Tiger Beatdown

So, you know what’s sad and hard to deal with? The Mackenzie Phillips thing. I mean, seriously: there is so much going on there! With the incest, and the “consensual” incest, and the nobody really even understanding or knowing how to process what “consent” even means (OPINION TIME: pretty much nothing) in contexts of abuse and wherein you have already been sexually assaulted by the dude a certain number of times and… yeah. Sad. Hard to deal with. Hard to even understand.

What is NOT hard to understand, however, is that a ton of the coverage around it has been totally shitty and irresponsible! Therefore, I invite you to join Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I as we puzzle through it all.

SADY: oh, say, have you heard of any fairly famous stories of abuse and sexual assault that people are spinning in a totally alarmingly rape-culturey way lately? because I HAVE!

AMANDA: wait … you mean the consensual incest?

SADY: ha ha, YEAH. i played a little game, the day that story broke. it was called, How Many Headlines Are Not Totally Fucked Up.

(Continued)

The action (or often lack thereof) taking place in [Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel] is so everyday slice of life for anyone who can use ‘Beacon’s Closet’ in a sentence, that it produces a sensation in the reader that is not unlike spending an afternoon catching up on your Tumblr dashboard.

Except that, unlike Tumblr, it costs money! BONUS.

Oh hi! Say, has anyone noticed a big, gory smear on the pavement lately? Yeah. That would be Seth McFarlane.

Now, if there is one thing I have had cause to think about this week, it is that people who intentionally seek to provoke outrage are really hard to deal with. Because basically, if you are outraged, they win! And there may ultimately be no point in engaging with a person of that sort unless you can control the conversation and keep him from turning it to his own advantage.

So, how do you engage with such a person? Well! Perhaps you could take some tips from your new hero, Deborah Solomon, who recently interviewed noted rape joke enthusiast McFarlane for the New York Times!

Now, I have to admit, my first thoughts, when I saw that he had been interviewed, were more or less along the lines of, “oh, great, more press for Seth McFarlane, I CRAVE THE SWEET RELEASE OF DEATH.” And the opening gambit really did not do much to allay my irritation. Because here is how it started:

Peter Griffin, the hero of your show, is a big lug of a dad who lives in Rhode Island and makes the sort of insensitive comments that send teenage boys into hysterics. Who is your biggest audience?
It’s men, 18 to 34.

Oh well, ho-hum, nothing to see here. Oh, except:

Personally, I find the show’s rape jokes especially unfunny.

BLAM! And she goes on, thusly:

In one episode, Peter learns that three co-eds were raped and murdered. He says to himself, “Everyone’s getting laid but me.” Why is that funny?
Because he’s so oblivious. You’re not laughing at rape; you’re laughing at him being an idiot.

Ugh. Well, it’s a stupid answer, but I guess he’s attempted to justify himself, and we should just move on to the next question. What is the next question, by the way, Deborah?

In another episode, Peter asks, “Would you rather be black or crippled?” Why is that funny?

Oh, DAMN. Deborah Solomon: you made me love you! I didn’t want to do it! Oh, okay, I totally did. But you made it very easy.

Anyway, it goes on from there, and you should read it all. Personally, my favorite part is when she semi-assuages him and does the friendly interviewer thing by comparing his stuff to The Flintstones – Seth McFarlane likes The Flintstones, apparently! – and then uses that to hit him once again on the sexism thing. Oh, or the part where she’s nice again for about five seconds, and encourages him to compare his work to The Simpsons, and then gives him concrete examples of why The Simpsons is a much better show? Fabulous.

Basically, if you enjoy the spectacle of Seth McFarlane being blindsided, over and over again – a tactic which, I would suggest to you, is both more effective and more viscerally satisfying than tackling him head-on – and humiliated publicly, you will like this interview. Four stars! Highly recommended! And so on, and so forth.

In one of approximately nine million things I have written in the past month about stuff I have contributed elsewhere, esteemed reader – and one-time contributor! – Chelseawantsout weighs in thusly:

Is everything going to be an important announcement from now on? When are we going to get some unimportant announcements or important proclamations?

Ha! Good question! And the answer is, um… welllllll… sort of?

Basically, I am writing more for other people than I used to. This is very nice, because it often contributes to important life goals such as “buying food” and “eating the food” and “not falling behind on my rent thus causing my landlord who already pretty much hates me to make my life far more difficult than it has to be!” It’s work. And I like working! For example: today, you can find my thoughts on Tucker Max protests in Broadsheet. (There is a solid possibility that you will not agree with them! Regardless, I am impressed that I managed to write about Tucker Max at all without the post devolving into several thousand words of cursing and shaking my fist at the heavens.) You can also find the first post in what is scheduled to be an eight-week guest blogging stint over at Bitch Magazine (the blog is called “She Pop.” I will be writing about gender in pop music. Yes, I KNOW, it will be NUTTY).

Now: while I am totally honored that both of these places have let my work be associated with their general awesomeness and wonder, the fact is that the stuff I submit has to be really, really good to merit inclusion there. And so, there are sacrifices to be made. One of them is that, for a while, I will probably be posting a bit less often at Tiger Beatdown.

Which is not to say that I will not be posting at all! It’s highly unlikely that I will ever become sober or thoughtful enough to keep from mouthing off about the issues of the day over here. It’s just that, instead of doing five long posts a week here, I will be doing lots of posts all over (or trying to, anyway), and probably fewer than five of them will show up on this blog.

The thing is, I know that at this point Tiger Beatdown is basically its own entity. There’s stuff that fits here that just wouldn’t fit anywhere else. And vice versa. And, over the past few months, I’ve come to feel that it belongs to me less than it does to the people who read it. I owe all of you. And love the ones that I know! Therefore, I would sort of like to ask you – You, the Internet! – what it is that you’d like to see here. Would you want to see more of the shorter, sillier, or more personal stuff? Because, if so, you will probably get more posts per week. Or would you prefer that I stick exclusively to the ladybusiness-related issues, and probably post less? Because that’s fine too. I can always go back to Tumblr. OR LIVEJOURNAL.

The fate of Tiger Beatdown is in your hands! Choose wisely. Or, you know, just post whatever! That is also fine!

PS: I have not answered your reader e-mail. I have not answered ANYONE’s e-mail. I have not answered MY MOM’S e-mail. This is because I am busy. But, more importantly, it is because I am a jerk. I am going to work on catching up now.

Along with Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys – hey, remember when I covered that? That was fun! – comes a new reading series, “Sex Worker Literati,” which takes place at the Manhattan bar Happy Ending on the first Thursday of every month. The reading is less an offshoot of the anthology than it is a different, and equally vital, take on the same project; both focus on introduce a wide range of voices from inside the sex industry. I recommend going to both, if you possibly can, not least because at Sex Worker Literati there is music, and a bar.

I got to see the inaugural event, on August 6, and to talk afterward with the wonderful Audacia Ray, who co-hosts the series along with Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys co-editor David Henry Sterry.
(Continued)