season of the bitch

I linked below to Little Light’s post, and I want you to please read it first, before I weigh in on this.

BFP wrote about this as well, and her post is also far better than mine. The two of them are an inspiration in so many ways, and I think more people should be reading them.

Police brutality is a feminist issue. I’ve written about it, oh, a million times. In addition, it is a progressive issue, a liberal issue, an issue for anyone who cares about civil rights and civil liberties.

Our freedoms are NOT granted to us by the state. They are agreed upon with the state, and part of the contract we’ve made with the state is that it will protect us and provide certain things for us.

I posted the First Amendment the other day in regards to Amy Goodman and other journalists’ arrests. It, in addition to the right of a free press, provides that people shall be allowed to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This State has failed us. Instead of protecting us, it has gotten us into unwarranted wars that have weakened us and diminished our ability to protect ourselves (and that’s even allowing that war may sometimes be necessary, an argument I am not going to have here). Instead of providing for us, it has attempted to control our personal lives and allowed profit to take precedence over silly little things like health and shelter.

Protests at the RNC especially, but at the DNC as well, have every fucking right to go on. There is no need for a “free speech zone” or anything of the kind. As long as the protesters aren’t attacking people in the streets, they have a right to be there and be heard. They certainly don’t deserve being arrested, let alone being brutalized beforehand (and afterward, while in jail).

This is not getting the press it deserves. Which is ironic, considering that the press should be freaking out at its rights being trampled, the way they freaked out at the idea that Judith Miller might have to give up her high and powerful source.

Freedom of speech, in other words, is no longer the concern of the ones who are supposed to fight for it: the media. They are more concerned with access to power. It is up to us to preserve the rights that we handed over control of to some state authority. The police are here to serve, not to coerce and control.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I’m not one of those people prone to making declarations about how great our Constitution is or how brilliant the founding ‘fathers’ were, but this one part of it I damn well value. I’ve threatened to tattoo it on my arm. The First Amendment means a hell of a lot to me, and it should mean a lot to anyone who’s ever had an unpopular opinion. And we all have.

In case you haven’t been following the Republican National Convention, the people have not been given the right to peaceably assemble. They are being arrested for protesting. And some of the people arrested are journalists.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now is the highest-profile member of the press arrested, and though she was released after only a few hours, others remain in jail, along with hundreds of private citizens.

A free press–well, we don’t have much of one at the moment anyway. We have a corporate press, and the conglomerates that own most news stations aren’t going to press the issue and try to get journalists in where the Republicans and city officials don’t want them. Democracy Now is a small program, but Goodman consistently covers issues that get ignored by the mega-media. And she can’t do her job from jail.

People can’t self-govern without information. Journalists can’t gather it when they’re being pepper-sprayed and handcuffed. This just can’t go on.

Please, sign the petition here.

You can see some pictures of the police state in Minnesota here.

One of my favorite ladies in all of bloglandia has been getting far more than her fair share of shit these days. So here’s something to cheer her up: pretty boys and talk of porn! (below jump, because there are a lot of pictures) » Read the rest of this entry «

So the stuff I was writing about here has mainly been excused by the fans of that vile cartoon by the idea that it wasn’t intentionally racist! Just like that New Yorker cartoon was excused because it was SATIRE, man! Satire!

This is the thing: most of us are not intentionally racist. Most of us are not intentionally sexist. Yet these things still exist. (Yes, some people are gleefully, openly racist and sexist, but we’re not talking about them here. Don’t derail me.)

M. LeBlanc at Bitch, Ph.D. wrote an excellent post about racism and sexism a while back that I think you should read. Really.

Racism isn’t only about burning a cross on your lawn or about saying that you wouldn’t vote for Obama because he wants to enslave white people. It can be as simple as locking your car door when you drive through a black neighborhood, or assuming in your head that the black woman you see walking down the street with her kid must be unmarried. Or saying that the men in that cartoon don’t have the right hair texture to be black.

