President Obama on Modern Day Slavery

On Tuesday, President Obama gave a speech on human trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference that no doubt elevated the priority of this policy in a way that only a presidential speech can. He gave an impassioned plea to end the scourge of human trafficking, remarking that children younger than his daughters are sold into servitude.

President Obama used all the right words, noting that a better term for human trafficking is modern day slavery, and drawing historical parallels to slavery in the U.S.  The President also accurately noted that human trafficking is a problem across the globe, including in the U.S.

What President Obama failed to mention in his speech is that, despite having the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act since 2000, anti-trafficking efforts in the U.S. have been an abysmal failure. Investigations are open on fewer than 3% of estimated cases, and, according to two whistle blowers, the FBI has practices in place that discourage agents from investigating human trafficking cases. But it’s difficult to get a real handle on anti-human trafficking efforts in America since the FBI is unusually stingy with data on this crime. At least one member of congress has called upon the FBI to release its human trafficking data.

During his speech, President Obama announced a new Executive Order that requires greater accountability from government contractors. The law moves us one step closer to addressing labor slavery, but does nothing to address the most common form of trafficking — sexual exploitation  (79% of trafficking worldwide). In fact, throughout his speech, I was struck by the President’s overt emphasis on manual labor trafficking over sex trafficking in the many examples he furnished. (Both types of slavery are heinous, and this discussion is not meant to suggest otherwise.) Whether his intention was to avoid the graphic nature of sex slavery or focus on the type of slavery that is addressed by his Executive Order, President Obama left viewers with a misleading impression of the problem.

My last quibble with the President’s speech is that he twice understated the problem by claiming that 20 million people were in modern day slavery worldwide. His own State Department estimates put the number at 28 million, while critics show that U.S. and global statistics are likely underestimates.

It is a wonderful day when the President of the United States raises awareness about such a pressing social ill. It would be more wonderful if the actions of his Administration matched his elegant words.

Mitt Romney and the 47% Meme

On Monday, Mother Jones released a video recorded in May of presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in the Boca Raton home of “private equity party boy” and “sexy party” host, Marc Leder. A hidden camera caught controversial remarks about Israel, Iran, and a joke about being more electable if his parents had been born in Mexico, but the topic of this post is Romney’s use of the 47% Meme.

The 47% Meme is the idea that half of Americans take from rather than contribute to tax coffers. It sometimes surfaces in the form of the “takers vs. makers” frame. I have encountered this “argument” for years on Fox News, so it is surprising to see it gaining national attention now. Romney did a superb job articulating the 47% Meme in response to a question of how he might win in November:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.”

Many myths start with a kernel of truth. The 47% Meme is loosely based on the statistic that 47% of Americans pay no income tax (down to 46% in 2011). This meme is wildly dishonest since people pay a host of other federal, state, and local taxes. It’s about as honest as saying a person doesn’t eat vegetables because she only eats carrots, celery, bell peppers, cucumbers, and cabbage, but not broccoli.

So who is paying taxes, and what taxes are they paying?

Federal Income Tax

The Tax Policy Center finds that two main groups comprise the 46% who do not pay federal income tax: (1) The poor whose subsistence-level income is not taxable, and (2) those who receive tax expenditures. This chart shows that the lion’s share of tax expenditures goes to senior citizens, children, and the working poor, with the notable exception of 7,000 millionaires who paid no income tax in 2011.

Other Federal Taxes

But enough about income tax since this narrow focus only serves to further the misleading 47% Meme. The chart below shows a more accurate picture of who pays federal taxes. If we don’t count retirees, only 8% of Americans pay no income or payroll taxes.

Americans also pay federal excise tax on gas, liquor, cigarettes, airline tickets, and a long list of other products, so virtually every American pays federal taxes in some form. And contrary to the 47% Meme, poor and middle-class Americans actually pay a greater percentage of their income in federal payroll and excise taxes than wealthier Americans.

State and Local Taxes

When it comes to state and local taxes, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds that the poor pay more in state and local taxes in every state except Vermont. As the chart below indicates, state and local taxes are regressive, meaning that those who can least afford to pay, pay more.

Romney has apologized for the inelegance of his statements, but stands by their substance, despite ample data debunking the dependency (above) and entitlement bases for the 47% Meme. I don’t believe that Romney believes that half of the people in the U.S. are pathetically entitled “victims.” He is a smart person, and this is a ludicrous line of reasoning. But what does it say about our bitterly partisan nation that heaping unmitigated scorn on the poor brings in big bucks from the base?

