Girls Can't Have their own magazines because it's "sexist"

I've been spamming every Facebook group I'm in with links to JumpMag which is an utterly brilliant advertising-free magazine aimed at young girls from 7-13 and has no make-up tips or free lip gloss or OMG look at Justin Bieber's hair!!!! articles.

I love JumpMag as both a mother and a radical feminist. It combats harmful gender stereotypes and cultural femicide which are two issues which greatly concern me. JumpMag publishes lots of articles, poems, and reviews by girls themselves. The silencing of women's voices begins in childhood so having an online space where girls can share their lives, their stories, their art and their dreams without being told to be quiet or make space for boys is so very, very important to destroying the patriarchy. 

I've been awed by the support of women for JumpMag. Today, I shared it again and the support was amazing.

Yet, that one niggly question rose up again: isn't JumpMag sexist because it excludes boys?

I mean, seriously? Does every single fucking thing have to include boys? Can't girls have one little thing just for them in a culture which is dominated by men's voices? 

Where are the men whining about Ben 10 and Young Justice excluding girls? Or, Harry Potter having to be written about a boy and by an author with a non-woman name so that boys would read it? Where are the men whining about girls being excluded from footballl? Or, the music industry?

Nothing is gender-neutral in our culture. JumpMag is trying to eradicate this by showing girls that there is so much more to life than what the media dictates is acceptable for girls. 

This is JumpMag's official statement on inclusivity:

From time to time, we are asked, 'Isn't a magazine aimed only at girls sexist?' 

Jump! Mag was founded to offer girls something that boys already have. Magazines aimed at their gender, which neither patronise, demean nor make them feel inadequate about their body, their minds or their feelings.

We did consider a gender-free magazine, but there are other magazines on the market already, which cover this sector for preteens, such as the excellent Anorak Magazine. 

Jump! Mag aims to inspire girls to be more than they ever thought they could be. To aim high, and to never stop believing in themselves. If we inspire some boys along the way, then that is a bonus.

See, JumpMag doesn't exclude boys. It just focusses on girls. How fucked up is our culture that the first comment about a magazine aimed at girls is that it's "sexist" considering the sheer amount of television, books, films and video games aimed at boys?

Frankly, if you are worried about boys feeling excluded by one measly online magazine for girls you've got some seriously fucked up values and internalised misogyny. 

I'd suggest you start working on that instead of belittling a magazine aimed at teaching girls that they have the right to be whoever they want to be.

Read More

Castle: Apparently, "drunk" girls deserve what they get.

It's safe to say I'm not really a fan of the program Castle. Any show with a male lead who is a sleazy tool who isn't actually qualified to do anything but drive a porsche yet is somehow smarter than the qualified woman isn't something I generally watch. However, I am running about packing for #RadFem2013 and it was on in the background.

This weeks episode features a sleazy man [a la Girls Gone Wild dickhead-in-charge] who is murdered by a beautiful woman with her bra. Many, many jokes about women with large breasts ensue. It features lots of gratuitous shots of women in very little clothing being used as objects. I left it on as inspiration for a weekend of ranting with brilliant women.

Right up until the moment, the "good girl" [over-achieving, super-smart daughter of the sleazy tool] comes home from university to visit Daddy who is worried about her blog. Daddy mansplains' the big wide internet world to his baby girl [who is 18 and way smarter than her father]. They reference the Girls Gone Wild videos and teenage daughter explains that Daddy shouldn't worry about her because she's a super-smart university student and not one of "Those Girls" who get drunk and "flash their tits".

Because women who get drunk deserve whatever happens to them.

Because women who "flash their tits" deserve whatever happens to them.

I fucking hate the Patriarchy.

There are no such thing as "sluts" or "good girls". There are women. Just women. And, none of us deserve to get hurt because of something we do or do not do.

Castle is now on my ban list. 

SmashtheP shared this article in response to my rant on twitter. It's one of my favourite articles by Feminist Current.

Read More

Anne of Green Gables is a Redheaded Child Not a Blonde Playboy Centerfold

This is the new cover of Lucy Maud Montgomery's children's classic Anne of Green Gables. You remember Anne: a redheaded, 11 year old orphan who hates her hair and who is sent to live with Matthew and Marilla who wanted a boy; a girl who spends the first two books learning to love herself both as a female and one with a red hair. At least, it's been a while since I've read the book but I definitely remember Anne being a redhead and a child; not a retro-Playboy centrefold. I definitely don't remember Anne rolling about in a haystack like a supporting body in Dukes of Hazzard. Being 7 am, I have taken the liberty of checking with Wikipedia  to make sure I'm not completely out-to-lunch with this. They're pretty sure Anne is supposed to a redheaded child too. Now, I do know that Wikipedia isn't always the most accurate source of information but even they can't confuse a redheaded child with an 18 year blonde with breasts being posed in a sexualised manner.