Sexism isn’t only about telling your wife to quit her job and get back in the kitchen, or jerking off to really offensive porn (whatever your idea of that is). It’s assuming that a woman who looks a certain way is stupid. It’s perpetuating a false dichotomy between “male” and “female” characteristics and according only the male ones value. (Why do you really think you value not wearing makeup and not shaving? Is it because doing those things makes you less a tool of the patriarchy, or because not doing them makes you less feminine?)

We all do a million little racist and sexist things every day. I do. You do. Barack Obama does and Hillary Clinton does and Noam Chomsky does and Beth Ditto does.

I love to harp on the fact that people are not either good or evil. There is not a line between the good guys and the bad guys that we can see. This isn’t a Batman movie (and hell, even that recent Batman movie played with those lines in a way that made me quite happy).

I’m not saying that there aren’t people who cross lines that make me unwilling to forgive them. Dick Cheney? No matter how much he renounced, I don’t think I’d ever be cool with Dick. Jesse Helms? Jerry Falwell? I did not cry or pronounce one word of regret when they died.

But having it pointed out that you unwittingly participated in something racist or sexist should not be a call for a huge defensive freakout designed to point out that you’re one of the good ones and therefore what you did couldn’t possibly be wrong or bad, because you didn’t intend for it to be!

In literary criticism, we don’t worry too much about the intent of the author. We look at the signs and signifiers, and interpret the message based on those.

This is a long-winded way of saying if someone calls you out on racism or sexism, the best thing to do maybe is give it a couple of seconds of thought, at least, and decide if they’re right. Then, the proper response is, if the questioner appears to be even remotely in good faith, “I’m sorry I offended you. I didn’t mean to be racist/sexist/ableist/whatever.”

Then you learn from it and get over it. It doesn’t make you the devil, or discount the good things you’ve done in the past, or even make most people hate you. It makes you human.

It got a little out of hand. So I’m reposting it here, as its own post. I really, really appreciate someone actually taking the time to engage and ask questions here. And though I’ve been snarky, seriously, if there’s something you’d like to know, I’m absolutely willing to discuss it.

here’s a link to my recent “My Feminism” post.

I actually have quite a few criticisms of raunch culture. Mostly they come from a sort of Marxist angle–that our sexuality is commodified and sold back to us in a very specific light, and that’s problematic, yes. I’ve written a bit about this, and actually was just saying yesterday that it might be time to dig out Das Kapital and write the big ol’ critique of porn and sex work as WORK rather than as social signification.

Like I said, I’ve been all over the map in terms of physical attractiveness, and I do absolutely think that there’s a beauty premium and that people get treated differently because of how they look. And that is a problem.

But I see the mind-body dichotomy as a problem, too.

The female was always associated with the body in that little binary there. And the body was BAD. So a lot of the feminism that I relate to is about reclaiming the body as good. As a source of joy and pleasure for the woman herself. (If you REALLY want to get geeky, I’d be happy to send you a copy of a paper I wrote for a film theory class that explains some of that.)

My biggest problem with Twisty is that she makes bold declarations that something is unfeminist or that it’s rape culture. If you read my post on feminism and heterosexuality, well, that’s something that bothers me greatly. In all my thoughts on female desire, I’ve never been quite able to break with the fact that I am a straight girl. I like men. I fantasize about men. I do actually enjoy heterosexual sex, even giving blowjobs and being shoved around some. It’s my desire, and as the quote I posted above says, my desires don’t revolve around what I’m repudiating.

So to me, to call things that genuinely turn me on ‘rape’ is insulting. It’s denying my agency, and while Twisty likes to tell us all that we don’t have any agency because of patriarchy, well, I’ve got to live this life and so until the Revolution comes and we overthrow the patriarchy/capitalism, I’ve got to find ways to make myself happy. So do we all.

Twisty said “The idea that women’s public sexuality can so precisely mirror traditional male fantasy while simultaneously existing in a kind of pro-woman, I-do-it-for-myself alternate universe is the cornerstone of funfeminist “thought.””

Unfortunately, my sexuality DOES mirror traditional male fantasy quite often. And it’s not because I haven’t examined enough or tried other options, or opted out altogether for a couple of years. So I DO have to find a way to reconcile those two facts.