Explaining Sexism 101 to Ali Velshi

CNN’s Ali Velshi

I don’t want to be writing this post. I was hoping this Labor Day would truly be free of labor, but I woke up to another dismissive Tweet from CNN Senior Business Correspondent Ali Velshi that compels comment. I’ve always enjoyed and respected Mr. Velshi’s analysis, but was unpleasantly surprised yesterday by his response to Mitt Romney’s claim to create 12 million new jobs if elected. Mr. Velshi stated, “Are you kidding? I’ll wear a dress for a week if after four years we have averaged a quarter million jobs per month.” Uh, wear a dress?

In other words, if Mr. Velshi loses his wager, his punishment is to wear women’s clothing. His comment derives its punitive meaning from the fact that we live in a society that routinely devalues women, and it’s considered absurd and demeaning for men to don anything feminine. Comments disparaging femininity are so ubiquitous and societally acceptable that Mr. Velshi’s sexism likely went unnoticed by most of his male and female viewers. Stealth sexism right in front of our faces.

Most boys learn to devalue the feminine at a young age since masculinity is learned through parents, teachers, media, advertising, and other entities encouraging intense rejection of everything associated with femininity (e.g., reviling the color pink, “boys don’t cry” (like girls), and the now classic gendered insult, ”you throw like a girl.”) Both boys and girls learn to value masculinity. To highlight this double standard, it would be non-sensical for a female news personality to say she would wear pants as a punishment.

Granted, it’s problematic to reify or celebrate socially constructed femininity since it comes with damaging baggage, but it’s also not okay to publicly disparage it as this equates to disparaging the values girls and women are raised to embrace. This is what Mr. Velshi did. I tweeted him to say his words were “demeaning to women,” and he went out of his way to insult me. He labeled my critique “dumb” without articulating a counter argument. Here’s the exchange:

2 SepCaroline Heldman‏@carolineheldman

@alivelshi just promised to wear a dress for a week if Romney’s economic plan works. Demeaning to women. @CNN

2 SepAli Velshi‏@AliVelshi

@carolineheldman why is it demeaning?

2 SepCaroline Heldman‏@carolineheldman

@AliVelshi You plan to wear it for losing a bet, a punishment. Dresses are symbols of femininity. You’re saying being feminine = punishment.

23hAli Velshi‏@AliVelshi

@HeeWhoSay yeah I sort of ignore coments like @carolineheldman unless I’m VERY bored. That was a dumb comment

22hCaroline Heldman‏@carolineheldman

@AliVelshi My “dumb” critique was obvious. Gender 101. It’s called “devaluation of the feminine.” Thought u were a smart guy. Disappointing.

10hAli Velshi‏@AliVelshi

@carolineheldman ridiculous

Unfortunately, Mr. Velshi’s comment joins a multitude of other television personalities saying blatantly sexist things. His statement was couched in a channel surfing marathon that included watching Snooki’s unbridled excitement in finding out that her (then) unborn baby would be a boy. Different channel, same sexist devaluation of girls/women. And unfortunately, Snooki and Mr. Velshi’s words matter because popular culture creates, reflects, and reinforces cultural norms.

I’m sure Mr. Velshi and others will think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but to mix metaphors, I’m zeroing in on a drop of water that serves as a reminder that there’s an ocean. If Ali Velshi acknowledges the blatant sexism of his sentiments, either privately or publicly, I promise to wear a dress for a week.

On “Having It All”

Second Shift

Marissa Mayer’s ascendency to the helm of Yahoo! while seven months pregnant has caused a media stir. Mayer’s comment, “my maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it,” has drawn criticism that she’s setting an unreasonable “Superwoman” standard for working women, and that she’s capitulating to anti-family corporate norms.

I am elated that Marissa Mayer makes a gazillion dollars and is the CEO of a major company at age 37! I am disappointed that there’s a press frenzy about her baby bump. It’s not news when male CEOs take two-week vacations, so why so much focus on this? But since it’s in the news, I’m a little sad to see Mayer nodding to male-centric family leave norms, but hopeful that she’ll pioneer better norms for women in the future.

Mayer’s situation and Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent Atlantic article have reignited the debate about whether women can “have it all.” Yes, women can ”have it all” – balancing a paid job and kids — if they are wealthy, have a position of significant power, or have a partner who will equitably share the burden of childcare and housework. But a better option is to reconsider the sexist premise that women must excel in both the private and public spheres to be fulfilled. Men are assumed breadwinners, but standards for being a “good father” are incredibly low compared to expectations for “good mothers,” and fathers are given more slack in the workplace than mothers.