Has it really come to the point that one of the best books written for girls by a brilliant author which has already sold more than 50 million copies and been translated into 20 languages needs to be repackaged as if the target audience is middle-aged men with a teenage girl sex fetish? Because, they've never struck me as the target audience for Anne of Green Gables. And, frankly, everything else in our culture is targeted at them. Why can't girls have one book that doesn't erase our lived experiences?

Why does everything have to reference a pornified, heteronormative sexuality?

Why do we assume young girls won't want to read a book about another young girl, especially since 50 million of us already have, if she isn't sexualised?

FFS, the whole point of Anne of Green Gables is learning to love ourselves even if we have freckles, red hair and aren't called Cordelia. It is not a book about a blond teenager learning to be a sex object. It's a book about a child discovering themselves and loving themselves.

This is precisely the kind of shit which evidences why porn culture is so insidious.

Anne should not pass the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. 

She is a child; to pretend otherwise is disgusting and creepy. 


This is the cover of the edition I have. Notice that Anne is both a redhead and a child; not a blonde woman being posed in a sexualised manner.

Plus, let's be totally honest here, there is NO WAY Marilla would let Anne prance about in a boy's shirt.

This is from the Mumsnet thread I started today. I thought it needed sharing:

FastidiaBlueberry Thu 07-Feb-13 12:04:17

Who is the publisher?

This really is pernicious and a brilliant example of porn culture.

Any child buying this book is receiving the message that being a girl means being sexy before being anything else. Even if the words in the book say something completely different and don't even talk about the need to be fuckable, the subliminal message is that even when you're busy doing other stuff, sexy is where it's at. If this goes on, it will almost be impossible to find pictures of female humans which don't emphasise their fuckability above every other aspect of them. Are we to look forward to a representation of Hermione Granger suggestively holding her wand in her mouth, or near her arse or something, a la 50 shades? WTF?

Who the fuck thought it was a good idea, is the publishing house full of child-molesters or something?

I mean seriously, what possesses an otherwise normal person, to imagine that the best representation of an 11 year old red-haired girl with freckles (something the book is very specific about) is a sexualised picture of a teenager? There's something actually quite sinister about this, what is wrong with the adults who authorised this cover? I really do think they should be forced to make a statement about why they felt it was appropriate to pornify the image of a child on a book whose target market is female children. It's beyond disgusting, it's actually amazing - as if peadophiles are working in the office and deciding the artwork and the normal adults there are accepting the paedophile view of the world, that every child is a potential fuck. 

And of course, we're all going to be told that we're overreacting, it's only a picture and it's fine for 8 year old girls to be brainwashed in this way.

FFS.

Read More

So, Playboy, Definitely Art. And, other Dubious Statements

Hugh Hefner's 21 year old second son from his second marriage is apparently lining up to take over the company. When he finishes school. Obviously. This rather creepy article in the Independent, which is attempting to pass for news, would like everyone to know that Hef Jr definitely thinks Playboy is art and not pornography. 

I'd like to believe the article's other claim that the Playboy is only a "marginal" brand now but, let's be honest, they aren't making their money from the magazine. Instead, they have been capitalising on ole' Hugh's penchant for sexual violence in reality TV programs like The Girls Next Door. The Playboy Club TV program may have been cancelled in its first season but the Playboy clubs are coming back [and are the focus of some brilliant feminist activism]. Sales of Playboy Magazine itself are falling but Playboy brand merchandising is everywhere. For reasons I genuinely don't get, parents are buying their children Playboy branded duvet covers and notebooks. Playboy merchandise is flaming everywhere and that's without getting into the "sexy" Playboy dress-up clothes.

Ranting about Playboy merchandising on children aside [and I judge parents who buy 6 year olds jeans with Playboy bunnies on their arse or t-shirts which say 'Future Porn Star'. It's not funny or clever. It's just creepy], Cooper Hefner's attempts to rewrite Playboy's past and label their magazines 'art' rather than porn demonstrates some serious cognitive dissonance. Or, nincompoopery. Probably both. Whatever it is, Cooper is just not the brightest of sparks when he's comparing nude art with Playboy centerfolds insofar as he misses the whole freaking debate. Because, there is feminist debate about this and there is recognition that much of the art we admire is of questionable value morally and ethically. Hell, there's a whole lot of recognition that some of the artists whose work we admire are nothing more than sexual predators. Pretending that Playboy is 'art' isn't participating in that debate. It's the intellectual equivalent of running about with Darth Vader helmet back to front on one's head.

As for Cooper's discussion on the Bunny Girls and "empowerment", well, it's nice he's giving us permission to decide for ourselves but, really, when is Cooper going to participate in an activity which "empowers" him? Because, I'd really like to hear someone use that word on an activity men are required to participate in to be considered valuable.

