Matt picks up a drum I've been beating for a long time, which is "everything is culture war". There's a tendency in the mainstream media, which is encouraged by numerically small but well-funded and frankly deceitul "libertarians" to think there's some giant gap between "fiscal" and "social" conservatism.  In theory, maybe (and mostly in the elite classes), but for the right wing base, that's largely absent.  Matt cites a van he saw driving around that had slogans about the evils of abortion and slogans about the evils of government spending.  He responds:

Abortion is, obviously, a very emotional and very ideological issue. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s a problem for the country when strong emotional and ideological views about abortion get intimately linked in people’s ideas with views about much more technical questions about the merits of raising the debt ceiling or whether we have too much inflation or too little.

Naturally, I do think there's something wrong with abortion---which is, as I've said a million times before, a stand in for a host of beliefs about sex and women's role in life---being so emotional.  I think we'd be a far greater country if people could step off and butt out of other people's consensual sexual behavior and their often incredibly personal choices about love, marriage, and child-bearing.  But all that aside, I think this is a good place to point out that while most of us think of "economic" and "social" issues as divergent, they really aren't.  

I'm going to point out that the truck in question here specifically singles out black women who have abortions as bad people. 

The reason I'm going to do so is to point out that in the right wing mind, these are all intertwined things.  The right wing story is basically that this country is going to hell because people have abandoned traditional values, and now they're fucking in the streets and that the hard-working white man has to pay for all this bad behavior with his tax dollars.  Women's sexual choices are blamed for a lot---I'd guess that your average right wing nut thinks that spending on welfare is about half the federal budget.  This is blamed predominantly on women's inability to control their sexual urges.  Black women are especially held out as living lacivious lifestyles that the taxpayer is on the hook for.  I think Dana Loesch's rant at CPAC really boils down the argument:

But you’re not empowered when you’re expecting Uncle Sam to act like your sugar daddy, and take care of your abortions and take care of your birth control, and pay your bills and everything else?

Preventing a pregnancy, having an abortion, and bearing children out of wedlock are all blurred together in the right wing mind as evidence of women's bad behavior that they're subsidizing with their tax dollars, and the debt ceiling gets all caught up in that.  So these aren't separate issues in their minds at all. The assumption is, from what I can tell, that the government needs to "crack down" and stop borrowing money, and throw all those sluts on the street.  And then what will happen is said sluts will stop fucking, get married, and have a husband to support them and this country will return to the 1950s....and the prosperity of it.  

I know that doesn't make a lot of sense if you see social policy and economic policy as different things---and god knows that a sensible approach does call for such a distinction---but for a lot of average voters, the most obvious change from the prosperous 50s to now isn't hard-to-understand economic policies.  Most people have no idea what the tax rate was in 1953, for instance.  But they definitely know how much sexual and gender mores changed, and the most obvious change becomes the scapegoat for all other problems.

The debates are going to continue for days about how wrong Weiner was during this, of which I'm going to maintain my concerns that it's much easier to sit in judgment of someone else's choices when you're not the one having to make them while a howling mob is outside calling for your head.  And there will be debates about whether or not what he did is adultery; my feeling on this is that it's alarming how many people feel secure in making declarations about other people's marriages based on what they prefer for their own.  Adultery should be strictly defined by the people in a relationship, full stop.  But this post isn't about any of that.

This post is about another concern I have, and had with the Chris Lee situation, and has been growing generally as the distinction between "men sending pictures of themselves to women who are welcoming of such pictures" and "men who send such pictures unbidden".  I'm seeing a lot of people bunching them altogether and saying, "Ewwww....who wants to see that?  Why would any man think a picture of his cock/chest/etc. be something a woman wants to see?!"  Now, I'm not talking about men who take a picture of their cocks and send it to someone who really hasn't sent any kind of signal that she's interested in that.  I'm talking about pictures that exist in the context of a flirtation or an outright ask for pictures.  I'm seeing the same judgment laid across the board, on Twitter and forums and blogs.  And I'm going to have to push back and point out that this is sexist.

Why? Well, you know what never happens when a naked picture that a woman sent to a paramour gets out?  The "ewwww" reaction.  No one ever says, "Why would any man want to see that?!" or suggest that the distinction between wanted and unwanted pictures is unimportant because there's no such thing as a man who would find it arousing to have that kind of picture sent to him.  To use some radfem terminology on you, that's because we think of women as the sex class, and the viewing of their bodies as sexual things as normal and natural, but to do that to men is considered feminizing and therefore "gross".  

Again, since this is the internet and people want to distort your arguments beyond all recognition, I'm not talking about unwanted cock pics.  Those are often threatening in nature, because men are positioned as aggressive and violent in our culture, and so unsolicited nudity is not only harassing but scary.  But the blanket assumption that it's always foolish, unsexy, and stupid for men to take cameraphone pics and send them to women they're flirting with bothers me.  It carries with it the assumption that women are sex objects and men are sex actors.  And that women aren't sexual beings, but that we simply tolerate sex from men in order to get romance.  I would argue instead that women are very much sexual beings who can find the male body quite arousing, and therefore a picture of a man in the context of a flirtation is not only normal but should be immediately understandable, just as the picture of a woman in a flirtation is.  

Honestly, the fact that gay men exist and can look at each other with lust should have put to bed this ridiculous notion that men's bodies have no sexual allure.  But no.  The myth that women are for romance and men for raw sex and relationships are about a tense exchange of these conflicting desires has such a hold it overrules common sense understanding of the facts at hand.

This bothered me with the Chris Lee situation.  From what I understand, the woman ratted him out not because she was delicately offended that a man would think she'd want to see something like that, but because she recognized him and was upset that he was a cheater. In fact,  he sent the picture in response to communications they'd had, if I'm not mistaken.  The idea was to show off that he had the good despite his age, and let's face it, he made his point.  Personally, I'm glad that we're entering an era where men are toying with the idea that their bodies might have some aeshetic value that women may appreciate.  It opens the door to other ideas that we need to embrace as a society, the first being that because you can look at someone with lust doesn't mean that you should stop looking at them as a full human being with full human rights. And if straight men are seen as people who can incite lust, then we're halfway there---no one is going to take away their right to be full human beings with rights, such as the right to say no.  

Which goes back to Slutwalk, as many things do lately.  In her pathetic attempts to debate strategy instead of stand by her suggestion that anti-rape activism shouldn't be a feminist priority, Melissa Clouthier tweeted something about how women who go on Slutwalks don't understand how men think.  (i'm paraphrasing, because I don't want to wade through her ridiculous Twitter feed.)  The implication is that men, when they see women in short skirts, cannot be expected to see the person in the skirt as a full human being with full human rights, including the right to determine who penetrates her body.  I disagree, of course---not only do I see men accomplish this amazing feat all the time, I also have point out that how much skin is "too much" is so culturally constrained that making essentialist arguments falls apart after a minute's thought.  The argument "you know how men are" is an illusion, and part of what upholds it as an illlusion is the strict policing of men to make sure they don't present themselves in sexualized ways reserved for women, thereby collapsing the wall that's been built between being sexy and being a full human being with full human rights.  

So, by all means, denounce men who harass women with cock shots.  But let's be clear on distinctions.  The problem is not that a cock shot is always unwelcome and that women can be considered as a class not into that.  A lot of women (and gay men and yes, even straight men) find penises and male bodies in general arousing.  And there's nothing wrong with a straight man who wants to be seen as sexy by women, any more than there's something wrong with a woman who wants to be seen as sexy or a gay man who wants men to find him sexy.  In fact, we should be welcoming of a world flexible enough where all people have the right to try to feel desireable, and all people have full human rights, regardless of their sexual status. 

Andrew Klavan has investigated Anthony Weiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and come to the inevitable conclusion: it's all women's fault.

I blame women.  No, really.  Women — by which I mean each and every single member of the female gender — you know who you are — need look no further than themselves to explain why Weiner-types behave toward them in this fashion.   We men are always hearing complaints from women about how badly we treat them, what pigs we are, how pushy and abrasive…  on and on.  But what these same women conveniently fail to mention is that this stuff really works on them!

[...]

So, then, ladies — what do you expect?  All we guys want is for you to love us.  If this is the sort of guy you follow after in droves, this is the sort of guy we’re encouraged to be. 

Everyone I know has dated assholes.  It's because assholes know how to manipulate people.  Now, I'm pretty sure that DSK raping women doesn't exactly count as women "falling for" something, unless it's the seemingly reasonable belief that they won't be raped.  

When you look at Klavan's other exhibits, though, it's obvious what must happen: the more than three billion women on Earth should start some sort of network wherein unapproved men are shunned, and only middle-aged writers for Pajamas Media are allowed to come into the womanly fold.

Ha, I said "womanly fold".  I'm awesome.

But you all need to understand the eminently reasonable threshold here: all women (like all minorities everywhere) are responsible for the actions of every other woman on the face of the planet, so that if anyone reciprocally flirts with world-famous movie actors or prominent politicians, you're basically boning them as you speak.  Sorry for the late notice, but I figured you'd want to know that you're responsible for adultery and rape by people you've never met and whom you might actually find revolting.  So, uh, stop it.