Women now comprise half of the labor force, and 4-in-10 are mothers who are the sole or primary breadwinner, but the idea of “having it all” is only applied to women because of sexist societal scripts that women will procreate and will be the primary caretakers of children. When is the last time you heard a man fretting about “having it all?” These gendered expectations place an undue burden on women to work the “second shift,” and rob some men of the opportunity to develop a deep bond with their children and create stronger relationships with women as egalitarian domestic partners. (Sharing housework makes men happier!).

The persistent assumption that parenting is “women’s work” is borne out with data showing that women who work full-time outside the home perform twice the child care and three times the housework as their spouses who work full-time. This gender gap causes 40% of working moms to always feel rushed compared to 25% of working dads. Stress is the norm for many of the 13 million single parents in the U.S. who are disproportionately female (84%) and women of color.

So how can we “have it all” without pulling our hair out? One way is to be wealthy. Mayer’s net worth of $300 million means she can afford lots of help, most likely from other women, and can hire a pediatrician and other baby professionals who can accommodate her busy schedule.

Another way to “have it all” is to have gain sufficient power within the workplace to set your own schedule. People in the highest echelons of corporate America have the flexibility to decide when and how they work, but only 3% of CEO slots and 14% of executive officer positions are held by women. A critical mass of female leaders could bring an end to anti-family corporate practices, but women’s gains in corporate and political leadership have recently stalled and even reversed, so this won’t happen anytime soon.

For most women who aren’t wealthy, corporate titans, our best option for “having it all” is to find a partner who is able and willing to share the burden of child rearing and housework. Based on the statistics above, these partners are few and far between. Women who identify as feminists do less housework per week than non-feminists, but men who are married to feminists do the same amount of housework as men married to non-feminists. In other words, it’s not enough that you’re a feminist. Your partner needs to be one, too.

Perhaps the best way to “have it all” is to recognize that working full-time inside and outside the home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Contrary to societal fairy tales about parenting, having children actually makes us less happy. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert finds that parents are happier eating, exercising, or sleeping than they are caring for children. “Looking after the kids is only marginally better than mopping the floor.” Using survey data, Sociologist Robin Simon reports that “Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers.” Economist Arthur C. Brooks‘ research shows that people with children are 7% less likely to report being happy than those without children. In short, having children leads to less happiness.

The purpose of this post is not to criticize women or men who choose to have children (although societal pressure makes procreation virtually compulsory for women). Moms have it hard enough already. As Sociologist Lisa Wade points out, “the U.S. government fails to support our child rearing efforts with sufficient programs (framing it as a ‘choice’ or ‘hobby’), the market is expensive (child care costs more than college in most states), and we’re crammed into nuclear family households (making it difficult to rely on extended kin, real or chosen). And the results are clear: raising children changes the quality of your life.”

The ongoing debate about whether women can ”have it all” will cease when we collectively reject the false premise that women need to work outside the home and have children to achieve real fulfillment. This social script is sexist and simply inaccurate. According to the data, women without children are the happiest, followed by moms who work outside the home, then stay-at-home moms (who are more socially isolated). But forget this data. The lower relative level of happiness for stay-at-home moms is no doubt a reflection of our society’s devaluation of this occupation. If we properly valued homemaking, parents would make $96,261 a year, men would work in the home as much as women, and the state would better support this important part of our economy.

The larger point here is that women are being set up by gendered cultural scripts that tell us we have to break our backs in both the public and private spheres to be fulfilled. If we choose to have children, it should truly be a choice and an informed one that eschews the myth that children automatically equal happiness. If we choose to pursue a career and not have children, we can be better prepared to deal with social pressures meant to make us feel like we’re “missing out.” And if we choose to “have it all,” mothers can approach this challenge with greater clarity about the resources and teamwork needed to minimize the personal toll.

This discussion has centered around the choices of privileged women, but many women don’t have the luxury of choosing between kids or paid work. Therefore, it’s vitally important that we pursue the larger projects of de-gendering parenting, valuing homemaking, and making workplace practices family friendly. Only then can women and men truly exercise choice in crafting their life paths.

Sexual Objectification, Part 4: Daily Rituals to Start

This is the fourth part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Daily Rituals to Start

This post details some daily rituals that girls and women can engage in to interrupt damaging beauty culture scripts.

