As you have probably heard, and raged about , the government's current plan is to target young women who are on benefits (or whose parents are on benefits) for long-term contraception.
"Why should, say, a 70-year-old who's had one partner all their life be paying for a young woman to sleep around? "We are the country with the most promiscuous young women in the world. This does nothing to help us at all."
Meanwhile Right to Life is really concerned about women getting tubal ligations. They're worried for the following reasons:
It undermines the nature and purpose of marriage and sexuality. It goes against the dignity of sexual relations as intended by our Creator. It prevents the total gift of self because it excludes the potential for fertility.
Tubal ligation is the mutilation of a woman’s body and a violation of her human rights. Women have a right to the protection of the State.
Tubal ligation is an assault on the integrity of a woman’s body.
It is bad medicine, pregnancy is not a disease. There is no disease for which ligation would be a treatment. It is a medical procedure which is intended to destroy healthy organs.
I have the perfect solution to this:
A cage fight.
We lock all the people who think that certain women should have contraception forced on them and those who think women can't consent to sterilization or don't really know what contraception is, but know they're against it.
While they're fighting it out with each other those of us who believe that all people should have control of their bodies, and be able to select whatever contraception, or non-contraception, best works for them, without any financial obstacles, can take over the world.
I don't think Tulisa Contostavlos is a household name in New Zealand. Certainly the only reason that I'd heard of her is because I spent last winter developing a my knowledge of British comedians, discovered the awesomeness that is Simon Amstell and watched a lot of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. For those who don't know she was part of a British group called N-Dubz, she judged British X-factor, and she's about to release a solo album.
And it turns out that she's awesome. Recently, a scum-bag ex-boyfriend of hers released a sex-tape. Horrifically, this is an occupational hazard for women like Tulisa. And if they have a scumbag ex-boyfriend prepared to release a sex-tape, young female celebrities are trapped in a web of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, judgement. Women in her position have had their careers threatened, and been forced to offer ridiculous 'apologies' to keep their job. It is very difficult for the young women caught in this web of judgement to respond to it without reinforcing some of the ideas they're being attacked with.
Tulisa didn't respond with a press statement forced by her management or employers, but with another video - where she is straight up, direct and refuses to be shamed by toxic ideas about women's sexuality:
My appreciation for this awesome video was slightly marred because I learned about it in this article from the guardian website. Because the author is not content in celebrating Tulisa's response. She also emphasises how 'unlikely' it is that Tulisa would provide a feminist response.
Tulisa has talked really explicitly about being in an abusive relationship as a teenager and the effect that had on her well-being. I'm just looking at interviews linked on wikipedia and she is very explicit about misogyny and the effect that it has had on her life. And yet the article doesn't even feel the need to explain or justify why she thinks Tulisa is an 'unlikely' feminist.
Because when a commissioning editor at the Observer describes Tulisa as an 'unlikely' feminist - the subtext is pretty close to being text. It would be uncouth to be explicit about the class-differences which underly the author's supposed surprise. After all this is Britain and you can hear Tulisa's voice - and on the guardian website no more explanation than that is needed.
I think it's really important to make the subterranean explicit. That's the only way to recognise these off hand lines as an effort to claim feminism as the exclusive property of middle-class women. This is both an assumption of what feminism is, an expression of what the author wants it to be, and act of maintaining those borders; for the author feminism is a movement that only recognises middle-class women's expression of their experiences, and allows people to be shocked when working-class women express themselves at all.
The best response of course, is to watch Tulisa's video again and say that there's nothing unlikely or surprising about it.
Russel Norman's decision to stand down his EA because of the actions of her partner is a feminist issue. I'm going to leave alone why the Greens thought it appropriate to condemn putting stickers on National party billboards (although it doesn't look good for principled left-wing green voters).** But why is his EA even part of the discussion?
Russel Norman decided to go public with the fact that his EA was in a relationship with Jolyon White. He then decided to use the power he has because she works for him to stand her down (I know that he is not her direct employer but Parliamentary Services are pretty responsive to MPs wishes).
From an employment perspective this is creepy enough - she is being stood down because she didn't tell her boss something her partner said months ago and instead made it clear to her partner that she didn't want anything to do with his actions. This is a pretty horrific view of employment and the right bosses have over their employees lives. A view Russel Norman endorsed.
But there is an important gendered to this. Russel Norman's action reinforces a world-view that defines women in relationships with men through their partners' beliefs and actions and therefore denies their autonomy and even existence. People have condemned Julie's writing on the hand mirror and tried to silence her, because of who her partner is. This discriminatory way of treating of women in relationships with men is systemic. Men are not treated this way, and are not defined by the actions of their partners. Russel Norman has endorsed this double standard by the way he has treated his EA.
Although this is far from the only feminist reason not to vote for any party which has Russell Norman at number 2 on its list. This was, after all, his assessment of Clint Rickards:
I don’t see that being involved in consenting group sex is any reason for him not to go back to work. And people use sex aids so using a police baton in a consenting situation doesn’t seem grounds for refusing him his job back.
Something to think about in the polling booth.
* Obviously this construction of her identity is problematic. However, I decided since I didn't think her identity should be public in this way I didn't feel comfortable putting yet another hit into google about who she was. ** I find the idea that political parties should be able to put up their truly inane hoardings in publicly owned space, but it is morally wrong to talk back to those hoardings, no matter what you are saying, a really depressing view of political dialogue.
Ten years ago I was attending a reunion of a Women's liberation group, as an observer. It was an incredible experience and an honour. And on the first day, in the first session, one of the women got up excitedly and said "I just want to say look at all the people wearing trousers, when we first met, every one of us would have been wearing a skirt, Isn't it fabulous."
She was an awesome, friendly, loving woman. She had the best of intentions.
And over the next two days I heard pretty much every woman who was wearing a skirt talk about what she'd said. She'd made them feel self-concious and judged. And other women who were wearing trousers that day felt the same way.
By celebrating one form of dress within a feminist space, a well-intentioned woman had alienated many of those there. And I don't think that she ever knew the effect her words had.
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I have been misquoted pretty consistently as arguing that The Wellington Young Feminist Collective 'should' take issues of aesthetics/lifestyle/survival strategies off the table. I didn't say that. What I said was this:
This is the reason I wrote my post: "I used to think I couldn't be a feminist because I like looking a certain way and I am interested in certain things."
I think this is a real danger - equally the inverse - that women can feel that they can't be a feminist because they don't look a certain way and aren't interested in certain things. And I think the easiest way to avoid that is to make aesthetic/lifestyle/survival choices off the table for feminist discussion.
Now I want to talk about why I think that, what I meant by it, and why I think it's important.
*************
I'm going to take as a basic assumption of this post that it is not OK to criticise another woman's aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies in the name of feminism.* I know that this isn't a universally held belief. This post and the discussion at Boganette's makes that clear. But I think it also makes it clear why other women's survival strategies should not be open to criticism.
Why isn't it OK to use the language of feminism to judge other people's decisions?
Because it's alienating, none of your business, and the survival strategies other people choose has nothing to do with your liberation.**
I am happy to argue about this in the comments, but I am going to spend the rest of the post speaking to people who don't support criticising other people's aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies in the name of feminism, but don't understand why they should be off the table. I'll try and explain why I think celebratory, or supposedly neutral comments about aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies can be damaging in feminist spaces.
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I opened with a story, here are some more.
My friend was at a feminist action. She had been given free razors as part of a promotion. She didn't shave her legs. She gives them to someone and says "here you shave your legs have these". Later, much later, the person she gave the razors too tells her how shit she felt in that moment, how judged. My friend doesn't even remember it happening. [Please respect this story. I'm not going to accept any second guessing of it in the comments]
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It had been advertised as a feminist meeting, but it was actually a clothes swap. Indeed it wasn't really a clothes swap at all, but one woman giving her clothes away. People tried on clothes, and they mostly didn't fit . One woman, who was probably half my size, put her hand on her hips and thighs and said "They're huge, that's why this is never going to fit."
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An older feminist is running a feminist workshop. She makes frequent references to where she does and doesn't shave. She was trying to put us at ease. In fact it just made me feel like this mattered.
