Several years ago, for just a few months, I was hot shit.

I was 19 years old and had just moved up from Orange County, CA to start college at Olympia, WA. The previous year I had been in an intense, ecstacy-fueled, love-of-my-life relationship that ended due to an equally intense, seratonin-depleted period of depression, and the new environment allowed me to get away from all of my triggers and put my chemistry back in order. Within a month I was feeling happy and inspired, and I showed it by growing dreadlocks, dying them pink, and shaking them out at parties and poetry slams all over town.
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A few years ago I took a class in women's literature (and no, it wasn't all chick lit and romance novels, fuckyouverymuch) and my background in women's studies + my lived experience *as a woman* muchly informed my readings to = a class that was altogether very awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to locate the source of a writer's muse in the cultural and political climates of her time, examine her work as a thesis arguing for or against that muse, and investigate how or if her thesis managed to bring about some meaningful cultural shift. Moreover, I really super duper liked being able to moot those arguments that "you can never know what a writer is thinking when ze writes" and that "words don't mean anything," because those arguments are plain stupid, and having a background in a certain group's history helps make that mooting much more effective.

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A group of men gathered several times at my school to discuss the need for a Men's Resource Center on campus. Now, I'm all for Men's Resource Centers as places where fellas can gather to discuss and then change the ways society constructs and maintains gender norms--i.e., that men are perfect and stoic and strong and should beat up anyone who says they're not (which usually means calling them womanly or gay), and women are pretty and polite and accommodating and should never say or do anything offensive (like talk about the ways "being accommodating" harms women). I'm all for MRCs as places where dudes can put together programs that help other dudes be nicer to themselves and women, especially where "be nicer" means stop hating women and gays or anything about themselves that could be considered womanly or gay.

From what I hear, some of the discussions have been about how unhealthy are these gender roles. But most of the conversations have been about the ways that men are made to feel bad about being men. The example that keeps coming up is a poster (that I created, ahem) for a school-sponsored play that discussed how women are treated on campus after sexual assault, and how these create an unfriendly atmosphere for women in higher ed. The poster featured a close-up shot of a man with very "angry hands" taking off his belt, presumably to assault someone, either physically or sexually (and yes, I know the latter encompasses the former). Below the image was the quote "1 in 3 college men say they would rape a woman if they thought they could get away with it."*

The discussion regarding this posters often consisted of "this poster says all men want to rape women, and I don't rape women, so this if unfair." Of course, that's not what the poster said, and if anything is unfair, it's the stuff women do on a daily basis to protect themselves from rape, or the things guys get away with because women are afraid they might get attacked if they say something, but I do see how men who don't rape might get itchy when they believe someone is calling them a rapist. Unfortunately, the discussion rarely veered toward "what can we do about it," and when it did, the answer was never "ask men why they might feel rape is something you don't do because it's illegal, not because it's wrong--and then work on ways they can stop."

The answer was either "get women to stop saying these things" or "we should prove to women that we're the nice guys." While the former was just dangerous--if we don't say these things we don't get any closer to stopping these things from happening--the latter was really misguided. The group pondered volunteering at a shelter for raped and/or battered women. When, afterward, one of the participants asked me how I felt about it, I didn't really offer an opinion, but I did wonder aloud if men were even allowed to volunteer at shelters, since women might want to recover from the trauma of their male partners' violence in the absence of males. His response was a kinda sorta chest-thumpy "but I'm not her husband...she needs to see that I'm a nice guy!"

This was frustrating for multiple reasons--the most important being it was just plain selfish. Dudes should work with survivors of domestic and sexual violence because they want to help women become empowered after a thoroughly horrifying experience, not because they want to look good. Moreover, if the space they want to work in doesn't really work well if they're there, and they refuse to accept a policy that addresses this, they are failing to recognize the importance and validity of a safe space. In failing this, they reaffirm the idea they should be welcome into any space on their terms. Barging into a space to say they're not they barging in type isn't really nice. The first thing guys have to do to prove they're nice is listen to women when they say they're doing it wrong.

Now, I understand that this argument is hard to swallow--what's the difference between not allowing men into a shelter and not allowing women into the military, or blacks onto a golf course? What's the point of sheltering women from men, when they're just going to be encountering men in their daily lives once they get out of the shelter? Et cetera. I don't agree with these lines of thinking, but I know it takes a lot of education to get away from them, so I don't push it. I did, however, impress this:

Women don't just want nice guys to prove they're nice guys, they want nice guys to help other less-than-nice guys be nice guys. There are a lot of spaces that work with survivors of domestic and sexual violence, but not nearly enough places that work with perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence. Men need to create these spaces, and better yet, create spaces where they can discuss with other non-perpetrators ways they might develop perpetrator-y tendencies, before they actually get to perpetrating. Something like.....a Men's Resource Center!

