I’m with Mighty Ponygirl: This article by Rachel Shukert about how Rock Band saved her marriage was a nightmare. I enjoy writers willing to hang out all their personality flaws for the world to see, but it’s also amazing to me how some of them can describe themselves so well and not realize that these are the sort of soul-destroying personality flaws that will cause them massive problems. Shukert realizes, to a degree, that she’s a nagging, clingy mess, but she doesn’t seem to realize that this is something that is a major problem that can’t be fixed with a video game.
It’s too bad, because I was pretty eager to read the story, as I am both a fan of the video game in question and have a fantasy rock band with my boyfriend called Shitbird. We also have a band with a rotating cast of friends called Cleveland Steamers.* I can testify to the fact that there’s something very socially redeeming about the game. But Great Cat, even correcting for hyperbole, Shukert has it all screwed up and it wasn’t a breezy, fun read. She was making me mad.
Once in awhile, you have a moment where you really see how the Equal Rights Amendment would, contrary to the claims of opponents, have a positive effect on our laws. Lily Ledbetter would have won her case, I suspect, because even the most law-bending reactionary justices would have had trouble denying her claims. Same story with Gonzales v. Carhart, or any abortion restriction really, since they’re all based on the idea that women are second class citizens who can legally have fewer rights than men, and in the case of Carhart, can be treated as mentally inferior as a class to men. I have to wonder if it would make it much easier to challenge abstinence-only education in schools, since the materials invariably come from religious organizations with anti-woman and homophobic agendas.
Maybe not. These groups do try to scrub some of their more offensive beliefs about gays’ and women’s inferiority out of the textbooks, with varying degrees of success. Still, it’s a strange situation, as if our government was accepting history textbooks written by SPLC-recognized hate groups, so long as they make a half-assed effort to cover up their more odious racist assumptions. Because once you get into the thick of the Christianist world, where they’re letting their hair down, their jaw-dropping ideas about women (basically, that they’re property) will shock even the hardened wingnut watchers.
Animal people looking for good organizations to give your money to, I beseech of you, please ignore PETA, who seems to spend most of their budget getting young women to get naked in public as publicity stunts. If you love both animals and people, look instead to less sexy but much more humane organizations like the Humane Society, who actually have done a bang-up job of using their issue of animal welfare to highlight the problem of domestic violence. From Salon, I see that the effort from organizations like the Humane Society, PAWS, the ASPCA, and the Humane Association (and no doubt many other animal organizations that don’t see the need to parade naked women around to make a point) to improve the public’s understanding of the link between animal abuse and domestic abuse have led to an article in O about the link.
For people who understand how domestic violence really works, this link is not surprising. Abusers use any leverage they can to terrorize their victims and break their will, and will happily resort to abusing and killing pets for that end. There’s also the added incentive of using the pet as leverage to keep your victim from escaping, because she knows that fleeing without or even with the pet might result in the abuser retaliating by killing her pet. In order to make pet safety less of a barrier to women fleeing abusive homes, the Humane Society has put together a list of 170 safe haven programs, where both the victim and her pets are cared for by the shelters, using various methods.
I suppose we should have seen this coming, but still: Oh my god. (Hat tip.) The headline is pure scare tactics.
‘Sex and the City’ Fiend: Show Turned Me Into Samantha
I’ve never understood the nation’s paranoid obsession with that show. Well, I do, but I also don’t. This headline really gets at it—there’s a real fear that women across the nation are going to watch the show and start getting ideas about how it’s not only okay not to get married and start having babies fairly young, but that being single and living independently is fun and exciting. Because no matter how some of us feminists wrung our hands because the characters on “Sex and the City” weren’t empowered enough (i.e., two of them openly yearned for marriage and one was somewhat disorganized and compulsive in her life choices), there’s no denying that the show did really portray single women with independent incomes as exciting, fun people. (With flaws, of course, but good lord, if every show portrayed all women as pillars of strength at all time, they’d be too damn boring to watch.) From the point of view of some of us who’ve tasted the life of independent living, we don’t see what the fuss is, but the show was wildly popular with women who went straight from the home to perhaps a college/young adulthood situation with roommates to marriage without ever having that part of your life where you answer to no one but yourself. And it’s those women that are feared might get ideas.
