Legitimising Sex Work: The Counter-Arguments to Your Anti Sex Work Position

Posted: January 23, 2013 | Author: Connie | Filed under: Classism, Feminism, Intersectionality, Privilege | Tags: consent, sex work | 28 Comments »

This is a controversial opinion, especially among second-wave feminists and radfems and even some intersectionally-aware feminists, but I firmly believe in legalising and destigmatising sex work in developed countries. I come from a firm sex-positive standpoint and very much support the ~~Safe, Sane and Consensual~~ Risk-Aware Consensual Kink creed found in the kink community*. This post is written for people who come from a similar viewpoint, but may still feel conflicted about sex work.

As I am not a sex worker myself, I would welcome any corrections to this post.

People who identify as sex workers do a variety of different work, and it’s not just prostitution**. There are people who make pornography, there are people who strip, there are people who you can pay for a bunch of kinky shit, but may not actually involve sex. Sex work is partly legal in Australia, however it will depend on the type of work and laws vary from state to state. Famously, the porn site Abby Winters moved away from my hometown because of strict Australian laws regarding the depiction of real sexual activity – regardless if it’s completely consensual and agreed to under ethical conditions.

Before we begin, let’s get some common objections to sex work out of the way first:

Sex workers are primarily women, and we don’t want women selling their bodies!

If sex workers are “selling their bodies” then so are manual labourers. And athletes. And office workers. In fact, anyone who has a job is “selling their bodies” because everyone is selling what their bodies can do for money. That’s what labour is. In some cases, people are literally selling their minds for jobs that are brain-intensive – like researchers, writers, and basically every creative job ever (which, arguably, can be almost every job).

The truth is that no one can really “sell their bodies” because slavery is universally illegal. To imply that sex workers are “selling their bodies” is in some ways incredibly offensive because in my mind it implies that all sex workers have no personal choice about the jobs they do and the clients they have. It implies that all sex workers have no agency over their own consent.

(Hold that thought. I’ll get to the issue of choice and consent later in the post.)

Sex workers only do it for the money! They’re addicted to money!

Similarly, anyone who has a job can be said to “only do it for the money”.

There’s an odd few who might actually labour in their chosen career paths for free, but that’s definitely the minority. A lot of people hate their jobs. A lot of people are completely indifferent about their jobs. A lot of people would prefer to never work again, if not for the money.

Some of those working people could probably live on significantly less than they’re currently earning – yet they still choose to work more hours in order to afford more. Are they “addicted to money”?

(If your answer is ‘yes’ that’s probably a discussion for another post. But if your answer is ‘yes’ then you’ve also failed to identify why this objection applies moreso to sex work than any other paid work.)

The sex industry is sexist, racist, and caters primarily to straight white men!

So are Hollywood movies. So are books. So is modelling.

Much of this blog has been dedicated to deconstructing problematic media. Media produced by the sex industry is just another problematic thing that you can be a fan of. Sex work and pornography itself, however, is not fundamentally problematic. Current mainstream attitudes are not the be-all and end-all to what pornography can be.

Like all media, there are people who are actively trying to break new ground in representation. There are sex workers who are queer, fat, disabled, etc etc all actively trying to give representation to the spectrum of human sexuality rather than just the straight, white male view. There is even an annual Feminist Porn Award.

CHOICE, CIRCUMSTANCE & COERCION

First, you should read dana boyd’s article about the model of Choice, Circumstance and Coercion in sex work, because it will cover the same ground, and in more detail. To quote the article:

On one end, you have choice where individuals with a high level of agency and capital (social, economic, cultural) choose to engage in sex work, often because they hold pro-sex attitudes and believe that the world would be a better place if people were more open and honest sexually… On the other end of the spectrum, you have coercion where individuals lack any form agency or capital and are directly or indirectly forced into the trade through manipulation or force. In between, in a category that describes what I suspect is the bulk of commercial sex, is circumstance. Circumstance itself can also be treated as a spectrum. On the end closest to choice, you have individuals who believe that they should have the right to sell any part of their bodies for financial gain… The bulk of circumstance has more to do with challenging economic issues, including poverty or financial desperation. Finally, closest to coercion, there are individuals who are both financially hard off as well as grappling with serious mental health issues, including drug and alcohol addiction, gender dysphoria, a history of abuse, and/or co-dependency.

I want to make clear that it’s not surprising that many sex workers from marginalised backgrounds will operate from the “coercion” or “circumstance” category (although obviously not all). This is because sex work is not an idyllic career that exists outside the framework of privilege, but nothing does so it’s not particularly “special” in that regard.

COERCION VS CIRCUMSTANCE

In my view, the difference between the Circumstance and Coercion categories is primarily one of information. As trite as it sounds, knowledge and information is power. Someone who is faced with homelessness but who can or knows to contact emergency accommodation and support is in a different position from someone who faces homelessness and is not aware of their options, or that there’s even an option to be had. The former makes an informed choice, and their individual agency should be respected because they are in the best position to make the choice for themselves. The latter don’t have a functional choice because they’re not aware of other options.

The former I would categorise in the Circumstance category – those who have chosen sex work from informed consent; and the latter I would place in the Coercion category – those who work in sex work non-consensually. There is some grey area about what constitutes “informed consent” but that’s a discussion that falls outside the boundaries of this post, suffice to add that the question extends to areas outside of sex work as well.

Sex-positivists (and I include myself in this category) are used to thinking about sex and consent in a very straight-forward way. To have sex, you should seek consent in a very active way from your partner/s. To not do so is to run the risk of raping someone.

But why do people consent to sex? People may consent because they’re in a romantic relationship with their partner… but they might just want to get their rocks off. They might also consent for less emotionally healthy reasons, like to get back at an ex, to boost their own self-confidence, to manipulate another person. I’m not saying these are “good” reasons to have sex, but as long as both parties consent, it’s not rape (although it may be other forms of emotional abuse which I’m not going to deal with in this post).

And, except for some very very limited circumstances, the reason why people consent to sex is generally not my business as long as the consent is there. Similarly, the reason why some sex workers give for working in the industry may not fill me with joy and cupcakes, but ultimately it’s not my business why someone else chooses to consent to sex.

Anti-sex work lobbyists will often point to the fact many sex workers in this category will have problems with drug and alcohol addiction, mental illnesses, homelessness, etc and are resorting to sex work because they can’t get money anywhere else. If that’s the case, then it’s clearly NOT sex work that is the problem, but the fact that people don’t have alternative options. If a sex worker said they’d rather be working as a waitress, but that their wages as a waitress did pay them enough to live off, then that’s a problem with the minimum wage or the social welfare system. If they’ve made a decision to do sex work instead of becoming homeless or not having enough to eat, why do anti-sex work lobbyists focus on eradicating sex work instead of rallying for more support to low-income earners?

Lobbyists will often focus on the fact that some sex workers have very few other choices – which may be true – but this rhetoric detracts from individual agency and the conscious choice being made. Someone may personally feel that sex work is the better choice out of two bad options, so the aim should not be to make sex work an equally bad option, but to make the other option better, or increase the number of options that person has access to.

TRAFFICKING AND SEX WORK

I place trafficked sex workers solely within the Coercion category and their work as non-consensual, ie. rape and sexual assault.

Traffickers will often prey on uneducated women from developing countries, lure them to a developed country with the promise of a jobs as maids and cleaners, and then force them into debt bondage at their destination country. Traffickers will claim that the girls owe them money for the trip, food, accommodation – and when they can’t meet the costs, the traffickers force them to work in brothels as sex workers.

The women have little or no English. They are in a foreign country where the only people they know are literally their captors. They are told by the traffickers that the police won’t help, will arrest them and/or won’t believe them. They are told they’ve signed binding legal contracts when they have not. Sometimes they not only threaten and assault the women themselves, but also threaten their families in their home towns. From the minute they enter the country, the women are entirely reliant on the traffickers.

I want to make a distinction clear: there are foreign sex workers who might come to a developed country in order to pursue career opportunities in sex work. The exchange rate may be quite favourable, or perhaps the destination country has better laws for sex work. Either way, they’re in a very different situation from women who have been trafficked.

Trafficking and forced labour occurs in both legal and non-legal brothels, and the fact that licensed brothels have been complicit in people trafficking has been an argument against legalising sex work. However, what’s less often spoken about is the fact that other kinds of legal, licensed businesses also participate in people trafficking.

