Beyond Feminism

Let me share with you my last brainstorm. Earlier today I had an “AHA” moment. I discovered a missing link in the reason for the existence of what I’ll be calling the Fake Boob Phenomenon.

Fake Boob Phenomenon: The cultural and social representation of an artificial form of the female chest. Though present throughout western history, it has been markedly stronger with the advancement of the Malestream Media. The main consequences of the Fake Boob Phenomenon is the mismatch between what people, especially men, believe the female chest to look like and what it actually looks like.

(Brought to you by the Radical Feminist Pocket Book of “Super Secret Radical Feminist Code Words”)

In other words, the insistence of the graphic portion of the Malestream Media to depict boobs as ingravid, solid, in your face and of the size of a small planet. Through history boobs have been squeezed in, squeed up, squeezed out; anything but being left alone.
See, the respectable EvoPsychos have kindly explained to us that the Fake Boob Phenomenon responds to men’s natural, biological attraction to Fake Boobs. The reason is because those are preciely the boobs which belong to the youngest and, therefore, most fertile of females. Except, that the don’t. And I’m going to kindly explain to the EvoPsychos why.
In short, because supposedly “young” and supposedly “fertile” women don’t have ingravid, solid, in your face and of the size of a small planet boobs. It’s a myth created by those who don’t actually have boobs but like to look at them, which are usually men. And so the Fake Boob Phenomenon has no “natural” explanation.
I am quite sure that it must respond to some kind of fetishism that I don’t have the capacity to discover by myself (we’d probably need a feminist equivalent of Marx for that). What I have discovered is this: boobs are supposed to look like anything other than what they actually are. Because natural boobs are not “different enough” to what men have on their own chests. It takes very little for men’s chest to start resembling women’s (at least at some point of the boob developing stages), and most of them inevitably will, sooner or later. Which seems logical, since boobs are little more than men’s boobs with slightly more fat tissue in them. But this is not different enough. Which leads me to think that part of the attraction of men to women and of women to men lies in the “difference”. A difference that is very small in reality but is magnified by culture and society’s depictions and expectations of what women and men should look like. It’s the difference that is erotized, not the actual bodies. And since it’s women’s prerogative to attract men in a patriarchal society, it is women’s jobs to differentiate from men. That’s why women who haven’t done the patriarchal duty of beautifying themselves are said to resemble “men”. It’s because without artificial intervention, women DO resemble men.
Now, this is when you tell me, “Duh, Mary, there’s a hundred feminists who have been saying that for two hundred years”. And I responde, “Please, tell me where”. This “erotization of the difference” cannot be my “discovery”, but I cannot think of who has covered it before.

I was thinking about writing a review of the new Sex and the City movie. That was until I read other people doing a much better job than I could. But still, if there is something I can add to the debate…

I didn’t find that much “glamour” or “fashion” in the movie, but that may be because I don’t register it. (The “fashionz-omgz” gene is missing in my genetic make up). One of the characters even poos her pants, literally. And for a “romantic comedy”, the movie was quite dark. Carrie spends most of the movie trying to put her life together, same as Miranda. And Samantha goes through a life crisis, despite it being presented in a “silly” kinda way.
The main reason why I liked the movie is because it delivered a good dose of that which I have always looked for when watching the serie: female friendship. For me, SATC is one big, shiny beacon of female friendship. I have never experienced that kind of relationships and I truly enjoy catching a glimpse of that world. It makes my heart warm and fuzzy and it fills me with hope to see friends being so close, loving, caring and suporting of each other. More so when thinks about the differences in character and beliefs between them. I do not know if the female friendship in SATC can correlate to the real world, but I like to believe it can.

So, for me this portrayal of female friendship is enough to balance out all the other questionable aspects in the feminist, leftist department.

THAT said. Has anyone had any doubt that anything remotely woman-oriented will be easy target for media misogyny? Exactly. Shakesville has done a great job in tackling this here, here, here and here.