And as I mentioned in several of the posts above and over the past few months, I had an ex who rather than wanting me to participate in wild sex or wear ‘porny’ clothes, wanted me to wear conservative clothes, was freaked out by my actual sexual desire, and basically wanted me to conform to the same ideals that I see vaunted over at Twisty’s–don’t dress sexy, don’t express your sexual desires, don’t be active sexually (not to be confused with sexually active) etc. So if I’d done that, I’d be pleasing a man. And he liked to use my feminism as a way to get me to behave the way he thought–if you’re a feminist, he’d say, why do you need men to look at you?

And so yes, at this point I would say that my freedom now to wear what I damn well want is a feminist act. My freedom to fuck how I damn well want is a feminist act. And those things don’t oppress anyone, because I’m not trying to force anyone else’s desires into the same box as I live in.

It strikes me sometimes as a reversal of the Kantian categorical imperative (I’m sorry if I’m sounding like one of those overeducated middle-class wonks that were getting ragged on over there, but once again, that’s who I am and I can’t fight it). People get angry because of the way I or Ren or Caroline looks or acts or talks, because they confuse our advocacy for our right to do that with advocacy that the rest of the world behave that way. I am not trying to impose my lifestyle on anyone else, and all I ask is that they don’t do it to me.

As far as burlesque goes, well, I just transcribed an interview with Margaret Cho the other day, and she was talking about how bellydance and burlesque actually helped her get over her body issues because she would go to bellydance events and see older women, bigger women, young women, skinny women, all of them dancing and shaking it and having a great time and being beautiful. The same thing with a lot of the neo-burlesque movements–there are plenty of them that revolve around non-porny ideals of beauty, and women find a lot of acceptance there.

Yes, to some degree it’s still performing for the gaze. But I’ve argued before and will again (because I looooove feminist film theory) that the gaze is not necessarily masculine.

Again, thanks for actually engaging. If you have any other questions I’m totally up for answering them.

Hi there, new readers.

Since my humble lil’ blog stats have quadrupled in the last couple of days, thanks mostly to Twisty, I suppose I should introduce myself again. So, Hi! I’m Sarah.

If you actually care, there are lots of posts that explain where I’m coming from. If you don’t, you could refer to the title here, which a recent commenter called me.

“Naive,” because, well, as you probably heard, there’s a picture of my ass in a pair of boyshorts below. Hustler brand boyshorts. Never mind that it’s not a thong and you pretty much see no skin, I’m “naive” for posting it.

Well, here’s the thing. First off, I’m probably older than you think. Been around the block a few times. Been a freelance writer for quite a few years (written for BUST and SuicideGirls.com, two places you probably hate if you’re coming from Twisty’s, but I don’t particularly care), and I currently teach classes at a university. Yeah, I’m one of those overeducated types who think it’s “empowerfulizing” to show my ass to a group of strangers, right?

Wrong.

I didn’t put that picture up to empower myself. If I’m seeking validation on my ass, all I have to do is walk down the damn street–I’ll get catcalled plenty, and it’ll remind me that women get sexualized whether we like it or not.

I do, lately, take a certain pleasure in wearing items of clothing that my controlling ex-fiance might have called “slutty” if he hadn’t known I’d punch him in the mouth for using that term around me. While it’s not necessarily “empowering,” it sure is nice to know that no one except for some radical feminist bloggers whom I usually don’t read will be shaming me for my choice in clothing.

(I also find it funny that one commenter said “when guys approve, it’s a great guage[sic] of whether or not something is feminist at all.” By that token, me wearing a low-cut shirt and short shorts is indeed feminist, since my ex would heartily have disapproved. But what happens when teh mens agree with the radical feminists? Because you know, I’m pretty sure James Dobson would agree that strippers and sex workers are terrible people…so doesn’t that mean you’re pleasing the patriarchy too?

Twisty’s right that you can’t avoid the patriarchy. So I choose to not give it even more control over my life by trying to do everything the opposite of what men want.

