season of the bitch

I’ve been reading and passing on MJ eulogies all morning.

But I think Trend captured below what it was like to be a child of the 80s and to grow up with Michael Jackson. My Twitter comment this morning was “I remember a world without the Internet. I don’t remember a world without Michael Jackson.”

And yet I’m shocked by how gobsmacked I am by this. I expect to be horrifically sad when Madonna dies–I have grown up in the shadow and image of Madonna in a much more obvious way than Michael Jackson. I have grown up a girl who flaunts all her contradictions, who despises sexual hypocrisy and who still, after all these years, loves to dance.

Last night I had coffee and then dinner with a new friend who grew up in England, and I was trying to explain to him what it was like, being American, being born in 1980 and suddenly, unexpectedly hearing that Michael Jackson is gone. I can’t.

I can’t explain why I didn’t own any Michael Jackson music but this morning I hit iTunes for the songs that I love (”Wanna Be Startin’ Something” in my headphones as I type) and am genuinely saddened.

John Nichols wrote a lovely post about Jackson’s activism and cultural relevance, and Natalia Antonova wrote like Trend about the impact of Jackson’s music. But this piece by Richard Kim goes to a darker place–and made me think.

I’ve already noted the things that I can say I’ve drawn from Madonna–it’s a clearer image for me. Michael Jackson? Before today I would’ve said nothing. Yet it’s obvious now, as these words spill out of me, that there has been an impact on me, on all of us. It’s a complicated one. The face we are left with of Jackson is not a pretty one. It’s an intensely problematic one–all the worst aspects of our society reflected back in the face of a celebrity whipping boy.

I write a lot about monsters. Michael Jackson was, in one sense, a monster. He blurred boundaries between black and white, child and adult, masculine and feminine (as Patricia Williams wrote back in 2005), and yesterday, life and death, as the reports from tabloids hit first and many of us didn’t want to believe, held out hope that it was just a salacious rumor, until the LA Times confirmed it for us.

People either disavow Michael loudly as a “freak” or choose to remember the music–which is, of course, what I’m doing now, cherrypicking my favorite tunes to play back. But if we really want to remember Michael Jackson, we will look into the dark places that he went, and look at the side of ourselves that wanted to have him as our freak. That didn’t want to admit that he was still a lot like us.

And yet. A little while back we did a series of music posts, proclaiming the best rock albums, best country albums, etc. We never did get around to a best pop albums list, largely because I couldn’t step away from Madonna and Michael to think of anyone else. This morning, listening to these songs with a new poignancy to every high crack of that voice, I still have to salute the best pop songs any of us have ever heard. The music will live on whether we self-examine or not. And that’s perhaps as it should be.

I mentioned to a friend (and then re-mentioned to other friends) this week that I would like to have the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brain-erasure procedure done, except instead of the memories, I’d just like to erase the damage. Erase the absolutely huge trust issues, etc.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that my issues run along a standard gender-based line. I do tend to assume that all men are out to fuck me, and I get insulted when I feel like they aren’t–have I internalized the idea that my only use to them is something to fuck?

And though I write extensively about “monster”-izing people and how it’s a bad thing, our tendency to split people into “good” and “bad” and not try and understand the psychological and sociological reasons they do things, the only group of people I seem to have no problem monsterizing are my ex-loves.

I know I have very good reasons for not being able to try and be friends with my last ex. I also know, after two years, that he’s not a bad person. That he cared about me in his own way, and he has a lot of demons to battle that have nothing to do with me (see above about erasing the damage, eh?). But I can’t have him in my life. That’s OK. But that’s not what I mean by monsterizing.

I have a couple of men in my past who I simply refer to as the “Evil Ex” as though they started a relationship with me simply to fuck me over. It certainly felt that way at the time.

But then I tend to extrapolate that hurt to every man I meet. Guys I’m not even dating get the cold shoulder when I suddenly assume they’re just trying to fuck me. I assume that every man is lying to me, and I wonder what it is he is keeping secret from me.

In its own way, it is the same dichotomy that gets burned into us when we’re little girls: Boys only want One Thing, and we women have to use that to get them to like us. We have to play games to keep their interest, and never let them know that we like them or care about them.

The whole adversarial relationship thing, that I like to make fun of so much in Cosmo and other women’s magazines, that try to give you tips to “get him to propose” or whatever, like the whole relationship is a con job? It makes me physically ill. I want to be with someone who is my best friend, who I can lounge around in my jammies with and argue about politics and religion and trade books with and yes, have amazing sex with until we’re so old that our bones creak. I don’t think it’s love if there are games involved.

Except I’m approaching 30, single (and mostly loving it) and at times (like the past couple of weeks) I just assume that all men are going to be the same as the ones I’ve been with in the past. That I’m going to have to play games to keep them, that I can’t let them know that I care, that they’re lying to me and keeping a shady past from me.

Or that I can’t be interested, myself, in just plain ol’ sex. Even though I know that I have been and am.

I assume that my dream best-friend boyfriend doesn’t exist even though I know lots of wonderful guys that are my friends, that care about me and show it in myriad ways and (when I’m not being suspicious of them because they after all are MEN) I appreciate them greatly.