I’m gonna focus on one aspect: frivolous and shallow, two terms I’ve heard being used to describe the characters and therefore, the movie. In the privacy of my own mind, my response to these comments are “shut up, you narrow-minded cock sock-puppet!!!”. But I cannot leave it at that in my blog, can I?
What an annoying example of the double standard used for men and women. It’s the pot calling the kettle black. (note: kettles are female). When was the last time anyone ever heard of a male character described as frivolous or shallow? And it’s not because of a lack of examples in the movie industry. From Superbad and Knocked Up all the way to Superman, Spiderman, Batman and every single “something”-man ever created. And those out of the mill movies with gangsters, mafias, spies and the lot, always the same, always men killing and blowing stuff up? Are any of these movies examples of the epitome of human achievement? The pinacle of grace and art? An invitation to analysis and debate? Of course not. They are exactly what 99% of today’s movies are supposed to be: a quick buck. Even those movies which are held up for their “wonderfulness” by (male) movie critics, the ones who get awards and “hoos” and “haas” consist of a strong combination of mindless, pointless violence and/or sex-a-plenty. The public is so apathic and numb that the only way to get his attention is to throw a good dose of violence and sex down his nervous system. The reason for the violence and sex is irrelevant; in fact it may not even be there. Quantum Tarantela has made his entire career out of this. Violence for the sake of violence, no one ever questioning the motives behind it. I don’t know you, but I would call that SHALLOW. This is the worse kind of shallow. It’s shallow that stands one step away from actual condining of violence.
To say nothing of the sex depicted in these movies. Always misogynistic, always predatory, always for the pleasure of the man, always… how could I call it? Oh yes, SHALLOW.

I’ve tried to explain this fenomenon before: you can focus on anything you want, as long as you don’t upset the peoples in power. So in reality, you cannot focus on anything.

As for frivolous, we already know how that works, don’t we? If it’s men’s it’s important stuff, if it’s women’s it’s irrelevant. Even if men’s stuff is composed of football, motorbikes and videogames. All of which I would rate at the same level of importance as shoes and handbags.

Is the SATC movie shallow? Sure. But show me a movie made in the past 50 years that isn’t.
If men want to use the terms “shallow and frivolous” to describe movies aimed at women, they should start with the movies aimed at them, a good 98% of the industry’s gross production.

I, personally, will choose female-friendship based “shallow” over “violent shallow” any time.

Last week I posted a half-arsed comic featuring three female celebrities. I’ve been criticised for this on several accounts and since I haven’t given any words on the post itself, here’s are my thoughts on the whole subject.

Let’s start off with what I am actually laughing at on the images.
a) The tables in society are suddenly turned and Madonna has to respond to the new people in power, The Feminists, and explain the reasons for her anti-feminism. I like this one the most and so this is the one I am more eager to defend.
b) Beyonce, in a continuing effort to appear smiling at all times, has pulled out a funny face. I make fun of the fact that she doesn’t seem to want to be seen non smiling, so much so that a funny smiling face which reeks of a pose is better for her than no smile at all.
c) Scarlett’s pose is, frankly, ridiculous. Her eyes are vacuous and her is mouth opened for no good reason in a good impersonation of “The Fuck Me Look”, her hair is floating and her bag is up in the air. Sheer nonsense in any normal life situation.

Now onto the wider topic of why I think it’s OK to laugh at and criticise female celebrities. In short words: because they hurt us all.
Let’s start with a quote I already quoted in what later became this blog’s most popular post for entirely un-feministy reasons.
It’s by Gail Dines, and I’m just gonna include the last bit:

“(…) When Madonna goes out, and talks about women and puts out the message that women are exactly as men thought they are (pornographic men), it’s all right for Madonna to say that, cuz’ you know what, she travels with beefy guys who protect her. It’s you and I walking in that fucking parking lot at night that have to deal with the guys who believe this. So that’s the problem when women talk about their choices is that every single one of us suffers in some level.”

I don’t think I can improve on what she’s said, but I’ll try.
First, I shoudl perhaps add that I have left out a small piece of Dines’ speech, seeing as she didn’t go on through that path. But her exact words were “when Madonna, in her “feminist” way, goes out …”. That detail is important to understand why I consider Madonna te be one of the greatest anti-feminist woman of our time: precisely because she dresses up her anti-feminism as feminism. But let’s go on.