Monogamy: Made for a woman, like fancy jewelry.
Update: I just want to make sure this post is understood not to be talking about marriages where the sex life has actually dwindled inside the marriage. Both men and women can and do suffer from a spouse who loses all interest in sex, a problem that I think compounds itself over time, because if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. This article is more another whine from a guy who wants to screw around and wants his wife to “understand”, i.e. tolerate it without demanding her own right to screw around.
Women cheat nearly as much as men. This is not an unknown fact.
Survey takers guessed that twice as many people are having extramarital affairs as really are, estimating that 44 percent of married men and 36 percent of married women are unfaithful. The reality is it’s not as rampant as we think, with 28 percent of married men and 18 percent of married women admitting to having a sexual liaison, the survey found.
I’m always shocked at people who act like adultery is basically a male-only temptation, because who the hell are men cheating with? Prostitutes, sometimes. That might be enough to explain the gap, sadly. But I suspect—especially in our day and age where the older-men-preying-on-younger-women model has had a wrench thrown in it by feminism—that mostly men who cheat do so with peers. Which would probably be mostly equally married women.
I bring it up, because Salon blogged this maudlin “woe is men” story that claims, among other things, that evidence is growing that the need to cheat is hard-wired in men. Interesting, the only “evidence” that is growing that men are hard-wired to cheat, rape, and act like pigs is the number of times a single hack psychologist named David Buss is quoted. Sure enough, the author goes sniveling to Buss to give him “science” to prove to his wife and women of the world that he has to cheat, and Buss complies. Buss admits women cheat, but has to hedge, implying that men just roam around fucking anyone, whereas women just like to keep an extra boyfriend in reserve so they’re never going without should the current husband croak. You’d think the combination of male desire for variety and the supposed oodles of scientific evidence would cause one of the writers who tackles this subject to talk to someone besides Buss, but maybe full-blown hackery of his sort is hard to come by.
This is extremely bizarre. A Staten Island high school has banned girls from the prom if they don’t have a male date. It’s a girls-only school, which probably means that proms generally have a huge number of girls and not that many guys. Maybe the principle is pitying the boys at the prom, feeling they shouldn’t be outnumbered. There’s other speculations.
“That makes sense only because it probably controls the chaos,” Valente said. “You know you’re there with somebody, you’re less likely to go crazy.”
So, there’s a grave danger of high levels of squealing and circle dancing. I say, good practice for the weddings the principle presumably wants them to have in the future.
Wow, this headline reads like something in the Reader’s Digest circa 1970, wedged between articles on why kids don’t appreciate waltzing anymore and how smoking marijuana cigarettes will cause your daughter to become a streetwalker: “Catcalling: creepy or a compliment?” (Via.) The article isn’t nearly so bad, and gives full voice to women who grasp that a man yelling sexual (and insulting or threatening) things at you on the sidewalk is insulting you for being a woman, not complimenting you.
But just like those articles of old from Schlaflyites (”I love getting hooted at on the street, and husbands have a right to rape wives!”), this one is full of women the reader is supposed to take cues from on how to be less of a grumpus pain in the ass who thinks she has dignity worth defending.
On the other hand, some women appreciate the attention in certain cases, like Jessica, a 31-year-old health-care educator in Los Angeles who declined to use her last name to protect her privacy.
“Yeah, it’s objectifying and all, but you know, if I walked down the street and didn’t have men looking me up and down and catcalling, I’d think, ‘Boy, I must really be getting old and dumpy,’ ” she said.
She’s gotten catcalls just walking her parents’ dog in baggy sweats. “I thought it was hysterical, like, ‘Boy, doesn’t take much to impress you, does it?’ “
Washington University students and faculty are in an uproar over the decision to award anti-gay, anti-feminist Eagle Forum fossil Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate at its May 16 commencement ceremony. A Facebook group created to protest the move has over a thousand members.