And, honestly, how do you even unpack the following twaddle:

"There are many domestic issues in the US that bother me, such as gay rights or fighting for the legalisation of marijuana. But as we go global we need to stand for more important issues internationally. Women's rights in the Middle East and internet censorship in China are two things we can stand for and have an influence in, especially when we're coming into these emerging markets like India and we're faced with the challenge of opening up Playboy clubs where the bunnies can't even wear bunny outfits. You have these countries which are in a very similar place sexually – especially when it comes to gender roles – where the US was when my dad first started."

"Faced with the challenge" of opening in markets where women aren't allowed to wear Bunny outfits? I genuinely don't what to stay except that's a whole load of  nincompoopery which is seriously missing the point, not to mention just a teensy bit of orientalist discourse. That's without mentioning the whole issue of women's rights currently being destroyed in the US with access to abortion being curtailed everywhere and gang-rapes like that in Steubenville being a whole lot more common than many would like to believe. Or, that internet censorship isn't only in China. Why is it important for women in other countries to have the right to dress in Bunny outfits when American women wearing Bunny outfits are slut-shamed? How is expanding the Playboy empire going to help women? What has the legalisation of marijuana got to do with large swathes of the planet not having basic human rights like access to clean water? 

Being raised in the Playboy mansion [and the house next door where his mother lived] can't have been a healthy place for two young boys to grow up. I don't think its all that surprising that Cooper's brother Marston has a recent conviction for domestic violence. Whatever your opinion of porn, it isn't ever appropriate for children and the two boys would have been exposed during Playboy "parties", photo shoots and the filming of the Girls Next Door. These would not have been simply nude women. The Playboy empire is built on porn.

Christie Hefner, Cooper's older sister, ran the company until 2009 when she stepped down. She oversaw the expansion of the empire out of the magazine industry and she put an end to some of Hugh's more egregious behaviours, at least ones financially supported by the company. Cooper may not want to wear his father's pyjamas but neither he nor his brother Marsten come across as well-rounded men with a respect for women and women's sexuality. I don't agree with many of Christie Hefner's expansion policies, and I certainly find the show Girls Next Door deeply creepy, but I'm quite certain that Christie Hefner wanted to run a business. I'm not sure that's what Cooper or Marston are looking for.

Read More

So, George Lucas is Marrying a "Gold-Digger"

At least, that's what the Huffington Post seems to be implying with this headline: "Let the Prenup Be With You". The fact that George Lucas is engaged to Mellody Hobson, an investment firm president who also serves as chairperson of Dreamworks Animation is irrelevant. 

Or, the very obvious fact that there is no such thing as a "gold-digger". That's just patriarchal bullshit designed to punish women for trying to survive in a Capitalist-Patriarchy.

This piece is precisely why I found this article by Vagenda so problematic. Yes, they are calling Hugh Hefner a creepy pervert for marrying a woman so much younger than him and there simply aren’t enough people lining up to call Hefner on his creepiness because he really is the quintessence of creepiness.* The problem with Vagenda's article is that they are operating under the assumption that their audience is smarter than it actually is; that their audience knows there is no such thing as a "gold-digger". 

At least, I hope Vagenda are assuming their audience of neo-liberal Guardian readers are smarter than they are because otherwise they seem to be buying into the myth of gold-diggers:  

Crystal Harris has played a blinder as far as the transaction with Heff is concerned. She barely even needs to follow through, the wily minx, giving a whole new resonance to the phrase "happy ending". She graduates maxima cum laude from the International School of Gold Digging, an accolade to which those of us languishing in hotel bars wearing bandage dresses, or occupying the recesses of websites such as SugarDaddy.com in the hope of catching the eye of a sickly impotent billionaire, can only aspire.

Of course, there is the slim chance that Harris is pulling a Gloria Steinemand going fully undercover – but it's unlikely, considering that the scope of her ambitions echo those of billions of women the world over.

Whilst I'm not personally acquainted with Gloria Steinem, I do think she would object to having her name used as a stick with which to beat other women. Whatever the personal motives Crystal Harris has for marrying Hugh Hefner, he  remains the problem. Not Harris. He is the man responsible for the mainstreaming of pornography to the point that all women are now considered fucktoys with no redeemable features. If we were considered human, the Huffington Post wouldn't have posted such an offensive article about a woman marrying a man. Can you imagine what they would have printed if Hobson weren't a white, middle class, highly educated women with a very powerful job?

* Actually, I would rather not have read the article since I live in hope that Hefner will somehow accidentally fall off the planet taking the entire “Playboy Empire” with him, but he hasn’t. Instead, Hefner has once again married a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Because he's a deeply creepy old man. With a serious ick-factor. And, a history of VAW.

