing, not on the abused to appease them, and on us to prevent the continued abuse and garner justice for the abused. As stated by UN Women, around the world, 35% of women endured “either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives. However, some national studies show that up to 70 per cent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime.”
750 million women and girls, currently alive, have been married prior to their 18th birthday, which is stating the 9-figure numbers of women undergoing child marriage – partnership prior to the age of consent. About 200 million women have been subject to female genital mutilation. 120 million girls around the world have endured either forced intercourse or forced sexual acts. Women and girls are 71% of the human trafficking victims. 82% of women parliamentarians “who participated in a study conducted by the Inter-parliamentary Union in 39 countries across 5 regions reported having experienced some form of psychological violence while serving their terms.”
This degradation, humiliation, and abuse reflect attitudes about women, often seen in the media portrayals; these impact the perceptions of the women of the world and leads to the need to implement new representations of women if we wish to see a more gender equal world. The conservative sources may indicate particular individuals who lost positions for freedom of speech, which, as a matter of principle, should not happen; however, consider, the balance of scales weighs massively, overwhelmingly in the favor of women as legitimately mistreated around the world compared to a few prominent men taken from posts prior to confirmation of any wrongdoing.
It points to the important distinction of Professor Noam Chomsky with demonstration and allegation with the, obvious, inclusion that most sexual abuse of women goes unreported and underreported. But Chomsky’s point, one can make the charge. Then the next is proving it, as stated:
I think it grows out of a real and serious and deep problem of social pathology. It has exposed it and brought it to attention, brought to public attention many explicit and particular cases and so on. But I think there is a danger. The danger is confusing allegation with demonstrated action. We have to be careful to ensure that allegations have to be verified before they are used to undermine individuals and their actions and their status. So as in any such effort at uncovering improper, inappropriate and sometimes criminal activities, there always has to be a background of recognition that there’s a difference between allegation and demonstration.
Nonetheless, there is a legitimate social pathology observation about the mistreatment of women. The next is verifying the cases because some are lies, as in the Rolling Stone article depicting a false set of allegations as true or real; they later turned out to be false. But even in these cases, as, sometimes, wrongly and unfortunately, happens to conservative and liberal men alike, the evidence leans heavily in favor of the need to deal with the – not only American but – global “real and serious and deep problem of social pathology.”
The media and mass communications constructed democratically with input from women from a variety of backgrounds can be an important part of humanizing women in the media with the open permission to tell honest stories of the successes and failures, vices and virtues, and hopes and fears of women as they live their daily lives and as they project into the future what they want for themselves and others.
Indeed, the responses against the work for better and more accurate, realistic, representations in the media comes in the form of denial of women’s rights, such as reproductive, while accepting their own religious rights. It is all-or-nothing on rights; hence, the universal aspect of them. If you wish to continue practicing the religion freely, you must accept, by logical extension, the rights of others to safe and equitable access to reproductive health services including abortion.
Another angle is a misunderstanding of the phrase “toxic masculinity” to mean all masculinity is toxic: not true/false. The basic premise is some forms of masculinity are counter-productive and negative, or toxic, to the individual and the society and, therefore, need encouragement to be changed. In this manner, conservatives and liberals argue for much the same form of masculine self for males but talk past one another. Of course, everyone loves the men in their lives, but the target is to work together for our better future through work towards better individual conduct. It saddens me, on this one, because both sides agree but remain dogmatic in ignorance on each other’s terminology and firm on vernacular differences to not find that common ground, not even see it.
Another is to invent terms such as “toxic feminism” as either a placeholder through selections of highly unusual and particular deviancies from the core of feminism or women’s rights activism to demonize both feminism with a broad brush and individual women’s rights campaigners. It remains an immature tactic through the transparent usage of oppositional terminology out of context with a bad re-invention and then going from the highly particular to the very general without skipping a beat.
Associated with it, the general use of epithets to demean the opponent in order to delegitimize them without confrontation of the arguments. Same with character assassinations, defamation, guilt by association, and so on. All very common to fail in the attempt to take down a political opponent who argues for the equality of women.
