The Guardian asked readers to share their experiences of sex discrimination in film making.

Conscious and unconscious bias is alive and well in our business. And much is to do with how “talent” is evaluated. Because of the belief in the auteur, a conceptthat has infected the film space but particularly public funding, women have been at a disadvantage – auteurs are generally men and if you can’t see it, not only can’t you be it, but no one will let you be it either. The way women’s work is assessed and their talent rated doesn’t cut it, because they’re being measured against a male paradigm.
Mia Bays, film producer, 44

Of course – because only men are complicated and interesting enough to be auteurs. Only men are clever enough and thoughtful enough and original enough. Only men contain multitudes. Women are simple, one-dimensional, conformist, dull creatures – nurturing, friendly, but not auteur-like.

There are lots of talented women out there who simply aren’t being given the chance to make work and become role models – and the UK industry as a whole rarely seems to get excited about women who do break through. I have had people walk away from me mid conversation at film events when I told them I, a woman, was making a feature length film and even though my film has been successful I can’t even get on the next rung of the ladder. I have many female friends who left for the US, and are making films with US money and backing as they never had any interest here, which shouldn’t have to happen.
Amy Mathieson, director/producer, 30

And then there’s the boys’ club mentality.

Sadly, the results of the recent study are not surprising, and the problem of gender-bias does not exist only in our industry. It is a part of a larger problem – a systemic, ingrained and institutionalized one. I am not able to explain the lack of female writer and directors concisely, but will offer that the continued comfort level and ‘boys club’ mentality is one that is rewarded time and again by executives, audiences and finance entities – so what is the motivation to change? When one can point to a successful outing by a female writer or director, it is largely ignored.
Jenna Ricker, writer and director, 40

Is it unconscious bias, or indifference?

My charitable explanation for this epidemic is that an unconscious bias may be taking place with those in power. My less charitable explanation is that those in power are fully aware of the sexism, but don’t feel like addressing it because they’re having a nice day and their male buddies are landing jobs – so ‘who cares?’
Caitlin McCarthy, screenwriter

There’s more.

Another entry for the “to the surprise of no one” file – very few British films are written or directed by women.

A report commissioned by Directors UK found that between 2005 and 2014 just 13.6% of British films were directed by women and only 14.6% of those had a female screenwriter, as a result of “unconscious, systemic bias”.

The damning report concluded that the problem of gender inequality had remained almost unchanged in those 10 years, revealing that in 2005, 11.5% of UK films had a female director, which only increased to 11.9% in 2014.

We know. How do we know? We see the movies, and the advertising for the movies, and the reviews of the movies.

Beryl Richards, the chair of Directors UK, emphasised how the “problematic” lack of progress – and in some areas even a regression – meant that a radical move was needed to force the industry to become more less inherently sexist.

Richards believes introducing a 50-50 gender parity target for films funded by bodies such as the BFI, Creative England, Creative Scotland, Northern Ireland Screen, Ffilm Cymru Wales and Film London – which collectively finance a fifth of British films – is a “the only way we will break the vicious cycle, where public money is going to a narrow, privileged few”.

Public funding of movies isn’t a thing in the US. We belong – voluntarily or not – to the Church of The Market Is Never Wrong, so we let the market decide whether or not the bosses think men will pay money to see movies written and directed by women. The market has decided that the bosses think men will never ever do that, and that there’s no need to count women because they go to the movies as the guest of a man so they don’t get to pick what to see.

The report, titled Cut Out of the Picture, illustrated that despite an equal split of men and women studying film, and subsequently entering the film industry, women dropped off at every level, particularly as budgets got higher.

The data reveals that 27% of short films – a starting point for most film-makers – were directed by women, but as budgets rose nearer £500,000, this fell to 16%, and when they rose to between £1m and £10m, just 12% had women at the helm. When it came to blockbusters with £30m-plus budgets, only 3.3% had been directed by women since 2005.

But wait. That’s not because the bosses refuse to hire them, is it? Surely it’s because they’re not good enough, or because they want to have many babies instead? Isn’t it?