Read More

In Defence of Megan Fox.

Until today, the only thing I knew about Megan Fox was that she starred in the first two Transformer movies and that she may or may not have been fired from the third for calling the director Micheal Bay a misogynist. It's hard to say if she walked or was fired as Fox is keeping a dignified silence whilst Bay, and her former co-star Shia LeBoeuf, are bad-mouthing her at every opportunity. Whatever actually happened, Fox is clearly a better person than either Bay or LeBoeuf; although that isn't the best compliment since I've eaten carrots that had more empathy than Bay. Suffice it to say, I'm on Team Fox.

Today, I learned that Fox is now married and has a very new baby. 

I learned about Fox's new baby from an op-ed piece in the Independent which effectively accuses Fox, but not her husband, of child neglect for hiring a night nurse. I have no idea who the writer Susan Elkin actually is, above her very basic biography attached to the article, but it's been a while since I've read a piece written by a woman who so clearly hates other women. 

Because, there is no excuse for what Elkin has written. 

There is no excuse for the Independent to have published the op-ed piece. 

But, you know what, I would like to thank Megan Fox for publicly acknowledging that she has hired a night nurse. 

Because what really pisses me off is the culture of "motherhood" that requires "celebrity" women to pretend that they do everything all by themselves after having a baby. That is what is harmful to all women: the idea that a woman who has just given birth must immediately lose all their baby weight, baking 250 cupcakes for the school fete, going back to work full-time at 6 weeks whilst simultaneously looking immaculate in their immaculate house. Celebrity women who try to exist outside this narrow and punitive construction of mother are punished by the likes of Perez Hilton calling them fat and Hello mag making snide remarks about their lack of make-up.

So, power to Megan Fox for being honest about something that was going to result in her being bullied. How freaking brave is she?

And, that shit about whether or not Fox breastfeeds, well that's none of our business. The culture which pushes formula feeding unnecessarily onto new mothers and which sexualises women's breasts to the point that women can not breastfeed publicly without feeling uncomfortable is the problem. The culture which believes that women's bodies belong to their husbands and that a man's rights to access his possession's breasts are more important than a new infant is the problem. The culture which defines any woman who has given birth  as unfuckable until they lose all their "baby weight" is the problem. That is what we need to address.

We won't create a breast-feeding friendly culture when women write shit like this:

Babies are born to women – whether some feminists like it or not and wish it otherwise – and nature provides the baby’s food in the form of breast milk. That milk, and suckling it from the mother’s breast, is the child’s entitlement. Direct access to its mother’s breast milk is, in my book, every child’s human right. 

That doesn’t mean extracting it with a pump and handing it over to someone else to pour into the child either. It means proper tactile feeding from the breast and all the bonding which goes with that. Everyone knows that there is nothing better than breast milk for a baby’s health and, there are benefits for the mother too – not least, it is much easier to lose the baby weight if you breast feed than if you don’t. It is also considerable less hassle – at a time when you’re tired and maybe stressed – than fiddling about with bottles which have to be sterilised. And you have it with you, on tap as it were, wherever you and the child happen to be. 

If you hire a night nurse the child may be losing out on part of this and I regard that as a form of neglect.

Now, I get that Elkin is clearly trying to flog some book that no one actually wants to read but, unless you are actually stupid, no one would think the above was going to increase the number of women breastfeeding exclusively for 6 months. It just isn't. All it does is make women feel like failures if they don't. As for the hyperbole of child neglect, well, I'd suggest that Elkin wasn't the most effective teacher on the planet if that's her definition of child neglect.

Plus, Elkin doesn't actually understand the mechanics of breast-feeding. It's not the breast-feeding which changes the shape of women's breasts. That's the result of the weight gain during pregnancy and the subsequent loss of weight thereafter. Not breastfeeding will do nothing to prevent a woman's breasts from changing. Pregnancy changes women's breasts.

And women shouldn't be policing other women's bodies. We should be standing up for other women being forced by Patriarchal structures into making "choices" they do no want for fear of reprisal. 

In many ways, this article is just spiteful. It's just the kind of spiteful that the Patriarchy loves: pitting women against women. Normally, I'd veer on the side of ignoring, however insulting a woman who has just given birth and making her personally responsible for the decisions of a thousand other women isn't kind. 

Megan Fox may be a very privileged woman but she is still a woman. She doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. 

Megan Fox is just a woman trying to survive in the Patriarchy; just like the rest of us. 

Cross-Posted in the New Statesman

Read More

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.