This story is very old. People from oppressed minorities and groups sideline with the oppressor to obtain personal advantages at the expense of their own group. It’s a tactic that feminists understand very well. And it’s precisely the reason why feminists feel they can criticize blatant anti-feminist women like the worm who wrote that vile stuffed column about how women are really REALLY sucky. They have betrayed us, and the loyalty we reserve for each other is, thus, gone. And, I think, rightly so.

Now, why do I think that female celebrities, for the most part, have “sidelined with the oppressor to obtain personal advantages”? Well, because their entire “celebritiy” status, the basis of their career, is precisely that of “being there for the menz”. If you magically removed menz from the equation, this women’s status would fall to pieces. They are embracing and encouraging patriarchal attitudes which have and continue to hurt women everywhere. Namely that we, women, are a sexual tool for men’s fantasies, that we are all “gagging for it”, that the sole purpose of our existence is to have men come and take us. What I call “making men’s balls jingle”.
Madonna has based her entire career on it. Well, that and creating pointless controversy, but let’s leave that aside for the moment. She didn’t have a “point” when she started and she doesn’t have it now. Her goal wasn’t for women to be sexually confidence, or for sex to be less taboo. Because she continues to carry on with the same poisonous attitude today. Without her talent to make men’s balls jingle, she would have never gotten anywhere.
Beyonce and Scarlett are just smaller examples of the same thing. One is a porno-pop-star, the other is a porno-pop-actress. What do I mean by that? That their success is based mainly in their ability to sell “sex”. Like porn-actresses, though less explicit, their goal is the same: making men’s balls jingle. Without that, they wouldn’t have gotten far either.

All of this has many effects. The main one is to condone the prevalent idea that women are here for men’s visual pleasure. This, in turn, affects the conditions of women everywhere. From sexual assault to campaigning for president, the whole perception of what women are is shaped constantly by the depictions of women like these. And they are complicit, there’s no way around it.
Another effect is to literally boycott the careers of talented women who refuse to play into this game. See, making men’s balls jingle might bring you fame and fortune, but it doesn’t get you silly little things like respect from your fellow women, recognition for your hard work and the always undervalued sense that you are doing something worth doing. If I may be allowed a moment of boldness, Billy Holiday and Aretha Franklin didn’t work as hard as they did so that Beyonce could become famous for her legs and arse.
Yet another effect is to make mere mortal women feel like shite. They present themselves as an impossible ideal, the underlying assumption being if THEY can be like this, then surely everyone can. One could say that this is not the celebrities’ fault; that this is all the doing of big corporations selling junk. But lo and behold, celebs do profit from this inmensely. They lend their faces to the big corporations so they can sell the junk. In this they are complicit. And we also have to consider how celebrities themselves are made up to look like something they are not through entirely artifical means. From make up and lighting to photoshop and surgery. We rarely hear them complaining about all this. What we DO hear is their blatant denial that they’ve had anything “done”. Way to go.

One last thing. I believe that this siding with the oppressor happens in all areas of life and is perhaps the main reason preventing women from marching as a whole to improve their situation. Which is why I am not willing to give any woman, celebrity or not, a pass just because they are women who suffer under patriarchy. We all suffer under patriarchy. And some of us pay an incredibly high price when we refuse to side with men.

People may say that criticizing female celebrities is not very useful. And I give you that. It does have the unwanted effect of removing men from the equation. I wish I could be a more positive person and use my abilities to help advance the feminist cause by bringing the spotlight to the people who are causing the real damage. I am aware of this, and, for what is worth, you have my word that I will try my best to change this aspect of myself.

I hope all of this has made my position somewhat clearer. You can disagree and that’s fine. I think the only thing we should restraing from is shutting up.

I have been reading, listening and watching Noam Chomsky lately (yes, I am a baby lefy feminist taking her first steps into the field of ideas). And because I believe strongly in passing the wisdom on, here I give you tiny snippets of his thoughs. If you can read the whole articles, that’s good and if you read his books, that’s even better. But if you can’t, like me, for whatever reason, then I strongly advice you to read this quotes, or, if you can’t, read my emphasis of them. They have clarified lots of things for me.