Mary Ann Dzuback, the director of the women and gender studies department at Washington University agreed, said it was “grossly inappropriate” for the university to honor Schlafly with a degree.Steve Ralls of PFLAG National:“She’s spent her entire career speaking against women in the workforce and for them remaining in the home,” Dzuback said of Schlafly, who rose to prominence during the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.
…The university issued a statement Sunday defending its decision, saying it — like many other universities — chooses to honor those “who have become a part of the broad public discourse on vital issues of the times.” The statement cited other controversial figures, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom the school has honored.
PFLAG and our St. Louis chapter are proud to join those on the ground in Missouri and call on school officials to do the right thing and, as executive director Jody Huckaby said today, “find a more suitable person to applaud.”Steve also points out some of Mother Schlafly’s winning cultural touchstones:
On California’s SB-77, to protect GLBT students: The legislation “represent[s] a repudiation of 2,000 years of Christian moral teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and the family. The result is that California’s schools are now promoting behaviors and lifestyles that are physically and spiritually dangerous for children.”
On the idea of any protections for GLBT youth: “The bottom line is, don’t count on the courts to protect public school students from being subjected to the promotion of homosexuality.”
On sexual harassment laws: “Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.”
Yeah. I think they could locate someone who isn’t terminally frozen in the dark ages.
Via Echidne, John McCain kills irony:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who skipped a Senate vote seeking equal pay for women last night in order to campaign for president, said he opposed the measure because it would prompt a flood of lawsuits…The presumptive GOP nominee is visiting poor communities throughout the nation, including towns in Alabama and Appalachia; today he toured New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.
Do you suppose that ensuring female heads of households earned the same amount as their male counterparts might improve the economy of poor communities?
“I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” McCain told reporters yesterday. “This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.”
As Echidne notes,
How would McCain achieve pay equity for women without any lawsuits? Perhaps if women ask very prettily?
SR 4-1239214t4325: RESOLVED, That women will be paid the same as men in equivalent positions, and also that this has always been the case, and that claims of former wage inequality are null and void, and maybe now this will shut women up even though they never had anything to complain about in the first place because they were always having babies and not applying themselves to their careers. Damn kids with their miniskirts.
There were some grumblings in the comments about the blogular silence greeting this Rebecca Traister piece about how a lot of male Obama supporters are relishing this opportunity to indulge their sexist side, but I can say in all honesty, I hadn’t blogged it yet because I hadn’t seen it. But now that I have, I highly recommend it. Rebecca, of course, is a remarkably good writer, and she articulates beautifully why privileged Democratic men might harbor hostility towards Clinton, hostility white middle class liberals wouldn’t show Obama.
In today’s United States, racism continues to have more damaging economic and social structural implications for African-Americans than sexism has for women. Especially white and well-educated women, who are catching up to their male counterparts, if not in terms of equal pay or domestic expectations or secure reproductive options, at least in their ability to pursue the education and vocation they desire. And that makes them a more threatening group to the population of white men who have enjoyed unchallenged power — in the White House and other workplaces — since the birth of the nation. Those who feel the army of tough ladies breathing down their necks, competing for jobs and salaries and refusing to drop out of the race, are the population of privileged white men from which the elite portion of the Democratic Party is built.
Rebecca Traister has a great article about the 10th anniversary of “The Vagina Monologues” in New Orleans, and ends up having the same reaction that a lot of what you might call advanced patriarchy-blamers have when seeing this play: a reluctant appreciation for how fun it is to see it, after a period of intense irritation at the hoopla around it. I’m definitely in the rationalist category of feminism, as it were, and have little to no patience with the Earth Mother feminism that tries to make a big deal out of the feminine essence. It’s true that we are awash in a culture where anxious men have a submissive relationship to The Phallus, but seriously, the way to correct that is not to make a great emblem out of vulvic energy or whatever you want to call it. There are some men who have a healthy relationship with the penis—they like it, but see it as a tool that belongs to them. I think that route out of shame over having ladyparts is to take that pathway. But, as Traister notes, Ensler surrounds the play itself with this Earth Mother goddess stuff that makes me squirmy.