Trafficking does not solely occur within the purview of sex work. People trafficking and forced labour occurs in many industries: at restaurants, factories, farms and retail shops. Anti-slavery Australia gives four case studies as an example – only one of which is about sex work. But no one calls on the government to ban construction work, or fruit-picking, or table service at restaurants. This is because we recognise those jobs to be legitimate in and not fundamentally harmful in themselves. There is no reason why we can’t apply the same reasoning to sex work, which is fine when consensually agreed to, but abhorrent when it is forced upon people.

This should be obvious, but maybe it bears saying: No sex worker I’ve ever met, heard or read has supported people trafficking or forced labour. Every sex worker I’ve encountered is disgusted by the practice. Conflating sex work with people trafficking and forced labour is lazy and intellectually dishonest and if you take that approach, you may as well conflate the hospitality, retail and agriculture with the same.

THE CASE FOR LEGITIMISING SEX WORK

First, sex work is no different from any other labour that is sold for money, and the sex industry is no more or less problematic than other job industries.

Second, if disadvantaged people choose sex work as their best option when they are faced with a number of bad options, then it is the government and our society that is at fault, not sex work. Money ought to be spent in improving access to mental health services, education system, drug and alcohol programs – not spent trying to dissuade people from choosing sex work. The problem is not that they’re choosing sex work to survive, but that our society cannot provide adequate health, monetary and social support for some of the most disadvantaged people in our community.

Third, people trafficking is not exclusive to sex work. People are trafficked across a number of different industries, but the majority of businesses within those industries operate lawfully and morally.

Consequently, there are a number of things that occur when sex work is criminalised:

If people are in desperate situations, criminalisation may not dissuade people and they may turn to sex work anyway. In the end, it would only result in a criminal record for a lot of marginalised people, and extra administrative costs for the police and the courts. Alternatively, it may mean that people will need to pick “the worse option”, whether that means working three jobs or becoming homeless or something else.

For people being trafficked, those sex workers remain controlled by their traffickers who will have no qualms in directing them to break criminal laws. The fact they’ve committed a crime will be used as additional ammunition against them by their captors.

In the end, all criminalisation would do is curb the choices of those sex workers in the Choice category – the most privileged group with the most opportunities available to them – which also happens to be the category of people who we are the least concerned about engaging in sex work.

If we are really concerned in helping disadvantaged and marginalised people, banning, criminalising or stigmatising sex work is not going to solve anything. Much of the criticism thrown about relates not to sex work per se, but to the system of privilege that affects all aspects of our society, sex work included. The fact of the matter is that most mainstream opinions towards sex work are still firmly couched in anti-feminist, anti-sex rhetoric about women – and the idea that governments should dictate what women can or can’t do with their bodies.

*Edit: With thanks to a friend for pointing out the problematic aspects of using SSC and that the better acronym is now RACK.
**Edit 2: Please note that “prostitution” and “prostitute” are generally not accepted terms to apply to sex work and workers. I have used this term in the absence of anything else that describes exactly what I want to convey, but please note that the preferred words are always “sex work” and “sex worker”.

At the Movies

Posted: September 19, 2012 | Author: Caphesuada | Filed under: Feminism, Gender, Privilege, Racism, Sizeism, White Privilege | Tags: Aboriginal Australians, Australian history, Australian movies, Chris O'Dowd, Deborah Mailman, Koori, movies, Pop Culture, Romance genre, strong female characters, The Sapphires | 8 Comments »

It’s been quiet around these parts, we know, we know. But look, we’re all really busy and important (at least one of those things anyway). There has been some moving internationally, some uni assignment completion (and procrastination) and some of us, naming no names, have been playing a lot of Glitch.

On Wednesday the members of SJL, still in the same country (*sob*), went to the cinema. We even managed to get our applicable concession tickets and good seats! Just as an aside, can I just talk about going to the movies? Why is so ridiculously complicated? It’s like one of those mini quests in Glitch which involves a lot of jumping between constantly moving levels and makes me feel intensely anxious because everything just won’t line up and I never played Nintendo as a kid and my fine motor skills suffered.

This complaint should probably be accompanied by the world’s tiniest violin because I don’t think they even have concession tickets in the US? (Presumably because it’s socialism). Anyway, SJL are still in the process of completing Uni, doing unpaid internships and being un/under-employed. Basically it’s like Girls but with slightly more POC and better sex. [1. Rest of SJL: not happy with this comparison]. Also we get some money from the government for being students because, socialism. Basically, we aren’t going to pay $5 extra for movie tickets if we don’t have to, so we must all assemble [2. Who is thinking about The Avengers now?] with correct student cards at the allotted time even though we are all, invariably running late or early. But we totally nailed buying the correct tickets to the correct movie because we are motherfucking adults! [3. Eds note: perhaps writing a whole paragraph about this undermines your point?]

And what movie were we going to see? [4. Further eds note: Are you planning to get to the action any time soon? This is a blogpost not a Tolkien novel, no one wants to know the songs you sang on the way to the cinema, OK. ] We were going to see The Sapphires a movie you have probably heard about if you are Australian and almost certainly haven’t if you aren’t.

Things that are almost always true of Australian movies:

1. There are about 100 credits as the movie starts because it takes a lot of people and a lot of effort to get a movie made in Australia. I know this is also true of American indie releases because it’s hard out there for a pimp/movie maker, but for Aussie movies at least a few of the “this is a [BlahBlah Production]” credits are for government government funded bodies (again with the communism!).

2. It is nice to hear Australian accents on film. It just is, OK? We aren’t in many movies and when we are often we are played by English people or, even worse, New Zealanders. There is a joke in the movie where Chris O’Dowd’s character, speaking in his Irish accent, says “As you can probably tell from my accent I’m not from around these parts, I’m from Melbourne!” Which SJL laughed uproariously at, hopefully foreign audiences also get this.

3. It is exciting to see Australian life/places on screen. Maybe it is condescending for me to say this but I really don’t think many Americans get this. Until I went to America I thought the following things only existed in movies: those red plastic cups at parties , yellow school buses [5. I’d like to make it clear that we do have busses in Australia, even school buses, they just don’t look so yellow and story-bookish (I make this point because when I exclaimed about school buses in the US my American friend looked at me with horror and said “You don’t have buses in Australia?” and as much as I tried to reassure her I don’t think she ever really believed me).] , NYPD cars, people calling their friend’s parents by their last names, prom, high school cheerleaders, high school sport being SRS BSNS, college sport being SRS BSNS etc. I also have a completely mangled view of the legal system of my own country because I’ve watched a lot of US court dramas. I am forever this close to thinking 911 is the emergency number I should call, whatever country I am in. Which is not to say that American Cultural Imperialism Is Ruining Everything. Because, I really like a lot of American popular culture, but it’s a nice change to see a movie set in outback Australia and the city in which I live (and also Vietnam, a place I have briefly lived. Basically, they made this movie for me).

4. You recognise most of the actors from a combination of the following: being in every other Australian movie you’ve ever watched, being the Australian actor who made it big overseas and is now back to prove their Aussie-ness and “give back”, your twitter feed and that time you once saw them at the shops and thought you recognised them but weren’t sure.

5. They are not very good. I know, I am bringing dishonour to my country but it’s true! Usually Australian movies are cheap and either:
a) so incredibly arty that you know you should be appreciating the art but you find yourself thinking in deep shame about how much fun Magic Mike was,
b) so incredibly broad you feel yourself at once wanting to dive under the cinema seat and suffering deep shame at your cultural cringe or,
c) Animal Kingdom, which I hear is great and all the nerdy movie podcasters/bloggers I follow really liked it but I’m kind of a wimp about violence so I haven’t seen it but I totally pretend to have at parties.

The Sapphires, though, is actually totally great! It’s the story inspired by real life of four Aboriginal women who go to Vietnam in the 60s to sing for the American forces there. It explores issues of race and gender, and there is singing and dancing. I laughed, I cried! (I actually cried a lot, so much so that it caused SJL to rummage through their bags for a napkin).

But I hear this blog is supposed to be a Social Justice blog so let’s try that. I am not going to “spoil” the movie in this section but I will reveal some background information and some plot developments so if you prefer to go into your movies with as little knowledge as possible, stop reading now!

