feminism
Oh you people and your ridiculous ideas.
[Trigger warning: mentions of rape and violence, but not graphic descriptions]
[Content warning: I am not sex positive. I am also not sex negative. I do have a horse in this race. I tend to come at things from an angle I like to call sex critical. I will not say ALL SEX IS TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME AND POSITIVE or ALL PORN IS TOTALLY FUCKING DEMEANING AND OPPRESSIVE]
Short version, Katie Roipe says that women are reading books about submission (like Fifty Shades of Grey) because we need a break from all that upward mobility we’ve got now. You know, the free birth control falling from the sky and the lack of the glass ceiling. The burden of all that stuff we have.
Now then, Fifty Shades was a Twilight fanfic that blew up to huge proportions. I won’t discuss the writing in either of them because it’s been done. I also won’t discuss in depth why the relationship is abusive because we all know that, too.
Let’s discuss why women are currently so heavily invested in the erotics of brutality.
I am saying currently and not suddenly because we’re not suddenly interested in anything. I hate Twilight in the way that I hate all things that teach women to accept their victimization as romantic. However, Meyer didn’t precisely invent the concept of dating your abuser like they are the greatest love of all. I read V.C. Andrews as a child. In fact, I went back and reread V.C. Andrews in preparation for this. My favorite V.C. Andrews was actually My Sweet Audrina, and while I prefer not to spoil the book, apparently the cure for PTSD is to rape her again so that she realizes she likes sex and marries you.
Twilight is a Little Golden Book compared to that.
Fifty Shades is slightly different, more sexual, more human (full disclosure, I have only made it through the second book, which was difficult at best. James’s writing is difficult at best, and eye-rollingly horrible at worst, but goddamn it, I’m a fighter), but still eroticized brutality.
There is so much at play in the critique of these two books, that I need to comment on them twice.
Mom Porn
Fifty Shades is currently being referred to as Mommy Porn, but this is also not new. You might also remember the Twilight Moms, who were the adult fans of the eternally 17-years-old Edward Cullen (they would show up to movie screenings with signs that said “You can break my headboard, bite my pillows, and bruise my body ANY day,” therefore sexualizing and giving a name to a scene that doesn’t actually happen in the book, which is righteous fucking, apparently). I’m not going to sit here and psycholanalyze these fans personally, but both of these books are, at the end of the day, about a life less ordinary. The extraordinary is the basis for most fantasy books; that’s the porn. The idea that you no longer have to take the kids to school or go to work or do anything even a little bit normal is 10x the porn as the actual sex in either book.* Most pornography is meant to display some kind of fantasy, some sex you could be having right now. It’s generally meant to fulfill a need, but is culturally shamed. It’s a need you can’t admit to having.
To refer to these things as “Mommy Porn,” is more than a little disparaging. First, it enacts a separation of mothers from the rest of us—this isn’t just porn, it’s porn for “moms”—which says that how mothers want to get fucked is somehow inherently different from the rest of us. Regular porn just won’t do? Then it denigrates by playing on the cultural ideal that your mother cannot possibly be cool, culturally adept, and sexual. Mom porn. Mom jeans. Mommy blogging. If you want to call something “shitty,” just stick “mom” in front of it. These are terms used to disparage parenthood as tragically unhip and boring. Furthermore, if you have read either Twilight or Fifty Shades, you are aware of the fact that both books are rather tragically chaste (Fifty Shades caveat—so far). So what we’re really saying here is “Sex so bad that only your mother, who is totally soulless and sexless, could get off to it.” You know, except she can’t.
Harry Potter is also porn by the definition that Twilight is porn, by the way. While I can’t find anything about the gender demographic across Harry Potter fans, apparently the key demographic for Rowling was age 18–34:
The eighteen-to-thirty-four age group is arguably one of the most discontent. Many of my friends and I have been in “real jobs” now for ten years, give or take, yet most of us still can’t quite believe it. Years after graduating from college, we’re still coming to terms with the fact that we sometimes wake up when it’s still dark out, pay our rent on time and in full, eat breakfast, take our Vitamin D, and make real efforts toward regular exercise. The mere fact that we’re actual real-life adults still eludes us a lot of the time, and can actually seem pretty funny. We started reading the “Harry Potter” series when we still had the pleasure of being somewhat carefree and ignorant; we weren’t yet the disillusioned, jaded youngish adults that we are now (although this is fun, in its own way). And so the “Harry Potter” movies are the ultimate form of escapism…I don’t mean to say that “adult life” doesn’t have its upside—but it’s nice to have “Harry Potter” to fall back on. (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/11/adult-education-at-hogwarts.html#ixzz169IQ2dKw)
TL;DR J.K. Rowling can clearly write, but her books are still fantasy fulfillment. I mean, really—I’d rather be a fucking wizard, too. We’d all rather be wizards.
We’d all like to have an eternally beautiful 17-year-old body with the wisdom and maturity of an adult.
We’d all like to have more money than King Solomon and a sex drive that is never interrupted by reality.
It’s all porn**.
Furthermore—and while I can’t find gender demographics, I have been to the movies in the last ten years—why are Twilight and Fifty Shades “Mom porn” and Harry Potter is “charming?” I know nobody like to go for the obvious on the internet, but I’m going for the obvious. Twilight and Fifty Shades are apparently being read, overwhelmingly, by older women (except that isn’t true. However, it’s being presented as a “women” thing). Harry Potter is much more mixed demographic.
What’s an easier way to disparage a woman than to tell her that she’s sexless? Mom-like? Basically only by calling her a slut, and the term “mommy porn” shames women not only for wanting an outlet for sexual and romantic expression, but also for it being so tame that only your mom could like it. Now you want the wrong kind of sex. You want MOM sex.
Take Me, You Brute
Second soap box full disclaimer—I am not talking about BDSM. I am talking about brutality and violence, which is something very different and much less fun or consensual. If women are “suddenly” into BDSM, call me a trendsetter!
Why is literature that depicts violent romantic relationships suddenly the new hotness? Katie Roiphe is wrong for many reasons that are not because she’s Katie Roiphe, though being Katie Roiphe is a black mark in her “Cons” column. These books are not, as I said, suddenly the new anything. They just have one thing in common: a representation of a violent male being written about like he’s the second coming.
While pages and pages of this have already been written, let’s just put this here so that we have something to look at.
Edward Cullen
-Prevents Bella from seeing her friends
-Drags Bella around by the wrist
-Repeatedly threatens her life
-Shames her for wanting to kiss him, saying that if he lost control, it would be her fault
-Shames her for wanting to have sex with him, even after they are married
-Shames her for HAVING sex with him, after they are married
-Follows her relentlessly, everywhere he can physically go
Cannot read Bella’s mind, so he reads the minds of everyone around her in order to find out what she’s talking about
Christian Grey
-Uses his power and influence to put himself in Anastasia’s way
-Keeps a dossier on her, including her social security number and everything she does
-Forces her onto birth control
-Forces her into changing her hair
-Refers to her repeatedly as a possession
-Her foray into punishment is not safe or sane and is only marginally consensual***
Implicit in each book is the fact that neither woman could ever, should she so chose, get away. Edward Cullen is a vampire. He spends 3 months in Bella’s room without her knowledge or consent, staring at her while she sleeps. It’s made explicit over and over again that he can outrun her, outfight her, and outsmart her.
Similarly, Anastasia could never get away from Grey. He apparently makes $100,000 an hour with his businesses and has kept a file on every woman he has ever had sex with. He knew who Anastasia was before she introduced herself, and has her address, her family’s address, her social security number, and bought the company that she works for without her telling him that she was even working.
We just have to assume that Edward and Grey would be gentlemanly enough not to take the abandonment to it’s natural and realistic end, which would be to kill her so no one else can have her. That’s reality. In 45 percent of Chicago homicides in which a man killed a woman, an immediate precipitating factor of the fatal incident was the woman leaving or trying to end the relationship. For clinic/hospital women who were abused on followup, 69 percent of those who had left or tried to leave an abuser in the previous year, but whose abuse continued despite their attempted departure, experienced severe incidents compared to 44 percent of women who had not left or tried to leave.
Maybe we read these things because they are reality. Men are socialized to be violent against us women from birth, and women are socialized to take it (see: If he hits you, that means he likes you).
