season of the bitch

The Summer Of Death continues. Patrick Swayze has apparently died. In his honor, I’m reposting my somewhat famous feminist defense of Dirty Dancing, complete with video. You know you love this, so don’t even pretend.

1. Dirty Dancing.

I submit that not only is Dirty Dancing a classic, but that it is in fact a feminist movie. The entire relationship between Baby and Johnny is about HER desires, what she wants and when. She has the power to break his heart. Her sexuality is not punished in the film (though admittedly Penny and her sister do suffer for their desires). But Baby knows what she wants, and she goes and gets it, class differences be damned. Plus, she’s studying economics of underdeveloped countries, and wants to join the Peace Corps–in the 60s. I love it. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

Hi, darlings. I’m getting settled in Brooklyn and at my summer gig, which, if I haven’t already mentioned (and by mentioned I mean bragged) is as the web intern at The Nation. So if you don’t already read EVERYTHING ON THE SITE, you should start, stat.

Seriously, though, I’m going to be pretty busy so I don’t know how often I’ll be around, though I’ll be required to be even more obsessively informed on the issues of the day, so I’ll probably have some rants here and there.

If you’ve missed me dearly, I’ve had two pieces up at Global Comment this week in between the unpacking. “No Common Sense, No Pleasure: From Dr. Tiller to The Pill Kills” is pretty much what it sounds like–it’s a beginning of some thoughts on how we deal with women’s sexuality. (I wish I came up with the title, but Natalia is better at that than I am.)

It’s 2009, and yet we’re stuck on the old terms when it comes to discussion of women’s sexuality. We’re inured now to sex scandals among male political figures, but women are still subject to lectures about their duty to children and families, and even the debate over a new Supreme Court justice hinges on whether or not she is pro-choice. Discussions of birth control and abortion too often leave out the point that sexuality is normal and healthy, and women should be able to enjoy it without being forced to bear children.

We yield to discussions on mournful abortions, or else feel required to admit to absolutely no guilt or second thoughts, lest we unwittingly give the Right some talking-point ammo. We are left with no avenue to talk about the pleasures and pitfalls of adult and adolescent sexuality.

Then yesterday I wrote a quick response to the early reaction to the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. There are so many ways I could’ve gone with that story, but I got quite annoyed at the bickering on Twitter about whose fault it was that an antisemite got a gun.

Arguing over whose side the killer was on is as simplistic, reductive, and plain stupid as arguing about whether the Columbine shooters were victims of bullies or crazed Marilyn Manson fans (they were neither). It misses the point entirely.

We have a culture, especially in the Obama years, in which a radical fringe feels newly disempowered, and acts of terrorism like this are perpetrated by people who feel threatened. They take up arms in some attempt to go after the ones they blame for their situation. They may believe their actions will change things, or just be angry or disturbed enough to want to go out in a hail of gunfire.

Hope that will tide over anyone who cared. Be back soon.

I bring you Sarah’s Favorite Female Desire Movies!

1. Dirty Dancing.

I submit that not only is Dirty Dancing a classic, but that it is in fact a feminist movie. The entire relationship between Baby and Johnny is about HER desires, what she wants and when. She has the power to break his heart. Her sexuality is not punished in the film (though admittedly Penny and her sister do suffer for their desires). But Baby knows what she wants, and she goes and gets it, class differences be damned. Plus, she’s studying economics of underdeveloped countries, and wants to join the Peace Corps–in the 60s. I love it. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

(more below!)

» Read the rest of this entry «

So since this topic Will Never Die: What does hetero feminist sex look like? Is there any sexual act that is inherently ‘unfeminist’?
Possibly NSFW below fold. » Read the rest of this entry «

So I think I’ve been doing this for a week, though I think, like everything else, we’re not really respecting the boundaries of this week. We’ll define it as we want, damnit!

I will be trying to collect everything done for this ‘week’ soon, so stay tuned for super-amazing linkage.

Until then, I’m doing a bit of a wrap-up here for my own thoughts on what I want, on what desire means to me.

Sexual desire isn’t the only thing that women have been limited on. We’re expected to be restrained about food, about power, about love, about friendships, about everything. Even I worry constantly that I’ve crossed a line, that I’m bothering someone if I call too much or email too much, and I think that stems from the same place: feeling that I’ve made the fact that I want something too clear, too obvious.