Race. Clearly I am no expert on this and I welcome POC to pull me up if I am missing nuance. The film addresses the level of racism in Australia during this time, and the limitations this placed upon what aboriginal people could do and the places they could go. There are a lot of jokes about race in this movie, but none of them are made at the expense of the POC. They are jokes about stereotypes and about the horror and stupidity of racism. I was particularly impressed with the way that the film dealt with the idea of “passing” as white and the complications that causes. This is an issue regularly brought up by unenlightened “commentators” in Australia . Kay, one of the singers is pale enough to be perceived as white. The film at once acknowledges the privilege this confers upon her while also exploring the pain and confusion this causes.
Holy female gaze batman. The film delights in treating male, (often) black bodies in the way that movie-makers usually treat (generally) white, female bodies. So when you see that slow upward pan of Kay’s love interest’s rippling abs remember you are doing it for feminism (feminism is a lot of fun guys, lets be honest). Also, I can’t lie, I do enjoy the reverse-Bella they pull on that guy by making his main, characteristic the fact that he is clumsy. While the love interest we learn the most about is white, the black male characters are shown to be at times desirable, funny, clever, enterprising and nuanced.
The feisty female character doesn’t have to submit to the male love interest. You know fairly early on, if you’ve ever seen a movie before, who’s going to end up together and from that point I was concerned that the female character was going to have to give in, to tone down her opinions. She never does. Also the way that he asks her to marry him is probably one of the sweetest and most egalitarian proposals of all time (I welcome alternatives in the comments).
Body diversity. At SJL we reject the assertion that some women’s bodies are better, or more womanly than others, while at the same time acknowledging problems of representation and the overall thinness of womens bodies in the media. (This is high level feminism folks, and please do try it at home, on the bus and at parties etc). So, it’s really nice to see a movie where the main female lead and part of a romantic pairing is not thin and her weight is never mentioned. Of course it shouldn’t be an issue because women Deborah Mailman’s size are not some kind of niche minority, they are us, our friends, our mothers and our co workers but they are weirdly absent from the screen.

The movie, unsurprisingly for a feel-good movie featuring musical numbers, is schmaltzy at times. Often these moments are cut through with jokes (because Australians think feelings are gross [6. A massive generalization! Also many English people think feelings are gross.] ). There is a scene where Kay secures them passage through land held by the Vietcong by giving a speech in an Aboriginal dialect. It’s also worth making the point that it is somewhat reductive to view the Vietnam War along entirely racial lines as this scene appears to. If nothing else the (North) Vietnamese wanted freedom from anyone who tried to deny it of them, including the Chinese, the Japanese, the French and the Americans (and not all the American soldiers were white, as the film itself makes clear) and they would fight them all. As guests of the US Army The Sapphires would surely be viewed as the enemy. The Vietcong were pretty hardcore (understatement) and I’m fairly certain that speaking to them in the Yorta Yorta language would not have worked, but I was crying a lot at that point, and narratively it worked so you know, whatevs.

And finally, I’m pretty sure that “bag of dicks” was not a thing that people said in 1960s Australia, but prove me wrong. OK, now let’s chair dance it out…

Separatism and Intersectionality

Posted: July 21, 2012 | Author: Rachael | Filed under: Ableism, Cissexism, Feminism, Gender, Heterosexism, Intersectionality, Privilege, Racism, Sexism, Sizeism, White Privilege | Tags: activism, meta | 5 Comments »

One of the broadest areas of disagreement within the social justice community is the extent to which we should distance ourselves from individuals in the groups oppressing us. The argument often devolves into a fight between simpering pacifism of the “Let’s all just get along and be happy together!” flavour, and violent militarism of the “I spit in the face of group Z” flavour.

Now, on a personal level, both of these positions are completely valid. If that’s how you feel is appropriate for you personally to proceed, then that’s fine. But we have a problem when either of these positions is evangelised, and presented as though it is the only acceptable way to live with yourself as the member of an oppressed group. In particular, pushing separatism as the ideal mode of resistance from oppression is a tactic that erases intersectionality.

In the past, I’ve been a card-carrying member of the “Let’s try to all live together because peace and love are better than fighting!” group. But I now realise there are some very deep problems with that position.

The first is that trying to always and everywhere get along and live together with individuals who are actively a threat to your mental and emotional well-being is not a sustainable position. There is often very real tension involved when individuals in oppressed groups befriend, become involved with, or interact with individuals from the groups oppressing them. Regardless of the intentions of the privileged individual, the social power dynamic between the groups creates additional risks for the person who is a member of the marginalised group. It’s important for us to recognise this, on two levels. As members of marginalised groups, we owe it to ourselves to preserve our emotional health, and manage these risks to the best of our abilities. That may mean limiting our interactions or choosing them carefully or many other options. As members of privileged groups, we owe it to everyone to make sure we never abuse the awful, misbegotten social power we have. (And if we fuck up on this point, we have to own it and say sorry.)

For example, in a society infused with sexism, androcentrism and rape culture, there are things that many women feel they must take into consideration when interacting with men, that they do not often feel they must consider when interacting with other women. Melissa McEwan’s excellent essay “The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck” explain this very well (McEwan and I often disagree, but that essay is phenomenal). I imagine that the situation is comparable – though with its own complexities, of course – for POC when they interact with white people. I know from experience as a queer woman with various mental health issues, the tensions can also arise when someone with a disability interacts with an able-bodied-and-minded person, and when queers interact with straight people.

The second issue is that marginalised people do not owe it to their oppressors to make nice with them. Sure, there may well be benefits to cultivating empathy and forgiveness towards those who hurt us (I find anger exhausting, so I try to do this). But people are not obligated to do this! There should never be any expectation that oppressed people should have a big Nelson Mandela moment and forgive everyone. The reason why Nelson Mandela is so famous is because what he did is fucking incredible. It is simply not right to ask all oppressed people to morph into a cross between Buddha and Jesus in order to live in this world. Often this request presents itself insidiously, in the form of fake concern, “I just think you’d feel better if you forgave Whitey…”. No. If people want to be angry, let them be angry. If they never want to forgive the people responsible for the harm done to CeCe McDonald or Jamie Hubley, that is their goddamn right. The fact that individuals in privileged groups feel entitled to preach the benefits of forgiveness and then brand all who do not forgive and forget as “part of the problem” is…well, part of the problem.

However, there are equally serious problems with the rallying cry for separatism as the only form of true activism. Well actually, I’m only going to talk about the one massive problem I see with separatism. Its name is intersectionality.

Aiming for separatism completely ignores intersectionality, and in so doing, recreates kyriarchical power structures within the social justice movement itself. I am going to demonstrate the issues using feminism and women, but the principles apply the same to other movements like fat acceptance, anti-racism, the queer movement, etc. I do not mean to imply that feminism is the only guilty party here. I do not mean to imply that, for example, asking queer women to choose womanhood over all other facets of their identity is any worse than asking them to choose queerness.

Also, when I talk about separatism I’m not only talking about the idea that we should be literally separated and not interact with individuals from privileged groups. I’m also talking broadly about the philosophy that declares that Group X and Group Not-X can never get along, that they are fundamentally too different to ever understand each other. The problem of course is that Group Y Separatists also feel that way about Group Y and Not-Y. So now what happens when you’re in group X and group Y? You probably have friends and allies who are X and Not-Y, or Y and Not-X. It’s not a fun time. Ask any woman who is not straight and/or white.

So: Separatist feminism declares that no peace can ever be made between men and women, so women should at least limit or eliminate any emotional ties or interaction with men, and at most commit social or physical violence against them. But to demand this of all women is to ask women to deny other, equally important aspects of themselves besides their womanhood. It is asking them to deny the ways in which they may feel more comfortable and more at peace with some men than with some women. For example, some women of colour, who have been marginalised by white women in the feminist movement for centuries, may feel they actually have as much or more in common with men of colour than with white women. Of course, asking for racial separatism has the same problem: it asks women of colour to cast aside all commonalities white women in favour of men of colour. Asking women of colour to declare an unbridgeable gap either with white women or men of colour is ridiculous and harmful.