From “The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”

“The people in the public relations industry aren’t there for the fun of it. They’re doing
work. They’re trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you’re watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That’s all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there’s got to be something more in life than this, but since you’re watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy, because that’s all that’s going on over there. And since there is no organization permitted—that’s absolutely crucial—you never have a way of finding out whether you are crazy, and you just assume it, because it’s the natural thing to assume.”

From “What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream”

“”The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. (…) It’s dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don’t do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society.”
“When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, “nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure.” Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.”
“Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect the news to be like? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses. “
“The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo. If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere, and you study journalism and communications or academic political science, and so on, these questions are not likely to appear. (…) If you look at the institutional structure, you would say, yeah, sure, that’s got to happen because why should these guys want to be exposed? Why should they allow critical analysis of what they are up to take place? The answer is, there is no reason why they should allow that and, in fact, they don’t. Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is just that you don’t make it to those positions. That includes the left (what is called the left), as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately socialized and trained so that there are some thoughts you just don’t have, because if you did have them, you wouldn’t be there.”
“(…) By manufacturing consent, you can overcome the fact that formally a lot of people have the right to vote. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate. (…)”

This would be much funnier if it were less true.

Now, who thinks this stuff is good enough to appear on a feminist zine? Any ideas which one would be willing to publish it?

By now you have probably heard of a story you would have rather never have to hear in your whole life, not even in fictional form. If you have, it probably means you have kept an eye and an ear open to whatever the mainstream media considers worthy of inspecting instead of relying blindly on the blogosphere, particularly the feminist blogosphere, to fill you up on every day human miseries. As of this moment, Feministing, Feministe and Pandagon haven’t reported on it yet. But in case you haven’t, here’s some bloggy coverage of the case from feminist bloggers who have been paying some attention: Echidne of the Snakes and Louise Livesey, from The F Word.

There are simply no words to describe the emotional horror of this story, so I’m not even gonna try. There’s already enough people out there giving it a go only to be faced with the limitations of the human language with regards to emotions. Instead, I’m gonna do what I do best and what I (hope) is (sorta) the hallmark of this blog: I’m going to look at it from a different angle and point at the big, pink elephant in the room. Though in this case we could say we have a whole group of big, pink elephants.

There’s the “what about the menz” elephant which feminists are well known for bringing up. Funny how it’s always MEN doing the abuse and it’s always WOMEN (and children) enduring it.

There’s the tiny “he must have done something before” elephant, usually coming from the police headquarters. They all seem to agree that an abuse so horrific doesn’t spring from the ground. A few girls being molested here, a couple of women being raped there and before you know it, you are raping and abusing your own daughter and your own children/grandchildren for 24 years. Funny how this logical interpretation of climbing up the crime ladder into more and more horrific forms of torture is NEVER associated with either prostitution of pornography. As Louise says:

Whilst this is at one extreme of abusive and violent behaviour it’s just an example at one end of the continuum of violences women suffer daily.

(She makes the case that by excusing men’s violent behaviour “as far as I am concerned the public lose all moral ground on which to be outraged by this - you cannot defend other behaviours which express the same sentiments and then claim moral outrage at this”. It’s a fascinating idea I would like to expand on, but I will leave it for another post.)