Even criticisms of Hillary Clinton were often that she wanted it too badly, and while I agree with some of the critiques of the way she ran her campaign, I realized that criticizing her for “wanting it” was if not sexist, than certainly something more likely to be a negative when coming from a woman. She did want to be president. I’m sure she still does. And that’s a GOOD thing.

But what do I want?

I don’t want power, per se. I don’t like hierarchical systems and I don’t really believe in power over others. One of the reasons I had to get out of working in retail was that honestly, I hated being the boss. I hated that I couldn’t pay people more, that I had to get angry at people for missing work and that I had to yell at people (though a few of them made it easy for me!). What I do want, though, is autonomy. I want to work for myself and work for editors who work with me rather than against me. I do want to be well-known enough that I don’t have to chase people for work.

I want to have time and money for sports. I love that rush that Ren writes about here, though running never did it for me. Muay thai and krav maga and even ice skating did it for me (though I suck at the latter). I love that feeling when every muscle hurts but the endorphin rush is tremendous. There is great pleasure in physical exertion.

I want to not be ashamed of my government every single day, kthx?
» Read the rest of this entry «

Not that I really need an excuse to post man-pretty on my blog–it’s MY blog, and I don’t have a boyfriend to get jealous, so what the heck, right? But there are a few more that I wanted to get on here before this whole shebang ends. Plus a few more thoughts on desires.

See, I think the point to all this (other than gratuitous pretty men) should be thoughts about ‘the gaze,’ as it were, and what it really means. If it is about power, or just about appreciation, and if we can look at someone just purely in a sexual manner (tell me that if you’re attracted to men

at all, that bottom picture here doesn’t get you going) without necessarily taking away their humanity or acting as though we’re entitled to them.

I suppose in one way or another I am acting entitled to these pictures–they’re up on the web and I used them.

At the same time, I’m not treating them as less than human because I’m acknowledging that they are attractive–particularly because these pictures are put out there (particularly, again, the last one) to give a specific impression. I’d hope that if someone posted a picture on their blog of me in a pretty outfit and said I was sexy, I wouldn’t take offense. That doesn’t mean that ALL I am is sexy. (whereas if they said “it’s a good thing she’s hot because she’s so dumb” or suchlike, well, that’s a different ballgame, isn’t it?)

I suppose that at the end of the day, sexuality isn’t going anywhere, no matter how badly the religious right or the radical feminists want it to. And it’s not going to stop playing a large role in our lives unless we deliberately ignore any and all occurrences–and even then, someone’s probably finding you attractive whether you like it or not.

So enjoy, from top to bottom: Adam Foote and Joe Sakic, Robert Downey, Jr., the guys of Lucero, and Josh Hartnett without his shirt on.

Can’t believe I haven’t watched this movie before this. Love it. Love America Ferrera. And it’s fairly appropriate for the topic at hand these days.

“Why don’t you value yourself?” her mother asks.

Oh, but she does value herself. She values herSELF. Which is why she had sex. Why she isn’t embarrassed by her size and her desire to go to college, why she complains about the lousy treatment at work, and why she wants her own life.

And why she whips her shirt off in the factory and is not ashamed.

“My weight says to everyone, ‘fuck you!’”

It may not be Superbad or anything else, but it sure is a movie about a girl getting what she wants. And part of what she wants is sex–and she doesn’t need to be married.

In this post I wrote about the nastiness inherent in hating other women for their looks. Now I have to take on the flip side of that argument–a discussion of pure physical lust.

Cassandra Says (in between pictures of one amazingly beautiful man):

Funny how taboo that still is to admit for a lot of people, that women look, that men get looked at. Personally I’m profoundly uninterested in associating with either women who won’t admit that they look or men who’re uncomfortable with being looked at. This is me, folks – I’m a sensual creature. I’m visual. I like to look.

I have a friend who constantly defends her love for Roger Federer by swearing up and down that it’s all about the game. She’s the same friend who reminds me all the time that there’s more to a man than his looks, and that I should be choosing them for their brains–a reminder that I sorely need at times.