In Ensler’s megalomaniacal V-universe, everything from voter registration to the Iraq war is seen through the speculum, er, spectrum, of the vagina, and moist metaphor and love for Eve (and beav) rule the day. It often seems, in fact, that Ensler has taken her laudable grass-roots success and turned it into a celebrity-centric, glitzy franchise — one that has, in its unrelenting and patronizing focus on women-as-cootches, often felt as reductive and objectifying as the language Ensler originally set out to fight.
All that is true, but at the end of the day, the “Monologues” continue to draw huge audiences because the play itself is so good. You don’t have to love Ensler’s approach to love the play, because what makes the play awesome is that the monologues are all built from the direct words of a bunch of ordinary women. The factors that were in play 10 years ago when the play made its debut—shame about sexuality, the belief that women are inferior and that control of the ladyparts belongs to men, because women can’t be trusted with it—are only more pronounced now than they were then, and have been enshrined into the law. I think women flock to the play, because it’s refreshing to hear other women talk about their vaginas…..much in the way that men with healthy masculine identities see their penises. It’s mine, but it does not own me. Ensler may skirt the edge of “women as cootches”, but the play itself sends home the all-too-uncommon message that women own their cootches. And because of its emphasis on personal narrative, it does this without being preachy or driven by ideology, and it’s really funny and entertaining.
All good feminist men mark women as their property.
The Feministe Feedback question from yesterday is too juicy not to tackle. M. LeBlanc has a good answer. Here’s the question:
Your most recent entry - on what a feminist relationship looks like - is primarily pitched at female feminists. I, as a well-intentioned but nonetheless male participant in relationships, would really like to know the answer to that question. i don’t commit the obvious sort of mistakes that non-feminist guys do, or at least i hope i don’t. Nonetheless there are certainly crimes of ignorance, so to speak.
In fact, you should write a book answering this question - “how to be a feminist boyfriend.”
I thought, “Hell, I could write that book,” but when I actually started to think about it, I found myself drawing a blank. There’s a lot of trite, obvious answers like, “Eat pussy and don’t make PMS cracks,” but I’m committed to treating people like they aren’t stupid and I don’t think anyone interested in this question is so stupid they haven’t thought of this. So I opened the comments and immediately found that I was disagreeing vehemently with the first comment:
Nicholas Kristof tries to tease out the difference between sexism and misogyny, suggesting that instead of viewing the violence and oppression towards women through the lens of irrational hatred of women (misogyny), we should instead see it as a systemic attempt at control that uses violence and oppression as tools (sexism).
In contrast, the evolutionary origins of attitudes toward women were based presumably less on hatred and more on desire to control them and impregnate them, so as to pass on one’s genes. Acquiring and enforcing a harem, so as to improve the odds of one’s own genes being passed on, might involve ruthlessness, enslavement and brutal beatings, but there was no evolutionary incentive for gender hatred as there was for hatred of different tribes. And of course much of the anti-women behavior around the world, from genital cutting to bride burnings to sex trafficking, is typically overseen by women themselves, and it’s easier to see their behavior as opportunism or deeply-embedded sexism than as hatred of fellow women. So that’s why I wonder if sexism, in the sense of discriminatory attitudes toward males and females, isn’t a better way of thinking about the issue than misogyny, in the sense of hatred toward women.
Other anthropologists I spoke to also noted that the most discriminatory restrictions against women tend to come not from those who profess to hate women, but from those who profess to honor and protect them. Think of Afghan society, for example. After interviewing many men who beat and lock up women and threaten to kill them if they take a false step, I’d say that their attitudes for females are a mix of bizarre honor and contempt, but not usually hatred.