One of the benefits to being a wingnut is that there's a low-cost, high-payoff emotional reward system.  A handful of smart people---Karl Rove, Frank Luntz---come up with the dog whistles and empty talking points, and all you have to do is repeat them and collect your high fives from your fellow dittoheads, who will crow about how you showed those lie-brals with their stupid facts they got from the lamestream media.  (Indeed, the quickest way to tell that a wingnut has lost an argument is he and his buddies start declaring victory.)  The one danger in this, of course, is that by mindlessly parroting conservative cliches, you occasionally will say something so incredibly wrong-headed and inappropriate that even you the shameless wingnut will be embarrassed, once you see what you did there. 

One of these cliches that you hear over and over is to claim that American feminists are wrong for caring about (fill in a cultural concern in American society) when some brown-skinned people in a non-Christian nation are tolerating some horrible abuse of women's rights.  This delightful cliche hangs in because it allows the wingnut both to paint American feminists as nothing but bubble-headed bimbos while making the racist assertion that only people not like them are sexist while also allowing themselves to pretend they actually give a shit.  It's a wingnut trifecta.  It is, of course, utterly meaningless, as it presumes, incorrectly, that women who care about body image issues here can't care about FGM there, and also it presumes, incorrectly, that the mere act of caring about women in foreign nations somehow magically changes their circumstances.  But setting that aside, this particular cliche also creates a giant trap and Melissa Clouthier (of course) stepped right into it:

Meanwhile gendericide in India. RT @billscher: Don't miss @JessicaValenti on Morning Joe defending "Slutwalks" http://on.msnbc.com/l8F9Rw

Jesse sent this tweet to me, because he actually has the stomach to follow some of these right wing bloggers, and I don't.  But I was immediately amused, because Melissa hadn't realized what she had just said there, and how it would sound to people not high-fiving her.  Let's recap:

1) SlutWalks are an anti-rape action that has proven to be really popular. 

2) Regardless of how effective you think a SlutWalk is, one must agree that someone defending it is opposed to rape and takes fighting it very seriously. 

3) Melissa plugged this into the usual formulation, and basically ended up arguing that Jessica is wrong to fight rape in America when there's "gendercide" in India. 

To be clear, I think Melissa actually meant this.  It's common enough for conservatives to argue that feminists are making too much out of rape, and that having some frat daddy corner a college girl at a party and rape her doesn't really count as much more than just good times, and it was probably her fault anyway.  Heather McDonald was trotting out an unvarnished example of this argument when I went up against her on World Have Your Say, and she even suggested that because many rape victims are able to function well enough, in the months and years after a rape, to attend classes and otherwise not fall completely apart means that it isn't real rape. This argument, of course, why SlutWalk exists.  So I responded to Melissa with this assumption in mind:

@MelissaTweets Wow, you're really going to put your money on arguing that rape isn't a real issue. Well-played.

I figured she'd ignore me, but having this mirror held up to her face created a giant reaction, which is understandable.  I find her attitude repulsive, and can only imagine what it must feel like to see with someone else's eyes what an asshole you are.  But her initial response was to double down:

.@AmandaMarcotte I'm saying Feminists undermine themselves by such stupidly misplaced priorities.

At this point, I reminded her that she was saying, in public, that considering rape a problem is a "misplaced priority". Which I think is when the penny dropped and she realized that perhaps saying that American feminists shouldn't take rape seriously may not be the brightest idea in the world.  Now that it's been discovered that arty film directors, leftist warriors, and the French can be rapists, the official conservative party line is that rape is a serious crime and they're totallly not disputing that, even if it's still the victim's fault in most cases.  (Melissa veered off on this for a bit, blathering about how I don't understand how men think, which is presumably that they have to rape anyone whose skirt shows X amount of thigh.  It's true; I don't think men are uncontrollable animals.)  Caught looking like an unreconstructed rape apologist, Melissa then tried to change the subject:

.@AmandaMarcotte Amanda, you're really going to argue that Slutwalks prevent rape?

Of course, that was not actually my argument.  I might make that in another context, but my argument here was against Melissa's assertion that as long as India is struggling with a cultural bias against having daughters, American women should not protest the rapes of themselves.  This was the assertion, and I carefully reminded her of this over and over while she dodged and weaved and complained about SlutWalk because she didn't think it was effective or appropriate.  I tried to explain that there's a difference between priorities and tactics, and that her first two tweets were priority-based---she denounced Jessica for supporting anti-rape protests while there were presumably worse horrors in the world than rape.  I'm completely disinterested in the opinion of wingnuts on the topic of whether or not SlutWalks work; in terms of what SlutWalks are trying to accomplish, getting the good opinion of professional misogynists isn't on the list.  That a resentment-based pea brain like Melissa Clouthier disapproves of women having fun while speaking out is about as shocking or interesting as the fact that I don't care for the music of Justin Bieber.  What I was interested in was her contention that Jessica's interest in fighting rape was wrong when there are sexism-based problems in India.  

She wouldn't get off tactics, of course, and ended up flouncing, which caused a sea of wingnuts tweeting that she had "won" the argument.  (See the first paragraph.)  I wish I could say this represents some sort of end to the use of the wingnut cliche that American feminists shouldn't care about X because brown-skinned people in non-Christian nations are doing Y, but alas, there is no such thing as a right wing shibboleth that is so stupid that it can be put to bed.  I, personally, am looking forward to the day that Nicholas Kristof is accused of not caring about Real Issues with women who are Really Oppressed.  Actually, I'm sure that's happened.

My point, besides the joy of sharing this encounter with the Pandagon audience, is twofold: 1) A reminder that a lot of wingnut truisms really are just empty blather, and this is doubly true when it comes to their stereotypes of feminists and 2) that feminist activism has actually done a lot already to change the dialogue around rape.  Even a couple of years ago, I imagine that Melissa would have just clung to the "rape isn't a real issue, unlike gender disparities in India" line until the bitter end, but now it's becoming toxic for even female anti-feminists, who often are empowered to be even more belligerently misogyny by virtue of their gender, to wave off rape like it's not big deal.  Good work, feminists!  We still have a long way to go, but that I was able to shame Melissa Clouthier about her knee-jerk minimizing of rape is a pretty big win.  Bit by bit, we're winning the argument against rape apologists.

Of course, I asked her repeatedly to admit that Jessica Valenti is in the right to declare rape a serious social problem, and I did get crickets on that.  But hey, I was just driving the knife in, so I get why she might feel humiliated by actually going on the record agreeing that feminists are right with our "rape is really bad" beliefs. 

How appropriate.  At the Guardian's CIF, I put up a piece about what it means to lose John Edwards as a figurehead of populist liberalism in the wake of his scandals.  I don't write much at all about Edwards, because invariably it means people project a lot of their more personal feelings about him and his campaign onto me because of the whole situation where I got a job with his campaign and then resigned because of attacks from the pedophila-excusing Bill Donohue.  (Who I just saw quoted in another piece in the New York Times recently!  He could rape a bunny on live TV and then eat it while its heart slowly stopped beating and people would still call him up to comment on various Catholicism-related stories.)  Please check it out; it's mostly about how Edwards had an opportunity to be the pro-labor conscience of the Obama era, and he screwed the pooch and there's not been another person who can really step into his shoes. 

In more ways than one, it turns out.  Because one reason I was eager to back Edwards was there was no conflict in his campaign between the three tiers of modern liberalism, which often do fight each other.  I see the three as:

1) Economic justice. This is labor movements, anti-poverty initiatives, fair taxation, health care reform, social services, government that is functional, etc.  Anything that helps secure the middle class, bolsters the economy, and lifts people out of poverty.

2) Social justice. Feminism, anti-racism, gay rights, anti-colonialism, things like that---anything that divides people against each other on the basis of identity hierarchies.

3) Environmentalism and rationalism.  Preserving the planet, promoting science, basically using the now to work towards a better tomorrow.

Obviously, a smart person sees how these are interrelated and that you really fail at anti-racism if you don't think about poverty and that you're not a good environmentalist if economic justice isn't part of your worldview, and you're not an effective feminist if you treat science like it's a lark.  I can think of a million other examples, but sadly all of them tend to happen over and over again.  Edwards was smart about weaving social justice issues in with economic justice issues. So I liked that.  And I fear that there's just not enough prominent leadership out there doing that anymore, even though I can think of many people who aren't that prominent who do so effortlessly.

Instead, we get Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a "slut".  Now, Laura Ingraham is a racist piece of shit, sure.  She's the wart that fell off a toad. Listening to her talk is like trying to bring santorum-stained sheets in to your dry cleaner and look him in the eye, except worse somehow.  She makes the world a worse place every time she talks.  But she is not a "slut", because a "slut" is a woman who is immoral because she enjoys sex too much or has many partners.  And "sluts" do not exist, because there is nothing wrong with women liking sex or liking sex with lots of people.  

