Jessica Valenti wants mentally ill women to know that their mental illness is the fault of the oppressive patriarchy:
A study published this month in the journal Sex Roles reveals that some of the sexism women face — from catcalling and sexual harassment to sexual objectification and violence — makes women generally more fearful and anxious. The researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas and Georgia State University found a substantive “link between physical safety concerns and psychological distress” . . .
When I spoke to Dr. Laurel B Watson, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and one of the researchers in the study, she told me that one of the hurdles in studying the impact that sexism has on women’s mental health is that women have normalized this fear and anxiety so completely. . . .
This fear and anxiety that women experience isn’t simply anecdotal: women are 70% more likely than men to experience depression and we’re twice as likely to have an anxiety disorder, something Watson,who has a degree in counseling psychology, says is “absolutely” related to living with misogyny.
“Over time, existing in a state of hypervigilance has a negative impact, and leads to a higher level of psychological distress,” she explained. . . .
You can read the whole thing, because (a) you have an expensive computer in front of you, (b) you’re sufficiently well-educated to be able to read at college-level and (c) you have nothing better to do with your time than to read a Jessica Valenti column, which tells you that (d) you’re living in a prosperous industrialized society. Congratulations!
Gratitude for one’s good fortune, however, is not what feminism is all about. Feminism is about endless misery and dissatisfaction and — lest we forget — blaming the oppressive patriarchy.
Would it surprise anyone to discover that Professor Watson’s undergraduate degree was in psychology, “with a concentration in women’s studies”? Perhaps you will also be surprised to learn that Professor Watson once worked as a counselor at an Atlanta abortion clinic, the Feminist Women’s Health Center. And I’m sure you will then be shocked to learn that Professor Watson’s publications include “Gay-Straight Alliance Advisors: Negotiating Multiple Ecological Systems When Advocating for LGBTQ” (Journal of LGBT Youth, 2010) and “Experiences of Objectification and Sexual Risk Behaviors Among Sexual Minority Men” (Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 2014)? But here, let’s just look at the “Major Research Interests” listed on Professor Watson’s curriculum vitae:
Research interests include: women’s and gender-related themes, sexual objectification experiences, interpersonal violence and trauma, social justice and advocacy, LGBTQIQ-related themes, body image/disordered eating, race and ethnicity-related themes, feminist identity development, feminist pedagogy and epistemology.
Where does research end and advocacy begin, Professor Watson? And does it not occur to you that your own privileged position within the Feminist-Industrial Complex of academia — where you’re paid to produce research for such publications as the Journal of LGBT Youth — is evidence contradicting your basic premise, i.e., that American society is a wall-to-wall nightmare of sexist, racist, homophobic oppression so intensely traumatic as to induce psychiatric disorders?
Only within the comfort of the Higher Education Bubble, is it possible for Laura B. Watson, Ph.D., to assert that American woman are “existing in a state of hypervigilance” that “leads to a higher level of psychological distress,” and to have this bizarre assertion taken seriously.
You know what might cause “psychological distress,” Professor Watson? Murder. According to the FBI, the city of Detroit had the highest homicide rate (45 per 100,000 residents) in the country in 2013, edging out New Orleans (41 per 100,000 residents) as the most dangerous city in America. Checking the data provided on victims, we find that 78% of murder victims (9,523) were male, compared to 22% (2,707) who were female. Furthermore, 44% of murder victims (5,352) were black males, although black people are only 13% of the U.S. population, so that black males (less than 7% of the population) were overrepresented among murder victims by a factor of more than 6-to-1.
Males are at greatest risk of violent death, especially black males, yet here we have Professor Watson telling us that women are living in a condition “psychological distress”? Here we have Jessica Valenti using Professor Watson’s research to tell us that “everyday expressions of misogyny could be seriously impacting [women’s] mental health”? And here we have Professor Watson herself bolstering her assertions with a convenient anecdote:
For example, she said “I went for a jog recently, and I saw a guy in a van — and if I jogged past him, he could have opened the door and snatched me,” Watson told me. “I had an immediate response to move to the other side of the van or to change my direction, I didn’t think twice about it.”
“It’s normalized, but it has such an effect on your life — women constrain their behaviors every day.”
OMG! Men drive vans! Women are in “a state of hypervigilance”!
more at
http://theothermccain.com/2015/01/27/feminism-and-first-world-problems-hypervigilance-as-irrational-phobia/