1) Start enjoying your body as a physical instrument. Girls are raised to view their bodies as a project that they have to constantly work on and perfect for the adoration of others, while boys are raised to think of their bodies as tools to use to master their surroundings. We need to flip the script and enjoy our bodies as the physical marvels they are. We should be thinking of our bodies, as bodies! As a vehicle that moves us through the world; as a site of physical power; as the physical extension of our being in the world. We should be climbing things, leaping over things, pushing and pulling things, shaking things, dancing frantically, even if people are looking. Daily rituals of spontaneous physical activity and thanks for movement are the surest way to bring about a personal paradigm shift from viewing our bodies as objects to viewing our bodies as tools to enact our subjectivity.

Fun Related Activity: Parkour,”the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment,” is an activity that one can do anytime, anywhere. I especially enjoy jumping off bike racks between classes while I’m dressed in a suit.

2) Do at least one “embarrassing” action a day. Another healthy daily ritual that reinforces the idea that we don’t exist to be pleasing to others is to purposefully do at least one action that violates”ladylike” social norms. Discuss your period in public. Eat sloppily in public, then lounge on your chair and pat your protruding belly. Swing your arms a little too much when you walk. Open doors for everyone. Offer to help men carry things. Skip a lot. Galloping also works. Get comfortable with making others uncomfortable with your transgressions of gendered scripts.

3) Focus on personal development that isn’t related to beauty culture. Since you’ve read Part 3 of this series and magically given up habitual body monitoring, body hatred, and meaningless beauty rituals, you’ll have more time to develop yourself in meaningful ways. This means more time for education, reading, working out to build muscle and agility, dancing, etc. You’ll become a much more interesting person on the inside if you spend less time worrying about the outside.

4) Actively forgive yourself. A lifetime of body hatred and self-objectification is difficult to let go of, and if you find yourself falling into old habits of playing self-hating tapes, seeking male attention, or beating yourself up for not being pleasing, forgive yourself. It’s impossible to fully transcend the beauty culture game since it’s so pervasive and part of our social DNA before we’re even conscious of being conscious. It’s a constant struggle. When we fall into old traps, it’s important to recognize that, but quickly move on through self forgiveness. We need all the cognitive space we can get for the next beauty culture assault on our mental health.

Sexual Objectification, Part 3: Daily Rituals to Stop

This is the third part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects. (Part 1, Part 2).

This post outlines four damaging daily rituals of objectification culture we can immediately stop engaging in to improve our health.

1) Stop seeking male attention. Most women were taught that heterosexual male attention is our Holy Grail before we were even conscious of being conscious, and its hard to reject this system of validation, but we must. We give our power away a thousand times a day when we engage in habitual body monitoring so we can be visually pleasing to others. The ways in which we seek attention for our bodies varies by sexuality, race, ethnicity, and ability, but the template is the “male gaze.”

Heterosexual male attention is actually pretty easy to give up when you think about it. First, we seek it mostly from strangers we will never see again, so it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of life. Who cares what the man in the car next to you thinks of your profile? You’ll probably never see him again. Secondly, men in U.S. culture are raised to objectify women as a matter of course, so an approving gaze doesn’t mean you’re unique or special. Thirdly, male validation through the gaze doesn’t provide anything tangible because it’s fleeting and meaningless. Lastly, men are terrible validators of physical appearance because so many are duped by make-up, hair coloring and styling, surgical alterations, girdles, etc. If I want an evaluation of how I look, a heterosexual male stranger is one of the least reliable sources on the subject.

Fun related activity: When a man cat calls you, respond with an extended laugh and declare, “I don’t exist for you!” Be prepared for a verbally violent reaction as you are challenging his power as the great validator. Your gazer likely won’t even know why he becomes angry since he’s just following the societal script that you’ve just interrupted.

2) Stop consuming damaging media, including fashion, “beauty,” and celebrity magazines, and sexist television programs, movies, and music. Beauty magazines in particular give us very detailed instructions for how to hate ourselves, and most of us feel bad about our bodies immediately after reading. Similar effects are found with television and music video viewing. If we avoid this media, we undercut the $80 billion a year Beauty-Industrial Complex that peddles dissatisfaction to sell products we really don’t need.

Related fun activity: Print out sheets that say something subversive about beauty culture — e.g., “This magazine will make you hate your body” — and stealthily put them in front of beauty magazines at your local supermarket or corner store.

