the woman problem

To the death: Wrestling with post-masculinity

2009-03-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

Darren Aronofsky’s recent film The Wrestler has been hailed as a classic comeback film for both its star, Mickey Rourke, as well as the character he plays, Randy “The Ram” Robinson. Like Rourke himself, Randy’s career peaked in the 1980s, and the film is set twenty years later as the once-pro wrestler as he negotiates his own process of aging. At once brutal and tender, the film is sincere without being sentimental.

Sincerity is a somewhat unlikely quality for a film about pro-wrestling, more spectacle than sport, in which artifice itself becomes art. Yet while the film quietly unmasks wrestling’s violent hypermasculinity to expose a much softer underbelly, its fascination with the masochistic rituals inside and outside the ring betray its ambivalence toward this curious new creature it portrays: the post-masculine man.

Randy is post-masculine in two important senses. Most obviously, he is an aging specimen of a type of masculinity that is no longer valued in mainstream culture; “an old, broken-down piece of meat,” as he describes himself. Like a prize fighting animal past its prime, the end of Randy’s career means a trip to the slaughterhouse, although in his case he is the one doing the butchering. Forced to get a job behind the deli counter at a grocery store, Randy is given a hairnet and an ID badge bearing his given name, Robin Ramzinski. In an interesting twist, Randy’s “real” name reveals not only gender ambiguity but also suggests a process of Americanization in which Randy’s ethnic identity is traded in for a more mainstream (whiter) version of masculinity. (Note that instead of being abjected completely, his surname becomes fodder for his animalistic wrestling moniker, “The Ram.”) Re-ethnicized and stripped of his masculine signifiers, “Robin” is now at the mercy of his boss Wayne, who snidely mocks his chosen profession (“isn’t that when you sit on other dudes’ faces?”). Whereas Wayne (played by comedian Todd Barry) was being slammed into lockers by guys like Randy back in the eighties, in the twenty-first century service economy, the rules of masculinity are reversed, and now the nerdy managers have the upper hand in the contest of brains versus brawn.

Yet as Wayne’s comment makes crassly clear, Randy’s narrative contains traces of another kind of post-masculinity, one that threatens to destabilize the very system that made Randy’s existence possible in the first place. From the fake tan to the fake highlights to the steroids, Randy’s masculinity itself is revealed to be artificially constructed. Just as drag performances rely on excess to destabilize gender identities, Randy’s embodiment of excessive physicality is anything but manly. Randy’s bleached tresses and bronzed hulk pay tribute to a superficiality that is unmistakably effeminate. Strangely at home in the feminized spaces of the hair salon and the tanning booth, he self-consciously creates an image that could easily be described as “Jersey girl.”

Gender play continues in the wrestling ring, whose hyperbolic brutality is juxtaposed with the gentle homosocial camaraderie of the backstage locker room. Randy offers encouragement to a bashful and softspoken younger wrestler, before agreeing on a set of guidelines for the match. One critic terms their relationship avuncular, which I take in all its Sedgewickian suggestiveness. In this theater for the performance of manhood at its rawest, the actors are in fact a bit queer. Outfitted in a black leather collar and boots, the younger wrestler’s S&M aesthetic almost unnecessarily exaggerates the sadomasochistic relationship between the two wrestlers. In this carefully choreographed performance of dominance and submission, the male body becomes both object and subject of not only violence, but desire.

It is precisely this desire which the film attempts to subvert by channeling Randy’s masculine energies toward more respectable, heteronormative relationships. After his doctor orders him to quit wrestling, Randy struggles with the meaning of “retirement” from his chosen career path. Haunted by the specter of his lost manhood (manifested most obviously by the castration anxiety-inducing scene depicting him signing autographs among a motley crew of retired wrestlers, all of whom are missing limbs), he turns to more traditional forms of masculine behavior. His clumsy attempt to ask out “Cassidy,” a dancer at the local strip joint, is almost pathetic (ironically, Randy doesn’t seem to understand that the strip club is just another theater of flesh and spectacle), yet there’s something winsome about his naivete and Cassidy (née Pam) gives him the second chance he probably doesn’t deserve.

We learn that Cassidy is in fact a single mom trying to get out of the business, which helps explain her motivation to encourage Randy to reestablish contact with his estranged daughter. Rebuffed coldly at first, and then with a torrent of rage (fatherhood was not his strong suit, we gather), Randy persists doggedly, and his unabashed willingness to admit his mistakes produces a sense of vulnerability his daughter is able to identify with.

Responsibility doesn’t suit Randy, however, and he blows it (literally) with his daughter when he shows up hours late to pick her up because he was sleeping off a coke-filled one-night stand. Acknowledging his failure to adhere to the provider model of manhood, Randy abandons the patriarchal project, and turns back to a more familiar – if less familial – arena for reclaiming his masculinity. Randy’s return to the wrestling ring marks his renouncement of reproductive heterosexuality in favor of the homoerotic fraternity of his fellow wrestlers and fans. In a dramatic speech to the crowds assembled at his much-hyped rematch with his longtime nemesis, “The Ayatollah,” Randy makes his affinities clear with heartfelt emotion: “You are my family,” he proclaims to the roaring crowd.

Unlike most family formations, however, which are structured around the creation and nurturing of life, Randy’s “family” is actually the site of destruction, and in fact this homecoming is the scene of his death. Ultimately, Randy gives up the struggle against mortality, choosing instead to indulge the masochistic logic of the death drive. The final moments of the film show Randy ascending to balance on the edge of the ropes in preparation for his signature move, the “Ram Jam.” Amid deafening cheers, Randy raises his arms in triumphant exultation and prepares for what we know will be his final jump. He’s in the air for a split second before the screen blacks out, thus immortalizing him. We are left with the troubling yet exhilarating suggestion that in death is ecstasy.

The Palin offensive

2008-09-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

This summer was an unusually dry one in NYC, and also quite barren on the blogging front. My brain cells were most unfortunately occupied with radicals, and not the fun kind. No, there is most certainly nothing radical about taking square roots, or any other element of 8th grade math that you apparently need to know in order to go to graduate school. Like the LSAT, the GRE exists purely to filter out everyone too lazy (or smart) to spend the better part of their summer studying interior angles and esoteric vocabulary words. It has absolutely nothing to do with how smart you are, how good you are at math, reading, or writing, or how likely you are to succeed in graduate school.

It has a lot to do, however, with the limited number of advanced degrees offered and the need for some kind of filter to keep the numbers of applicants down to a somewhat reasonable number. When you receive 300 applications each year, and admit only 30 students, you need an expedient method for weeding some of them out. Enter ETS, an organization devoted to finding new and devious ways to make smart people look dumb. As evidenced by an entire test preparation industry, the key to succeeding on the GRE, or any similar standardized test, has nothing to do with intelligence or prior knowledge. All it takes is weeks and weeks of mental drudgery as you unlearn whatever you previously knew about writing and math, and re-learn the tactics required to outsmart ETS. It can hardly be called “studying”; it’s more of a mental retrofitting process.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the exam was the so-called “analytical writing” portion, in which you are given a choice of two prompts and asked to compose an essay presenting your own perspective on the topic. In comparison to the multiple-choice verbal and quantitative sections, this part of the exam seems like it might actually hold some relevance for graduate school. After all, it seems likely that most graduate fields would require this type of analytical writing. Most graduate fields, however, do not require timed essay exams on topics so inane that it is difficult to take them seriously. My exam topic was:

"Those who treat politics and morality as though they were separate realms fail to understand either the one or the other."

Ironically, since Sarah Palin was named as McCain’s running mate, this topic has become more relevant than I could have imagined. In just one week the unlikely vice presidential candidate has eclipsed both Obama and McCain in the media, which is understandably transfixed by the idea of a moose-hunting, Jesus-loving, oil-drilling hockey mom in the White House.

It seems completely absurd, and originally I saw McCain’s pick as an act of desperation, an acknowledgment of his own failure to compete with the rising tide of Obama. And the fact that the Republican party was forced to put a woman on the ticket is a strong indication that this election marks a turning point in American politics. For the first time, being an old white man has become somewhat of a liability, rather than an advantage.

This is due in large part of course to the efforts of Hillary Clinton, whose epic bid for the presidency, though unsuccessful, did in fact succeed in cracking the white woman’s glass ceiling (women of color, I’m afraid, usually face a ceiling made of concrete and reinforced with steel). And the irony of ironies is that now Hillary, who was the battering ram against that ceiling (and has the scars to prove it), must stand aside and watch Miss Congeniality happily ascend to the level she herself failed to attain.

And here’s a lesson to all you ambitious young women: the path to the presidency is marked not by how many times you have defended children’s rights, but by how many children you have. It is marked not by your commitment to national health care reform, but by your commitment to driving your kids to hockey practice. In other words, if you want to reach the White House, don’t bother running for US Senate, just join your local PTA! Oh and by the way, you should probably trade in your pantsuit for a cute skirt and heels.

This is a man’s world, after all, and it turns out that men don’t like women who act like men. Hillary was punished because she wasn’t content to play by the (gender) rules. Instead of politely waiting to be offered second place on the ticket, she aggressively pursued the highest office in the land. Rather than tending to her wifely duties, she let her adulterous husband disgrace her. Hillary was trying out for quarterback but it turned out the only position available to her was on the cheer squad.

So now Hillary is back on the sidelines and we have a new head cheerleader in town. And despite our collective instinct to laugh her off the field, I believe that underestimating Sarah Palin is one of the most dangerous things we can do right now. As she said in her knockout speech at the RNC, “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” We didn’t have hockey where I grew up but as the daughter of a former PTA president (who went on to run for public office), I am all too familiar with this breed of rabid supermom to take that joke lightly.

Some analyses have suggested that Palin isn’t going to last, that she will be undercut by her own administrative missteps and her daughter’s scandalicious behavior. Something tells me, however, that if a teen pregnancy out of wedlock can’t stop her, there’s not much that will. Rather, I agree with Adele Sten’s suggestion that Palin is the Christian right’s new “culture warrior,” who dresses up hardcore conservatism with a fresh face and a sassy personality. It’s true, she has single-handedly revitalized John McCain’s moribund campaign, giving him the grounds on which to claim his own agenda for change and providing a solid basis of conservative family values to counter his “maverick” forays away from the party.

For this reason, she is a formidable opponent and we should be very wary of the pit bull underneath the lipstick. And much as we may be tempted, it would be highly unwise to succumb to the desire to belittle her as nothing more than a ditzy beauty queen. Showing contempt for her policy positions is one thing, showing contempt for her background, her career, or her choice to have kids is quite another. If we stoop to this level, not only do we risk alienating the soccer mom constituency, we also come uncomfortably close to reproducing a patriarchal devaluation of women and motherhood. And although her daughter’s pregnancy seems like a perfect excuse to pillory Palin with her own conservative Christian hypocrisy, nominating Bristol Palin for slut of the year is hardly a feminist tactic.

