Female sexuality can go both ways -- it can be seen as subjection and empowerment simultaneously, depending on the agenda and context.
A female portrayed as a sex symbol would previously be considered as victims subjugated to men's desires and expectations of them. The woman appears passive, vulnerable to any way the man wants to utilise her, and essentially place herself under the mercy of the male. To some, adorning something that is considered 'feminine', such as heels and dresses, would be to conform to societal's, or more specifically, men's stereotype of feminity. To quote the protagonist in the movie 'She's the Man', high heels are "a male invention designed to keep women from running away". What a promising future the fashion runway has for us.
On the other hand, a female's forte can lie in her sexuality itself. To be able to wear heels and dresses as she desires would be a physical expression of her freedom to follow her choice. In more recent times, if a female is portrayed suggestively, more often than not it isn't in the "I'm your slave" kind of way, but rather in the "You know you want me" kind of way. This juxtaposition automatically places the woman in the position of power, as she uses her sexuality to manipulate men to get what she wants, not the other way round. Not that this kind of power is exactly in the positive sense, but the tables have turned. It does not help that many men's weaknesses lie in their inability to resist this, thus falling prey to women manipulating their sexuality to their advantage. The first example that comes to mind is from the movie 'Munich', where 1 of the spies sent out, Carl, gave in to the advances of an attractive woman, actually a spy in disguise, resulting in a swift death in his hotel room. If men flaunted their power through muscles and speed, women could tap on theirs using their sexuality.
Of course, a female's sexuality is not the only area she can showcase her power and authority in, but why the struggle for power? Does having more power over the other necessarily equate to having a better quality of life and welfare? "With great power comes great responsibility", and if mishandled, with great responsibility comes burden, stress, anxiety etc. It isn't about having greater power, but to be able to assert an individual's human rights and dignity that is the more important issue here. In the domestic arena, a working husband may appear to have more power in the household than the stay-home wife, but each role has its own purpose and importance, and as long as there is mutual respect and love in the family, it does not matter who wields more visible power as long as both parties complement each other in establishing a complete and wholesome family -- which should be the ultimate goal of both spouses. If, however, having more visible power leads to the husband abusing the wife or subjecting her to his expectations of her, the root of the problem would not be power, but about the love and respect he has for his wife.
Submission isn't necessarily derogatory either. Submission is a divine order ordained by God - just as Christ washed the feet of His disciples, so we serve others out of love. In marriage, submission is an attitude of yieldedness and love, not of inferiority. God ordained men to be the head of the house, just as Christ is the head of the church, and the woman represents the bride of Christ - the church. However, this definitely does not call for abusing of the man's power over his wife. Eve was created as Adam's helpmate (Genesis 2:18), his 'manager', so both their physical, emotional and spiritual differences can complement each other through marriage. Woman was created with the desire to be protected and loved, thus He asked husbands to love their wives - but this inherent desire has been perverted over time, seeing how young women now look for love and assurance in the wrong places using the wrong ways.
Female sexuality, no matter whether propelled in the direction of subjection or empowerment, should always preserve dignity and integrity at all times. The Bible says that our bodies are a "temple of God" - God dwells inside of us, and thus we ought to love our bodies and treat them with respect and reverence, irregardless of gender. The one with the true power is the one who knows how to treat his/her body with true understanding, exercising Godly leadership as representations of Christ in this world.
JL*
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Sex and money
By 2020 over half of Britain's millionaires may be female. Why?
IN APRIL this year, 92 females graced the Sunday Times Rich List, an annual round-up of Britain's 1,000 wealthiest people. Ten years ago there were 64. And rich women are getting richer, too: over the decade the average worth of female millionaires has grown by more than half. Today Britain's wealthiest woman has £4.9 billion ($9.6 billion) to her name, compared with the paltry £1.5 billion her counterpart had in 1997. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) reckons female millionaires will outnumber male ones by 2020, and by 2025 women will control 60% of the nation's private wealth. They do better at school and in higher education, and they live longer. Girl power, it seems, never had it so good.
