Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by C.L. Minou
So Kinsey Hope, who some of you –but I’m betting not too many, which is kinda the subject of this post — might know better as Recursive Paradox (or even Genderbitch), wrote something about feminism that I think you should go and read. Not because I suspect you will agree with all, some, or even most of it. Not because I can guarantee that you won’t find it infuriating. Bits of it rub me the wrong way, and a lot of the people on her Shit List — yeah, she has an actual Shit List — are folks I respect and work with on occasion. But that is Kinsey’s paradigm, and I’ve never not been moved by her extraordinary passion.
You should read it, still. Because you’re not going to find a more brutal, honest, and passionate attack on the ways feminism has failed a lot of people. Most of whom are women.
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Posted on Monday, August 9, 2010 by Lauretta Charlton
The media’s reaction to “tapegate” was predictable. “Mel Gibson is a colossal fuckbag. A sick colossal fuckbag. Case (and career) dismissed.” I’m just as happy as the next person to see him go, but before we hang Gibson out to dry I think it’s important to peel back some of the scandal’s Hollywood patina and ask ourselves why critics have latched on to Gibson’s racist remarks and virtually ignored his hateful verbal assault against women. Headlines overwhelmingly decried Mel Gibson’s “racist rant” when racist pejoratives are mere footnotes peppered throughout piercingly misogynistic tirades.
My initial reaction to “tapegate”: “Oh, Mel Gibson’s a dick? Duh. NEXT!” I hadn’t actually listened to the tape. I blithely read about it in between yawns and doing actual work. Then I read that he’d managed to construct a sentence that didn’t include the words “cunt” and “cock.” He told his ex Oksana Grigorieva it would be her fault if she were raped by a pack of niggers.
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Posted on Friday, August 6, 2010 by BMichael
Proposition 8, California’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, was overturned–not that same-sex couples may see an immediate benefit. A seventeen-month-old boy was murdered for acting like a girl. Nineteen young men in Sudan were sentenced to a public flogging for wearing women’s clothing and “dancing in a womanly fashion.” Sudan was also named one of the ten worst places to live if you’re a woman.
World Breastfeeding Week occurred over the first week of August, during which time Giselle Bundchen faced criticism for asking rhetorically if parents were going to to give their children “chemical food.” An ad campaign by Men Can Stop Rape has finally showed what we may have suspected all along: Rapists can prevent rape by not raping people. On the other hand, David Brown, Dallas Police Commisioner, may or may not have shifted the blame of date rape onto the victims–you decide.
Seth MacFarlane noted that “every civil rights conflict–black people, women–come to an end the right way.” His body of work makes you wonder what he meant by “the right way.” Video game publisher Activision might have something against female leads in its games. Mark McInnes, the former chief executive of Australian retailer David Jones, was named in a $37 million sexual harassment lawsuit. Male commenters to the story thought the suit was ridiculous for one or more stupid reasons.
Arizona state senator Russell Pearce compared the birth practices of immigrant women to those of farm animals. The New York Times reported by means of data and anecdote that feminism has solved all of women’s job problems save one: Motherhood. Some eggheads at Psychology Today found that there still is sexism in the workplace. Despite common assumptions, feminism is not one of the highest-paying jobs in the world.
Posted on Thursday, August 5, 2010 by Sarah Jaffe
Female desire has been my feminist project for a while. I’m focused on reclaiming it, understanding it, making room for it, staking out a place for it as something worthwhile. Cristina Nehring, I think, is on a similar quest in A Vindication of Love, and I rather love her for it.
Nehring isn’t out to say that feminism has failed us or that it’s made us miserable or that we should just go get married and have babies and then we’ll be satisfied. She’s arguing as much for our right to have our hearts broken as anything else. She points out, though, that in its rush to liberate women from the confines of marriage, children, and male control, feminism has left us very little space to negotiate the very real feelings that women have, often for men. In her view, this erasure of desire, combined with a consumer culture that sends us running to buy any new product that promises us instant gratification and online dating services where you can order up a date like a takeout meal, have caused us to forget love. And, I would add, its revolutionary, liberatory, even empowering potential.
Nehring embraces the fucked-up-ness of love, writes in defense of power imbalances, inequalities, hell, even infidelities. Her defense of failure in love is particularly passionate, an argument for holding your head up high if and when it doesn’t work out, for letting go of the dual guilt that being a “strong single woman” leaves you with: not only that you’re hurt that it ended, but that you should’ve never bothered in the first place. What did you think, that you needed a man!??!
