Anthony Kiedis: Moving from Sexiest Rocker to Creepy Old Man

A friend sent me a link to these images because they know I'm a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Apparently, they are from the Russian version of Vogue and are supposed to be a fashion shoot. You know, if you think soft porn constitutes a fashion shoot; as most of the fashion industry seems to believe. Normally, I'd ignore the images and wonder about whether or not Anthony's considered therapy for his quite serious inability to date a woman over the age of 21 but these images are just, well, creepy.

Here we have "woman with breasts" shocker.

And, here we have "creepy old man with naked women" 

I'm really going to have to bin all of my RHCP albums, aren't I?  

(sighs)

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

Femen Redux: I'm not even sure what to say anymore

It's farking Femen. Again. This time they are protesting the very brutal gang-rape of a young woman in India who committed suicide rather than being pushed into marrying her rapist. This is the statement from the Facebook page to accompany the image above: 

FEMEN shares the world sorrow of 17-year-old Indian girl, victim of a brutal rape. According to the newspaper La Figaro, the victim took the fatal dose of poison, in response to demands by Indian police to withdraw his statement and to marry one of the rapists!
late on November 13 was raped by two men on their way to a religious festival in the city of Punjab. Within two weeks the police refused to accept the statement about rape.
Unfortunately, the facts of genocide against women in India have become known worldwide only after the case of brutal gang rape the girls in the New Daley on December 16, that shakes all India.
FEMEN has long pointed to the Indian authorities ' official policy-misogynistic, religious and caste wildness against women. FEMEN women's movement demands immediate international intervention in the plight of Indian women, subjected to daily physical and mental abuse, suffering from some pointless authorities, corrupt policemen etc. .In February 2012, the activist of FEMEN dismantled the India flag from the roof of the Indian Embassy, protest against visa rule by chauvinist Indian authorities towards young women from Ukraine. For protection of the rights of Ukrainians before the official Daily on four participants of protest was filed 5 criminal cases, litigation that lasts to this day.

A little bit of self-reflection wouldn't go amiss with these people. Honestly, do they not get the problem with their imperialist campaigns which alienate the very women they claim to be fighting for? 

I could rant for hours on their hypocrisy but I think Sara Salem's article Femen's Neocolonial Feminism: When Nudity Becomes Uniform says it much better than I can. 

Read More

Playboy goes Artistic.

At least, that's what they claim to be doing by having some "leading contemporary artists",  a list which includes Tracey Emin, "explore the female body as a work of art". Normally, I'd be willing discuss the issue of the female body as art and whether or not it could be anything other than the objectification of women's bodies, but this is Playboy.

Playboy. 

They aren't interested in art. They are interested in making money by the sexual degradation and objectification of women's bodies. This is just another desperate ploy to differentiate them from 'bad' pornographers. In many ways, Playboy's mainstreaming of pornography has been far more detrimental to women's rights than the more violent pornography now available online.

I would rant further but Exiled Stardust has deconstructed this far more eloquently here.

Read More

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.

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

The New Minnie Mouse: Just Reinforcing the Patriarchal Fuckability Test

I was fairly creeped out by these "sexed up" Sesame Street character costumes for women. I can't think of anything worse than women dressing up as "sexy" versions of children's cartoon characters. Turns out I'm really naive because there is a whole industry of selling these kinds of costumes. I don't get how this is even remotely sexual and I would rather scrub these images right out of my brain. The thing is lots of retailers, including Amazon, sell these kinds of costumes. If you google search Minnie Mouse costumes, you will get links to these kinds of outfits. They are easily available for all kids to find. It's just another way sexualise childhood for girls.

I also don't think it's difficult to over-emphasise the problematic relationship between these kinds of costumes and the "new" Minnie Mouse campaign of Barneys New York. She is ultra thin, tall and glamorous. She is everything that Minnie Mouse, and the other Disney characters, were not. Despite quite a lot of activism to get Disney and Barneys to stop running this sexualised Minnie Mouse campaign, the companies have dismissed concerns: 

"We are saddened that activists have repeatedly tried to distort a lighthearted holiday project in order to draw media attention to themselves," Disney and Barneys said in a joint statement to the News. 