Furthermore, focusing on these kinds of details distracts us from the real issue, which is that Palin is positioned to assume a very, very powerful role, in which she is likely to bring the full force of her pit bull personality to bear on a mission to destroy many of the freedoms we currently enjoy.

The fact of the matter is that Palin is a born-again evangelical Christian who believes that the war in Iraq is a mission from God. She believes in teaching creationism in schools. She opposes abortion unilaterally, even in cases of rape or incest. She opposes any form of sex-ed except abstinence-only programs. One of her top three stated goals as governor of Alaska was “Preserving the definition of “marriage” as defined in our constitution.” (source)

Indeed, it is precisely these ultra-conservative values that won her a place on the ticket, because the Republicans needed someone to appeal to their core constituency on the Christian right. McCain was far too liberal for this group, and without Palin they might have stayed home on election day. Yet Palin’s views are in fact far more conservative than most Americans, and so the Republican party is also working to mask some of her more extreme views in order to make her palatable to a wide group of swing voters, not least of which are some of Hillary’s followers.

That would explain why the article from the Eagle Forum Alaska that quoted Palin’s position on the topics above was removed from the internet. The task at hand, then, is to bring these issues to light, to demonstrate conclusively that Sarah Palin is most emphatically NOT your typical soccer mom, but rather a conservative extremist who poses a grave threat to the freedoms we cherish. It is on an ideological basis, rather than a personal one, that she must be attacked.

Queering the Family

2008-07-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

I am remiss in blogging and don't have time to analyze all the implications and media chatter and conservative backlash politics surrounding this, but I gotta say, I'm loving the separation of reproduction and gender.

Thursday is the new Friday

2008-07-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

While riding the elevator up to my office yesterday, I was stunned to see this headline on our news screen: “Utah mandates four-day work week”. Yes, it’s true, government workers are now required to work four days rather than five at most Utah state institutions (with the exception of things like prisons of course… I guess they didn’t want to make Fridays get-out-of-jail free day).

I’ve been advocating a four-day work week for years (okay, well, at least for the two years that I have been working five days a week). Obviously, from the worker’s perspective, I know very few people who would turn down a three-day weekend. But I’m also convinced that from a management perspective, a four-day week would not necessarily decrease productivity and might even increase it (in the short-term at least). Think about it. How much time do you waste during the average work day?

15 minutes scanning the New York Times headlines
5 minutes emailing article to your mom about how regular exercise prevents aging
5 minutes chit chatting with cubicle neighbor
20 minutes morning Starbucks run
5 minutes bathroom break
5 minutes complaining to coworker about lack of soap in bathroom dispensers
10 minutes personal phone call to insurance company
5 minutes watching hilarious youtube clip sent by friend
5 minutes composing hilarious email reply to said friend
10 minutes arguing with coworkers about where to order lunch
5 minutes deciding what to order on menupages

See? It’s only noon and you’ve already managed to waste an hour and a half! And this doesn’t even include gmail chat, AIM or facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that there is anything wrong with wasting 1/3 or more of your working hours. In fact, quite the opposite. But these types of time-wasting techniques are generally a response to the ennui of office work (analogous to the “slow-down” techniques factory workers used to oppose industrial production). After all, salaried employees get paid the same amount regardless of whether we’re actually working for eight hours straight or working for three and idling away the other five. (Things are different, of course, for freelancers and the self-employed, who possess a kind of self-discipline I do not aspire to.)

So here’s the question: if you were given the choice between wasting your time sitting at your desk or wasting it not sitting at your desk, which would you choose? I know the internet is fun and all, but I have to say I’d rather be at the beach. I think that most people would have no trouble accomplishing the same amount of work in four days rather than five, if given the proper motivation.

Now, it should be noted that Utah is not actually reducing the number of hours in a work week (they are just breaking it into four 10-hour days rather than five 8-hour days). I am not a fan of longer hours under any circumstances, and if you are literally working a 9-5 job, then working from 8 am to 6 pm would be unpleasant. However, in most workplaces, 8-6 is already the new 9-5! In my office normal hours are 8:30 – 6:00 with no lunch. Nonprofits might be a little more relaxed, but it’s not unusual to work until 7 pm and/or come in on weekends.

Whatever happened to the 40-hour work week? Answer: we think we’re too good for it.

For most upwardly mobile young people in New York, the 40-hour work week applies to the blue collar workforce, not to us. We turn up our noses at anything that reeks of manual labor, including lunch breaks and overtime. Instead, we slave away at jobs that give us the dignity of using our brains rather than our hands (although anyone who thinks working construction doesn’t involve a brain hasn’t framed any houses lately) and compensate us with fancy resumes and a sense of superiority.

This is not a call to go back to the factories – for one thing, they’re hard to come by in this day and age. But we’re not gaining anything by disassociating ourselves from the folks who got us the 40-hour work week in the first place. We may not be wearing overalls and carrying a lunch pail, but as long as we’re selling our labor for cashmoney, we’ve got the same chips on the table.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that our blue collar brethren have fought successfully for shorter hours and higher wages, those of us in finance, technology, nonprofits, the arts, and the nebulous “information” sector are working more and more, for less payoff.

According to this study, when compared with workers in 1965, the least educated and least skilled workers today work far fewer hours, but the most educated and most skilled are working the same amount or more (source). When you take into account that productivity has more than tripled, that means that workers today should theoretically be able to earn the same standard of living in one-third of the time.

So why are we working as hard or harder than our 1965 counterparts? Well, for one thing, we have gotten it into our brains that more work = more money. To some extent, this is true. The folks who are working fewer hours are also making less money overall. But by the same token, when you divide your average i-banker’s salary by number of hours worked, it may not be quite so impressive. Time is money, after all, and we seem to have to choose one or the other.

Some people have responded to this dilemma by eschewing materialism in favor of “voluntary simplicity,” defined as a “non-consumerist life-style based upon being and becoming, not having” (source). Now, I’m glad there are people out there who enjoy harvesting corn in their backyard and milling their own grain, more power to them. But I do not enjoy organic farming, and I have a number of materialistic vices that I rather enjoy, thankyouverymuch! (Interestingly, many in the self-professed “simple living” crowd seem to have no problem with shopping either, if the proliferation of stores specializing in organic cotton and hemp sandals is any indication).

What I want to know is how can we maximize the amount of money we make while simultaneously minimizing the number of hours we work? This is why I think the four-day work week is genius. Sure, it’s still a fringe idea, but I think this is an opportune time to push for it. After all, with the economy tanking and costs rising, companies are looking for ways to cut corners. Sometimes this means encouraging people to work from home, which can be a good alternative and possibly a step toward the four-day work week. When you subtract the time it takes to get ready for work and commute, you probably just bought yourself an hour and a half. Plus, who doesn’t like to work in their PJ’s? A word of caution, though – keep in mind that when you work from home, your employer is just outsourcing more of its costs to you. If you are going to be subsidizing your employer’s rent and utilities, you may want to consider what form of compensation you’d like in return.

Moving from the shop floor to the office cubicle has signified a variety of changes, but in most places it does mean more autonomy for employees. Your boss doesn’t make you punch a timecard because s/he trusts you to manage your own time. Internalizing the timekeeper role can be severely damaging, but it doesn’t have to be. It seems silly, but something as simple as leaving your desk every day for an hour can truly be an act of workplace resistance. Or, if you’re working through lunch anyway, figure you might as well work a half day every Friday. And if you can, do both.

Happy three-day weekend!

The last single girl in New York? Not quite.

2008-06-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

[Note: contains spoilers. However, if you care about spoilers I’m pretty sure you already saw the movie.]

So, I gotta admit that I’ve never been a fan of Sex and the City. When the show first aired, I lived nowhere near New York and wasn’t particularly compelled by a story about women buying designer clothing. Later, I came to appreciate the symbolic importance of a series about confident single women having all the sex they wanted (and talking about it!) but every time I tried to watch it, I was turned off by the contrived plotlines and annoying characters.

As a single woman living in New York, however, I figured once Carrie et al. hit the silver screen, I’d better go see what all the fuss is about. So after a naïve attempt to get tickets for opening night (what was I thinking?) I finally ended up seeing it last weekend.

As expected, the film was little more than a two and a half hour montage of Sarah Jessica Parker scampering around in ridiculously expensive clothes, wearing even more ridiculously expensive shoes. Sure, there were a few very vanilla sex scenes amidst all the haute couture product placements, and I gotta give Samantha credit for doing her darndest to objectify the male body.

Indeed, Sex and the City excels at superficiality. The biggest mistake of the film was in trying to do more.

Witness Carrie’s miraculous recovery from her post-jilting funk, aided by her very own guardian angel, “Saint Louise” from St. Louis. The days of “Mammy” may be gone with the wind, but apparently rich lil white girls still need black women for spiritual guidance (even at, ahem, age 40). In addition to cleaning Carrie’s apartment and organizing her closet (really?), Louise helps Carrie learn what love really means.

And what does love really mean? Well, taking it from Louise, Carrie and even bitchy, callous Miranda, it means forgiving the guy who screwed you over and/or broke your heart, so you can get married and live happily ever after.

And herein lies the ultimate betrayal of everything this show was supposed to stand for. Even though I didn’t personally watch Sex and the City, I saw the show as a testament to women’s desire (okay, let’s make that straight white upwardly mobile women’s desire) to be single, have sex, and live in New York City. And while I take these things for granted, I also realize that the show (and its popularity) is a product of both the women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution. There was a time not so long ago where being a single woman living in New York writing about sex would have been unthinkable, much less cause for a syndicated television series.

What made Sex and the City so fabulous was its unapologetic love affair with the glitz and glamour of being young and single and yes, addicted to shopping. Of course it’s unrealistic, of course it’s superficial. But it also speaks to a certain type of desire for autonomy (Charlotte is after all the only character without her own income) that holds water with millions of women across America.

But in the end, the message of the film was this: settle. Being single is okay when you’re young, but once you hit forty, you better get yourself a man post-haste. It doesn’t matter if he humiliated you (Carrie), dumped you (Louise), or cheated on you* (Miranda), if you don’t want to end up alone on New Year’s Eve (gasp!), you better take that asshole back.

Interestingly, Samantha is the only one of the four who decides to stay single, mostly because monogamous domesticity doesn’t particularly suit her (or, as she puts it, “I love you but I love me more”). This becomes apparent when she shocks her friends by gaining 10 pounds (gasp!). Turns out that Samantha has been eating in order to resist the temptation to cheat, displacing her sexual desires into food. Carrie responds with a wholly unconvincing “Of course you would look great at any size, but… are you happy?” No, she's not, so she ditches the relationship in favor of the freedom of single life.

I hope that audiences saw Samantha’s decision as powerful and self-affirming, that being single is not the same thing as being alone, even at age 50. But the fact of the matter is that within the film, her narrative was a lonely one, unable to compete with Charlotte’s miracle pregnancy, or Miranda’s joyful reunion with Steve on the Brooklyn Bridge, or even Carrie’s no-frills “just you and me” wedding at City Hall.

Powerful female sexual autonomy, once the trademark of Sex and the City, is now marginalized within its own master narrative. Something tells me that doesn't bode well.