HUZZAH!

*Some places the 1-in-3 statistic has been published
Fisher, B., and J. Sloan III (1995). Campus Crime: Legal, Social and Policy Perspectives. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas.

Koss M.P., Dinero, T.E., Seibel, C.A. Stranger and acquaintance rape: Are there differences in the victim's experience? Psychology of Women Quarterly. 1988:12:1-24.

Malamuth N.M. Rape proclivity among males. J Soc Issues. 1981;37:138-157.

A friend I hadn't seen in years visited last week and asked me to meet up with him and a girlfriend. He'd always been supportive of my feminist leanings and literary aspirations, and like a good pal asked me how my writing was going. "Purely academic," I groaned. He pleaded I elaborate.

So I launched into the sordid details of my last paper. Not, mind you, the thesis-that art informed femininity as dangerous and antithetical to masculinity, that feminism's gains have led to a new, anxious masculinity, and how our most popular low art (porn) reflects this. I went instead into an extended whine about the stress headaches, back problems, and carpal tunnel I acquired in my research and writing, hurting for some old-fashioned sympathy. Of course I didn't get it. The topic was mentioned, the male ego alerted, and the inevitable materialized: so am I for or against porn?

I hate this question.

I don't give a shit about porn. I've sought out porn, watched porn, jilled off to porn. I know and know of a hundred billion men who watch porn and aren't rapists or shitheads, and I'm really proud of them.

I was pretty clear and extensive about my position on porn, and that it's not the genre that irks me, but the culture. After a pretty well-read and -reasoned monologue about the history and implications of desire, where I expected a thoughtful discussion if not the total agreement I absolutely always deserve, girlfriend folds her hands, nods gravely, and assures me "[she] used to think like me" and someday I would grow up. Worse, old buddy agrees.

Ugh! It was so infuriatingly dismissive and pathologizing. No matter what I said, all he (and his annoying girlfriend WHO QUOTES THE RULES) could hear was "porn is bad. People who watch porn are bad. I loathe and avoid such people."

That's not what I think, okay? Yeah, I think it's an issue. If porn existed in a vacuum, I wouldn't. I would be fine with it. But it doesn't, and I'm not.

Porn exists within a culture that doesn't respect women, and reiterates and reinforces the contempt all. The damn. Time. When popular social commentators go unchecked after shrieking "every time Hilary opens her mouth I want to cross my legs," the subtext being that she is a scary castrating woman with power, we see a culture where intelligent, politically potent women are not respected. When, meanwhile, Jenna Jameson's autobiography sells more than biographies on women in politics, and more and more young women have eating disorders, we see the importance of desirability and powerlessness (indeed, the desirability of powerlessness). These are alarming. When we look at how these intersect, they really trouble.

While plenty of men indulge in porn purely as a means to be aroused and do their business and be done, with no disrespect toward women, there are plenty of men--especially younger men--who know few other representations of women. Watching women gagging on dicks and being called bitch and slut and whore, with little other reference, creates a model of femininity that is grossly unrealistic and unfair. From experience and study I can confidently posit that porn and porn stars become the standard toward which men base all women, and all women inevitably fail.

But it doesn't end there--it doesn't end at the leers and comments from dudes in striped shirts and cargo shorts. Young men are the demographic all social institutions court. The standard that young men seek becomes the standard that corporate America seeks. The cycle of culture and popular opinion intersect deeply and significantly, and it's difficult to pinpoint which came first. Regardless, over the course of western history a standard of women develops in opposition to women's power. In America, where powerlessness yields the most profit, the idealized depictions of women become more polarized, more unattainable, and more coveted. Depictions that do women little service seep throughout our culture and subconsciously plant themselves as desire-that's how advertising works-and is reiterated and refined and made further extreme in places like porn. And the cycle repeats.

If there were a well rounded representations of women, then these desired images could simply be fetishes or kinks. But they become a standard. Young men in study after study describe how porn influences their desire, from who they seek out for sex to how they have sex to how they fell about women who do and do not participate in their porny ideals. What they say and how they feel is grim. Really grim.

And, so to speak, it sucks.

I've found myself compulsively locking my hair again.  It's a long process of twisting and knotting and backcombing and rubbing and twisting, and most of them unravel by the end of the day, because I'm white and have fine white hair and it's not a natural hairstyle for me.

But then, it seems sometimes that it IS a natural hairstyle for me--it looks how I want my hair to look, and says certain things I like that my hair can say.  But besides all the lefty-politics chic, it can say other things:  that I freely co-opt a culture that is not my own.  I may lessen my white privilege by "kink"ing my hair, but can (and, no doubt, eventually will) use my white privilege to un-kink my hair: when it stops being convenient for me I can brush it out or chop it off and go back to my white lifestyle. For folks of color, for whom such a hairstyle really is more natural, there are no such politics, and there is no luxury: they live in their skin forever.