"They have deliberately ignored previously released information clearly stating this promotion is a three-minute ‘moving art’ video featuring traditional Minnie Mouse in a dreamlike sequence set in Paris where she briefly walks the runway as a model and then happily awakens as her normal self wearing the very same designer dress from the fashion show."

Neither Disney nor Barneys want to acknowledge the problem of the sexualisation of young girls. They see only a 3 minute video where Minnie Mouse pretends to be a model. I see a culture which punishes women who don't conform to the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. I see a culture which prevents little girls from being children by focusing on their appearance rather than their person. I see a culture which tells women they aren't important unless they are pretty. 

Disney and Barneys might think it's just a silly video. I see the increasing pornification of society. It breaks my heart to see little girls being taught that they are worth nothing unless a man wants to fuck them.

There is a petition here requesting that retailers stop selling sexy Halloween costumes for young girls. I don't know what it will change but I signed. Because I wanted my voice to be heard.

Read More

Sesame Street Goes Porn

Well, it's not actually Sesame Street who have joined the porn industry but some enterprising Dude, and it's always a Dude, has decided that Halloween is not complete without women dressed up in pornified versions of Sesame Street characters.* Even creepier is the fact that these are ostensibly all male characters. I mean, I know, Sesame Street is a male-dominated show but they couldn't think of a single female character to pornify. Not that I want any Sesame Street characters pornified. It is just way too creepy. And, yes, I am over-using the word creepy, but, come on, this is quintessentially creepy. There is no other word to describe this level of porn.

Also, whoever came up with this idea is pretty much a pervert. I don't like making snap judgements about people's sexual preferences but looking at Oscar the Grouch and thinking tits is perverted. And creepy. And, probably in need of some serious therapy. 

I do wonder about copyright laws. Don't Sesame Street have to approve the use of their images for commercial purposes or does Yandy get around this by selling the masks separately? I really, really hope this isn't something that Sesame Street approved but nothing would surprise me now.

* If you aren't already following the Reel Girl blog you should be. It is brilliant.

Read More

Jezebel Remembers It's a Feminist Organisation

I was complaining about Jezebel's bizarre understanding of feminism the other day. I was in a full-on righteous rage about their inability to understand the political and cultural context of the so-called sex entertainment industry. I questioned their feminist credentials. Well, actually, I rubbished them. Then they published Listen Up Ladies, Everything Real Men Think Is Wrong With You which is a fucking brilliant feminist anthem.

These are some of my favourite highlights:

First of all, I am neither an empty man-socket nor a fucking venus flytrap. I am not looking to "attract a man." I am just trying to do my stuff and then maybe meet a person who likes me because I am also a person. I didn't want to get all serious right off the bat, BUT SORRY: Women's grueling, lifelong, losing battle to transform themselves into magical, flawless creatures with Disney hair and 15-inch waists and massive ham-lips is not for the benefit of women. And when men say that they "love to see the woman underneath the makeup," they're not saying they want to see your leg stubble and greasy bangs—they're saying they want you to be better at hiding your maintenance routine. Because the maintenance spoils the fantasy.
...

First of all. I find it hard to believe that Shaun can even tell the difference between a salon manicure and an at-home manicure, unless his girlfriend has some sort of tremor-inducing palsy, or multitasks by combining nail maintenance with trampoline practice. Which means this whole thing is just about signaling—Shaun wants to be with the kind of woman who gets her nails done at a salon. Nevermind the fact that going out to get your nails done can eat up several hours a week (I presume he also wants his girlfriend to have a career and a social life and to take care of her family and do her taxes and maintain her home and feed herself and possibly sleep once in a while), and can cost hundreds of dollars a month (I also presume Shaun is not footing the bill).
...
Also, women: If you are single, it is not because your fake eyelashes are too bushy or Kevin doesn't like cucumber lotion. This shit is an oppressive waste of your time. Here's my new beauty tip for everyone on earth: Go read a book or something.

Jezebel can be freaking hilarious when they're ranting. They just need to dump the celeb shit and rant more.