*which you probably deserved anyway because you wouldn’t sleep with him

Politics as usual

2008-06-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

Yes I know I'm behind but I have a few thoughts on the post-Clinton era:

1. Thank goodness someone is trying to set the record straight on the so-called feminists for McCain. With all due respect to the battleworn second-wave feminists, some of whom have said some pretty stupid things, they do not speak for all feminists, much less all women, the majority of whom know that voting for someone who is not only against abortion but against BIRTH CONTROL goes directly against our self-interest. A thoughtful discussion here.

2. Should I be excited that Obama is going to get the Democratic nomination? Probably, but I can’t help feeling absolutely terrified that instead of treating his success as a matter of individual accomplishment, we’re going to use it to as ‘proof’ that we’re in a post-civil rights era where Guess what! Racism no longer exists! This article sums up my fears. From Ward Connerly, anti-affirmative action crusader and Chairman of the misleadingly named American Civil Rights Institute:

“The entire argument for race preferences is that society is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field,” Mr. Connerly said. “The historic success of Senator Obama, as well as Senator Clinton, dismantles that argument.”

You can bet he won't be the only one trying to make that point. Horrifying. Truly.

3. Now that Hillary is out of the picture, you might think we’d get a reprieve from the onslaught of misogyny and sexism in the media. Oh wait, here comes Michelle Obama, who *gasp* dares to open her mouth and speak her mind. Plus, she’s black! So Fox News couldn’t possibly help referring to her as “Obama’s Baby Mama”. No matter what Tina Fey wants you to think, that phrase is STILL OFFENSIVE. More analysis here.

The price of perfection

2008-06-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the blogging hiatus but I was busy doing my part for the tourist industry by exoticizing the other in Central America. There’s nothing like taking some light reading with you to the beach, so I brought on vacation with me a newly acquired copy of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. Published last year, it was written by Courtney E. Martin (co-blogger on Feministing) at age 25.

This book hit me like a ton of bricks. I was expecting yet another preachy text on The Negative Effects of Media on Girls’ Self Esteem (yawn). Instead, this book is an incredibly honest and eye-opening examination of the bizarre new forms of gendered self-hatred that have sprung to life in a post-feminist culture.

This is how she describes the new generation of “perfect girls”:

We get into good colleges but are angry if we don’t get into every college we applied to. We are the captains of the basketball teams, the soccer stars, the swimming state champs with boxes full of blue ribbons. We win scholarships galore, science fairs and knowledge bowls, spelling bees and mock trial debates. We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans.

We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving…

We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others…. We carry the old world of guilt – center of families, keeper of relationships, caretaker of friends – with the new world of control/ambition – rich, independent, powerful. We are the daughters of feminists who said “You can be anything” and we heard “You have to be everything.”

We must get A’s. We must make money. We must save the world. We must be thin. We must be unflappable. We must be beautiful. We are the anorectics, the bulimics, the overexercisers, the overeaters. We must be perfect. We must make it look effortless.

Martin sees perfectionism as the driving force behind a generation of women who were brought up on girl power and Title IX, but are in no way exempt from the cultural imperative to beauty and thinness, try to do it all. The problem is, within every perfect girl is a starving daughter full of insecurity and self-doubt. The more we try to deny her, the more attention she demands. Our bodies quite literally become the territory upon which we battle ourselves.

I don’t know how many girls actually fit into this mold, but I couldn’t help feeling like she was talking directly to me and my friends. It can’t be a coincidence that some of the fiercest, smartest, funniest, most talented women I know are the same ones who only eat two bites of their dinner, or train endlessly for marathons, or schedule their life around spin class and weight watchers meetings.

And it wasn’t an accident that I packed this book in with my bikinis before vacation. As we are so constantly reminded by every advertisement we see, summer is no longer the carefree world of slip ‘n slides and popsicles we enjoyed as kids. Now it’s all about slimming, firming, tanning and toning for the much-dreaded swimsuit season.

I’d like to say that as a media-literate self-conscious feminist, I’m above it all. And yeah, I’m not doing a hundred crunches every night in hopes that I’ll wake up one day with a magical six pack. I’m not subsisting on carrot sticks and diet soda, and I’m not throwing up every other meal. I think Jennifer Love Hewitt looks WAY better in a swimsuit than say, Nicole Richie, and I think Jennifer Hudson looks even better than JLH.

But despite my best feminist intentions, I’m not immune to the enormous social pressure that is exerted on women to make us hate our bodies. A slim build and high metabolism may have saved me from an all-out eating disorder in high school and college but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find a million other flaws to obsess over. And in some ways post-college life has been even harder, as I’ve adjusted to the stress of living in a city where image is everything and working for a company where even the guys are on the Zone diet. It took reading this book for me to finally confess (first to my best friend, then my therapist) that for the past year I have been keeping a detailed list of everything I eat. What started out as a general effort to eat healthier and get more exercise quickly spiraled into obsessive calorie counting, food restricting, and guilt complexes for inevitably failing to adhere to my 1200 calorie goal. When I found myself sticking my finger down my throat in order to get rid of the “stomachache” I got from eating too many cookies, or French fries, or Italian food, I knew it had gone too far.

So, I took this book as my wake up call and after some stern advice from my therapist, I stopped. No more counting, no more purging. Of course, old habits die hard. I still know exactly how many calories are in my bowl of Shredded Wheat and soy milk, even if I’m not writing it down. I still couldn’t bring myself to order the Eggs Benedict at brunch so I settled for granola and yogurt. Honestly, I doubt my eating habits will change significantly, especially since if I’m not restricting certain foods I’ll be less likely to demolish entire chocolate bars in moments of weakness. But the main difference I notice is that I no longer spend all my time thinking about food –planning what to eat, thinking about what I ate, and calculating how much more I’m allowed to eat that day.

Martin estimates that if each of us spends the equivalent of an hour each day thinking about food, exercise, and what’s wrong with our bodies, by the time we’re 85 we will have wasted three years of our lives. Three fucking years. All I can say is thank god I came to my senses before it got any worse.

There’s a trade-off, though. Since I stopped counting calories, I have become less stressed out about food, but more stressed out about everything else in my life. Whereas I used to obsess about whether or not to get cream cheese on my bagel, now all of a sudden I’m freaking out about my career, my relationship, my future. I realized that I had been using my food obsession as an escape from the things that actually matter – when you feel like so many aspects of your life are out of your hands, it’s easier to focus on the little things you can control, like what you put in your mouth.

Until now, I didn’t fully understand what eating disorders are all about. It’s not about low self esteem, or the media, or your mom. Those things obviously contribute, but they fail to explain why so many smart thoughtful girls who “should know better” still fall into the trap. Fundamentally, disordered eating is about our fight to control our own bodies and our own lives. In a society that expects so much of us, yet gives us so few tools for autonomy and self-determination, is it such a surprise that we are battling ourselves?

I’ve recently come to realize that I’m not the only one who is struggling with the sense of being out of control. The quarter-life crisis may be a real phenomenon after all. Especially for us perfect girls – having been told all our lives that we can be anything, we suddenly find ourselves three years out of college and we still don’t seem anywhere close to becoming the famous writer/artist/actress/filmmaker/dancer that we wanted to be. Never mind that we are working full time, going to school, working part time, freelancing, volunteering, blogging, rehearsing, campaigning, performing, and all the while living in a place where something as simple as getting to work can turn into a full-blown MTA nightmare. But instead of appreciating the simple act of just being, all we feel is a nagging sense that we’re not good enough.

What makes it worse, though, is that we all feel so alone; since it's obviously not cool to admit that you are scared and insecure and unsure of yourself, instead we put on a brave perfect girl face and try to hide the starving daughter inside. This story by a dear friend of mine brings it home: each of us is busy comparing ourselves to our “perfect” friends who seem to have it all, without realizing that they are in the exact same boat as we are.

But one thing we have outgrown is the catty backbiting of adolescence; when it comes to our friends we are incredibly supportive and understanding. If we could only show ourselves the same compassion, maybe we could finally be comfortable in our own skins.

Desperate White House Wives

2008-05-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

I can’t say I’ve ever been a big fan of Hillary Clinton. I think her husband is basically a douchebag, and like many women I couldn’t understand why she stuck by him during his douchiest moments. I was horrified by her support of the Iraq war. I was more horrified by the idea that she only supported it for her own political career. She may not be any more cold and calculating than any other politician, but she does a worse job of hiding it. There is something about her that I just don’t trust.

However, when her presidential candidacy was announced, I tried to keep an open mind. After all, she is a staunch supporter of reproductive rights, has worked to fund access to birth control and sex education, and helped bring us Plan B (praise lady Jesus). She changed her position on the war in Iraq, she believes in global warming, and she doesn’t want to build a fence to keep out the undocumented immigrants whose labor our economy relies on. And, hello, it’s about time we had some gender diversity up in the White House.

There is no doubt that Hillary was a marked improvement from the last couple Democratic nominees (after all, what’s the point of electing a man if he doesn’t have the balls to fight for a presidency he should have won?).

But then a junior senator from Illinois named Barack Obama had the audacity to declare his own candidacy, and his idealism was so infectious that it captured the media, the youth, and a significant chunk of Hillary’s base.

I feel bad for Hillary, I really do. She has worked incredibly hard to get where she is today, harder indeed than most male candidates would have had to. She has been subjected to vicious sexist attacks in the media and elsewhere. She has been the subject of ongoing criticism based on her appearance and demeanor. For anyone who thought that sexism was a thing of the past, this campaign has certainly proved that blatant misogyny is still socially acceptable.

Regardless of who is running against her, Hillary faces a mountain of obstacles. It must be devastating to come this close only to be eclipsed by Obama’s grace and charisma. Hillary is like the straight-A student running for class president against the captain of the football team.

The thing is, Hillary needs to wake up and smell the reality. After all, both candidates want to put new vending machines in the cafeteria, and at this point it’s a question of what’s best for the student body.

Hillary’s performance in this election, however, has shown that she in fact has little regard for what’s best for our country, and is more than willing to exploit racial fears to further her own candidacy.

From Betsy Reed’s excellent analysis in The Nation:

Yet what is most troubling--and what has the most serious implications for the feminist movement--is that the Clinton campaign has used her rival's race against him. In the name of demonstrating her superior "electability," she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right--in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country--seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security.

As her chances of winning narrow, Hillary continues to sink to new lows in her desperate bid for power. She is now eschewing subtlety and just going straight for racist rhetoric.

Just in case you missed the point, that would be WHITE Americans who are hard-working. Presumably the black voters supporting Obama are either shiftless welfare recipients or over-educated bourgeois dilettantes without real jobs.

So Hillary’s claim to fame is that poor, uneducated white people prefer her to Obama. Not to jump to any conclusions, but might I conclude that a majority of that demographic would prefer ANY WHITE PERSON to Obama? Especially since over 80% of the West Virginian voters who said that race was a key factor supported Hillary.Yet Hillary is not at all embarrassed of her racist constituency. In fact, she is embracing them and their racism, because the last card in her deck is the white privilege card.