Is this wave of affluence a chimera or does it have solid underpinnings? A report this week by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company, for Barclays Wealth, a financial-management firm, claims that the historical sources of women's wealth—marriage, inheritance and divorce—have been replaced by independent income, business ownership and investments. More than 80% of women now derive their riches from personal earnings, it says, particularly from their own businesses. Divorce, long the engine that propelled women into prosperity, is cited by only 2.9% of those questioned as the main source of their wealth.
But Philip Beresford, who compiles the Rich List, dismisses the idea that women are breaking into its ranks independently of men. “There is no evidence, yet, of seriously rich female entrepreneurs coming in huge numbers,” he says. The woman who tops the list is in fact Lady Green, whose husband made them both a fortune in retailing. If the CEBR is correct, Mr Beresford thinks most British millionairesses will still be wives, daughters and divorcees.
A glance at the number of women in the top ranks of business suggests he is right. Women make up only a tenth of the directors of FTSE-100 firms. They are also under-represented in the upper echelons of management. In a report in March, PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm, said that the number of female senior managers in FTSE-350 firms had fallen by 40% since 2002. This may be due to a prevailing macho culture at the top; or it may reflect the costs of child care, which have risen by 27% in the same period.
IN APRIL this year, 92 females graced the Sunday Times Rich List, an annual round-up of Britain's 1,000 wealthiest people. Ten years ago there were 64. And rich women are getting richer, too: over the decade the average worth of female millionaires has grown by more than half. Today Britain's wealthiest woman has £4.9 billion ($9.6 billion) to her name, compared with the paltry £1.5 billion her counterpart had in 1997. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) reckons female millionaires will outnumber male ones by 2020, and by 2025 women will control 60% of the nation's private wealth. They do better at school and in higher education, and they live longer. Girl power, it seems, never had it so good.
Is this wave of affluence a chimera or does it have solid underpinnings? A report this week by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company, for Barclays Wealth, a financial-management firm, claims that the historical sources of women's wealth—marriage, inheritance and divorce—have been replaced by independent income, business ownership and investments. More than 80% of women now derive their riches from personal earnings, it says, particularly from their own businesses. Divorce, long the engine that propelled women into prosperity, is cited by only 2.9% of those questioned as the main source of their wealth.
But Philip Beresford, who compiles the Rich List, dismisses the idea that women are breaking into its ranks independently of men. “There is no evidence, yet, of seriously rich female entrepreneurs coming in huge numbers,” he says. The woman who tops the list is in fact Lady Green, whose husband made them both a fortune in retailing. If the CEBR is correct, Mr Beresford thinks most British millionairesses will still be wives, daughters and divorcees.
A glance at the number of women in the top ranks of business suggests he is right. Women make up only a tenth of the directors of FTSE-100 firms. They are also under-represented in the upper echelons of management. In a report in March, PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm, said that the number of female senior managers in FTSE-350 firms had fallen by 40% since 2002. This may be due to a prevailing macho culture at the top; or it may reflect the costs of child care, which have risen by 27% in the same period.
If things look sticky at the top, women at the bottom find the relative going far tougher. Although the gap between men's and women's earnings has shrunk for those at all income levels, it remains far bigger among the poorest tenth than in any other group (see chart). The latest annual report from the Equal Opportunities Commission shows why: men still dominate highly paid work, and the proportion of female graduates in low-level jobs has rocketed in the past decade, along with the number of people going to university.
It will take another 60 years before there is equality between the sexes in British business (and 200 to achieve the same in Parliament), the commission calculates. Progress, it moans, is “painfully slow and at risk of going into reverse”. It's still hard to be a woman.
It will take another 60 years before there is equality between the sexes in British business (and 200 to achieve the same in Parliament), the commission calculates. Progress, it moans, is “painfully slow and at risk of going into reverse”. It's still hard to be a woman.
Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Quote of the Day
HIS Quote : "I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war." ~Robert Mueller
HER Quote : "In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman." —Nancy Astor (British Politician)
jy
HER Quote : "In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman." —Nancy Astor (British Politician)
jy
Sunday, May 6, 2007
A game of ducks and drakes
Taken from The Economist :
The evolutionary battle of the sexes has some curious consequences
SEX, in most species of bird, is a consensual activity. It has to be. Males have no penises and are armed with a genital opening which looks little different from that of a female. Intercourse happens when these two openings are brought together in what ornithologists refer to as a cloacal kiss. In these circumstances, rape is a difficult option.