Read More

So, Prince Harry Got Naked in Vegas and I'm Supposed to Care about HIs Right to Privacy

As ever, I think the media, and the all dipsticks in a frenzy over this, have got themselves mixed-up in some sort of David-Bowie-inspired-Labyrinth debacle. This isn't about the constraints on the British Press which prohibit them from invading the privacy of the Royal Family. This debate should be about everyone's right to privacy. No one should find pictures of themselves being drunk, stupid and naked on the web; even over-entitled white boys with some serious privilege issues. And, let's be honest here, the media sources making po-faced statements about not being allowed to show pictures of Harry's penis are actually whinging about not being allowed to. I doubt even channel 4 news would have managed to refrain themselves from showing all the footage of Harry's penis if they though they could get away with it.

I couldn't give a rat's arse about Harry. I think he's a buckethead and I have no time for him or the rest of the nincompoops in his family. I do, however, care about his right to privacy and that of ordinary people; especially those who are vulnerable. I think Paris Hilton is nincompoop but no one deserves to have their sex tapes available on TMZ [or whoever posted them. I'm not going to google this to double check which parasitic media outlet actually published them]. No one deserves to be sexually assaulted in this manner. And, here, I do mean sexually assaulted. Having pictures of your unclothed body posted about the net for others to sneer at or masturbate to is sexualised violence.

And, yeah, I'm sure some will read this and think I'm over-reacting; that Harry is just being a jack-the-lad and it's all a bit of a fuss over nothing. I would agree that Harry playing naked billiards with his mates is neither news-worthy or surprising [although, let's be honest here, possibly a bit unsafe playing it drunk]. But, it is sexualised violence to post pictures of his body naked without permission. Frankly, I'm not overly-fond of the issues around consent and naked pictures in general. I think far too many vulnerable people get pushed into both being photographed or filmed naked and then lose the rights to their images but are somehow led to believe they have "consented" through "choice" [and, seriously, do I loathe "choice" feminism and it's insistence on pretending to "empower" vulnerable women through their sexual exploitation].

There is also a gendered dimension to this issue which the press is conveniently obfuscating. Harry, age 27, running about naked is a bit of a laugh; Vanessa Hudgens, still pretty much a teenager, sending a man naked pictures of herself is a "slut". This is without even getting into the serious misogyny which has punished both Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan. The old slut-shaming double standard always rears it's ugly-head in these situations. As @londonfeminist tweeted this morning:

Just imagining today's headlines if Prince Harry were Princess Helen.

We all know the Daily Fail would be running headlines about a Princess Helen being disgrace to the crown, a slut, a whore and a whole passel of nincompoopery. They'd publish the photos. They wouldn't care about a Princess's right to privacy; not in their desperate attempt to label her a whore.

Publishing photos of people either naked or in other sexually compromising positions is sexualised violence. This should apply as equally to bucketheaded princes as it does to vulnerable 17 year olds. And, the media aren't the only ones responsible for perpetuating this sexualised violence. Every time ordinary people google these images, they are buying into and feeding the sexual exploitation industry and helping to increase the number of sexually exploited people.

The whole reality television and "celeb" magazines industry need to die. Today.

People need to stop financially supporting the sexualised violence of others. This serves only to feed rape culture.

Read More

Pussy Riot: whose freedom, whose riot?

BY HUB NEWSFEED

Please reblog this radical feminist analysis of the Pussy Riot controversy. [via RadFem Hub]

Recently there has been lots of noise around the arrest of three members of Pussy Riot, a Russian anarchist female punk band. The media almost unequivocally represented them as the modern heroines of our time, fighting for freedom, democracy, sexual liberation and peace against a dark and ruthless dictatorship (articles are to be found in the NYT, Le Monde. The Guardian, etc.) Feminist groups all over the Western world are sending links and petitions to “free pussy riot”, anddemonstrations have even been organised in support of the group by big institutionalised organisations such as “Osez le féminisme” (dare to be a feminist).

Now while I support without ambiguity the liberation of Pussy Riot’s members, it’s worth pausing for a minute to ask ourselves, as radical feminists, what the political dynamics are here. Why would Western media denounce so passionately the repression of feminists in Russia, when it usually only diffuses information that supports male supremacy and patriarchy? Feminism has long disappeared from any malestream media, except when journalists can turn it into male masturbation material, that is pornify either our suffering or our resistance to it. What’s going on here?

