On Becoming a Sexual Female, via Miley Cyrus

I tend to agree* with this analysis of the photos of Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair that we've seen so far from Vanity Fair, that they're not "that bad."

*sidenote: Except that the bare skin and sultry looks are for your prom friends, not the American Celebritocrical Gaze. And typically you go to the prom at 17-18, not the age of 15. Mir Kamin makes the distinction quite well between these images and simply wearing a backless dress:

For me, my problem lies with the fact that she's underage and I find the picture intentionally sexual. It's not her naked back -- it's her tousled hair, her come-hither look, and the bed-sheet-esque cover; all of those things together combine to portray a post-coital vixen.

(end of side-note)

But the whole thing still troubles me for a few reasons I know, and probably some I can't articulate yet. And I think the question of whether the images themselves are "that bad" isn't the real issue here.

And I've really become disappointed in Annie Leibovitz who, back in the day, took this amazing image of Yoko Ono and John Lennon that surprised our gender expectations. She has recently become more known for replicating racist images of the recent past, and now this. And while, as I said "they're not that bad" (isn't is sad we have a world of sexualized teen girls to compare this image to that we can make the judgment, 'it's not that bad'? Ugh)

This comment on Female Impersonators is quite striking and right-on, and I think it sums up what was really giving me anxiety:

a fifteen year old girl should be beginning to discover her sexuality. She should understand how her body works and why. She should appreciate her body's feelings and responses, but she should not be doing it in front of the world. To sell magazine covers.

That's exactly it. In a world where women's desirability matters more than her desire or that she desires at all, this is sad yet unsurprising. This 15 year-old girl is learning the very real and 'truth' of our modern culture that posing and being socially stamped as 'sexy' is an important (if not the important) part of women's 'sexuality'. That her being sexy is defined through, well, this. I'm not denying that a 15 year-old can be a sexual being. But the problem is that our culture perpetually defines sexuality and sexiness in terms of public validation of public sexual display. And hers being a sexuality-in-process...sigh. And what were you saying about 'The Sexual Revolution'?

And Gawker's provocative take on the photos is pretty interesting: grooming for pedophilia. I would never argue that's what is consciously and absolutely going on, but it's a compelling suggestion.

And it also makes me think about how our culture "grooms" women to become public sex objects, to desire the validation it provides, to justify it to themselves until it's "no big deal." We don't live in a vacuum, and women (or girls) don't one day jump out of bed and say "I think I'd like to show my tits to strangers while I'm drunk next spring break."

I think I'm just going to leave this here for right now. Thoughts?

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The Next Steps for Redressing Unequal Pay

I don't normally blog on equal pay. It is for sure not an area of expertise. I did a short post two weeks ago for Fair Pay Day, because I was so struck by the tangibility of the day in April where men's and women's wages would be equal, and how that day is so close to Tax Freedom Day. But it really isn't an area I'm extremely knowledgeable about (as far as studies go), and I know that the notion of "equal pay" is often contested-- studies often come to conflicting conclusions, people often don't make their terms clear, and there are many different opinions as to who should get equal pay and what counts are equal pay.

These debates are not what this post is about. This is about the Fair Pay Act--the one that on the 23rd a motion to advance it was passed by a majority in the Senate, but didn't get enough votes to have a debate and vote scheduled on the bill itself. It's called the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and Suzanne Reissman has an excellent explanation about the history of the bill and what this bill is actually about--check it out here.

Regardless of whether you 'believe' that pay discrimination as a result of sexual identity exists or not, there is no reason not to support this bill--because the bill addresses the terms by which pay discrimination can be redressed--and if there is no pay discrimination, then the law won't need to be utilized!

The next steps for advocating this bill is to contact your Senators. See the National Women's Law Center for more information on pushing your Senator to get a debate and vote on the bill scheduled.

