“But the men in comics are sexualized too!” they have whined since time began, copletely ignring how boob-windows, brokebacks, boob socks and more are not the same thing as a man with a good physique in a dynamic pose. Well courtesy of Sears (!????!!?!?) and the listing for a UNDER THE BED RESTRAINT GEAR here’s what it actually looks like when a male is sexualized, just for your information.
This restraint gear sounds very handy for travel, BTW.
Manline Under The Bed Restraint Gear includes 4 cuffs, 4 restraint straps and one connector strap. Restrains your partners arms and legs from the sides or bottom of the bed. Restraint strap quickly fits beneath any mattress with no hooks. Easy set-up on any mattress. Portable and great for travel.
CTIA and ESRB have put a mobile app rating system in place (to help parents and kids understand which apps are age-appropriate. The system is meant to be industry-wide, though the two giants, Google and Apple, are holding out and don’t plan... Read the rest of this post
MTV unveils 'MTV Crashes' (A global music event series that kicks off next month with Sean 'Diddy' Combs in Glasgow. Also ABC Family launches 'Chatterbox' iPad app to facilitate virtual fan viewing parties. ) (MediaWeek UK) (MediaWeek)
- Forever 21... Read the rest of this post
Simon & Schuster, LivingSocial launch Loser/Queen (an online serial novel that invites teen readers to vote on how the story will continue. J.C. Penney has also signed on as a sponsor. Also check out these awesome comic book reviews from an 8... Read the rest of this post
Last year was known as “the worst back-to-school since World War II." This time around recovery talk is in the air, but a recent survey shows that spending is expected to decrease 10% for kids 7-12 and 12% for teenagers 13-17. Yikes. Sales have... Read the rest of this post
In the flurry of media attention around this season's back-to-school shopping push, the focus has been split (not surprisingly) between the projected downturn-induced dip in numbers and a move towards integrating even more social media into... Read the rest of this post
Coming of age parties (become more of a DIY affair during the recession. Plus make-up parties persist as a pre-teen birthday trend in the UK) (AP) (Telegraph)
- Comfort foods vary by generation (with Boomers leaning towards classic fare, Gen X... Read the rest of this post
Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. In this article, Zelinsky discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in MetLife v. Glenn. That decision, he concludes, unintentionally reinforces the trend from defined benefit to defined contribution plans. Under MetLife v. Glenn, employers which sponsor and administer defined benefit pensions operate under a conflict of interest which subjects their administrative decisions to greater legal scrutiny.
Wanda Glenn was an employee of Sears, Roebuck & Company (“Sears”) and, as such, was covered by the Sears long-term disability insurance plan. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (“MetLife”) both administered and insured the Sears plan. Ms. Glenn applied for continuing disability benefits. MetLife, as plan administrator, denied Ms. Glenn’s application for benefits which, if granted, MetLife, as the plan’s insurer, would itself have paid.
Ms. Glenn sued. Her lawsuit made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court which held in MetLife v. Glenn that, in light of the discretion confided to MetLife by the Sears plan, MetLife’s denial of Ms. Glenn’s disability benefit was to be reviewed judicially under a deferential “abuse of discretion” standard. However, the Court further stated, MetLife, as plan administrator, operated under a conflict of interest since any benefits MetLife granted as such administrator MetLife itself also paid as the plan’s insurer. Hence, in assessing whether MetLife, as plan administrator, abused its discretion, the courts must, among other factors, “take account of the conflict” MetLife faced as a plan administrator which was also the plan insurer. Such conflict of interest might “act as a tie-breaker when the other factors are closely balanced.”
MetLife v. Glenn has engendered extensive discussion. However, so far, one aspect of this decision has gone 
unremarked: MetLife v. Glenn is one more unintended push from our legal system, nudging employers away from traditional defined benefit plans towards 401(k) plans and other similar defined contribution retirement arrangements. After MetLife v. Glenn, the administrative decisions of employers sponsoring and administering defined benefit pensions will typically be subject to greater legal scrutiny than will be the administrative decisions of employers sponsoring and administering most 401(k) and similar individual account arrangements. This greater scrutiny incents employers to shift from their defined benefit pensions to defined contribution plans.
Embedded in the traditional defined benefit pension administered by the sponsoring employer is the conflict of interest stemming from the employer’s obligation, as plan sponsor, to pay the costs of the plan — just as MetLife, as insurer, paid from its premium revenues the costs of the Sears disability plan. In the defined benefit setting, greater plan distributions to participants and beneficiaries require greater employer contributions to the plan. Consequently, any distribution denial by the employer sponsoring a traditional defined benefit pension implicates the conflict of interest in which MetLife found itself: If the employer as plan administrator denies plan benefits, it thereby reduces its costs as plan sponsor.
