who said it? rapist or men's magazine?

I copy and pasted this, in its entirety, from Jezebel.com, because I couldn't cut out any part of it for a nice little box-filling quote.


The University of Surrey reports on the study (conducted jointly with researchers at Middlesex University), to be published in the British Journal of Psychology. Researchers gave a group of men and women quotes from the British lad mags FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo, as well as excerpts from interviews with actual convicted rapists originally published in the book The Rapist Files. The participants couldn't reliably identify which statements came from magazines and which from rapists — what's more, they rated the magazine quotes as slightly more derogatory than the statements made by men serving time for raping women. The researchers also showed both sets of quotes to a separate group of men — the men were more likely to identify with the rapists' statements than the lad mag excerpts. The only slightly bright spot in the study: when researchers randomly (and sometimes incorrectly) labelled the quotes as coming from either rapists or magazines, the men were more likely to identify with the ones allegedly drawn from mags. At least they didn't want to agree with rapists.

Still, the results as a whole are pretty disturbing. Says lead study author Dr. Miranda Horvath, "We were surprised that participants identified more with the rapists' quotes, and we are concerned that the legitimisation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated." Her co-author Dr. Peter Hegarty adds,

There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects. We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders?

Many of the rapists quoted in the study talked about coercing women or having sex with them even though they were initially unwilling. However, so did the lad mags. Horvath says, "Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads' mag could have come from a convicted rapist." A lot of these stereotypes — that women say no when they really mean yes, or are "asking for it" by going out with a man or wearing a short skirt — have indeed been normalized, and it's sad but not surprising that they appear in a lot of lad mags. Defenders of such statements like to frame them as innocent, or even helpful, observations. But perhaps the news that they sound just like rapists will make people — and magazines — rethink their words.

Middlesex University generously provided us with a copy of the quotes the researchers used. See if you can tell the difference between the rapists and the lad mags:

1. There's a certain way you can tell that a girl wants to have sex . . . The way they dress, they flaunt themselves.

2. Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it?

3. A girl may like anal sex because it makes her feel incredibly naughty and she likes feeling like a dirty slut. If this is the case, you can try all sorts of humiliating acts to help live out her filthy fantasy.

4. Mascara running down the cheeks means they've just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.

5. What burns me up sometimes about girls is dick-teasers. They lead a man on and then shut him off right there.

6. Filthy talk can be such a turn on for a girl . . . no one wants to be shagged by a mouse . . . A few compliments won't do any harm either . . . ‘I bet you want it from behind you dirty whore' . . .

7. You know girls in general are all right. But some of them are bitches . . . The bitches are the type that . . . need to have it stuffed to them hard and heavy.

8. Escorts . . . they know exactly how to turn a man on. I've given up on girlfriends. They don't know how to satisfy me, but escorts do.

9. You'll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they'll do it willingly.

10. There's nothing quite like a woman standing in the dock accused of murder in a sex game gone wrong . . . The possibility of murder does bring a certain frisson to the bedroom.

11. Girls ask for it by wearing these mini-skirts and hotpants . . . they're just displaying their body . . . Whether they realise it or not they're saying, ‘Hey, I've got a beautiful body, and it's yours if you want it.'

12. You do not want to be caught red-handed . . . go and smash her on a park bench. That used to be my trick.

13. Some women are domineering, but I think it's more or less the man who should put his foot down. The man is supposed to be the man. If he acts the man, the woman won't be domineering.

14. I think if a law is passed, there should be a dress code . . . When girls dress in those short skirts and things like that, they're just asking for it.

15. Girls love being tied up . . . it gives them the chance to be the helpless victim.

16. I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.

Answers. 1. Rapist, 2. Rapist, 3. Lad mag, 4. Lad mag, 5. Rapist, 6. Lad mag, 7. Rapist, 8. Lad mag, 9. Rapist, 10. Lad mag, 11. Rapist, 12. Lad mag, 13. Rapist, 14. Rapist, 15. Lad mag, 16. Lad mag

Common sense is all too often a casualty of the media culture we live in. Parents assume the sexual content and innuendo in the programming they are watching will go over their child's head, or think it's cute to dress their child in sexy clothes or encourage her to imitate Beyonce's dance moves so they can post it on YouTube. In reality, they are teaching their children what kind of behavior will help them get noticed.

...Everyone in society suffers when children are sexualized, but those hurt worst are the children themselves. In February 2007, the American Psychological Association released a report on the sexualization of girls that found that girls' exposure to hypersexualized media content can negatively impacts their cognitive and emotional development; is strongly associated with eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression; leads to fewer girls pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and causes diminished sexual health.