That is the essence of separatism. When you call for female separatism you are asking queer women to cut off their ties to non-women queers and declare undying allegiance to all women – including straight women, who may in the past have bullied them, who may today be passing laws that hurt them. You are asking fat women to declare they have more in common with thin women than with fat men – when thin women might well have been the primary enforcers of their marginalisation as fat people for years. What is more, you are erasing genderqueers and other nonbinary folk. And frankly given that some so-called feminists don’t consider transwomen women, you’re probably making all the transwomen very fucking nervous indeed.

Any form of separatism has these problems. Ask anyone with more than one area of marginalisation, and they have stories about how their “Group X” identity is marginalised within the much-vaunted “Group Y Safe Space”. This doesn’t just happen in big, populous movements like feminism. There are people who are marginalised in the trans community because of sizeism. There are people who are marginalised in the fat acceptance community, and in the movement against ableism, because of their race.

I don’t deny that cultivating an “us versus them” mentality is tempting, given the horrors of oppression. But it is actively bad for our communities. It erases the most vulnerable members of oppressed communities, that is, those who have more than one area in which they are marginalised. Even if you say “Well okay then, we’re going to have ‘queer women of colour’ separatism!” you’re still asking disabled and fat people to make allegiance choices… and you’re potentially ignoring the ways different ethnic groups are treated in the caucasian-centric racial heirarchy. It doesn’t end there either because virtually everyone is in a unique situation. We can’t escape the problem by implementing a finer granulation. It doesn’t work like that.

Thus, separatism inherently demands that some members of your group choose between their various “competing” and complex identities. That’s just not okay. This shit is hard enough to reconcile even without all the white feminists or male queers or thin or able-bodied people breathing down your neck and urging you to “pick a side”. There is no picking sides. Yes, we are different, and we have different experiences in this world because of the traits we have and the groups we belong to. But there is no unbridgeable gap between these groups – there are actual human beings where the gap is supposed to be.

On a societal level, we do all have to live together. Not out of some misplaced, wide-eyed, soppy utopianism, but because any attempt to balkanize humanity is an attempt to erase and deny intersectionality completely. Yes, any individual is free to arrange their life to preserve their mental and emotional well-being, and whatever level of interaction they choose for themselves is to be respected. Yes, it is abhorrent to expect members of marginalised groups to forgive and forget, and make nice all the time. But it is equally abhorrent to ask them to cut out a part of themselves and disavow it – to end their emotional investment in all communities except the one being championed right at that moment. That is not the way to end marginalisation. That is a recipe for re-creating it within our own communities.

Dear Kat Stratford (I think I love you)

Posted: June 11, 2012 | Author: Caphesuada | Filed under: Feminism, Gender, Sexism | Tags: 10 Things I Hate About You, 90s teen movies, Kat Stratford, movies, Pop Culture, strong female characters, teen movies | 4 Comments »

Hopefully I am not the only one who still remembers/watches weekly 10 Things I Hate About You. It is the the story of Kat Stratford, and her younger, more popular sister, Bianca. They are at high school and there are boys and bets and Important Dances. It is, ostensibly, a remake of The Taming of the Shrew (?). Mostly it is important to remember that there are a lot of great lines and a bit where Heath Ledger sings a song and that Kat Stratford Is Really Awesome OMG.

I was going to come up with some tenuous tie in for this post eg. “isn’t it still sad that Heath Ledger is dead?”[1], it is [some random year] since this movie came out[2], “isn’t Joseph Gordon Levitt cute?”[3] etc. However, I have decided to eschew such fakery in pursuance of my art. My art called for me to write a list of things.

A (not entirely) random number of things I love about Kat Stratford, in a mostly random order.[4]

“I suppose in our society being male and an arsehole makes you worthy of our time.” When I watched this movie I was in early high school and critical and/or feminist approaches to texts were not something with which I was familiar. The scene in English class near the beginning of the film is so perfect. This scene includes Kat informing Heath Ledger’s character (Patrick) that all he has missed is “The oppressive patriarchal values that dictate our education.” I didn’t know what patriarchal values were but gee they sounded bad and I wanted to know more.
Kat is angry about things which are angry-making. So maybe injuring someone to extent that they need a testical retrieval operation because they groped you in the lunchline is somewhat disproportionate but also it’s awesome… Oups?
Banter! So much beautiful banter. When I watched Ten Things the first time my “moves” around boys I liked were mostly a mixture of blushing, sweating and mumbling, sometimes I managed all three moves at once! So that exchange where Heath Ledger’s character says “I know a lot more than you think!” and Kat whips back with “Doubtful, very doubtful” and others like that, were very aspirational. Would I ever be so cool?[5]
According to (unethical!) sleuthing it is found that Kat likes “Thai food, feminist prose and angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion.” Would I still like Pad Thai and The Handmaid’s Tale and Bikini Kill if I hadn’t met Kat Stratford at such a crucial time? A controlled trial is not forthcoming. I do know that I lived pretty far from a shop that sold Riot Grrl, so it certainly helped. (Shortly after watching the movie I used my parents newly acquired dial up internet to download Rebel Girl and it made my life better).
Aside from Bikini Kill, Kat references some other pretty great stuff: Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, Charlotte Bronte and the Feminine Mystique[6] for example. Women make great and important cultural works!
The conversation between Kat and Bianca at the party. I was long from attending such events, and of course such events don’t really exist because yay, Hollywood movies![7] But that scene where Bianca refuses to talk to her because she’s not cool enough and Kat looks genuinely hurt? Oh my heart. She’s fierce and badass and has all the best comebacks but she is still a teenager girl capable of feeling hurt in the way that teenage girls are so very skilled at inflicting it.
“You don’t always have to be what they want you to be, you know?” Which is just the best advice and an excellent tattoo idea and great words of wisdom I hope to impart on my future hypothetical sons and daughters. ([2] Of course my hypothetical future children will also no doubt fail to listen to me, just like Bianca).
That bit where she makes out with Heath Ledger while rolling in the hay, covered in paint.[8]
So Kat isn’t great at communicating all the time, but eventually she brings Bianca ‘round and then Bianca hits The Douchebag in the face. Who wouldn’t want to be that much of a positive inspiration in someone’s life???[9]
That she takes him back. So maybe this is counter-intuitive but stay with me OK? You really like this hot guy and he seems to like you but then it turns out it was a bet.[10] So you think a) can I trust this guy again? b) does he even really like me? And then it turns out that yes you can and he does (as far as you can tell) actually like you. Choosing not to be in a relationship with someone should not be about denying someone the gift of your presence/vagina in payback. If you still really want to be with someone and have assessed things as levelly as you can, I say go for it! (Shockingly I may have over-thought this).[11] Also, he bought her an awesome-looking guitar!!!

An aside: Black “panties” don’t mean you want to have sex some day. Those underpants don’t even fit the stereotype given they look like the type of cotton hipster bikinis you get in a ten pack at Target.[12] That bit is so weird and I am impressed with Patrick Verona’s skeptical face when delivered with this as evidence that Kat is worth pursuing.

[1] Yes.

[2] It is… twelve years. God, who feels old now? Also why the fuck does this movie only have a 6.9 rating on IMDB?

[3] Yes.

[4] Other keen scholars of the film will note that actually in that (I think we can admit, pretty bad) poem there are actually more than ten things! Scandal! Lied to by Hollywood!

[5] The short answer is no because I don’t have a script writer, or a soundtrack, to my ongoing disappointment.

[6] I read this book when I was 16 mostly because of Kat, but also because of a great sociology teacher I had and the fact my mum already had it sitting on the bookshelf. In short: women are great!

[7] Although I have discovered that American parties do actually feature those ubiquitous red plastic cups.

[8] This was also very aspirational to teenage me.

[9] Disclaimer: violence is not the answer. Most of the time.

[10] Happens all the time, am I right? Oh late 90s/early 00s teen movies, why all the bets?

[11] Note to SJL: possible series idea “Sex Advice for the Protagonists of Teen Movies”???

[12] I suspect they are, in fact, “period panties”.