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I could give many more examples like this. Think of the effect of celebrating a particular aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategy in the name of feminism has on those who for whom it is financially impossible, or for those for whom it is inaccessible because of the way society disables their bodies.
When you're celebrating a particular survival strategy it still has nothing to do with anyone else's liberation, it's still alienating, and it's still none of anyone else's business.
In particular, in my experience, discussions about aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies take on more meaning and become more fraught when they happen in feminist spaces - and even more so the larger the feminist space.
This is just an observation. It may not be true in all feminist spaces, but it has certainly been a consistent experience of mine. I'm just guessing, but I think this is a result of the impossibility of women to win with their choices - they're always too much something, and are juggling so many different expectations, as well as their own and other people's needs. Therefore any kind of expression within a feminist space about these issues becomes a whole nother axis of pressure.
You'll notice that I only feature as an observer and the one excluded in these stories. This is not because I have some magic non-alienating super power. It's because what these stories have in common (as does the Trousers one I mentioned) is that the people who have made others feel alienated and excluded by discussing survival strategies have no idea that they've done unless someone tells them.
***************
I stand by my statement that the easiest way to solve the problem that I have now explored in quite some detail is to make discussions of aesthetics/survival strategies/lifestyles off limits in feminist spaces.
Let's consider a different way of dealing with discussions of clothes shops on the WYFC feed. Another way of doing it would be to post "Hey we all know clothing yourself can be super difficult. I just found this neat boutique called Emma's which works for me for [x reasons], but it might not work for you. What are your favourite clothing shops?" That's less universalising and I would have made no comment on a post like that.
Would people feel posting that they liked City Chic? The Warehouse? Hallensteins? Glassons? Supre? Each of these spaces provide different types of clothes at different prices for different people. Is this a space where people would be able to say, actually I can't afford to shop for clothes. Or I don't go to the clothes shops because of anxiety. If those things don't get posted how do you know why?
So what if someone comes a long and all the shops seem to them super-femme, or expensive, or don't cater to bodies anything like hers, and she's think "oh", and feels like feminism is a bit further away. My experience suggests that this is not just a hypothetical. This is a likely outcome.
The reason I say that I think the easiest solution is to take these matters off the table, is because I think having a good conversation about survival strategies/aesthetics/lifestyle is really fucking difficult. (for ones that go badly see any number of discussions on Feministe) If you want to initiate these sorts of conversations you have to know what you're doing and take the responsibility really seriously.
Can it be done? I was very interested in some of the conversations they had a FWD. They put a lot of effort into making sure that different experiences were heard. But who knows if people felt alienated by the way they did it.
***********
I know how useful discussion with people, those who share your experiences, about your aesthetic/survival strategy/lifestyle can be. They're useful for understanding why you do things the way you do, what meaning you've given to them, they can help making you stronger. I know what a difference it's meant so much to me having not just a name for the set of things that I found hard (dyspraxia) but someone who finds some of the same things hard.
I think spaces which tell individual women's stories and describe their aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies are really awesome and important. I follow a lot of blogs about women's lives, with their experiences and their analysis all rolled around. And then it's really clear 'this is me'. Locally, I love, and learn a lot from Letters from Wetville and Tales of a Redheaded Devil Child
The discussions which are useful for one person - will be unbearable for another. A description that one person finds really speaks to them is super alienating for another. There is value in creating spaces for all of us where we can feel comfortable, relax and socialise.
***********
And I know, many people have said, that it can seem ridiculous that when I've caused so much division to be so concerned about alienating people. But to me divisions based on ideology - 'what is feminism' are necessary and important. And if I write a follow up post - a response to all the people who asked me "Who the fuck are you to say what feminism is?" I'll try and explain why.
Alienating people who are wearing trousers, or who shave their legs, or who can't use the products you promote, when you don't even mean to, that's completely unnecessary and avoidable.
* Just to be clear I differentiate betweens survival strategies and the use of power. So, for example, if you take a job that gives you management responsibilities then you can and should be criticised for the way that you use that power. However, almost all survival strategies don't involve the wielding of power over someone else.
** The other exception I would lay out to when other people's survival strategies become other people's business is if you cross a picket line, but I don't think that applies here.
Because in about one in every twenty things they post makes me want to have a massive city wide discussion about what feminism means. Here's the latest:
Hey ladies, here is a shop I discovered in Berhampore today which is FANTASTIC. Lovely handmade, locally designed ladies clothes and jewelry. And they fit ladies with big boobs, which is rarer than it should be. Yay for awesome local businesses! x
That was posted on Saturday, and about every four hours since I've gone backwards and forwards about responding to it, and how I should respond to it. Which maybe has a little bit to do with the fact that I've been travelling alone and the alternative was walking in the rain to Pak 'n' Save to discvoer they don't stock Whittakers Dark Almond Chocolate. But it's also because feminism is really important to me and things which I would normally just be 'eh' about really agitate me when they're done in the name of feminism. On the other hand I know it's very easy for me (particularly in full rant mode) to come on very strong. In this case I want to start a discussion, rather than just rant about why am I right and everyone else is wrong (which to be honest which is what I want a lot of the time), but I don't know that I've got that setting. So far I've stayed silent (and started an argument about Seasame St on facebook to make myself feel better).
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that there was an important feminist principle at stake that I wanted to try and articulate. I think (and maybe the admins of the Young Feminist Collective will disagree) that posting anything to a feed of a feminist group is to promote that post as a feminist act. I have three main objections to that in this particular case:
1. Cutting for some body shapes (like a large bust) will make clothes fit some body types better, but other body types worse. Clothes shops sell a hole that your body should fit into. And promoting any particular sized or shaped hole is problematic from a feminist perspective.
2. Promoting clothes shops that only sell straight sizes in a feminist space is exclusionary. But actually what I find even more offensive, is that nowhere on Emma's website does it mention what sizes she stocks. So people have to go out to Berhampore to learn they're not welcome to buy her clothes. By looking at another website that sold her stuff, I was able to discover that she has a very few 16s, a few more Ls which is 14-16, and some styles which have 14 as their largest size (and a lot of her clothes don't come in an 8 either). Fine different shops stock different ranges of sizes. But to not specify what body types you sell for, to act as if they really limited range which you do stock covers everyone is perpetuating particularly damaging ideas about women's bodies.
3. And then there's the capitalism issue. Because actually no I don't support locally owned businesses, even the supposedly awesome ones. The idea that local businesses are any better than larger ones is not an evidence based assertion. While I know nothing about Emma, I do know a reasonable amount about the New Zealand clothing industry - and the way clothes are produced in New Zealand is absolutely the opposite of everything I think feminism stands for.
I'm not dissing clothes shopping - I understand that clothes shopping can be awesome for some women at some times(my question of the moment is how many LucieLu dresses with zips up the front do I need - and the answer is ALL OF THEM). What I object to as promoting clothes shopping (particularly at a specific shop) as something that is going to appeal to a group of women who have nothing in common other than they're young feminists.
Feminism isn't a particular aesthetic or lifestyle or survival strategies. We're not all the same, we don't all like cupcakes, knitting, cute dresses, cool accessories, moon-cups, op-shops, roller-derby, Joss Whedon, gardening, and bicycles.
There's a reason I didn't post all my Dollhouse reviews to the Hand Mirror, and partly that's because of spoilers, but it's also because the Hand Mirror isn't just my playground the way my blog is. The Hand Mirror is a group feminist blog, and the only one (that I know of) in the country. What I do in The Hand Mirror, more than what I do anywhere else, is done in the name of feminism and that comes with it a certain responsibility.
To me a core part of that responsibility is to never suggest that liking the things I happen to like is part of being feminist. Feminism is an ideology not an aesthetic. Feminism should be about massively different people coming together with ideas in common.
Last week was a week of feminist rage - this week was supposed to be something new. I wasn't quite expecting a week of feminist revolt and joy, but I was hoping to rage about something else for a week.*
But no - The Rock were determined that my week of feminist rage should never end. To be fair he mention of "the Rock" in the news in itself is like a lighthouse warning that rocks of misogyny are ahead. They did after all used to have billboards which said "We gave you something to listen to while your girlfriend was talking" (printed on the t-shit of a woman while not showing her head - naturally).