You can, then, why the high hopes have been dashed.  Is it so hard to have leaders who can speak out on economic justice while not making rookie mistakes like that?

Argument, by Beyonce:

;

Counterargument, by Jarvis Cocker:

To be clear, while the term "cunts" is sexist as hell, it functionally means "asshole" in this context, and this post doesn't make sense unless you take the word in the spirit in which it was intended.  

I think Beyonce is a great pop songwriter.  Still, the lyrics to this song are classic faux empowerment, as she's literally suggesting women run the world by being very persuasive with our vaginas.  Not only is this an insulting ploy that's been used for eons to explain to women why they don't deserve real power, but it's also just false.  Evidence:

In 2007, officials at the fund declined to investigate a complaint by an administrative assistant who had slept with her supervisor, and who charged that he had given her poor performance reviews to pressure her to continue the relationship. Officials told the woman that the supervisor planned to retire soon, and therefore there was no point in investigating the charges, according to findings by the I.M.F.’s internal court.

Honestly, in a world where rape is so incredibly common, the argument that women run the world behind the scenes with their sexual power is not only insulting and false, but kind of traumatizing. 

More from this awesome lady and from Samhita.

If you haven't yet, I can't recommend enough the recent Sound Opinions episode on Riot Grrrl, featuring an interview with the marvelous Sara Marcus, who wrote Girls to the Front, a history of the brief period where Riot Grrrl grew, made an impact, and then flamed out dramatically, fueled by juvenile, over-the-top identity politics that had come to replace any thing like thoughtfulness or complexity.  (Draw your own parallels to recent struggles in the feminist blogosphere.)  While Sara does reming the hosts Greg and Jim that Riot Grrrl was about far more than music---that it was also and in some ways primarily about zines, political actions, and community organizing---most of the episode is about the music.  And I think that's about right.  My feeling is the best part of Riot Grrrl, the most interesting and lasting part, was the music.  Part of that is because the rest is ephemeral by nature, but it's also because music, being art, was able often to rise above the purity rituals and in-fighting that tends to eat up feminist movements.  The politics of Riot Grrrl may have turned into a holier-than-thou fest, but the music often embraced ambiguities and complexities, ironically exactly the sort of thing that makes feminism so compelling to many of us.

Sara talks about this during the interview, mentioning Bikini Kill's evolution from a polemical noise band to a lyrically fascinating band with songs like "Rebel Girl" and "New Radio", where Kathleen Hanna demonstrated herself to be more than a fist-pumper, but also a genuine humanist singing songs directly to the fuck-ups out there who never did nail the art of Being A Girl, and through some great imagery, she empowered said fuck-ups to realize that they deserve to be proud of themselves.  (Perhaps one reason I'm indifferent to most song lyrics is that they don't speak to me, but Riot Grrrl at its best totally did.) 

I also want to shout out Bratmobile, who mastered the art of writing songs that captured both the longing to be cool and the anger at how oppressive the rules of cool were, especially considering that the rules were often written by guys who had ulterior motives when it came to the women in the punk community.  Songs like "Punk Rock Dream Come True" may not have fixed my personal problems for me, but at least I felt like someone actually understood the way certain cool guys would draw you in with their coolness while repulsing you with their sexism, and the number of bad decisions that could be made in the space between the desire to fuck and the desire to run.

Note: Nice Guys® would be wise to keep their complaints to themselves.

A lot of the zines were also remarkable, but a lot of what I've read wouldn't have had any interest for me if not for the music, because there was some wallowing that crossed into a humorless territory that bores me.  What I found most compelling about Riot Grrrl as music was that it was a pro-pleasure feminism.  The whole point of getting women on stage and giving them space at shows is that shows are fun.  Music is fun.  Women deserve to have fun and are not just here to serve men's pleasures.  That, more than anything, had a major impact on me as a young woman.  I wasn't a Riot Grrrl or anything---I was too isolated as a young woman, and it was over by the time I discovered it, but the music meant a lot to me.  Still does.

Speaking of a pro-pleasure feminism, Michael Bérubé has posted the text of the speech he gave at the Ellen Willis conference.  Good stuff; check it out. There's some thoughts in there that go back to the eternal problem in feminism of those who are more interested in establishing their bona fides as the Best Feminist than being effective or interesting.

And on that subject, I would like to say that I finally got around to reading Roseanne Barr's epic essay in New York Magazine about her struggles in the TV business and why that bullshit is still going on. As soon as I finished it, I could hear the Problematic Choir denouncing it because Barr is wealthy and quite privileged in many ways.  Examples, though thankfully not too many, available in comments here. (I'm beginning to notice the Problematic Choir often dislikes the same things about some women that the patriarchy hates, with bitchy loudmouthness and overt sexuality at the top of the list.)  But seriously, read it.  It's actually a good example of how to think through multiple concerns and levels to a problem without sacrificing your voice or substituting piety for genuine analysis.  Also, Rosanne Barr does not care what you think.  She admits to many major failings as a person and her strengths are often things we don't like to admit are strengths---stubborness, belligerent about what she believes she's entitled to---and the points she makes are all the stronger for it.  Domestic goddess indeed.

One of the best, most life-affirming parts of being a female writer is that some dudes will never ever allow that you might know what you're talking about, no matter how much experience or education you have with a subject.  This is doubly true when the subject is Lady Stuff like abortion rights or rape---the vagina creates a magical force field around the brain where no amount of time spent covering a subject will allow any information to penetrate that could make an opinion the vagina-holder has worth considering.  This expectation that women don't know what they're talking about is one of those joyous things that gets me out of bed in the morning with a song in a heart and a skip in my step.  That, or maybe it's the daily treat of freshly ground coffee I allow myself.  Your choice.

Today's fun example is the thread at my post on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case at Double X. I think it's a pretty good post, especially since we're in the early stages of this case, where there's not much to opine on.  I went with discussing the police work, which is looking pretty solid right now.  But I also noted---because I have extensive experience going back many years on this---that it's just a matter of time before the victim-blaming and other ridiculousness kicks in.  Quoting myself:

Right now, I have a sensation of the quiet before the storm.  The arrest happened over the weekend, out of the usual news cycle, and so the nearly inevitable firestorm hasn't yet begun of victim-blaming, accusations against the victim for moral degeneracy and lying, feminists angrily denouncing victim-blaming, and calls for a much higher presumption of innocence than is offered for any other crime in the media.

I even allowed an out, on the very slim chance that rape apologists give this one a pass, by saying that all this may not happen.  No matter---it was time for questioning my intelligence, experience, and mental health in comments. I point this out not to pity myself, since I truly don't care what said dudes think about me, but because I think it's interesting to note in real time how rape apologism and sexist treatment of women when they dare speak out works.  So, I got this comment:

People want sexual assault accusations subject to " a much higher presumption of innocence than is offered for any other crime in the media?"  
 
Are you mad? 

It's possible that the only reason to suspect that people use "presumption of innocence" as a weapon to argue that accused rapists shouldn't be treated like any other person accused a crime would be that I suffer from a mental condition that gives me delusions and hallucinations.  That's why I'm asking you, the readers, to tell me if this link works and whether or not the quote that is contained therein is a hallucination cooked up by my crazy lady-brain, or if it's actually there.

The chief of Sarkozy's conservative party, Jean-Francois Cope, said he told the president that he asked fellow party members to "proceed with caution and restraint" in their comments, and Sarkozy supported the idea.

"I was, like all Frenchmen, very disturbed by the news, very disturbed by the images that I saw," including of Strauss-Kahn handcuffed in New York.

"There is the principle of presumed innocent," he said.

As far as I can tell, this is a demand much higher standard of presumed innocence than you would have in any other criminal case.  I was unaware that accused rapists should be allowed to go about without handcuffs, unlike the accused in any other crime.

I was also held up as a paragon of hysterical overreaction for predicting, with a caveat, that a wealthy Frenchman would probably have his defenders, no matter how good the evidence or tawdry the accusations.  The commenter:

Now Ms Marcotte has gotten so shrill and alarmist on the subject that she is going after, "the nearly inevitable firestorm hasn't yet begun of victim-blaming, accusations against the victim for moral degeneracy and lying," before it even exists. 

Truly, only a "shrill" and hysterical alarmist with some kind of crazy agenda could possibly think that excuses will be made for the accused, and the alleged victim will be accused, sans evidence, of all sorts of crazy stuff.  Sane manly men can see that the chance of rape apologism on the behalf of Strauss-Kahn is only something that could be dreamed up by alarmist feminists, and not something that could be predicted from extensive past experience.  Which is why I surely hallucinated veiled accusations that the alleged victim is just being a hysteric and a prude, who probably made it all up anyway:

To tell the truth, everybody knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a libertine; what distinguishes him from plenty of others is his propensity not to hide it. In Puritan American, impregnated with rigorous Protestantism, they tolerate infinitely better the sins of money than the pleasures of the flesh. It would be easy to trap a personality so unresistant to feminine attractions as D.S.K.

See more stuff I just hallucinated with my shrill lady brain here.