And then there’s the WHITE WOMEN elephant. Funny how we only care about cases of abuse when it’s perpetrated upon white women in rich countries and we manage to ignore the sistematic abuse endured by millions of women the world over who have had the bad fortune to be born in poor countries and with the wrong skin colour. Congo and Darfur come to mind where, I insist, we are talking about thousands of women.
I’m gonna turn this elephant upside down and make it work in my favour. Kinda. The question I’m gonna ask is WHY AUSTRIA. It would be a pointless question, considering what I’ve already said, were it not because of the similarities of this case with another one that also occurred in Austria 2 years ago.
See, when you live in a “third world”, “undeveloped” country, you are always looking at the “first world”, “developed” countries for role model policies and guidance. So, how can something like this happen in Austria?
And what do I know of Austria, apart from the fact that it’s the setting of one of my all time favourite movies? Austria, a rich country in the middle of Europe filled with history and culture. A country always eager to remind us that one of the best musicians of all times, Amadeus Mozart, was born on its soil. A country which year after year hosts the strongly gender biased New Year Concert, the only concert the world, or the media, seem to care about. Such a model country! And yet… And yet they must be doing something very, very wrong.
Do I know what they are doing wrong? Hell no! I cannot know everything. And it’s not my place to know everything either. As I said, I don’t know much about Austria, aside from what we are supposed to know about Austria, meaning “holiday brochure” style information. But I do know that the it’s the media’s place to ASK QUESTIONS. Something they are NOT DOING. They have been trained to inform us, they are getting PAID to inform us, and they are not doing it right. This are the warning sings that something is wrong. This are the symptoms of a sick society. A very pretty snowy mountain tops painted society, but a sick society at the core. It is simply not good enough to throw our arms at the heavens and cry “well, human nature”. (Did you notice how, all of the sudden, it’s not a man’s world but a human’s world? How when men do something bad it’s always “humans” and when they do something good it’s always “men”? There’s another elephant right there).

As I said, something stinks in Austria. And they better start asking why. And the countries of the world that take Austria as a reliable role model also better start asking why. Something is very wrong with the world and not even the prettiest and richest of countires can escape it. And I think it’s about fricking time we stopped looking at this stories as “oddities” and started looking at them for what they really are: symptoms.

This is the first of what I fear will be a long series of posts accusing some particularly nasty form of misogyny I have encountered and that no one else seems to have noticed.

Today I bring you this pearl from “The Now Show”, a comedy programme for BBC Radio 4. That’s right, it’s paid by people’s taxes. As if that ever stopped anyone pumping sexism in the already saturated modern culture. And since The Now Show, despite being a part of the BBC AND of Radio 4, doesn’t seem to be very welcoming of criticism, ie: they don’t allow comments on their web site, I felt I had to make use of my little corner of the world to dump the manure that is crushing my sensitive heart and to DENOUNCE THE NOW SHOW FOR THEIR BLATANT.. how can I but it?… MISOGYNY.

“Prince William apparently used a 10 million pound REF (something or other) helicopter to get him and his brother to a stag night”

Way to go for the future king! He has to continue with a long tradition of denigrating women and he’s definitely catching up in his short, spoilt and otherwise entirely pointless existence. But this is not what has bugged me the most.

“(…) so we’ve asked our audience what’s the best perk of their job…”

Well, what did you expect? Some kind of QUESTIONING of the well approved and embraced nature of the stag night??? Of course not. They could have at least mentioned that going to a stag night doesn’t constitute part of either of the princes “jobs”, if they can be said to have ANY. But questioning ANYTHING seems to be out of modern society’s mental capabilities.

That’s why something like this can take place:

“… and I have to say they have responded magnificently to this. (…). What’s the best perk of your job? An endless sucession of hot babe eye-candy to oogle. Ever exploited it? No, I’m their teacher. “
*insane laugher and clapping from the audience ensues*.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain to anyone reading THIS blog WHY this kind of SHITE is NEGATIVE and, in now effing way, FUNNY. But apparently, everyone else in this world doesn’t seem to get it. Shame there’s very little chance of them coming across this blog or any other feminist blog for that matter.

Then we are all shocked when a peadophile makes it to the news. That includes the BBC news.

Or how this extreme commodification leaves us speechless.

From Wikipedia:

In Marxist political economy, commodification takes place when economic value is assigned to something not previously considered in economic terms; for example, an idea, identity, gender. So commodification refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-market areas, and to the treatment of things as if they were a tradeable commodity.

