Feminist Men

Many people in today’s society will tell you that the title of this entry is an oxymoron. In fact, the feminist man has been believed a mythical creature for decades now, as if a group of ladies with completely limited social power single-handedly won the right to vote. Many feminists find it morally messy to acknowledge that men were involved in that event, or for that matter any event revolving around women’s social and political freedoms gained. It is much easier to see feminism as an Us vs. Them sort of crusade, it’s so much more PC to have these events reflect our inherent strength, resourcefulness, and political sway. But, what happens in the process of affirming these women is that the politics of feminism, the dogma of feminism, becomes exclusive. We’re asking men to take down their “No Girls Allowed” signs when we in fact have a very exclusive girls club. This is stunningly hypocritical.

I personally find few things more enlightening, delightful, and brave- yes brave, than the feminist man. Because very rarely do we human beings take a moment to dwell in another person’s imagined position, it may be quite hard for a bulk of feminists to imagine what could be very brave about a man taking the logical step toward equality. Finding myself somewhat on the fringes of gender, I thought I’d offer my own projection. Men are raised to perform gender. You all knew this, it’s not new, so are women, right? Men are raised to perform gender or else. The consequences for not performing gender are very vivid and exact and almost always demonstrated to a young man at a very impressionable age.

I’m reminded, whenever I reference this, of the Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain. (Which is not to be confused with the recent sensationalist movie of which it is the basis) In this story, Ennis del Mar recalls a boyhood scene in which he witnesses the corpse of a gay man who has been castrated and beaten to death with a tire iron. His father, in fact, guides him toward this scene, ritually demonstrating the very severe consequences in violating norms. The image is what haunts Ennis through out his discovery of his sexuality and the development of his feelings for Jack. Now, the bulk of young men are not subjected to such heavy handed teaching, but for them the price of not performing gender is often demonstrated in violence, social reprimand, or withdrawal of social support.

So while young girls are slowly generation by generation prying open the doors of gender possibility, the definition of masculinity often becomes more and stringent and limiting. Which is why men like John and Hank Green deserve so much more credit than they get. Not only are John and Hank talking to a pretty massive YouTube audience about things that truly matter and enrich the viewer’s mind; they are talking primarily to an audience of impressionable young adults and moving to do things like make literature cool, get young individuals to imagine other individuals as complexly as they might imagine themselves, debunk the pretense of a certain popular fictional relationship that teaches that stalking is cool, and provide opposing viewpoints to many mistaken notions their generation falls victim to.

I have been personally effected and uplifted by the men I encounter who possess the bravery and wisdom to realize that something is wrong with the way society demands gender performance and do something about it, either by saying so with their words or modeling it in their actions, so I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be doing everything in our power to create more of them. This means opening up the doors of feminism. It means representing a feminism that doesn’t threaten the very people who’s minds it is trying to change, and doesn’t ridicule people for their innocent ignorance. I do believe that two wrongs don’t make a right, and stifling the male opinion, representation, and voice on this subject does not make equality.

Link to full text of Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx:
http://www.mattwagner.de/Textarchiv/artikel/Brokeback.htm

Links to relevant Brotherhood 2.0 videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KQ1sM2dGps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFiApf_m4H0&amp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB_eZOe80Nw&amp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTj8JwG2kKo&amp

 

Taking down your Breast’s

I read a website called digg.com quite often and it collects news stories that people find interesting. I came across one about a lady who had posted pictures of herself breast feeding her child on facebook. These picture of course were taken down shortly after being posted due to explicit content. Here is the thing though, alongside her page was a ad for American Apparel with a girl topless and wearing mini skirt posing in a sexual manner.  How is it that an advertisement with sexual appeal is okay to show half your breast but showing a natural thing like breast feeding is not? To pose another question what do think of women breast feeding in public ? Is this okay or not? I personally believe that it is that women’s choice to do it in public or not, but personally I would never do it.  Keep in mind I also never wish to bear children.Breasts shown in a sexual manner seem to always be accepted by the general public but not something natural like breast feeding. When you think back into history where would we be without breast feeding? Why has it turned into something explicit or grotesque ?

For original story : http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31849749&op=7&o=all&view=all&subj=2517126532&aid=-1&oid=2517126532&id=66800355

 

Durex presents “O-Girl”. Allison says “O-no-you-didn’t”.