The Revolution Will Not Be Polite: The Issue of Nice versus Good

Posted: April 26, 2012 | Author: Rachael | Filed under: Cissexism, Classism, Feminism, Intersectionality, Privilege, Racism, Sexism, White Privilege | Tags: activism, politeness, social justice, the movement | 84 Comments »

A while ago, tumblr user “iamateenagefeminist” compiled a list of non-oppressive insults, a public service that will never be forgotten. The people of tumblr wept with joy and appreciation (although it should be noted that the people of tumblr will literally weep over a drawing of an owl). The list is not perfect, and “ugly” should NOT be on there as it reinforces beauty hierarchies. Still, I was happy to find it, because I am always looking for more insults that don’t reinforce oppressive social structures.

But if you scroll through the reblogs you’ll see that not everyone was enamoured of the idea of creating this list at all. In particular, several people said that trying to find non-oppressive ways to insult other people is “missing the point” of social justice. Those people seem to think that being nice is a core part of social justice. But those people are wrong.

Social justice is about destroying systematic marginalisation and privilege. Wishing to live in a more just, more equal world is simply not the same thing as wishing to live in a “nicer” world. I am not suggesting niceness is bad or that we should not behave in a nice way towards others if we want to! I also do not equate niceness with cooperation or collaboration with others. Here’s all I am saying: the conflation of ethical or just conduct (goodness), and polite conduct (niceness) is a big problem.

Plenty of oppressive bullshit goes down under the guise of nice. Every day, nice, caring, friendly people try to take our bodily autonomy away from us (women, queers, trans people, nonbinaries, fat people, POC…you name it, they just don’t think we know what’s good for us!). These people would hold a door for us if they saw us coming. Our enemies are not only the people holding “Fags Die God Laughs” signs, they are the nice people who just feel like marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense, it’s just how they feel! We once got a very nice comment on this site that we decided we could not publish because its content was “But how can I respect women when they dress like – sorry to say it, pardon my language – sluts?”. This is vile, disgusting misogyny and no amount of sugar coating and politeness can make it okay. Similarly, most of the people who run ex-gay therapy clinics are actually very nice and polite! They just want to save you! Nicely! Clearly, niceness means FUCK ALL.

On an even more serious note, nice people also DO horrible bad things on an individual level. In The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker, he explicitly says that people who intend to harm others often display niceness towards them in order to make them feel safe and let their guard down. This trick only works because we have been taught that niceness indicates goodness. What is more, according to De Becker, women have been socially conditioned to feel indebted to men who are “nice” to them, which is often exploited by abusers. If this doesn’t seem obvious to you, I suggest you pick up the book – it talks a lot about how socialisation of men and women makes it easier for men to abuse women.

How many more acts that reinforce kyriarchy have to be done nicely and politely before we stop giving people any credit for niceness? Does the niceness of these acts make them acceptable? It does not.

An even bigger issue is that if people think social justice is about niceness, it means they have fundamentally misunderstood privilege. Privilege does not mean you live in a world where people are nice to you and never insult you. It means you live in a world in which you, and people like you, are given systematic advantages over other people. Being marginalised does not mean people are always nasty to you, it means you live in a world in which many aspects of the cultural, social and economic systems are stacked against people like you. Some very privileged people have had awful experiences in life, but it does not erase their privilege. That is because privilege is about groups of people being given different rights and opportunities by the law and by socio-cultural norms. Incidentally, that is why you can have some forms of privilege and not others, and it doesn’t make sense to try to “tally up” one’s privilege into a sum total and compare it against others’.

By the way, the first person who says “But then why are TV shows a social justice issue?” in the comments will have their head put on a pike as an example to others. Cultural narratives are part of what builds and reinforces social roles, and those determine what opportunities a person has – and the rights they can actually exercise, even if they have them in the law. If you don’t believe me and don’t want to accept this idea, you will now google “stereotype threat”, you will read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, you will watch this speech by Esther Duflo on women and development (which talks about stereotypes and outcomes), and THEN you may return to this blog.

The conflation of nice and good also creates an avenue of subtle control over marginalised people. After all, what is seen as “nice” is cultural and often even class-dependent, and therefore the “manners” that matter get to be defined by the dominant ethnic group and class. For example, the “tone” argument, the favourite derailing tactic of bigots everywhere, is quite clearly a demand that the oppressor be treated “nicely” at all times by the oppressed – and they get to define what “nice” treatment is. This works because the primacy of nice in our culture creates a useful tool – to control people and to delegitimise their anger. A stark example of this is the stereotype of the desirably meek and passive woman, which is often held over women’s heads if we step out of line. How much easier is it to hold on to social and cultural power when you make a rule that people who ask for an end to their own oppression have to ask for it nicely, never showing anger or any emotion at being systematically disenfranchised? (A lot easier.)

Furthermore, I think the confusion of meanness with oppression is the root cause of why bigots feel that calling someone a “bigot” is as bad as calling someone a “tranny” or taking away their rights. You know, previously I thought they were just being willfully obtuse, but now I realise what is going on. For example, most racists appear to feel that calling POC a racist slur is a roughly equal moral harm to POC calling them a “racist fuckhead”. That’s because they do not understand that using a racist slur is bad in any sense other than it hurts someone’s feelings. And they know from experience that it hurts someone’s feelings to be called racist douche.

So if you – the oppressed – hurt someone’s feelings, you’re just like the oppressor, right? Wrong. Oppression is not about hurt feelings. It is about the rights and opportunities that are not afforded to you because you belong to a certain group of people. When you use a racist slur you imply that non-whiteness is a bad thing, and thus publicly reinforce a system that denies POC the rights and opportunities of white people. Calling a white person a racist fuckhead doesn’t do any of that. Yes, it’s not very nice. And how effective it is as a tactic is definitely up for debate (that’s a whole other blog post). But it’s not oppression.

Being good and being nice are totally unrelated. We need to get serious about debunking this myth, because the confusion between the two is obfuscating our message and handing our oppressors another tool with which to silence us. In some cases, this confusion is putting people (especially women) in real danger.

This social movement can’t achieve its goals if people think it’s essentially some kind of niceness revolution. And anyway, social justice is not about making the world a nicer place. It’s about taking back the rights and opportunities denied to us by law or by social and cultural norms – and breaking out of the toxic mindset that wants us to say please and thankyou when we do.

The Man With the Hero Complex… Tattoo

Posted: March 30, 2012 | Author: Connie | Filed under: Feminism | Tags: novels, Pop Culture, sexual violence, strong female characters | 18 Comments »

Spoilers for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book and major trigger warnings for rape, both in the review and in the book. I am not a survivor of rape or sexual assault so I would happy to receive any criticism or comments of this post by survivors, either through the comments below or through our contact form.

The two reasons why I wanted to read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were because of the original title, The Men Who Hate Women, and also because I’d heard that Larsson wrote the book in response to witnessing a rape. I’d been told from a number of (not explicitly feminist, but usually somewhat reliable) sources that the main character, Lisbeth Salander, was one of those Strong Female Characters who was emotionally detached and exhibited sexual desire and agency that was uncommon for female protagonists.

On the other hand I’d also heard the book was a rape victim’s revenge fantasy – and that was something we should be critical about, and I wasn’t sure what to think of that. So curiosity overcame my natural suspicion of popular books dealing with complex feminist issues.

After slogging my way to the final page, I closed the book and immediately thought of Kate Beaton’s comic (again). At best, the book is unspectacular and deals clumsily with the issues of rape, misogyny and abuse of power. Here is a man who witnessed a rape take place, felt shaken enough to write a book about it, yet still did the most superficial and cursory research into the subject. At worst, the book is downright offensive.

While Salander’s general detachment is refreshing – it is implied she is aneurotypical and that she’s probably autistic, perhaps the lone point of feminist interest – the book merely ends up retreading age-old hero and damsel in distress tropes. Contrary to my impressions before reading, the male journalist, Mikael Blomkist, is actually the protagonist who gets the most page-time and his character is significantly more developed than Lisbeth. Lisbeth really acts as a sidekick to his detective work and like many Strong Female Characters (TM), while she is smart and resourceful, her internal motivations for helping Blomkist are unclear and difficult to believe.

What’s more is that Salander falls in the love with the protagonist for no particular reason at all. The passages from her point of view are all tell, no show, and reading Salander wax poetic about how Blomkist doesn’t interfere with her life is utterly perplexing because this is apparently the reason why she falls for him. A man who doesn’t interfere with a woman’s life and her choices is, at most, neutral, since men don’t get cookies for meeting the basic standards of morality, even if those men are few and far between. There is absolutely no reason for her to show such an interest in him at all.