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What's wrong with this article? Marriage and Taxes, part 2

Especially in light of my critique of 'marriage'-centric social organization, check out this article from CNN.com:

"Study: Single parents cost taxpayers $112 billion":

Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion a year, according to a study commissioned by four groups advocating more government action to bolster marriages.

hmm...what's wrong with this so far? (hint: it's something to do with the premise of the article)

Ok, I'll tell you.

1. It implies that divorcees and parents who are unmarried are not 'taxpayers.'
2. Thus, it positions those not divorced or single parents--married people, single people (aka not-yet married), and married parents--as the 'ideal taxpayer-citizen'

And that's just the first paragraph.

Next:

Sponsors say the study is the first of its kind and hope it will prompt lawmakers to invest more money in programs aimed at strengthening marriages.

Could it possibly be that our social and economic structures heavily favor married parenting, and that's what needs to be investigated, rather than 'strengthening marriage'??

Two experts not connected to the study said such programs are of dubious merit and suggested that other investments -- notably job creation -- would be more effective in aiding all types of needy families.

...which is good, especially since I heard on NPR recently (I can't find the show reference! aah!) that divorce and income are correlated (and ya know, 'the sanctity of marriage' etc. is of utmost important to preserving 'traditional' --read: patriarchal capitalist --values).

There's more:

Scafidi's calculations were based on the assumption that households headed by a single female have relatively high poverty rates, leading to higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice and education for those raised in the disadvantaged homes.

Right, because there's a natural connection between single mothering and poverty, apparently, so we need to fix the 'single mothering' rather than, say, the 'feminization of poverty' or the socio-economic structure that perpetuates single-parent (mother) poverty.

See, there's two problems here with our socio-economic structure:

1. The assumption of two parents present and sharing a home. The model used to be male breadwinner/female domestic servant. Now, women are 'allowed' to have economic independence but continue to bear the homemaking burden.
   
2. Women are paid less money, plain and simple.
   

So in a single-parent family where that single parent is a woman, she's doubly screwed economically.

At the end of the day, the article--along with the study and those who commissioned it--assumes the natural and neutral center of American life (ought) to be marriage and specifically, married-parenting. Further, they conclude that we should tell people how they should structure their networks of association in their life because it would cost less in government expenditures and because they are deviating from some sort of arbitrary 'normal'. Sure marriage is the norm in American society; that doesn't make it natural. It's still an arbitrary primary structure of social relations.

Sure sounds like life, liberty, and all that jazz to me!

cross-posted to The Reaction

see my part 1 here

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I think rape is funny, and all I get is this lousy t-shirt: WTF

The Lizard Queen has a good posting, piggybacking of of Cara's post at The Curvature; they are both worth a read.

They are responding to the awful rape-endorsing t-shirts that are available at CafePress (and no, I'm not going to give them the benefit of linking to them).

While you might be tempted to sidestep the issue by saying that people have a right to print whatever they want on a t-shirt, Lizard's commenters point out that the "free speech" argument refers to censorship by the government, not by a company.

Further, The Curvature cites CafePress' own content policy:

General Guidelines for Prohibited Content

• Content that may infringe on the rights of a third a party.
• Items that make inappropriate use of Nazi symbols and glamorize the actions of Hitler.
• Use of marks that signify hate towards another group of people.
• Hate and/or racist terms.
• Inappropriate content or nudity that is not artistic in nature.
• Content that exploits images or the likeness of minors.
• Obscene and vulgar comments and offensive remarks that harass, threaten, defame or abuse others such as F*** (Ethnic Group).
• Content that depicts violence, is obscene, abusive, fraudulent or threatening such as an image of a murder victim, morgue shots, promotion of suicide, etc.
• Content that glamorizes the use of “hard core” illegal substance and drugs such as a person injecting a vial of a substance in their body.
• Material that is generally offensive or in bad taste, as determined by CafePress.com.

The list outlined above should NOT be construed as an exhaustive list of offensive material but rather as a general guideline for you to follow.