As I said, I read V.C. Andrews as a child, but I also read other things like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Wuthering Heights, which are all about How To Love The Asshole You’ve Got. Jane, Elizabeth, and Catherine are all Bellas and Anastasias—women with spirit who have romanticized and fallen in love with men who are absolutely brutal. From Mr. Rochester’s Forgotten Wife to Heathcliff’s Generational Manipulation A Go Go to Mr. Darcy the Neckbeard, our romanticized men are brutal creatures who hurt and lie to their partners just enough to still be romantic, but they never get to the point of, say, shooting her and then turning the gun on himself. They stop just before the natural conclusion, or the women never try to leave, so there’s no occassion for having to write out the natural end of this kind of behavior.
A lot was made about Stephenie Meyer looking an awful lot like Bella Swan (http://4.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ku7uy2kIlm1qatyobo1_400.jpg) and something similar is being said about E.L. James (there is no kicky internet meme yet, but it’s been brought up that Anastasia is pale skinned with dark hair and a wide smile…Here is a picture of E.L. James http://c4241337.r37.cf2.rackcdn.com/04-29-56_elj_420.jpg). These books are clearly some level of fulfillment for the authors, and are clearly filling some niche in the women who are just gobbling them up so voraciously that they can’t make the movie fast enough. So why are we reading this? What fantasy does this fulfill in women?
The natural answer is that having lots of sex and money is really pretty convenient, but lots of people have lots of sex and money and still read these. We can write a book where people have lots of sex and money and a husband who is pretty nice, does his share of the boring tasks of every day life, and trusts his wife to do as she likes because she’s a thinking person, but we don’t write that book. We write this book, and we’ve been writing this book for hundreds of years.
Perhaps the reason that we flock to the Brute is because 9 times out of 10, we’ve got the Brute at home. And how could we not? Look at our cultural ideals, where men are given male heroes to emulate who are violent or hypermasculine, aggressive go-getters who don’t take no for an answer. The masculinity scripts that men are given are usually violent in some way (the tough guy, the emotionless rock, the ladies’s man) and when men reject these scripts in childhood, they are often bullied, and usually for being “gay.” While we all know how horrific childhood can be for everyone, and while I am not male, I can imagine that daily beatings for not conforming to the cult of masculinity pretty much suck, and even if you’re not hypermasculine, my guess would be that you can fake it. In that way, even when following the script is just an act, my second guess would be that some of it becomes natural. I mean, you can’t sit in dirt for 25 years and expect to come out clean, can you?
This is not to say that your husband is some kind of brutal testosterone junkie who is just waiting to fucking kill you. It’s only saying that the Brute is familiar territory in both lives and literature. Maybe this isn’t about the male characters, maybe Edward and Grey are just the background, and infinity money and constantly hard dick would just be nice.
Maybe the fantasy is in being Bella (or Anastasia, or Jane, or Elizabeth, or Catherine), in so much as none of them are particularly bothered by things like misogyny and abusive behavior. Maybe, instead of it being about our secret desire to submit all our power, it’s about ignorance being bliss. Or maybe it’s a fantasy of not having to be scared by the Brute, of living somewhere where misogyny can’t touch you, and the natural end of abusive behavior is Happily Ever After and not what really happens.
Though I suppose it’s just easier to mark it as women actually wanting absurdly bad sex.
*If you can jerk off to a sex scene in Fifty Shades of Grey, seeing as they are written like Jim Morrison’s pussy took a bunch of acid and saw orchids and tin foil, I’ll give you a dollar.
**This is not to say that your life sucks and your husband is ugly and you resent your children. This is to say that your life is pretty good, but these impossible things, fantasies, if you will, are also pretty good. I wouldn’t kick a partner out of bed for Edward Cullen or Christian Grey, but infinity money might be pretty useful.
***Spoiler: When he finall does convince her to try something kinkier, Grey belts Anastasia. He apparently hits her as hard as he can six times, which she finds so painful that she forgets her safeword and basically loses her shit while he continues. She is traumatized enough to walk out directly afterward. First of all, this is not how you introduce someone who’s never masturbated previous to six weeks ago to sex, let alone kinky sex. Secondly, I know very few people who like to take pain out of context or who enjoy scenes with new partners that were not negotiated. Lastly, the whole scene read incredibly rape-y and I was really put off by it.
I Want A New Big Daddy
2012
Preface: I am the world’s biggest Bioshock fangirl. I have no idea whether I will buy Infinite or not, given everything, but my hero worship ends right here.
Dear Ken Levine,
We’re breaking up. I’m sorry.
This begs some explanation.
As I’m sure you know, because you’ve responded to it, there is a lot of criticism going around about the main female character in Bioshock Infinite. Her name is Elizabeth, or as we like to call her around the way, Boobs Nelson.
As you know, Ken Levine, some weirdos on the internet don’t understand you the way I do. They seem to think that Elizabeth’s chest is absurd, they think she’s sexualized, and they think that she doesn’t really speak much in the trailer—she just stands around and has boobs, occasionally squeaking out lines.
I didn’t say anything at first because I didn’t particularly mind her. Yes, she does have an absurd chest and a waist so small that she resembles an insect more than a girl. There are mannequins like her in Macy’s. They put necklaces around the waist. I find them scary and deformed, and I’m not sold on having a waist smaller than my neck, but I was willing with Elizabeth. There’s a new Bioshock! I’ve had it reserved since I went to pick up my copy of Cataclysm (December 2010), if that gives you any indication of my borderline obsession with your games.
But Ken, your reaction, I’m sorry. You’re just not the sort of person I can continue to admire. I can be forgiving, Ken Levine. I don’t mind giant boobs. I mind female characters being so sexualized that the things they do border on absurd (I’m looking at you Lara Croft). Elizabeth might have giant boobs and a corset that might only cover her nipples and a waist the size of her neck for a good, storybased reason. I mean, Catherine, while having the distinction of being the single most misogynistic game I’ve ever played (and still I love that game), also has Catherine looking that way for a reason.
It was just those things you said, Ken Levine, they hurt. I can’t be with someone doesn’t have any self awareness at all. Coupled with the way that you showed that you have no awareness of other people…I’m sorry, Ken Levine. We’re breaking up.
“In terms of her body type, I think certainly people on the Internet have spent way more time thinking about Elizabeth’s chest than I have. It’s something I’ve barely thought about.”
Well, that’s true. While your default slider for a female character might be set all the way to ten, you’re right. You have absolutely no need to think about women’s bodies. After all, we can look at her and think about that for you. We have to all the time, because almost every image that we are shown is an idealized version of ourselves, but so twisted as to be physically impossible. I am happy, Ken Levine, that you don’t need to think about women’s bodies and the way they are represented. I would love that option.
“We sort of evolved her over time, and that’s the challenge when you show stuff early on – you’re still in the creative process and you’re still evolving the creative process. I’m sure Elizabeth may evolve a little bit more over time because until it’s out, I haven’t made the definitive statement on it… so I certainly don’t spend as much time thinking about this issue as the Internet does, and I’m not sure what that says about the Internet but, you know.”
I was so hopeful here. You didn’t totally dismiss her character model as set, and I understand that the game won’t be out until later this year. There’s still time!
I’m sorry, however, that you don’t like the people on the internet. We are clearly just a load of big perverts who have nothing else to do all day than to look at representations of women and complain about them. We’re not nearly as busy as you are, you forceful and dynamic man, and if we were that busy, we wouldn’t have the time to give a second thought to avatars that are meant to represent our gender and race. Surely if you had a little less to do, you would also be aware of the fact that there are other people in the world. I can tell you what it says about the internet, though. I’ll give it to you quickly, so you won’t have to devote any time to thinking about the class of people you are representing.
There are girls on the internet. And we are so over this shit.
“It’s disappointing when [Elizabeth's chest] becomes a focus for conversation because that was never my intent and it’s sort of a disincentive – I’d much rather talk about what she’s going through as a person, but whatever, they have the right to shout out whatever they want.”
Ken. May I call you Kenny? It doesn’t matter, I’d rather call you Kenny, so I’m just going to go ahead and do that.
I have no idea why her chest would be a focus point for conversation.
No
- Yours don’t glow?
Idea
No one thought about them, which is why they are shaded perfectly, with drop shadows for her nipples.
At
This is the same focal point used in The Last Supper.
All
Why aren't you looking at her face?