I certainly don’t give it any more power over my life by letting disputes over what it wants lead me into tearing down other women for how they look or how they choose to perform their sexuality (more on how sexuality is inherently performative later, with added intellectual thoughts on blowjobs! I promise!). And I definitely don’t let it limit my pleasures.

To quote Lydia Lunch, “I do exactly what I wanna do.”

What I wanted to do with that picture, below, was to tell a group of people being judgmental exactly what I thought of their judgments. I’m not “naive” and I didn’t think it was going to make a bunch of people go “Oh! Now I see! Porn is great!” or anything like that. So, annoying? Yeah, that was kind of the point.

The point was also to illustrate that you never know what people are hiding under their clothes. I’m not a sex worker, never have been. I have been assorted other things, including bicycle mechanic and teacher at a nonprofit literacy program. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that when I came to feminism, it led me to stop judging other women, not to find a new way to do it.

In “Cunt,” Inga Muscio talks about her project to make her stop hating on other women: reading autobiographies, or at least biographies. I’ve done a good bit of that, too. It can be fascinating. I read Poppy Z. Brite’s biography of Courtney Love, and Traci Lords’ autobiography, plus Antonia Fraser’s excellent volumes on Marie Antoinette and the queens of Henry VIII, just to name a few faves.

It opens you up to understanding other women as women. To stopping before you pass judgment.

So, naive about showing my ass on my blog? I’ll let you in on a little secret: I did think twice about putting it up there. This blog is under my real name, and is hosted on the same site with my professional resume and portfolio (which are in desperate need of updates…). But you know, I decided I wasn’t going to let people’s decisions of what is ‘appropriate’ and ‘obscene’ or ‘derive[s] a lot of your identity from your conformance to patriarchal expectations.’

That last commenter continued, ‘And if you talk about it in public, you are necessarily inviting people to “judge” you.’

No, actually I’m not. I was inviting you to kiss my ass. But you can judge me all you want. I’ll let through any comments you want to throw at me on this post right here. Call me a slut, a whore, a patriarchy-pleaser, a naive young dimwit. Hell, bring out some racialized and ableist language if you want. It’s not going to hurt me any. Do you think it’s the first time I’ve heard it? And it won’t say anything about me. It’ll just say something about you, and where you derive your validation from: tearing other women down.

But I sure made y’all look, didn’t I?

Ok. So I guess I’ve got to weigh in on this New Yorker cover thang. Some comments here, here, here, here and here. And a particularly good one here. Edit* my favorite one here, h/t Summer.

I was walking out the door earlier to go do errands and I stopped, because NPR (which I leave on for the dog when I’m not home) had Art Spiegelman on to comment about the cover. And because he’s someone I respect (and a former New Yorker cartoonist himself) I waited to listen to him before I headed up to the bank.

He said he loved the cover. He said that it was successful satire because it held a mirror up to the lies being perpetuated about the Obamas, and it shone a light on them.

I agree that this is what satire is supposed to do, as is allegory, and other such things. I tend to love satire and allegory. I do not love this New Yorker cover.

It’s not that it’s really that offensive to me. Maybe because I don’t really have a problem with any of the things portrayed on that cover (well, maybe with Osama Bin Laden, but whatevs. Also not a huge gun fan, but, well, civil libertarian and all…). I just don’t happen to see Muslim as a slur, despite understanding why Obama has to, for political reasons, continually separate himself from the perception of being a Muslim. I certainly don’t see Michelle Obama with a ‘fro as a bad thing.

More to the point, since people noted above have covered the offense, racism, etc. angles quite well, I think the cover fails at satire. Spiegelman said it holds up a mirror and reverses the image–but it doesn’t. It’s an image that, aside from the quality of the cartoon, I would expect to see on the cover of the National Review or Weekly Standard. It does nothing to subvert the stereotypes being thrown out there. It just depicts them. No mirror, straight on.

Spiegelman also said that he thought people couldn’t be afraid of the reader in Kansas who might see the cover and think that it’s serious. He misunderstands, again. I’m not worried about this cover converting any new people to thinking that the Obamas are terrorists, militants, Muslims, what-have-you. That stuff is already out there, and anyone who’s going to believe it already does, despite lots of evidence to the contrary (and those numbers seem to hold steady at about 10-12%).