I see his point, but in my experience, the men who most rhapsodically talk about protecting women are often the first to turn extremely hostile if a woman presents any kind of threat to his dominance. And it’s not a cool-headed response, either. Men who are violent against women tend not to have the calm demeanor of someone issuing a bit of discipline, but are swept up in temper and hatred of the object of their violence.
This is interesting. The show “Mob Logic” has found a pattern in their “man on the street” interviews—women, far far far more often than men, are afraid to express an opinion, defer to male companions, or don’t even really have a chance to defer since they get stepped on.
I really, really like the design of this T-shirt, I have to say before I say anything else. It’s brilliant. Really captures the sense of shame that rape victims have, a sense of shame that, in a just world, would be the property of rapists, who are all too often belligerently unashamed of what they did.
In a fair world, saying you were raped should cause you no more shame than saying, “I was mugged,” or “I was carjacked.” In our world, however, it’s a crushing thing to talk about. I feel guilty bringing it up on this blog that it’s happened to me, though I know intellectually that it’s very important for those of us who can talk about to talk about it, to get the message to other victims: You aren’t alone. Which of course is the main attraction of this T-shirt designed by Jennifer Baumgardner as something of a sequel to her controversial “I had an abortion” T-shirt. (Hat tip.)
I appreciate the idea that visibility is critical to getting people to understand that women who get abortions or rape victims—two groups dehumanized and demonized in an effort to strip them of their rights—are human beings. I was in full support of the “I had an abortion” T-shirt, because to me, it’s not complicated. The anti-choice movement tries like hell to erase women’s existence, or at least our individuality, and the T-shirt undermines that. It also clarifies that abortion is nothing to be ashamed of. For me, “I had an abortion” should be as morally loaded as “I had a Pap smear”. The underpinnings of the moral angst about abortion—the idea that a woman has no right to pry loose a flag a man has planted in her (even if he agrees with her decision, as most men in this case do), or that she should be punished for having sex—offend me to the core, and that many women go through anguish over getting abortions depresses me. They shouldn’t feel bad for having sex or having autonomy. In fact, they should be proud of themselves for taking care of themselves despite all the misogynist messages out there that women don’t have a right to take care of ourselves. People balked at the idea that the “I had an abortion” T-shirts smacked of that mortal female sin of pride, but I applaud it. Women should be proud of doing right by themselves in a world where that’s socially disavowed.
OK, so this isn’t important “news” in the grand scheme of things, but WTF - Nipplegate? Now WWE man boobs are the cause of the fall of American civilization. Sigh. From Scott Maxwell’s column in the Orlando Sentinel:
Anybody who’s ever seen a professional wrestler knows their bodies don’t look like most folks’.But the wrestlers featured on a massive sign in downtown Orlando look even more unusual. They’re missing nipples.
Yep. John Cena, Triple H, Randy Orton and even Big Show. All nipple-less.
…Even more unsettling is the fact that government is partly responsible for the missing areolas on the banner that hangs on the side of the Lynx office building, facing Interstate 4, and promotes this weekend’s WrestleMania.
…What happened, said a similarly uncomfortable city spokesman, Carson Chandler, was that city staffers asked the WWE and folks to create banners that weren’t too provocative. And somewhere along the way, the nipples were airbrushed out before the giant sign reached Orlando.
Yes, airbrushed . . . which at least means they didn’t involve hubcap-sized pasties.
Boy, I hope this quote was taken out of context. (Hat tip.)
Some insist it can be explained by basic biology. Feminist author Robin Morgan says men “stow their brains in their crotches. Women do seem to approach work differently. And women tend to regard sex differently. They like to at least like the person.”
There’s nothing about the quote that inclines me to think Morgan was speaking about biological imperatives or any evo psych nonsense that exists to justify “middle-aged professors sleeping with their younger graduate students.” But still, I’m wary of the language that shames sexual desire, or more importantly, credits certain kinds of sexual misbehavior to sexual desire, when I think a lot of it is about power desire. Women are as fully capable as men of letting our lusts overcome our reason, but that’s not what a lot of these scandals are about.
