#ReadingOnlyBooksWrittenByWomen: Radical Feminist Theory

My reading theme for May is radical feminist theory. I haven't actually read many classic texts of radical feminism; a lot of my radical feminist theory has been learned reading blogs and discussing it with other women on FB and at conferences. Since I am attending my first formal RadFem conference this June, I thought it might be worth covering more texts than Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics [both of which are must-reads].

These are the texts I've lined up for this month:

Valerie Solanas' Scum Manifesto
Marilyn French's The War Against Women
Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy
Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Womens Liberation Movement
Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller's All the Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism
Janice Raymond's A Passion for Friends
Diane Bell & Renate Klein's Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed

Three of the texts, Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful, Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller's All the Rage and Diane Bell & Renate Klein's Radically Speaking, are anthologies. They are also huge. I'm not sure I'll make it through them all but I wanted to get as big a variety of radical feminist voices as possible.

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In the missing the point entirely category today:

We have this somewhat ridiculous article by Kamila Kocialkowska on whether or not the cultural appropriation of the Plains Indian War Bonnet is offensive. Now, I fully planned on blogging about this last night after reading the article but the thought of, once again, having to point out that it doesn't matter if white Dudes think it's okay to run around pretending to be 'Indians', it's still rude. White Dudes have a habit of thinking all sorts of things are okay despite them being obviously racist, homophobic, disablist or misogynistic. As a general rule of thumb, if white Dudes think something is socially acceptable, it's probably best to take 2 minutes to double-check. Just in case.

I decided to have a bubble bath instead. I know this isn't a very helpful response to this level of nincompoopery but this will be something like the fourth time I've written about cultural appropriation in the past two weeks and I'm starting to bore myself. 

Here's the thing, I think the cultural appropriation of the Plains Indian War Bonnet by Lana Del Ray, No Doubt and Victoria's Secret is incredibly rude, offensive and totally lacking in critical thinking skills. Frankly, this total refusal to listen to the opinions of other people sets my teeth on edge. That's why we have a Tory party. If you don't belong to them and you are spouting the "it's P.C gone mad" line, you might want to rethink your political position. Or, acknowledge that you're an asshole. Or, both. Probably both.

Pretty much the entirety of Kocialkowska's article pissed me off with it's total refusal to engage with the opinions of others but I found this section particularly telling: 

The truth is that nowadays, cultural assimilation has become so all-pervasive it’s almost unnoticeable. Popular culture has always consisted of mining, borrowing from and subverting the cultural heritage of the past. In fact, Frederic Jameson went so far as to see this as a defining factor of the postmodern age. For him, the past and its symbols no longer exist, "except as a repository of genres, styles, and codes ready for commodification”.

This has vast implications for political incorrectness - no symbol can truly be said to be culturally isolated any more. The eagle-feathered headdress which inspired such extensive outrage on the Victoria's Secret runway doesn't belong to the Native American repositry alone. It's origins date back to widespread early cultures, including Aztec warriors, early Gaelic clan chiefs and Slavic hussars. Now it’s been assimilated into contemporary culture and passed into the collective unconscious. Its original meaning is melded and mixed in a sea of new, secular meanings.

In other words, in a postmodern, post-ironic, globalised world, can anyone really be said to have ownership over their own heritage?

First off, Victoria's Secret were referencing the Plains Indian War Bonnet. They were not referencing Aztec warriors or Gaelic clan chiefs or Slavic hussars. So, let's not play the "other-people-did-it-so-its-totally-not-special" game as it makes everyone look like a buckethead. Secondly, we all know that things-which-one-sticks-on-one's-head are frequently used as signifiers of power. That is because it is a simple and visible way to denote power relationships; see: the Victorian top-hat. Minimising or dismissing these signifiers, as Victoria's Secret did, is rude and is, inherently, racist. Thirdly, even if you were too dim to get this, First Nations, Metis, Inuit and Native Americans have been saying this for years. 30 seconds on google would have been evidence of this. Fourthly, invoking the "John-Wayne-and-Clint-Eastwood-were-in-movies-about-Injuns" argument just makes you look more racist and dim. The fact that they engaged in racist stereotypes does not make using those stereotypes acceptable. It just means there are a whole lot of racist, culturally insensitive, dim people running about the continent. 

Finally, we may be living in a world where postmodernism is God but that doesn't mean that postmodernism is actually God. Or, that most of the people running about claiming to be postmodern have any understanding of postmodernism. The word postmodernism is bandied about a lot by people who think it makes them sound clever when, frequently, it's the opposite. So, yes, people are entitled to have ownership over their own heritage. There is no grey area over this. Deliberately, or undeliberately, minimising, mocking or otherwise plagiarising the cultural heritage of other people is ignorant, arrogant and rude.