No, I just think the cover straight-up fails in its mission to be satirical. It is not funny. And it ain’t because I don’t have a sense of humor, people. I laugh at many, many things that the rest of the world does not find amusing. I laugh a lot. But again–there’s no mirror here. There’s no subversion. There’s nothing but a drawing of how about 10-12% of America sees a man running for president, and his wife.

What’s funny about that? Where’s the irony?

Another thing said on that NPR show was the idea that irony died on September 11. We all know that ain’t true. Anyone who’s ever come into contact with a hipster knows better than to think irony is gone. Postmodernism may have died (but that’s a big long issue that I don’t want to get into right now) but irony is alive and well.

But this wasn’t it. So no, I don’t like the New Yorker cover. I will defend their right to run whatever stupid crap they want on their covers, just as I will defend all sorts of ugly speech (don’t mean I’m going to publish your asshole comments on my blog, but if you’ve got your own, well, mazel tov). I’m not a regular reader, so I’m not going to be protesting or threatening to cancel my subscription.

But it was not funny. It was not witty. If this is what we’ve got for political satire in this country, well, I worry.

Really, fuck Viacom, too. Prof BW has the details on a nasty little court decision that will have your YouTube records handed over to those shady bastards at Viacom. Every video you’ve ever watched. Because they need to know about the popularity of copyright-infringing videos?

Yeah, sounds like crap to me too.

With talk about offense, porn, virtual child porn, and the First Amendment! Yay!

I get to take a First Amendment law course this fall, so I’ll probably definitely have lots more on the subject.

I’m a free speech hardliner, you see. I believe that the best way to foster dialogue and to just know what those crazies are up to is to keep that shit legal and out in the open, as much as possible. Even when it’s things I absolutely hate, like racism, sexism, and anything Hillary Clinton’s said on the campaign trail in the last two months.

I defend not only free speech rights, but your right to burn the flag, unlike Hillary Clinton. Though I find them utterly repugnant, I agree with this guy that a proposed law to ban display of nooses, burning crosses, and swastikas in Philadelphia is unconstitutional, and just plain wrong.

And porn? Yes, porn, as long as it has the consent of those involved, is free speech. It falls under the same categories as art (though many people would be offended by that comparison–that’s another book’s worth of ideas in its own right). Child porn is not free speech or art because it cannot have the consent of those depicted–we define children, depending on the laws in different states, as being unable to have informed consent to sexual acts.

Jill over at Feministe has an excellent post up about the recent Supreme Court decision on child porn. The comments are pretty damn good, too. Read ‘em. Jill brought up the comparison to art as well, and asked where the line is between a sexual image and art. The discussion was on virtual child porn, or porn rendered by artists or digitally manipulated so that the actors appear to be children, and whether it should be illegal. My own comment there was that we tend to overlook the real issues at stake with child porn (as well as with rape and murder) and just lock people up and want to throw away the key. (Wendy Kaminer has more on the case.)

We want to control the speech–the symptoms–without dealing with the problem.

Take racism and sexism, for example.

(I had this discussion in a bar at 1 AM last night with perfect strangers who happened to be having a conversation about the campaign at the same time as I was.)

We cannot put a label on which one is “worse” (and we certainly should not ignore the ways in which they intersect, overlap, and feed each other). But we can probably agree that sexism can still be more overtly stated. Hecklers at a Clinton rally can yell “Iron my shirt” and nobody beats the crap out of them. If someone yelled “N****” at an Obama rally, well, his ass would be toast. (Or her ass, because certainly not all racists are men.)

Does that mean that racism is gone? Or that we’ve just forced it into the closet, only to see it erupt in Don Imus or Hillary Clinton or Geraldine Ferraro or all those people in West Virginia?

So if we force virtual child porn into the closet, are we going to get rid of the feelings that make people want it or are we just going to force them underground in trying to find it?