3) Stop Playing the Tapes. Many girls and women play internal tapes on loop for most of our waking hours, constantly criticizing the way we look and chiding ourselves for not being properly pleasing in what we say and what we do. Like a smoker taking a drag first thing in the morning, many of us are addicted to this self-hatred, inspecting our bodies first thing as we hop out of bed to see what sleep has done to our waistline, and habitually monitoring our bodies throughout the day. These tapes cause my female students to speak up less in class. They cause some women to act stupidly when they’re not in order to appear submissive and therefore less threatening. These tapes are the primary way we sustain our body hatred.

Stopping the body-hatred tapes is no easy task, but keep in mind that we would be utterly offended if someone else said the insulting things we say to ourselves. Furthermore, we are only alive for a short period of time, so it makes no sense to fill our internal time with negativity that only we can hear. What’s the point? These tapes aren’t constructive, and they don’t change anything in the physical world. They are just a mental drain.

Related fun activity: Make a point of not worrying about what you look like. Sit with your legs sprawled and the fat popping out wherever. Walk with a wide stride and some swagger. Public eating in a decidedly non-ladylike fashion is also great fun. Burp and fart without apology. Adjust your breasts when necessary. Unapologetically take up space.

4) Stop Competing with Other Women. The rules of the society we were born into require us to compete with other women for our own self-esteem. The game is simple. The “prize” is male attention, which we perceive of as finite, so when other girls/women get attention, we lose. This game causes many of us to reflexively see other women as “natural” competitors, and we feel bad when we encounter women who garner more male attention, as though it takes away from our worth. We walk into parties and see where we fit in the “pretty girl pecking order.” We secretly feel happy when our female friends gain weight. We criticize other women’s hair, clothing, and other appearance choices. We flirt with other women’s boyfriends to get attention, even if we’re not romantically interested in them.

Related fun activity: When you see a woman who triggers competitiveness, practice active love instead. Smile at her. Go out of your way to talk to her. Do whatever you can to dispel the notion that female competition is the natural order. If you see a woman who appears to embrace the male attention game, instead of judging her, recognize the pressure that produces this and go out of your way to accept and love her.

Stay tuned for Sexual Objectification, Part 4: Daily Rituals to Start.

Sexual Objectification, Part 2: The Harm

This is the second part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects. (Part 1).

After nearly three decades, the feminist “sex wars” are back.  This fiery debate from the 1980s pitted radical feminists who claimed that female sexual objectification is dehumanizing against feminists concerned about legal and social efforts to control female sexuality.  Over a decade of research now shows that radical feminists were right to be highly concerned.

The end of the “sex wars” gave rise to so-called third wave feminism that generally celebrates women’s sexual objectification as a form of female empowerment.  It also enabled a new era of sexual objectification, characterized by greater exposure to advertising in general, and increased sexual explicitness in advertising, magazines, television shows, movies, video games, music videos, television news, and “reality” television.

Getting back to the “sex wars” and how radical feminists were right, women who grow up in a culture with widespread sexual objectification tend to view themselves as objects of desire for others. This internalized sexual objectification has been linked to problems with mental health (e.g., clinical depression, “habitual body monitoring”), eating disorders, body shame, self-worth and life satisfaction, cognitive functioning, motor functioning, sexual dysfunction, access to leadership, and political efficacy.  Women of all ethnicities internalize objectification, as do men to a far lesser extent.

Beyond the internal effects, sexually objectified women are dehumanized by others and seen as less competent and worthy of empathy by both men and women.  Furthermore, exposure to images of sexually objectified women causes male viewers to be more tolerant of sexual harassment and rape myths.  Add to this the countless hours that most girls/women spend primping and competing with one another to garner heterosexual male attention, and the erasure of middle-aged and elderly women who have little value in a society that places women’s primary value on their sexualized bodies.

Theorists have also contributed to understanding the harm of objectification culture by pointing out the difference between sexy and sexual.  If one thinks of the subject/object dichotomy that dominates thinking in Western culture, subjects act and objects are acted upon.  Subjects are sexual, while objects are sexy.

Pop culture sells women and girls a hurtful lie: that their value lies in how sexy they appear to others, and they learn at a very young age that their sexuality is for others.  At the same time, being sexual, is stigmatized in women but encouraged in men. We learn that men want and women want-to-be-wanted. The yard stick for women’s value (sexiness) automatically puts them in a subordinate societal position, regardless of how well they measure up.  Perfectly sexy women are perfectly subordinate.

The documentary Miss Representation has received considerable mainstream attention, one indicator that many are now recognizing the damaging effects of female sexual objectification.

To sum up, widespread sexual objectification in U.S. popular culture creates a toxic environment for girls and women.  The following posts in this series provide ideas for navigating new objectification culture in personally and politically meaningful ways.