I would love to talk about what she’s going through as a person. If only any of that had been released. In the gameplay trailer, Elizabeth speaks directly to the narrator for the first thirty seconds, going so far as to take his hand and wrap it around her throat (the first image in this post is from that trailer). After that, it’s FPS footage of the player; a single time he calls for her help and she yells, “On it!” from off screen, but never appears. Ever. For the rest of the trailer.
So while I wait a year for you, Ken Levine (and trust me, I love your games so much, I’d wait forever), I don’t know what else I’m supposed to talk about, since her boobs are given more screen time than her voice.
“To me, the most important thing with Elizabeth was just honestly her eyes because, you know, they’re somewhat exaggerated and the reason for that is because there’s so much expression you can do there, with her eyes, and you see her often at a great distance.”
Your heart is in the right place, Kenny, but this just isn’t working out for me anymore. I do believe that she has some deep and intense back-story. I do! I have played your games over and over and over again.
I suggest, humbly, that if you wanted to focus on her eyes, that you simply swap places. Greatly exaggerate her eyes and somewhat exaggerate her boobs.
Though what do I know. I’ve only been a woman for my entire life and therefore I have no idea how people react to women’s bodies. The internet perverts who spend a lot of time complaining about her breasts are just wrong. We have been looking in the wrong place.
Ladies, her eyes are up there!
“I’ve spent way more time thinking about her eyes than her chest because eyes show a ton of expression, and you see her at a great distance. AI characters get very, very small, very, very quickly so you need to be able to recognize her silhouette, the shape of her body. Her colour scheme’s actually very simple, you know, the sort of two tone colour look – that’s all to do with this sort of exaggeration.”
Oh, I see! Elizabeth is usually far away, so you have to recognize her silhouette. The more she looks like an actual hourglass, the easier it would be for the player to pick her up.
I mean, he’s right. This is basic game design. Characters should be able to be identified in multiple ways by the player; silhouette, movement loop, color codes, tags, and voice.
And there is practically no way to make a female character identifiable at a distance other than to exaggerate her chest size and pull in her waist so tight that there is no room for organs…
Those are your Big Sisters from Bioshock 2.
Oh, and Brigid Tenenbaum. Another of your distinct female characters, easy to pick up behind the screen in Bioshock 2 because of her distinctive sloping walk.
While I’m here, actually, Ken Levine. Let’s talk about one of the other reasons I’m breaking up with you, while I have these ladies with distinctive silhouettes around.
When I first played Bioshock, Ken, I fell in love. I watched my friends play in the background at my apartment and I looked and looked and there was not a single woman who was ornamental. Which is not to say that none of them were pretty, because they were beautiful, but that they weren’t ornamental. There was nothing about their character models that was ornamental. When people asked me for recommendations for games for women, I suggested Bioshock. This is a big secret; to appeal to girl gamers, you did not need to have a pony or a sim where the player can try on new hair styles and heels. I did not need Rosie The Riveter Fights The Patriarchy (PS3).
I only needed women who had a function and who were distinctive. Even if they were not the player character, it was amazing and life changing to look at a video game and see me. My definition of “me” in video games is fairly large—Me: noun. Any woman in a game who does not tantalize the assumed male player character, who has some function of import, and a realistic-ish body. If they tantalize, I can get over it if they also do the other two. I’m not non-sexual, after all. It’s just that I do other things, too.
I know you’ve been taken to task by feminism, Ken Levine, but I found your games to be woman positive in at least a few ways. I didn’t want to throw your baby out with the bathwater, though your Plasmid videos and underwater objectivism reeked of privilige. Yes, Brigid Tenenbaum is a horrible mother, as it were…but it wasn’t because she was a woman. Big Sisters will make you wish you had harvested every last one of those little brats in the first game…but they had lithe, feminine bodies, without being over-exaggerated fanboy service. Little Sisters do need to be protected by Big Daddies…but they are children, and Big Sisters can quite easily take out a Big Daddy.
I mean, just look at the female characters you have given me over the years, Ken Levine.
A Little Sister
Does this look like a princess to you?
Sofia Lamb, antagonist of Bioshock 2.
Oh look, a woman who serves a huge plot purpose and needs to be instantly identifiable and she still has her top on.
Grace Holloway
Gracy Holloway and racism are an entirely different blog.
Various Female Splicers (Bad Guys, for the uninitiated)
In thinking back, the only scantily dressed female I can recall is Jasmine Jolene, and only in her poster. She made her living as a dancer, so I don’t find that to be totally unnecessary, and she also serves a huge plot point.
Of course, none of these are a distinctive, driving force, female character with a distinctive silhouette, who plays next to the PC for all or part of the game…
Oh that’s right. Eleanor Lamb. A character with big, expressive eyes, who has been through an ordeal, and plays next to the character for part of the game. As I recall, she also needed to be distinct from the other big sisters, so I bet that was achieved via exaggerating her secondary sex characteristics.
Oh.
Ken, Ken Levine, this is why I have to break up with you. This is why I can no longer shrug helplessly while you say some weird Objectivist shit all over the internet.
Now you are lying to us. You are well and thoroughly capable of producing a game with female bodies that don’t exist to be eye candy. You have been producing them for your entire career.
I don’t care that you made Elizabeth. I don’t even particularly dislike Elizabeth or her body, once I get past the fact that this change in your style makes me sad. I care that you are now lying about your motivations in order to avoid being called to the carpet for making a sexist choice. I would have at least gone to couples counseling if you had come out and said, “I’m tired of the gangly women and I wanted to make something else. I wanted to create a girl completely and totally physically unlike any of the women I have created before, and darn it, I did.”
Instead, Ken Levine…I used to think you were a genius and now you are giving interviews that leave me embarrassed for you. You, you see, very obviously think that this is just an overreaction. We don’t understand you. You didn’t mean it like that, and anyway, don’t you ladies have something else to talk about? I’m not even going to entertain this!
Furthermore, you have attempted to demonstrate that you think that I’m stupid, that the women who noticed this ridiculousness are stupid, because only someone who was utterly and painfully stupid would think that you have made a career out of creating women with distinctive, yet realistic, bodies, and just didn’t give a damn about this last one. Didn’t even give her chest a second thought. I don’t know why anyone is even discussing this, because it’s clearly totally in line with my previous offerings.
So I’m sorry, Ken. My love affair with you is over. I will wait for you to come around, and I hope you do…but I don’t think you will. I think that if you will conveniently forget your entire body of work in order to avoid a question that makes you uncomfortable (a question about making your fans uncomfortable, no less), you will forget me just as easily. I will be fine, though. I still have my copies of Bioshock and Thief to keep me warm at night. I will make my SHODAN cross stitch. Don’t worry about me. I will survive.
But if it helps, it’s not me. It’s you.
Durex. This is enough. I’m done.
I looked into Durex after reading a tweet from their South African twitter that was horribly violent towards women.
I won’t even analyze that, because I don’t have to analyze that for anyone who has a head. Rape is not okay ever, not even if she won’t stop talking.
After reading about how quickly Durex threw their South African PR company under the bus for the tweet (named and shamed and all), I was curious about how Durex usually operates, since they sold this as a grievous error made by an outside party. What I discovered is that this is actually par for the course for Durex.
First of all, I’m going to say that for a while, I really enjoyed Durex advertisements because they were explicit. Trojan ads tend to lean more towards the absurd—remember the Trojan Games campaign?—while Durex ads tend to be directly sexual. I also want everyone to recall the absolute hullaballoo over the Trojan “Evolve” ads featuring the males as pigs until they get a condom, at which point they turn into handsome, well dressed men (the condom is the glass slipper of our generation). If you google “sexist Trojan ad” there are pages dedicated to this campaign and how horribly sexist (they mean prejudiced) it is against men.
Both companies are decidedly heterosexist to a huge extent. Durex USA’s twitter (more on Durex tweets in a moment!) features a sex positive Position of the Week feature that is very clearly directed, always, at heterosexual couples. The directions come in two parts; one for the man and one for the woman. There is also a picture used to go along with the directions.
Okay, I can see some positivity in this. Durex doesn’t gloss over what condoms are meant for. There’s no shame here, and the directions are straight forward for 140 characters. You will be using this condom for fucking. You will not be staring into one another’s eyes in a restaurant, you will not be walking along a beach, and you will not be in the Olympic Games. You’re going to be fucking. People fuck. Get over it.