But now they have started a competition to 'win a wife':
The winner of MediaWorks' The Rock promotion will fly to the Ukraine for 12 nights, be given $2000 spending money, and be able to choose a bride from an agency.
There are really no words besides 'gah' and 'argh' and obviously their obnoxiousness is in part seeking an outraged reaction.
But what got me were the questions you have to answer to enter the competition. A large number of them ask about the various things contestants have done to 'score'. And then:
All women are nuts, but what can you tell us about your craziest Ex that sets her apart from the other nut-jobs?
The internal contradictions of a masculinity which hates women but requires hetrosexuality are so stark that whenever I try and think about it my brain short circuits.
It's like women are bogs of eternal stench with islands in the middle. And sex is catching a butterfly on one of those islands taking it home and pinning it on your wall for your mates (who are very judgemental about bog smells) to see.
It seems so ridiculous, so contrived, so obviously not connected to anything real or true that I find it hard to understand how this house of cards stands.
And it doesn't quite stand. The Rock, and beer ads, enforce masculinity in ways that dance so close to parody - and a sturdy house wouldn't need this sort of scaffolding. Our radical notion that women are people is a powerful counter-weapon.
* I have had lots of rage about the treatment of minimum wage workers both by the government and their employers. Tomorrow maybe.
Queen of Thorns wrote a post Why the Left Needs Feminism and cross posted over on the standard. I think her post is really interesting and important (and it's great to see it at the Standard, which usually only comments on feminist issues when there's a really obvious way to insult John Key in the process). Here I do focus on what I disagree with her about and so I suggest you read the whole post, because there's lots of cool ideas in there.
And I agree with her conclusion - obviously I agree with her conclusion. But I disagree with some of the points she makes along the way. Mostly, I think, because we have a different analysis of the role of the Labour Party within the left.
QoT appears to begin her post by setting up a Labour party: "focused on class struggle or strictly economic leftist ideas." This labour party does not exist. Chris Trotter has indeed tried to portray worshipping at the altar of testosterone as a service to the working class, but that doesn't make it true. Likewise there are those who suggest the reason that the fifth labour government alienated so many working-class people was because of it's crazy feminism, but the actual feminist legislative achievements at that time were minimal particularly with what doesn't done (I'm looking at you pay equity and abortion law reform). At times QoT appears to accept Chris Trotter's zero-sum game and just argue that 'identity politics' things are important - rather than going further and saying that there's enough liberation to go around.
In places of her post she is treading over reasonably familiar ground. One of the biggest intellectual challenges for the left is to understand the why and the how of the fourth labour government? Certainly this has come up on left blogs before and there is an argument which places the responsibility at the feet of 'identity politics' (Chris Trotter, John Minto and Bryce Edwards have all made it). I disagree - and I've written my thoughts on this before, so I'm not going to go over them again.
But at times QoT seemed to be arguing the inverse of Trotter's argument:
Trotter is speaking about the 1980s, that golden age of namby-pamby identity politics when the left got distracted by piffling little side issues like whether men should be held accountable for raping their wives and whether gay men should be allowed to be gay.
A time when the Left wasn’t, to quote Phil Goff’s own advisor John Pagani on that thread, “connecting with things that matter to people”. You can probably draw your own conclusions as to the kind of people he means.
I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again, but this idea that the 1980s was a golden age of identity politics (whether you see that as a bad thing) gets repeated far more often than it gets proved. No-one has been able to tell me what the wonderful legislative feminist gains of the fourth labour government were.
But more importantly here Pagani is clearly conflating the 'left' and 'the parliamentary labour party'. He's also wrong on both counts. Because in the 1980s the parliamentary labour party was 'connecting with things that matter to people' - if you call a kick connecting. It was privatising assets, introducing GST, introducing student fees and selling post-offices. And the extra-parliamentary left were also connecting with those very same things, remember just because we didn't win, doesn't mean we didn't fight.
Likewise while homosexual law reform and rape law reform, both had their home in the extra-parliamentary left, neither sat quite as comfortably in the parliamentary left. Homosexual law reform was a private members bill, and several Labour MPs at the time voted against it. Whereas the act that criminalised rape in marriage had been drafted under Muldoon's government, but not passed before the snap election. I disagree with QoT idea that 'the left' focused on Homosexual and rape law reform during the 1980s and this was good, as much as I disagree with Trotter et al's reverse formulation.
I am concerned about the stories that get told about the 1980s, partly because I care about history, but also because I am worried people will draw the wrong lessons today. I think QoT reinforced Trotter's formulation of class and 'identity' politics standing in opposition to each other with the way she talked about the past even though I think her argument was the opposite of that.
This is not a zero sum game - there isn't a limited amount of liberation available that we have to fight among ourselves for. It's the opposite - your struggle is my struggle, and I cannot be free while you are in chains.
For a long time Ana at Whenua Fenua Enua Vanua was the only wahine Maori blogging that I knew of. But recently a couple more blogs run by Maori women have started, and I wanted to bring people's attention to them.
Kim from He Hōaka is a friend of mine. This is from the introduction of a post:
Colonisation invented a story of who Māori are: it made Māori a race, and made up a limited set of characteristics for that race. These stereotypes are not controlled by us (Māori), they limit us, and they serve the purposes of ongoing cultural imperialism. They make us uncomfortable in our own skins and on our own land. They are used to blame us for the problems created by colonisation. It is essential that we develop our own answers to the question of what it means to be Māori.
Just a warning Kim's posts tend to be very long - so make sure you have some time to really get into them when you're posting - they're worth it.
A national hui of Māori women, Te Whaainga Wāhine have condemned the exclusion of wāhine from national, regional, local and Māori political forums.
The hui made specific reference to the Iwi Leaders Group who do not speak for Māori women.
The hui, the first called in thirty years, has challenged Māori leadership that advance the political agenda of the National-ACT-Maori Party Coalition at the expense of whenua, whānau and hapu wellbeing.
Hui spokesperson Denise Meisster said Te Whaainga Wāhine confirmed Maori women’s political, spiritual and rangatahi leadership to carry current and future generations to 2040.
[....]
The hui affirmed Tino Rangatiratanga by 2040 and implemented a specific plan of action to achieve this. Te Whaainga Wāhine will be reconvened in Feb, 2011 in Palmerston North.
There's more about the hui here. Their blog has the press releases they put out, and links and copies of other awesome material from wahine Maori.
For another discussion of Maori bloggers, see Maui St - most of those listed are men.
I am aware of the debt of gratitude that I owe you. I have read every issue of Broadsheet you edited. Your columns in the Sunday Times were one of my early exposures for feminism. I know that so many of the parts of my life that I hold most dear to me were only possible because the movement you were part of changed the world.
But all this compels me to speak, rather than compelling me to stay silent. This week you used your vote on the Auckland City Councillor to support the re-criminalising of outdoor sex-workers in Manakau.
That is not a feminist action.
From memory (I read your column in the Sunday Star Times during the prostitution law reform debate) you favour 'The Swedish Model' decriminalisation of selling sex and the criminalisation of buying sex. I do not. But I do recognise that it is a feminist position, taken as a result of feminist analysis. However, I cannot take those who promote it seriously as feminists unless they are more passionate about decriminalising sex-workers than they are about criminalising Johns.
Instead you supported legislation that criminalises buying and selling sex - but only for poor people. Only those who live in South Auckland (possibly all of Auckland by the time the bill is done) and can't afford to work indoors need to worry about this legislation.
This bill will impoverish women who get caught, tie them to the stress of the court system, and put them in the power of the New Zealand police.
And that should be enough, for any feminist in this country. We know the power the police have, how they have used it, and how many within the force take 'bros before hos' as a life mantra and cover for their mates. How dare you support giving the police more power over a group of our sisters, for any reason?
The bill hasn't passed yet, you still have time to change your position. You have time to stand in solidarity with street sex workers , rather than with those trying to punish them.
In sisterhood,
Maia
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For those who want to know the voting break-down went like this:
In support: Len Brown, Cameron Brewer, Sandra Coney, Chris Fletcher, Mike Lee, Des Morrison, Calum Penrose, Noelene Raffills, Sharon Stewart, John Walker, George Wood. Against: Arthur Anae, Cathy Casey, Michael Goudie, Ann Hartley, Richard Northey, Wayne Walker, Penny Webster. Absent: Penny Hulse, Jami-Lee Ross.
