Sexism; Part 2

After reading Chester's blog I realised that I wasn't very clear in my previous blog. So I'm just setting a few things straight and elaborating on what I said and what I didn't say.

Firstly, I don't think I was clear on this, but the degradation of women in these videos doesn't come from them being overtly sexual. The degradation comes from the nature of the relationship between the males and the females. The women are generally being overtly sexual to get the attention of one male who will generally ignore them. It is implied that even though he ignores them, they are still so clingy and need him so much that they hang around trying to win his affection through their sexuality.

And it is this portrayal of a relationship between men and women that is my main problem.

Also I'm not trying to push some kind of moral panic. Sexism in music videos is not the most important issue to be concerned with. And I don't think the media is quite as powerful as some people think. But the media does carry some weight. Especially among younger more impressionable people. And the mysoginist man is portrayed as a good thing or something to aspire to be. I'm not saying that everyone that watches television will suddenly behave like the people they see, but I have known it to happen.

In my old home of Papua New Guinea, the image of the powerful, mysoginist man was very influencial. This could be because of the cultural history of the "Big Man" system. But regardless, in Papua New Guinea with the introduction of MTV 90% of teenagers who were looking for an identity chose to be 50 cent. And the women, who had never been equal in Papua New Guinea and probably won't be for a very long time, went along with it.

But maybe, the effect of these videos in a place like Canberra is less influencial. Infact I'm sure it is.Probably because of the cultural differences or the education level, I'm inclined to think it is a combination of the two.

well, that is just to make things more clear.