In contrast, an employer sponsoring and administering a typical defined contribution plan usually has no such conflict of interest since the individual accounts of such a plan belong to the participants. If, for example, an employer, as administrator of a 401(k) plan, denies a participant a hardship distribution from the plan, that denial does not decrease the employer’s costs; it merely delays the distribution to the participant of his 401(k) account until later. Since there is no conflict of interest in that setting, under MetLife v. Glenn, the employer’s decision will receive greater deference if challenged in the courts.
An important factor causing the decline of traditional defined benefit pensions and the concomitant rise of individual account arrangements like 401(k) plans has been the heavy regulatory cost imposed on defined benefit plans. MetLife v. Glenn represents the latest such cost, an unintentional cost, perhaps a small cost, but a cost nonetheless. Employers who sponsor and administer defined benefit plans are now on notice that, because of their conflicts of interest, their administrative decisions will generally receive less deference from the courts than will the comparable decisions of their competitors sponsoring and administering 401(k) plans who do not operate under such conflicts of interest. By itself, this will rarely cause an employer to terminate its defined benefit pension and shift to an individual account arrangement. But, to paraphrase the Supreme Court, this is the kind of cost which can act as a tie-breaker when the decision is close.
Consequently, Metlife v. Glenn, by reducing the deference ultimately granted to employers which sponsor and maintain defined benefit pensions, represents one more small, but unintended, push away from such pensions.
ShareThis
For sake of argument, let’s say a comics company wanted to have an absolutely level playing-field, but still wanted to be able to depict its characters in a sexual manner. What would be the solution? I for one think it would be both immoral and futile to ask straight cartoonists to attempt to sexualize male characters. With rare exceptions, they simply wouldn’t have the mindset.
Could the company create a level field simply by employing 50% straight artists and 50% gay artists? But then, the gay artists chosen would have to be something along the line of P. Craig Russell, who can draw women competently but IMO generally doesn’t sexualize them as he does his male characters.
>> Do you WANT men to be sexualized? Or do you want women NOT to be sexualized? >>
I think the issue isn’t a simplistic “all of one thing” or “none of it.”
It’s that women being sexualized in comics is overwhelmingly the standard, while men being sexualized isn’t. If both were treated in appropriate ways depending on the character and story — so you had sexualized men where appropriate, and women were sexualized when appropriate but not reflexively, as they are now.
>> Either way, you’re fighting a losing battle.>>
Give up, Heidi. Jim says you’re not going to win, so it’s not worth the effort. You might as well give up on equal pay, too. That doesn’t affect him directly either, so it’s just not an issue.
>> No matter how sexually repressed you’d like people to be, sex is going to win when it comes to trying to sell something.>>
And here comes the argument that if you don’t want overly sexualized images, you’re repressed and want others to be as well, not that he was trying to be personally offensive. Because sexualized woman are NORMAL and sexualized men AREN’T, and that’s just the way it is, and you might as well accept that things are run for men first and women as an afterthought, because it’s not worth trying to change it. Or something.
>> Why does Spider-Woman looking sexier than Spider-Man upset you so much that you write a month of posts about it (several of which specifically attacked Manara’s basic drawing ability)?>>
You’ve missed the whole point, Jim. If there were, in fact, only those two examples, I don’t think anyone would care much. But the Manara cover is an example of something we see repeatedly, the Campbell cover, not so much.
kdb
“I don’t know J. Scott Campbell very well, but I believe he is a straight man who is attracted to women and although his SPider-Man cover has the exact same pose…somehow it lacks the sexualized element”
You say that as if it’s a fact when it more closely reflects subjectivity. If you zoom out the Manara cover and add in a villain or two, then they are on a more equal footing as a whole…however, the pose is the same. Whether you see it as sexy or not when a male or female character does it is entirely subjective. I don’t think the Manara cover is sexy or sexualized, but I’m not surprised some women and men have taken it to be so from their perspective…because it’s subjective. The Manara cover was made the appeal to the inner teenage boy in all of us by essentially being an action model pose that portrays anatomy in a very in-your-face kind of way.. but “sexualized”? I don’t think so.
>> I for one think it would be both immoral and futile to ask straight cartoonists to attempt to sexualize male characters.>>
Straight cartoonists are all male, after all.