Needless to say, the university I attend puts out a pretty half-baked newspaper. I mean, not to rag on it unnecessarily, but articles such as this past autumn’s special feature on “sexy Halloween costumes”  appear with some regularity. Don’t even get me started on their ‘dating columnist’,  which is undoubtedly some 20-year-old frat kid writing under the guise of a fat, balding Dr. Drew clone. Fine, whatever. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Of course, in addition to being a locus of bad journalism, large universities such as mine are regularly inundated with advertising touting the latest film starring Seth Rogen or some other yahoo. Though the campus newspaper somehow cannot manage to secure enough advertising to avoid filling the three back pages with ads extolling the virtues of the newspaper itself, Valentine’s Day looms over the horizon. In some kind of desperate bid to increase sexy, sexy February sales under the guise of the promotion of safer sex, this ad appeared as a full-color flyer/insert in the campus newspaper yesterday or the day before.

“Chess Club Susie isn’t so quiet after all… The Incredible O-Girl!

Little do they know, a Play Vibrations Ring is her secret weapon!”

“All you need now is a theme song. ”

See a higher-quality version here on Durex’s website.

Holy moly. Am I the only one who finds this extremely problematic? Where do I even begin?

I’ll respond in the comments later, because I am really curious to hear some other opinions on this before I go blah-blahing my thoughts all over these vast internets. I think there are two potential readings here – one that is critical and what the dear Spinster Aunt Twisty over at I Blame the Patriarchy would call “fun feminism”.  Please share your thoughts.

Props to my pal and classmate R. who first mentioned this ad to me. He was thoroughly disgusted by it I’ve extended a welcome to him, so he’ll soon be joining us  on this here internet receptacle o’ conscious consumption. R. is a history major with an interest in issues of gender and sexuality; he also has a particular talent for the analyzing pop culture. We have a women’s history class together right now and have a good ol’ time being “those kids” in the class together. Vive la snark.

(2/17) Edit:: Okay, thanks for all the great comments! Keep ‘em coming. This seems to be a pretty polarizing image/advertisement.

I’ve been thinking about this image a lot the past few days and I become more and more troubled by it the more I think about it! I have been internet-less for the last two days or so, so I apologize for the delay. I’ll try to keep this short and concise, but I do feel that there are a lot of aspects of the image that need to be addressed.

- Firstly, it enforces several damaging binaries and does not address or create the space for alternative forms of sexual expression nor sexualities for women by presupposing that penetration by the phallus is the ultimate in sexual pleasure for all women everywhere regardless of any other factor. By that same token, the image constitutes similar implications for men, fencing in sexual expression/pleasure to the penetration of a woman.  Yikes! Hegemonic sexuality abounds!

- This image represents a total loss of female sexual power, autonomy and agency. The Batman-like “O” signal goes up in the sky, which means O-Girl must have an orgasm at that time – regardless of what else she might be doing, without consideration for whether she wishes to engage in such an act at that time – to serve her societally ordained purpose. Instead of having control over her own body and pleasure, it is subject to manifest when it is needed.

- You could go further to read that this supersonic orgasmic shrieking could be considered a threat in moments of peace and quiet, thereby further legislating/limiting the woman’s ability to participate in sex. The presence of that random naked dude solidifies this for me personally. What is he, some random cop who has ‘gettin’ frisky with superheroines’ in his job description? Ha! But it does all suggest the ever-present power of the Phallus (capital P, for it’s full effect as a concept. Haha.)

- Female sexuality is only acceptable (or outside abjection) when it is channeled into specificity; contained in a concrete, socially acceptable way, or when it serves a specific societal purpose (i.e., instead of childbearing in this respect, it is crimefighting. Think about the parallels here! This is fascinating! Like childbearing and mothering, O-Girl’s act of crimefighting serves t0 preserve and protect the status quo in society, making her participation in the sex act legitimate.)

- Other points that I won’t get into too much – presence of the ‘male gaze’, woman as spectacle, the problem of racial minority status in an image like this. Also, Rainer had an interesting point today when we were talking about this — the failure of the female cop to stop the crooks when she is so highly trained/educated. Dude, you should comment with more of yr thoughts on this.

 

Whoops!

Hi pals!

I sincerely apologize for my extended absence from the blog. Finals really fired up, as it were, and now school begins on Tuesday again! Ah! I’ve only just decompressed, really – and am ready to post again!

So thanks to those of you that kept this blog kickin’ while I was off frittering my time away! Haha.

I hope you all had an excellent holiday season, and I am working on some posts. Bear with me.

Kisses,
Allison

 

To shave or not to shave, that is the question.

I thought I’d pose this question to the women who post here and read this blog: is it anti-feminist to say that you don’t like to see armpit hair on women?

I ask because this discussion came up on another online community where I post.  A woman on this other online community posted some pics of herself and her friends out partying for New Years, and made the comment that she went against her better judgment and shaved her pits because she was wearing a sleeveless party dress.  She wrote that she preferred the feel of her unshaven pits, and regretted that she’d made the decision to shave.