I have blogged previously about the commodification of all things human. It has just occured to me that this commodification acts to, indirectly, censor speech. Al least, intelligent, meaningful speech. It stems from the fact that no one touches the big guys that make the moneys. Let me make it clearer with an example. Imagine you are a radical feminist (not so hard to do) and that you magically land a job as a columnist for a popular women’s magazine like Cosmo (a bit harder to do). It’s your column, so you can write whatever you fancy. Or not. Any criticism of the fashion and beauty industries would have to stay out, since that is precisely where Cosmo gets its bucks from. By extension, any reference to the objectification of women, the idea that women are things, and sexual things at that, any condemning of the male gaze, would have to go as well. Let’s see. Happiness is a no-no area too, as Cosmo makes some money out of promising its readers they will be oh so happy if they only followed this handy dandy step-by-step guide included in the magazine which, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, is anything BUT true happiness. Self esteem and true love suffer the same fate. If you dared write anything meaningful about self esteem or true love, the only kind of writing worth doing, it will be tantamount to saying that because of their complexity they cannot be obtained through a simple step-by-step guide, which immediately blows the business away. And Sex! One of the very cornerstones of Cosmo. What on Earth could you posibly say about sex that doesn’t uncover the fallacy that is its commodification, the only vision of sex Cosmo could possibly ever have because its the only one that they can get money from. We are quickly running out of topics here. Cross over consumerism and capitalism, unless you are planning to write condoning them. (YUCK!) Ehmmm. Nature? Again, only if we stay within clearly defined boundaries. Namely, “you can only enjoy nature by going somewhere and spending money, here, we’ll show you how”. The same applies to food and art. Dude, I don’t know you, but I’ve run out of ideas already!

Now it’s easier to see where this is going. The main flaw within the mainstream media: speech is powered by money. Sure, you can think whatever you want, but you can’t actually SAY whatever you want because, sooner or later, you’ll reach the money making wall. And in time, this gets worse and worse because more things are turned into commodities. Things which are re-defined in “money making” terms, which you cannot question because “thou shall not get in the way of the money making”.
In time, we cannot express any ideas. In time, we run out of speech.

Every now and then, Feministing and I agree on something.

Much has been said on the subject of the so called “Gray Rape” invented by “Cosmo” magazine. Of course, I only limit myself to what the feminist rethoric makes of it, so, with this in mind, I summarize everyone’s opinion on it in two little letters: BS.

While I do agree with this cathegorical verdict, I have a tendency to pick up situations like this, turn them around in my hands and look at them from different angles.

The first thing I notice is how powerful “the Cosmo” lot are and how powerless WE, the real, breathing, living women are when confronting it.
What I find particularly painful is that a “woman’s” magazine spouts poisonous vile like this once and the whole world is turned upside down, so much so that even with all the feminists out there blogging together about it, their impact cannot possibly be large enough to put the world back in place. They have the moneys. They have the power.
This “Grey Rape Myth” is a perfect example of how “not guilty” the MSN is of shifting people’s ideas and perceptions. The MSM has no impact on people’s minds, no, none at all. And at any rate, they have our best interests at heart, so even if they did have an impact, which they don’t, it’s all good, because they know what’s best for us. Or so the brainwashing “free market laws” principle goes.

On a closely related note, I’ll attempt to answer the question raised by the author of the post.

“And the author of the article is a young college woman; why are young women buying into the myth? Is it because they don’t want to think it could happen to them?”

First, we don’t know if “young women” are buying into this, we only know that the author has. I wouldn’t put it past me that this is indeed the case, but I like to remain optimistic whenever I can. Though her question could mean “why is the author buying into the myth?”. And to this I do have something to say. I think the answer has to do with the discrimination women face when refusing to endorse the status quo. In the same way that amongst “the feminists”, radical feminists are ignored or dismissed. In the same way that anti-porn and anti-prostitution feminists are silenced in pro of the “sex-positives”. Whoever winks at the patriarchy the most, whoever rocks the boat the less, gets more brownie points. If this girl had instead pointed her finger at the men responsible for raping, she wouldn’t have gotten her article published, simple as that.

jfaustus, a commenter in feministing’s post, provides us with some interesting thoughts on this topic. I reproduce it here for your reading pleasure.

“I wrote in with:
Had to come back for a second helping. I just put my baby daughter to bed, and was thinking the entire time how desperately I want her to be able to grow up in a world where the kind of vicious, ignorant, destructive tropes you traffic in have ceased to exist. Where women don’t have to cut themselves walking the razor’s edge between being ‘desirable’ (wearing sexy clothes) and asking to be raped (wearing sexy clothes). Where women who opt out of the game aren’t called dyke bitches, or feminazis, or castrating man-haters, or whoresluts. Sound like an interesting world to you? We could get there, if the ignorant would stop blindly perpetuating the perception of women as unworthy of basic respect for the sanctity of their bodies.
Go crawl back under a rock and stop polluting my daughter’s world.”

