Breaking News: You are a FemBot.
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To Whom It May Concern:
I recently watched a Today Show segment suggesting that the word "Fembot" is now synonymous for confident, career-driven, non-relationship obsessed, childfree women. Furthermore, the host and guests go on to imply that these ambitious women are also selfish, emotionally distant, and "sad" (read: 'pathetic'). Additionally, Guest Janet Taylor makes the broad and patently false claim that all women are hardwired to be "nurturers".
The falsehoods and stereotypes pandered in this clip are dangerous, unhealthy and demeaning. The overall implication reads loud and clear: women who are not excessively interested in babies, cake, and periods are "robots", or less-than-human. This sexist ideology has been force-fed to motivated women for centuries, only beginning to diminish when challenged and debunked in the 1960's. It is now 2007, and I was under the impression that our society had evolved to a more enlightened consensus. Sadly, this segment seems to indicate otherwise.
I am unsure of the motivation for creating this segment. However, I assure the producers and staff of The Today Show that the views of your host and guests do not reflect the views of your audience. Pandering myths, stereotypes, and lies about women does not help your ratings, and the implication that motivated, passionate women are inhuman is both ignorant and insulting.
Please refrain from further, gender-based slurs in future programming.
Send your email to The Today Show.
10 comments:
I don't understand why "career driven," "emotional detachment," and cupcakes are apparently inseparable. Some of the most brilliant career women I have ever met were the most easily accessible. And most people like cupcakes.
I'm surprised by your take on the piece. I'd love a transcript of the piece because they couldn't have said more frequently that it is wonderful that women are now career-driven and non-relationship obsessed. They added (perhaps inelegantly mixed in) that it is important that we all "as human beings" remain connected to our family, friends and coworkers.
What is offensive about that?
Funny for my 20 years of adult experience (yes, that makes me 38), I have found a vast (no, not an exaggeration) majority of my female counterparts to be emotionally self-centered, career driven, two faced, sell their soles type people. I am glad for the ones that don't have children and sorry for the children of the ones that do. I have witnessed them fire a father of four before Christmas to meet numbers while she lets her buddy go and get her hair done on company time. I have witnessed another woman sleeping with one boss (he he belongs in the evil column too) while she defamed one of her employees as being a slut because she was dating a black man (It is the 21st century people!). I hate the new woman because of her lack of morals just as much as I disliked the womanizing businessman of old. Why can they be held to the same standards as the rest of us are?
TRANSCRIPT
Host: Joanna Coles is the editor-in-chief of Marie Claire magazine, and Janet Taylor is a psychologist. Ladies, good morning!
Joanna Coles: Good morning.
Janet Taylor: Good morning.
Host: So, Joanna there, obviously Christine from Grey's Anatomy might be an extreme example, ah, maybe not--tell us what a "FemBot" is. Describe that for us.
Joanna Coles: Well, a FemBot is really someone who doesn't want to be held to the stereotype of women as nurturers and caregivers who sit and talk about their feelings all the time. She's someone who wants to get on with life, and women's changing roles in the workplace--now they have more responsibility, they're earning more--gives them more choices. So this woman, the FemBot, is putting off getting married, she's putting off having children, and she may have several relationships before she does eventually get married. And I think that changes the way she interacts with other people.
Host: You say this a social revolution of sorts?
Joanna Coles: It is a social revolution. I mean, what's going on with women and men is really very interesting, especially when women have more economic power. And if you look actually, the statistic is astonishing. For women who are married under the age of forty, forty percent of them are likely to out earn their husbands, which really makes a huge difference in the way that men and women inter react.
Host: Is this a decision, uh, that these women have made, or is this just a personality type?
Joanna Coles: I think it's about the fact that we're in a place in our culture where women can admit they don't care--I mean, we've all seen FemBots. She's the girl in the office that isn't interested when the colleague brings in her new baby. She doesn't want a cupcake with her friends to celebrate her birthday...she wants to get on with life, she wants to explore, and she wants to be all about 'me'.
Host: Personally, I think that's a little sad. I mean, that's just my take on this. Uh, Janet, one of the traits is being emotionally unavailable. Is that a healthy thing to be?
Janet Taylor: Well, clearly being emotionally unavailable is not healthy, because we need to be connected, and when you're emotionally unavailable, not only do you have difficulty expressing your own feelings, but identifying how other people are feeling as well. And so the implication is, as mothers, and as nurturers--which I think, is not a stereotype, our brains are wired to be nurturers-- but, um, when we're emotionally unavailable, it can affect our decision making, our ability to enhance a relationship. I, I think being a FemBot, being cool, being confident and in control is great, but you can do all that, and still be connected.
Host: Yeah, and if, if you do happen to think that you are, or you know someone in your life who might be one of these extreme cases--we're calling them FemBots--there are some signs to look for, for someone who seems to be emotionally unavailable. What are they, as we talk about them?