Before learning more about the case, the first thing that made me frown was the fact progressives were hailing Pussy Riot as the “new feminists”, despite that their name is fairly insulting to women. It is certainly not apolitical, since we are in a context in which pornography has deeply colonised our movement and the only groups that the media presents as feminist are those that either insult us or reclaim the very instruments of our subordination, that is, male sexual violence, PIV, pornified femininity and all the associated harmful cultural practices. These tactics of destroying the meaning of feminism form part of a general worldwide backlash against women.

I found it suspicious that Pussy Riot was getting so much media attention, even for pseudo feminist standards. You can measure the degree of feminism of an action by how men react to it, and if men collectively cheer and celebrate it, then you can be pretty sure there’s something wrong about it, or that it doesn’t somehow support our liberation from men. And as far as I can recall, even the slutwalks didn’t get as much coverage or public appraisal. What was it that men liked so much about Pussy Riot?

Well, under closer inspection I discovered that the high level of coverage was related to – though indirectly – promoting men’s right to women’s sexual subordination and the pornification of our movement. The arrested women actually form part (and are victims of) a mixed anarchist group called “Voina” (meaning “war”), founded in 2007 by two men called Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaïev, who regularly engage the women in extreme and degrading women-hating pornography as part of their public “political stunts”. Some of Voina’s men have actually already been incarcerated in 2011 for hooliganism – which is punished for 7 years of prison in Russia, but their bail was paid for by an artist named “Banksy” four months after their imprisonment. (More information can be foundhere and here)

Included in their anti-government actions are a “public orgy” in the national museum of biology in a room full of stuffed bears, where several men anally penetrated their female partners in a position of submission, including one heavily pregnant women, as a metaphor to “bugger/fuck Medvedev”. “Medved” means “bear”, hence all the stuffed bears – this was meant to be symbolic, artistic and revolutionary according to the activists. Here the male anarchists literally used women as dead bodies or receptacles through which to make a political point to other men. Violating women as a means to offend other men is nothing else but an age-old patriarchal mechanism – behind which the intended target are us, for men to bond over our annihilation.

Another planned stunt in the name of “sexual freedom”, inspired by extreme forms of pornography such as zoophilia/ necrophilia, includes a member of Pussy Riot masturbating with a dead chicken in a supermarket under the watch and camera of the anarchist males, after which she inserts the dead chicken entirely into her vagina and hobbles with the chicken inside her out of the supermarket. This is how the male members themselves describe their act of “liberation”:

“How to Snatch a Chicken: A Tale of How One Cunt fed the Whole of the Group Voina… in honor of their hero, a 19th century political philosopher/prisoner, Voina’s president’s wife dubbed “Vacuous Cunt With Inconceivably Huge Tits,”smuggled a chicken out of a grocery store in said “Vacuous Cunt…”  [the journalist comments] : First, the troupe searched for a large and fresh enough chicken. Then, the store isles and CCTV cameras were blocked by the members of the group holding up banners with “FUCK WHORING YOURSELF!” smeared on them in I-don’t-want-to-know-what. The blockade allowed Vacuous Cunt to promptly stuff and smuggle the poultry out of the store, which was then presumably cooked and eaten.[1]

The president is presumably Oleg, and the woman in question, apparently his wife – a situation which would qualify as domestic abuse and sexual slavery given the level of violence, women-hatred and humiliation directed at the women involved. The woman is reduced to a corpse to be ‘stuffed’ in the most degrading and insulting way. No woman would desire such things as inserting a dead chicken in her vagina in public were she not under heavy control and terror. Also of note is the fact that one of their children was brought to this stunt, visibly no older than four. Sexual exhibitionism in the presence of children may also qualify as child sexual abuse. How deeply has women-hatred sunk into men’s minds, that they are incapable of imagining a riot without it being a by-the-book copy of a gonzo porn film? Here again, we see men instrumentalising women and using sexual torture of women as a means to communicate a political message (which if not totally vacuous, communicates nothing other than their hatred of women).

Perhaps the most saddening action of all consisted in filming one of the women naked, covered in cockroaches, meant to be understood as “sexy”. The association of women to filth and parasites to be eliminated couldn’t be clearer. This is women-hating, genocidal propaganda at its most dangerous form. Voina’s men give the world to see where women’s place must be, even when fighting against authoritarian regimes: head down, underneath men and fucked by them.