One of the great traditions of New Zealand advertising is that no portrayal of masculinity can be too over-the-top or too ridiculous to sell beer.
However, recently beer's place as the pinnacle of ridiculous masculinity by some products which are less deeply ingrained in NZ's idea of manhood - such as Yoghurt. Yes the same dairy product that made Sarah Haskins famous:
Ok now we've had that break for the awesomeness that is Sarah Haskins we have to go back to this bizarre new development in New Zealand which is manly yoghurt. What is manly yoghurt, well it's thick, packed with nuts and seeds and comes in flavours such as Apricot Manuka Honey, Mango Coconut Flakes, Lemon Passionfruit, and Apple Blueberry.
So how do you sell the idea that the official food of woman in apricot and manuka honey flavour is manly? Silly question - all you need is to emphasise misogyny, homophobia and the extreme danger of girl germs. This is from their website:
Man. It used to be the best job title in the world.
Man has lost his place in the world and his place in the fridge. There are scarce few products we can call our own. At Mammouth Supply Company, we've decided to do something about this and offer men something for men - non-nonsense, fill-you-up yoghurt, iced cofee and ice cream.
The boxes come with simple instructions about what men do and don't do - they do eat yoghurt but only manly yoghurt, but stay away from all things that might ever have been coded women or gay (although I do recommend reading the packages at the supermarket - they're even more ridiculous than you can imagine).
I find this deeply weird. I can guess the origins of these products. Fonterra was sitting round worrying about what to do with all its milk and thought "Men! We need to get men to consume more milk derived products." But does this really resonate? Who could it possibly resonate with? Do people suddenly forget that apricot honey is a body lotion flavour if there's enough homophobia on the packet?
And that's not even the strangest form of masculinity advertising products let me introduce mantrol:
There's also two shorterversions that makes it even clearer that according to some arms of the state New Zealand masculinity is about pakeha well-resourced homo-social leisure time.
I honestly don't understand these ads (but I am sometimes very slow about some aspects of NZ masculinity - I used to often have to have tui billboards explained to me). Is the point supposed to be MANLY THINGS! MANLY THINGS! MANLY THINGS! MANLY THINGS! DRIVING SAFELY IS ALSO MANLY BECAUSE IT'S IN THE AD WITH THESE OTHER MANLY THINGS! STOP KILLING PEOPLE!
I'd understand that. Even if I don't really understand the association between BBQ, cricket, video games, and not killing people, I can see NZTA's point. I'm sure they have many many statistics that show that the demographic they're targetting (I'm guessing it's young pakeha men) are dangerous drivers, and probably they've reached the time when they want address it head on.
But then there's this line: "If we're not in full control of such a manly thing [as driving] then what does this all mean? [and he gestures to many different depictions of homosocial leisure]"
And at that point I stop being amused, or weirded out, or confused, and become angry. That a government agency would spend millions of dollars reinforcing the idea that to be manly is to be in control sickens me. As if that idea wasn't deeply ingrained enough. As if it wasn't understood by so many women who have been at the receiving end of men's control.
That's the problem - each piece may not seem like much. Portrayals of masculinity can seem ridiculous and insignificant - it's just an ad, just a piece of packaging, just a beer company. But each piece normalises an idea of what it means to be a man that is so damaging for men and women and for men who conform to it and for men who don't. And those who want to use it to sell their products seem to be winning over those who want to tear it down.
It has another, more euphamistic name (Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill), but what it is actually doing is re-criminalising poor sex workers.
This bill will make it an arrestable crime, punishable with a $2,000 fine, to buy or sell sex outside of a brothel in areas decided by the Manakau City Council (if it goes through it'll be the Auckland super city council).
It is specifically targeting street sex workers. Street sex workers do not generally have $2,000 to pay a fine. The fines, when they're awarded, won't have the magic power to stop someone being poor and working as a sex worker, it'll just make them poorer. It won't make street sex work disappear, it'll just make it harder, more dangerous, and more marginalised.
It'll give police officers, like Peter Govers and Nathan Connolly more power over some women. And whatever else your politics, that is reason enough to oppose this bill.
I would like to take a brief moment to draw your attention to a new reactionary tendancy on this issue within the Greens (who block voted for prostitution law reform). Two of the Green MPs voted for the bill and Russell Norman abstained (because he thought I needed another reason to hate him).
Three parties block voted (Act and National supported the attacks, the Maori party opposed them), Labour and the Greens split their votes. Nanaia Mahuta was the only woman from either of these parties to vote for criminalising poor women who work as sex workers. Now it physically pains me to say nice things about Labour and Green MPs, but I want to give credit to the feminist analysis and solidarity that those who opposed these bill showed. It shouldn't be noteworthy that women MPs voted the way they did. But the extent to which their male colleagues accepted criminalising women who were already marginalised as an acceptable side effect of protecting small businesses (as the rhetoric in defence of hte bill is all the poor shop owners whose lives are made harder by the fact that sex work happens near them), means that it is noteworthy in the context in which they're operating.
The contempt that those who voted for this bill have for sex workers comes through in the parliamentary debate. George Hawkins uses the language of 'plague' to describe street sex work - which is about as dehumanising as you can get. Others demonstrate their contempt through sneering and patronising - and claim that this bill is necessary to stop underage sex work.*
A few months ago I read this article about American criminal approaches to sex work, and I was horrified. How can anyone who stands in solidarity with women say that being criminalised in this way helps anyone?
I understand that there are nuanced feminist positions on sex work. But I don't think good feminist analysis of any kind, can possibly endorse life being made harder for poor sex workers.
* No I don't get it either. How driving street sex work underground magically stops kids from being sex workers wasn't explained.
A young, and new, constable was posted to Rotorua in the 1980s (yeah it's not a happy story). I don't know why he became a police officer, or what he wanted to do, or anything about him or his life. What I do know is his fellow police officerswould collect the names of single mothers - vulnerable women who would be home during the day alone - knock on the door in uniform and demand sex.
The young constable didn't like this, but he couldn't stop it, or maybe he just didn't know how to stop it, or wasn't prepared to do what it would have taken to stop it. But he couldn't be around these men, knowing what they did, and having to be an accomplice. So he left the police force.
Rape and abuse of power wasn't just something Rotorua police officers did in their off time? It was something that required structural support, and structural cover up. It required a widespread mentality that women didn't matter, and other police officers had a right to abuse them.
Dave Archibald was still operating under the 'bros before hoes' mentality when he used his position as police officer to get access to information in the hope it'd help his rapists mates.
Now he is in charge of training new police officers.
I'm reasonably clear that I don't think the police can be reformed, that I think the problems that come from the sort of power that they have are unavoidable, that their job, and the job of the criminal (in)justice system is to maintain the status quo not create safer communities together (see here).
But for those of you who have some faith in the police, who think the culture of rape and abuse is extinguisable, how is that going to happen? Maybe you think our young constable would have made a good constable, that he could have made a difference, but that difference he could have made was the reaosn he couldn't stay in the police force. Those who stayed, are those who could stomach, or turn a blind eye, to what was going on, they're the people who are training new police officers and choosing who gets promoted. How can you believe in reform?
I can’t remember when the character descriptions for Dollhouse first leaked. I was surprised, and happy to read November’s:
20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy. Another Doll, a hopeful child in the house and everyone else you need her to be outside. A comforting, radiant presence, who tends to get fewer of the criminal gigs and more of the personal ones. Recurring.
Later, when the casting was announced and I saw Miracle Laurie, I was disappointed, more than surprised. Like Amp, I assumed that ‘heavy’ had turned out to be an optional part of the character description.
Miracle Laurie is only a recurring character, and her media appearances appear to be arranged by her saying yes when people ask her, rather than by any publicity department. She’s given several, reasonably in depth interviews with fans of Dollhouse, and I’ve realised that I was wrong. Heavy wasn’t, in the end, treated as an optional part of the character description. The truth is far more disturbing.
In two recent interviews Miracle Laurie talked about being cast as November. She says that she read the cast break-down and thought: “This is it – this character is perfect for me. If I don’t get this part it’ll be my fault for not working hard enough.” In one of her interviews she even recites the character description. When I read the character description, I had no idea of how limited “beautiful and heavy” really was. Miracle Laurie may only have one other credit to her name, but she understands Hollywood better than I can.