However, this discounts a whole part of attraction and desire. I like to remind her that it’s OK to look. It’s especially OK to look at a celebrity who you’re in all likelihood never going to meet.

She doesn’t know Federer. I don’t know Clive Owen. And those people are probably quite happy that we don’t know them. We know and like what’s put out there for us to see, and the rest is kept for them and the people who actually know them.

That doesn’t necessarily contribute to dehumanizing them, something that’s inherent in the usual discussions of “objectification.” Cassuto, in The Inhuman Race, writes of the tendency of people to try to turn other people into things, but I’d argue that simply appreciating the physical beauty of another person can be the furthest thing from treating them as a thing.

I wrote here about the different types of attraction I feel, and of course they shift as you get to know someone. But that doesn’t change the original physical attraction.

I wouldn’t want to be with someone who didn’t find me attractive, who didn’t think I was the prettiest girl in the room. Of course, I want them to like my mind too, but I want that physical attraction to be there.

I think part of the problem here that sees physical attraction as shallow or objectifying is that mind/body false dichotomy. Which was always equated with mind=male and body=female. So of course women are the only ones that can be looked at sexually, and men cannot be, right? Wrong.

Because we know that it’s crap, that we are all body AND mind. To recognize that someone is pretty, to take a sexy picture of them is not to deny that other parts of them exist. Sure, there are ways to objectify someone–to treat them as if they are not a person, to abuse them, insist they do things that they don’t want to do, deny their agency and ability to choose for themselves.

Just as when you see this picture of me, you know that there is a face and a front of my body, and if you read my blog, you know that there are a gazillion opinions inside me too, when we look at pictures of attractive people, we know that there is a person there. We appreciate how attractive they are because they are people, not because they are things.

So it’s OK to look. The problem comes from how you treat people, not how you see them.

Since we’re talking desire, I’m going to lay off both the feminism and the manpretty and talk about the different types of attraction I notice. (I’d love comments on this!) I’m writing this with male pronouns since that’s my usual frame of reference, but I’m pretty sure these swing all ways.

There is, of course, the knock-you-senseless physical attraction. That feeling that, damn, that is a lovely man and I want to touch him. It could be a body shape, a walk, eyes, a smile, whatever, but it’s that kind of desire that hits you squarely in the guts and moves down…yeah. And it’s purely physical. And of course, most of the celebrity pictures we’ve been posting fall into that category.

But so many of that type, as soon as you talk to them, don’t measure up.

Then there’s the one I dealt with recently–the ones that I uninterestedly think, “well, he’s kinda cute,” and then move on. But after talking to them for a little while I get drawn in, by a wicked sense of humor, a joint love for some or other crazy thing, and suddenly that “kinda cute” has grown into really wanting to know what their skin tastes like. Crush central, in other words. Where the crush is born of an actual spark between you, and it’s much harder to shake.

There’s the type that grows the longer you know someone, the kind that really comes out of love, not just lust. Those people you may know for years and then realize that you’ve been falling for them all along. This is so rare, but I think it can be the best kind. Except when it blows up in your face, but I ain’t tellin’ that story.

I tend to get these weird aesthetic crushes–my girlcrushes can fall into this category–where I think someone is beautiful and want to be around them and look at them but don’t really have any sexual desire involved at all.

Sometimes I don’t know where someone fits, when they’re in between crush and just appreciation and it seems the only thing missing then is chemistry, when I don’t really know what I want from it, sometimes I want to touch them and sometimes I recoil from it, unsure. Now that I think about those, none of them have turned out terribly well for me. Maybe I should stick with type 1, 2, or 3.

Though of course the type 1’s change, as soon as you actually get to know them, into 2’s or into that other kind, those people who are sexy but personally repugnant.

And of course you have the friends that you love to flirt with but don’t really want to date, or the friends that you’d love to date if the world were a different place and one or the other of you were single, or the friend you really, really wish you were attracted to but you just aren’t and it sucks because they’d be wonderful.

Wherein I expand on my definition of sexy men. Enjoy.

Nick Cave

Iggy Pop

Common

Clive Owen

Peter Dinklage

Kal Penn

Takeshi Kaneshiro