Now what does this mean for us, what can be understood from the media’s silence about Voina’s pornographic exploitation of women, when all the attention is focused on promoting Pussy Riot as our modern heroines? The effect and intent is political. While all the public eyes are set on the Russian representatives of the state and religion as the ultimate fascists, dictators and machos, we are made to forget that the primary oppressors and tyrants of these particular women are the men closest to them, that is, Voina’s men and their use of pornography to demean, oppress and enslave their female comrades. They are their everyday police, the fascists and colonisers breaking the women’s resistance, occupying their souls, sentencing them to public humiliation and subordinating them through sexual abuse. We are made to forget that these women are doubly victimised: first victims of the violence by the men of their own group, they are then punished and held responsible for the abuse committed against them.

By holding Pussy Riot as examples of resistance, being silent about the pornographic violence and denouncing the state and religious authority as the only oppressor, it follows that the media is complicit with the men from Voina. It protects the anarchist’s individual impunity, and more generally, furthers all men’s interest in promoting rape and women-hating propaganda. It also prevents women in general from identifying men’s sexual violence and the harms of the penis as the primary agents of our oppression. It distracts and disgusts women away from feminism. What kind of dignity and respect for our movement can women have if the only models of resistance given to us by the media are those to be seen by millions of men as humiliated, soiled and degraded in this way?  Even the most brave and valiant women, who fight bare handed and alone against Putin and the religious authority, must be shown by men to the world as surrendering and conquered.

If we want justice for the women imprisoned and to show true solidarity, we need to not only denounce the injustice by the Russian state, but also denounce the violence by the men from Voina. We need to recognise and openly denounce the pandemic levels of sexual violence present in most male-centric leftist or anarchist activist groups, whereby women are often pimped by the men of the group for pornography or expected to submit to extremely violent or degrading acts in the name of “sexual freedom”. What counts for these men is to fight for men’s total public access to women, especially militant women, because it really serves to put all women back in line. The weapon of mass destruction against women is the penis and this is why all men are focusing on making Putin look bad while they say nothing about the bastards of Voina.

For our sisters, for all women, we need to say out loud that this is not feminism.

–  HUB Newsfeed

Read More

Jezebel: I'm Not Sure if We Should Be Celebrating or Crying. I think I'm Going With Crying

I read Jezebel. I'm not proud of it but, really, where else can you get real feminist analysis and anti-feminist handmaiden shit all in the same place? TMZ and Perez Hilton are just facile, woman-hating shite. Jezebel has moments of genius; you know, when they're not insulting and denigrating actresses for having sex or labelling models fat or the whole breast-feeders are Nazis schtick and what have you. I'm never entirely sure how they manage to flip between feminist activism and the Official Handmaiden Cheerleading Squad. But, they do. And, I can't help myself but be amazed at their hypocrisy and their frequent tendency to completely miss the Feminist point.

This article being a case in point. It starts like this:

On Saturday, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law that will force strip clubs to pay an additional tax, which will in turn be used to fund programs aimed at preventing sexual assault as well as counseling sexual assault victims. The new tax is expected to haul in about $1 million a year for rape prevention programs, funding that even critics of the tax think is sorely needed.

Well, this is a lovely law except for the whole bit about it expecting rapes to happen. You want to stop the increased rapes which occur near strip clubs, then you ban strip clubs. You don't tax them to pay for the treatment of the rape victims who were raped because of the existence of the club. It's ridiculous. And, circular. And, stupid. But, at least, they are acknowledging the relationship between the "sex entertainment industry and increased sexual violence; even though they are solving it in the stupidest fashion possible.

This, however, is Jezebel's conclusion:

You'd have to be some kind of epic asshole to disagree with the way this additional revenue will be used, but implying a definite link between strip clubs and sexual assault carries the danger of further stigmatizing a business that already implies a certain degree of sleaze. Ultimately, this tax might not affect club owners like Ocello as much as it might affect the women who work at Ocello's clubs.