But there was more to it than that, because Dollhouse had quite a complicated development process. Fox didn’t like Joss’s original plan for November, (I’m really curious about what the original plan for November was, but there’s been no leaking in that department. I can’t imagine it’d be cooler than what they ended up doing with Mellie, but I could be wrong) so pretty much on the fly (as Miracle Laurie describes it) the writers came up with a new idea for November as Mellie, as Paul Ballard’s next-door neighbour.
Miracle Laurie has said that Joss had to fight to keep her in the role, to keep his vision of November. To take a small step and there conclusions are, Fox wanted to recast November when it was decided that the character would have sex with Tahmoh Penikett, and that this would be the only on-going sexual relationship in the first season
I want to tease why I think Fox wanted to recast November. I don’t think it was as simple as her not being ‘attractive’ enough, or at least not in the sense of being sexually attractive. Dollhouse is not short of scenes designed to appeal to those attracted to women, the dress that is actually a shirt, or the dominatrix outfit are only the most obvious. Fox has plenty of material that is geared to what it thinks its 18-34 year old male viewers want to watch.
The casting description made it clear that November would be having sexual scenes. There is no reason that November being Mellie would change the extent to which Miracle Laurie would be in scenes that were sexual. (I’m deliberately ignoring the fact that I find the idea that Miracle Laurie would be considered ‘not attractive’ enough for, well anything, patently ridiculous.)
What changed, when November became Mellie, wasn’t the way her body would be seen on the show, but the meaning of those scenes. Fox didn’t want to re-cast November because Mellie was going to have sex scenes, they wanted to re-cast November because she was going to have a sexual relationship with the male lead character.
It’s not about what Fox thinks its male viewers want, it’s about want Fox thinks its female viewers need - in order to buy whatever is being advertised. Ratings may be king in TV-land, but the raison d’etre of TV isn’t actually to get viewers, but to get viewers to watch advertisements. Or, more precisely, get viewers to watch advertisements and for those advertisements to work.
Which is where Sarah Haskins comes in. For those who don’t know her, Sarah Haskins is the genius feminist comedian who focuses on the way media targets women (really if you haven’t seen her stuff – just go and spend a couple of hours on youtube and come back – its that good). She shows how inane and ridiculous media targeted at women is. Here is her segment on yoghurt:
Here is her segment on chocolate:
Everyone who watches those ads knows that 150 calorie warm delight minis aren’t going to be that good (Whittakers Dark Almond chocolate isn’t as good as they make warm delight minis look, and it has sugar and cocoa butter in it), and calling yoghurt key lime pie doesn’t make it key lime pie rather than yoghurt.
But the advertisements make more sense if you think about the programs that contain them.
The women screaming and rioting in the 100 calorie oreo advertisement will only resonate with a woman who believes she should take up no space. Comparing yoplait to a private island makes sense only if you think you should be denying yourself the sustenance and pleasure that comes from food and yoghurt is as good as it gets.
And all these ideas fit better after watching a sex scene between Tahmoh Penikett and (hypothetically) Amy Acker than they do after watching a sex scene between Tahmoh Penikett and Miracle Laurie.
For most women, looking like Miracle Laurie is just as much as an unattainable beauty standard than looking like Amy Acker (who is an awesome actress, and I’m just using as an example because she’s also in Dollhouse). Miracle Laurie is somewhere round the bottom 15% of American women when it comes to height and weight ratio and her body is of a particular type (plus her hair looks like shampoo commercial).
But Miracle Laurie as Mellie, given her story arc, does disrupt an idea that advertisers rely on. I think any single image of what is attractive is damaging (particularly for women, given how we are taught to view our attractiveness as a primary factor in our value). But one of the things that I think is particularly damaging about the standard of beauty in our society is that there is no end, there is no ‘thin enough.’ Our society has an anorexic vision of women – where any flesh, any fat, any space is too much.
And it’s a profitable vision. Advertisers, and therefore executives, don’t want it disrupted.
This may sounds conspiratorial, clearly television works that way, at least in part, but is it conscious I it designed? What justification do the Fox executives themselves give when they want to recast November? Obviously I have no idea, I live in New Zealand. But I think it’s important to understand that such profitable ideas don’t just exist, they have to be created and maintained.
I think the easiest ways to understand this is to turn to an earlier way of selling women things. The Feminine Mystique is an incredibly strong exploration of one of the problems women faced in the post-war period (it’s much weaker as a total explanation of women’s situation at the time). Betty Friedan’s famous book outlines the ‘problem with no name’, a situation where women who are trying to be what women are told they should want, are in fact miserable, even if they succeed. Of particular relevance to this discussion, she asks “How did this happen? How didso many women get persuaded that they needed to be something that would never make them happy.”
In the second chapter, Betty Friedan outlines how, in the 1940s, the parameters of what a heroine was allowed to be changed in fiction aimed towards women. She talks in some details about how women with jobs, careers, education, or a desire for any of these things, were slowly written out of the fiction that ran in the women’s magazines. Then in Chapter 9 she starts to ask some of the bigger questions:
Some months ago, as I began to fit together the puzzle of women’s retreat to home, I had the feeling I was missing something. I, despite the nameless desperation of so many American housewives, despite the opportunities open to all women now, so few have any purpose in life other than to be a wife and mother, somebody, something pretty powerful must be at work.
There are certain fats of life so obvious and mundane that one never talks about them. […]Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role tat women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house In all the talk of femininity and woman’s role, one forgets that the real business of America is business. But the perpetuation of housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes are the chief customers of American business. Somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused nameless-yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of-sate of being housewives.
She doesn’t just state this as a theory; she explores how this happened. She talks to advertisers’ researchers and survey takers. They tell her how important it is that women are persuaded of the validity of roles that they actually find unsatisfying in order that the advertisers can sell products. They describe the research they do to measure how women respond to different ideas. How they use the research that they have, and the media that they have access to maintain the image of women that will allow them to sell the most stuff. She ties it all together, by going back to the magazines that changed the sorts of stories they carry, and showing the connections between them and the advertisers.
The Fox executives probably didn’t say “If November’s sleeping with Ballard we want her re-cast, because otherwise she won’t make women feel bad enough about themselves.” The process has probably got more complicated sine the 1950s, but the process will have remained the same. Researchers and marketers will tell the networks what the advertisers want them to hear.
The range of bodies that get shown on TV is so narrow, that Miracle Laurie has been trumpeted as exceptional. She was asked what it felt to look different from other women on set – as if the difference between a size zero or two and a size six or eight or whatever was a rubicon between the normal and the great unknown and unaccepted. She answered:
Let me start by saying thank you to those of you who have said ridiculously kind and sweet things about my work on the show, but also about my figure. It’s a very satisfying feeling to have one of the most influential creators, producers and writers in the industry fight to have “normal-sized women” on his shows. To have Joss Whedon say, “You’re beautiful, sexy, strong and normal and there should be more women like you on TV and I don’t know why there aren’t” feels incredible, as you could imagine. I think everyone wants to be skinnier than they are, it’s just the way it is
That Miracle Laurie is an exception when it comes to the amount of space women are allowed to take up on screen is ridiculous. That this is how far Joss Whedon can get when he fights is an indictment on the industry. Television can portray many things – but it needs to deliver an audience in a frame of mind to buy stuff - and self-hatred is a starting point advertisers love.
******
At comicon Joss was asked why he was fascinated by the idea of The Dollhouse:
Have you been in America? I mean I like to consider a myself great documentarian. The entire structure is designed to mess with your mind to combined selling you things with entertaining you. To keep you in line, to think that you need the thigns they want you to need, and to stay away from the things they want you to stay away from. To keep them in power, to share none of it. This is all happening. There are lights in the darkness. The art that we get to create because the powerful patrons let us is one of them. But sometimes, yeah, it’s like running the daycare on the death-star.
I love Joss; I love the television he creates. I’m convinced his politics have got more radical and outspoken since the writers strike, which is awesome. And if this speech is a tad self-indulgent, I’d be self-indulgent too if I got treated the way Joss gets treated at Comic-con.