What’s made even more disturbing is that Salander is named after the victim whose rape he witnessed. And considering that Larsson and Blomkist share the same occupation, that Blomkist is the fictional representation of Larsson seems extremely likely, and then it becomes extremely disturbing that Larsson has written a fantasy where the representation of a real victim of rape falls in love with him.

As for the rape victim revenge fantasy, I’m going to completely blunt: Salander rapes her rapist to punish him. Yeah. Like, I don’t even know where to go with that. Rape culture is not solved with more rape culture. Just like sexual assault in prisons is not justice and merely contributes to rape culture, this fantasy also contributes to rape culture. Even if this were a frequent desire or reaction of rape survivors, Larsson himself was not a rape survivor (that we know of) or even someone who frequently worked with survivors of sexual assault and rape. While I can appreciate that witnessing a rape would have a deep impact on a person, to forward the narrative of a survivor raping their attacking seems pretty fucking appropriative of survivor experiences and feelings.

And if Larsson were considered a survivor, the narrative in the book is still highly irresponsible because it condones Salander’s actions as justifiable because society’s systems have failed her. Yes, it is disgusting and awful for society’s to regularly fail to protect women, but presenting society as having forced Salander’s actions as justified vigilantism ignores the organisations and activism that do exist to help women who have been victims of violence. Maybe witnessing a rape opened Larsson’s eyes to the systematic victimisation of women, but many of us have had our eyes open for years and some of us have done something about it. Rape aside, not every woman is able to physically fight their attackers like Salander or extract themselves from financially-dependent relationships. Once again, Strong Female Character is being interpreted as physical “strength” without much regard to the mental or emotional resilience that I would characterise of many survivors of sexual assault. (Of course, I definitely do not consider “strength” or lack of it to be a moral judgement.)

The book also engages in victim-blaming and fails in any complex consideration of the psychology of rapists. On one level I understand this is meant to be a crime/thriller novel where the crime needs to be sensational in some way, but I am so sick of rapists being painted as psychopaths who kidnap women and set up basement torture chambers. That happens in a tiny minority of cases and then it becomes easy to dismiss rapists as “monsters” without humanity, and also for Salander’s acts of vigilantism to be more easily accepted (ie. it is acceptable to rape “monsters” if they have no humanity left). Furthermore, Salander is shown having no compassion for her fellow female survivors (I think it would be far more realistic for her to experience strong feelings here than with Blomkist) and in fact blames one of the victims for not speaking up earlier. Blomkist is then the one who mansplains a rape survivor’s psychology to her, another rape survivor, and at this point I decided that someone should give me an award for continuing to turn the pages of this book.

What’s also disturbing is how the acts of rape are described in detail and in a way that made the scenes feel like spectacles rather than crimes that are deeply scarring and emotionally damaging. The women who are the victims of the crimes are, on the whole, faceless, and described as prostitutes, immigrants and generally marginalised people in society whose bodies have been tossed into the oceans. We have no emotional connection with them. Salander is an emotionally detached character and remains so regarding her rape, and another character’s rapes occurred 30 years ago so she’s not about to recount it all. Because there’s no real focus on the impact on victims/survivors the focus becomes the acts of the violence, the rapes themselves. When Salander gets her revenge on her rapist, I have the feeling that this is the end of the matter for Larsson because justice has been served. Even if her actions constituted justice, the reason why rape is such a heinous crime is because the psychological and emotion scars it leaves on its victims. It’s very convenient that Larsson wrote a protagonist who just so happens to be completely detached from the world.

I can imagine that this would have been a very cathartic novel for Larsson to write, and obviously because it was published posthumously he had no say in the matter of its publication. But honestly, this should have never been published. We really did not need another white dude’s account of horrible things done to women, even if his heart was in the right place. None of the narrative, characters, mystery, ANYTHING provided anything that was particularly helpful in forwarding the feminist message. The fact this was labelled feminist in the first place has me worried. The most “feminist” part the novel I could find is how each part opens with a statistic about violence against women in Sweden. Old hat to hardened feminists, but might be why the mainstream seems to think it’s so revolutionary.

In a completely unrelated area of criticism, I found the writing quality to be abysmal and almost unreadable. I’ve been told that the writing is equally pretty bad in Swedish and it wasn’t just the translation that made everything painful to read. For the first few hundred pages I was so distracted by the writing that I couldn’t stop myself from mentally editing everything and the last time I did that was with a Laurell K. Hamilton book.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. It is a bit of a page-turner in the sense that I wanted to know what happened next when I didn’t want to throw it across the room, but that’s about it. Unfortunately I’ve bought the whole series already so I suppose you’ll have to look forward to more long ranting book reviews from me.

Achievements Earned: Sexual Harassment, Rampant Misogyny, Silent Complacency

Posted: March 7, 2012 | Author: Connie | Filed under: Feminism, Sexism | Tags: geek culture, rape jokes, sexual harassment, video games | 5 Comments »

Listen up, gamers! When a prominent member of your community states explicitly that not only is sexual harassment a good thing, but that it’s ethically wrong to try to eradicate sexual harassment from gaming cultures, there is something very, very wrong. (I’m not the biggest fan of PA or this particular coverage, but it’s probably the best and most general overview of the issue.)

The fact that the article goes on to say that the fighting game community is split on the issue is positively frightening.

I’m not even going to address the people who think sexual harassment is okay because you’re morally reprehensible and frankly, you’re not worth my time. But for the people who are worried about the reputation and culture of the fighting game community, the gamer community or even the geek community in general, let’s chat.

First, it may be surprising that I’m not particularly interested in this Aris dude or the apparently numerous gamers who agree with him. At this point I’ve written them off as no-hopers who can’t see past their own egos to understand basic codes of moral behaviour. What I am concerned about, however, is the circumstances where the gaming culture has allowed these disgustingly bigoted views to flourish.

In many other subcultures and communities, people like Aris and his supporters wouldn’t make news or even dent the reputation of the community. Bigots like these people would be dealt within internally, mocked for their views and prompted ejected and vilified (as they should be). It would be clear that they were so completely out of touch with the community standards for good conduct that anyone claiming they were representative of the whole community would be laughed at.

But clearly this isn’t the case. There is a prominent and even normalised trend of sexually harassing women in gaming circles. I’m sure there are a number of perfectly nice gamers who don’t harass people and you know what, I could even believe that people like Aris are part of a small but vocal minority. The problem isn’t numbers, the problem is systematic complacency to bigotry and douchebaggery.

The Penny Arcade article illustrates the point perfectly here:

It’s important to point out that video comes from the first day of the competition. The stream where Aris defends and encourages the harassment of female players takes place on day five. That means this woman may have been mocked and sexually harassed for days without anyone stepping in, stopping the situation, or speaking to Aris. At one point during the stream there is even a conversation about the “Cap cops” coming in to shut things down, but the conversation about sexual harassment continues.

When no one stands up to bigots, then everyone who is silent is complacent to their bigotry because bigots take silence to mean approval. Yes, Aris was the one who was sexually harassing female players, but what of the number of spectators who stood around and just let it happen? This kind of behaviour could have been nipped in the bud if someone had spoken up from day one. Their individual silence is as bad as Aris’ abuse, and collectively more significant.

You might think it’s unfair that I accord this sort of responsibility onto spectators who don’t have control over what Aris says. The fact of the matter is, Aris had enough confidence to let loose his abuse because he’d done it before with no consequences. He’d done it before, might have even been congratulated by a few douchenozzles, but more importantly, he’d experienced no or very little backlash from fellow gamers. The truth is that if you’re silent about bigotry then you are complicit in it – because bigots will assume that, you too, are a bigot.

You might still think it’s unfair that I accord this sort of communal responsibility onto spectators, but it’s also fucking unfair that Miranda Pakozdi was allowed to be abused in this way. You can’t have it both ways; you can’t say that people like Aris are ruining the community image on one hand while having a laissez-faire attitude to the existence of such people within the community on the other.

Hey, gamers? If you’re so concerned with the reputation of the gamer community, you should be less concerned about the effects of media coverage and more concerned with eradicating bigots from your community so the media will have nothing to latch onto. Instead of complaining how the media focuses on the negatives, maybe you should be stating that people like Aris are unequivocally condemned within the community and their presence is wholly unwelcome in your social circles. Just like high scores or impressive chain combos, good reputations are earned by working at them and not by sitting around watching others play.