Cara says further:

I think that these shirts pretty much have to fall under at least one of these guidelines. Cafe Press says that if something breaks the usage policy to email them at cup@cafepress.com. So, below the jump, I’ve compiled a bunch of links for the shirts I found, roughly though hardly scientifically in order of most to least offensive. I suggest sending off an email with these URLs and an explanation as to why they violate the content policy. Trigger warning: all of these shirts are very disturbing and offensive.

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten (Note: this shirt is particularly offensive as “rape.com” redirects to rainn.org)
eleven
twelve

Lastly, I’d like to note that many of the most offensive shirts (”I put the sensual back in consensual”) can be seen during searches but are no longer available — though I don’t know if it’s because they’re sold out or because Cafe Press removed them. If you do find something that I’ve missed, leave them in the comments. I have no illusions that this will somehow stop rape jokes, but we can at least try to keep fuckers from making a profit off of them.

I've emailed CafePress, and I'd encourage you all to do the same. Let's not let anyone profit off of rape and our culture's refusal to take it seriously.

UPDATE: Most of the shirts have been removed-yea! Item 8 and 10 are still available. I want to leave my post up though, because we need to be aware that this crap exists and that speaking up works! There is plenty more of this b.s. out there, believe me, so keep your eyes opened and when you see it say something and spread the word.

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Musings: Struggling to Share What/Who Feminism is For

Salon's Broadsheet has this recent article: "Welcome to the 'Menaissance'", which, I have to say, struck me kinda funny...but also sad. It also struck a chord for me in light my recent thoughts pondering how people can take feminism so...wrong, especially when it's something I have lived and breathed for the past 10 years, and what has fundamental to my understanding my experiences, others' experiences, and the world around me.

I have been cruising around the blogosphere lately, and seen in abundance the incredibly angst that many men feel toward feminism. Clearly, feminism has ruined their life. It took away their housekeeper, it has subjected them to sexual activity that doesn't revolve around their needs, it has meant legislation and social policy that doesn't take men's experiences for human experience; women's economic independence has meant they men can no longer expect to be able to provide for a woman in exchange for control over her body and labor, and it has also meant that economic security is not enough to gain access to women at all.

And let me tell you, some men are really pissed. And say it's feminism's fault. And when women behave badly? Also feminism's fault. They fail to see that an analysis of gender as a hierarchical institutional system of oppression is not just about women's rights, but about analyzing society to reveal how the structure is harmful to all involved, but that equality often also means giving up some privileges. Women's rights, however, often get rewritten as "special rights and advantages," because from a man's perspective, it might look that way because they are accustomed to seeing male-centered society as just "society." The work structure that follows from men's needs is seen as just "the workplace." Men then end up resisting feminism, viewing it as advocating female dominance rather than see it as liberating masculinity as well as femininity.

I suppose I'm rambling on a bit and being vague, but I'm doing that a bit on purpose because I'm not trying to accuse or blame any particular individuals or websites. But I have had an interesting few days observing the way that many men perceive feminism-they perceive it as threatening (which is it-to structural male privilege), but in articulating their frustrations (and often rightly so) about their masculine gender role/expectation, feminism, and not patriarchy, is blamed. And it really is too bad. I've tried interacting with some of them, and let me tell you it's really tough to break all these assumptions about what feminism is and what it isn't, and articulating bad behavior that some women exhibit toward some men vs patriarchy as a cultural system of privilege. Not to mention that feminism does not advocate women's bad behavior-women, for example, lying about being raped! Yet feminism gets blamed for this (because feminism created rape, I suppose, since it suggests women can say no if they don't want sex. Or because feminism I guess teaches women to use whatever they can to their advantage).

We're all concerned with young women not wanting to embrace the term 'feminist' because of much cultural misunderstanding. I think that problem is easier to address (by tangibly addressing real-life issues like Jessica Valenti does in her book) than how do we show men that feminism is their friend? That much of what they attribute to feminism is really a result of patriarchy? How do we convince them that it is worth it to give up some privilege in order to live safer and more meaningful lives?