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Posted on Tuesday, August 3, 2010 by Sady
Well! We are scattered about to the four winds this week, apparently. HOWEVER, you may still want to read these delightful pieces I wrote for the Atlantic, in which I ask that you compare yourself to Snooki and tell you that you have Peggy Olsen’s problems. Enjoy!
Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 by BMichael
Mad Men returned. Jon Hamm delineated a “weird conundrum” in which American men in the 60s were gracious enough to be cordial when they treated women like trash; men today, they’re not even polite about it, which Hamm called “too bad.”
The Guardian placed a recent piece by Bidisha on casual sexism in the one online section it was likely to be well received, Life & Style’s Women section. Susan Douglas was interviewed about her latest book, Enlightened Sexism. Did the Hirter brewery portray sexualized beer or “self-confident beer drinkers?” Who knows, but the ad makes me thirsty (for more interesting beer ads).
Systematic sexist practices were alleged in the world of Australian air traffic controllers. The Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) Organization deemed separate but equal a cutting edge idea. After chastising her for cursing, Infoworld tells an inquirer that, yes, the IT world is still sexist. (The comments section disagreed.)
Some Islamic feminists were trying to get out of the penalty box. The National Organization of Women smelled sexism in President Obama’s reluctance to nominate Elizabeth Warren to run a new consumer protection agency. Investors were shown to be sexist. Women started getting plastic surgery to make their feet smaller.
Honestly, who even knows, but a Film School Rejects piece about an actress’ “cleavage holding court” at a Comic-Con event for Zack Snyder’s latest film asserts the director will lose his sexist label. (But will he lose his ethno-exoticizing fetish? Stay tuned!) A third woman has come forward to allege that Roman Polanksi raped her. Surprise!
Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2010 by The Rejectionist
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: you have all no doubt heard a lot about this book, which has been out for a while, and was made into a movie, and has sold about a bajillion copies in many languages, and also carries with it the deliciously tragic legacy of Stieg Larsson’s untimely death and estranged family evilly stiffing his longtime partner of her share of his (now enormous) estate, etc. etc. People love this book. They love it. They love Stieg Larsson. They love his noble anti-fascist politics (which are indeed noble, don’t get me wrong), and I lost count of the book reviews I read that basically went like this: HUZZAH FEMINIST STIEG LARSSON, FEMINIST PENNER OF FEMINIST THRILLERS FOR FEMINISTS LISBETH WHAT A BABE.
Well! For me, this thriller was not so thrilling. There are some problems with Dragon Tattoo, and let’s talk about the main one: There are a lot of dead ladies in this book. Literally: hundreds. There are other beefs I have with Dragon Tattoo, on the level of Literature: the plotting is sloppy; the sentences are decidedly unlovely; the villainous family is SO BAD they are Nazis AND serial killers (yes, plural) AND rapists (yes, plural) of their sisters/daughters/many murder victims. But the bottom line is not so much that of a Reviewer, but that of a Lady: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo creeps me the fuck out. In my gut, right there, the place that is like GET ME OUT OF HERE AND FIX ME A DRINK AND START TELLING ME ABOUT UNICORNS AND KITTENS OR SOMETHING. The novel’s original title in Swedish was Men Who Hate Women; but reading the book, you start to get the feeling it’s not a polemic so much as a manual.
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Posted on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by C.L. Minou
I once had occasion to date a woman who had very strong boundaries regarding acceptable affection. (I won’t get into the reasons, because they were hers, and totally valid.) Now, as I am a fanatic for consent, this turned out to not be that big an issue for me; in fact, it was a healthy reminder of the way things should ALWAYS be. That is, I had to ask her when I wanted to try something new. I made sure that I got enthusiastic assent before I stretched a previously-established boundary. And yeah, sometimes it was frustrating, but it was often sexy as hell. (It helped that there were no boundaries on kissing, and she was a past master of the art.) And in a weird way, by needing to seek and receive consent constantly, we achieved an intimacy I’ve seldom felt in other relationships.
I despair sometimes that we were able to achieve this mutuality of respect and consent only because we were both women. Because lately, except for Thomas Macauly Millar, it’s getting pretty hard out there.
Take, for example, your latest court-sanctioned reaffirmation that a woman’s body belongs to everyone but herself:
A jury on Thursday rejected a young woman’s claim that the producers of a “Girls Gone Wild” video damaged her reputation by showing her tank top being pulled down by another person in a Laclede’s Landing bar.
A St. Louis Circuit Court jury deliberated 90 minutes before ruling against the woman, 26, on the third day of the trial. Lawyers on both sides argued the key issue was consent, with her side saying she absolutely refused to give it and the defense claiming she silently approved by taking part in the party.
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