Sarah Gavron, director of Suffragette and Brick Lane, said she had been waiting for things to change since she left film school in 2000, but in vain. “It was only when I started seeing films directed by women that I felt I could dare to try to direct,” said Gavron. “Role models are key to developing and encouraging the next generation of film makers.

“Film of course influences our culture which is why it is vital to have diversity and more gender equality both in front of and behind the camera. We need to work to shift this imbalance, and it seems the only way to do this is to be radical, rather than waiting for something to change.”

We’ve been waiting for several generations now, and still film continues to influence our culture in such a way that most people seem to think women are a tiny insignificant minority who can be safely ignored. If life is like the movies, then women just aren’t around, so why pay attention to them?

The report revealed how the “systemic” difficulty in climbing the directorial ladder also meant female directors direct fewer films in their career and are less likely to receive a second, third or fourth directing job.

“Collectively, these findings paint a picture of an industry where female directors are limited in their ability to become directors and their career progression once they do. They are limited in the number of films they can direct as well as the budget and genre of the films they do,” concluded the report.

It’s self-perpetuating. They can’t direct a first film, so then they don’t have a track record so they go on being unable to direct a first film. Career over.

News from Saudi Arabia: women there face flogging and imprisonment if they check their husband’s phone without his permission.

The offence would be prosecuted as a violation of privacy because it is not covered in the country’s Islamic laws, senior lawyer Mohammad al-Temyat has said.

Well it wouldn’t be, would it. There weren’t phones to check when Mo wrote the Koran – which is reason number 4 billion whatever whatever for why we shouldn’t take a very old book as something we’re not allowed to change or dispute or throw away. Mo didn’t know everything, including phones and secularism and feminism and human rights, so he shouldn’t be set up as an infallible authority on all things.

Speaking to The Independent, Mr Al-Temyat said he worked with the government only on a voluntary basis, providing legal advice.

He described the law on checking someone’s phone as Ta’zir offence, coming under judicial discretion because it has no definition or prescribed punishment under Islam.

He said: “I would like to clarify that this subject involves the husband and the wife and it is a Ta’zir offence so it is possible that there is a flogging, a fine, imprisonment, just signing a pledge or even nothing.”

Right. When in doubt, suggest a flogging, especially when it’s a woman doing something a man doesn’t like.

Tavaana on Twitter:

Tavaana توانا ‏ @Tavaana May 13
Persepolis women’s #volleyball team, 1970. #Iran: a country where pictures from the past look like the future!

Bangladesh yesterday:

Police in Bangladesh say a 75-year-old Buddhist monk has been hacked to death in the south-eastern district of Bandarban.

An official said the monk’s body was found inside a Buddhist temple.

It is the latest in a spate of murders of religious minorities, secular activists and academics.

It’s ideological cleansing.

Police said Maung Shue U Chak appeared to have been attacked by at least four people at the temple in Baishari, 350km (220 miles) south-east of the capital Dhaka.

His killing follows the murder of two prominent gay activists, a law student and a university professor in April.

In February a Hindu priest was beheaded in northern Bangladesh.

In other news –

Locals in presence of a local MP punished a Hindu headmaster of a school in Narayanganj on Friday for allegedly making offensive comments about religion while meting out corporal punishment to a student of the school on May 8.

Principal Shyamal Kanti Bhakta of Piyar Sattar Latif High School in the district’s Bandar area told BBC Bangla service that the locals were provoked by the false accusations of him making disparaging statements about religion.

According to the BBC report, Shyamal was beaten up by a mob. He was then rescued by police and taken into safe custody, Abul Kalam, officer-in-charge of Bandar Police Station, told the BBC.

Purity über alles.

H/t Taslima

More from the piece on prostitution in Germany by Manuela Schon at Feminist Current. There’s a section on…prostitution in the educational system.

Pro Familia, a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), is an organization that advises schools in their sex education materials. Among the material they recommended for teenagers is a book called, “Sexualpädagogik der Vielfalt“ (which loosely translates to “Sexual Pedagogy of Diversity”). This text includes suggestions and material for projects in which students are asked to name sex positions and to “modernize a brothel.” In small groups they are to discuss what “services” a “Freudenhaus der sexuellen Lebenslust” (which  loosely translates to “pleasure house of sexual lust for life”) should offer.

