I sound like Camille Paglia

http://www.xojane.com/issues/i-screamed-at-my-therapist-for-asking-about-my-short-skirt-and-then-got-sexually-harassed-a-mllion-times-so-maybe-he-was-right

I read this piece last week with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, yes of course women are free to wear whatever they please, and should be free from public censure including but not limited to sexual harassment. (When I say 'not limited to' I'm thinking of entreaties to smile, or like, hollering that you look bad or whatever. No good, any of it.)

The conflicted part comes when I think about the many reasons why I would never wear the outfit that Emily is talking about. The reasons I"m thinking of are:
-I don't want to get stared at more than usual on the street;
-I don't want to have men staring at my body;
-I don't need the attention.
Ok, those boil down to one reason I guess, I don't need or want the attention.

Emily has told us in the past that she is being treated for sex addiction, and that she is a self described attention seeker. I'm not making any assumptions about her past or her motivations, she is very forthright about these things.

And, I don't think you can really analyze the outfit and the reactions to it in a vacuum that doesn't take these things into consideration. And I get that this may be perceived as gross sexism.

The thing I can't get my mind around is--is the point of this piece (and a million others like it) that women will wear what they want when they want, and wish to take no heed of the cultural climate in which they make their sartorial choices? Like, are we saying that we want to behave AS THOUGH all fashion choices are equal, that none of them have any cultural or sexual implications?

It would be great to think that way: I dress the way I do to speed the revolution toward egalitarianism, in spite of the fact that I know I will be objectified all day long. It's a brave choice. Dressing for utopia.

But the sad fact is, we don't live in that utopia. We live in a time and place where our clothes and bodies and sexual presence will be commented on. Sometimes loudly, and on the street. For myself, I prefer to dress and present myself defensively, because I can't deal with the unpleasant repercussions of wearing the type of (really pretty/cute etc) outfit that Emily got so much flak for.

And I feel like to ignore the reality that there are consequences for these kinds of choices, is to say, de facto, that you're willing to deal with them. Emily knows that the fashion/publishing/women's magazine audience for whom she dresses (and for herself, obviously), is not the ONLY audience that will pass judgement on the clothes. I'm sure she's well aware that her therapist, and bicycle couriers and many random assorted sexist pigs, will also provide an eager audience.

And I hate that thinking this, or writing this, sounds like victim blaming. At the same time, while street harassers need to take responsibility for their actions, unfortunately most women are forced to either dress defensively, or assume the responsibility that these men seem to have abjured. And it does worry me a little that I sound like Camille Paglia.

Real Men Don't....wait, what?

I just saw a 'Real Men don't X' thing on Tumblr which got me thinking again about these campaigns.

I hate this 'Real Men' meme. Apparently real men don't do all kinds of asshole shit, which makes me wonder about these....half men? fake men?....running around fucking everything up for the rest of us, real men and women alike.

A particular favourite spotted on a bumper sticker a few weeks ago: Real Men Love Jesus.

Clearly, these real men aren't just defined by what they DON'T do, they also love jesus, and probably treat real women like gold. UGH.

I know I'm a complete pedant but it seems like this stuff just reinforces the same gender stereotypes in a way. I guess the assumption is that rapists will get so angry at not being perceived as 'real men' that they'll just stop raping? That would be nice.

I presume the point is that men are making an effort to socialize other men into acceptable behaviour which doesn't include rape. Not that rape is sissy or ungentlemanly in some way. I think this effort is laudable, but the language bothers me in that it's prescriptive about what "men" do or don't do. So the issue isn't that rape is a crime, or that rape affects huge numbers of women (and men); it's also the issue that according to the campaign, these behaviours don't transgress a code of decency or of lawfulness, they transgress a code of manliness.

It just seems evasive of the crucial core reasons of why rape (buying girls, whatever) is wrong. It's not wrong because it's not manly.

On the upside, at least this is one campaign that has nothing to do with women's conduct, behaviour or chosen attire (SlutWalk).

vagina at the wheel

so painful to buy a used car as a lifelong non-car-owner. The whole thing has been a real anxiety fest. To begin with, I don't give a fuck about cars. I learned to drive when I was about 27 yo, in New York City, where I had no intention of driving but knew they had just introduced the graduated licensing in my home province in Canada and thought I'd save myself some aggravation. Getting the license was no problem. Using it has been great, occasional renter and autoshare champ.
I recently was compelled to purchase a car by a new job. Que the horror movie strings.
I have pored over consumer reports (did you know you can peruse them free with a Toronto Public Library card, online?); talked to everyone I know with a car (there are about 3 people I know who own a vehicle); sent up a flare on facebook (where i got some good advice actually); pored over MoneySense magazine; and tried to play nice with some sexist dumbshit.