And it’s immoral and futile to ask Olivier Coipel to draw sexy men, but moral and effective to ask Amanda Conner to draw sexy women.
I think, perhaps, that cartoonists, both male and female, straight and gay, should be able to draw what the story needs. If the story needs a sexy guy, it shouldn’t be immoral (immoral?!) to ask for that to be drawn in a story. A sexy woman, same deal. But the idea that straight men simply can’t draw sexy men, and that it’s actually _immoral_ to ask them to do so, is a pretty weird concept.
But then, perhaps to some eyes, sexy women are just and normal and the default setting, while sexy men are weird and unpleasant and squicky. To the point that morality demands that men not have to draw such things.
This is called gender bias, though, and it’s not really a compelling argument.
kdb
>> You say that as if it’s a fact when it more closely reflects subjectivity. If you zoom out the Manara cover and add in a villain or two,>>
If you alter the Manara cover so it doesn’t have the same focus, it doesn’t have the same focus.
>> Whether you see it as sexy or not when a male or female character does it is entirely subjective.>>
Subjective, however, doesn’t mean “random.” I expect that seeing the Manara cover as sexualized is a pretty common reaction.
>> The Manara cover was made the appeal to the inner teenage boy in all of us >>
That’s right, Heidi. And all the women this comic was supposedly aimed at — just tap into your inner teenage boy. That’s who it’s for. Blahdeblah has one, so everyone has one.
>> but “sexualized”? I don’t think so.>>
I think you’re in the minority. And I think that if it’s appealing to your inner teenage boy on the level you think, your inner teenage boy probably disagrees with you.
kdb
“What it actually looks like when men are sexualized”
….which means there are girls that get horny with these kinds of pics…right?
Am I right? Uh..right?
I’m more disturbed by the fact that Sears sells stuff like this than I am by the sexualization of either gender in comics. I mean, Sears???? My Mom used to shop there.
Also just curious, do women, in general, find poses such as the ones in this ad as sexy. I know gay men do but it’s been my experience that what gay men find sexy and what straight women find sexy are very often entirely different things.
You’re a good writer of fiction, Kurt, but please don’t resort to fictionalizing me and my opinions in order to more easily debate a straw-man.
>>You might as well give up on equal pay, too. That doesn’t affect him directly either, so it’s just not an issue.<> Because sexualized woman are NORMAL and sexualized men AREN’T, and that’s just the way it is <> the Manara cover is an example of something we see repeatedly <> If both were treated in appropriate ways depending on the character and story — so you had sexualized men where appropriate, and women were sexualized when appropriate but not reflexively, as they are now. <<
I'll support that! Now, let's ALL agree on where the "appropriate" line lay. THAT should be easy!
You’re a good writer of fiction, Kurt, but please don’t resort to fictionalizing me and my opinions in order to more easily debate a straw-man.
>>You might as well give up on equal pay, too. That doesn’t affect him directly either, so it’s just not an issue.>>
Why stop your lame conflating there, Kurt, while you were at it, you should have gone straight on having me support Hitler and slavery. That would have made me look REALLY bad.
>> Because sexualized woman are NORMAL and sexualized men AREN’T, and that’s just the way it is >>
You’re on a ROLL, Kurt! Man, I sure do have some boneheaded opinions, once you invent them and put them in my mouth!
>> the Manara cover is an example of something we see repeatedly >>
Such as, oh, say, Conan #24 — a book YOU wrote. Of course that cover didn’t stop at implied nudity, like Spider-Woman — NO. This was your book, Kurt, so it had a fully exposed vagina shot right on the cover!
Of course this was the same Conan title wherein YOU, Mr. Busiek, created a female character designed to go toe-to-toe with Conan, and you decided that the best way for her to acquire her amazing fighting ability was for her to be raped repeatedly by monsters every night until she learned how to fight them off (WTF?). Fortunately, Dark Horse had the good sense to stop using that character once you left the book.
>> If both were treated in appropriate ways depending on the character and story — so you had sexualized men where appropriate, and women were sexualized when appropriate but not reflexively, as they are now. >>
I’ll support that! Now, let’s ALL agree on where the “appropriate” line lay. THAT should be easy!