Those who protested this kind of content being introduced into curriculum were accused of being “reactionary,” “conservative,” and “prudish.

Members of the teachers’ union (GEW) in the state of Hessen were offered advanced teacher training courses between 2006 and 2015, taught by a pro-decriminalization lobby group called “Dona Carmen.” Teachers could collect professional training credits by participating. (Last year, the general assembly decided to eliminate these courses from the education program.)

The normalization of prostitution in Germany, even among school-aged children, has lead to young men celebrating their high school graduation (called “Abitur”) together in brothels. Here, it’s no big deal that boys as young as 16 go to their local prostitution apartment to buy sex (something I see on a regular basis in my own neighbourhood).

This isn’t liberated sex education, please notice, all about mutual pleasure and consent – it’s about prostitution in brothels. It’s pleasure for the john, and no one else.

The next section is about the hunt for bargains.

“Geiz ist geil” is a phrase commonly used in German ads and marketing campaigns, meaning, “greed is hot” or “greed is good.” Unsurprisingly, this idea — that the public should try to get everything as cheaply as possible — is transferred to the prostitution market as well. Women are sold as products, so, as products, they should be as cheap as possible. Brothel owners fall over themselves trying to offer the best bargain:

Attention, K-Mart shoppers: you can poke her for 20 minutes for 20 Euro. It’s cheaper than going to the movies!

A flat-rate brothel chain called “Pussy Club” made headlines when, on its opening day on June 5, 2009, 1,700 men lined up to get in. The long lineups outside women’s rooms lasted until closing time when many of the women collapsed from exhaustion, pain, injuries, and infections, including painful rashes and fungal infections that spread from their genitals down their legs. It was shut down a year later for human trafficking.

Flat-rate brothels are very common in Germany, as well as “tabuslos,” meaning “no taboos.” In practice, this translates to “everything without any protection.” As a result, STDs are on the rise in Germany (HIV rates have gone up after several years of stagnation), and it’s common for married men to infect their wives.

Competing for customers means that brothel chains like the Pascha in Cologne offer gambling games with the chance of winning a free hookup. A brothel in Berlin gives customers a “collection card” like coffee shops do — five visits will grant you a 50 per cent rebate, and your 11^th visit is free.

Women as cut-price meat. This is the glorious utopia of decriminalizing the sex trade.

The New York Times reports on the feminist side of Donald Trump.

Hahahahaha no just kidding, of course.

Mr. Trump was not just fixated on the appearance of the women around him. He possessed an almost compulsive need to talk about it.

Inside the Trump Organization, the company that manages his various businesses, he occasionally interrupted routine discussions of business to opine on women’s figures. Ms. Res, his construction executive, remembered a meeting in which she and Mr. Trump interviewed an architect for a project in the Los Angeles area. Out of the blue, she said, Mr. Trump evaluated the fitness of women in Marina del Rey, Calif. “They take care of their asses,” he said.

“The architect and I didn’t know where he was coming from,” Ms. Res said. Years later, after she had gained a significant amount of weight, Ms. Res endured a stinging workplace observation about her own body from Mr. Trump. “ ‘You like your candy,’ ” she recalled him telling her. “It was him reminding me that I was overweight.”

…

Mr. Trump frequently sought assurances — at times from strangers — that the women in his life were beautiful. During the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, he sat in the audience as his teenage daughter, Ivanka, helped to host the event from onstage. He turned to Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee, Miss Universe at the time, and asked for her opinion of his daughter’s body.

“ ‘Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?’ ” Ms. Lee recalled him saying. ‘I was like, ‘Really?’ That’s just weird. She was 16. That’s creepy.”

From Feminist Current, legalized pimping in Germany:

A flat-rate brothel chain called “Pussy Club” made headlines when, on its opening day on June 5, 2009, 1,700 men lined up to get in. The long lineups outside women’s rooms lasted until closing time when many of the women collapsed from exhaustion, pain, injuries, and infections, including painful rashes and fungal infections that spread from their genitals down their legs. It was shut down a year later for human trafficking.

Flat-rate brothels are very common in Germany, as well as “tabuslos,” meaning “no taboos.” In practice, this translates to “everything without any protection.” As a result, STDs are on the rise in Germany (HIV rates have gone up after several years of stagnation), and it’s common for married men to infect their wives.