Is it just me or does this feel like a flashback to another historical electoral moment, when white women suffragists were like, totally cool with black men getting the vote... until it became clear that it wouldn't be possible for both black men and white women to get it, at which point they sold out their black allies, started using white supremacist logic to argue for women's suffrage, and joined forces with white male racists to oppose the 13th and 14th Amendments?

You would think we'd learn from our mistakes. But rather than help create a coalition to strengthen the Democratic party and unite its core constituency of BOTH working class whites AND people of color, Hillary's win-at-all-costs strategy is functioning to exploit racial divisions and entrench white supremacy. On second thought, sounds like she's a perfect candidate for President of the United States!

There's Something About Miley

2008-05-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

The last thing I want to do is add to the ridiculous obsession over the Miley Cyrus photo shoot in Vanity Fair. It has already been pointed out (more excellent analysis here) that the hypersexualization of adolescent girls is nothing new, and in the grand scheme of things, showing a little back is not the worst thing a fifteen year old has ever done. In fact, compared to the topless photos of Vanessa Hugdens or Jamie Lynn Spears’ scandalous pregnancy, Miley’s photo shoot is positively tame.

The thing is, Miley is not supposed to fall into the same category as all the other catastrophes of the childhood entertainment industry. She’s the good girl, the role model. She's doing it for Jesus.

Let’s not forget, once upon a time before she became a hot mess, a young, innocent Lindsay Lohan starred in The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday. Miley isn’t the first Disney darling to shock the public. She’s just a few years ahead of her time.

It’s not that we can’t handle the sexualization of young actresses. In fact, we rather pruriently obsess over the sexualization of young actresses. After all, there would be no good girls without bad girls. And the more scandalous the behavior of her counterparts, the more Miley was praised for resisting the temptations of celebrity. While Jamie Lynn was getting knocked up, Miley's career was skyrocketing to make her the most successful teen celebrity, with a year-end earning potential of $1 billion.

But Miley is learning the hard way that the good girl image is a difficult one to maintain. According to Gary Marsh, the president of entertainment for Disney Channel Worldwide, “For Miley Cyrus to be a ‘good girl’ is now a business decision for her. Parents have invested in her a godliness. If she violates that trust, she won’t get it back.” (source)

And this is the crux of the issue. Parents don't care about Miley, any more than they care about any other teen celebrity trainwreck in the making. What they care about is their own daughters, and Miley's photo shoot has made them confront the possibility that their own darling tweens might be exposing their backs, or bras, or worse... on myspace, right now.

In an industry known for its "corrupting influences," Hannah Montana was the exception to the rule. Now, it seems that the secret weapon in the parental battle to control teen sexuality has defected to the other side. Parents, a word of advice: stop trying to control your daughters and deny their sexual agency. If you actually respect your daughters' sexual autonomy they are much more likely to grow into strong, self-confident women.

Reality check

2008-05-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday Grand Theft Auto IV hit the market, which means that right now, approximately six million gamers worldwide are sprawled in front of their HD-TVs, enacting violent fantasies of thug life on the virtual streets of a pseudo-New York City. Or maybe I’m wrong, and actual thugs are taking time out of their busy schedule stealing cars and shooting cops* to play video games about it instead. Like how all the drug dealers in Baltimore hang out together watching The Wire. Ah, the fantasy is so much better when you can pretend it’s real.

Like all video games, Grand Theft Auto inhabits the realm of fantasy. Unlike other video games, however, which feature superhuman fighting machines or magical forest creatures, GTA offers something different: the fantasy of realism. Set in what NYT reviewer Seth Schiesel calls “the exhilarating, lusciously dystopian rendition of New York City,” (see review here) GTA IV disavows its own phantasmagoric qualities by concentrating its energies on a world of gritty urban crime whose ‘realness,’ at least to its gaming audience, is the main draw.

From Schiesel:

“It looks like New York. It sounds like New York. It feels like New York. Liberty City has been so meticulously created it almost even smells like New York. From Brooklyn (called Broker), through Queens (Dukes), the Bronx (Bohan), Manhattan (Algonquin) and an urban slice of New Jersey (Alderney), the game’s streets and alleys ooze a stylized yet unmistakable authenticity.”

Stylized is one word for it. Schiesel does note that the characters are “each a caricature less politically correct than the last,” but somehow fails to find anything problematic about the depiction of “black crack slingers, argyle-sporting Jamaican potheads,” and “Puerto Rican hoodlums.” Does anyone else find it disturbing that a journalist living in New York finds these blatantly racist stereotypes to be “authentic”? What about the authenticity of the portrayal of women in the game? Does Schiesel believe that all women are prostitutes? That our purpose in life is to be fucked, and perhaps killed afterwards?

Don’t get me wrong, unlike some people, I don’t have a problem with prostitution or its representation in video games. If there were a game where the avatars were hookers and the goal was to sleep with as many johns as possible, then kill them and take their money, I’d probably buy a copy. But there is a big difference between violence as subversion and violence as subjugation. As I’ve discussed before, violence against sex workers is a technique of patriarchal dominance. In a world where women are systematically oppressed on the basis of gender, there is nothing subversive about glorifying sexualized violence against women. (More on this here.)

This is not to say that the game itself is not subversive in other ways. After all, the premise of the game is a sharp critique of the American dream:

"What does the American Dream mean today? For Niko Bellic, fresh off the boat from Europe, it is the hope he can escape his past. For his cousin, Roman, it is the vision that together they can find fortune in Liberty City, gateway to the land of opportunity. As they slip into debt and are dragged into a criminal underworld by a series of shysters, thieves and sociopaths, they discover that the reality is very different from the dream in a city that worships money and status, and is heaven for those who have them and a living nightmare for those who don’t." (source)

Turning conventional values upside down, the game rewards players for behaviors that society has deemed criminal. And judging by the legislation the game has inspired, not to mention the lawsuits, more than a few people are convinced that GTA is indeed threatening the moral fabric of American society. Whether or not you believe that Grand Theft Auto is a “thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun,” as Schiesel would have it, there is no denying its immense popularity. This is no doubt due in part to its virtual “open world environment” in which players are free to roam and complete tasks at will. Combined with its embrace of recklessness, cars, guns and sex, is it any wonder this game is so appealing to its primarily male 18-35 year old demographic? After a long day of mindless work in your office cubicle, a trip to Liberty City is indeed liberating.

Of course, it’s not liberating for everyone, unless you consider watching racist/sexist stereotypes of yourself getting killed to be liberating. Grand Theft Auto may offer a critique of the American dream, but it does nothing to challenge dominant structures of racism, sexism and heteronormativity. It's a shame, because the beauty of nihilism is that it doesn't discriminate. Regrettably, the makers of GTA missed the point.

*Wait, I thought this game was supposed to be realistic. Last I checked it’s the cops doing the shooting, not the other way around.

Abort this

2008-04-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

The latest media controversy over women’s right to control our own bodies involves Yale University student Aliza Shvarts, whose senior art project, according to the Yale Daily News involved artificially inseminating herself and then inducing miscarriages using abortofacient drugs. A media uproar ensued, and despite voiced concern over Shvarts’ physical and mental health, something tells me simple self-harm is not the core issue here. After all, artistically, it’s been done.

The story was picked up by national media, inciting sufficient outrage that Yale officials have since denied the project, saying that the it was a “creative fiction” and “[h]ad these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.” But Shvarts disputed the University’s claims in her own statement, in which she emphasized the purposeful ambiguity of the pregnancies (since she did not take pregnancy tests, and used herbal abortofacients during the time of her normal menstrual cycle, there is no way to determine whether she in fact was pregnant).

This apparently did not provide much comfort to the pro-life movement, which has predictably denounced Shvarts as a “serial killer”.

The fact that the president of the National Right to Life Committee thinks that Shvarts is “clearly depraved” is not remarkable. What is more surprising is the lack of support Shvarts has received from women’s rights groups. NARAL actually joined the right in condemning Shvarts’ project, which is “offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage,” according to NARAL spokesman Ted Miller.

Sure, I get that this project might be offensive to women who have had to undergo abortions and/or miscarriages. The idea that some privileged art student at Yale has nothing better to do than simulate acts that for many are painful and traumatic is fairly absurd. I would expect it to provoke anger and bewilderment.

What I would not expect is for it to provoke censure and finger wagging by the leading national organization for reproductive rights. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought that reproductive rights meant women’s right to control our own bodies. This means that we don’t have to have a baby if we don’t want to. It means we can’t be sterilized against our will. It also means if we are crazy enough to spend a year self-inseminating and self-aborting, we have the right to fucking do it.

In denouncing Shvarts’ project, NARAL is sending a clear message to women: reproductive rights are conditional, and they will only defend our right to control our own bodies when they approve of how we are using them.

I don’t care if you think Shvarts is crazy, offensive or gross. But if you believe in reproductive rights, you have to acknowledge her right to do what she wants with her body.

It’s a hard concept to affirm, since it involves giving up our own power (through social opprobrium, if nothing else) to exert influence over the behavior of others. Our culture does not actually grant decision-making autonomy to everyone (certainly not minors, the elderly, or others we consider “incompetent”). Women suspected of harboring a fertilized ovum are considered particularly incapable of making an informed decision about what to do with it (hence mandated abortion counseling).

Shvarts’ project brought the uterus into relief as a site of contestation, and incited controversy because she dared to exercise complete control over her uterus in order to produce an abstract and utterly un(re)productive result: art. By self-inseminating and self-aborting, Shvarts refused the social imperative to “responsible” reproduction espoused by the left and right alike.

Yes, she is provoking, offending, and even angering. That’s what artists do. But she is also making a strong statement that her uterus belongs solely to her, to do with what she wants, and I gotta give her props for that.

The Yale Women’s Center puts it well:

“The Yale Women’s Center stands strongly behind the fact that a woman’s body is her own,” the statement read. “Whether it is a question of reproductive rights or of artistic expression, Aliza Shvarts’ body is an instrument over which she should be free to exercise full discretion.”

The race card

2008-03-31T21:18:00.000-07:00

When Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controversial views on America hit prime time, Barack Obama took a plunge in the polls. Rather than denounce his longtime friend and pastor, Obama took the time to write and deliver one of the most honest speeches on race and racism I could ever imagine coming from a politician. I admit I was somewhat shocked. Up to this point in the campaign, Obama’s attitude toward race had been nothing less than transcendental, to the point that I wondered if he was actually in touch with the real state of racism in this country. His speech left no doubt in my mind that Obama has an incredibly clear understanding of race in America, and moreover his own biracial upbringing has given him valuable insight into both black and white racial identity.

As much as I was impressed with Obama’s openness about the racial issues that continue to plague our country, honesty is not always the best policy, especially when you are running for president of a country deeply embedded with racism. And Obama’s optimism about helping us heal and move on may prove to be too optimistic, if the backlash against Reverend Wright’s comments is an indicator.