Drakes, however, are notorious rapists—forcing their attentions on ducks indiscriminately—and it is surely no coincidence that they are among the 3% of male birds that do have a penis. In fact, drake penises come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that are thought by students of the subject to be part of an arms race to ensure that it is the owner's sperm that fertilise the next generation of ducklings, rather than anybody else's.
The question is, an arms race against whom? The males of many species of insect have similarly elaborate genitalia. These seem designed to compete directly against other males—for example by scraping out the sperm of previous suitors or breaking off and blocking the female's genital opening. But Patricia Brennan, of Yale University, and her colleagues suspected that in ducks and drakes the arms race might be between the sexes rather than between members of the same sex. Females, in other words, would rather choose which males inseminate them. And if rape is inevitable, evolution might provide them with other ways of making this choice.
Surprisingly (or perhaps not, given the male-dominated nature of science) the elaborate cataloguing of drake genitalia had not been extended to ducks. So Dr Brennan got out her scalpel and started looking. As she reports in the Public Library of Science, she discovered that the sexual passages of ducks are every bit as elaborate as the penises of drakes are. Indeed, for every species, the more elaborate the latter were, the more elaborate were the former. In particular, duck vaginas are often equipped with additional passages that have blind endings, and frequently corkscrew in a clockwise direction, in contradistinction to the anticlockwise thread of a drake's penis.
Dr Brennan interprets these anatomical flourishes as anti-insemination mechanisms. The contrary threads of the genitalia make successful penetration much harder if the female is not co-operating. The blind passages make it likely that sperm will be ejaculated into the wrong place and thus fail to fertilise the duck's eggs. Conversely, a willing female should be more easily inseminated.
That interpretation is backed up by the fact that ducks with the most elaborate genitalia are those from species where the drakes have the largest penises. These species are also the ones where rape is most often observed. In ducks and drakes, it seems, size matters. But not in a way that is good for females.
Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
The evolutionary battle of the sexes has some curious consequences
SEX, in most species of bird, is a consensual activity. It has to be. Males have no penises and are armed with a genital opening which looks little different from that of a female. Intercourse happens when these two openings are brought together in what ornithologists refer to as a cloacal kiss. In these circumstances, rape is a difficult option.
Drakes, however, are notorious rapists—forcing their attentions on ducks indiscriminately—and it is surely no coincidence that they are among the 3% of male birds that do have a penis. In fact, drake penises come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that are thought by students of the subject to be part of an arms race to ensure that it is the owner's sperm that fertilise the next generation of ducklings, rather than anybody else's.
The question is, an arms race against whom? The males of many species of insect have similarly elaborate genitalia. These seem designed to compete directly against other males—for example by scraping out the sperm of previous suitors or breaking off and blocking the female's genital opening. But Patricia Brennan, of Yale University, and her colleagues suspected that in ducks and drakes the arms race might be between the sexes rather than between members of the same sex. Females, in other words, would rather choose which males inseminate them. And if rape is inevitable, evolution might provide them with other ways of making this choice.
Surprisingly (or perhaps not, given the male-dominated nature of science) the elaborate cataloguing of drake genitalia had not been extended to ducks. So Dr Brennan got out her scalpel and started looking. As she reports in the Public Library of Science, she discovered that the sexual passages of ducks are every bit as elaborate as the penises of drakes are. Indeed, for every species, the more elaborate the latter were, the more elaborate were the former. In particular, duck vaginas are often equipped with additional passages that have blind endings, and frequently corkscrew in a clockwise direction, in contradistinction to the anticlockwise thread of a drake's penis.
Dr Brennan interprets these anatomical flourishes as anti-insemination mechanisms. The contrary threads of the genitalia make successful penetration much harder if the female is not co-operating. The blind passages make it likely that sperm will be ejaculated into the wrong place and thus fail to fertilise the duck's eggs. Conversely, a willing female should be more easily inseminated.
That interpretation is backed up by the fact that ducks with the most elaborate genitalia are those from species where the drakes have the largest penises. These species are also the ones where rape is most often observed. In ducks and drakes, it seems, size matters. But not in a way that is good for females.
Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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