Everything else…downhill. It’s like they made every possible decision to make these as homophobic as possible. While it might be impractical for twitter to write out a description of Actor 1 that is inclusive every time (the egalitarian, yet penetrating partner!), every last one of these is for heterosexual partners. There is no sex act that doesn’t feature penetration. Even though these could be adjusted for lesbian couples, or gay couples, or couples who don’t have penetrative sex for whatever reason, Durex goes the extra mile to make sure that you know a MAN and a WOMAN are having sex—they put boobs on their stick figures. I’ll repeat that, because it could stand to be repeated. Boobs on their stick figures. They don’t have hands or feet, but they have boobs. It’s honestly a little bit obscene.
Durex USA’s twitter then features this little gem.
Just so you know, while there was no date attached to the twitter screen capture from DurexSA (other than 7 hours ago), the article came out on November 26, 2011. The original capture of the issue came from Feminist SA on November 24, 2011. The capture above is from November 5, 2011, so this is not ten years between fuckups. In fact, this one predates the SA tweet that Durex disavowed post-haste.
This tweet is rape-y. If someone doesn’t want to have sex, then the answer is to respect the fact that they don’t want to have sex. There are plenty of reasons people don’t want to have sex; they are all valid. From the medical to the psychological to the practical to no reason at all that you can discern…forcing yourself to “have sex anyway” is pretty much the antithesis of a safe sexual environment and an enjoyable experience.
Furthermore, even without the rape culture context, who wants to have sex with a partner who is merely tolerating you? Or a partner who is in pain in that bad way? Or one who is actively upset about something else? Giving up because you don’t feel like arguing is not consent and it feels like shit. Any sexual relationship is about mutual satisfaction and partnership, though these things look different depending on the situation. “Just get it over with,” isn’t mutual satisfaction and partnership. It’s forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do.
If we’re referencing the loss of libido that has happened to just about everyone, then this is horrible advice based on shaming the partner who just doesn’t feel up to it. In the context of a relationship, it’s true that sometimes our sex lives go south. You get sick, you get stressed, you get tired, and suddenly the libido is gone. When one partner suddenly loses interest, ignoring the change and resigning yourself to your fate is pretty much what not to do. If you don’t want to have sex, and you’re unhappy about that, you speak with your partner. You decide whether you want to fix the issue. You discuss the possible causes. You decide whether you want to speak with your doctor. You create an environment that is healthy and happy for your body, no matter what that may be. You should not just lie there, frustrated and angry, resenting the person having sex with you.
Also, forgive me, because I don’t mean to medicalize a lack of sex drive, or to say every time you don’t feel like having sex, you should sit down with your partner, listen to some whale song on the stereo, have some herbal tea, and have a good processing session. I realized as I was writing that I was treating this like a problem to be solved, and this is because the language of the tweet is medical (Sex will cure that); it frames your desire not to have sex at a particular time or with a particular person as a sickness that can then be cured. Maybe you just don’t feel like fucking. That’s a fine idea. Don’t have sex. These are your parts, you have the agency.
The same way there is no shame in wanting to have lots of sex with lots of people, there’s no shame in not wanting to have sex, either. There’s nothing positive about having sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you. There’s nothing positive about wanting your partner to give up, give in, and give exasperated consent so you’re technically not raping them.
This is 101 stuff.
And it gets worse.
Durex also likes to make jokes about penis size. They seem to enjoy sticking endowments on stick figures, because, along with the boobs, they also have a figure with a third leg, winkwink. There’s also an ad featuring a set of footprints that are heading away from the camera, and and a line is drawn in the sand between the feet. It’s about a giant penis. I get it.
Then we get to this, from about 3 years ago.
Which I guess is what happens when you use your penis to shut her up as suggested?
And then we get to the ads that are the antithesis of safe sex. I actually don’t understand how a condom company let these things fly. Isn’t the usual point of a condom to prevent STDs and pregnancy?
I am reduced to gesturing wildly at the screen, people. No. No condoms are so tough that you can do this to them, even if you can fit it over your entire head. Do not do this with your condoms. A condom is made of latex or rubber, not reinforced steel. Do not stick sewing needles in your condoms. Do not put anything sharp near your condoms. Always check your condoms for tears, rips, or holes before use. Please have safe sex. Actual safe sex.
And now…for the crown jewel of Durex.
A snappy analysis is located at The Gloss, but I really want to fine tooth comb this one.
Leave her pleasantly puzzled.
Just out of curiosity, would any of you be pleasantly puzzled by the notion that your partner may not have followed your requests to keep you both safe? I am pleasantly puzzled by things such as the New York Times crossword. I am less pleasantly puzzled by “Did I actually consent to this?” I would file that under “possibly life-altering tragedy.”
For those of you in the audience who see this as a coy joke, it’s also a double standard joke. There is a grand cultural myth about women who lie about their birth control to trap a man. If you are male and your female sexual partner lied about using birth control and became pregnant, how pleasantly puzzled would you feel? What if your partner lied about their STD status or presented you with phony results? Feeling a little bemused? I didn’t think so.
Birth control sabotage is deadly serious and actually quite common.Nearly 20 percent of women at family clinics across northern California reported that their partner tried to coerce them into having a child, sometimes using methods such as poking holes in condoms or flushing birth control pills down the toilet. Birth control sabotage is also a common form of domestic abuse, and while the studies of this are newer, the numbers are alarming. I’ve provided two short overviews, but Google is full of information here.
If you don’t use a condom when your partner requested that you do so, that is a rape. If a woman consents to safe sex with you and you deliberately ignore her request, you don’t have consent. Consenting to having sex with a condom is an entirely different act from having sex without a condom. “I don’t want to have unprotected sex,” is “No.” Consenting to one thing does not give a human being blanket consent to your entire body.
For those of you who think that this is no big deal, because it’s a condom ad so the missing partner in the picture clearly wore the condom, this ad also plays heavily on female sexual embarrassment. It says that it is better for a woman to wonder what is going on with her own body than for her to speak up. It denies female sexual agency, makes her body something that is acted upon until sex is over, and only then may she think about whether her consent was taken seriously. I don’t know about everyone else, but if I had some doubts about whether my partner was possibly exposing me to serious health risks, I’d sit up and make sure. This plays on the message that a woman’s job is to be a peacemaker. Don’t rock the boat. Nice girls don’t. Or if Nice Girls Do for the sake of a condom ad, they certainly don’t talk about it. Better to bite your nails the next morning rather than to risk upsetting your partner.
The same advertisement, with the same message (this doesn’t feel like you’re fucking a medical supply store!) could easily have been conveyed without any of this. Even just giving a female agency in the ad would have made a huge difference. While this is by no means perfect, a woman looking at or asking about the condom and being “pleasantly puzzled” by the fact that she can see it but not feel it actually conveys the message, “Durex feels the best.” This ad says, “Her consent is a joke, do whatever you want, she won’t be able to tell, and she’s been so steeped in gendered bullshit about nice girls that she won’t even ask!”
Since this is now long enough, and I could do this all day, I’ll just leave this.
You may fill out the form to contact Durex USA about their fabulous history of sexism here. Durex UK is located here and Durex Canada is located here.
Note 1: While I use the terms “fucking” and “having sex” and all other manner of euphemisms, I am talking about any sexual activity and not just PiV sex. I apologize if I missed some references or used non-inclusive language.
Note 2: I was originally least offended by the image of the woman’s lips with the bandages. After all, I know plenty of people who like to have sex that requires minor medical attention afterwards. Rug burns, rope burns, and scratches are not all that uncommon, and I am sure that someone, somewhere on FetLife, has enjoyed a consensual, dick-induced Glasgow Smile (everything about it). However, given the rest of their advertising, an emotionless woman with a slack and injured mouth just doesn’t scream Pro-Kink and Sexual Freedom to me.
I keep meaning to blog, but every time I sit down, something more fucked up and horrible happens, leaving me in a state of shock and sadness so great that I just wander away. Instead of saying something, I tweet incomprehensible ramblings from my friends. Sometimes I retweet feminist things, but mostly I am tired.
These are all highly triggering.
A So. Cal derby girl was shot by her husband before he turned the gun on himself.
A Florida derby girl was beaten by her partner so badly he did $500,000 dollars of damage to her, and she is still recovering.
A Canadian derby girl is missing, and has been for weeks
There’s Penn State. That doesn’t need a link.
There’s ESPN covering up molestation.
Oh, and police pepper sprayed…all of Seattle.