Obama’s reprimand was gentle yet firm:

We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

True words? Absolutely. But watch out, because all your Fox News viewers just turned off the television. Because while a certain subset of white people have a thing for guilt, most white people are just plain sick of hearing about slavery, and they sure as hell don’t believe that they owe Black America a damn thing.

At the top of the list of white privileges, after all, is the privilege of not seeing racism as it operates in society. That includes, of course, our own role in upholding racist institutions and the benefits we accrue from them. In a column last week NYT columnist Maureen Dowd made a good point when she warned Obama to “stay away from the phrase “typical white person” because typically white people don’t like to be reminded of their prejudices”. Dowd points out that at a key tenet of Obama’s “feel-good appeal” was that it made white people feel like they were “allowed to transcend race because the candidate himself has transcended race.”

Indeed, the beauty of the Obama appeal was that supporting a black candidate allowed us to feel smugly superior to the Geraldine Ferraros of the world, but at the same time, we weren't threatened by a "racial agenda." For much of white America, Obama was boy wonder -- here was a (well-spoken and educated!) Black man who was not playing the race card. In fact, he wanted to overcome the divide and unite America! Up until last Tuesday, Barack Obama was not only a shining example of a “model minority,” he was proof in the pudding of a postracial nation. If Obama could transcend race and win the presidency, we would finally be able to pat ourselves on the back and say “racism is a thing of the past.” We could tell Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the NAACP exactly where to shove it.

After all, what could be better for the liberal vision of a colorblind America than a black president who doesn’t have any of those annoying habits that black people seem to have, like complaining about “racism” and sitting with all the other black people in the cafeteria?

But Obama did have a skeleton in the racial closet, in the form of his longtime friend and pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose views on race are a bit more materialist. And we discovered that while Obama believes strongly in the hope of uniting this nation, he refuses to disavow the history of suffering and struggle that has made this country what it is.

It is a testament to that suffering and that struggle that in the year 2008, one of the best leaders in our nation today may lose a presidential nomination because of the racism that he has no choice but to acknowledge. It is remarkable to me that someone who has experienced the brutal racialization this country bestows on black men is ready and willing to help lead our country to a better place. If I were religiously inclined, I would be tempted to call it something like salvation. But for white people, acknowledging the realities of racism has proved too threatening. Instead, like a child to its tattered security blanket, we doggedly cling to the scant comforts of whiteness, retreating into the rhetoric of victimization and “reverse racism”.

Bitch PhD has some interesting views on the phenomenon of white people getting extremely angry about black people being angry, namely that deep down, white people actually believe that black people do have a right to be angry. The spectre of his “anti-American” pastor plays on our own anxieties: “Obama (who is black) hates America (because really, if you were black, wouldn’t you?)”.

Like the white South Africans who fled the country when Nelson Mandela was elected, we have been so indoctrinated with the philosophy of racial superiority that we can’t imagine any other alternative. According to this logic, if blacks gained power they would turn the system on its head, and whites would be the new oppressed class. Ebonics would be taught at Harvard and Maya Angelou would replace John Steinbeck as The Great American Novelist.

Ridiculous, yes, but also quite indicative of the anxiety white people are experiencing over not only a potential loss of power, but also the loss of a worldview whose adoption has required significant sacrifice on our part. For those of us who have bought in to the system wholeheartedly, who truly believe that hard work and sacrifice are the key to the American dream, acknowledging an ongoing legacy of racism suggests that first of all we might not actually deserve what we have worked so hard for, and secondly that all we've given up may not in fact help us attain the unattainable.

The American dream may be a myth, but it is a hopeful myth, and one that has endured for centuries, despite remarkably thin evidence to back it up. Since our nation’s inception, wave after wave of immigrants have traded their languages, customs and cultures for a stake in the American dream. In the process, they have been both de- and re-racialized into the disciplinary norms of whiteness, less a racial category than a system of power that relies on constant surveillance and regulation in order to maintain its boundaries.

Like gambling addicts who spend their life savings on the chance of winning the lottery, many of us who have bought into the system simply refuse to believe that our dream is a lie. We are the ones who have been consistently playing the race card, but in the end, the house always wins. The anger toward Reverend Wright is based in the profound resentment of what we have lost on the racial gambling tables, and moreover, the intolerable fear that the jackpot might not actually exist.

Pimps, slaves and whores

2008-03-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

With this whole Spitzer scandal, sex work has been at the front of my brain, but before I get into that mess, I wanted to note that last weekend the NYT Magazine ran a surprisingly thoughtful article on transgender students at historically women’s colleges. Kudos to Alissa Quart for breaking down the fundamentals of gender theory (and citing the likes of Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin and Jack Halberstam!) and calling out Barnard president Judith Shapiro for being less than supportive of gender nonconforming students. And what’s more, I never would have found the article if it hadn’t popped up in the top ten most popular side-bar, which means, if nothing else, that a ton of people are reading it and emailing it to other people.

It’s a good thing I found something worthwhile on the NYT website, because after the garbage I’ve been reading by Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, I was about ready to puke. You can tell Kristof is giddy at the idea of getting to spear Spitzer on the blade of his own hypocrisy, and indeed last week's column "Do as he said" argues for stricter laws governing prostitution, specifically those “cracking down on pimps and customers.”

The real problem, Kristof suggests, is perverted and hypocritical men like Spitzer, who prey on young women like poor Ashley Alexandra Dupre, who he is quick to point out in a second column, had been “abused as a child, and tangled with drugs and homelessness.” Kristof doesn’t mention Dupre’s upper-class upbringing or the fact that she is currently making even more off publicity on the Spitzer scandal than she did working for Emperor’s Club, but even despite this, he has difficulty portraying her as a victim, and emphasizes that her situation is “dangerously unrepresentative” of prostitution.” He also cites a former sex worker who wrote on his blog that she “never felt exploited or trapped” and prostitution was “one of the best jobs” she ever had, only to dismiss her immediately. You see, women like these do not fit into his idea of a prostitute.

Instead Kristof cites statistics about abuse, drug use, mental illness and mortality rates, quoting experts from the field who confirm his idea that prostitution is equivalent to slavery.

I have no doubt that these statistics, gruesome as they are, are generally accurate. Like other workers involved in illicit industries (drug dealers, for instance), sex workers operate outside protections from the state, and are thus much more likely to be targets of violence. In addition, sex workers often face unique forms of gender-based violence (and in fact, transgender sex workers face the highest mortality rates by far). Yet rather than decry the abysmal working conditions for people engaged in the sex industry, and support their efforts for reform, Kristof wants to eradicate prostitution altogether.

Putting aside for the moment the obvious pragmatic difficulties in that endeavor, let’s say that a successful campaign managed to literally lock up every john in the nation (we won’t pause to imagine the number of empty chairs in the house and senate, let alone the leaderless cities and states across the land). What then, of our now unemployed sex workers? Just as shutting down sweatshops in and of itself does little to improve the lives of maquiladora workers, shutting down prostitution doesn’t actually give women any more autonomy and choice in their lives and occupations. Rather, it reduces women’s choice and autonomy by denying sex work as a viable occupation.

In refusing to acknowledge women’s agency in choosing to be sex workers (even in the face of a variety of factors that may restrict individual women’s choices), Kristof demonstrates a particularly insidious version of paternalism. Like many of us, Kristof has internalized the virgin/whore binary, in which women face the choice of submitting to patriarchal protection and control, or risking social condemnation and violence in return for sexual freedom.

Violence against sex workers is an abomination. It is also a way to keep the rest of us in line. It’s not a coincidence that uppity women get called “whores”. These serve as warnings – if we attempt to exercise autonomy (and control over our own bodies and sexuality is a particularly dangerous form of autonomy!) we run the risk of losing those protections that proper ladies receive. But just as Kristof’s idea of protecting women from the “nightmare” of prostitution involves denying their agency to choose their own occupation, we must keep in mind that the protections of patriarchy are inherently limited. And, unbelievable as it may seem to Kristof, some women do in fact choose to be whores. The fact that many choose this occupation despite the incredible risks associated with sex work, and the lack of formal protections indicates the possibility that in certain instances, freedom from the imperatives of patriarchal authority may be worth the risk. After all, violence isn’t endemic to prostitution, but gender-based violence is endemic to patriarchy. By refusing to accept the logic of the virgin/whore binary we can take an important step in dismantling the division that is central to the technology of patriarchal violence.

The power of redemption: Remaking masculinity in Children of Men

2007-01-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

The year is 2027, and the world is going to shit. In order to prevent total government collapse, London has become a fascist police state, rounding up illegal immigrants by the truckload while attempting to hold back armed rebel groups. As if this weren't grim enough, it turns out that no children have been born in eighteen years. The gritty premise of Alfonso Cuaron's newest film is a far cry from the irreverant sexual escapades of his acclaimed 2001 film, Y Tu Mama Tambien. Like Y Tu Mama, however, Children of Men affirms fundamental values of human existence, in a deeply compelling story about the power of hope and salvation.

The film centers around Theo (Clive Owen), who "lost his faith by chance" when his son died. A former radical, he is now completely disillusioned with his life and the world in general. When his former lover-turned quasi-terrorist revolutionary Julian (Julianne Moore) entrusts him with the mission of delivering a miraculously pregnant immigrant woman to safety, he rediscovers a sense of purpose and meaning to his own life.

Cuaron's critique of current anti-immigration policy is less than subtle (vans transporting illegal immigrants to camps are marked "Homeland Security") yet he also refrains from idealizing the revolutionaries, who come across as no less fascist than the government.

So who are the true heroes of the film? Is it Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), the woman whose baby represents hope for the future of mankind? Not exactly. Like so many mother figures, her main purpose is a symbolic one; it is her womb that promises to deliver salvation to the world, and her identity that drives home Cuaron's views on the value of immigration (is it an accident that her name is a homonym for "key"?). Despite the centrality of her role, never is the audience asked to identify with her as an individual.

The film may be set against the backdrop of Third World upheaval, but the plot in fact centers on a crisis of white masculinity. Theo is the very picture of emasculation; sitting in his white collar office surrounded by crying women he looks utterly disgusted with himself. In contrast to the masculine images of the police, the rebels, and even Baby Diego, Theo is passive, almost inert. His furtive swigs of whiskey are about the only thing that get him through the day.

In a complete gender reversal of the kidnapping scenario, it is Julian who kidnaps Theo. Julian exhibits all the traditionally masculine qualities that Theo so conspicuously lacks: aggression, self confidence, control. Yet this positionality is untenable; she is destroyed by her (male) comrades. Her character does play an important role in terms of enabling Theo to regain his masculinity, however. Much to Kee's disbelief, Julian recounts stories of Theo's virile activist past. Imagining Theo as a masculine subject requires his (hetero)sexualization via his relationship with Julian. Yet the power Julian wields also bars Theo from assuming a similar position, until the void created by Julian's death provides the impetus for him to act.

David Savran argues that what he terms "reflexive sadomasochism" came to characterize a new form of white masculinity in the 1990s. As white men embraced a discourse of victimization, they redefined masculinity in terms of the ability to "take it like a man". In Theo's final scene, he reveals to Kee that he is mortally wounded. Ironically, his own victimization demonstrates his masculinity; the fact that he was able to stoically sustain the wound shows that he has finally proved his manhood.