Vagina Dialogues

Posted: February 29, 2012 | Author: Caphesuada | Filed under: Cissexism, Feminism, Gender, Intersectionality, Privilege, Sexism | Tags: Australian comedy, Comedy, Corinne Grant, Josh Thomas, Pop Culture, Tom Ballard | 9 Comments »

OK, let’s get some comedy nerdery happening on this blog. Australian comedy nerdery, that’s right, niche. (Some of the things I’m nerdy about are stuff you literally probably haven’t heard about unless you’re Australian and like comedy).

This week Corinne Grant wrote an opinion piece about gay male comedians making sexist comments about women. Her main contention was that:

Gay male comics can declare how disgusting they find women’s bodies, how ugly older women are, how women are hags, nags, sluts, bitches and whores and the audience will laugh.

It was quite a provocative piece and in the latter part she speaks with Tom Ballard, a gay male comedian who is kind of a big deal, used to date one of the other best known Aussie gay male comedians (it’s a small country OK) and now does the youth radio station breakfast here. Ballard later wrote his own response blog.

I think the politics of this issue (in the social justice sense) are murky and ripe for getting into a oppression-Olympics showdown so lets try and avoid that. I can see the political validity in gay male comedians challenging heteronormativity, of course. Masculinity is often defined as being intrinsically related to being attracted to women. So getting onstage and saying “I am a man and I find lady bits gross” can be seen as a radical move.

However, the paradox of the way women’s bodies are viewed in society is that while women’s bodies are constantly arranged and displayed in a way that is pleasing to men and stresses the desirability of “womanliness”, so too women’s bodies are constantly attacked for failing to reach those standards. An almost impossible criteria of attractiveness are expected for women. Not too fat but not too thin, curvy but not too curvy (because then you’re tacky), enough makeup to appear with perfect skin but not so much you look “cheap”; women’s bodies have to be just right and they are regularly judged to be lacking. And let’s be honest, constructions of female sexiness are usually not about how great vaginas are. Framed in this context, a man on stage talking shit about women’s bodies seems less than politically-pure.

Now let’s get real here, I think that we can all agree that jokes about how old women are gross and people with penises are the only ones worth talking to are not OK. We’re all humourless feminists here, right? But seriously, if that’s the point of your routine, you should really be trying harder. I spend enough time putting up with sexist bullshit in my life, and that stuff makes me want to cry not laugh. Constantly calling women by nasty names is just not cool. Here I am talking about a context where it’s on-stage and public, and the women in question aren’t OK with it. I mean if all your female friends love being referred to as sluts face-to-face I would first triple check and then go for it (because there IS a difference to what you say when performing for the public and what you say to our friends, and there should be). Tom Ballard’s response blog is actually pretty on board with this, and I really admire how both he and Grant have managed to have an actually civil and respectful conversation. I’m also glad that both of them are coming from a standpoint that “political correctness” is worth considering and if you are going to comment on this post this will also be expected as a baseline.

So the real issue here is vagina (and isn’t it always, amirite? Urgh. I don’t even know what that means). That’s right, we’re going to have an in-depth conversation about what is OK to say about vaginas, PC police/Social Justice League, suit up! I suppose the question is “can you hate vaginas and love women?” There are plenty of women (I have even met some of them!) who would say yes, because that is them. It is really problematic to tell a group of people how their experience of being part of being a member of that group can be, especially if that group is marginalised. (I say “can be” because as is sadly, but not surprisingly, missing from this debate is that not all women have vaginas and not all men don’t, but urgh, society).

I think an interesting corollary to this is that my friends and I went to see Josh Thomas (Tom Ballard’s ex, as mentioned above) a couple of years ago, after he had just recently come out. He talked about how terrifying gay sex was and how you should really avoid it if at all possible. (He also made a particular comment about how great and useful vaginas were.) One of my (straight, female) friends thought that this was a homophobic attitude for Thomas to hold. I vehemently disagreed and then attempted to get into a discussion about the mechanics of anal sex (something it should be pointed out, that is not reserved to gay men), in a quiet cafe, you guys should all be very jealous we aren’t friends IRL. (Sadly my friend was not keen to discuss lubrication right then.)

I suppose my point here is that just because you’re gay you don’t have to be overjoyed about every aspect of the experience of being a gay man, and if you have a vagina you don’t have to be delighted by all its functions. I mean, let’s talk about periods here. There are women for whom menstruating is a beautiful and natural cycle of life (apparently). I mostly find that it hurts, makes me cranky and is kind of gory (yeah that’s right, so much for the fairer sex, blood GUSHES out of my body once a month). I feel pretty silenced by the whole ‘it’s all beautiful and natural’ approach.

On Twitter I saw someone (actually another one of Josh Thomas’ exes, lolz Australia) suggest that unless Grant loved everything about vaginas she was being a hypocrite (see Grant’s pretty hilarious response). I don’t really think women expressing negative opinions about their genitalia and not being happy to hear this as a punchline from men is “hypocritical”. Just like there are words which are acceptable if used by African Americans and not if used by white people, this is not a level playing field situation. You know why? Because it was NEVER a level playing field to begin with. See: privilege. Of course there is overlap here, and maybe gay male comedians would argue that being grossed out by lady parts is an intrinsic part of being gay and by telling them not to I am silencing them.

Tom Ballard in his response to Grant talks about the special relationship that women and gay men share. I certainly think there is merit to this argument, often there is a different dynamic to this kind of a relationship, although obviously its not a get out of jail free card. I thought it was particularly interesting that he referenced the relationship that female comedians have with their gay fanbases. He mentions Kathy Griffen and I was reminded of this clip from her (seriously great, omg I love her) show where she objects to being called “fish” by members of her gay male fanbase. So the relationship is clearly far from perfect.

In the end, I have failed to come up with some kind of grand unified theory for comedians talking about vaginas on stage. I think there probably isn’t one to be found, because there are a lot subtleties, statements like “I think vaginas are gross” “We all know vaginas are gross” and “Every time I hear the word vagina I want to gag” are different levels of problematic to me, and I think there is an argument that the first one is acceptable but you can argue with me in the comments (respectfully! And I don’t promise to answer. I have important things to ~~Tumblr~~ work on, OK).

Reveeenge! (Against Common Tropes For Strong Female Characters)

Posted: January 23, 2012 | Author: Connie | Filed under: Feminism | Tags: revenge, strong female characters, Television, tropes | 18 Comments »

Mild spoilers for Revenge up to 1.12 Infamy. When I refer to Emily, I refer to the protagonist of the show.

Every time I hear or read the phrase “strong female characters” I get flashbacks to Kate Beaton’s comic about it. Characters like Sarah Connor and Xena were pretty ground-breaking at the time for being bad-ass female protagonists, but it feels like pop culture hasn’t progressed very far in their definitions of what a bad-ass female character should be. Too often creators seem to believe that “bad-ass” means making a woman hold a gun and fighting rough while spouting sarcastic one-liners. There’s often no internal motivation or driving force behind that character besides “being bad-ass” (read: being a male fantasy and nothing else).

Revenge is a TV show (very) loosely based on the Count of Monte Cristo and features a female protagonist. I was delighted when I heard about the premise because Dumas is one of my favourite authors, but my delight turned to full-blown worship after I actually watched the show.

I think what elevates the show from “alright” to “exceptional” is how it avoids the common gender tropes for female bad-asses, and subverts many of them. When I really thought about it, I realised that most shows that purportedly had strong female protagonists usually engaged with at least one of the following tropes that would irritate me, yet Revenge hasn’t (yet). I’ve got my fingers crossed that the writers will continue to treat Emily (nee Amanda) with the awesome she deserves and not have me hastily retconning the content of this post.

To be clear, I don’t think the following tropes are problematic in isolation, but they’re macroproblematic representations of women, especially when media engages with more than one of them at a time. The issue is not the representation itself, but the fact that there are very few other representations of women:

1. Women are more emotional and sentimental.

Part of what the actress Emily VanCamp does beautifully is her portrayal of a single-minded, focused woman who is actually operating deep undercover. A lot of media fall into the trap of women being “fooled” by their own emotions while undercover, such as accidentally developing feelings for people they’re meant to dislike. I think the writers tried to incorporate this into the text, but I hope they gave up on it. VanCamp plays the duality perfectly – in one moment she is warm and friendly to her enemies, and in the next moment we see her coldly plotting their demise.