Competing for customers means that brothel chains like the Pascha in Cologne offer gambling games with the chance of winning a free hookup. A brothel in Berlin gives customers a “collection card” like coffee shops do — five visits will grant you a 50 per cent rebate, and your 11^th visit is free.

Sounds like a paradise of female empowerment, doesn’t it?

Check out the advertising:

That one’s on a freeway overpass. There are lots more in the post.

From Science Daily a year ago:

New research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham shows that high-heeled-shoe-related injuries doubled between 2002 and 2012. The findings were published online May 12 in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Injuries, and the frequency and severity of those injuries were sufficient to make the investigators suggest that wearing the appropriate shoes for the appropriate occasion and being aware of one’s surroundings are good ideas.

“Although high-heeled shoes might be stylish, from a health standpoint, it would be worthwhile for those interested in wearing high-heeled shoes to understand the risks and the potential harm that precarious activities in high-heeled shoes can cause,” said lead investigator Gerald McGwin, Ph.D., vice chair and professor of the Department of Epidemiology in the UAB School of Public Health.

In addition to discomfort in the lower leg, ankle and foot, research has indicated that walking in high-heeled shoes has been shown to significantly reduce ankle muscle movement, step length, total range of movement and balance control. Many studies have documented that the long-term use of high heels alters the neuromechanics of walking and places greater strain on the muscles and tendons of the lower legs, which can lead to musculoskeletal disorders later in life.

McGwin’s team looked at data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System of injuries associated with wearing high heels seen in hospital emergency departments between 2002 and 2012. There were 123,355 high-heel-related injuries seen during that period. The peak year for injuries was 2011, with more than 19,000. People between the ages of 20 and 29 were most likely to suffer an injury, followed by the 30-39 age group.

“Some historians suggest that high-heeled shoes have been around for nearly 300 years, and that medical professionals have been warning wearers about the dangers of such shoes for the same amount of time,” McGwin said. “While previous studies have confirmed that high heels are associated with lower extremity discomfort and musculoskeletal issues, there is very little information on the nature and frequency of these injuries, or which age groups were most affected.”

The vast majority of the injuries — more than 80 percent — were to the ankle or foot, with just under 20 percent involving the knee, trunk, shoulder, or head and neck. More than half were strains or sprains, with fractures accounting for 19 percent of all injuries. While white females as a group had the largest number of heel-related injuries, the rate of injury for black females was twice that of whites.

“Our findings also suggest that high-heel-related injuries have increased over time, with the rate of injury nearly doubling from 2002 to 2012,” McGwin said. “We also noted that nearly half the injuries occurred in the home, which really supports the idea of wearing the right footwear for the right occasion and setting. Also, to reduce the time of exposure, we recommend that those wearing heels be aware of how often and for how long they wear them.”

Co-authors on the study are Justin Xavier Moore, MPH, Department of Surgery; Brice Lambert, MSPH, departments of Epidemiology and Emergency Medicine; and Gabrielle P. Jenkins, MSPH, Department of Epidemiology.

No one should ever be required to wear them.

It’s Saturday, so have a treat. Art and colors on Facebook:

Janice Turner wrote a piece at the Times titled The trans lobby peddles a pink and blue world. I expect that will get her added to The Index if she’s not there already, but it’s true.

A friend of hers commented that he thought she was gender fluid, and she was taken aback.

I’d never thought about my gender identity before. It hadn’t occurred to me that not being a “girly” girl meant I wasn’t 100 per cent woman. The point, I’ve always believed, is to expand the categories “man” and “woman”, to tear down pink and blue prisons. So a little girl can like trucks, spacemen, getting dirty and still be a girl; a boy can put on nail polish, play with dolls and be no less a boy.

Same here – and I still see this as the progressive approach. Why? Because it makes more room for everyone, men as well as women. Prisons are prisons; nobody wants to live in them.

We should, Turner says, oppose “a view of gender, spun off the trans movement, that is as conservative as the Mad Men 1950s.” Eddie Izzard used to say “These aren’t women’s clothes, they’re my clothes.” Now he says, “Being a transgender guy, I do like my nails.”