But it's not just our daughters who are being affected by these images. Boys and adult men are also learning to value women only for their sex appeal, which the report says can lead to increased incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence, and increased demand for child pornography.

- excerpt. Melissa Henson, CNN

The really frustrating thing about the “Save the boobies” campaign and similar ones is that it gets it exactly backward. Often, the point of breast cancer treatment is to destroy some or all of the boobies in order to save the woman.

Saying that we should work to cure this disease because it threatens breasts is really upsetting. For starters, it suggests that women are worth saving because they’re attached to breasts, rather than the other way around. But worse, it tells any woman who’s had a life-saving mastectomy that she’s given up the thing that made people care about her survival. What a punch in the stomach.

Randall Munroe, writer of xkcd


thank you, sir. and amen.

"We don't necessarily think it's problematic for women to be portrayed as 'sexy.' But we do think it is problematic when nearly all images of women depict them not simply as 'sexy women' but as passive objects for someone else's sexual pleasure."

In their study, the authors cite a large body of research that has shown a link between sexualized portrayals of women and violence against them, as well as garden-variety sexual harrassment and, in some men, neanderthal attitudes toward women.

This hypersexuality dominates the cultural representation of what it means to be a woman today. And you'd better believe that hurts us all. Because as much as we claim otherwise, the media often becomes another way by which we measure ourselves. Sure, we know all about photo-shopping and air-brushing, and we know it's not real. But still: As much as we try not to, we buy into what is presented as a cultural norm.

"The fashion industry shouldn't be using kids, tweens or teens in mature fashion campaigns because it sexualizes young girls in the name of art. Portraying young girls as fully sexualized adults obscures the fact that they are only 'posing' in adult roles,” pop culture expert Jessica Wakeman says.
“This contributes to a society that's desensitized to the inappropriateness of making little girls into Lolitas for the enjoyment of adult men. I question why young girls are dressed up like adults in revealing outfits, hair and makeup. Do the ad campaigns have nothing else going for them so that they have to resort to sensationalism?"

AND THEN:


However, Los Angeles-based fashion and business reporter, Anne Riley-Katz, said that while such campaigns and couture-driven spreads do push boundaries, that doesn’t automatically make them distasteful.

“The creative and artistic direction in the fashion world is intended to be far afield from traditional commercial advertisement, often by being outrageous. The photographers, makeup artists and stylists will most certainly be adults, and for luxury and high fashion ads, will be very experienced – they want the best for the ads. Does that make them pedophiles? I would strongly disagree,” she said. “The ads make more of a statement. Whether that translates into sales for a luxury label is harder to measure, but it creates unmistakable - and valuable - brand awareness. There may be questionable innuendo in the ads, but short of pornography or something actually illegal, it's near impossible to regulate taste level.”


So... even the contact speaking FOR the campaigns has to admit that it's only for the value (re: $$$) that they are sexualizing little girls. She says that "the ads make more of a statement" but the only positive (?) statement they make is brand awareness. Even someone who's job title is "pop culture expert" (i mean really, that exists?) knows that this is wrong and inappropriate.

Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has pulled a pair of ads featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington for being overly-airbrushed:

"We should have some honesty in advertising and that's exactly what the ASA is there to do. I'm delighted they've upheld these complaints," she said.
"There's a big picture here which is half of young women between 16 and 21 say they would consider cosmetic surgery and we've seen eating disorders more than double in the last 15 years.

"There's a problem out there with body image and confidence. The way excessive retouching has become pervasive in our society is contributing to that problem."

...Perhaps significantly, though, both rape victims depicted (Schwartzman's friend Netanya was also raped, by a stranger) eventually contact their attackers to explain what the men did wrong. Victims shouldn't have to do this, but their words make a powerful point — rapists themselves, not alcohol, revealing clothing, homelessness, or "bad choices" are responsible for victims' pain. As activist Don McPherson explains, "we do nothing to talk to men about not raping, but we do talk to men about how to protect themselves, which is [...] why we place the blame on women when something happens." The attitude that sex is something men are supposed to want and women are supposed to evade doesn't just result in victim-blaming — it also creates a monolithic view of sex that denies the experiences of people like Schwartzman (as Sokolow points out, "consent to one form of sexual activity isn't consent to every other form"). Part of teaching men (and women) not to rape is the lesson that sex should be cooperative and communicative, not something, as McPherson says, that "we do to the Other."