Theo's interpellation into the role of Kee's protector and guardian reinstates the patriarchal relationship he gave up when he lost his family. But this relationship is based less on power than on sacrifice. In accepting this role, Theo finally has something to live for. Of course, the flip side of the coin is that he also has something to die for. Hope for the future is represented not by the baby itself, but by the heroic acts done on its behalf. In this sense, the sacrifice of Theo's life for the future of humanity thus suggests the possibility of redemption not only for him, but for the world as a whole.

In many ways Children of Men is an emblematic film for the Left. Indeed, its critique of social policy and affirmation of diversity appeal directly to the prevailing strain of leftist thought. Most convincing, however, is its commitment to reproductive futurism and a politics of sacrifice (more on this here). Cutler points out that the anti-war movement embraces the rhetoric of sacrifice even as they protest the sacrifice of soldiers and civilians. Children of Men provides a humanistic alternative to war, yet that alternative is grounded in a narrative of white male victimization and sacrifice. The crisis of white masculinity is thus resolved through the very same tropes that have traditionally defined femininity and womanhood. Good luck with that, guys.

Voting and other absurdities

2006-11-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

So, tomorrow is election day. Meaning that today I finally opened my absentee ballot and took a look at the delightful options 2006 has brought to Washington state. In Seattle, congressional races don't have quite the same urgency as elsewhere -- our solidly anti-war Democrat, Rep. Jim McDermott isn't facing any realistic opposition. Statewide races, on the other hand, are a different story. I was somewhat enticed by Bruce Guthrie (any relation to Woody?), the libertarian senate candidate, but I held my nose and voted for Maria Cantwell because, well, I don't want a Republican senator. The joys of a two-party system. Plus Maria did give lip service to bringing the troops home, so that's progress. And I got my usual small thrill from voting for a write-in candidate against our unopposed draconian county prosecuting attorney.

Then we get to pages and pages of initiatives, propositions and referendums, which are usually so confusing that I have to rely on the voters' pamphlet which luckily gives a 'statement for' and 'statement against' along with lists of supporters. (I have heard that other places do not have voters' pamphlets and I am shocked and dismayed. How else do you determine the level of a candidate's commitment to personal grooming, without a handy snapshot?) Along with the usual attacks on public education and public transportation, this year we have a referendum on the ballot for Measure No. 1, which would approve a City Council ordinance passed last year commonly known as the 'lap dance ban'. This ordinance would institute a "four foot rule" between dancers and customers, prohibit private rooms, and mandate a minimum level of light in all strip clubs. In an effort to eliminate any possible sexual contact between dancers and patrons, customers would also be prohibited from directly tipping a dancer.

Yes, this is an "only in Seattle" moment. What other city in the nation would issue a death sentence to its strip clubs? Obviously, this law would not only be disappointing to strip club enthusiasts, but would also be economically devastating to dancers (try soliciting tips with a four foot pole). But little attention had been paid to the group most affected by this law: Seattle Police Department vice detectives.

According to proponants of the referendum, police officers currently undergo the hardship of actually having to pay for lap dances themselves, in order to determine whether or not a certain club is adhering to law. The new referendum would save them the trouble; by eliminating "closed doors," officers could simply observe other patrons rather than having to personally engage in the services provided at these establishments.

"What Ordinance #121952 does is it removes closed doors so our police officers can enforce the law visually, instead of having to purchase a nude lap dance to get behind the closed doors while they work undercover. "

Imagine the adversity our stalwart vice detectives must have endured in order to document all of the "blatant sex acts and code violations" that reportedly occur in strip clubs across the city! Thank goodness we finally have the opportunity to save them from such atrocious working conditions!

The referendum proponants actually have a pretty good idea:

"Either end the hypocrisy and legalize prostitution - so these clubs can keep their actions inside legally and we don't have to waste our tax dollars subjecting our police officers to lap dances - or make and enforce reasonable laws that police officers can enforce."

Wow, how about that? Legalize prostitution, decriminalize sex work, and save tax dollars? Too bad that's not on the ballot.

Addendum

2006-10-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that not everyone is privy to the conservative rantings that are only available on Times Select. Here is the text of David Brooks' column, for all to enjoy!

A Tear In Our Fabric

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 5, 2006

This is a tale of two predators. The first is a congressman who befriended teenage pages. He sent them cajoling instant messages asking them to describe their sexual habits, so he could get his jollies.

The second is a secretary, who invited a 13-year-old girl from her neighborhood into her car and kissed her. Then she invited the girl up to her apartment, gave her some vodka, took off her underwear and gave her a satin teddy to wear.

Then she had sex with the girl, which was interrupted when the girl's mother called. Then she made the girl masturbate in front of her and taught her some new techniques.

The first predator, of course, is Mark Foley, the Florida congressman. The second predator is a character in Eve Ensler's play, ''The Vagina Monologues.''

Foley is now universally reviled. But the Ensler play, which depicts the secretary's affair with the 13-year-old as a glorious awakening, is revered. In the original version of the play, the under-age girl declares, ''I say, if it was a rape, it was a good rape, then, a rape that turned my [vagina] into a kind of heaven.'' When I saw Ensler perform the play several years ago in New York, everyone roared in approval. Ensler has since changed the girl's age to 16 -- the age of Foley's pages -- and audiences still embrace the play and that scene at colleges and in theaters around the world.

But why is one sexual predator despised and the other celebrated?

The first and obvious reason is that male predators are more disturbing than female predators. But the second and more important reason is that they exist in different moral universes.

Ensler's audiences are reacting to the exuberant voice of the young girl, who narrates the scene. They're embracing -- at least in the fantasy world of the theater -- a moral code that's been called expressive individualism. Under this code, the core mission of life is to throw off the shackles of social convention and to embark on a journey of self-discovery. Behavior is not wrong if it feels good and doesn't hurt anybody else. Sex is not wrong so long as it is done by mutual consent.

By the rules of expressive individualism, Ensler's characters did nothing wrong. They performed an act that was mutually pleasurable and fulfilling.

This code dominated cosmopolitan culture during the 1970's and 1980's. When Congressman Gerry Studds was censured in 1983 for his relationship with a 17-year-old page, he argued that the sex was consensual, and he was re-elected several more times.

But there's another and older code, and people seem to be returning to this older code to judge Mark Foley. Under this older code, we are defined not by our individual choices but by our social roles.

Under this code, when an adult seduces a child, it tears the social fabric that joins all adults and all children. When a congressman flirts with a page, it tears the social trust that undergirds the entire page program. When an adult seduces a teenager, it ruptures the teenagers' bond with his family, and harms the bonds joining all families.

This older code emphasizes not so much individual exploration as social ecology. It's based on the idea that people are primarily shaped by the moral order around them, which is engraved upon their minds via a million events and habits. Individuals are not defined by their lifestyle preferences but by their social functions as parents, job-holders and citizens, and the way they contribute to the shared moral order.

In this view, the social fabric is a precious thing, always in danger. And what Foley, and the character in the Ensler play, did was wrong, consent or no consent, because of the effects on the wider ecology.

In discussing the Foley case, the political class, with its unerring instinct for the aspect of any story that will be the least important to average Americans, has shifted attention from Foley's act to Denny Hastert's oversight of it. It has fled morality to talk about management.

But the real import of the Foley story is Foley's act itself. In a country filled with parents looking for a way to raise their children in a morally disordered environment, Foley's act is just one more symptom of a contagious disease.

In the long run, the party that benefits from events like the Foley scandal will be the party that defines the core threats to the social fabric, and emerges as the most ardent champion of moral authority.

2006-10-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

Well it’s that time of the year again. Is it just me or does election season always seem to spawn a sex scandal? Of course, it’s not the sexiest of sex scandals (the transcription of the AIM conversation makes the dialogue in adult films sound positively inspired). Still, even for a cyber-scandal, I would expect a little more in terms of moral panic. No one is calling for AIM to be banned. No one is demanding a stop to the child exploitation of pages everywhere. Of course, the Democrats are obviously too busy trying to figure out how to unseat Dennis Hastert and the Republicans can’t risk injuring their own party.

Which leaves it to NYT columnist David Brooks to bring us back to our senses, to defend America’s social fabric, to champion moral authority. And deliver a quick kick in the clitoris to Eve Ensler and lesbian sexual awakening in general in his Op-Ed column yesterday.

Brooks compares Congressman Foley to a character in the Vagina Monologues – a secretary who has a sexual relationship with a 13 year-old girl. Why, asks Brooks, “is one sexual predator despised and the other celebrated?” Good question. Or, to put it in a different way, why are some people characterized as sexual predators at all?

In fact, Brooks is the only one calling the Vagina Monologues character a sexual predator. He seems baffled as to how the narrator of the story can recall the experience as positive – even “glorious.” She is quoted as saying, “I say, if it was a rape, it was a good rape, then, a rape that turned my [vagina] into a kind of heaven.” In using this to characterize the older woman in the story as a sexual predator, Brooks completely misses the point. The narrator’s use of the term “rape” here is an acknowledgment of the illicit nature of the relationship as defined by statutory rape laws and is a complete refutation of these same laws. There is of course no such thing as a “good rape” – which might lead some (not Brooks, evidently) to question the effects of age of consent laws on sexual freedom.

But Brooks isn’t interested in sexual freedom. He is primarily interested in “shared moral order.” And any violation of one individual’s social role threatens to jeopardize his entire moral order.

“In this view, the social fabric is a precious thing, always in danger. And what Foley, and the character in the Ensler play, did was wrong, consent or no consent, because of the effects on the wider ecology.”

For those of us interested in unraveling the so-called social fabric, this statement is surprisingly useful. We’ve been grasping at straws trying to come up with radical new ways to disrupt the moral order, and it turns out that a Republican congressman beat us to it!

For your convenience, I have created a handy guide to breaking David Brooks’ moral code:
1. Avoid taking on social roles whenever possible. (Role-playing, however, is encouraged.)
2. If you are unable to avoid a social role, make individual choices that conflict with that role.
3. Make sure that all “lifestyle preferences” include “mutually pleasurable and fulfilling” acts.
4. Do not under any circumstances “contribute to the shared moral order.”
5. This includes voting for the political party that “defines the core threats to the social fabric, and emerges as the most ardent champion of moral authority.”

Meanwhile, if anyone has contact information for the secretary in that story, please let me know.

Girls will be boys

2006-08-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

In her book Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam effectively demonstrates that a rich history of female masculinity has been obscured within not only conventional methods of historiography, but also in queer histories that privilege “lesbian” identities. Halberstam tracks various historical instances of masculine behavior and identity in women, arguing that modern notions of gender and sexuality cannot be retroactively imposed on these diverse characters. From female husbands and tribades of the 19th century to modern-day drag kings, women have been just as important as men have been in defining and producing masculinity, according to Halberstam. Attacking the notion that “masculinity in girls and women is abhorrent and pathological,” she wants to “make masculinity safe for women and girls”.