A white man puts himself in the place a of “poor black kid” and by doing so illustrates the gross misunderstanding people have of poverty and race and debt.
Paypal refers to charity for poor children as “not a worthy cause,” though in the wake of a PR nightmare and what was probably the worst day on earth for whatever poor intern is stuck with the Paypal facebook, Paypal fixed the issue.
I think about Occupy a lot. I think about class. Narratives. What we’ve done.
Here goes nothing. I’m going to share my story first and preface it by saying that I am incredibly fortunate, and it’s sad that my situation falls under the heading of Incrediby Fortunate.
People say that Occupy is lead by spoiled kids with too much time and too many lattes, but I know this is a lie. Occupy is desperation at its absolute purest; it’s a generation realizing that terrible mistakes were made with us and we now have to adjust to living with these mistakes while simultaneously being judged for them.
My mother groomed me for college since I was five. I was given the speech, of course. If I go to college, I will somehow escape my mother’s fate by virtue of being educated. My mother didn’t want me to flip burgers, or strip, or take an administrative position with no mobility. My mother wanted what most parents want—for her kid to do better than she did. When I asked my high school career counselor how people pay for college, she said that loans are available for college, and the education will enable me to get a job that pays me enough to pay off the loans plus some interest to ensure that another person can have a loan. I was 16 and I wasn’t fiscally worldly. I trusted adults. I went to college.
I left school with a mountain of debt. I believed that if I was educated and tenacious and honorable, there would be a job for me (this is a continuation of “if you get good grades, you can go to college,” which is also a lie). I do have degrees people decry as useless, but I find it funny when people look down on the humanities. I am an editor now. Many people couldn’t conjugate a verb if it wore revealing lingerie and came with a map. The fellow from Forbes magazine could have used an editor with a background in class and race issues. That nonsense with Paypal would have never happened if they hired anyone who was adept at social issues and communication at the same time. I am useful.
Anyway, I won’t go into how much student debt I had upon graduation, but the payments are often more than I actually take home (I pay almost 1/3 of my paycheck in taxes, and could not afford both loan payments and retirement savings). This debt was acrued on top of various scholarships, a grant, and payments made while in school. It was a staggering number that I was told would be paid off with the money I’d make for being educated a cut above the rest. Indeed, as scary as this is, in school I was among the best and the brightest. I’m supposed to be some kind of creepy genius, and I might be one. I haven’t thought about it much and I won’t go into my qualifications, but suffice to say they are numerous. Unfortunately, there is nothing called summa cum debt forgiveness.
Upon graduation from college, when I realized the gravity of my student debt and employment prospects, I reconciled myself to the fact that I would not do better than my mother. I only tread water when the loans are paid. I accepted long ago that I would never be able to afford a house or could never have a wedding if I wanted one. I have a skilled job that makes use of my talents and education and I live paycheck to paycheck. I do not have much credit card debt, because I used my credit cards for emergencies only (I am incredibly lucky, because credit card companies prey on college students, hoping they rack up a $10,000 balance before they even have a job. I escaped this through sheer dumb luck). I have a small, shared apartment that is cheap for the area. I have a little car that I use to get to my job. I live slightly worse than I did when I was actually in college.
I have the education needed for my position; I would be unable to have this job without going to college. Most of my paycheck is used to pay the loans I ran up to get the job. Isn’t that a trick? Isn’t that amazing? I have a friend who wanted to be a teacher, and chose the profession thinking that teachers are always needed and she would have a job. She needed her certification and her M.Ed. to become a teacher in her state. The salary for a teacher in her state is not enough money for her to pay off the loan she needed to become a teacher. If she could even find a job, which is an entirely different problem.
How does that sound reasonable and logical to anyone? How? Explain it to me.
This doesn’t even make sense when you’re stoned, let alone when you’re a thinking human being.
I wanted to pay my student debt. I wanted to pay the universities I went to for the education I recieved. I had some truly amazing teachers and professors, and I wanted to pay for their time. I wanted to pay for the time of everyone who made the universities run for me, from the registrars to the professors to the custodians. I do not want to have to pay 50 times the cost of my education for the rest of my life, when I could have paid off what I owe with reasonable interest already. When people graduate with $30,000 in college loans, and pay $400 a month faithfully for 20 years (when $400 monthly would pay that debt in 7 years) and still have $20,000 left to pay, they are no longer paying for college. They are paying Sallie Mae for having been born poor. I don’t want something for nothing and neither does Occupy. I only want to stop being punished.
The root of the Occupy movement is desperation; a generation realized that it is the proletariat in the worst way. We paid to get a job, and can never do anything else except pay that money back. We are not even producing things we can’t afford, we paid for the privilege of coming to work (for people who then spit on us and call us whiners looking for a handout).
So please, let’s not start with the latte talk, vicious classists. I can see the sadness and fear driving Occupy. This is not hard.
It’s not just this lie that my generation has to contend with. There is a whole social order of necessity that we can not buy into because we went to school instead, and we are punished for this, though mentally instead of fiscally.
As I said, I can not have that student debt and buy a house or have a wedding. I also cannot afford children, but I am lucky to have access to health care so that I will not accidentally have a child and we all starve to death. In truth, I would like a house, and I am undecided on marriage and children. I think I could make a decision like that if I knew I could handle the fiscal issues that go along with children. I don’t know that, so I opt to keep the damage contained. I made a mistake by believing that boot straps and hard work were all it would take to give me a modest life.
I am often asked why I am not married and why I do not have children. Almost everyone asks me this, especially people I haven’t seen in many years (thanks, facebook!). This is socially acceptable—to ask a woman what exactly she’s up to with her own vagina, since she’s clearly not using it in a way that is expected. No one asks me why I didn’t make other choices, like why I am not an astronaut or a NASCAR fan. They ask me about what’s been taking up residence inside my body, and how socially sanctioned is that residence.
They are not asking for a concrete answer. When people say, “Oh, you didn’t have a family? Why not?” they are asking, “Why did you not uphold your part of the social order? How did you screw that up? What deviant lifestyle are you living?” Yet if I had a child, I would need assistance to feed them and would be socially derided for not knowing how to keep my legs closed. Truthfully, I am living the life of the educated poor, with the added derision heaped upon women who side-stepped the burden of having a family, either by choice or by necessity.
What the current system does is destroy the entire social order, not just the class order. The protests against the 99% seem to come from people who want to cling to the concept of hard work as a bottom line. They probably want to believe, like my mother did, that their children will be able to do better than they can.
Yet the reality is that if you go to college and work hard and apply yourself, you can have three jobs and no health insurance? Eighty-hour work weeks? The inability to have children? Small, cold apartments? If you do not go to college, you may have the exact same thing, only with extra derision for not having the grit and determination to…buy into a broken and unsustainable system, I guess.
Unless you have privilege or incredible luck, the top of the game now is the total inability to thrive. Basic survival is incredible good fortune. That is horrible.
And there is no way out. We have created an entire generation of people who ruined their lives by believing in bootstraps. Yet the next generation just can’t skip college, because the job market demands university for everyone.
Occupy isn’t spoiled. They are trapped and they are scared, and so are the rest of us.
And the very least you could do is stop lying.
1.
I’m at a red light on the way to pick up my friend Krista from the metro station. We are on our way to the DC Slutwalk. I am not dressed particularly salaciously for the Slutwalk, though I debated going in pasties and a bustle. Instead I’m wearing jeans and flip flops, and a black t-shirt that says Kissable that I got at the mall for 9 bucks. I am also wearing a pair of fingerless gloves with red ribbons on them, because they matched the shirt and looked a bit like something rejected from the wardrobe of Rock of Love. Anyway, I think they are ridiculous, and the outfit is something I would wear out on Friday night, as I am too old to walk home with my shoes in my hands but not too old for ridiculous accessories (ask me about my pink feather earrings).
On the median at the red light is a set of city workers and as I’m waiting for the light to change one leans into the driver side window of my car, right in my face, and says “I really like your gloves.”
I’m a little cowed by the fact that this man has shoved half his body through my car window to get near me, so I stare straight ahead and say, “Thank you.” When the light changes I speed off and I tell Krista later, “I guess this means I picked the right outfit?”
2.
I am at the coffee shop I go to every morning before work. I park my car, I go get my coffee, and when I come out there is a car next to mine with a man in it. As I’m getting into my car he rolls down his passenger side window and says hello. I say, “Good morning!” because I am, surprisingly, a pretty friendly person in general.