Read More

Eat Battery Farmed Chickens and Save Women: Challenging PETA's Reinforcement of Rape Culture

I know that this flies in the face of common sense and compassion but bear with me here. PETA’s campaigns are based on the idea that the objectification, sexualisation, and torture of women's bodies are a great way to raise awareness of animal rights. They glamorise, romanticise and eroticise Violence against Women because they refuse to either acknowledge the construction of “woman as object” within the Patriarchy, or take responsibility for the harm they cause to women by their campaigns. PETA usually uses the bodies of young, thin, blonde, white women as a canvas for their protest. Whilst their protests garner public attention, it isn’t because people are interested in animal rights. PETA have become a spectacle; their message lost in medium of their protest. PETA also seem to have completely forgotten what exactly they have been campaigning for and instead have become obsessed with out-porning the porn industry in their objectification of tortured women’s bodies.

PETA’s newest campaign is called “Fur Trim is Unattractive” and it has been getting considerable amount of press for both the level of misogyny and the generalised nincompoopery within it. It isn’t a new campaign though. It is yet another recycled campaign designed to shock; despite being neither original nor interesting. It's the normal "women with pubic hair are unfuckable" motif, as evidenced by the entire porn industry. One would have thought that an organisation who campaigns against the cosmetic industry's animal testing practises might be aware of the links between pornography, the fashion-beauty complex, and the unnecessary torture of animals. One would be wrong. The very last thing PETA is, is self-aware. Nor do they care that they are supposedly campaigning to prevent the torture of animals by financially profiting from the torturing the bodies of vulnerable women in porn.

Whilst it is undoubtedly unpleasant, the “Fur is Unattractive” campaign is actually rather tame for PETA. Over the past few years, their campaigns and street protests have become increasingly violent and quite deliberate in their use of Violence against Women. They are no longer content with using the bodies of naked women or even carving up women’s bodies as if we were meat. This year alone they have had one advertisement, developed for the Superbowl, banned for having women simulate sex with vegetables; an ad which was only marginally less offensive from Voina’s ‘protest’ art involving women having sex with frozen chickens. Their second ad campaign this year, entitled ‘Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom out of Me’, should have been called An Ode to Violence Against Women: The Romance Period. It features a physically and sexually assaulted woman wearing a neck brace and covered in bruises because her boyfriend, newly vegan, has pounded her in every way possible. Apparently some of the unfortunate consequences of veganism and the subsequent “mind-blowing intercourse” are “sex injuries such as whiplash, pulled muscles, rug burn, and even a dislocated hip.” That isn't sex. It is rape.

A third campaign developed this year to celebrate World Vegan Day involves a large number of men gyrating, in increasingly more violent ways, with vegetables in place of their penis. Surprisingly, nothing makes me want to give up bacon like a Dude with a cucumber for a penis, or so I'm lead to believe. I'm not entirely sure what PETA was aiming for with this but this is pretty much the definition of creepy:

“A cucumber has never looked so good – or so wicked. In honour of World Vegan Day, watch this spicy video that gives a wink to the sexual health benefits of going vegan by showcasing men enthusiastically and proudly showing off some healthy protrusions from their trousers.”

PETA have pretty much become a parody of themselves. It would be amusing if it weren't for their constant perpetuation and perpetration of rape culture.

So, I say we start eating battery-farmed chickens to raise awareness of the objectification, sexualisation and torture of women's bodies. After all, PETA doesn't care how it raises awareness or who funds its campaigns, so why should feminists? PETA have gone so far as to develop their own porn channel to supposedly raise awareness of the abuse of animals. You don't see feminist groups raising funds by offering to kill rabbits live on the web; perhaps we should.

I believe PETA's advertising campaigns buy into the hyper-sexualised and hyper-masculinised culture in which women are treated as no more than Patriarchal fucktoys. PETA support, perpetuate, and perpetrate rape culture.

So, if PETA wants to reduce the discourse on animal cruelty to simply objectifying women as an advertising tool and encouraging rape culture, I'm going to start buying battery-farmed chickens.

Read More

Pippa Middleton: Today's Object of Derision.

So, Pippa Middleton wrote a book. About party tips. Which no one is buying. Because, let's be realistic here, it's a stupid book for which she was grossly over-paid. So, obviously, Middleton deserves all of the vitriol and hatred currently being thrown her way. 

Or not.

I'm going to go with not because, whilst I think agreeing to write this book was a serious piece of nincompoopery on the part of both Middleton and Penguin, it's not really constructive to make this about her ass or to call her stupid or any of the other myriad of insults out there. If Middleton were my friend, I would have told her to skip the book as it was only ever going to end badly, regardless of the contents. She was appallingly treated following her sister's marriage. The objectification and sexual harassment Middleton received was unbearable. No one should be lining up to insult and belittle Middleton on behalf of the Patriarchy. Criticise her decision to write the book, by all means, but don't resort to asinine insults or baseless slurs. It demeans us all.

Read More

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. 