As was pointed out on the Feministe thread, it’s almost impossible to get statistics on child porn’s possibly causal relationship to child molestation because it’s illegal, the only people who get busted with it go to jail and nobody’s going to believe them when they say they never molested kids, right?

When it comes down to it, the speech is and should be protected. If we want to say that virtual child porn–a  cartoon video, say–is illegal, the next thing you know Lolita is illegal, or any sexual drawing that could be extrapolated to be of people below the age of consent.

The actions in the videos are what should concern people. The anti-all-porn crowd dislikes porn because it’s harmful to women, and they often argue that what’s in the video can incite people to do similar things at home–or worse, since they often cite porn as cause for murder. (See Ren.) Me, I don’t care what’s in the damn videos as long as there’s proof somewhere that the people in them–not just women, thanks, let’s make our concern for all people instead of assuming that the men are horrible patriarchal abusers and the women hapless victims–are old enough to consent and have given their full informed consent.

Children cannot give full informed consent. So making porn with them in it is illegal. (other than the fact that age-of-consent in itself is an arbitrary line, but one I would argue that in this case we do need to make, and more on that some other time when I feel like it.)

Adults can give full informed consent, we assume. They can drive a car, shoot a gun, go to war. They can damn well have sex on video for money–or for free, if they like. They can have sex that would make me cringe and possibly even want to throw up. Because it’s not up to me.

Caroline has plenty of goodness on the recent UK ban on “Extreme pornography.” Read it, because she knows way more than I do about it.

I used to joke that I should go through a boy’s porn collection before deciding to get into a relationship. This after a guy whose porn consisted of titles that should’ve warned me he was going to want to do things I didn’t want to do.

But there are plenty of women out there who do enjoy those things. Mazel tov, right? Not my problem, not with that guy anymore (for reasons unrelated to his particular kink and more related to the fact that he was a lying, cheating SOB, but that’s a story no one needs to hear).

I can’t legislate away his kink because I don’t share it. I can’t legislate away someone’s racism by banning a noose. Republicans (and Bill Clinton) can’t legislate away homosexual life partners by the Defense of Marriage act or a Marriage Amendment. And though I’m sure we all wish we could, we can’t legislate away pedophilia by banning child porn–if we could, that shit would be gone because it’s damn sure been illegal

So while sex with children remains and should remain illegal, drawing it, writing about it, or whatever should not. For one thing, the slippery slope argument holds up. For another, it could be our best chance to examine pedophilia without harming children or monsterizing the people involved.

The anti-porn argument from the feminist side often seems to go like this: porn causes rape, men watch porn, men are in porn, men are all rapists, men are BAD! I go both ways on this issue. When I’m walking alone at night, you better believe I feel like all men are potential rapists. And because I don’t believe in “monsters” or “evil” human beings, I do believe that on some level we are all potential rapists, murderers, etc. Not all men, but all people.

Racism, sexism, and violence are not black and white issues, they’re on a continuum and we have to examine that to understand why, yes, some people do rape and some do not. Some people kill and some do not. Why I feel very deeply to my core that I could never hurt another person unless we’re in a ring and both wearing gloves, and I had a problem with a boyfriend who wanted me to slap him in the face during sex. (Didn’t think he was a bad person, but couldn’t bring myself to do that.)

All people who watch adult porn don’t commit the things they see in porn, just like all people who watch violent movies and play violent video games and listen to violent music don’t commit violent crimes. Media just does not have that effect on people. So logically, perhaps, all people who watch virtual child porn will not molest children, just as all people who read Lolita do not molest children. Maybe they do. I don’t know.

I do know that the argument for free speech means nothing if we do not defend speech that we deem offensive. Particularly for someone like me, whose opinions run so deeply counter to the ingrained political power structure so much of the time, it is terribly important that unpopular opinions remain safe and protected. I’m no Emma Goldman and I don’t want to go to jail for my opinions. And I certainly don’t want to go to jail for my sex life. What I consent to is nobody’s business (even if I do make it your business sometimes by blogging about it). Don’t forget which way morality laws tend to go: the way of the white male power structure.

Feds want to make female orgasm illegal.

(Ok, that was hyperbole. But not by much.)