Let me elaborate. The article in question is a Newsweek piece about why female leaders don’t get caught up in sex scandals as often as male leaders. The most likely explanation, albeit the least conducive to essentialist sexist arguments, is that there are simply a lot less female leaders. Women do, after all, cheat almost as much as men, and so if every adultery turned into a sex scandal and representation was 50/50 in the halls of power, we’d see an equal number of women getting outed as adulterers. But I’m not going to dust off my hands and call it a day with that, because I think the Newsweek article does make a good point about the qualitative difference. Women have been outed for garden variety adulteries, but with men, it’s often about sex with prostitutes, interns, grooming the next younger wife while the current one is sick with cancer, etc.
Update: I also want to give Kerry Howley a chance to respond to a quote about prostitutes that may just “love sex” that was taking out of context. She definitely does not want anyone to think she’s under the misimpression that prostitution is glamorous or that most prostitutes wouldn’t get the fuck out given half a chance. I apologize to Kerry for misrepresenting her position. We are in full agreement that no one should go to jail for selling sex. I will admit I’m skeptical of the idea that legalizing prostitution will do anything to reduce the stigma—most legalization schemes preserve the stigma, understanding that a non-degraded prostitutes is an oxymoron in the eyes of many, probably most customers, and that without the atmosphere of degraded womanhood, there’s nothing to buy and so the trade would slow to a trickle.
One great thing about being a fan of reading blogs and general internet writing is that you flit around from piece to piece, all short attention span theater, and you occasionally have serendipitous justapositions.* I liked this one. First I read this:
Well, Caitlain, in a patriarchy, the cornerstone of which is a paradigm of male dominance and female submission, women do not enjoy the same degree of personal sovereignty that men do. This oppressed condition obtains a priori to all other conditions, and nullifies any presumption of fully human status on the part of women. A woman, therefore, cannot freely “consent,” because her will is obviated by her status as a subhuman…..
No sane radical feminist could possibly support the assertion that women are “incapable” of making decisions; we are merely prevented by an oppressive social order from exercising our capability to its fullest extent.
Last night I participated in a reading of “The Vagina Monologues” at a local university. I didn’t tell my husband what I was doing, since his politics are more conservative than mine and I just didn’t want to get into it over something I had already decided was the right thing to do. (The benefits supported a local women’s shelter.)
That said, I have to say I really liked this part of Twisty’s post:
I suspect that the rampant willingness among young feminists to deny this grim truth stems from the wholly untenable position into which it thrusts’em. They’re young, they’re fit, they wanna boink; who can blame them if they just aren’t ready to accept that nothing short of an exhaustive, uncompromising overthrow of the social order will put them in complete control of their own selves?
The interesting thing about this is that while you buck the idea that your full consent is always being pinched in these intellectual discussions, out there in the sexual field, as it were, you behave as if this were true. When sex education activists talk about teaching negotiation skills in the classroom, usually we’re thinking specifically, “Teaching young women to hold out for the condom, despite wheedling and even threats.” (Or being offered more cash to go without.) Young women who wanna boink have to become adept at working around the fact that many of their bedmates are simply not ever going to accept the idea that they’re full human beings instead of just sex toys that happen to have heart beats. (See this thread for many examples.) And if you get really good at getting yours and not letting the assholes trying to come on your face get you down, you get rewarded with being called a slut. Personally, I admire the navigational skills that many women develop and find it to be a tragedy, albeit an entirely predictable one, that the intelligence that it takes to be a good slut gets redefined as “dumb” in our culture.
In all honesty, considering this state of affairs, I can see how some “happy hookers” develop. If the price of just trying to have some fun-loving sex is frequent encounters with guys who think being gracious to sex partners defeats the purpose of fucking someone, then it’s just a matter of time before you start thinking you should be getting financially compensated, I’m sure. I just want it to be clear that while I hold men who visit prostitutes in very low esteem, I would never judge a prostitute, who is either a survivor or someone who took stock of a certain situation and decided that she’s going to game it. As well she should, since the system’s out to get her.
*New band name.
