Beyond Feminism

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.

If you’ve been hoovering the blogosphere lately, you must have stumbled upon a blog with a title strikingly similar to this post’s. It’s gotten obcenely huge. That blog has been alive for 1 month and 8 days and has gotten 4 million 7 hundred thousand hits. Meanwhile, my blog has been alive for 50 years, (feels like), and has gotten a grand total of 0 hits, (again, feels like). Is there a non-existing reader who is starting to think that I may be slightly jelous? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. I have never complained about blogs which I respect and admire, regardless of their popularity. *cough-Twisty on the blogroll-cough*. However, I do NOT respect the tone of this blog, and here’s why.

First, the blog works strictly under the following premises:
1) All white people live in the US and
2) White people = upper middle class

Now, I feel slightly offended by those assumptions. I’m all up for mocking the habits and tendencies of the ubber rich, but I wouldn’t be so BLIND as to call them “white people”. The author seems to be entirely oblivious to the fact that there’s white people outside of the US, the countries from the ex URSS, for example. These people not only do not indulge in the sibaritic and consumerist orgy-like practises of the rich the world over, but also lack some things we tend to take for granted, like freedom and basic human rights. That’s right! There’s plenty of white people out there who are not even close to upper middle class. Some can even be found in the very US! And I’m so sensitive and bold to believe that the racist claim “all black people are poor” is a teensy weensy bit similar to the claim that “all white people are rich”.
But I guess Stuff “Rich” People Like doesn’t sound all “that” original after all. And here we encounter the other reason why I find this blog annoying: it’s NOT original. It has the exact same cynical and sceptical attitude that is the default of the “creative” ones of my generation and younger ones. They are what I call “The Simpsons Generation”, and one day I’ll blog about them. They don’t believe in anything and they look down at the few who do.

“White people spend a lot of time of worrying about poor people. It takes up a pretty significant portion of their day.”

Notice the slight swift of bullying? The subtle tone of mockery? How dare you think about something! See,it’s not what people are doing or thinking. It’s not that they are choosing to change their actions or beliefs for more ethical ones. It’s the fact that they have ethics in the first place. Because in this age of moral relativism, having a clear idea of what is right and wrong is tantamount to proclaiming that some ideas are BETTER than others. And that cannot be. It would get in the way of individualism. Anyone should be whoever they want! Even if that means being a pseudo racist copy-cat passing as “cool” and “trasgressive”.

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.

I think it was someone from Gilligan’s Island that said, “The hardest problems often have the easiest solutions”. And then, there’s the little pearl of wisdom from my friend Felipe, who claims that “Quite often we know the answer to our questions, we just have trouble accepting it”. Put those two statements together, and it would seem that you have a good chunk of all the problems/questions in this world at least half solved/answered. As you may have guessed already, I agree with this theory to a good extent. Particularly when it comes to “deciding” if something is right or wrong.
Most of the time, the little compass we have purposely installed within us knows for sure whereas something is right or wrong. And yet, we discuss, like mindless morons, if this or that has a “measurable” detrimental effect on people or not, utterly ignoring if this or that is, indeed, morally correct or not. Well, I find it very hard to stand. I much rather see people saying openly “yes, what we do is bad for society, but we don’t give a toss, because we make money out of it”, than playing numbingly foolish ”poor innocents” who just “don’t really know” that this or that is wrong. And the list of topics over which people pointlessly discuss its moral righteousness is never ending.
• “Porn hurts women? How do YOU know? What prove do you have? We LOVE women!”
• “What evidence do YOU have that alcohol has anything to do with alcohol related health issues, alcohol related accidents, and alcohol addictions?”
• “How was I supposed to know she didn’t want it? She was ASKING for it, with the way she was dressed up!”
• “We didn’t know nicotine produced addiction. We just thought people really REALLY loved our product”
• “How do you know that bombarding women with 100 zillion pictures of skinny, sexy models a day has an effect on increasing anorexia rates or women’s own self loathing?”
• “High speed cars increase road accidents? Non-sense!”
• “Women want to have big boobs, small noses, straight long hair, non wrinkles, no cellulite, no fat, no belly, small ankles, small waists, no spots, no moles, no pores. Our 1000 zillion pictures of computed altered models bombardment a day has nothing to do with it!”
• “There’s absolutely nothing that suggests that violence in video games increases violence. Therefore, we can put all the violence we want in video games, because it’s all right.”
• “We may spend 2 billions of dollars on advertising a year the world over, but we don’t make people want our food. And besides, our food is part of a healthy diet.”
• “Pubs within Universities Campuses and cheap alcohol in student shops has no impact on the amount of alcohol students consume.”

I could go on all day. See what I’m trying to say? It’s EVIDENT like hell what’s wrong and why.
We may not be ready to live without alcohol, porn or high speed cars. Big companies may not be ready to give up the millions they make out of messing up people’s minds. But please, don’t come to me with pretended ignorance to justify your lack of moral behaviour. You know exactly what you are doing. At least have the decency to recognise it, if not the courage to change it.