Heidi – I think this photo that started doing the rounds on Twitter a few days ago does an even better job of illustrating it:
https://twitter.com/ashyda/status/510415353420054528
>> Now, let’s ALL agree on where the “appropriate” line lay. THAT should be easy!>>
You’ll never get to universal agreement — as is the case with subjective matters — but that’s not a reason not to try for better understanding than what we’ve got now.
kdb
>> Kurt, while you were at it, you should have gone straight on having me support Hitler and slavery. That would have made me look REALLY bad.>>
You shouldn’t support Hitler and slavery! Man, what’s wrong with you?
>> Such as, oh, say, Conan #24 — a book YOU wrote. Of course that cover didn’t stop at implied nudity, like Spider-Woman — NO. This was your book, Kurt, so it had a fully exposed vagina shot right on the cover! >>
Actually, you’re referring to a variant cover; the main cover had clothing.
But yes, I would never argue that nudity and sexualization are verboten — indeed, I said rather the opposite. I think there are some things appropriate to Conan that I wouldn’t put in, say AVENGERS, and that’s certainly one of them.
So if you’re suggesting that such a cover should never run on CONAN, I think I’d disagree.* If you’re suggesting that I must therefore want such covers on all comics, then I think you’ve missed the point entirely.
*I say “think,” because if not for the way that cover came about (as a gag the artist did to startle the editor, which only became a variant cover when readers and retailers saw that version and asked specifically for the variant cover), I doubt it’d have happened at all. But CONAN as a series was intended for a different audience than SPIDER-WOMAN, and nudity, sex and brutality have been part of the setup since the 1930s.
>> Of course this was the same Conan title wherein YOU, Mr. Busiek, created a female character designed to go toe-to-toe with Conan, and you decided that the best way for her to acquire her amazing fighting ability was for her to be raped repeatedly by monsters every night until she learned how to fight them off (WTF?). Fortunately, Dark Horse had the good sense to stop using that character once you left the book.>>
Have they? At one point, they were holding her in reserve for when I’d be able to write her again, but I’m pretty sure she’s shown up at least once since I left — they ran a plot outline past me for comments.
And we weren’t simply designing a character to be a good fighter — there are better ways to get to that, if it’s all we wanted — but to contrast Conan’s fiercely-guarded independence with a character who became a badass by handing over all control to someone else, and as a result endured horror, coming out the other side a skilled fighter but a severely damaged person. Maybe we’ll get to explore that more in the future, if I ever wind up writing more Janissa.
But yes, that was meant to be a WTF? situation, so I’m glad your Hitler-lovin’, slavery-boosting sensibilities caught that.
kdb
How is the image of a man restrained on a bed, requiring a black bar presumably because his genitalia is hanging out, in any way equivalent to the depiction of women on mainstream comic book covers? Milo Manara’s covers for Marvel look downright tame in comparison to Bondage Lad there. A more legitimate, non-hyperbolic comparison is romance novel covers:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=romance+novel+covers
Lots of “sexualized” images of men, designed to appeal to the “female gaze” in order to sell more copies.
>>Actually, you’re referring to a variant cover; the main cover had clothing.>>
Which is PRECISELY what the Manara cover is — a variant, not the main cover.
>>So if you’re suggesting that such a cover should never run on CONAN, I think I’d disagree.* If you’re suggesting that I must therefore want such covers on all comics, then I think you’ve missed the point entirely.>>
REH probably wouldn’t have had a problem with that cover. It’s not too far off what Brundage was doing, and definitely in the ballpark of his prose. I also don’t think you’re promoting nude covers on all titles (though if we were to use your straw-man approach, you might be suggesting all manner of things). My only point was about glass-houses and first stones.
The Spider-Woman cover doesn’t strike me as the kind of thing that should be on the cover of an all-ages comic book, but much of Marvel’s line strikes me that way. It’s Marvel’s decision. If it sells, no one will be able to persuade them that they were wrong. If it doesn’t sell — well, they still won’t think they were wrong, but they might try a different approach… eventually.
Personally, I liked those Darwyn Cooke covers Heidi ran the other day. I’d like to see more comics with those ideals.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the use of rape as a plot device with any positive results. Robert E. Howard’s own badass woman — such as Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, or Dark Agnes — left plenty of dead would-be rapists in their wake, but appropriately, no successful ones.
Okay, Jim, you’ve had your fun, but the trolling has come to an end.
Blahdeblah wrote:
>>>I don’t think the Manara cover is sexy or sexualized,
WOW and people were insulted with that redraw? THIS is the most insulting comment yet leveled against Mr. Manara. one of the greatest erotic artists of all time.
I think we’ve gone about as far as we can go here, so my thought experiment must end, as it began, with trolls claiming black is white and night is day.