“If I go to the debate on pornography, I’ll just fume about the fact that everyone’s got stupid analysis but me.” I said that a couple of months ago, and I was joking, but only a little bit.
Feminist discussions on sexually explicit material tend to be heated, and change no-one’s mind. The latest discussions on The Hand Mirror have followed this pattern. I want to explore why.
Media that has been created for the purpose of sexual arousal and produced to be bought and sold (which is a mouthful, but I think more precise than ‘pornography’) sits at an intersection: Desire, sex, the construction of men’s sexuality, the construction of women’s sexuality, bodies, work, the role of the state, objectification, the creation of rape culture and commodification (and much more, those are just what’s on top for me).
It only takes small differences in feminists’ analysis, weighting or experience of a couple of these before they’re coming at the issue that we call ‘pornography’ from completely different angles.
As well as making the issue complicated, these many facets also mean that those no such thing as a disinterested party. Everyone has a stake in what is being discussed, but what is most triggering about the discussion about sexually explicit material varies widely.
To simplify one example more than is really justified: discussions of sexually explicit material may trigger some women’s experiences of having their sexuality and desire denied, while the same discussion might trigger other women’s experience of having other people’s sexuality or desire forced on them. (I don’t mean this as a dichotomy, just an example of the sorts of talking past that can happen in these discussions).
I think it’s very difficult even to talk about, or articulate any of this, because the vocabulary we have around sexually explicit media is so limited. The distinctions I think need to be made about are numerous and complex: Was it made by an individual expressing their personal desires? Was it made to be bought and sold? Did everyone involve in making it give genuine consent? Does it normalise misogynist ideas about women, women’s sexuality, women’s bodies, or sex? Do they normalise racist ideas about any group of women or men, their bodies or sexuality? Does it normalise a limited view of human sex or sexuality? How do the ideas it contains interact with rape culture? Does it normalise a particular type of body?
Now the answer to most mass-produced mainstream pornography from Ralph to are yes (or no depending on the question). But my point is that these are different questions, and they’re different again from:
What do we do about it all? What do we expect other organisation, or the state to do about it all?
Those are just my questions, I’m sure other people have different ones (I’m sure I’d have different ones if I wrote them on a different day, after reading different material). Unless we are clear about what exactly we’re talking about, unless we actively try and overcome the difficulties I’ve outlined, we’ll never have anything useful to say.
I wrote this post - I decided to continue talking about pornography, despite my cynicism, because I think it’s important. I think untangling these threads, understanding the role of sexually explicit material in women’s oppression is vital. I think the first answer to the question: ‘what is to be done?’ Is that we have to figure out how to talk about this.
I am so excited about having a new Joss Whedon TV show (even though I haven't been able to write anything else, because I've been planning this epic review. I may need to make the reviews a little less epic, if I'm going to ever blog about anything but Joss). Even though dollhouse is not great, by any stretch of the imagination, I've missed having a show to watch every week, and there's huge potential.
I thought this episode was a huge step up over the second pilot (and not as good as the script from the pilot that they scrapped, but that's the great minds of Fox executives for you). In particular the main plotline wasn't deathly boring, and there was some connection between that plotline and what we learned about the dollhouse. It seemed to show exactly how much they could fit in an episode, and how much richer the episodes are when they're full.
Plus it seemed more like a Joss show in general, it was more twisty, and the dialogue was snappier ("Four brother, none of the democrats" being the standout line). I thought the crash cut between the shooting of the deer and the sex, was obvious, but in keeping with the themes of the episode.
Clearly the heart of the episode was about Echo's relationship with Boyd, and how he came to see her as human. I thought they tied the threads in together thematically really well, with the violence of Alpha reflecting (and possibly not just metaphorically) the psychopath's mission. We learnt more about how the dollhouse operated quite organically.
Most importantly I really liked that they showed that Echo and Boyd's relationship had started off with him contemptuous of her. To get explicitly political: The dollhouse was trying to divide it's employees - the actives and the minders - by encouraging the minders pre-existing inclination to see the actives as lesser. To see Boyd and Echo overcome that was pretty awesome.
The big question for me is the politics of the engagement. One of the big questions that other people have asked is: 'what makes depicitions of sexual predatory exploitative?' and 'does the fact that the woman wins in the end matter?'. And I can't really comment that much, because I don't watch the crime shows and horror movies where this sort of stuff happens, so I don't really have a feel for the parameters. As a single episode this didn't bother me from that perspective, although I would have a big problem if it happened all the time. But that might change if I knew just how bad things are in the land of TV and movies I don't watch.
The question I was more interested in was about the psychopath. I saw his psychopathic behaviour as a natural extension of buying the perfect woman. If you see people as commodities to be brought to order then of course you want to test them, of course you see them as yours. But another reading could be to see the fact that he's a psychopath as endorsing what went before. "Well it's a problem now he's trying to kill her, but building her to spec is totally shiny."
Having rewatched the ep, I think the show did actively undermine the second reading and support the idea that wanting to buy someone was part of him being a psychopath. In particular, he comes across as creepy from the first moment and his entitled misogyny is apparent from the way he talks about women with Adele. Although any understanding of this episode is challenged by the revelations about the psychopath's connection with Alpha, and my reading could be uncompatible with what will be revealed in future episodes (which was the one thing I didn't like about the way the stories came together, I liked the psychopath as a psychopath and wouldn't like anything to undermine that).
The point of the story turned out to be that Echo overcame her programming in her relationship with Boyd. I think that that, combined with the fact that the psychopath is portrayed as an extension of men who feel entitled to women's bodies, makes me more generous towards the general creepiness of men writing stories about men who want to kill women. But I would be worried if it was going to be like this lots.
Although this episode was much stronger than the pilot, I think the show still has a long way to go. I'm still unconvinced about Eliza Dushku's acting range. Although I don't think the scripts really helped her. The two male fantasy characters she's played in the first two eps are Faith like (you can imagine either one of them saying "I've got mad skills" like Faith to Robin in the final of Chosen). I think she's doing an excellent job as Echo, unimprinted, but I'm not sure about the idea that she can be anyone.
The FBI plotline just goes from bad to worse. You can tell that the writers on dollhouse have spent their entire writing life constructing plotlines where they get to set the rules "Don't touch the Flabotinum in jar C "*, and don't know how to make plots from real life. It's not just that everything they know about cop-shows they've learned from other cop shows. It's not even that they're telling a story about a cop and have no interest in cops and nothing to say about cops (and I've watched the Wire, they've watched The Wire, there's no excuse). It's that they don't seem to care that they're regurgitating scenes we've all seen hundreds of times before.
I actually enjoyed Lasagne girl AKA Mellie. But I was more than a little distracted that this was the woman who was originally cast as November. The casting description called for:
20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy.
And like a chump I got all excited, just like I did when Kaylee was described as zaftig in the Firefly pilot(and I'm not saying a word about Jewel Staite who was unbelievably awesome as Kaylee). I knew that they'd cast Miracle Laurie, so I wasn't surprised when I saw her, but I still spent most of that scene going "What?". I think it was underlined by the fact that the costuming people appear to have taken the same tack the Buffy people did with Tara "This is a real person, she will wear real people clothes that emphasise her real-ness".**
I forget what the point of this rant was? I'll be interested to see where Mellie goes, but her character will have to develop quite a way before I stop ranting in my head everytime she's on screen.
It was really noticeable to me that this episode did not pass the Bechedel test (none of the female characters talked to each other). More than that the women in Dollhouse don't seem to have relationships with each other, in the way Topher*** and Boyd do (or Boyd and Echo) do. While I'm hopeful that Sierra and Echo will develop some sort of relationship, that'll be long and slow. All the other female characters seem very isolated from each other. But, unlike on say Battlestar Galactica, where you got the feeling there must have been heaps of relationships between women that existed and the show just really wasn't interested in them, I can believe that the women who work in the dollhouse are atomised, it seems like the place that would do that to people. I think that could be interesting, as long as they show the relationships developing over time (and at this point Adele DeWitt and Dr Saunders could have a huge history, but we wouldn't know abuot it).
I'm worried about different things than I was after the first episode. I think this episode showed that they could write an interesting stand-alone story, that we weren't just going to be bored with a procedural of the week.