Even the ads on autotrader + kijiji--the first time a friend mentioned the term "lady driven", I thought she was joking. But no, it's a common used car descriptor.
Today I mentioned it to the salesman from whom I finally bought, and was informed that it is ironic because "women are actually more destructive". He was in the rear seat of the car during my test drive, I gave him a quick look and the phrase "bitter divorced dude" went through my head. I guess we all have our own gender based stereotypes?

This was the same guy who told me that concern about the colour of a car is a 'women' thing. The whole process is death by a thousand papercuts actually, as you pick your way through a minefield of gender essentialism, where I have to pretend to understand things I don't understand; plus muster up interest and enthusiasm for things I have absolutely no interest in (emissions testing, what is certification?, do i need to worry about tires?, i don't know what transmission is, what is the warranty supposed to cover.....and on, and on, and on until you are fast asleep with your eyes open).

The annoying part is, you find yourself biting your tongue repeatedly, simply because I have no desire to repeat this hostile performance with another short dick dimwit. (Ok, that DID sound a little hostile.)
I'm inclined to try to forget the whole thing now, blessed amnesia will kick in as I'm driving into the sunset.

One more 'destructive' woman will be on the road, hopefully by tomorrow!

NYC reads

Great visit to NYC last week. One of my favourite things to do there is shop for books....at Bluestockings, St. Mark's Books and the Strand. There are other amazing places but I never fail to find something I've never seen before at those three.

We also spent time in Brooklyn and found this comic book shop:
http://www.desertislandbrooklyn.com/

I was super excited to pick this up.

It's got Richard Kern, Beth/Scott B, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch et all. Looks amazing.

Above is the namesake film, also fantastic starring David Wojnarowicz and Karen Finley as the parents of Lung Leg, 'celebrating' a traumatic Thanksgiving. EYE POPPING

And....another gem from Bluestockings:

I first heard of him at a retrospective at the New Museum on Lower Broadway in 1999. He did an amazing breadth of work in a short period and was an outspoken influential AIDS activist when ACT UP was prominent in NY. I'd never seen this before either. I like him a lot.

this is one of his more famous pieces

And.....

I'm stoked for this too, it's sort of Arsenault's gender/plastic surgery journey as performance art. I don't know much about her, she's from Toronto. I gathered her transformation has been about art as well as her own gender issues, using the body as a canvas for commentary like Orlan. (that video is preceded by an ad, which i hate. anyhoo). 

This kind of combines my interests in body transmogrification, and performance art via mortification of the flesh, combined with always interesting gender performance issues! 

I got two other books at Bluestockings, one is a compilation of a zine about yard sales, another a treatise against equal marriage. I like reading about gay perspectives on equal marriage, and the idea that Proposition 8 is sort of a bait and switch for more meaningful reforms and inequities affecting LGBTT communities. 

Mutante: Virginie Despentes

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Joy killing vegan feminist attends comedic theatre

I went and saw the Soulpepper production of The Sunshine Boys this weekend. I have a very short memory for things I fucking hate in theatre, hence why I would attend a comedy or (eegads) a musical (hate hate hate hate).
The acting was great, I'm sure the play is amazing, it's Neil Simon, I get that he's a touchstone for modern comedy from the 60s/70s. Probably not a bad thing to go see....except it was long, annoying, and the humour is totally lowbrow.

The joy killing feminist in me became particularly incensed in the scenes with the sexy nurse. Not because I myself am a nurse and bristle at the stereotype of the sexualized nurse (although I'm sick of it for sure and feel like the trope is convenient shorthand for not only sexism but a grinding lack of imagination). No, this was annoying to me because it finally crystallized something I find totally annoying in comedy.

This convention is where the white man takes credit for the joke that was laboriously set up by the (usually female) "straight (wo)man" who has to feign a lack of understanding of both the set up and the joke.




There are allusions to mildly racist jokes but clearly sexism is still totally fine in modern theatre, especially when it's a re-production of a comedy gem like "The Sunshine Boys".
It kind of makes me long for new material.

you already know from this picture who the comedic genius is, right?

Sister of the Road gets run over by Hollywood *SOB*

Just watched Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha. What a let down. It watches like an object lesson in how Hollywood can fuck up a great story, and how the idea of a strong independent woman being the focus of a film is clearly anathema to the sexist movie industry. They completely neutered the Bertha character, simulataneously sexualizing her in a passive, stupid way. They gave her 3 male sidekicks and a love interest whose story eclipses hers.

