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From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sex in videos
Message-ID: <1991Mar11.153415.22369@aero.org>
Date: 7 Mar 91 21:01:56 GMT
References: <1991Mar1.101138.12962@mailer.cc.fsu.edu> <1991Mar1.220724.22726@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
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In article <1991Mar1.220724.22726@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu> lputnam@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu writes:
   I don't think that the original poster was saying that sex is bad or sick. He
   was saying, I think, that there seems to be an increase in using females as
   sexual objects in videos. Men are rarely portrayed that simplisticly.
   [...]

I read an article in the Sunday SF Examiner/Chronicle a week and a half
ago which discussed the "new trend" in rock music.  According to the
article, it is no longer expected/accepted that (male) rock musicians be
either emaciated or overweight.  The trend now is for them to be in very
good shape, and to then display their bodies in concerts, videos, etc.
The article went on to say that all the things which had been done with
women in terms of marketing their bodies, displaying them in "sexy"
ways, etc, was now being done with men.

A point about this, the article I'm replying to, and other things I've
noticed lately.  People have certain ideas about the way things are in
the world, such as "women are exploited for their bodies in rock
videos."  These things are often true and relevant.  The thing I've
noticed, though, is that people often therefore seem to imply or assume
that the symmetrically opposite thing must be true, such as "men are not
exploited for their bodies in rock videos."  Related to this, I was in a
discussion with someone who claimed that women were paid less because
companies knew that, statistically, they would take more time off for
pregnancy, so they would cost more to the company.  At one point in the
discussion, he sent me an article that said that, actually, men took
more time off due to health problems, had a greater tendency to problems
with alcohol which interfered with their work, etc.  So, the initial
belief was "women take off a lot of time to have children (so they are
more expensive to employ)."  The opposite belief which this seemed to
engender was "men don't take as much time off from work as women (so
they cost less to employ)."  The article contradicted this, but it seems
that most people I talk to accept/believe the pregnancy argument
(although they don't feel that women should be paid less because of
that, for the most part).  Where do these ideas, some correct, some
incomplete, some incorrect, come from?  And why do people assume that if
A is true for women, it must not be true for men (like the video
exploitation)?

Muffy