He correctly notes that women who “opt out of the game” are ostracized by being labeled as “dyke bitches, or feminazis, or castrating man-haters, or whoresluts“. That is the fate of anyone who dares put the onus of rape in men’s hands. And I somehow cannot imagine these women given an inch of media to express their “feminazi” views.

One more twist of the “grey myth”-puzzle and we are done. And for this I shall be using the same comment stated above. Pay attention to this line, “Where women don’t have to cut themselves walking the razor’s edge between being ‘desirable’ (wearing sexy clothes) and asking to be raped (wearing sexy clothes).” What relation does this bare with Cosmo itself? Nothing more, nothing less than precisely Cosmo’s essential motto. The whole magazine is based on the premise of making the reader “desirable”. And they make no attempt to hide the intrinsic sexual nature of that “desirability”. From fashion and “tips to improve your body” all aimed at better pleasing men, whom are assumed to be the quintessencial judges of that “desirability”, all the way to sex techniques, ditto focused on their men-pleasing ability. There’s probably no other “women’s” magazine so strongly geared towards training women in the fine art of (pleasing men during) sexual intercourse. All this leads us to conclude that Cosmo is being extremely hipocritical. First, it stops short of telling women that being sexually promiscuous is the way to go; that looking sexually palatable is the only way to look good. And then it blames women for “getting themselves raped” out of acting in the exact way they promote?

Now you can understand why in this post the term “women’s” magazine has the word “women” between quotes.

I don’t think I need to say this, but just in case: WOMEN ARE NEVER RESPONSIBLE FOR BEING RAPED. MEN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR RAPING.

I have just stumbled across this article from Sarah Montague, from BBC Radio 4 titled “Is This Empowering?”. We feminists know that every so often someone will attempt at commenting on the new “Raunch Culture”, but fall shortly of really saying anything so as to not piss off the masses too much. This doesn’t seem to be justified, since the BBC is financially supported by the state and so doesn’t depend on people “liking” your product and “consuming” it. This attitude makes me cry at the top of my voice “Can you please stop trying to be “neutral”, a.k.a. “morally relativistic”, and give your DAMN opinion on something for a change?”.

This article is the most worthless use of media space I’ve seen in the whole day. The author isn’t:
a) Informing us of anything we don’t know already.
b) Giving us her opinion on that which we already know
c) Providing us with a wide and varied selection of different opinions so we can think things through under a new light
What she IS doing is drawing attention to something we already know is going on, then failing to take a stand somewhere and give us her opinion on it, but instead providing us with the most mainstream of ideas about the topic there are.
Her whole article could be summarized as: “we know this happens, but bleh. And someone else thinks ‘well, yeah, bleh’”. All so very enlightening!

I only whish they had asked me to write about this. I could literally come up with a whole book on the topic. Some of my many opinions on this in bullet point form:
1) The ability to titillate men is not a high moral purpose, ergo it is not, or should not be, desirable.
2) Women’s confidence, sexual or otherwise, shouldn’t be tied to male approval.
3) If we go from thinking that women ought to be “virgins” to be “sluts” we are not really changing anything.
4) Women shouldn’t be reduced to sexual objects. And reducing themselves to sexual objects doesn’t make it one bit better.
5) Making money out of presenting yourself as a sexual object doesn’t make it morally right.
6) The bogus sexual “power” women could have over men by presenting themselves as sexual objects, the source of the so-called “empowerment”, is not morally right or desirable.
7) Women’s sexuality shouldn’t be reduced to appealing to men’s sexual fantasies.

But I guess the author couldn’t expand on any of these points because that would mean expressing truly unpopular ideas.

So, to summarize, I would like to let everyone out there who might feel the itch to discuss about the new “empowerment” that women feel when titillating men in this most extreme ways. Either inform us of something new, express your opinion on it or describe other people’s opinions on it. And try to remember that the easiest approach to something, or the most popular for that matter, is not always the best one.