The important thing is that, at the end of the day, we remember that we can't assume that a feminist has a clue what she's talking about when it comes to rape and culture, no matter how many years she's put in reseraching and commenting on one case after another that have all fit into exactly the same pattern.  I'm sure we can get this guy to explain that it's because women's brains evolved so that we can't make out patterns or learn from experience.  There's no room in our brains for memories, since our cells are all taken up with wanting to look pretty and have babies.

The great paradox of social justice movements is that they exist to eradicate themselves.  Think, for instance, of the abolitionist movement.  Once the goal of ending slavery was achieved, there was no more abolitionist movement.  This is what we all want for our movements.

Feminism, in particular, exists for one specific reason: to overturn the patriarchy. Should we achieve that goal, there is no more need for feminism.  Feminism---the belief that men and women are equal and that we shouldn't be constrained by stifling gender roles---will simply be accepted as fact.  In little ways, we're achieving this bit The belief that women should have the vote used to be radical feminism, and now it's probably not generally considered a "feminist" belief, but just a mainstream idea.  That's the goal. I'm not talking about "post-feminism", which is a word that basically has come to mean shoving questions about women's equality into the closet and simply accepting our half-baked patriarchy as it is.  Our goal is a post-patriarchy, where feminism isn't needed anymore. 

Which is something I thought about reading Lori's piece at Feministing and the piece that inspired it by Lara at f-word on the topic of whether or not non-overt feminism can be more radical than overt feminism, at least in pop culture.  Lara mentioned two pieces of pop culture that were feminist by virtue of simply showing women being full human beings in charge of themselves, but in genres where this has rarely, if ever, been a given.  Lori added to it by asking questions of Tina Fey's new book Bossypants, and whether or not its light feminism will reach women that overt feminism won't.

I think it's important to separate the two questions here, because what Lara is talking about is pop culture products where women's equality is assumed and doesn't have to be asserted, Tina Fey is actually a feminist but one who approaches it from a non-threatening perspective, and the feminist blogs Lori talks about are overt, threatening feminism.  I would say we need all three things.  Different approaches, different audiences, different concepts. 

I think about this a lot because I'm not only big into music, but big into music in the context of feminism.  What is interesting about Tina Fey is that she just admits what is true, which is that a woman can't put herself out there as a public figure without grappling with feminism, even if it has nothing to do with your work.  No where does this strike me as more true than when it comes to female rock musicians, at least for me as a fan who is also a feminist.  Rock music has traditionally not only been male-dominated but often notoriously misogynist, where women were expected to be sexually compliant fans but not aggressively grab the guitar themselves.  Most of rock music history has featured women fighting the man in some way, from Janis Joplin trying to use a vulnerable sexuality to endear people to her to Patti Smith deliberately adopting an androgynous pose to compete with men to the campy aesthetics of punk and New Wave to Riot Grrrl's in-your-face anger and then there's now. 

What I find so enthralling and invigorating about a lot of rock music now is that there's a creeping feeling that all this fighting and fussing has started to, well, work.  At least in indie rock, we're beginning to see women who get up on stage and do their thing with distinctly less grappling with what it means to be a Woman on Stage.  It hasn't gone away, but it's muted.  Feminism has become less a weapon for women to assert themselves and more a fact.  Women don't have to apologize for themselves in their stage presence or music, nor do they have to scream at The Man in order to earn the right, nor do they have to downplay their femininity or ramp it up in a comical way.  I'm just seeing a lot more women simply be themselves in a way that was always something men got to do without question.

Occasionally, the fighting feminist in me gets a little upset.  "Why," I will think, "Do I see so many women in bands and pretty much never are they screaming about sexism?  I would like some of that."   I have a concern, of course, because we still need feminism.  There are still a lot of sexist douchenozzles to fight in the rock music world, believe you and me. Is the lack of overt feminism from women a capitulation?  I don't think that it is, but I can see that for the audience it might end up functionally being one, because you don't have a soundtrack to the anger that women still very much need.

And yet....and yet I'm so happy when I see women who don't seem to feel pressure from sexist douchenozzles.  In a way, having women be able to get up there and do their thing without having to fight sexism while they're at it means that the sexists have lost a whole lot of power.  It's true, also, that in the past decade I've seen a distinct shift in the way male audiences react to female musicians.  When I was a wee girl going to shows, and there were women on stage who had a dominate presence either in numbers or because they were playing in ways that had been previously owned by men, you would see men just not handling it left and right.  It wasn't the comments about fuckability per se---sex appeal is part of being a rock musician---but perhaps that these were the sole comments and were often issued in a highly personal way that gave no credit to the woman for being a conscious performer but instead sounded more like something you'd say about someone standing at the bar. 

But it was more than that.  It was the tension.  You can just tell when a lot of people in the audience suddenly feel lost and put off and suddenly don't know how to conduct themselves graciously, and that was always an element when I saw female-dominated bands playing throughout much of my youth.  It was often more exhausting, because you could feel the emotional energy of men trying in vain not to be intimidated and failing, often fueled by alcohol that lowered their inhibitions on saying stupid shit that demonstrated their internal bullshit struggles.  And then it seems that the fog started to lift, and I still credit Sleater-Kinney with this, though I never got through their shows without a few uncomfortable encounters with threatened dudes.  But the last time I saw them, it was minimal.  And when I saw Wild Flag, it was non-existent. Maybe I'm just oblivious now, but I doubt that.

Now I can get through entire shows where women are equal to or outnumber men on stage and no one seems to give a flying fuck.  And this is both in New York and in Austin.  It's like all of a sudden Dudes Who Like Rock Music realized there wasn't anything scary or intimidating about women having equal access to the stage.  Like Wednesday night, I saw Cansei De Ser Sexy and towards the end of the show I realized that while most of the band is female, and they conduct themselves exactly how they want without any overt contending with the strictures of femininity, and they have lyrics that are witty and often irreverent about sex, I didn't hear one threatened comment or see one dude doing the "I'm feeling threatened and that's compromising my ability to appear relaxed or god forbid dance" manuever.   And that this is typical of my experiences lately.  I think the only reason I thought about it at all was that the lead singer was wearing a very 90s looking outfit and it made me think about how much has changed since then.  Men and women in the audience were experiencing the same show.  I don't know how else to put it.  They saw the band through the same eyes, and they had fun.  It was everything I've ever wanted for women who take the stage and rock out, and those of us who are in the audience and just want to enjoy seeing other women be awesome without having to contend with some dudes and their issues over that. 

I can see the dangers in this, which is that when you get into spaces or TV shows or books where the world we're fighting for is finally coming into being, that is more of a fantasy than a reality.  Rock shows are breaks from the real world, as are TV shows, and there's always a danger that if you think that this fantasy is your reality outside you won't have the gumption to fight.  But there's also a flip of it.  It can breed entitlement, the good kind.  If you're used to women being completely accepted as-is in the way men are, and then suddenly you encounter some sexist bullshit, it sticks out.  You are now having something taken away from you, and that can often create a bigger, angrier reaction. The problem with fighting sexism when it's the status quo is that it's hard to imagine what a world without it would be like.  Having even fantasy or temporary spaces where equality is closer to a reality gives us a goal to fight for.

Plus, you know, it's our goddamn right.  I want my entertainments to be fucking entertaining.  I want a break from my realities.  I want to go to a show or watch TV without having something or someone piss me off with their sexist bullshit.  That alone is an argument for what Lara and Lori are calling non-overt feminism, but I'm going to call assumed feminism. I want someone to be able to sing a love song to me without it being full of fucked up gender assumptions.  And I---we all---deserve that.

To be clear, because I know people are going to say this but you are mistaken, I'm not saying there's no sexism in rock music.  As noted, there are so many sexist pigs, it's not even funny.  Hipsters and dudebro bullshit continues to go strong. But the quick assumption that women on stage in dominant roles is not normal and therefore threatening and must be reacted to in some intimidated way?  It's not like it was, by a long stretch.  "Women can play rock music" is getting closer to where "women can vote" is right now.  Doesn't mean there aren't other forms of sexism that need to be addressed, but just that this one strain is finally fading.

So, I'm sure you've heard of the Slutwalk, but if you haven't, here's a link.  I've been broadly supportive of this, because it brings together two of my favorite things in the world, feminism and humor.  The concept of a "slut" is so slippery and so misogynist that the only real way to push back against it is to laugh at it.  "Slut" has power as long as the people who it's applied to take it seriously.  But if you start pointing and laughing, it shifts the power tremendously.

Of course, since Slutwalk is built around humor, it baffles the humorless.  And so defenders of Slutwalk have entered into this maddening space that is the equivalent of trying to explain a joke to the humorless, and if you've ever tried to do that, believe me, it may be the biggest waste of time on the planet. Gail Dines and Wendy Murphy aren't the most prominent examples of the problem, but they are the most humiliating, since they're taken seriously as feminists. I think they may have actually been so eager to start firing on younger feminists that they didn't actually bother to read the basic arguments for Slutwalk before they dove in.  Circular firing squads are fun!  Too bad they're so fucking counterproductive.