Janet Taylor: Again, I think it starts with yourself. If you find that you can't react to a situation where you probably need to, in terms of figuring out exactly what you're feeling, then that's a problem. Or if you're not curious about your own life, and other people's lives, and also your ability to and capacity to love and give love.
LIST ON SCREEN:
Signs of emotional unavailability
-Unable to identify how others feel.
-Difficult expressing emotion.
-Lack of curiosity about life.
-Incapable of giving and receiving love.
Host: And Janet, speaking to what I asked Joanna, in terms of this is a choice or just how you're born, or I dunno, your mother did it to you-- I mean, can you stop? Can you change? How do you make yourself care? I know that sounds strange, but that's what we're talking about.
Janet Taylor: But--I think what we're talking about are two different issues. Being a career driven woman, and deciding that you have choices, and you don't necessarily want to be, have a family--I mean that's wonderful. So it's not a matter of that a FemBot is a negative characteristic, but that--
Host: Well it's not a really positive name. [laughs]
Janet Taylor: But, but I think it's a fun name--
Joanna Coles: More like an acronym.
Janet Taylor: Yeah.
Joanna Coles: But I think the idea is that it's a different kind of woman. It's not the kind of woman who's sitting at home worrying about, is she having her periods as the same time as her friends.
Janet Taylor: [laughs]
Host: [laughs]
Janet Taylor: But I think--I think--but Joanna brings up a good point. I think there is an element, it is a social revolution, but it doesn't have to be negative. As women we have more choices, and we need to honor those choices, but also find ways to stay emotionally connected to ourselves, our families, our coworkers, because I mean, as humans, that's, that's what separates us with animals--is our ability to emotionally connect.
Host: Right. And Joanna, how big of a trend if this?
Joanna Coles: I think we should all have a group hug in, right now--
Janet Taylor: [laughs]
Host: We're emotionally connected!
Joanna Coles: I think it's a really big trend, I don't see it at all as a negative thing--
Host: Ok.
Joanna Coles: Um, I think it's great, I think it's about women expressing their choices. And it's about, you know, women not waiting for men to enable them to do things, it's about women deciding to have children on their own--
Host: Oh, we can [unclear]..
Janet Taylor: [laughs]
Joanna Coles: --and buying their own diamond rings.
Host: I like that. [laughs] Ok, Joanna Coles, Janet Taylor, thank you both, we appreciate it.
What's offensive about this?
FemBot= Female Robot. Inhuman, android, alien, false, etc. It is a negative "nickname" that they are poorly attempting to spin into something positive and socially enlightened.
The piece opens with a definition of a typical independent woman: non-conformist, ambitious, motivated, confident, not immediately jumping into marriage and childbirth. Nothing offensive or surprising there (though all of these traits, of course, are being tacked under the title "FemBot").
The preface is followed by the host asking if this is a "learned" or inherent trait, as though female ambition is a genetic disorder. And now -- the definition changes. Suddenly, the FemBot is a self-serving baby and cupcake hater. Moreover, she's also "sad". Something pathetic, to be pitied.
Finally, there's the DSM inspired list to support the "FemBot Disorder". No distinction is made prior to sharing the list--apparently, all independent women must also be emotionally detached and incapable of giving and receiving love. The host leans in, eager to help her audience identify themselves or their friends as "broken".
Yes, Joanna and Janet both backtrack and attempt to reassert that "FemBot" is a positive term, but the intention of the segment is quite clear. Women are not supposed to be motivated. Women should get back to their "biologically" nurturing roots. Career women, independent women, non-stereotypical women, all require an "intervention" to heal them of their emotional repression--and, more importantly, their hatred of cupcakes.
It's just more of the same, eudaimo. Women are weak and emotional, or they're heartless bitches. Damned either way.
Anonymous--I'm sorry your experiences with certain career women have been so negative.
Thanks for posting the transcript!
Interesting. I agree with you that the use of a negative connoting word like "fembot" is an inelegant way to describe something they characterize with positive. I also agree that they were very clumsy in their jumbling of multiple topics.
I'm not sure I agree as to what the "intention of the segment," but don't think I have enough information to argue it competently.
Thanks again.
I've never seen "fembot" used to mean "career woman" before. It's the opposite of what I've always understood it to mean: a fembot is a Stepford wife, except for not necessarily being married. She has no ambitions of her own and mostly exists to look good in male eyes and serve men (in one sense or another). Applying it to independent women is abusive even before they make the stupid generalisations about what such women want.
Maybe I'm the only one that watches it, but on the cartoon Futurama, a Fembot is a robot prostitute. Just a random pondering
I thought I was the only one who wrote letters like this to television producers.
Hurray I'm not alone.
I think it's rediculous the way the media is always trying to pit women against each other.
As if, as a mother and wife, I'm totally pissed that another woman decided not to be either.
Whatever. Reminds me of that whole Alph Mom bit. As if there are two distinctly different kinds of mothers.
Anonymous... there were just as many selfish two faced women when they were kept from working! Guess what... there is no one TYPE of woman. Not any more than there is ONE type of man.
The whole concept of isolating any ROLE that women fill is sexist.
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