I assume that men hate me. That introducing sex turns any friendship into a minefield. That aside from a couple of exes whom I was around long enough to think of as complicated, difficult people with feelings, I tend to reduce men to that same biological urge that was told when I was younger–men only want One Thing, right?

The way I used to think blowjobs were degrading.

I have to protect myself from being “used” by the type of Wrong Guy that’s out there.

But that’s just as damaging as anything else. People aren’t born bad or good. They all have complicated feelings and emotions and issues, and it is entirely possible for someone to love you and still hurt the hell out of you. Finding the right person doesn’t protect you from hurt, and assuming that all members of the opposite sex are evil doesn’t help anything.

So I need to work on my damage, I suppose. That much I knew, after getting out of the last relationship, that it would take me time to be able to deal with people as people again. But I am also realizing that I need to work on my own internalized sexism, that I need to stop assuming things about people simply because they’re men, and most importantly, to not make people into monsters. Not even my ex.

Going to just throw something out there right now.

Men are not the enemy.

There is no monolithic entity out to ‘get us;’ Team Woman, I mean. There’s no conspiracy sitting up on top of a hill somewhere figuring out ways to get women like me to wear short shorts like I am today in order to make the rest of womanity feel bad. (Or give men an excuse to rape or even catcall.)

There’s a fucked-up system that was created and sustained for thousands of years by subconscious drives and fears (yeah, I’m getting Freudian, deal) and yes, it was and has been sustained by keeping women doing domestic work, having sex when and how men said, and generally having no rights. It has also been sustained on the backs of a worker class, and on the backs of people of color or other groups designated as not-worthy.

But it’s stratified society in ways that hurt men too. Even white men.

Part of the goal of feminism, other than the goal I quoted the other day to “open up definitions and identities,” is to liberate all of us from constrictions placed on us by gender. It is also to revalue those things generally gendered feminine, and to allow men to have those characteristics and take part in those activities too. Not because we need male approval to make our activities worthwhile, but because it will make the world better for ALL people.

I get caught up in the idea that men are the enemy too. I doubt the motives and sincerity of male friends all the time, simply because they’re male. And you know, that idea isn’t new. It’s one that was drilled into my head way before I knew the word “feminism.” It’s created by the same things that created patriarchy and kept women treated as subhumans. Divide and conquer. Divide us from each other, make women into lesser beings or monsters, and by doing so also make men into monsters.

The creation of monsters in our own minds is (you will well know if you’re a regular reader here) a fascination of mine. And it’s so easy to see it happen within feminism as well. Not only the pro-porn sellout to the patriarchy strawmonster that we see discussed below, but the Male Monster.

Yes, all men are potentially capable of rape. Yes, this leads to women being scared and thus men having more control and power. Does this mean that all men actually are rapists, and actually enjoy benefiting from a system where women are kept scared of rape?

No.

So, I still hold to what I said earlier about men and feminism: Listen more than you speak. But I have to remind myself and everyone around me sometimes: men are not the enemy. Feminism should liberate us all.

“Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)”

She had an horror of rooms
she was tired
you can’t hide beat
When I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home

She could’ve been a killer
if she didn’t walk the way she do,
and she do
She opened strange doors
that we’d never close again

She began to wail jealousies scream
Waiting at the light know what I mean

Scary monsters, super creeps
Keep me running, running scared

She asked me to stay
and I stole her room
She asked for my love
and I gave her a dangerous mind
Now she’s stupid in the street
and she can’t socialise
Well I love the little girl
and I’ll love her till the day she dies

She wails
Jimmy’s guitar sound
jealousies scream
Waiting at the light know what I mean

Scary monsters, super creeps
Keep me running, running scared

Run, Run, Run

David Bowie

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.

I linked here the other day, and today in my email I had a link from Media Matters to read their report on the portrayal of immigrants in the media. So check it out.

Most (white) Americans need a reminder that we’re all immigrants. I saw a fabulous bumper sticker a couple of weeks ago that said “Welcome to America, now speak Cherokee.” How many people see that and don’t even get the joke?

I know plenty of “illegal” immigrants. I know college students who’ve overstayed their visas. I know people who’ve snuck across the border in the middle of the night. I know people who work whatever job they can get, and I know people who are the highest paid employees at their workplace.

They are not all or even most of them from Mexico. They are from Argentina, Lithuania, Germany, Venezuela, Peru. They speak English.

(And how, anyway has “Mexican” somehow become the dominant picture of “illegal” immigration and a dirty word instead of a neighboring country and a beautiful culture? How many people at the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum also ate cheesesteaks at Geno’s under the “Speak English” sign?)

I know schoolteachers busing tables in restaurants because it pays them better than teaching did back at home—but I know American schoolteachers who wait tables to make ends meet.

Immigrants didn’t come here to do the jobs “no Americans wanted.” They don’t deserve to be treated as though they’re some untouchable caste here for the work no one wants, cleaning toilets and looking after children and cooking fast food.