Men, I’ve found, can’t understand why this enrages women. Why are feminist ladies so mean to Eddie? Well, because he’s no longer saying “I’m a bloke who likes pretty nails”. He has declared: “Because I like pretty nails I am female.” He is reducing being a woman down to make-up and sparkly shoes.

And guess what: we don’t like being reduced down to that.

At heart the trans lobby upholds the same nonsense that underpins porn and men’s mags and the Tea Party right: that men are muscly hunks and women are passive pink fem-bots. To feel you are neither doesn’t make you gender fluid — or any of the other 72 crazy gender categories on Facebook — it just makes you human.

It’s not special, it’s not trans-anything, it’s just human.

Originally a comment by Steamshovelmama on Faithful and regular worshippers, a post about a council-funded bus service that refused to pick up a student because he’s not Catholic.

OK, I’ve found some more out about this.

The parents of the boy in question have chosen to send him to Holy Trinity Academy (yes, bloody academy status, thank you David Cameron) rather than to one of the geographically nearest schools. Because that has been their choice, the local council expects the parents to arrange and fund school journeys. Where the geographically nearest school has been accepted it is the local council’s role to ensure that journey is safe and affordable – for instance some pupils may be eligible for a free bus pass and the council must ensure there are safe road crossing places etc.

Where religion comes in to it – and I really don’t agree with this at all – is that if a parent wishes their child to go to a school of their faith and the nearest one of those is not the nearest school then a local council may have a policy that accepts the right of the parent to have faith appropriate education and will then subsidise transport. Apparently Telford and Wrekin local council do indeed have this policy.

The central government Equality Act requires that local authorities do not discriminate on grounds of belief but this act, apparently, does not apply to school transport. And there was a Joint Committee on Human Rights that actually scrutinised this legislation and who warned that this kind of issue might occur. (Headed by MP Harriet Harman, 4 Labour MPs, 6 Conservative, 1 Liberal Democrat and 1 cross bench – 6 from the Lords and 6 from the Commons).

Time to lobby my local MP – who is, unfortunately, a socially conservative (Labour Party) old duffer who has been in his safe seat for years. Last time I lobbied him was on the gay marriage question and I was distinctly unimpressed by his answer…

Rose Hackman writes in the Guardian that a major part of the emotional labor women are forced to do is the de-escalation of incidents of harassment.

Years later, I realized the abuse was less in the act I had been subjected to, and more in my learned silence. De-escalation had been my trick, to the detriment of my agency.

A blog entry from last fall put this into words for me. It made me realise [w]hat women around me had been doing for years: de-escalating situations caused by men, with the burden of minimising incidents being placed squarely on our shoulders.

Occurrences could be as mundane as a street catcall, as infuriating as a sexist comment at work, or as troubling as an unwelcome physical touch. Occurrences also include compliments we have to decipher (just nice, or suggesting an expression of male ownership over our bodies?).

To the initial weight of having to deal with those acts of dominance is the added mental drain of having to evaluate how best to deal with it and not risk a violent backlash. De-escalating is just another form of the “emotional work” women provide with little recognition of its ongoing exertion and toll.

That time the surly guy angrily told me to smile as I was walking past his house with my mind elsewhere? It occurs to me that was an act of rebellion against that duty of de-escalation thing. I knew that at the time. There was a little pause where I debated whether to ignore him or to do what I wanted to do, which was to demand why the fuck he had said that. The normal thing to do would have been to ignore it. I’d ignored it many times, all my life. I doubtless would have ignored it that time too if he’d been “friendly” or “jokey” as opposed to aggressive and hostile. His hostility did me the favor of making the dominance unmistakable, and worth rejecting.

For Hanna Rusin, a 29-year-old fashion industry worker based in New York, gendered micro- and macro-aggressions are a “vast, vast” part of her everyday life.

She recalls, off the top of her head, scarring incidents including being stalked by a man who was her neighbor for six years and being followed home by a policeman after he asked to see her ID on the subway. She also remembers unwelcome attention growing up – comments and physical contact in private settings – but being taught to dismiss it.