Back to the Broadsheet article:

More than half of the men believe society is turning them into "waxed and coiffed metrosexuals."

Fifty-two percent say they are forced to live by women's rules.

Four out of 10 men are scared of spiders, while a third are scared of "bossy women."

Many men feel they have to play too many roles.

For a sample of men allegedly enamored with stereotypical masculinity, they're awfully whiny. Women are fairly familiar with the pressure to be "waxed and coiffed," living by men's rules and struggling to balance family with work. These men do, indeed, seem burdened and resentful, but to them, I say: Welcome to the party!

While I don't necessarily say welcome (although in some cases I do), it's funny how these struggles are seen to be a result of feminism's challenge to gender roles, therefore a reversion to traditional masculinity is seen as the solution, rather than the problem. I think men's anxieties are very real and are surfacing now because the way we typically think about gender and sexuality has changed as a result of feminism and queer movements, and these changes and challenges bring into relief how traditional masculinity was predicated on a particular form of femininity and organization of sexuality.

So I don't want to welcome men into women's struggles with patriarchy, except to hope their struggles might become the ground on which to be able to say, "I advocate feminism."

(the inclusion of this video is not to imply that The Feminist Majority speaks for all feminisms or all women)

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Why We Still Need Women's History Month, and other things that remind us that patriarchy isn't over

I mean, [sarcasticly] "Isn't Feminism Irrelevant?"

AfterEllen has a great posting using recent events about why feminism is still needed. And what a great line from one commenter:

We have Come a Long Way Baby, but it's a short journey back.

Spot-on!

Check out the full post here.

Also goes along with this great comic via feministing:



(NOTE: nothing after the jump)

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WTF of the Day

The Feminist Daily News (Feminist Majority) reported this story (via the f-word):

"Oklahoma Man Not Charged for Violating Privacy of 16 Year Old Girl".

Oklahoma's Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that taking pictures up someone's skirt in a public place is not a crime. The court voted 4-1 in favor of 34-year-old Riccardo Ferrante who was arrested for putting his camera up an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl’s skirt in a department store, reports the Associated Press...Ferrante was charged under Oklahoma's "Peeping Tom" statute, which makes such offenses felonies punishable of up to 5 years in prison. Tulsa World reports that the court ruled that the statute only applies in situations where the victims are in a reasonably private place such as their own homes, a restroom, or a locker room.

Quick thoughts:

• Clearly, sexual privacy doesn't seem to apply to when women are in public.
• What can of worms does this open up? Spycams in changing rooms? Can someone pull down your shirt as you're waiting for the bus? The implications of this ruling are absurd!
• She's 16-years old...WTF?!
• And this is all because she dared to wear a skirt in public that was short enough that a camera could be placed under that. Hear that ladies? If you're gonna leave the house, you'd better be wearing full-body armor! Enter the public sphere, and your sexual privacy belongs to everyone. But stay at home (ya know, where women belong), and you're fully protected.
  

I have been thinking a lot about women's right to privacy in public spaces, due to some recent stories and discoveries I've made, and I plan to write about it more extensively soon (keep an eye out!)...but in the meantime, puke on this.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction)

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Another interesting perspective on patriarchy hurting men

I've been a little more MIA lately than I intended to be. I had a week off from class at the end of February and went to New York City, and now I'm getting into the busy time at school when I have to start thinking about my course paper and am feeling the pressure of writing my thesis....

So here's a quick post about another post and comments to it that I found interesting.

Posted on Shakesville, "Robbing the Hearts of Men" is speaking about patriarchy hurting men. It's an excellent read, along with the comments on the post.

A few of my thoughts (and I commented on it as well):

• I was immediately put off by her article at the beginning when she says:

It's long been my view that sexism and misogyny do every bit as much damage to men as to women.