But, in my head Echo's coming to conciousness would be about forming relationships with other people.**** And in this episode it seems to be about violence. The first sign we had that she remember everything was the horrific-ness of "shoulder to the wheel/do you deserve to live." It seems to undermine the idea that she's overcoming her programming if all she takes with her is something from one of her programmers.
This episode was, for me, still more rocket launchers than emotional resonance.***** The Echo/Boyd plotline was cool, but it didn't hit me in the gut. It was a story about trust and a growing relationship, but it seems strange and unusual, not resonant. I think the premise is very rich in emotional resonance, but mining it might be a challenge, because the leap to ideniify with an Active, or someone's relationship with one, is a big one.
It's frustrating, because the more I watch and think about the dollhouse, the more excited I am about the premise. Because at it's heart it is a criticism of commodification, and (presumably) a statement that people cannot be commodified. It could be an amazing statement about resistance. And I know Joss's work well enough to be reasonably confident that that will be part of the story he's trying to tell (but probably not all of it). I'm just worried that Fox was more into the sex and violence, and not at all into the collective resistance, and they're going to cancel it before we get to see the bits that I'm most interested in.
* A term the Buffy writers coined to refer to the magic plots which they could just make each week since they controlled the whole universe.
** Although the costumes are in general miles better than Buffy, where all the women had ridiculously large wardrobes and wore even more ridiculous and unsuitable clothes (remember when Willow skinned a muppet and wore it for a vest). On Dollhouse the clothes are stylie and all but they also seem to serve the story, rather than just be things the actresses want to wear. Also I've wanted almost every top Adele DeWitt has worn.
*** Confession: I find Topher really engaging. Clearly he's an absolutely asshole, but particularly in his relationship with Boyd, I find him really watchable. I think it's at least partly because he's an archetype Jossian character surrounded mainly by normal people. I've got kind of addicted to people who talk funny and it's nice having one on my TV.
*** I think this is influenced by the unaired pilot, where the first sign we're given that Echo is coming to awareness is that she's grouping with two of the other dolls.
***** For those less obsessed than me in the commentary to Innocence Joss said that the two most important things in the work that he does were emotional resonance and rocket-launchers. Innocence certainly has an abundance of both.
I've really enjoyed the Buffy comics, even though I stopped reviewing them. After a while there are so many ways you can say "It's great that Buffy had sex with someone that I don't hate so much I would like to pickle them in brine, but do they have to draw all the women looking the same?"
What draws me back to talking about the Buffy comics isn't the series itself (although it's getting really interesting and exciting), but the letters column at the back of last month's issue (the Harmony issue for those who subscribe). The last letter in the column said:
I'm not loving the way the characters are drawn. I know they're comics and that's how men typically draw women in comics, but why does Buffy have such a tiny waist and such large breasts? Seeing the way she was drawn in #10 was a real let down; Buffy looked more like Heidi Montag of Jenna Jameson than Buffy. I don't have anything against a tiny Waist (I have one myself!) or large breasts (okay, those I don't have, as most women with tiny waists don't have naturally. But it was disappointing to see Buffy have an unrealistic, unattainable, Barbie-esque body type. I don't understand why Buffy's looks are clearly modelled after Sarah Michelle Gellar, but someone decided to inflate her chest.
I wish I had a scanner so I could show you the image she was talking about, but I'm sure you can imagine it. I want to draw attention to how specific the author's point is. You could write, but all she is saying that in the comics female character's waists have got smaller and their breasts have got larger.
You can tell the reply is going to be full of weasaling because Scott Allie immediately turns over the replyto one of the few women who work on the comics.* Sierra Huhn an assisstant editor spends the first few sentances blathering on about how Buffy is much better than other comics, because the women don't have big breasts and itty-bitty waists (she clearly didn't look at the first frame of #10 before she wrote that.
She ends with the mealy mouthed "The last thing we want is for anyone who reads this comic, or works on this comic, to feel like we're in the business of exploiting women" (acutally the last thing she says is 'yay Buffy means more women read comics', which is so irrelevant that I'm ignoring it). Which is nice side-stepping what was actually brought up (the original letter didn't mention exploitative. It's also an interesting rhetorical technique when the facts are against you (the way women look in the comics is limited and emphasises extreme hour glass figures) you say "I don't mean to make people feel that way" - shifting the topic from what exists to other people's feelings.
But it's in the middle that she gets really offensive:
It's true most of the characters are attractive (have you seen the show?), and thin (Slayers ahve to follow a pretty strenuous exercise program...just saying'...), and sometimes Buffy may be more buxom from one issue to the next. It happens. But not unrealistically so, and not all the time.
Because we all know training regiemes give women large breasts and small waists (you think slayers spend hours doing the "I must, I must, I must, increase my bust arm thrusts?). It's a ridiculous and insulting answer to a serious question.
That's not even what I object most to what she says. It's that she's stepping on the greatest moment of the history of TV.
Those of you who watched the show will remember Buffy's last speech. For those who don't Buffy is talking about doing a spell to share her slayer power, with all the potentials all around the world (it's way cooler than I can make it sound in a sentence). And as she was doing this there is a series of images of girls becoming slayers, at school, at home, and on a baseball diamond. It means a lot more if you've watched the show, but you get the idea.
One of the slayers is fat. She isn't not-skinny, she isn't hollywood fat, she isn't a size twelve, she takes up space. And she stands up and uses her body and her strength to stop stops the man who is trying to hurt her. Meanwhile we hear Buffy's voice saying "Everyone who can stand up; will stand up."
Why haven't we seen her in the Season 8 comics yet? Don't tell me that she started a strenuous exercise programme and now she's got a tiny waist (her boobs would presumably be the same size) and is one of the many identical looking slayers you see in the background, because I will hurt you.
* There have been eleven men and one women involved in producing the art of the comics (that's pencils inks colours and letters) and five men and one woman have written scripts. Jo Chen does most of the covers, and the designer has always been female. Listed in the front is three editorial staff and a publisher. The Publisher and Editor are both male, but usually one of the editorial staff is female. I say this not because I necessarily think the comics would look any different if they had more women involved in their creation, but to point out that given how few women are involved in producing the comics to put one forward to justify the way women's bodies are drawn is tokenism of the worst sort.
** Random piece of Buffy trivia - that was the last shot of Buffy Joss ever shot.
So as I said, I'm going to take a break from writing about abolishing prisons and ending violence against women, to write about something else, which is almost as important to me: Joss Whedon.
His new show, Dollhouse, airs tomorrow in the states (well technically it's today, the timezones get complicated, anyway I'll watch it in my tomorrow). So in honour of that I thought I'd put together some of the awesome things Joss Whedon has written or said - a 'loving Joss for beginners'. There's heaps more - I've kind of left out the funny and focused on the awesomely political. But I need to go to bed.
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"But that's not the point. There's always a name. Lincoln. Hitler. Ghandi. The name can inspire terror, awe, sometimes great things. But there's milions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn't imagine they would. In the moments that matter even our own names are just sounds people make to tell us apart. What we are isn't that.
The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my Sisters? My comrades, children, slim slug clan... There's a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that." -The Chain, Buffy Season 8
"Dateline September 2007, things are looking grim in the negotiations between the writers and the studios. AMPTP spokesman Nicholas Counter says quote I will grind the writers guild into a fine paste cut it with baby powder and sell it to underprivileged kids end quote." Commentary the Musical (there's a strike song, who knew I'd ever get a Joss strike song?)
"You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own." - Buffy, Earshot (I know Jane Espenson wrote the episode, but this speech was Joss)
"Get the word out, remind everyone that corporate greed (it's nothing but) is hurting everyone in this country. Not just because they're robbing people of entertainment (and, on occasion, art) and strangling an entire (non-writing) community, but because they're sending a message to every union in the country: you're next. The actors know that in their case, it's literally true, but it's also true for the concept of a unionized workforce. We get a lot of flack for being well-fed, glamorous, rich and powerful. We've worked hard to dispel that stereotype but in fact, a select few of us are wealthy and influential. And we have the support of some of the most famous and beloved (and wealthy and influential) people in the country: TV and movie stars! So the fact that the studios feel perfectly comfortable SPITTING IN OUR FACES in front of the whole world cannot bode well for any other union that works under them -- or under anyone who sees how easy it is to deny the basic rights of workers even so public as we. This is bad for writers, bad for actors, teamsters, teachers, nurses, dockworkers... the shape of this country is changing. The middle class is being squeezed out. We're trundling back to the middle ages, people, and all we can do is lie there and take it.