“In a more intimate setting, it’s more subtle. If you say something, you’re a troublemaker,” Rusin says. “If you would go to your mother, they would just say, ‘This is how they are, they’re just drunk old men, ignore them.’ Women don’t even notice that it’s happening to them until they hear someone else talk about it. And then they are like, wait, is this what this is?”

Ignore them. Ignore it. Ignore ignore ignore. That will be easier in the moment, and nothing will ever change.

Nichole Thomas, a 26-year-old attorney, says the sexism she feels in her male-dominated law office is understated but very real. When she was at an office outing recently, she noticed every time a junior male colleague spoke, his point was uplifted and highlighted by other men, including higher-ranking men. Women did not receive the same treatment.

The way in which Thomas has decided to deal with what she is sure are expressions of sexism at work? De-escalating by taking it in her stride and not letting it affect her work performance. “I would never say anything at all to anybody. I notice it in that moment and then I forget about it. I try and not think about it every day.”

It’s everyday sexism, that happens every day, but it’s crucial to avoid thinking about it every day.

When [another woman] tries to explain the toll of such experiences to men, she says it is so exhausting she feels “it’s not even worth the effort half the time”.

“They don’t get it. It’s just not a reality for them.”

Hardikar, the health worker, adds: “There is a construct within masculinity that teaches them that they have the right to exert power over any space … It’s about demonstrating who is in charge in that space. I am sure that it’s subconscious, but it is learned and it is taught.”

And it is performed, and it is noticed or ignored, every every day.

Chris has an epiphany.

CNN reported last month:

A United Nations official is headed to the Central African Republic after reports that over 100 women, girls and boys were raped and abused — many by U.N. peacekeepers.

Jane Holl Lute, a senior U.N. official tasked with leading efforts to curb peacekeeper abuse, was en route to the country Wednesday, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

Allegations of sexual abuse by foreign and local forces have plagued the Central African Republic since the United Nations sent forces to the country two years ago. But they’re still just as shocking as ever.

…

[M]ore than 100 victims said they were sexually abused by U.N. peacekeepers and non-U.N. forces, a U.N. official said Tuesday.

“Tragically, the vast majority of the victims are children,” said Edmond Mulet, the U.N. chief of staff on sexual exploitation and abuse.

There were more, and more horrifying, allegations at the end of March.

At the meeting Tuesday, Atul Khare, the U.N.’s under-secretary-general for field support, called on the countries that sent those accused to discipline them and carry out “criminal sanctions warranted under their national laws.”

Khare also said new legislation should be proposed if current law would not cover prosecution of these alleged crimes.

The United Nations has also said that implicated troops must remain confined to their camp, “except for essential operational tasks and increasing the presence of military police at affected locations.”

Khare said officials are working with children’s agency UNICEF to ensure services and extra funds are available to help affected communities.

He said the number of allegations is expected to rise.

They made a wilderness and called it peace.

It’s not always possible to do everything at once. You patch the leak in one place and it pops up in another.

Like trying to figure out this matter of “gender identity” for instance, and how it coheres with nondiscrimination on the basis of sex.

The Obama administration is planning to issue a sweeping directive telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

I’m leaning toward doing away with the whole sex segregation thing when it comes to restrooms and just having neutral rooms with floor-to-ceiling stalls. Privacy for all, and no need to fret about who is what.

Also, HB2 sucks.

But “gender identity” is a very iffy concept, and I don’t think the government should be treating it as settled fact when it is in fact hotly contested. The gov gets itself into a tangle by doing so:

A school’s obligation under federal law “to ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of sex requires schools to provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities even in circumstances in which other students, parents, or community members raise objections or concerns,” the letter states. “As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”

As soon as a child’s parent or legal guardian asserts a gender identity for the student that “differs from previous representations or records,” the letter says, the child is to be treated accordingly — without any requirement for a medical diagnosis or birth certificate to be produced.

Ok, so if a school’s obligation under federal law to ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of sex requires schools to provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities, then that means a student whose “gender identity” is female can play on the girls’ basketball team even if the student is a foot taller and 50 lbs heavier than the girls who don’t have any “gender identity” but are just plain old garden variety girls? Is that what the Obama administration is saying? If so is that a good plan?