He then said, “I saw you park here and go in, so I parked here and waited for you.”
I said, “Okay…so that’s not creepy at all.” Unsurprisingly, my friendliness can vanish pretty fast. I look around and realize there are other people in the parking lot, so I’m probably safe.
He said, “Do you want to go to dinner?”
I refused, probably also not very surprising. He mutters something under his breath and speeds out of the parking lot. I get in my car and proceed to feel bad and guilty for saying no. Mind you, I don’t want to go out with him. I still feel a tug of guilt, because he could have been a totally nice guy who creepily waited for me in a parking lot, right?
3.
I was out running. Actually, I was out walking because sports bras are pretty hit or miss with me and this one was a miss. I was dressed pretty messy and my hair was in a ponytail. I was wearing baggy sweatpant-shorts and a white undershirt with a black and white sports bra underneath. I have a purple backpack and I walk and run on a somewhat removed trail that goes through a shallow forest. Every mile or so the trail pops out at a cross street, and you cross the street and continue on the trail.
I am a little bit ditzy as a person sometimes and before I went out on this particular day, I forgot to check the weather. DC is always a swamp, so a cloudy and humid day doesn’t really mean rain, but this time it did. I got about a mile away from my car (the first time you pop out of the woods at a cross street) at it started pouring. I came out at the cross street and looked around for shelter, a picnic grove or a playground but nothing. I figured, you know, what’s a little water? I’ll go back to my car, go home, take a nice hot shower, and call it funny. It would be a two mile walk, which is better than zero.
As I’m preparing to turn around, a man who was standing on a stream bridge on the cross street sees me and yells over to me. He asks me to come talk to him, and I say no, and turn around and attempt to make my way back to my car. He crosses the street and follows me, yelling at me the whole time. He’s telling me that I’m pretty and that I should come talk to him. I say no again. He continues to follow me through the woods. He is behind me by a good deal and I am walking as fast as I can, realizing that I should not have turned around and walked back into the woods. I also won’t break into a run, because if I run and he runs, he’s going to win that race. Right now he is content shouting at me from about 25 feet back, though we’ve moved onto vulgar language about my ass and my tits and all other kinds of stuff.
Finally, after 15 harrowing minutes, I pop back out of the woods on a main street, about 100 yards from my car. I go to the corner and wait for the light to change, a little calmer that he maybe won’t drag me off by the hair in front of traffic. He calls me a bitch, spits towards me, and walks off in the other direction. Someone drives by on the streets and yells, “Nice tits!” at me. I am soaked to the skin, and the sneakers will have to be thrown out.
I went after that and locked doors to things that don’t even matter. I was locking closets and the washing machine door. I called my best friend and told him some of what happened and he said, “We need to get a bear that you can take out with you places.”
♣
If anyone has read this far, can I get a show of hands, via comment or facebook or twitter (hashtag #metoo for lols), as to whether or not things like this happen pretty commonly to women or if I just look particularly harrassable? The following is an extreme example, though it certainly put the fear of god into me. Still at least once a week, someone doesn’t take no for an answer with me. Someone calls me a bitch if I don’t want a drink for him, or they hoot when I walk by, or generally decide not to listen to me or even better, like the fellow who stuck his torso in my car, not even ask.
What I get told a lot, from certain very derpy friends of mine, is that I run into the WEIRDEST people. That’s just so WEIRD AND UNCOMMON. I can’t BELIEVE that these things happen to you so much! Golly gee willakers. You are so UNLUCKY!
Hand raise for that, too, if you get told that your very common experience are, in fact, totally out there.
That is a rather underhanded and insidious way of victim blaming that I’m kind of sick of. Insisting that you’re some kind of freak magnet or walking invitation when actually the vast majority of women have been street harassed doesn’t even make sense to me. Do the people who think that I just meets the STRANGEST DUCKS think that, like, four dudes go around sexually harassing 80% of women and I just happened to meet some oddities. I mean…why not take the most rational explanation, which is that, as a whole, we live in a culture where it is acceptable and lauded to, say, chase a woman through the woods in the rain and then spit at her when she doesn’t want to talk.
I also want to say that I experience the kind of street harassment I do because I am fairly normative-appearing. I’m pale, fairly femme, and while I’m a little brightly colored, I pass in ways that a black woman, or a transwoman, or a disabled woman does not. In no way am I saying that my experience is universal, only that street harassment isn’t atypical, or an offense committed by five lunatics against woman who look particularly assaultable that day.
Anyway, here’s a whistle in the dark. To be honest, I’m feeling a little at fault, a little like I’m just terribly unlucky or somehow I draw this stuff to me (by…jogging? driving? I don’t kn0w). So I’m poking at people to see if anyone whistles back, in case they are feeling a little at fault.
So Amy Winehouse died and that’s funny.
Apparently.
The jokes about “Guess she should have gone to rehab!” aren’t particularly funny, actually. What concerns me more is the idea that none of us should have been surprised because she was a trainwreck, out in public, high as jesus, acting a fool. I admit to being unsurprised at the news, but for entirely different reasons. My reasons being that, having had a Blake of my very own, and having a tendency towards self-medication…well, we can smell our own. Anyway.
First of all, I wanted to highlight here something my friend Lynsey said on my facebook (Lynsey is the fabulous organizer of the Glazgow Slutwalk and all around feminist rock star)
Our women artists, when they suffer addiction, mental illness etc. well then they’re silly whores, they’re wasting themselves! But guys do it and they’re tragic figures that you plaster on your walls. Never mind that she obviously never had the support she needed. Never mind that it’s pretty clear her management and label were more interested in shoving her back on stage to make money than helping her. Never mind that she obviously had a complete wasteman of a violent husband who exploited and harmed her. “lol she was an addict what do you expect” I’ll tell you what, stuff like this is a really great way to see what people are really like, and which ones are worth talking to ever again.
UPDATE: Hello, everyone. I see that this post has gotten some attention in the past few days. Welcome to Feminist Land. It’s fun here.
The one thing that I wanted to say here is that the comparisons I’ve made above aren’t entirely meant to be 1:1. I did my best, and I could argue, for a long time, about the validity of my comparisons, but I won’t. The point of this was never to figure out if Live Through This was as genius as Nevermind (I contend they there were different, but significant) or if Keith Richards can truly be compared to Britney Spears on a musical level or only on a cultural level.
That’s not the point here. The point is all the other stuff. We’re not judging our female artists and our male artists on the same criteria.
Anyway, thank you for coming here. Please come back again some time. There will be more feminism and video games. And cookies!
I’m Not Having This Conversation Anymore
2011
I’m late to the party, but I’m going to talk about why the Slutwalk is epic and awesome and has absolutely nothing to do with sex, which is what everyone seems to be getting arms about, as well as the issue of pejorative names, which is a slightly more relevant topic.
Here’s your obligatory background sentence. Don’t say I never did anything for you. At a local community meeting about women’s safety, Constable Michael Sanguinetti had recommended that if women wanted to avoid sexual assault they shouldn’t dress like “sluts.”
You know, he was just saying.
Let me also explain, slowly and clearly, that I have been called every gendered name under the sun (including slut pretty consistently) in order to shame me. There’s no other reason to call names unless you’re trying to shame a person (or reclaim the term—more on that later).
My reaction to this shaming has been to grab the terms and run with them. I wear a little necklace that says BITCH in rhinestones. I’ve got a baby tee that says “Let’s Fuck Tonight!” in an absolutely beautiful purple script. I also want my readers to understand that I thought about buying these things and wearing them very carefully, and I thought about what they would say and what they would do. I’m 30 years old, I stopped trying to shock mommy half my life ago (she’s unflappable anyway, it wasn’t very satisfying). This is a deliberate, thought out move on my part.
The reason Slutwalks are so important is because they change the course of the conversation we have about sexuality drastically. You can be on either side of that conversation all you want, but they are putting nails in the coffin of the old discourse. Please, for the love of god, stop cheering for the old discourse.
The thing is, 90% of the time, slut is a designation given to a person by someone else. Let’s just get the Feminism 101 out of the way here. Slut is a concept, sluthood is not a concrete state of being. For other states of being, there are some pretty solid things that you have to do to fit into that category. If you’re a vegan, for instance, everyone agrees that vegans don’t eat or use any animal products. Vegan has a definition. Zero animal products. Slut…doesn’t have much of a definition. Well, I guess it does.