I've been thinking about the implications of such a hairstyle, and (also compulsively) relating it to gender fucking.  Basically, gender fucking is a political act of subversion, and in radical circles is good. Culture fucking, which is just a pithy shorthand I'm using for this entry and so far as I know not a real movement, is not.

And maybe that's for the best.  I think about people who unwittingly or perhaps semi-consciously "culture fuck", and they're certainly not the best representatives: 

We have earthy women who think white folks don't have a culture, romanticize diaspora, and buy themselves a little soul with a few belly dancing classes, imported Eastern furniture, and Barnz and Noblz Best Of: Thelonius Monk CD's. 

We have (I hate this word so much) "wiggas." 

And we have upper-middle-class hippies, who mine the margins of black and Asian culture for little nuggets that fit their narrow view of acceptable Otherness --you know, "it's hip-hop, not rap, which is synonymous with gangsta rap, which is a chosen lifestyle that is all drugs and anti-womanness, and not listening to it delineates me, white, ganja-smoking and fairly anti-woman backpacker types from them, black, crack-smoking, bitch-and-ho--fucking stereotypes.  And I just love Azn chicks. <3 <3 <3"

There are many more, but these stick out most.  What they share, of course, is that  the only culture they are willing to fuck is a culture that serves their own white ends.  It conveniently describes or projects the self they would like the rest of us to see, discarding and sometimes even exaggerating the elements that sometimes helped shape that culture--the oppression, the exclusion.  And the worst--ugh, the WORST--is then they use it to justify the oppression and exclusion: "they have Buddhism and unity and Frida and Miles, but they choose to be rappers and kill each other!  Golly!"

I just don't want to be lumped in with that.  And I don't have the right to think everyone else should presume I'm not like that. 

And some people may say, you know, who cares?  Why live your life according to someone else's standards?  or,  You're different, you know you're different, you've shown you're so enlightened!  and can only mean well! and that means you get a pass :))) 

I'll even say I'm beginning to wonder where culture ends and plain old inequality begins, and what not doing x or y or z does to accomplish appreciation of the former while eradicating the less-desirable latter ('nother post alert!).

But shit.  We're really not at a point where racism is gone enough that I can start picking and choosing aspects of marginalized lives to take home for myself.  When racism doesn't exist and we're all free we can sit down and decide what's free to go around.  For now I have no idea what this shit means and entails. I can't even imagine the struggles POC go through, the various ways they need to measure their Otherness against my whiteness and navigate the differences so that they can maintain their freedom and dignity. I don't know how many times a day folks are inconvenienced or inconvenience themselves just plain living, let alone safely deviating from the norm.
 
 It doesn't get to be about me. It doesn't hurt me to not do something as effectively inane as not do my coif a certain way.  I should just shut up and brush my damn hair.

I am not okay with folks using "retarded" in casual conversation. I don't care if it didn't mean any harm. I don't care if it once meant "slow" or "to slow down."  Our popular culture has loaded that word with images of mentally handicapped people with big gaping mouths and rolled-back eyes slamming their hand against their chest and barking like a seal, and claiming that's not what it means doesn't change the fact that, typically, that's what it does.

Let me be provocative and mean-sprited and go there: if I found some antiquated version of "n*gger" that meant, simply, "colorful!"  Not "lesser person of color", just, you know, "ooh!  Purdy colors!"  should I have the right to walk around exclaiming "wow, that's one n*ggerly wastebasket!  Gosh, that painting is a n*gger!'"  No, I shouldn't.  I mean, not unless I want to be an insensitive, pig-headed asshole.  

Want to know why?  Of course you do.

We've so far removed slurs from any innocuous meanings they once claimed, that to re-insert them into casual conversation claiming they no longer mean anything  is at best tactless and misguided, and at worst (which is to say, in reality) reinforces positions of power and dominance and everything that word represents.

When we claim the good intention to use or redefine an offensive word, we're not getting it -- because what we're speaking of isn't intention, it's unearned rights.  It's privilege.  It's one century we say a word means this fine thing, and the next century it means this horrible thing, and the next century it means, again, this fine thing -- and if they don't like it, they're just whiny, uptight, an elitist, a member of the pc-police, playing the X card--basically, wrong and inferior, just like we always said they were.

I just don't buy this.  I don't buy privileged folks reclaiming words "for" oppressed groups.  If folks of color want to use "nigga" and LGBT folks want to reclaim "queer", that's their prerogative.  It's also up to them to decide if they're comfortable with my using it -- and if I think I should be able to use it as an insult because people in that group use it as a term of endearment, I REALLY shouldn't be using it.  But to act as if I'm doing someone a favor by using it on my terms?  No.  Just no. Can't do that. Just CAN'T.  I know folks in power-up positions can't stand being told they can't do something, because *stamps foot* it's censorship and oppressive and by golly no fair! but you know what?  You're wrong, it's not, just no, and you can't.  If you don't get it, scroll up.