So, in response to all the confusion sown by those who don't get it (but feel they need to express an opinion anyway), I put together a FAQ sheet.

What is a Slutwalk?

You can read about the official formation of the protests here. I haven't gone to any, but my feeling is they're an update on the Take Back the Night Rallies.  Back when those were formed, feminists were saying, "Hey, we should be able to leave our houses after dark without getting raped."  Now we're adding to that list of things we should be able to do without some dude raping us and then people excusing it like rapists were some vigilante police force assigned to the task of keeping bitches in line: wear what we want, go to parties, have as many sexual partners as we like, drink alcohol, smart off to Gail Dines.  Eventually we plan to reach a point where women enjoy the freedom men have to what they like without everyone implying that you have it coming if someone rapes you.

But isn't "slut" a patriarchal word used to dismiss women who are sexually active, outspoken, or in any way not adhering to strict patriarchal guidelines?

Huh, you make it sound like a slut is the best possible thing you can be.  What's that you say?  It makes James Dobson uncomfortable?  Keep talking.

No, really, be serious.

I'm bored with that. "Serious" is increasingly used as a cover for not bringing all your brain cells to the table.

Just for a minute.

Okay.

Aren't you obligated to rein it in, drop your hemlines, and act like ladies so that other women don't feel pressured to have sex with anyone who asks?

No.

But that's Gail Dines and Wendy Murphy's argument in the Guardian when they say: "Encouraging women to be even more "sluttish" will not change this ugly reality.As teachers who travel around the country speaking about sexual violence, pornography and feminism, we hear stories from women students who feel intense pressure to be sexually available "on demand"."

First of all, they're arguing with a strawman. Slutwalk is not saying, "Everyone has to be exactly the same, and that person has to dress in nothing and have sex with everyone who asks."  Slutwalk is saying, "Even if you think someone's a slut, don't rape her."  Which is a much different thing. 

Second of all, their argument is hinging very close to the conservative argument that women's sexuality and sexual freedom must be curtailed for the good of civilization.  They argue that women need to rein it in so that other women don't feel they have to be sexual to get men's attention.  That is no different than the conservative argument that the "hook-up culture" is making so easy for men to get laid they won't give women what they really want, which is marriage.  If you swap out "marriage" for "respect" and "not bugging you for sex", it's functionally the same argument.  Next they'll be arguing that women shouldn't show their faces in public to prevent men from using even the image of their faces for nefarious purposes. 

Um.....: "The recent TubeCrush phenomenon, where young women take pictures of men they find attractive on the London tube and post them to a website, illustrates how easily women copy dominant societal norms of sexual objectification rather than exploring something new and creativeAnd it's telling that while these pictures are themselves innocent and largely free of sexual innuendo, one can only imagine the sexually aggressive language that would accompany a site dedicated to secret photos of women."

See?  Clearly the only way to make sure some picture of you fully dressed standing on a street corner hailing a cab doesn't end up on the internet where some guy can just jerk off to it if he wants is to not leave the house.  Or start wearing a hood over your head and a potato sack.  Or you could just get over hyperventilating at the idea of a man being sexually aroused on his own terms, and focus your energies on making sure that everyone approaches partnered sex with respect and enthusiastic consent.

Well, what do you expect men to think of you when you dress a certain way or do things like call yourself a "slut"?  This was a question that was asked many times by callers and in forms by Gail Dines on "World Have Your Say".

There's a pretty broad question.  Depends on the circumstances.  If I'm out on the town wearing a cute minidress, I expect that I'll get a lot of indifference, some men thinking I look good, some men thinking that I want to be attractive, some men thinking I enjoy feeling sexy, some men flirting, and some men thinking, "I wouldn't wear those shoes with that dress."  I expect men to be happy they live in a world where people have fun and exude sexual energy, because I believe sex is pleasurable and good and that a little more sexual energy in the world tends to impact the fun we have at home.  What I expect men not to think is, "Oh boy, I get to rape that one!" or "Clearly, she has forsaken her right not to be harassed when she broke the non-existent rule written by me on skirt length."  I feel that these are reasonable expectations, since this is what happens to me 99% of the time when events like minidresses on my body in public occur.

I expect that when a man thinks that a woman being sexy means that she isn't smart or deserving of basic respect, that man has told you everything you need to know about him, and he is the one who has forsaken his right to be treated with respect, not the woman he claims provoked him.  I think such a man doesn't actually respect any women, and he's just making excuses because he likes harassing women. I expect other people not to make excuses or consider his opinion to matter in any way.  I expect instead that such men should be shunned by decent people.

I expect when I use the word "slut" in an arch, ironic way that men will find it both funny and insightful.  I expect men to understand humor.  I expect men to understand that even if I really do think I'm a "slut" that this doesn't mean I'm no longer a human.  I expect men who believe I've had a lot of sex to know that no means no, no matter who says it.  Again, these expectations have proven so far reasonable with the majority of men, and I expect that men who resist them have it in them to not be assholes.

I have one more expectation.  I expect that when a man flouts the rules of morality and decency and harasses or assaults a woman, that we treat him like the raving douchebag he is, and bring criminal charges where applicable.

What about when girls make out because dudes want them to?  Doesn't that piss you off?  (This came upon "World Have Your Say".)

Sure, but I believe strongly that we should lay blame on people who are hurting or exploiting others. I don't blame girls who succumb to this ritual even when they feel humiliated by it.  What precisely did they do wrong?  Is it that they wanted to be liked?  That they wanted to be adventurous?  That they wanted to be sexually exciting?  These are all either understandable or even good desires to have.

I blame those who exploit the goodness in young women to get them to do things those women don't want to do. So I blame the guys exerting this pressure for being evil fuckwits.

But shouldn't women stand up for themselves?

Sure, but I fail to see how you get them to stand up to guys when you reserve your judgment for women.  When we blame the men who coerce, that is a way of saying, "The bad person is the guy."  That gives women space to say, "You're in the wrong, and I'm standing up to you."  When we don't blame men and men coerce, women are far more likely to think, "Well, I guess he's not doing anything wrong..... So why do I feel so bad going along with it?"  By blaming men who coerce, we give women the space to stand up. Blaming women just perpetuates the cycle.

But some women really do feel pressure not to be "prudes" and when you run around making jokes about "sluts" and saying women shouldn't get raped even if they do have a lot of sex or wear miniskirts, you make the women who don't like having a lot of sex or wearing miniskirts feel bad.  Isn't that a problem?

I reject the notion that the mere existence of women who dress differently or have different expectations of sex than you automatically means you aren't as valued a person.  And if that's true---if one person's choices invalidate another's---then why do the "prudes" automatically win?  Or the people who want to be "in-between"?  Wouldn't their preferences oppress the "sluts"?  If my having sex makes you feel like you can't say no, then you're saying I have to say no so you can so no, but if I don't want to say no, your choice really is oppressing mine.  See?  It turns into a rabbit hole of bullshit.  How about we not make an arms race out of this and instead have a wide range of what are acceptable personal choices for women to make?  Or even better? How about we start trying to view our politics as pro-liberation and not just swapping one form of sexual control for another?

But with all the porn saturation and pop culture pressuring women to be sexually submissive objects, isn't a Slutwalk just adding to the pressure?

If you really think that a bunch of goofy feminists marching about anything is something anyone can interpret as evidence that women are naturally submissive and there to be abused, I don't know what to make of you.  Even if  a bunch of bona fide porn actresses marched dressed half naked but waving signs, sexist men would be threatened as hell, and probably would think they were unionizing or something.

If you continue to be confused by this, I suggest you ask yourself if one of the many celebrities used to exert this pressure---think Paris Hilton---were asked to join a Slutwalk what do you think the reaction would be?  Yeah, I thought so.  So quit fucking conflating the two.

Did you laugh out loud when Gail Dines worked herself up to the verge of hyperventilation when describing girls in low-cut jeans with belly button piercings on "World Have Your Say"?

Not only did I laugh, but I had an urge to put on a tube top and a miniskirt, take a picture of myself flipping off the camera, and send it to her.  But I don't think she'd get the joke.

This week on the podcast, I was lucky enough to interview the amazing Stephanie Coontz, who is one of the nation's experts in the evolution of family life and women's roles in the 20th century.  In it, we spend some time talking about the amazing levels of overt misogyny women faced in the 50s and 60s, and though the words "mad men" were not uttered, rest assured, she's basically confirming the accuracy of that show's portrayal of the era.  The notion was unchallenged in many parts of the country that women were a) stupid and b) unambitious and perfectly fulfilled by fetching bourbons and wiping asses, and while <i>The Feminine Mystique</i> has many flaws---which we also talk about---it was still an important book because Betty Friedan was able to reach people who may not have been exposed to the idea that women are people before. Her recent book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, is well worth checking out.