Slut–n
- a. A person, especially a woman, considered sexually promiscuous.
Of course, that doesn’t say who does the considering. There’s not a slut board of directors, is there? You there…you’re more of a skank. We’re sorry.
Slut is a name that’s supposed to be given to you by someone else to chastise you for behavior (real or imagined) that they don’t approve of.
The Slutwalk has completely and utterly reversed that conversation. Now that the wayward girls and wicked women have opted to totally flip the script, they are attempting to finish this issue in more ways than one. I fully and truly support this dialogue being changed (and I also look forward to the opportunity to march down the street in my fucking panties if I feel like it).
Slutwalks don’t intrinsically shame people who have very few sexual partners. Do you want to know why? Because there is no such thing as a slut. There is no magic number where you hit sluthood and you get your official toaster. We’re not talking about Sluts vs. Prudes, which is where the argument seems to be going. We’re talking about ways that we shame women with words for their sexuality (and that does include the ever-popular “frigid,” in case you missed that one). There is no such thing as a slut. There is no such thing as a prude. There are only derogatory names for women’s sexuality. Can you think of a single positive term used widely to denote a woman with “a lot” of sexual partners? Go on. I’ll wait.
Slutwalks are absurd because the concept of the slut is absurd. Showing up in pearls and a smile isn’t required, but it’s a certain level of absurdity that throws up a critical mirror at the concept of a slut. Ye shall know her by how high her heels are? No, that’s not how that works. Only the most uninformed of us think that the Slutwalk is actually a parade of women who fuck everything that moves. The rest of us are reacting to the actual damaging ridiculousness of the idea that what you wear is directly related to how much you will deserve it if another human being hurts you.
Slutwalks also challenge another cultural myth, which is that the responsibility for sexual assault is with the victim. Slutwalk is busy poking holes in that myth. Slutwalk looks directly into the face of Mister Sanguinetti and says “Please, tell me which one of us is asking for it?”
This is also something that people need to understand. There are very few people on the planet who think, “YAY, RAPE.” There, however, are a lot of people on the planet who have been drowned from birth in cultural narratives that do, occasionally, amount to YAY RAPE in a much more insidious way. How many times have we heard that women are supposed to coyly say no, which really means yes? How many times have we heard that men don’t have feelings and should be indifferent to the suffering of others, ruthless in their pursuits of what they want? How many times have we been told what a victim should act like (which is incorrect and correct simultaneously)? These things exist and they are sad and they are no way for people to interact with one another and they are absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Slutwalk is attempting to change all of these conversations and it is taking terms used to hurt women and repossessing them to do so. This is a change. Change is good. You might not agree with the method of the change, but we’re entering into a completely new era of discursive sexuality.
And it’s going to be pretty fucking awesome to march across the National Mall wearing tailfeathers and nothing else in what will possibly be one of the safest environment where you could do so (and if you see me at the DC Slutwalk, please come say hi).
I am asked, fairly often, if parts of my body are real. Often times by strangers.
I get asked if my hair is real.
I get asked if my lips are real.
I get asked if my breasts are real.
People have yet to ask me if my ass is real, but plenty of other women have been accused of butt implants, from Kim Kardashian to Nicki Minaj.
I am asked, alarmingly often, about what parts of my body are real are not.
And that’s nobody’s fucking business. Also, all parts of all bodies are real. No one has a theoretical head. A prosthetic anything is yours and it exists and is real.
There’s an entitlement to certain parts of my body in public. I have had people come up to me and ask if my hair was real while pulling on it. That is a fairy good way to get yourself punched in the nose, by the way. Pulling my hair hurts. Furthermore, I don’t know you. Don’t touch me without asking. How would you like it someone came up and twisted your nose while saying, “This thing can’t possibly be real!”
The issue here is usually couched in entitlement, the entitlement we feel to women’s bodies in their various stages. People feel entitled to touch women’s bodies, to judge their bodies publicly, to have sex with them without asking, to critique, to pull apart, to approve of, to disapprove of, to suggest improvement…every day is a firing squad. How do I look?
Except this issue, I think, also raises the questions of authenticity. Of realness.
What actually triggered this ruminating was an article about the trend of “hot women pandering to nerds.” I’m not linking it, because the article writer can go fuck himself and when he was wildly critiqued on twitter, he reacted with headpatting and eyerolling.
The problem is not, of course, whether or not hot chicks can be nerds. I’m a hot chick. I’m a nerd. I’m a level 85 fucking Blood Elf hunter, goddamn it. I’ve published a scholarly paper on visual horror in the Blizzard universe. I have my nerd cred and, well, I think I’m pretty cute. That’s not the issue here.
Here you see the nerd girl in her natural environment, taking pictures with her camera phone in her bathroom mirror.
It’s that kind of overbearing entitlement people use to judge a woman’s authenticity. The disbelief that your self cannot possibly be your self astounds me hourly. It takes a serious amount of gall to walk up to a human being you don’t know and decry them as fake, and it takes a certain amount of cowardice to do so on the internet. Still, it’s a more insidious kind of sexism, not as overt as rape or cat calls or entitlement. It’s a sexism that goes right for the heart of the matter; your standing in your own self narrative.
It doesn’t matter whether or not Rosario Dawson or Adrienne Curry are geeks, or how good they are at being geeks, or if they reach your benchmark for geekdom. This is how they have chosen to identify a facet of their personalities, this is a culture that they have chosen to take part in, and it’s nothing but sexism to attempt to cut them off from that culture by means of derision and questions about how real their interest can possibly be. I’m old enough to remember when Vin Diesel said he was a dungeon master and the reaction to that was, “That’s so cool, I want to hang with him.”
This is a large contingent of people, empowered by a sexism that says this is okay, who are attempting to cut women off from themselves. If you paid for your breasts, they certainly aren’t real. Your body is fake, nonexistent, a nonissue, not good enough for us. If you step outside of the Girl Box and enjoy guns, orcs, klingon, space travel, you’re just pandering to men. You’re not real.
Geekdom, by the way, is owned by men and all that article did was illustrate it. This is not a newsflash, given how often we end up speaking in gaming public and being told to go make a sandwich, or how often we’re subjected to M’Lady handkissing at cons and fests, or how we’re judged in the academy as being unable to be both lovely and intelligent. This functions very similarly to how our bodies are public property, up for critique, approval, ridicule. The doorway is in the same place and patriarchy stands in front of it and says, “Not good enough, girlie.”
It’s a fragmenting, compartmentalizing, trivialization of women, their bodies, and now their interests combined with their bodies. I don’t usually put pictures of myself in my blog (that’s what facebook is for, natch) but there you have it, snapshots of a person, reduced to only parts, pieces, facets. Parts that are assumed fake; I must be the one to somehow prove authenticity rather than being and existing as a person on my own.
I fail to see how being denied access to our selves as we have chosen to define them is anything but sexist.
My breasts exist as I want them to, my hair is what it is, my interests were set in childhood and probably won’t be changing. I’m plenty real.
So I’ve basically just read the worst article on the planet about marriage.
This article asserts that you are not married because you area selfish bitch with your own needs who has sex and you’re never going to find a man like that.
This first part is going to be fast. Here is why you’re really not married.
1) You haven’t found someone who you want to marry and who wants to marry you at the same time.
2) You’re gay and you’re not allowed to be married.
3) You don’t really want to get married or don’t care one way or the other.
I’m going to write a significantly more useful article right now, because I’m nice like that.
Why You Feel Bad About Not Being Married.
1) Articles like this one
Articles like this one feed into the hysteria surrounding women and marriage and also set up dangerous ideas about men.
First of all, I’m going to be a bit mean and say that perhaps, undertaking three failed marriages doesn’t quite make one an expert on human relations. Getting married and divorced three times isn’t all that special. I could be married and divorced 3 times by next week, if anyone would like, and then do I get a job writing misogyny and misandry (at the same time!) for the Huffington Post? Is that what makes you an expert on marriage? Getting married is actually not all that hard. Being in a long term, loving, supportive relationship (or multiple relationships, if that’s your thing) is actually the hard part.
Still, that little tweak of “Aww, but I want to get married…” exists. We might not all feel it, but I will admit that even I feel it sometimes. I sometimes worry that I’m not complete without a partner, or that I’m going to miss out on an important part of humanity.