Read More

Femen: Because they really bug me

Femen are back in the media once again.* This time they are running about Ikea with their breasts bared to protest Ikea’s decision to edit out all the images of women in their catalogue for the market in Saudi Arabia. Now, I’m quite offended by Ikea’s decision but I’m not sure what protesting in the Ikea in Paris two weeks after the story broke is going to change. In using women's bodies as a canvas of protest, Femen are using some fairly basic signifiers of woman as object. Their message is obscured by the medium of their protest because the medium conforms to the normalised construction of the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. As Exiled Stardust says, getting naked or stripping aren't acts of Feminist defiance or resistance. They are simply appeasement since “(m)en don’t care if you write incendiary messages of revolt all over your naked body, as long as they get to see that body.” Femen's activism using the objectification of women's bodies to make a political point isn't new. It isn't clever. It's just the Patriarchy trying out a new hat. After all, as Megan Murphyhas pointed out, PETA's been doing this shit for years. Their male supporters include a veritable who's who of celebrities with criminal convictions for Violence against Women.

Femen’s use of the female body is a tactic deliberately chosen in order to get recognition in the western media and they seem more interested in the attention than any specific feminist goals. They have already joined the Free Pussy Riot movement and, frankly, there are very few attention-seekers who haven't hopped on that bandwagon. It's proving to be quite a profitable one for everyone but the two women currently being transported to a penal colony. Inna Shevchenko demonstrated her "support" for Pussy Riot by destroying a crucifix in Kiev with a chainsaw. This stunt coincided exactly with the court in Moscow finding Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism; make of that what you will.

Femen have also occupied the Louvre to protest the rape of a young woman called Mariam by two Tunisian police officers. Personally, I think the women of Tunis taking to the streets is a more important and braver protest than a bunch of topless women running around the Louvre. Equally problematic are Femen's anti-burkha protests. Femen attacked an easy target; veiled Muslim women are some of the most frequently silenced of women's voices. But Femen aren't really doing anything really radical here. Instead, they are just doing exactly what western neo-liberal men do: attack a visible target with little to no power. Running about in front of the Eiffel Tower stripping off burkhas to reveal young, thin white women in their underwear isn't very interesting. Setting up a "bootcamp" in Paris to teach French feminists how to tackle the Patriarchy using tactics developed in the Ukraine is also not very clever. A reversal of the normal imperialism it may be, but it nonetheless shows a rather incredible lack of self-awareness. Thing is, which protests get more coverage? And, which ones really deserve the media attention?

And, this is the problem. The issues Femen claims to want to discuss are important. They are very, very important, particularly the issue of sex trafficking and prostitution in Eastern Europe. The sexual exploitation of vulnerable and poor women is increasing at astronomical rates. But, this isn't what the media is discussing. Femen's insistence on baring their breasts, regardless of what they are actually protesting, just reinforces Patriarchal norms. They have become objects for men to wank over rather than feminist protestors. Whatever message they had is obscured. Instead, their breasts are what are deemed important. 

We won't destroy the Patriarchy by reinforcing its constructions of "acceptable" women. We won't destroy the Patriarchy by targeting one small group of women and demanding that they remove their veil, without even considering the political and cultural structures in which they are either forced or, in some cases, choose to wear the veil. We cannot demand the government of Tunisia tackle the issue of rape by police officers, by running about art galleries naked. We won't change the control that the Church has by chopping down crosses half-naked. Protest needs to be vibrant, engaging and culturally specific but we will not smash the Patriarchy by reinforcing its belief that the only women who matter are those who conform to the Patriarchal Fuckability Test.

As many a wise feminist has said: if the penis is keen, it probably demeans. And, that's the problem with Femen.** Men aren't listening to the message. They are wanking to the image.

*I submitted this piece to the Huffington Post on Monday; just before their servers went down due to Hurricane Sandy. It hasn't been published and I'm assuming they are currently swamped as I haven't had a reply from them. Or, they didn't like it. Either way.

**Apparently, this originally comes from the I Blame the Patriarchy blog. 

Read More

James Bond's Skyfall

I feel the same way about James Bond movies as I do Superhero movies: I like my misogyny straight-up. That way you don't get sucked into watching something arty like Sideways and then discover half-way through that its just another giant wankfest for men. James Bond is usually predictable in its misogyny: every woman who fucks Bond dies a horrible, vile death as punishment for being a slut. After all, the only reason any woman would want to have sex with a man they aren't married to is because they are a slut. Consequently, they deserve to die. But, Casino Royale changed this. It was different. Bond was different and his relationship to women was different.  He wasn't just a violent, misogynistic sociopath. He was an arsehole and recognised as such. Even with the whole "falling in love with a woman made him a better man" trite sub-plot, Craig's first outing as Bond changed the franchise.  Eva Green's Vesper Lynd was a different woman to previous "Bond girls".  She was smart, resourceful, loyal and brave. 