There is no such thing as post-irony either. That's the same twaddle as people suggesting we live in a post-feminist, post-racism world. It's just nincompoopery.

Oh, and what  Kocialkowska neglects to mention in her article is that the model in the War Bonnet image was meant to represent the month of November: the month where Americans give thanks for committing mass genocide. Because that wasn't at all stupid either.

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Lana Del Ray's Ride

I have only recently come across Lana Del Ray and that is only due to the Feminist backlash to her being named GQ's Woman of the Year and being the only winner to be nude on the cover. Coincidentally, she was the only woman. It's fairly obvious that her value to GQ was for her body rather than her career as a talented musician; a situation which isn't exactly abnormal in the music industry. Today, for the first time, I have actually watched one of Del Ray's music videos: Ride. I came across whilst researching the backlash to No Doubt's newest video for my piece of Victoria Secret's cultural appropriation of the Plains Indian' warbonnet which is frequently used as a cultural signifier for the entire Native Peoples, First Nations, Metis and Inuit of North America. The reductive use of the warbonnet as a cultural signifier is, simply, racist so I was disappointed to see yet another female singer using the Plains Indian warbonnet as part of their sexualised eroticisation of abuse.

Lana Del Ray's video is beautifully deconstructed here and here. There is very little I can add to these deconstructions except to say how incredibly depressing and distressing I find the eroticisation of sexual abuse and the forced prostitution of women's bodies. It is that same old "the child is responsible for their own abuse and continuing self-harm as an adult" with no contextualisation whatsoever of how the adult woman came to be in trapped in self-destructive behaviour. The video features Del Ray as a "wild child" who "believes in the country American used to be". Manifest Destiny anyone? The whole issue racism exhibited by Del Ray running about being "crazy" in a Plains Indian warbonnet aside, the video is an incredibly disturbing tribute to the sexual abuse of a young woman at the hands of many men, most of whom are old enough to be her father. It is both racist and misogynist and Del Ray is far too talented for this type of shit.

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Victoria Secrets' Annual Demonstration of Misogyny: This Time With a Side of Racism

Victoria Secret's annual Fashion Show is testimony to the mainstreaming of the pornification of women's bodies. It represents everything which is wrong in the Patriarchy rendering women not only into objects for men to wank over but commodifying their bodies with the woman given the honour of wearing a $2.5 million dollar diamond studded bra considered The Ultimate Woman. It isn't so much a fashion show as a live action soft porn show with titillating photos of the models leaked online prior to the broadcast. I won't link any here but the images are the same poses as found in Playboy or any other mainstream soft porn magazine. Victoria Secret's trades on an image of respectability despite the fact that it uses the same techniques as porn to entice men. They reinforce rape culture by parading women in their underwear for male audiences. They are not selling underwear to women but the image of fuckable women to men who then by the underwear for their partners who can not be expected to look like the models who routinely go on crash diets involving only liquids in the run-up to the show so they don't look "fat". It normalises the Patriarchal Fuckability Test on women who have no hope of passing it.

The women-hating and exploitation of Victoria Secret's has become so common place that I don't even notice them anymore but this year they added racism to their bow. One of the themes of the production this year was the calendar and November was represented by a white model wearing a fairly racist signifier of "Indian". The use of a Plains Indian Warbonnett as a signifier for all Native Americans, First Nations, Metis and Inuit people is racist because it is reductive. You can not reduce huge, disparate cultures down to one item which was worn by men who had earned the honour and pretend it isn't anything but culturally insensitive. The cultural appropriation of such item on the objectified body of a white woman is doubly insensitive.

It really isn't that hard to take ten minutes and think about cultural appropriation. It isn't that hard to think about the links of a nearly naked white woman dressed in cultural signifiers of 'Indians' when Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other group of women in the US. The majority of the perpetrators of this sexual violence are non-Native men. Yet, the representation of white women dressed in outfits sexualising a construction of Native Americans derived from racist discourse in 'Cowboy and Indian' films has become a trope in our visual culture, one which has been repeated multiple time in the last couple of months. Lana Del Ray's latest video is possibly the most offensive of the recent insurgence in cultural appropriation; interestingly she seems to have received far less backlash than No Doubt or Victoria Secrets. Whilst I don't think No Doubt's apology is a proper apology what with the whole we have non-white friends trope being called up, they at least seem to understand that they have caused offence. Neither Del Ray nor Victoria Secret's appears to have understood at all. No Doubt pulled the video within days of the complaints arising. It seems unbelievably arrogant for Victoria Secrets not to take 10 minutes to rethink the outfit a week later.

And, FFS, using a cultural signifier for 'Indian' in the month of year where the major American holiday is a celebration of their genocide seems, I don't know, really fucking stupid. 

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