One more is the inclusion of a handful of cases to demonize an entire global movement for women’s equality, which is then extended paranoically into the idea of a conspiracy against academics en masse. The cases can be Matt Taylor, Larry Summers, or Sir Timothy Hunt, for examples. But these are select and not the principle but, rather, a minute set of exceptions; maybe, they could look into the history of Norman Finkelstein as a case study, too. An important person from the other side of the ‘spectrum.’
Conservative commentators and public intellectuals, by contrast, have openly called for the shutting down of entire disciplines and massive defunding of universities because these do not serve the public economically as much as STEM and trades, where this raises questions about their ideas of the proper place of a postsecondary institution in the training of a worker who makes money or in the development of an informed and civically engaged citizen; their opposition has not declared this on theology departments, too – showing their cards and open bias with covert support for, more often, particular brands of Evangelical Christianity there, which shows the inability to even deal with the arguments anymore – simply shutdown through defunding or public threats to shutdown deviant academics, particular disciplines and departments, even whole aspects of universities, e.g., which has effects – as is starting to, potentially, happen in Hungary with gender studies.
The arguments continue to fail; thus, these conservative commentators and public intellectuals, also some as ultra-conservative reactionaries, argue for the radical changes mentioned before. In fact, this shows in the attempts to develop AI for identification of programs against their interests to caution and warn high school students about it, because the arguments appear to fail with a) their colleagues and b) most of their students, so go to the high schools – the pipeline.
When their lies, omissions, and arguments fail, go to demonization and character assassination, then attempts to defund entire disciplines and postsecondary institutions, finally, the targeting of the high school students as even these tactics fail in order to, at least, attempt to indoctrinate some of them.
Recall: the actions against the “leftists” – which has become a catch-all invective for anything against ultra-conservative reactionary forces – in other countries implementing the will of the people or having people’s movements within, for instance, America was assassination with the support of the state or the government in media collusion with ultra-conservative commentators and writers. The same individuals and organizations making excuses for rampant militarism around the world.
Of course, another claim is activists are “whining” or partaking of “victimhood culture” or are, in fact, “victims.” This can be stated against activists from some Indigenous communities, as an example. In Canada, bear in mind, the right to vote for Indigenous men and women only came into effect in 1960. The last residential school closed in 1996. 92% of non-Indigenous adults have a high-school diploma and only 48% Indigenous adults on reserve have them. Indigenous peoples, depending on the group, have lifespans 5-15 years shorter than non-Indigenous Canadians. This is not yesterday and far from the founding of the nation.
Some individuals, and whole peoples and communities, were targets of direct government and religious institution attempts to assimilate children, obliterate culture including languages, and also convert-or-kill the adults. People are still alive. Their children are impacted by the trauma that harmed the entire lives of their parents.
Yes, these can amount to “victims,” but the term is being used to dismiss people rather than confront them – and their legitimate concerns and demands for justice. It becomes easier to justify crimes against others if you can define them as less-than through, within this particular context of words turned, epithets such as “victim.”
It is similar to the issues with the term “postmodernist” and “neo-Marxist” or their admixture. One, the mixture or combination of the terms remains an oxymoron. Two, these people who argue for free speech – which is a misnomer in Canada (should be freedom of expression, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 19 and the Canadian Charter of Rights of Freedoms in Article 2(a)), debate, dialogue, and so on, and against the purported massive underground colonies of neo-Marxists and postmodernists only speak within their own circles.
I am against violent groups/individuals or endorsements, or calls, for violence, as seen in aspects of groups such as Antifa and various hate groups in North America. I support free speech, debate, and dialogue, but I would expect these individuals claiming to be in support of freedom of expression, especially the prominent and well-financed public intellectuals, to debate the purported academic deviants and sociopolitical-academic enemies rather than almost always and only talk about them.
They, almost never, debate any, probably because they do not want to debate them and because their opponents amount to ghosts – phantasmagoria from their paranoia and sense of a changing culture from the young upwards. (Hence, the focus on the high school students.)
These articulations suffice as smoke but, often, not as serious objections. The disproportionate stereotyping of women and negative impacts on the lives of women is a global phenomenon with precursors and real counterparts today. It becomes an ethical issue to rectify these problems. We can do it. The assiduous efforts in more difficult circumstances worked before; it can be successful again.
—
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
Got Writer’s Block?
Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo by Candice Picard on Unsplash