It’s refreshing to see a woman who is not sympathetic to sob stories and who can’t be swayed by appeals to her emotion. It is a male character, Nolan, who frequently has to play The Heart and moral compass to Emily’s scheming – to varying levels of success.

What’s even more heartening is the lack of emotional attachment to the consensual sex she has while undercover. Women who have sex with people they don’t love or even like are usually presented as having an unhealthy emotional motivation. She’s insecure. She’s lying to herself about her feelings. She wants to make someone else jealous.

In this case, Emily has sex with Daniel because it’s useful to her quest for revenge, and there’s nothing more to it. What we see instead is Daniel becoming attached to her after sex. Which makes sense given how Emily is deliberately plotting to attract him.

2. Women react to events rather than take initiative.

You are the Chosen One, go slay some vampires. Your son is going to lead a future rebellion, protect him. Something nasty is after you, pick up a gun. In many cases the actions of female protagonists are brought about by fight or die situations where characters have limited choices, and their only motivation is to stay alive.

Emily’s decision to exact a slow and terrible revenge on everyone in the Hamptons stem from her father’s death, but it’s hardly a forgone conclusion. Most of us would probably take the money and run. But rather than accepting the status quo, Emily takes initiative and makes plans to shape events and her world so it aligns with her beliefs. What’s exciting is watching events unfold as a direct manifestation of her will – a woman who has an impact on the world because she chooses to, not because she’s forced to.

3. Women are unable to achieve their goals without the help of others.

I’m a big fan of action movies where the lone wolf (or lone wolf plus side-kick/partner) trope is often invoked. Sadly there aren’t many female action heroes generally and the ones that do exist often do fall into the other tropes I’ve mentioned. Other portrayals of leading bad-ass women (Buffy and Veronica Mars for example) require them to receive help from their network of friends and allies — which is fine, but I’d love to see a female MacGyver, for example.

So far Emily has called in exactly two favours – everyone else she has manipulated, blackmailed or otherwise persuaded. She saves and navigates herself out of tricky situations – the favours she calls aren’t white knights or deus ex machina and still required a lot of her own scheming to work. While she receives assistance from Nolan, it’s clear that she initially doesn’t want it, will never ever need it, and probably doesn’t rely on it. Their dynamic seems to imply that she lets Nolan help as a favour to him, rather than as assistance to her.

It helps, of course, that she has a ridiculous amount of money. But so does Batman.

4. Women use sex to get what they want.

Emily is not a femme fatale. She has a sexual relationship with Daniel, but the sex is a byproduct of having that relationship. They have sex because she convinces him that they’re a romantic match and that she loves him; not because he’s suddenly lost all rationality because a woman wants to sleep with him.

Instead of overdone come-ons and seduction plots, we see Emily deftly using information and subterfuge to draw suspicion on others, and manipulating relationships to her advantage. It’s clear that she’s not only extremely intelligent, but also extremely competent. Too often we’re just told that a bad-ass female character is smart, only for the narrative to limit the demonstrations of her talents to her physical allure and nothing else.

Revenge subverts the femme fatale trope in many ways because the people we see wielding sexual power to manipulate others are men – Nolan and Tyler. Nolan seduces Tyler and makes a sex tape, Nolan is the the dinner date diversion while Emily blows shit up. Both are common plotlines would ordinarily be given to women.

And this is why Revenge is so compelling for me. The femme fatale story and the superspy story have already been told a thousand times – I don’t need to watch another iteration. But when you reverse the gender roles that story becomes different and infinitely more interesting. It highlights how much storytelling is about the choices of creators and that while certain choices are being made over and over to the point of needless repetition, other stories are being completely ignored.

Stilettos, Catwoman and The Dark Knight Rises

Posted: January 16, 2012 | Author: Clare | Filed under: Feminism, Gender, Sexism | Tags: batman, christopher nolan, comic book movies, movies, Pop Culture, superheroes, the dark knight, the dark knight rises | 9 Comments »

WARNING: Discussion of The Dark Knight Rises. Don’t think that there are any serious spoilers but the purists may want to give this a miss. There are also serious spoilers for The Dark Knight discussed.

The costumes of female superheroes are often the objects of intense scrutiny from various corners of fandom for various reasons. Anne Hathaway, who will be playing Catwoman in the latest incarnation of the Nolanverse Batman films, stated that “I love the costume because everything has a purpose, nothing is in place for fantasy’s sake, and that’s the case with everything in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City.” The Hero Complex (spoilers at the source) has stated that in a scene they viewed, Catwoman was ‘navigating the steps with stiletto heels that, on closer inspection, turn out to have serrated edges capable of leaving nasty claw marks in a fight.’

Now, Catwoman is a thief. Whether she is a thief in the Nolanverse isn’t entirely clear, though I see no reason for her not to be. Barring the Batman Returns interpretation, her whole aesthetic relies upon the cat burglar motif and as a thief, what she relies upon most is stealth. By the time she’s been seen or heard, it’s too late. Anybody who has ever worn stiletto heels knows that they are really fucking loud.

And that’s without even talking about how hard it is to run in heels, how easy it is to turn (or even break) an ankle, how hard it would be to land from a jump of any height in heels. Anybody who has seen a Batman film or read a Batman comic book knows that they spend a lot of time running and parkour-ing across rooftops.

The ability to cut somebody when you kick them (something which seems a ridiculous idea to me in the first place) is surely secondary to all that. The fact of the matter is that Christopher Nolan seems to care about gritty realism with regard to his male characters but not his female ones. Catwoman is the first female member of Batman’s rogues gallery introduced in the Nolanverse, the first woman in the Nolanverse who could be considered to be a “superhero” or “supervillian” in the same vein as Batman himself.*

This is significant, particularly in a series that is severely lacking in women. Rachel Dawes and Martha Wayne are almost literally the only named women in the first two films and between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rachel Dawes receives a rather unfortunate personality transplant. This of course is not actually the case and the problem lies with the source material as well as with the films. Anyone who has watched The Dark Knight with more than a passing knowledge of the extended Batfamily and any investment in Barbara Gordon was more than likely appalled at the final sequence of the film with Two-Face and Jim Gordon, which focused not on Barbara, a significant person in the Batman mythos, but on Jim Gordon’s rarely-mentioned son.

When a number of photos were released, some bloggers were endorsing a ‘wait and see’ approach with regards to The Dark Knight Rises, implying that Christopher Nolan is someone who can be trusted with female characters, something which I don’t believe to be true. With regards to Batman’s white, male characters I have faith that Christopher Nolan will treat them well and with the respect they deserve.**

With regards to his female characters however, I have little expectation or belief that they will be treated with the respect they deserve. I would very much like to be surprised! But in general, Christopher Nolan seems to work best with female character when they are dead or about to be dead, serving as motivation for his male characters.^ This means that the issue of Catwoman’s costume takes on more significance than it might otherwise, indicating that she may well be being treated with the same level of respect that Nolan often treats his female characters. In a universe where “gritty realism” is paramount, Catwoman’s costume and its practicality becomes an even greater issue than it is in the hyper-real world that the comic books inhabit.

*I’m not counting Nolan’s horrifying attempt to character assassinate Renee Montoya in The Dark Knight. This actually works in his favour! The character ‘Ramirez’ was originally supposed to be Renee Montoya and DC refused to allow him to use the name.

**Both Ra’s Al Ghul and Bane have been white-washed in the casting department and the only POC in the films that has been treated with any kind of respect is Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox. Admittedly Lucuis Fox had been treated with utmost respect but in light of the way in which other POC characters have been treated this seems a bitter trade-off.

^Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, Mal in Inception, Julia and Sarah in The Prestige.

Social Justice League

Everyone's A Superhero

At the Movies

Separatism and Intersectionality

Dear Kat Stratford (I think I love you)

The Man With the Hero Complex… Tattoo

Achievements Earned: Sexual Harassment, Rampant Misogyny, Silent Complacency

Vagina Dialogues

Reveeenge! (Against Common Tropes For Strong Female Characters)

Stilettos, Catwoman and The Dark Knight Rises

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