From plannedparenthood.org:

The Bush administration is about to release a rule that will make it possible for federal funding that is specifically designed to prevent unintended pregnancy and promote reproductive health to now be used for [fake crisis centers.]

Right now, anti-choice groups run so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" in communities all around the country — often a block or two away from Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers. These facilities look like health centers, but in reality are run by anti-choice zealots who deliver only the reproductive health care options that fit their agenda. No birth control, no abortion — and no choice for women and families who need it.

If this rule takes effect, they're likely to receive a massive influx of our tax dollars to expand their deceptive operations and to attract hundreds of thousands of women who think they'll be getting medical care but instead will receive a large dose of anti-choice ideology.

This is totally fucked in myriad ways and you should write your congressperson or the President and say so:

I am opposed to President Bush's proposed rule to allow federal funding that is specifically designed to prevent unintended pregnancy and promote reproductive health to now be used for anything but that.

In redirecting funding from pro-choice, pro-birth control entities such as Planned Parenthood to deceptive, fraudulent, fake pregnancy crisis centers, the government puts women and children at risk and undermines our Constitutional rights. Here's how:

Many fake crisis centers are operated by or affiliated with churches and religious organizations[1]. Women report staff members forcing them to pray before or after receiving test results[2]. Giving tax payer money to these centers undermines the separation of church and state.

Many fake crisis centers perform no medical services and do not have real doctors, nurses, or other trained health care personnel on site[3]. Fake crisis centers withhold the results of a pregnancy test if the woman is interested in an abortion[4], or employ fake pregnancy tests with negative results in hopes the patient will miss the window of time to obtain a legal abortion[5]. Such tactics under the guise of medical care are deceptive and life-threatening, and federally funding these is morally repugnant.

Women describe fake crisis center staff harassing and intimidating them[6]. Women who leave fake crisis centers still desiring an abortion report bring followed home, and receiving intrusive mail and phone calls to their place of residence[7]. Supporting these threatens the sanctity of our right to privacy.

Fake crisis centers are religious organizations that lack proper medical credentials and use deceptive tactics to disseminate false, misleading, and dangerous information that is adamantly anti-choice and anti-women's health. I urge you to take a stand for our health and pour rights, and reject Bush's proposal to earmark federal money for these fake crisis centers.

[1] "Beware of Anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers." Feminist Women's Health Center. April 23, 2008. July 16, 2008. <http://www.fwhc.org/abortion/fake.htm>

[2]Ibid.

[3] Women's Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM). "Fake Clinics: A Public Health Hazard." Brooklyn Pro-Choice Network. July 16, 2008. <http://www.echonyc.com/~bpcn/fakeclinic.html>

[4] "Beware," Ibid.

[5] Women's, Ibid.

[6] "Beware," Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

I discovered on my roommate's bookshelf a copy of Susan Faludi's Backlash, the early-90's tome charting the political and cultural backslide against the gains of feminism throughout modern American history.

In one chapter regarding the co-option of feminist rhetoric to sell products that peddle staunchly anti-feminist standards of womanhood, Faludi discusses an (80's, mind you) ad for new light beer proclaiming "Now you can have it all!"

Recently Bitch magazine reported on Kim Catrall's new stint shilling low-calorie liquor for another company. She, too, smiles serenely above the same proclamation, the image of late-90's sexuality and ambition just stoked! to find a low-cal faux-white wine.

It's sad, of course, because it's not what we want to have. Women want to have the same experiences and opportunities and agency as men. Women want to have success, want to succeed, and want men to come to terms with themselves in relation to the women who succeed. They don't Want to Have light alcoholic beverages that taste like cheap imitations of appropriately feminine fruits.

But really? What's so sad?

Is not only that it's so old, it's that it's not even new.

-[W]hy do you write these strong female characters?
-Because you’re still asking me that question.

Joss Whedon





 

this anarchist guy at the bus stop that got all leery on me today. I sat next to him and pulled out my spanking new copy of Brainscan 18 (which had this really wishy-washy essay about riot grrl that tremblingly argued it's not worth investing in because "people" think it's angry and "reverse sexist", as if once popular perception decides to delegitamize a movement, well then, we should just up and chuck the whole movement!--something someone so invested in the oft-maligned zine scene should really not be arguing! But I digress.).

Brainscan is really big on the whole copy-and-paste aesthetic, and anarchist guy must dig said aesthetic whole bunches, because after ogling the zine for a minute he turned his supercharged Man Gaze on me, in this really intense and intimidating way.

I expected anarchist guys to be learned in the concepts of gender, entitlement, and the politicization of a gal's space, but alas, he just stared at my tits.