The pics of the woman and her friends were totally cute, all in their vintage party dresses.  But, unlike the woman posting, some of her friends had not shaved their pits and were proudly showing off their armpit forests in the pics.

I then commented that I was glad the woman had made the decision to shave, as uncomfortable as she was with it.  I thought it looked much better with a sleeveless party dress and was the best thing she could have done.

I was then subsequently treated to a series of negative jabs from other posters, like “what a fucked up thing to say,” and “how completely anti-feminist.”

So I started to think: is it anti-feminist to prefer to see shaved pits on women?  I mean, I completely understand a woman’s reasons for not wanting to conform to the patriarchal standards of the ‘hairless woman’ by refusing to shave her pits.  But my personal preference is to see shaved pits.  Not out of any support for patriarchal standards, but because I simply prefer the cleaner look, particularly when a woman’s wearing a sleeveless party dress.

So what do the rest of you think? Is it anti-feminist of me to prefer to see shaved pits, and to express my opinion on the matter?

 

Why Chuck Norris Jokes are Essential

It’s Christmas eve and presently the only thing on my mind besides the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special is Chuck Norris. I really couldn’t tell you how my brain drew a line between Chuck Norris and Christmas, maybe it’s just the time of year when I encounter a surplus of the men in my life. Either way, I wanted to open a discussion about Chuck. Not specifically Chuck, because honestly who really cares anymore, but Chuck Norris jokes. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about but here’s an example or two anyway;

Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.

When Chuck Norris does a push up, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the earth down.

ect. ect. Allison was assigned a paper recently on postmodern masculinity and I spent a lot of time wondering what I might write that paper about. I find masculinity in it’s both positive and destructive forms to be an essential part of feminism because we can’t overcome all these things while fighting 50% of the population. After a large amount of thought, I decided my topic would have been Chuck Norris jokes. What’s important about Chuck Norris jokes is what they are making fun of at a basic level, which is not actually Chuck Norris. Yeah, Chuck Norris gets his fair share of ribbing in the process for his ridiculous outrageous ego, but the basic element of these jokes are lies that we have believed about masculinity itself for a very long time.

An unwarranted sense of entitlement is one of the doorprizes one gets from being identified as male at birth. I don’t believe that men are born with this infantile grandiosity but that they most certainly learn it by experience along the way. My hope is that the trend of Chuck Norris jokes is another reflection of this redefinition of masculinity, a rejection of that arrogance and entitlement. On the surface, these jokes seem like a strange sort of male bonding, similar to taking turns punching each other in the arm until one of them can’t stand it.

But there is a lot more going on in these exchanges than meets the eye. This is the sound of young men mocking the very foundations of masculinity itself. Traditional lies that Chuck Norris as a person supports, that the real man controls everything, that the real man is tougher than everything, that the real man doesn’t cry, doesn’t care for his fellow man, can kill things with his bare hands, are the subject of these jokes. There are some cave men and gamers that don’t really “get” what Chuck Norris jokes are about, but I hope the trend is a forecast of things to come. If men can stop buying lies about manhood, it is equally possible for women to stop buying lies about womanhood.

 

Female Doctor Who?

It’s been presented as an idea on quite a few Doctor Who boards. Now that it’s official that David Tenant will be breaking our hearts at the end of the year by bowing gracefully out of the role of the doctor, the big question seems to be; who’s next? Personally I’m still trying to pick my broken heart strings out of Tenant’s teeth, so forgive me if my reaction is still a bit emotional.

The first I heard of this question was on a YouTube vlog I’m not particularly crazy about, his name is Nerimon if you’re interested, but I’m not going to link to him. Nerimon presented an idea Russel T. Davies shared. It was having the next regeneration of the doctor be played by an actress instead of an actor. Davies also said he thought Amy Winehouse would be an excellent choice. To which I was immediately like, holy shit, Davies, WHAT have you been smoking and are you hoping to share it with her?

Leaving aside the obvious lack of brain it takes to think a woman who no acting experience and a drug habit can even begin to fathom a role of this size, the question of gender does interest me. Especially given the overwhelming reaction to that very question. Here’s the thing: whenever this idea is brought up in any blog, there seems to be a very clear trend among the male fans of the show especially. I hear comments about alienating a young male audience, things that demonstrate a loud ignorance toward the very definitions of gender, sexuality, and transgender individuals, scathing comments in which “feminism” is used in an unfriendly tone, and various people who don’t seem really so very concerned with the character as with the fact that the character stays white and male. (I even caught a commenter waving DrW as one of “the few male shows still out there” but commenting on THAT would require a whole other entry…stay tuned for my extended thoughts on women in science fiction some other day)

Now I can’t really blame these comments much, this is coming from a society that has conditioned itself to think of gender as a fixed biological concept. They’re simply reacting to what ideals they’ve been given. They want to protect the character. Making the doctor’s face, sexuality, romantic history, background, name and such ambiguous would just be wron- OH! oh…wait a sec, that IS the doctor, isn’t it?