I had it while I read that article. Then I realized two things:
a) This article makes me feel bad. I’m basically being shamed into the marriage culture. This article is designed to make me feel bad for not taking part in marriage and that it’s better to marry a “liar and cheater” like the author’s third husband than to have needs.
b) My life is awesome. I have nothing to be upset about.
The reason people tweak about not being married is because marriage is set up to be the pinnacle of a woman’s existence and none of us live in a bubble. We internalize this ideology, and even those of us who have looked critically at it and rejected it still get pangs of, “I’m doing something wrong!” We have to live with everyone else, after all.
And this isn’t helping.
This is horrible. These are horrible things to say to someone.
You’re getting that little twinge at a wedding or while being a bridesmaid because…it’s a happy event. Very few people don’t want to be happy. Our brains make the connection between this happy event and our own happiness.
Except this happy event does not last and you are currently witnessing only a single side to the story; the good side. I’m not saying that every marriage is destined for bitter, nasty divorce. I’m saying that love certainly does NOT mean never having to say you are sorry. It means having to say you’re sorry a lot. Or having to be apologized to a lot. Sometimes it even means having to say, “Sorry isn’t good enough this time.” The sooner we get rid of this idea that love is effortless and needless and every day looks just like your wedding day, the better we will all be.
In fact, call me crazy, but this ideal woman she wants you to be…would make me get divorced. Having to act like you don’t have needs is actually exhausting. This an article calling all kind of judgments on women that concludes with the saying that marriage is about giving. We mean women giving, though. A proper marriage, for men, is about getting.
Furthermore, and this is a thread that goes through the entire article that makes me uncomfortable as a feminist—
I am the mother of a 13-year-old boy, which is like living with the single-cell protozoa version of a husband.
No, it really is nothing like that. Aside from that being a really creepy sentence which leads me to wonder what kind of narcissistic wonderland she’s forcing her child to live in, I’m going to make an assertion here that might not shock anyone with a brain.
Men aren’t children.
If your husband is as utterly dependent on you as a child would be, stop, drop, and go to counseling. Your partner should be your equal partner and not your charge. If you are treating your husband like he is your child or your child like he is your husband, that’s REALLY BAD. If you are reducing your husband, who is a fully grown human being, to a drooling, Neanderthalic ball of id, that’s a really horrible thing to do to a grown, thinking human being. I can’t wait until we get away from this myth of the woman as the caretaker for a nation of children. It’s not doing anyone any favors.
This entire article pretty much advocates you treating your husband like he’s an overgrown teenage boy, and not only do I have zero interest in treating anyone like a child, I imagine that’s insulting to a lot of men. Really insulting. Especially to those men in the article who don’t want a teenage girl for a wife. I imagine they don’t want a mom for a wife, either. I imagine that men of character want partners. Human, breathing, imperfect partners.
I mean, honestly, I think men deserve more credit than being reduced to a “their most treasured possession — a free-agent penis.” What? No! Men are human, and as a feminist, I’m aghast at how this article describes men. I don’t want to infantalize 49% of the population. I’m reduced to wildly gesturing at the screen in horror right now.
I’m going to throw my little pence out there for women, though, since you have to live with so much hatred all the time. It’s actually my hope that someone reads this and feels better.
It’s okay if you’re angry at injustice. It’s okay if you like to have casual sex. It’s okay if you have needs. It’s okay if you’re selfish sometimes. It’s okay to ask your partner for things. It’s even okay to think about your career. It’s okay if you’re not married. It’s okay if you really want to get married and feel bad that you’re not. It’s okay if you are married. It’s okay if the idea of marriage makes you break out into hives. It’s okay if the only thing stopping you from getting married tomorrow is the law (actually, that’s not okay, that’s a horrible violation of your human rights, but your relationship with your partner is beautiful and no less valid than anyone else’s). It’s okay if you want to raise your children alone. It’s okay if sometimes you buy into bodily hatred and wish you looked differently. It’s okay to not want to have to walk on eggshells around your partner.
It’s okay to be a fully realized, flawed human being. You’re fine. You’re going to be fine.
So Justin Bieber appears on the cover of Rolling Stone with his trademark bowl cut pushed back off his face, wearing a wife beater and a leather jacket coyly slipped off one shoulder. So begins the Growing Up process that most tweener sensations go through. Rolling Stone did the same for Britney, with her teletubbie and little girl bicycle shoot, though Vanity Fair got Miley Cyrus wearing a sheet and a smirk. This has happened and will continue to happen.
This, however, is usually a cycle of control over girls’ bodies. We take our semi-sexless pre-teen girls and repackage them to be sexually appealing for a mass audience, usually in a series of magazine covers and shocking interviews about how they are “growing up now,” and “maturing emotionally.”
This is one of the first times I’ve seen it done to a male popstar and while the New Hair and Slightly Too Big Jacket speak to a certain sexualization of character, indeed you can see that the Biebs is going to be a pretty handsome guy one day, when it comes to sex in the interview, we get a sound bite about waiting until you’re in love and then, of all things, the interviewer decided to ask 16-year-old male Bieber about abortion and rape.
“I really don’t believe in abortion,” Bieber says. “It’s like killing a baby.” How about in cases of rape? “Um. Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don’t know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”
Okay.
I see…
Now, here’s the thing, Bieber answered the question and I hold him responsible for his answer. That’s a horrible thing to say, and as my friend Angela put it, “Plus, dipshit, if everything happens for a reason, then someone who has an abortion after being raped must have done it for a reason.”
Rape is also not ever, Bieber (though I highly doubt you’re reading this), a Happy Fucking Accident. It’s an act of violence that one human being does to another human being and it’s not going to Make You Stronger or Part of God’s Plan. It’s evil. The end. Also, you’ve never been in the position of having to have an abortion under any circumstances, so you are not able to judge that to begin with.
HOWEVER.
Bieber is a pretty easy target here, after all, he opened his mouth and stupid came flying out all over the place. In fact, his answers to most of the questions show his age. They are the short, uninformed, moral-absolute answers (including not knowing the politcal parties of the US or Canada, but being able to designate Korea as “bad”) of a young kid. I know most of us would like to pretend that we were born at age 28, but I’m sure we’ve all said our fair share of stupid things while the world was still new to us. I imagine there will an apology in the form of, “I regret if my words caused any harm to any of my fans,” and then we will move on.
But we’re still left with why Rolling Stone would ask a 16-year-old boy about his stance on abortion and rape in somewhat good detail. I highly doubt that anyone was hoping that Bieber was going to sit down and have a nuanced discussion with them about the concept of foreign relations and the hefty emotional and physical toll that comes with being sexually active. They got the answer they were looking for, and I guarantee this was done on purpose and here’s why.
This is what I want everyone to remember…Bieber’s fans are legions of screaming pre-teen girls who use Bieber (albeit subconsciously) as a safe conduit for their burgeoning sexual desires. The girls love him, ferociously and desperately. When he kissed Selena Gomez, youtube was FLOODED with videos of crying tweeners in genuine agony. I realize most of us looked at these videos and thought “Ha! Aww! Poor thing!” and sort of giggled about the silly fantasy of being Justin Bieber’s Dream Girl, but we’re looking at a very real heartbreak and the reason the connection is so strong is because of his function as a safe sexual object.
Believe me, I feel dirty even writing about this, but I was a 13-year-old girl once (though I wanted to be Axl Rose’s Rocket Queen) and to buy into the idea that our breastless and hipless daughters are somehow also sexless is a dangerous fallacy. To propogate that idea is to continue to send our kids out into the world without basic knowledge.
As Bieber ages, his fans age. These girls are growing up, they want to have sex, some of them might even get pregnant by accident. The best way to keep their sexuality under control…have the object of their desire discuss what they should and should not do with their own bodies.
We knew what Bieber was going to say. Moral Christianity is part of his schtick and there’s no way Jesus Bieber was going to say, “You know what, abortion is a matter between a woman and her doctor.”
I don’t really think Rolling Stone is part of some weird conspiracy to keep little girls from having sex, but the media does not exist in a vacuum and the sexual control of women is a given. The question isn’t even framed in a way that relates to Bieber; what would you do if someone you were with wanted to have an abortion? It was simply a broad question about women’s bodies asked of a young male who had a lot of sway with young females.
So shame on you, Sir Biebs, for propagating rape apologism and abortion shame to your legion of fans, but shame on you Rolling Stone for setting him up to even be that kind of mouthpiece to begin with.