Going beyond that, she proposes that female masculinity may offer a way to envision a re-creation of masculinity:

“If we shift the flow of power and influence, we can easily imagine a plethora of new masculinities that do not simply feed back in to the static loop that makes maleness plus power into the formula for abuse but that re-create masculinity on the model of female masculinity.”

The redemption of masculinity. A daring and somewhat dubious proposal, to my mind. Not just because I am skeptical of the masculine behaviors that I’ve seen performed by all sorts of people (usually involving the domination of spaces, conversations, bodies, etc), but also because I wonder what all this would mean for folks who aren’t interested in inhabiting masculinity.

Halberstam is careful to note, “we should perhaps double our efforts to make femininity a safe haven for boys and girls even as we attempt to make masculinity extend to women. This book has spent little time on female femininity and male femininity, but this is not to say that these forms of gender are not also important locations for the struggle against binary gender.”

What little she does say about femininity, however, seems to contradict this. For Halberstam, femininity is unhealthy and dangerous, especially for children.

“…the excessive conventional femininity often associated with female heterosexuality can be bad for your health. Scholars have long pointed out that femininity tends to be associated with passivity and inactivity, with various forms of unhealthy body manipulations from anorexia to high-heeled shoes. It seems to me that at least early on in life, girls should avoid femininity. Perhaps femininity and its accessories should be chosen later on, like a sex toy or a hairstyle. In recent years, I believe that society has altered its conceptions of the appropriate way to raise girls; indeed, a plethora of girl problems, from eating disorders to teenage pregnancy to low intellectual ambitions, leave many parents attempting to hold femininity at bay for their young girls. Cultivating femininity in girls at a very early age also has the unfortunate effect of sexualizing them and even inducing seductive mannerisms in preteen girls. The popularity of the tomboy is one indication that many parents are willing to cultivate low levels of masculinity in their female children rather than undergo the alternatives.”

I have already disclosed my feelings on high heels, and I do not dispute the relationship between the body image issues of adolescent girls and what Halberstam terms “excessive conventional femininity.” But wait a minute. What was that about “the unfortunate effect of sexualizing them and even inducing seductive mannerisms in preteen girls”? Excuse me? Since when did Judith Halberstam join Focus on the Family? I didn’t know that anti-sex moralizing was part and parcel of queer theory these days.

Excessive conventional femininity has a number of undesirable characteristics, but I would not count “inducing seductive mannerisms in preteen girls” as one of them. Not only do I disagree that preteen sexuality is undesirable, I also don’t believe it to be characteristic of conventional femininity. If anything, the history of conventional femininity (and by conventional femininity I mean a normative bourgeois white femininity) has associated sexuality with restraint and passivity, rather than sexual subjectivity. And today, we’re still vilifying women who don’t ascribe to the cult of true womanhood. The coverage of the Duke rape case is just one example of society’s intolerance for women who dare to assert their sexuality. In attempting to answer the question of “whether the woman was in fact raped” her entire history of sexual behavior is put on trial. And when it comes to the word of a black dancer/escort against the word of three white lacrosse players, we can all guess how this will play out. Because within the confines of conventional femininity, the virtue of a woman who sells her sexuality (especially one who is poor and black) is always already compromised.

Excessive conventional femininity is indeed dangerous – to those who violate its norms as well as those who follow them. But I would not count sexuality, preteen or otherwise, among things to be avoided. If anything is unfortunate about the sexualization of adolescent girls, it is that girls are rarely invited to develop assertive, desiring sexualities. It seems to me that the hype about preteen sexuality is generally led by parents who are concerned about their daughters’ failure to adhere to the rules of conventional femininity. Last time I checked, girls were still expected to resist boys’ sexual advances. Despite the rhetoric, the panic about teen sex isn’t a panic about the objectification of girls – it’s a panic about girls asserting their sexual desire.

And while we’re on the topic of unfortunate sexualization, what disturbs me is the culture of sexual aggression and rape (lacrosse at Duke, for instance…) that one could attribute to something called “excessive conventional masculinity.” I think Judith and I could agree that both conventional femininity and conventional masculinity could be considered hazardous to one’s health, and a more interesting project would be to consider, as she does, alternative expressions of gender and sexuality.

Killer heels

2006-08-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

In my office, there is somewhat of a double standard for ‘business attire’. Men are expected to wear suits and ties every day. Women, on the other hand, can get away with a lot less – while some women wear suits, many do not, and short sleeves or even sleeveless tops are generally considered acceptable. As a result, some men become embittered. I have one coworker who enjoys remarking sarcastically on my choice of apparel (“Oh, look who decided to wear a t-shirt today”), clearly jealous of my relative freedom of choice. I fully sympathize with his predicament (who would want to wear a suit and tie in hundred degree weather?) and I would encourage all men who feel stifled in terms of their business attire possibilities to try out a blouse and pencil skirt for a change. But before we start too far down the road of lamenting the oppressive confines of masculinity, I’d like to introduce one caveat: the high heel.

It took me approximately one week of blisters, blood and limping to smarten up and do what more and more women are doing: leave my heels at work. Contrary to popular belief, this does not require commuting in hideous white Reeboks, although this is certainly a path followed by the fashion-indifferent. Summer is, of course, the time of the flip flop, which I indulge in on particularly humid days, but there’s no reason not to wear a comfortable pair of flats or sandals – not appropriate for the board room, but not an eyesore if you happen to go out after work.

Going out. Of course, here we get to the meat of the issue: sometimes you want to wear heels when you go out! While an argument might be made (and has, I’m sure) about the patriarchal aesthetics of women’s fashion, I gotta say it: heels are sexy. Unfortunately, sexiness often necessitates dozens of band-aids, painkillers, and/or excessive drinking (“Once I have a few more drinks, I won’t be able to feel my feet”). I am not just talking about 6 inch stilettos (anyone who can walk in those should be given an Olympic medal, if you ask me) I’m talking about basically any women’s “dress” shoe. I recently bought the most comfortable pair of heels I've ever tried on: a pair of Aerosoles with 2” heels, and despite the soft leather and relatively cushy foot bed, inevitably by the end of the night they are killing me. One option, of course, is foot surgery. Luckily, I don’t anticipate owning any Manolos anytime soon, so I won’t have to go under the knife.

What I don’t understand, in this age of technology and modern design, is why on earth it’s so hard to make hot shoes that don’t cripple you! I think that if more designers wore their own shoes that would certainly help (come on, Jimmy, try these on!). Also, it would be great if we could get a celebrity to come out with a line of comfortable high fashion shoes. ‘Xtina’ has a nice ring to it…

But realistically, the best bet is consumer demand. And I’m not necessarily advocating trying to convert the hardcore stiletto-wearers (although if an alternative existed I’m willing to bet they would rather save their foot surgery money to spend on a new pair). I think there are a lot of folks suffering from uncomfortable shoes who would change in a heartbeat. Not to mention the comfort shoe crowd who might be coaxed into a pair of heels – at least once in a while.

I don’t know what it’s gonna take – we either need to pressure high fashion designers to create comfortable models, or pressure comfort shoe manufacturers to create cute, non-clunky styles. Progress is being made – even Jimmy Choo has started designing flats. But there’s a ways to go… the concept of arch support has yet to catch on, and the few almost-comfortable models out there tend to require taking out a third mortgage. It’s time to rally, in the name of health, fashion, feminism, or whatever you want to call it. And let's hurry, my feet are killing me.

Frightening Women: Gender and Sexual Deviance in Hitchcock's "Rebecca"

2006-07-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hitchcock isn’t exactly known for being a feminist. Which makes it all the more interesting that he chose to shoot several films from the point of view of a woman. I recently saw Rebecca, which was based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. “Rebecca” is not the female narrator and protagonist (who in fact goes unnamed throughout the film), but is rather the deceased first wife of our protagonist’s new husband, Maxim de Winter. When “the new Mrs. de Winter” finds herself mistress of Maxim’s impressive Cornwall estate, Manderley, it is Rebecca’s lingering hold on the house and servants that creates a rift between the newlyweds and nearly drives the poor girl mad.

An orphan of lowly parentage, the new Mrs. de Winter interprets her husband’s distance as grief over the loss of his first wife, and can’t help but compare herself to Rebecca’s legendary beauty, intelligence and confidence. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, clearly disapproves of the new Mrs. de Winter, and devotes herself to keeping Rebecca’s presence alive throughout the house. When Maxim reveals to his new wife that Rebecca’s death had not been accidental, that their marriage had been a sham and he had loathed Rebecca from the beginning, the new Mrs. de Winter is overjoyed – no longer jealous of her husband’s first wife, she believes that she and Maxim can finally find happiness together. But for Maxim, it is already too late: “Rebecca has won. Her shadow has been between us all the time, keeping us from one another. She knew that this would happen…. I've loved you, my darling. I shall always love you. But I've known all along that Rebecca would win in the end.”

Does Rebecca win in the end? In the inquisition surrounding the discovery of her body, one of Rebecca’s former lovers accuses Maxim of murdering her, because Rebecca was pregnant with another man’s child. A visit to Rebecca’s doctor clears Maxim’s name, however: it turns out that rather than being pregnant, Rebecca had cancer – thus providing a motive for her “suicide.” As Maxim is driving home, about to be happily reunited with his wife, however, he sees a terrible light in the distance – in her devotion to Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers has set fire to Manderley rather than let another woman take Rebecca’s place. In the final shot of the film, Mrs. Danvers stands in Rebecca’s room, surrounded by flames, looking utterly possessed. The shot closes with a close-up on Rebecca’s pillowcase, embroidered with the letter “R.”

It is telling that our blue-eyed, blond-haired protagonist has no name – she is obviously the weakest female character in the film, defined only by her relationship to Maxim and Rebecca (“the new Mrs. de Winter”). Young and naïve, our protagonist plays the part of a child discovering a world to which she does not yet belong. Maxim addresses her like a child (“Oh, come on. Eat it up like a good girl.” “You can’t be too careful with children.”) and praises her for her innocence (“It's a pity you have to grow up.”). When she arrives at Manderley, she acts more like she’s playing house than actually running an estate (“You behave more like an upstairs maid or something, not like the mistress of the house at all.”).

The protagonist’s childlike innocence is juxtaposed with two other more damning versions of female sexuality: Rebecca’s adulterous promiscuity, and Mrs. Danvers’s depraved queerness. The traits that Maxim’s new wife so envies in Rebecca – “breeding, brains and beauty” – turn sour when Maxim reveals Rebecca’s “life of filth and deceit.” Rebecca played the part of wife and mistress of Manderley, but led a secret life on the side, visiting her lovers in a flat in London, and even inviting them to her cottage at Manderley. Maxim, bound by “the family honor” was forced to agree to this “dirty bargain” in order to prevent the public humiliation of a divorce. The release of this information transforms Rebecca from the tragic victim of an untimely death to a “devil” who got what she deserved. Invoking the classic virgin/whore dichotomy, Rebecca’s sexual agency is portrayed as guilt, thereby reserving innocence for Maxim and his new wife. In her analysis of the du Maurier novel, Alison Light writes,

“Rebecca, then, is the focus of the novel’s conflicting desires for and descriptions of the feminine. She is the character through whom the fiction of romance is undermined and whose murder will rescue and re-establish its norms. She jeopardizes the given social categories by existing outside them” (11).