Via the newly-moved Man Boobz, I found this Goodyear ad that encapsulates exactly the attitudes that Coontz is talking about:

Like David says in his post, one of the most stunning things about it is that it's not even cheeky.  The idea that women are literally too stupid to be expected to drive cars with minimal competence is taken as a given.  I'm reminded of the first episode of "Mad Men", where Joan says, without irony, that the typewriters were designed to be simple enough for women to use.  This, even though it's clear that her entire staff went to two-year colleges where they did nothing but learn things like how to use typewriters, and this despite the fact that many men in that office probably couldn't use the typewriters.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this ad and how feminism has managed to lay to rest many of the media narratives about women's lack of basic competence.  It's not that women aren't still considered stupider than men---as any woman who's had to endure mansplaining (aka, all) can tell you---but much of the time the areas in which women are considered stupid are more abstract.  I find that I'm talked down to more when it comes to understanding abstract concepts or complicated systems, but very rarely will you see anymore the ready assumption that a woman cannot operate basic machinery or work other systems that require competence more than abstract intelligence.  If anything, we're entering an era when women are considered more competent than men much of the time, which is why women are populating competence-oriented jobs in low and mid-level management and administration, while the glass ceiling is still firmly in place when it comes to more exciting life-of-the-mind kind of jobs. (You even see this divide in the sciences, with women gravitating more towards biology than sciences deemed more abstract, like physics.  You also see it in publishing, as Ann Friedman parodied brilliantly, pointing out that full-time, high profile writing jobs are mostly reserved for men, whereas women are the workhorses doing the thankless, behind-the-scenes work of editing.) But the idea that women are too stupid to breath is being put to bed, and even replaced often with an image of women as hyper-competent at tasks like cleaning, organizing, and other basic competencies, while it's often men who are portrayed as too bumbling to handle certain tasks.  The divide is no longer men smart/women stupid, but more men having higher intelligence/women excel at learned skills, but aren't so creative.  Still sexist, but with a little more space for women to be considered valuable.

On the home front, women aren't being portrayed in the media anymore as daft housewives who can barely hold it together, and men aren't playing the role of exasperated husbands who could easily do a better job at women's work if they had the time or the willingness to be so emasculated.  You don't really have TV ads where a wife has bumbled some easy task at home, been screamed at yet again by her husband, and is rescued from her own stupidity by a product---the implication behind this Goodyear ad and this coffee ad, which also brings up the threat of male infidelity to bully women into purchasing the product:

Still, that doesn't mean that misogyny is gone from advertising.  Far from it.  In fact, I would say that advertisers haven't abandoned misogyny so much as they've shifted the narrative about why women suck. Nowadays, it's less that women are exasperating because they're stupid, but that women are exasperating because they're annoying, screeching harpies who need to shove a cock in it.  If anything, women's growing reputation as being competent is being held against us in advertising, as more evidence of why we're overbearing.  Oh, we're so organized and shit!  Well, that's annoying to the men who have to tolerate honey-do lists that proliferate in the absence of men actually creating those lists for themselves. 

We've drifted from "women are stupid" towards "women have no value to men beyond sexual release and are otherwise annoying", and since our society still judges women's value on what use they are to men, this means women have little value in this media landscape. Take this infamous Bridgestone ad from just last year:

Another aspect of this stereotype is that women are portrayed as having a basic, if banal intelligence, but also as being dull workshorses who are unable to experience sensual or transcendent pleasures. This view comes out in two ways, one that's more "egalitarian", where men are shown as condescending to women for being so boooooring, and women are shown as exasperated by men who won't play by the rules governing social relationships held together by banalities.  Take this Bud Light ad:

The women in the ad are competent people.  They can read a book and understand its themes and characters.  But in this ad, they have no passion for literature.  Book clubs exist in the media landscape to show women as people who read because it's what you're supposed to do in order to be a Good Person, and the clubs are there to hold together female relationships in the absence of true shared passions or affection.  The man is portrayed as a rude loaf, but he's also---and this is important---portrayed as someone who actually lives.  He doesn't drink beer because it's there, he drinks beer because he can experience pleasure and will go out of his way to do so.  He's impulsive and fun-loving.  We in the audience aren't expected to wonder why his wife puts up with him, but to simply understand that women tolerate this bad behavior from men because men are our only door to a world where actual passion and lived experience resides.  It's the higher intelligence vs. competence thing, spun in another direction.  It's unclear what men get out of this arrangement, besides a steady supply of beer on the table.  Which is why the Bridgestone ad comes into play---at the end of the day, this is still basically misogynist and women are portrayed as being annoying and lucky that men will have them at all.

Of course, some ads don't try to balance the message "women are oppressive, dull-minded machines that will ruin your life by draining your soul out of you" with a little humor about how men are a bit childish.  Some just portray men directly as victims of women's dull-minded conformity.

The assumption is that men resent having to be responsible people who get shit done, and women relish it.  In a way, it's that different from the 50s, when the assumption was that women are completely fulfilled by wiping asses and men and only men needed to have a public life with meaningful work to feel fulfilled.  In fact, it's basically the same message.  The one thing that's improved dramatically is the notion that women are too stupid to tie their shoes without a man's guidance, but the underlying message that women aren't really people continues to dominate much of advertising.

I have a jumble of thoughts and a lot of other things vying for my attention, and my urge is right now to just give up.  But I think what I have to say matters right now, so I'm going to try.  I'll start with this Saturday, which I spent at a conference about Ellen Willis, a conference built around a posthumous release of her writings on rock music titled Out of the Vinyl Deeps.  Willis wrote about music in the context of her version of radical feminism, which was a pro-pleasure feminism that was highly critical of knee-jerk identity politics which often replace the right wing policing with a left wing one.  Not that Willis was a mindless choice feminist who claimed everything every woman does ever is great because it's her choice.  She just had a keen eye for the difference between legitimate, productive criticisms of genuine oppression and the pointless circular firing squad that erupts on the left when everyone starts to vie for the spot of purest, most noble progressive/feminist/etc.  The intersection of this and rock criticism was her willingness to work out in public why she wasn't going to feel bad about liking certain rock music even if it had misogynist content.  Kathleen Hanna spoke movingly on a panel of how Willis's work helped keep her sane after Riot Grrrl descended into a circular firing squad, or as Hanna put it, a "beauty pageant in reverse" where people were so busy trying to score points that real work in fighting the man had basically been forgotten.

I went home and proceeded to turn off the internet and start really pouring through this book, trying to really grapple with the ideas in it away from the din of the internet.  I haven't finished it, because Bin Laden got killed and that was a distraction---which I'll get back to in a moment---but I did manage to read a mind-blowing essay she wrote on her evolution away from being someone who didn't like punk rock to someone who did.  And she freely admits early on that a strain of internalized aesthetic Stalinism kept her from liking punk at first, because she perceived the dudeliness of the culture that led to an easy misogyny.  But, in a series of events that's too long to recount her but you can read in PDF form here (the essay is called "Beginning To See The Light"), she started to see how punk's form fit very nicely into her desires to poke holes in pretensions and hierarchies and power plays and other bullshit that feeds into our oppressive systems.

I want to quote a couple passages that are relevant.  In this first, she talks about her reaction the Sex Pistols' indisputably misogynist anti-abortion song "Bodies":

It was an outrageous song, yet I could not simply dismiss it with outrage. The extremity of its disgust forced me to admit that I was no strange to such feelings---though unlike Johnny Rotten I recognized that disgust, not the body, was the enemy.  And there lay the paradox: music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, love, hated---as good rock and roll did---challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.  Similarly, timid music made me feel timid, whatever its ostensible politics.

Earlier, she describes with some irritation how intra-feminist politics made feminist music---and I would argue feminist expression generally---timid:

Years ago Ella Hirst had told me that she thought most female performers did not have a direct line to their emotions, the way men did---they were too busy trying to please.  It seemed to me that too many of the women's-culture people had merely switched from trying to please men to trying to please other women.

She goes on to describe an example:

A couple of years ago I had gone to see the feminist folk-rock group the Deadly Nightshade at a lesbian bar in Boston.  They sang "Honky Tonk Women" with rewritten, nonsexist lyrics.  Someone in the audience sent them an outraged note, attacking them for singing an antiwoman song. The lead singer read the note aloud and nervously and defensively complained that the writer hadn't been listening.  The incident helped me understand why I wasn't enthusiastic about the group.  They did not have the confidence, or the arrogance, to say or feel, "If you don't like it, tough shit."  It was not that I thought performers should be indifferent to the response of their audience.  I just thought that the question they ought to ask was not "How can I make them like me?" but "How can I make them hear me?"

These observations of Willis's echoed through my brain in two very different ways today: one regarding intercine warfare amongst feminist bloggers and one regarding the circular firing squad reaction of liberals who immediately set to shaming and scolding other liberals for celebrating that Bin Laden was killed.  Let's see if I can tease this out a little.

On the first one, what happened was Jill Filipovic issued a long response to the large numbers of humorless joy-killers who  hang out at Feministe, waiting for her to say something they can blow way out of proportion, so as to start a flame war accusing her of insensitivity or having nice things, which she is apparently supposed to feel bad about.  I have no idea what has managed to keep this place relatively free of the joy-killing trolls, though I have a few guesses I won't bother you with here.  Either way, I've always felt bad that Jill gets abused so much by bullies who hide behind feminism, and was glad to see her punch back.