Talk about missing the freaking point. Guess what? The research does suggest that rapes and other forms of sexual violence increase in and around strip clubs and lap dancing clubs. And, this is without considering the sexualised violence that the women working in these clubs experience. That increased risk is to random women who just happen to be unlucky enough to live or work near one. And, yeah, I think the sex industry is sleazy. It harms all women whilst deliberately targeting vulnerable women for exploitation: women are poor or lack formal education or are already victims of sexualised violence (usually as a child) or women with serious drug or alcohol dependency issues. The idea that women "choose" to end up in this industry would be laughable if it weren't so harmful. The sex entertainment industry [an oxymoron if I've ever heard one] is about the objectification, abuse and torture of women's bodies. It is sleazy. And, it will always be sleazy.

A cursory search on google would have found lots of research and articles discussing the correlation between the increase risk of sexualised violence and the sex entertainment industry. Here's an article in the Telegraph about a police chief in Newquay objecting to sex entertainment establishments because they increase VAW. Object has countless resources listed here outlining the prevalence of sexualised violence near lap dancing clubs. The writer at Jezebel was either to lazy or too constrained by Patriachal discourse to even contemplate that the objectification of women's bodies does make other[ed] women unsafe. 

We need to face up to the fact that prostitution, pornography and "sex entertainment establishments" help perpetuate rape culture. It is disingenuous and unkind to suggest otherwise.

Read More

Thankfully, Misogyny Returns to Live Another Day: The Olympic Closing Ceremony

So, The Olympic Closing Ceremony has returned us to normalcy with Misogyny making it's big comeback; along with Freddie Mercury and John Lennon. I do have to state, for the record, that I went to bed during The Who and I haven't bothered to read any blogs or media reports on the Closing Ceremony yet so it's entirely possible I'm just repeating what everyone else is saying. But, I don't actually care. The Closing Ceremony was just an embarrassing celebration of nincompoopery and misogyny. Spending two weeks celebrating the talents and athletic ability of some truly incredible and inspiring women to end it with 2 women famous for wearing clothes seems a bit, well, pathetic. Not to mention, the whole Kate Moss cocaine issue and Naomi Campbell with her violence problems. Moss, at least, wasn't too out of place considering the rest of the show seemed to be a Who's Who of British Drug Addiction. Why Pete Doherty wasn't invited is anyone's guess.

I thought most of the Closing Ceremony was tedious, ill-conceived and poorly executed nincompoopery. I can't begin to imagine why anyone thought One Direction was a good idea or what dimwit was in charge of sound and hadn't planned enough music for the Athlete's Parade so that they were forced to repeat music from the first half; cleverly highlighting who had been lip-syncing. All in all, it was nowhere near as good as the Opening Ceremony lacking any sense of story-telling or political protest. I was holding out for a Pussy Riot protest art piece and the Kaiser Chiefs singing I Predict a Riot. I was sorely disappointed by the lack of both. Although, I do have to give whoever was in charge props for celebrating two charming British institutions: the traffic jam and police kettling tactics. Unfortunately, those were simply not whimsical enough to maintain any sense of fun during 3 tedious hours of bad British music: performed by some who should have been better [and I'm looking at you here Beady Eye].

But, what really fucked me off was the Ode To Misogyny which was the second half. That should have been accompanied by Soul II Soul's Back to Reality wherein men are celebrated (fully clothed) for their talents and women were running around half-naked. Then, at least, we could have pretended it was meant ironically. And, yeah, I'm fucking incensed that Moss and Campbell's images were paraded around the venue on the back of a truck: because objectifying women's bodies is just so cool and, you know, unusual. Or, something equally tedious.

That alone was just beyond fucking sexist bollocks but Eric Idle surrounded by (fake?) Victoria Secret's Models in angel gear was the final nail in a night of extreme stupidity. Monty Python aren't exactly reknown for their realistic portrayal of women but accompanying Always Look on the Bright Side of Life with a bunch of angels in their underwear is just beyond ignorant. They had a chance to do something truly spectacular and original with the Monty Python sketch and instead went with the same tedious misogyny; much like they did with the inclusion of rape apologist Russell Brand. It was disgraceful. He is disgraceful. The less said about him, the better.

The ONLY redeeming feature of the whole night was Darcey Bussell. She is just an incredible athlete and a true celebration of British talent. That sequence with the Phoenix and the brilliant dancing was the best part of the Closing Ceremony. As soon as someone with better computer skills than me puts the Phoenix sequence on youtube, I will post it because it was genius. 