Rebecca is all the more dangerous because she herself is fully aware of the threat she poses to heterosexual monogamy. Maxim recalls her taunting him on the night she died;

When I have a child,” she said, “neither you nor anyone else could ever prove it wasn't yours. You'd like to have an heir, wouldn't you, Max, for your precious Manderley?”
Then she started to laugh.
“How funny. How supremely, wonderfully funny. I'd be the perfect mother, just as I've
been the perfect wife. 'No one will ever know. It ought to give you the thrill of your life, Max, to watch my son grow bigger day by day... and to know that when you die, Manderley will be his.”

By refusing to give her husband control over her sexuality, Rebecca delivered a blow to the imperative of heterosexual monogamy – one that could not go unpunished (at least within the masculine cinema). The retribution that Rebecca “deserves” is not murder after all, which was precisely what she wanted. Rather, it is cancer: as if her ‘degenerate’ sexuality was forcing her body to deteriorate as well. (In the novel, the doctor’s x-rays actually show a malformed uterus – Rebecca was never capable of having children, making her – from a heteroreproductive viewpoint – both monstrous and pitiable.) In this sense, the final blow to Rebecca is the viewer’s participation in her denouncement. Having been invited to sympathize with the narrator, the viewer sees Rebecca’s sexual deviance as a despicable impediment to the happily-ever-after story of heterosexual monogamy – a story that most of us have at least some investment in. Therefore it is necessary for us to view her death as just deserts for a life of sin – to do otherwise would involve jeopardizing the innocence of both Maxim and the new Mrs. de Winter.

True, the new Mrs. de Winter has lost some of her naiveté (“That funny, young, lost look I loved... won't ever come back. I killed that when I told you about Rebecca. It's gone. In a few hours... you've grown so much older.”) The child bride has grown into a full-fledged wife, prepared to stand by her man no matter what he’s done (is it just me or is “Oh please, Maxim, kiss me, please” a strange response to finding out that your husband is responsible for putting his previous wife’s body on the bottom of the ocean?). But one more thing stands between the happy couple and blissful heteromonogamy. As we find out in the opening lines of the film, (“We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain.”) their home – the foundation of Maxim and his new wife’s life together, so to speak – has been destroyed. And it is not in fact Rebecca herself who destroys it (she is dead, after all), but rather it is Mrs. Danvers, whose devotion to her former mistress borders on obsession. A very peculiar obsession. A queer obsession, one might say. Despite her married name, no “Mr. Danvers” is ever mentioned, and her mannish demeanor and male nickname certainly led certain minds (mine) to curiosity about her sexual preferences. Once she started caressing her dead mistress’s underwear, there could be no question: Danny is a dyke.

“I keep her underwear on this side. They were made especially for her by the nuns in the Convent of St. Claire. I always used to wait up for her, no matter how late. Sometimes she and Mr. de Winter didn't come home until dawn. While she was undressing, she'd tell me about the party she'd been to. She knew everyone that mattered, and everyone loved her. When she'd finished her bath, she'd go into the bedroom and go over to the dressing table. Oh, you've moved her brush, haven't you ? There, that's better-- just as she always laid it down. ‘Come on, Danny, hair drill,’ she would say. I'd stand behind her like this and brush away for minutes at a time. And then she would say, ‘Good night, Danny,’ and step into her bed. I embroidered this case for her myself, and I keep it here always. Did you ever see anything so delicate? Look, you can see my hand through it.”

For as much as the new Mrs. de Winter is unsettled by the haunting memories of Rebecca, it is Mrs. Danvers’s queer presence that she is most fearful of. (“Well, it looks as though Mrs. de Winter were afraid... you were going to put her in prison, doesn't it, Mrs. Danvers?”) Of course, her fears are certainly justified – with what could quite aptly be described as murderous lust in her eyes, Mrs. Danvers almost succeeds in convincing her to commit suicide on the night of the ball (“Why don't you go? Why don't you leave Manderley? He doesn't need you... he's got his memories. He doesn't love you, he wants to be alone again with her. You've nothing to stay for. You've nothing to live for really, have you?”).

In the book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Lee Edelman argues that queerness often symbolizes a threat to what he terms ‘reproductive futurism’. He argues that the queer, “in the order of the social, is called forth to figure the negativity opposed to every form of social viability.” In Rebecca, it is the morbidly queer Mrs. Danvers who embodies this negativity; her queer presence is the destructive force that endangers both heterosexuality and futurity. Her power over the protagonist (figured as both child and future mother) threatens to destroy the de Winters’s marriage. Burning down Manderley is more than an act of revenge – it is a violent attack on the de Winters’ future together. After the discovery of Rebecca’s cancer clears Maxim of any implication in her death, Favell bitterly tells Mrs. Danvers on the telephone, “And now Max and that dear little bride of his... will be able to stay on at Manderley and live happily ever after.” As the house goes up in flames, so does the happily-ever-after story. By turning order to chaos, this final act of destruction interrupts the awaited resolution of happy heterosexuality, thus assaulting the very premise of reproductive futurism.

The final shot of Rebecca’s pillow embroidered with her initial reminds us of her own destructive impulses. Did Rebecca win in the end? If she had witnessed the final chaotic scene of her husband’s home and future going up in flames, I imagine she might have had the same reaction as she did when she found out about her cancer: “She smiled in a queer sort of way.”

"fearless in their lust for designer shoes, jackets and jewelry"

2006-06-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks j and b for introducing me to my new personal heroes. When it comes to designer clothing, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. If you happen to be a 6'5" black dude, you still need a pair of strappy heels for summer! The thing is, shoplifting isn't usually characterized by words like "crime ring," "brute force", "pack of thieves," and "reign of terror." But maybe that's because most shoplifters are teenage white girls. Whereas any group of black men -- even "very skinny, very flamboyant" drag queens in wigs and pumps -- must be a gang.

I am planning to adopt their strategy as my personal mantra: if you see something you like, don't stop until you have it. Bring on the reign of fashion! Oh, I mean terror...

2006-06-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

Eve Ensler is a kick-ass lady. Me and my vagina are both psyched that she’s on our side. Like a billion other women, seeing the Vagina Monologues for the first time gave me a new perspective on feminism – to borrow a phrase from Inga Muscio, a cuntlovin’ one. Recently I had the opportunity to attend an evening of performances as part of Eve’s V-Day festival in NYC. Talented and sometimes famous women and men performed pieces submitted by over fifty writers on the topic of violence against women. Bracing myself for an incredibly depressing wake-up call to the dire condition of women worldwide, I was pleased that the emphasis was placed on women resisting and overcoming victimization. In “Maurice,” by Kathy Najimy, an overweight sixteen year-old skillfully dumps her date rapist… out the door of his car onto the ground. In “Blueberry Hill” by Christine House, a woman about to be gang-raped decides to fight back, and succeeds in scaring off her attackers. Stories from Haiti to Palestine, from El Salvador to Rwanda spoke of violence against women as anything but monolithic. Rather than male bashing, the pieces traced root causes of violence to colonization, patriarchy, racism and militarism. In her electrifying piece, “Give it back,” Suheir Hammad called out women warmongers for their failure to act like women, admonishing them to “Give your coochies back!”

Somewhere in the midst of this cuntlovin’ frenzy, however, I began to feel a little uncomfortable. Not because I disagreed with Kimberle Crenshaw’s suggestion that we begin to demand respect for vaginas – I get a little giddy imagining all phallic architecture being replaced by vagina-themed structures! Wheee! And not because I disagree with the goal of ending violence against women and girls (um, hello!). Rather, it was the connection between the two – demanding respect for the vagina as an avenue for ending violence against women – that left me slightly confused. What might that mean for women who weren’t born with vaginas? Or for transmen who aren’t necessarily all about signing their vaginas up for goddess worship? And furthermore, how does the movement to end violence against women relate to the issue of violence against a whole spectrum of folks who don’t fit into the gender binary (trannies, genderqueers, intersexuals, bulldykes, queens, stone butches, and queers of all stripes)?

Of course, Eve Ensler and the V-day crowd are far from participating in the kind of discourse that draws on sexist stereotypes to posit women and children as helpless victims (say, Muslim women in need of rescue by the U.S. military), separating them from the homos whose sexual practices and preferences have always already jeopardized their innocent victim status. But the goal to “make NYC the safest place on earth for women and girls” still leaves it plenty dangerous for many others.

Even for those of us who fit fairly comfortably inside the parameters of the term “woman,” I am not so sure that demanding recognition of our value as women is the most viable solution for ending violence against us. In “True,” Carol Kaplan suggests that if our oppressors could simply “see us for who we are” then they would have a change of heart. Seemingly, if women were valued and loved, rather than despised and hated, no one would have cause to inflict violence on us. I have to admit, I am somewhat skeptical. I recently read Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog, a book in which men’s love for women is precisely the cause of their violence. Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon just wants to help the woman he loves get her house back. So he holds a family hostage and threatens them at gunpoint, his actions finally resulting in the death of their son. Meanwhile, all Colonel Behrani could desire is for his beloved wife Nadereh to be happy. That’s why he smothers her to death so she won’t have to find out about the death of their son. What a guy.

What’s the moral of the story? Well, I for one am not comfortable trusting men (or anyone) to act in my or my vagina’s best interest, no matter how much they might profess to love and respect us. And frankly, I’m not all that interested in convincing men to stop hurting us, because I’m not wiling to concede that men are the ones with the power to end violence against women. Women are the ones with that power – the power to open a car door at a crucial moment, the power to fight and fight and fight and fight until your attackers finally realize it’s not worth it.

In both of those stories, a woman went through a moment of realization of what was about to happen to her, and then decided that there was no way in hell she was just going to sit there and let it happen. I’m not suggesting that it is always possible to win a fight. But considering that one of the main reasons women become targets of violence is our perceived submissiveness, refusing to act like a victim can go a long way in turning the tables on an attacker. A 1998 study showed that women who screamed or yelled were more likely to avoid being raped than women who used a more passive approach of pleading or crying.

Of course, the pattern of violence against women is etched deeply in the collective consciousness. But perhaps as we begin to disrupt this pattern more and more frequently, we will eventually succeed in completely changing its shape. While we’re marching on the path to pussy power, however, let’s not forget that the ol’ patriarchy is pretty damn reliant on heterosexism, racism, and imperialism. Back in 1851, former slave Sojourner Truth delivered her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman,” pointing out that black women were excluded from the protections and privileges of the term “woman.” Today, queer theorists like Judith “Jack” Halberstam are redefining the boundaries of what it means to be female altogether. I hope that the movement to end violence against women is more open to redefinition than the women’s suffrage movement was. After all, what’s the point of making NYC a safe place to be a woman, if that’s not who you feel like being?