But in the feminist blogosphere, “calling out” has increasingly turned into cannibalism. It’s increasingly turned into a stand-in for actual activism. We have increasingly focused on shutting down voices rather than raising each other up. Pointing at the gap has replaced doing the hard, often thankless work of filling it......

None of which, again, is to say that you should just turn your head if an important topic isn’t being addressed, or if something isn’t being addressed adequately, or if someone fucks up. It is to say that we should all keep the end goal in mind, and communicate accordingly. And none of this is about the Shameless post in particular — it’s about the entirety of this corner of the internet, and how we treat each other, and how there’s this weird sense that we’re all in competition for the Best Feminist prize and that we win by cutting each other down and calling each other out and denouncing anyone who gets more attention than we do.

Best Feminist prize: love it. It's hard to put your finger on when someone crosses the line from issuing a legitimate criticism to when someone is trucking in outrage for the hell of it, but like with obscenity, you know it when you see it. You can just tell when someone is more interested in feeling righteous than doing right, and when they prefer to tear down rather than build up.  Sometimes they prefer it because it's easier.  Sometimes they're bullies and assholes.  Most people I see doing this are genuinely just lazy. They don't want to meet people where they're at.  They don't want to be challenged.  They want clear black and white rules and they want to believe that oppression can be overcome by just policing other liberals endlessly to make sure they don't say words like "lame" or "crazy". They see some of the uglier emotions in people, like bitchiness or morbidity, and they want to silence instead of think about how these emotions can be channeled in the right direction. They want to score points in some game that never ends by mouthing off because you joked that someone is ugly or reacted with irreverence to some cultural event or piece of writing. They hear the Sex Pistols' "Bodies" and want to flip it off rather than grapple with the complex emotions it brings to the fore. 

But they're wrong.  Willis ends her essay "Beginning To See The Light" with this feeling of wanting to be challenged even by stuff that makes us uncomfortable because it falls outside of an easily defined set of rules about what you are and are not allowed to say and be a Good Feminist.  Turn a couple pages and you find Willis in 1997 noting, almost marginally, that this urge of hers ended up being the right one in retrospect.  Instead of abandoning punk rock because of the misogyny, many feminist-minded women were drawn to it because of its anarchist urges.  And they picked up guitars and started to make the music that there hadn't been before.  They started, as Jill suggests, to fill the gaps.  Grappling instead of silencing was more work, but what it created was greater.  It turned into Joan Jett.  It turned into Riot Grrrl.  It turned women into feminists who would have avoided it like the plague if the only path to feminism was a dour one centered around coaching people to watch their mouths instead of open their hearts.  Though Riot Grrrl did descend into a similar clusterfuck, and it similarly caused a lot of people to quit.  The people who survived and went on to make more music that is feminist in spirit and in content were those who decided that they simply were going to not let critics put them in a corner where they valued not-offending over speaking their truths.

What does this have to do with Osama Bin Laden?  Well, I saw a similar kind of thing going on with the reaction of many on the left who were made uncomfortable when others reacted not with a Christian-tinged sobriety, but with partying in the streets or crass jokes on Twitter.  They told us to shut up and quiet down and act with more "dignity", aka all this WASP shit that I'm so done with that I think I was born done with it.  When I see piety crop up so rapidly, my number one urge is to stick a clown nose on it, but I did try to respond at Double X more thoughtfully.  My feeling is that elation is a reaction that is understandable, and instead of trying to squelch it, we should try to understand it.  And by understanding it, we can use this feeling for our purposes, to demand an end to the war now that we've accomplished this goal. In other words, to listen to the Sex Pistols and instaed of turning it off in disgust, to think, "How can I use this and make something greater out of it?"

If feminists had abandoned punk rock, it would have degenerated into a stew of misogynist bile. By engaging it and channeling it, feminists were able to turn it into a feminist art form.  I see the jubiliant reaction to Bin Laden's death the same way.  Liberals can decide it's shameful to enjoy it, and shame each other out of it.  That will mean the only people who engage in it will be conservatives, meaning that it will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, turn into a bloodthirsty call for more scalps.

Or we could engage it.  We could take this form---this relief, this ecstasy---and own it.  We can say, "YAY WE WON, LET'S BRING 'EM HOME!" We have a choice: Do we want to feel righteous and pure, or do we want to have a part in shaping what happens next with all this energy?

I've noted before that I'm done with words like "problematic" that serve not to illuminate or deepen understanding, but to create unease and get people to shy away from dealing with the complexities.  I'm also done with a liberalism that prioritizes point-scoring over grappling.  And with liberalism that is always on the look out for people having too much fun or being messy or complex.  Not that I'm going to give up criticizing or saying harsh things, as I did with my post mocking the American tradition of the proposal.  In fact, I would say that these insights are probably going to make my world more complex, my choices harder and more oriented towards the gray.  But that's a task I'm willing to take on and hope others are willing to join.

Now's a good time for this song:

Most feminist bloggers try to avoid talking the concept of "chivalry" very much, because it draws so many asinine comments from people who want to dwell on the most innocuous forms of chivalry. Ridiculous and false claims that feminists are beating men about the head for opening doors and pulling out chairs is not worth the time of your average feminist blogger. But chivalry has manifestations that are much bigger and more serious than a few door-openings and coat-takings.  For instance, the concept of chivalry defines the shape of the modern marriage proposal in its most mainstream form,* and that's what I want to talk about.

Chivalry is a set of behaviors where men feign servitude and humility towards women, but in practice they tend to actually reinforce men's greater social status.  That means they seem "nice" on the surface, but often aren't.  Again, I don't care about door-opening or coat-holding, but with the ritual of the marriage proposal, you really see how this works.  On the surface, the proposal is about male humility---he's supposed to get on one knee, offer a present that's not reciprocated---but in practice, it tends to be all about how much power men have over women in the world of romance and marriage.  Which is why I cringe like a motherfucker when I see women swooning over "romantic" proposals, especially public ones that strike me as especially coercive.  The underlying narrative of the proposal is that the man is the savior from the ignominy of singlehood, and she is now in his debt. Her expected pose is weeping with gratitude that he's allowed her to join the human race by bestowing his manly favors on her---which is why I'm skeptical of the public proposal, which involves a crowd examining the bride for proper displays of simpering gratitude. And the idea of romance provides larger cover, so women are often less critical than they should be. 

There are other ways that the American marriage proposal uses a mask of male humility to signal, "I'm your superior."  Which is why I was so disappointed to see Jezebel run this irritatingly typical marriage proposal on their blog, and fawn all over it.  They usually have strong douchebag detectors over there, but the proposal has this aura around it that masks the lurking douchiness from the blogger Jessica and the commenters.

Right off the bat, this guy loses points for having a big, giant proposal, which I've noted before strikes me as coercive.  But what really set me off was the final bit:

And I know you're sensitive about my not having formally asked you, so:

Dorothée, will you marry me?

Insulting someone in your marriage proposal by tweaking her for having emotional needs and desires is a douchebag move.  But more than that, you see right here that he's acknowledging that he made her wait.  He deliberately withheld something he agreed to provide to see how long she'd put up with it, and he's not oblivious to this fact, but is in fact going to make fun of her for being sore at being treated this way.  The Wait seems to be part of the proposal dance in mainstream America.  There's supposed to be a built-in period between when it's clear they both want to get married, and when he asks, during which time she is supposed to feel sorry for herself, obsess over when he's going to ask, consider the possibility of issuing a humiliating ultimatium, hash over what's wrong with him (or her) that he hasn't asked yet, and lose precious woman-hours.  I've written about this before, but it really pisses me off, because it makes relationships a competition, a game of chicken.  If she issues an ultimatium or nags him or god forbid, proposes herself, he wins the game, and this guy is gloating like a motherfucker over that fact.**  The Wait is about tearing up her ego so that she demonstrates the proper slobbering gratitude when he lowers himself to actually asking her to clean up after him for the rest of their lives and bear children named after him.

If you have any doubts left that The Wait is an informal ritual of humiliation for women that reveals that the humble stance of a man's proposal is actually ironic, look at the (ugh) royal wedding.  The tabloids deemed Kate Middleton "Waitey Katie", a nasty nickname that only makes sense if you accept that a woman waiitng for a proposal is being subtly humiliated by being made to wait. That the person "rescuing" you from this abject state of waiting is the same person who put you into the state of waiting is quite the mind fuck, and why I think there's an element of sadism in so much of what we consider chivalry.

There are other red flags in the proposal.  He airs their dirty laundry in public, talking about her personal troubles and some of their arguments, causing the reader to wonder if their troubles are so great that he can't even stop thinking about them while proposing.  He strikes a pose of mock humility about his supposed flaws (mostly related to being less environmentally conscious than his girlfriend), but then says, "Yet somehow I convinced you that I was worth being with, and that's made me the luckiest person alive."  I'm so over men fawning over their "better half" in a condescending fashion, especially when said fawning involves removing her agency.  For all we know, she gets off on guys who don't give a fuck about global warming.  Or, distressingly, maybe she hasn't got high enough standards.  We don't know, but this fawning causes both possibilities to arise in the minds of the audience. 