But of course, that's not what's going to happen. The studios mean to starve us out. They can't. We know what's at stake. We take care of our own, and those around us who aren't our own." - At Whedonesque on the writers strike.
"It's the only way. For our planet, for our people. For every mother holding her newborn child.
"I don't want it to have my name on it if it doesn't reflect what I want to say. Because once you get to the position of actually getting to say something, which is a level most writers never even get to, and is a great blessing, you then have to worry about what it is you're actually saying. I don't want some crappy reactionary show under the Buffy name. If my name's going to be on it, it should be mine. Now, the books I have nothing to do with, and I've never read them. They could be, "Buffy realized that abortion was wrong!" and I would have no idea. So, after my big, heartfelt, teary speech, I realize that I was once again lying. But I sort of drew the line. I was like, "I can't possibly read these books!" But my name just goes on them as the person who created Buffy." - Interview with The Av Club
"You have gross emotional problems and things are not OK between us."* - Willow, Innocence (I've always kind of wanted to say this to someone, which if you think about it is one of the most stupid ambitions ever. My life needs less emo dramas not more.)
Crochet Me interviewer: "So, crafty people often feel like they have to let their materials behave and become what they want to be, even if it's not what we had in mind to begin with. Do you feel that's somewhat similar sometimes in how you write characters and plot lines?"
Joss: "You're going to need to meet the materials halfway. Yes, you definitely want every skein of yarn to do exactly what you have in mind, but they never will. And that's part of what makes it beautiful. That's part of what makes it not working in a factory. And every actor is going to bring something to the party, and I'm going to embrace what they're bringing as fucking hard as I can as long as it doesn't hurt the narrative, so that it becomes something more than just an idea I had that somebody acted out. You have to remember that if the thing isn't slightly out of control, it ain't art. Or [muffled] craft." - Interview with Crochet Me (I actually just included this one because I knit and it excites me to year of Joss talk of yarn)
"With me? You mean to say, as, sex? Hell with this. I'm going to live." -Kaylee, Serenity
"Well, you know, I'm sure I'm going to bring down News Corp with Dollhouse. Hmmm—maybe you shouldn't quote that. I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Murdoch's politics, God knows, or his methods. But I've been at Fox on and off for practically the whole of my career. Am I the biggest hypocrite in the world for taking their money? Am I doing any good? Or am I working for Wolfram and Hart?" - Interview with Mother Jones (listen to it it's awesome, even though the interviewer is idiotic enough to ask Joss who he thinks has suffered more the black man or the white woman).
"In every generation one Slayer is born because a bunch of guys that died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. (points to Willow) This woman is more powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rules. I say my power should be our power. Tomorrow Willow will use the essence of this scythe, that contains the energy and history of so many Slayers, to change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer. Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Who can stand up, will stand up. Every one of you, and girls we've never known, and generations to come... they will have strength they never dreamed of, and more than that, they will have each other. Slayers. Every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?" - Buffy, Chosen (Shooting Script)
1. On the discussions about Police Orders there's been a lot of discussions about the problems that could come about if people were ordered to leave their house for five days. Issues such as the fact that the police have no obligation to ensure that people are dressed let alone they have a wallet, have been raised.
There seems to be an assumption that ignoring these issues would be irregular or unusual. My experience of the police and justice system would be that this is a false assumption. I know people who were arrested at 6am in Wellington and then released on bail four weeks later on a Friday at 5pm in Auckland, from the side of the court house. They weren't given their original clothes back, let alone their wallets, so they had neither money or ID. To assume that the police only occasionally ignore the needs of those they label as criminal is naieve for the extreme.
2. One thing that I want to make very clear from the beginning (and will discuss from several different angles later on) is that I'm not making any argument about what women who have been raped or abused should do. I don't think any women who is considering how to respond to her abuse should listen to a word I say.
More than that, I would not rule out going to the police and justice system myself (in fact I'vedone it). And I would certainly testify if asked.
Louise Nicholas showed that the justice system can be a platform.
I want to make this explicit, because it's too common for political analysis to be taken as an argument that individuals could change by acting differently. That's not something I believe in general.
In my previous post, I didn't deal with prisons as a feminist issue, or the effect of prisons on women. Prisons are a deeply gendered phenomenon, and their effect on men is fairly widely known (they go to prison). I think that aspect of the gendered nature of prisons makes it easy for feminists to put a 'someone else's problem' field around the issue. But I think this ignores some important aspects of women and the prison system.
Men who are in prison are a feminist issue, because of the impact their imprisonment has the lives of the women who love or need them. The vast majority of the work of having someone in prison, is done by women. Visiting, bringing children to visit, providing money and phone cards and the things that ease prison life, this is done by women. I'm not yet in a space where I can write about that with any kind of distance. I'm not sure I ever will be. It's over a year since I set foot near a prison and I still identify so strongly with the women that I queued behind and visited with. I think I'll have to let my previous post on this issue explain some of what I have to say for this.
Women in prison are also a feminist issue although they are a tiny minority of the prison population as a whole (although I think that percentage of prisoners who are women is increasing in many NZ and the US, and probably other countries with similar prison policies). Like the men in prison, women in prison are not just chosen as a random sampling of the female population, but tend to be poor, and non-white.
But prison is more gendered than that, and women in prison are not just the female version of men who are in prison. Women in prison are very likely to have been on the receiving end of violence against women, and on the receiving end of abuse, misogyny and control. There is often a path between women in prison's experience of abuse and being in prison.
Women also get considerable less support in prison than men (I wrote a post about this here which is based on my experiences of visiting at women's prisons). So the experience of being in prison is more isolating for women than it is for men, and women have less to call on when they get out of prison than men.
I might later try and write about the implications of being under complete control in prison for women who have been in abusive relationships (but I may not, because it is so far away from anything I know). But I think it's an important thing to think about, when conceptualising feminism and prisons.
So to ignore prisons as a feminist issue is to abandon the women who are in prison. Feminists who support the prison system (and I am planning to discuss the ways feminists uphold the prison system) abandon these women as collateral damage. I don't think that's acceptable.
It's a very loaded word 'sexy'. And I've been thinking about it since reading a post on Yes Means Yes, about striptease aerobics (admittedly a topic I know nothing about). Jacinda, who wrote the post, enjoys the classes, they make her feel sexy, and she's trying to unpack that.
To be seen as sexy by someone else is something that can happen regardless of gender. And any one can feel sexy as in horny. But it is women's role that means that being desired (or desireable) is something that you feel. Women's sexuality or our own desiring, is deliberately muddled with being desired.
Which isn't to say that I think it's anti-feminist to go to a pole dancing class. Because my politics are not about individual's actions, and if people enjoy pole dancing classes they enjoy pole dancing classes. But I think feminists should be extremely critical of institutions that reinforce this dynamic of women as desired rather than desiring. It underpins so much of our ideas about sex and rape.
But that's not what motivated me to post (for the second time in a week). What I wanted to respond to was her conclusion:
What I do struggle with, though, is the idea of sexiness. When we say these classes make women feel sexy how exactly are we defining that word? Does sexy simply mean men want me or does sexy mean I love my body because it’s healthy and strong and because I can have fun with it doing things like these over-the-top dances.
I find the first option much much less problematic than the second. Because in attempt to re-frame 'sexy' she's actually reinforcing really narrow views of acceptable (let alone sexy) bodies. Because not everyone's body is healthy and strong, and not everyone can do any particular dance move.
That's not a better way of understanding the meaning of 'sexy', it's a worse one. Firstly because it's dishonest, as it hides the actual dynamic of the way women are framed as sex. And secondly because society has already slammed the door on many sorts of bodies being sexy, and this idea sits with the back to the door and tries to keep it shut.
There is no shame in feeling good because you feel desired, and there's no shame in loving your body for what it can do. But the second is no more a liberatory political position than the first.
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
Pat Robertson - 1992 Republican National Convention