And they certainly don’t deserve what happens so often, that they get screwed out of money they have worked for because they have no recourse, no one to go to to ensure they are fairly treated.

My family is French by way of Canada and Jewish by way of Russia and Poland. We certainly aren’t native. My French Canadian family grew up bilingual in their community in New Hampshire. My Jewish family had their own community in Boston where they spent time mostly with other Jewish families. Did their lack of “assimilation” hurt America? Did any of the waves of immigration destroy “American” culture–whatever the hell that is, anyway?

No human being is illegal. And no one deserves being dehumanized the way they are night after night on the network news, let alone in their homes, at their jobs, on the streets.

“By revealing that difference is arbitrary and potentially free-floating, mutable rather than essential, the monster threatens to destroy not just individual members of society, but the very cultural apparatus through which individuality is constituted and allowed.” -Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Theory”

After all, when we create monsters out of immigrants, we may have to face the fact that they show us how arbitrary our borders really are, how not-different we are from them, after all.

Once upon a time–well, back in 2002–I took a course on Literary Monsters.

We read lots of lovely stuff that I don’t have lying around to reference right now (but if you want a deeper post on the subject, you can buy me this book, thanks). But the main gist of our study of texts like Beowulf, Interview With the Vampire, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest was seven monster theses that my professor outlined for us at the beginning of class.

I’ve watched this primary campaign go from a spirited competition into a mess where each candidate’s supporters firmly believe the other candidate is a monster. We’ve looked at the actual reasons for that, and I believe that especially with Hillary Clinton, but with Obama as well, the press portrayal of the candidates can be looked at through these theses. And yes, there’s probably a much longer paper in this, but what the hell.

1. The monstrous body is a cultural body.

Both candidates reflect our culture. The older woman, past being seen as sexual…the old queen and the wicked witch, simultaneously, as I said in an earlier post. And the outsider, the younger black man. Both of them arise from categories we know well, but are breaking those rules just by running.

2. The monster always escapes.

Over and over again we’ve thought this horrendous campaign was over, only for one candidate to stage a comeback. We’ve thought Clinton was done after Iowa, then Obama after New Hampshire and Nevada, then Clinton again after Obama’s post-Super Tuesday wins, then Obama again after Clinton won Ohio and the Texas primary and then Pennsylvania, and now…

3. The monster is the harbinger of category crisis.

Of course, they’re bringing on category crisis just by being a white woman and a black man running for President, and certainly by having defeated more typical white male candidates. Hillary Clinton has always been disconcerting–at first she was too masculine a woman, then she was too feminine, standing by her man. Now she’s both uber-masculine–”obliterate,” “if she gave Obama one of her balls…”–and feminine, when her angry supporters accuse Obama and his camp of sexism.

Obama, of course, is both American and not-American, black and white, masculine and feminine (at least according to Carville), rich and poor, elitist and community activist, and if you’d believe the crazies, Christian and Muslim.

4. The monster dwells at the gates of difference.

You see the fear of difference much more with Obama, especially with the reports of overt racism and the repeated cries that he’s Muslim despite Rev. Wright’s best attempts to remain part of the media cycle. Hillary Clinton’s problem is more that she is not different enough. Obama supporters hate her as part of the culture that they despise and reject–not alien, but all too familiar. But Hillary Clinton is still a woman, and still different.

5. The monster polices the borders of the possible.

Is it really possible for America to elect a (white) woman? A black man? And does some of the intense anger at the other side stem from the fact that it feels like not just a rejection of Hillary Clinton or of Barack Obama, but of all (older) women or all black Americans? How much change can America handle? And what ugly truths about ourselves do we have to confront in the process?

6. Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire.

Obama is too well-spoken, too charismatic, too seductive. We can’t have that. It must be bad because we can’t quite quantify it. And Clinton is too determined, she wants it too badly, how dare she?! But secretly, the need to over and over again reiterate what’s wrong with the Other candidate (yes, I capitalized that for a reason) is to remind ourselves that we don’t want it, we don’t want it, we don’t want it…

7. The monster stands at the threshold of becoming…

President?

Joking aside, one of the first ways that people learn to commit atrocities is by Othering the opponent, making them not just the enemy but something monstrous and not-human. Soldiers in Abu Ghraib, or in Nazi concentration camps, rapists, police who shoot an unarmed man or drag people from their cars and beat them, the people who killed Matthew Shepard or Brandon Teena or Sanesha Stewart. It always seems easier to do that when the hated person is already different in some visible way–female, black, Arab, gay, transgender.

So we have a presidential primary campaign, supposedly in the party of tolerance, the party that supports people who are women, black, Arab, gay, transgender, Latino, Jewish–at least more than that other party does. And we get this polarized mess, and I can’t help but wonder if this would be quite so angry if it were between, say, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (it would be for me, because I’d be in the position of trying to care which one of them won when they both rub me the wrong way), or even Barack Obama and John Edwards, to say nothing of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd or some other grey-haired white men. To what degree does all that category crisis, those border issues, that Difference affect our view of the candidate we don’t support?

(Cross-posted to Alterdestiny)