Oh yeah, and then there's that audience. Like I've said before, there's something not quite kosher about inviting a crowd to pressure her into saying yes to your proposal.

On the whole, I give this a big fat F, and am more than a little surprised more of Jezebel's peeps didn't see it that way.  One commenter said, "Anyways, this guy sounds like a bit of a pussy to me," demonstrating that even if you take potshots at your girlfriend when proposing to her, there's still people out there who want more ridiculous displays of toxic masculinity in order to be satisfied.  Some times, I just want to crawl in bed with giant earphones that play L7 on a continuous loop and avoid the world with this much bullshit in it. (Edit comment)

*Yes, no one is saying you can't do it differently.  You could come to a mutual agreement. She can propose.  He can propose without all the pomp and bullshit.  There are workarounds, and I know that you found them!  Good for you.  I'm talking here about the mainstream proposal. Don't be so damn defensive.

**Which is why a very simple way to avoid engaging in some sexist bullshit when getting engaged is for a man to be prompt if you've agreed on a formal proposal, or better yet, avoid it altogether and make the moment of the mutual decision the beginnng of your engagement. Or, you know, be a weirdo and don't get married at all.

Okay, most aspects of sexism make sense to me.  I don't agree with professional sexist bloviators, but I get it.  I get why they come up with facetious arguments claiming that women don't actually get paid less (ignore those statistics!), or why they blame rape victims, or why they want to force women to bear children against their will.  But I really don't get the disconnect with the basic structures of our society, the language we use and the customs we observe.  The weirdo contingent at Bloggingheads, unable to quarrel with any actual points I made during my most recent video debate with Daniel Foster, decided to start whining that I laugh and smirk too much.  (I am very unladylike---the internets agree.)  In my defense, I have to point out that he kept saying words like "mate" and "courtship", though he refrained, thankfully, from using "female" as a noun.  You try to having someone say "courtship" to you without cracking up.  I dare you.

Exhibit #1 in the I-just-don't-get-it department (via Feministe):

One night at a dinner table at a wedding, I got into an argument with a female guest about terminology I was using. She was asking about my dating escapades and I kept calling females "girls". After a while, she took offense:

"We are not girls, we are women."

I said: "No, I call most females girls. Women are different than girls."

She asked me to explain my terminology for females. I responded:

"Girls are girls until they have a baby. Then they become women."

She asked: "And what do they become after they are moms?"

I said: "Well eventually they become ladies."

Louis CK said the same thing in a much funnier way:  "To me when you become a woman is when people come out of your vagina and step on your dreams."  Also, he was kidding.  I don't think Rich-from-Marie-Claire is kidding. 

Do you get this?  Because I really don't.  I mean, I get that Rich's cluelessness is a result of male privilege and being able to blithely move through life without ever really worrying that he's going to have to answer for this kind of assholery towards women.  But I don't get why he thinks that this girls vs. women thing makes sense.  I think it stems from reducing women to their reproductive organs (which is how it differs dramatically from Louis CK's act, which is more a commentary on marriage and motherhood and gender roles, and again is actually funny).  If you assume women are just walking uteruses with attached vaginas, and that the uterus is kind of like a flower, then this makes sense.  The uterus-female turns from a flower-girl to woman when she converts to fruit.  I think that's the mentality here.

My problem with it is that you can see with your own eyes that women aren't flowers that turn to fruit and then to "ladies", which is Rich's cutesy way of suggesting women who have kids are post-sexual.  (Which is weird, since he then spends the rest of the essay assuring mothers that someone might still want to fuck them, so they shouldn't consider suicide or anything.)  The urge to reduce "females" (as he calls us) to our sexual organs has overriden empirical evidence that we aren't flowering plants. 

Exhibit #2 is Kay Hymowitz's irritating link-grabbing "concern" that education will make women unmarriageable:

Still, the biggest reason we probably won’t see a lot more college-educated women walking down the aisle with their plumber is one we don’t like to say out loud: they want to have smart kids. Educated men and women are drawn to spouses they think will help them produce the children likely to thrive in the contemporary knowledge-based economy. That means high IQ, ambitious, and organized kids who will do their homework and take a lot of AP courses. The preference for alpha kids is the reason there is a luxury market for Ivy League egg and sperm donors. It also explains why, though we don’t have solid research distinguishing between elite and State U mating choices, Ms. Harvard will probably not accept a proposal from Mr. Florida State.

You definitely see this kind of logic from conservatives a lot---the assumption that people approach marriage like you do dog breeding.  Thus the use of terms like "mate" that are never used by most people talking about their actual romantic choices.  I don't know about you, but I actually don't know anyone who approaches dating like Hymowitz is imagining, where they take in some resumes, eliminate the people who don't have the job qualifications, take a few interviews, and then hire/marry the person who most closely fits the job description.  Nor do I know a single person who chooses their "mate" because of the assumptions they hold about their genetics. 

Matt Y. makes fun:

Not only does the conclusion here not fit the premise, the argument points in the opposite direction. Colleges aren’t genetic engineering facilities. Women may well be motivated to enter into relationships with men who have “smart genes” but shifts in the relative share of the population who go to college don’t change the underlying genetic factors. If the median man doesn’t go to college and the median woman does, but Median Man still wants to signal to Median Woman that he’s smarter than Twentieth Percentile Man he’ll just have to find some other way of doing so. Given that Median Woman is unlikely to marry anyone sight unseen irrespective of where he went to college, Median Man ought to have ample opportunity to achieve this by (for example) engaging Median Woman in conversation.

Silly Matt.  Next he'll be arguing that people's "mating" decisions are based on totally strange factors, like "love" or "passion".  I would offer a counter-theory to Hymowitz's contention that people marry people like them because they're coldly assessing how to get the best genes to mingle with their own.  I'm going to suggest people are attracted to people they have a lot in common with, especially since they have to engage in these conversation things while they're doing that dating thing that Hymowitz seems unaware plays a role in mate choice. 

Of course, one reason more women are going to college than men isn't that women are over-represented at Harvard, but more at State U., where women are getting business degrees to get lower middle class administrative jobs.  Perhaps class more than education is what people have in common that pushes them into situations where they date each other.  If so, it's not inconceivable that large numbers of lower middle class women with college education will pair off with lower middle class men who have jobs that don't require a college education.  Hymowitz imagines all college-educated women are upper or upper middle class professionals, but I don't have trouble imagining lots of college-educated women working as office managers and bureaucrats marrying plumbers.  In fact, I'm guessing that's happening quite a bit.

Julie Sunday, writing for RH Reality Check, reports on a piece of legislation that passed the Texas House and will probably become law because Republicans have a super-majority.  The law would require any university that has a “gender and sexuality center” to also have a “traditional values center” as a form of counter-programming. 

What I like about this is how nakedly obvious it is.  Gender and sexuality centers at universities are there to promote what really should be non-controversial ideas: that women/gay/transgender people are full human beings, that human sexuality is a natural part of life, that rape and domestic violence are bad things, and that people have a right to be healthy regardless of gender or sexual status.  Counter-programming then, I have to assume, is pro-rape, pro-domestic violence and bullyin, anti-health, and anti-woman.  Not a big surprise to those of us who’ve been paying attention and know that the conservative movement does in fact oppose anti-rape efforts, sex education, gay rights, anti-domestic violence efforts, and health care for anyone who has dared experience sexual pleasure, especially outside of their strict rules (which include not just being married, but being the right race and wealthy enough to pay out of pocket for all expenses related to sexual health care).

On that last link, I want to point out that the implication behind the misleading obsession with mammograms on the right carries with it the implication that anyone who dies of cervical cancer—-which Planned Parenthood does screen for in office—-had it coming and deserves to die. Because she touched a penis.  In theory, virgins can get breast cancer, so they’re hard-pressed to oppose screening for it, though I suppose if you released statistics showing that 99.9% of breast cancer patients have had sex at some point, they’d probably go ahead and round that one up to a had-it-coming disease. 

What is fascinating about this particular story is how blatant this is.  Usually there’s an attempt to pretend that anti-woman efforts are somehow pro-woman—-Susan B. Anthony would want women to die of cervical cancer, we swear!—-though of course, no such effort is expended in the game of pretending they care if queer people live or die.  In this case, though, it’s just straightforward.  Gender and sexuality centers offer health and anti-violence information, and that needs counter-programming.  I’m curious what kind of “traditional values” programming we can expect to see. For instance, if gender and sexuality centers organize a Take Back the Night Rally, will the anti-feminist centers organize a Bitches Stay In Or You Deserve To Be Raped Rally?  If a gender and sexuality center has a seminar on avoiding or escaping violent relationships, will the “traditional values” center have a seminar explaining that men only hit because they love too much?  If you think about it, it seems that this move might be a tad counterproductive, except that it creates more jobs for professional anti-feminists.