The rest was a gigantic pile of shite. And, I can't even begin to work out what Annie Lennox was on about. If this Olympics was a real celebration of women athletes with Saudi Arabia sending women competitors for the first time, Lennox should have been singing her anthems of women power: Sisters are Doing it for Themselves or Sing. Oh, and George Micheal's Freedom should have been performed by women in Pussy Riot outfits. Just because. But, it wasn't. It was the same tedious misogynistic constructions of patriarchal conformity celebrating the hyper-sexualised objectification of women's bodies that Playboy peddles daily. A waste of money and time.

Read More

Misogynistic Walk of Shame: Hooters. And, Not Just for the Name.

This is the bit where I admit to reading Jezebel; a magazine which claims to be feminist whilst writing some of the most misogynistic, anti-woman twaddle I've had the misfortune to read. If you don't believe me, look at their posts on breastfeeding or any post on celebrities. In between the gobsmackingly sexist posts about women, Jezebel manages to produce some utterly brilliant rants about body image, patriarchal fuckability, and stupid arsewipe advertisers. So, I have to give them props for their rant on this piece of misogynistic arsehattery: 

The entire ad is about how fat, ugly and utterly unfuckable most women are; cause that isn't offensive or misogynistic at all. Apparently, the only subhumans with vaginas who are even remotely fuckable are "girls". I do wish people would actually read Nabokov's Lolita and realise it's about the rape of a child and not some guide to fucking barely legal 18 year olds. [I'm also fairly creeped out by 40 year old men wanting to fuck 18 year olds. Just gross. Really, really gross].

Hooters remains the quintessential example of the normalisation of the objectification and pornographication of women's bodies. FFS, Hooters is classed as a "family restaurant" and not  a sex entertainment venue. You can have your child's birthday there. Granted, you have to be a pretty piss-poor parent with some serious common sense problems to think that a venue featuring half-naked women being objectified is a good place to go for chicken wings. But, lots of parents do this and, in doing so, help perpetuate rape culture. So, I'm going to be loud and proud about my judgy pants here: If you take your kid to Hooters, you really do need some basic critical thinking skills and parenting classes to boot.

I can't possibly improve on this rant in Jezebel: 

This commercial is just a stank bundle of cheap, hacky, antique jokes that prop up the patently damaging notion that women's societal value declines drastically with every cellulite dimple. Oh, thanks, guys. Thanks a lot. Now that I'm too embarrassed to go to the pool and exercise because some dickhead lifeguard and the voices in his head are going to be horking over my body, I guess I'll just cloak my shame in sweatpants and gorge on fried chicken all night! 

So, what they said and I'm adding Hooters to my Misogynistic Walk of Shame Boycott. [Not that I have ever eaten there. Obviously.]

Oh, and in case you are clinically stupid and wanted to pretend that that was a one-off example of extreme misogyny by Hooters, here's another ad charmingly entitled More than a Mouthful.

Read More

The Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: The Continuing Nincompoopery of Lynx

Now, I'm sure everyone will be as shocked as I am at Lynx having misogynistic advertising. After all, Lynx are the creative geniuses behind this: 

And then there is this gem which isn't about the objectification of women at all: 

Lynx are clearly on the forefront of the anti-misogyny advertising front. So, I was shocked, horrified and utterly perplexed by this new ad campaign: The Five Types of Women: 

Because that's all women are: objectified stereotypes whose sole purpose is to be fucktoys for men. Or, in the case of purchasers of Lynx, teenage boys and "adults" with serious psycho-sexual disorders. After all, these are the kinds of comments Lynx allows on its FB page:

Louis Small She is not a brainy girl... she is a whore with glasses... 

ris Avfc Harrison High maintenance biyatches can suck my fat one. They horrible n fake

These ads just feed our hyper-masculine, hyper-sexualised rape culture wherein women are shamed for being sluts whilst being coerced into trying to fit the requirements of the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. Lynx is just another way for the Fashion-Beauty Complex to punish women whilst capitalising on male insecurities about their sexuality. Lynx isn't selling pleasure. Its just reinforcing patriarchal conformity and rape culture by constructing and constraining sexuality. I'm not sure who Lynx thinks is their customer base but I do think that the rule: "if the man wears lynx, he's not worth dating" is a maxim to live by.

Read More