Olga Kurylenko's Camille Montes in Quantum of Solace took it one step further. The film ends with Montes being left to lead the Bolivian resistance movement in taking back their land and their water rights. She is every bit Bond's equal. Unfortunately, in order to have Montes as an equal, the film reasserted the "women who fuck Bond deserve to die" motif which is unbearably tedious. It's like the producers were frightened by a Bond who wasn't just a sociopath and so had to drag the series back to its original construction of Bond the Misogynist. 

Skyfall is just a pile of pooh. It's basically old school Bond resurrected and it wasn't anywhere near as good as either Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace. The plot had holes big enough to drive a subway train through, which it did. Literally. There were 3 women: the whore who dies, the 'wife' who becomes the secretary and the mother who is M. Each gets the punishment they deserve for trying to transgress her assigned gender role. Heck, they even throw a female MP who is clearly supposed to be the 'bitch'. Quantum of Solace ended with a strong woman walking away from Bond to lead her people to freedom. In Skyfall, the women fucked up, got punished and then disappeared into ignominy.

Now, I like James Bond movies. I like movies with explosions and general silliness but Skyfall couldn't decide if it wanted to like Casino Royale or cheesy like Tomorrow Never Dies. The  funny places were few and far between and mostly figured around Q; by far the best character in the film. But, it was the erasure of the strong women from the previous two films which disappointed me the most. It's a good movie for car chases and explosions but they lost their nerve. Skyfall is just like a 100 other movies in the spy franchise which is unfortunate because it had the chance to do something really different. And, even almost feministy .

UPDATE: I have been getting crosser and crosser about Skyfall. I have been in such a rage that I haven’t quite worked out what pissed me off the most. Last night, a friend posted on FB and pointed out that the woman who is punished with death for fucking Bond isn’t just a ‘woman’. Severin’s back story involves being sold to a brothel at the age of 12. She is raped and tortured repeatedly. Her escape route is the official ‘bad guy’ of the film who is still raping her. As she says, he frightens her more than anyone she’s ever come across before. It is a deeply abusive relationship. Bond’s response to this story of child rape is to push Severin into helping him. He does so by climbing aboard her boat and getting into the shower with her. Without asking permission. Bond has sex with a terrified and abused survivor of child rape. She dies because of this. This is why Skyfall is more than a return to old school Bond misogyny. It glamourises and eroticising child sexual abuse by keeping the adult woman as nothing more than Bond’s sex toy.

Here is a great blog by Giles Coren on Skyfall: [[http://reciperifle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bond-villain.html]]

And a brilliant response by Exiled Stardust: [[http://exiledstardust.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/women-the-makers-of-skyfall-hate-you/]]

Read More

Femen Redux: Still Conforming to the Patriarchal Fuckability Test

I've blogged about Femen before because I was utterly gobsmacked that a photo of a topless Femen protestor without any political context managed to win a World Press Photo award (and the total lack of understanding of the irony of this photo being called The New Amazons). Supposedly, Femen protests against sex tourism, the legalisation of prostitution and the selling of "brides" internationally. How they quite expect the Patriarchy to take them seriously when they protest using pretty basic anti-woman signifiers is beyond me and that's without getting into them selling prints of their breasts as a fundraising tactic. In using women's bodies as a canvas of protest, Femen are conforming to the norms of Patriarchal objectification of women's bodies. Their message is obscured by the medium of their protest because the medium conforms to the normalised construction of the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. As Exiled Stardust says, getting naked or stripping aren't acts of Feminist defiance. They are exactly what the Patriarchy  wants after all: 

Doing what men want is appeasement. Feminism is resistance. Appeasement and resistance are opposing forces; the more you do of one, the less you can do of the other. That’s why these groups are insidious; they divert feminist energy into meaningless acts that only serve male interests. Men don’t care if you write incendiary messages of revolt all over your naked body, as long as they get to see that body. 

We all have to appease in one way or another to survive, but let’s not confuse that behavior with feminist activism. It’s not. Let’s do as little of it as we can get away with, and as much resistance as we are capable of.

Femen's activism is the same old Patriarchal twaddle dressed up as "Fun Feminism". The objectification of women's bodies to make a political point isn't new. It isn't clever. It's just the Patriarchy trying out a new hat. After all, PETA's been doing this shit for years and their supporters are a whose who of celebrities with criminal convictions for Violence against Women.