I do not agree with this. Like one commenter says,

I do not think "sexism and misogyny does every bit as much damage to men as it does to women." If it did, they would stop it. Damage, yes. "Every bit as much damage" seems to me to be a stretch too large for reality to encompass.

The next commenter indicates why men being damaged by sexism is often hard for men to see or want to do anything about-this damage comes from a system that advantages (white) men. while in many ways they are hurt by it, there are many more ways (or perhaps more tangible or rewarding ways) they are privileged by it.

Perhaps there is a kind of sub-conscious cost-benefit analysis going on here-certainly women who yearn for traditional gender roles or who demand a man to take care of her do the same thing. In fact, attitudes don't need to be even as retro as that-there are many ways that women choose "the path of least resistance" (please! read The Gender Knot by Allan G. Johnson) by "using" patriarchal attitudes to their advantage instead of fighting them-many uses of "sexuality" to "get what you want" can fall under this category.

Another commenter made this interesting point,

I think many men aren't fighting to undermine the patriarchy not because they support it or hope to benefit from it, but because they literally don't understand it's there. The world is set up for them, it seems to run fine, why can't everyone else adapt?

It takes actually stepping outside oneself to recognize the level of privilege men have. Now, needless to say, some men are aware of that privilege and are happy to defend it. But many who are opposed to feminism are actually opposed to strawfeminism, many are opposed to "man-hatin' humor," which isn't part of any feminism I've seen, and many are afraid of change because they're just afraid of change.

True, true. There needs to be some way to educate men about feminism and gender analysis. There is the awful assumption that feminists hate men. Many feminists like men an awful lot, they just hate patriarchy. And it can be hard for men who feel like women want to "take away" "their" privileges to see how they are hurt by patriarchy and how its critique can benefit them. then there's also that darn cost-benefit thing which keeps many men from embracing feminist critique.

• Another concern I had is the way that what she deplores (emotional men denigrated as feminine and therefore men are taught not to experience a range of human emotions) does not seem to be part of the feminist/gender analysis of the social construction of masculinity and femininity, which it most certainly is. She says,
  

In our society (at least), the following traits are considered primarily "female/womanly":
Tender, Emotional, Vulnerable, Receptive, Passive, Compassionate....

...If you are living in a misogynist, sexist society where privilege is awarded automatically by virtue of manliness/maleness or perceived manliness/maleness, and therefore, being womanly/female is an undesirable (if not despicable) position, then you are going to work hard to avoid the culturally-acceptable traits of womanliness...

...Men feel -- because they're human. They experience moments of tenderness, and vulnerability, and emotion (yes, emotions other than rage) -- as well as moments of compassion, and receptivity, and passivity.

The problem is: They can't express that without looking like a woman. Which, in a sexist, misogynist society, would be a bad thing. A thing that loses you jobs, and gets you called "pussy", and "mangina", and subjects you to suggestions that you "sit to pee" -- which would all be BAD, because being anything like a woman/female human is BAD.

This is exactly what the feminist critique of gender entails-both that what has been traditionally labeled "feminine" has been denigrated in order to support patriarchy and sexism, and also that there is nothing inherently bad or gendered about these attributes. Masculinity and femininity are not two separate social constructions where you can critique one without the other. consistent with a deconstructive analysis, masculinity is not self-defined-it is defined by what it is not: feminine. So to critique the arbitrary production of femininity and the subsequent denigration of all things female is to also critique masculinity. In this example there are many "wrongs" here-the idea that certain traits are considered "bad", that those "bad" traits are arbitrarily linked to a particular gender by arguing a natural connection, that this gender is denigrated all over society, that anyone in the dominant gender who exhibits said traits are denigrated as well...(see my post on the politics of the word pussy)

Now many female feminists do not necessarily write extended analyses about masculinity, but there are many male feminists who do, and they are well worth reading. (see my earlier post).

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