I think my main concern is that if something like this is going to create such a backlash and open the forum for discussions like these…doesn’t it seem to imply that this might be…and forgive me…just what the doctor ordered?

 

Chief speechwriter for Obama’s presidential campaign acting like an Asshole

Here is a link to a much better blog entry, but I thought everyone could stand to take a look at this picture.  It’s definitely worth discussing.  Unlike The New Agenda, I don’t see any reason to fire Favreau over an indiscretion that took place in the presence of a piece of cardboard.  I’d like to not be fired over some of the pictures on my Facebook profile too, and he apologized to Clinton, and Clinton sarcastically accepted that apology.

What concerns me on the topic is the reaction of most of the commentators on the subject.  This picture is being found humorous and inconsequential by a majority of Americans, male and female.  But even more disturbing to me is the deafening silence coming from president elect Obama.  At the very least, a condemnation is in order for what is at the very least sexual harassment toward his future secretary of state.

What does everybody think?  Is this an overreaction?

 

Can’t escape from Nicolas Cage

I saw the movie Next last week.

In it, Nicholas Cage’s character can see into the future, but only by two minutes. There is a lengthy scene where he wants to meet Jessica Biel’s character. He tries several different ways of striking up a conversation, not by actually doing them, but by looking into the future and seeing if it will “work”.

She clearly is not interested in meeting him. Instead of leaving her the fuck alone, he just keeps trying until he weasels his way in and she tolerates him.

So, what she wants is unimportant. What he wants is what goes.

Later on, they have sex.

The patriarchy wins again.

Needless to say, the movie does not pass the Bechdel test.

 

Normalcy as fallacy.

A good read in the conversation that has sprung up here about bodies, attraction/attractiveness, size and sizism – this post from last March by Kate Harding. The blog, Shapely Prose, is written by Kate and two of her friends is a fantastic read because of the consistent thoughtfulness, wit and knowledge that these ladies bring to the proverbial table. Betsy turned me on to it last summer and I have been reading it ever since. Love it!

But, anyway.  Every time I try to write here, I want to organize it like a formal paper. I feel like there are about eight thousand things I need to mention and a zillion terms to define to make sure that I am conveying my point properly. This is a problem. I made this blog to have a space outside of the academic sphere to dither and dilly-dally. I sure have plenty of academic writing to do in the next week. I don’t need to transfer that here! The end of the semester is quickly approaching for me, and as usual, I’ve left most of the work ’til the last minute. I’ve been trying to develop a thesis for a fifteen-page paper about an aspect of American masculinity all weekend, vainly trying to come up with some idea that isn’t a complete waste of time.

Nope. I got nothin’.

The limiting factor about this assignment is that I am not allowed to use any written scholarship outside of what is listed on the bibliography prepared for us by our professor. Good gravy! Don’t these kids know how to write research papers? I guess I should be happy that this means less work. Mostly I am disappointed, because I know it is going to lead to 45 vaguely similar fifteen-page wastes of time and energy to be graded by our professor. I cannot believe the amount of hand-holding that it takes to coax a paper out of most university students. I don’t have the patience for this as a student, much less as an instructor. I will never be a professor. Nope, never.

So dither I shall. And dilly-dally. And really regret that I am not making better use of my time come next Monday night when I am all hopped up on black tea with no end to this paper in sight, cobbling together some kind of poorly composed thesis statement barely supported by a half-baked analysis.

So, you know. Now is the time for the boring and the predictable! There is only one week left in the semester! The time for creativity has passed! Vive la mediocrity!

Yeah, I’m going to write about the so-called normalization of masculine identities through Calvin Klein underwear advertisements.

While looking for a couple of images to deconstruct for my paper, I found this advertisement [pictured below] which I thought merited posting. Consider this my vain attempt to get some more conversation started. Look at it. And respond to it.

What does an image like this say about the constructions of femininity and masculinity in our culture? What does it say about gendered power and dominance? The bathroom as a gendered and regulated space? About normalcy?

There’s no trick question(s) here. Seriously. The implications of this image are probably considerably different to each viewer.

I’ll respond with my thoughts in the comments of this post later.