Whilst I'm willing to concede that there might be a reason why using women's naked bodies as a platform of political protest in the Ukraine is an interesting tactic because I know nothing of the their Feminist movement, it isn't a new or even interesting tactic in Western Europe. More importantly, I think it's a tactic deliberately chosen in order to get recognition in the western media because appealing to horny men is really the only way women get any attention. I think Femen are more interested in the attention than they are in achieving specific Feminist goals. They are hopping on far too many bandwagons, such as the Free Pussy Riot movement. Frankly, there are very few attention-seekers who haven't hopped on the Free Pussy Riot bandwagon. It's proving to be quite a profitable one for everyone but the two women currently being transported to a penal colony in Russia. Inna Shevchenko demonstrated her "support" for Pussy Riot by destroying a crucifix in Kiev with a chainsaw. This stunt coincided exactly with the court in Moscow finding Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism; make of that what you will.  Femen also occupied the Louvre to protest the rape of a young woman called Mariam by two Tunisian police officers. This article seems to imply that the Femen protest in Paris was more important than the woman in Tunis who protested outside the courtroom. Maybe I'm over-thinking things here, but I think the women of Tunis taking to the streets despite the crackdown on women in Tunisia is a shitload more important and so much braver than a bunch of topless women running around the Louvre. Thing is, which protest got more coverage? And, which one really deserved the media attention?














Femen's anti-burkha protests are equally offensive. Regardless of what I, as an individual, think of burkhas, the fact of the matter is that many Muslim wear them. It is utterly arrogant for a group of non-Muslim women to tell Muslim women what they can and can not do. The debate over whether or not the burkha is anti-feminist or whether or not it should be banned is a debate that needs to involve the voices of Muslim women. This does not mean that others can not have opinions. I think the burkhas use as a tool of oppression for all Muslim women in some countries supercedes its use as a tool for freedom for a small number of women in "western" countries. However, Muslim women's voices need to be central in this discussion. In this case, Femen are attacking an easy target; one which has very little access to mass media. Veiled Muslim women are some of the most frequently silenced of women's voices. Femen aren't really doing anything really radical here. They are just doing exactly what western neoliberal men do: attack a visible target with no power. A radical approach would have been for members of Femen to approach Muslim women's groups and ask them how to support them. Running about in front of the Eiffel Tower stripping off burkhas to reveal young, thin white women in their underwear isn't radical. It's not even very interesting. Setting up a "bootcamp" in Paris to teach French feminists how to tackle the Patriarchy using tactics developed in the Ukraine is also not very clever. It's a reversal of the normal imperialism but, nonetheless, it shows a rather incredible lack of self-awareness.

I would not have bothered to write another blogpost on Femen had I not caught the discussion on Femen live-streamed on AlJazeera called the "Future of Feminism". I knew from the beginning that the discussion was going to piss me off when the host got herself confused between Radical Feminism, the political theory, and radical forms of protest. Femen are not a Radical Feminist group. Femen's idea of "sextremism" is not Radical Feminist. This is not to say that they aren't feminists. Femen clearly defines that way. They just aren't Radical Feminists. That said, I agree with Chloe Angyal from Feministing that we should be having discussions about the role of women's bodies in the public sphere but it isn't Femen starting these conversations. These conversations have been started recently by the Everyday Sexism project, the Turn Your Back on 3 campaigns, the publication of nude photos of Kate Middleton, and the unmasking of violent, predatory internet trolls. Femen are getting media attention for being naked; not for their message. They are just like PETA: equally tedious and utterly incapable of listening to others. And, this is the problem. The issues Femen claims to want to discuss are important. They are so very, very important, particularly the issue of sex trafficking and prostitution in Eastern Europe. The sexual exploitation of vulnerable and poor women is increasing at astronomical rates. But, this isn't what the media is discussing. Femen's insistence on baring their breasts, regardless of what they are actually protesting, just reinforces Patriarchal norms. They have become objects for men to wank to rather than feminist protestors. Whatever message they had, is obfuscated. Instead, their breasts are what is deemed important. 

We won't destroy the Patriarchy by reinforcing it's constructions of "acceptable" women. We won't destroy the Patriarchy by targeting one small group of women and demanding that they remove their veil, without even considering the political and cultural structures in which they are either forced or, in some cases, choose to wear the veil. We can not demand the government of Tunisia tackle the issue of rape by police officers by running about art galleries naked. We won't change the control that the Church has by chopping down crosses half-naked. Protest needs to be vibrant, engaging and culturally specific. Suffragettes marching on Parliament this week was truly beautiful but it would have been a stupid protest in somewhere like Zimbabwe where the symbol of the Suffragette does not have the same political meaning. Femen's protests lack the imagery that Pussy Riot managed. We will not smash the Patriarchy by reinforcing its belief that the only women who matter are those who conform to the Patriarchal Fuckability Test.

As many a wise feminist has said: if the penis is keen, it probably demeans. And, that's the problem with Femen. Men aren't listening to the message. They are wanking to the image.

Read More