I was really stoked to see this movie so I'm bummed it was such a let down. Needless to say it completely fails even the Bechdel test (below), give that it has one female character (ok, there were glimpses of a few of her fellow sex workers).

Bechdel test

 

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The Bechdel test or Bechdel/Wallace test was developed by Liz Wallace and became widely known after Alison Bechdel featured it in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

The Bechdel test is a test of female characterisation in movies. Passing the Bechdel test requires that:

1. the movie [media] has at least two women characters;
2. who talk to each other;
3. about something other than a man.

Passing or failing the test is not an ironclad guarantee of well-rounded, feminist, characterisation but it is indicative of the problems of token women characters. A vast amount of geeky media fails the test.

Master of her own domain. 

The movie was supposedly based on the book, which I read a few years ago. It was amazing. It's a nonfiction memoir of Boxcar Bertha. She comes of age during the depression and is basically a complete radical who rides the rails, stands in solidarity with unions and wobblies, and eventually tells her story to the doctor who writes the story. She's on the move through the whole book, she believes in free love, works in a whorehouse, befriends all kinds of intellectuals and street people. She comes across as a really intelligent, uneducated woman who kind of epitomizes the notion of the free spirit. Her actions are motivated by survival and also by an innate moral compass. It's a great book.


I'd never even heard of the Scorsese movie until a couple of years ago. I really wish someone else would take on an adaptation of it for film, and let the character speak for herself. Fuck, I'm actually depressed by how stupid and passive they made her character. The film industry thinks so little of viewers, or maybe just has so little capacity for creating progressive work due to financial issues that I don't know or care about.

Well I guess the movie got terrible reviews. It's kind of cold comfort but I'll take it.

Bitchface: Stop telling me to smile

I, like many, have a case of chronic bitchface. I guess it's epidemic these days. In my face I was born scowling and looking bored, and it's probably compounded over time as I accumulate exposure to general stupidity, evil, avarice, and all the other dwarfs (sorry, I meant deadly sins). Bitchface serves me well, I'm not aware I'm even doing it. Unaware, that is, until some helpful man helps reorient me to reality by making the patronizing/good natured suggestion that I should "Smile sweetheart! It may not happen!". My preferred reply would be "It IS happening!", but I sense that's not part of the script. Anyone with bitchface will probably attest, they are encouraged regularly, by well meaning men (and always men) to smile. 
Just smile and smile, like a fool, while the world turns to ashes, because you are a woman, and everyone hates an angry woman.
Part of the rub, for me, is that I'm generally not sad, angry or even unhappy. Most of the time I am actually thinking. Perhaps this is part of the problem? If I can't muster the common decency to arrange my mouth in a more pleasing configuration, clearly I need reminding. To what end would I reassure them that I am happy, content, lost in thought? How much of an idiot would I have to be to respond in kind, with a sunny smile at the behest of some complete stranger who has decided, quite literally, that he doesn't like my face. Can you imagine telling a male stranger to smile for you? How insane and actually how funny it would be? And yet how many of the bitchface sisterhood have had to peacefully endure being endlessly entreated to smile, smile and.....just SMILE goddamnit!


The good news is, I can still turn it around, by letting the sun come out in the form of an insincere smile.
It's not quite street harassment--it's so well meaning! Nonetheless it has always angered me, to be told by a male stranger to smile. I'm not a performer. I'm not here to reassure you with a vapid grin that "IT"s not going to happen.

I remember in high school a good friend of mine told me I have an 'intelligent face'. He said something like, 'you know with a face like that, you're no dummy'. And I kind of know what he means. I choose to think he meant a certain depth in the eyes, a determined set to the mouth, a quiet vigilance of the world. What he probably meant was BITCHFACE.

Would it improve matters if I politely assured these well meaning dudes that I am very content, happy even; that my unsmiling face is thoughtful, and that sometimes even when I appear dead in the eyes I am brimming with good cheer and (gasp) sometimes even goodwill towards others? No, not at all. Because this dude does not give a FUCK why how I feel. You've missed the point, he cares how he feels, and until all the women are smiling, he's not feeling too great.

Sometimes I will catch a glimpse of myself and realize that I do, indeed appear pissed off. The best explanation I can come up with for this is that it is evolutionary--I have learned through many years of hard experience, that it doesn't pay to look too approachable or cheerful, if you're a woman in the public sphere. Especially if you are alone. In addition to being a bitchface, I have another affliction, which is my aversion to talking to strange men in public when I am alone. I do not wish to be chatted up at the grocery store, to make small talk on public transportation. Bitchface, an ever present book and a set of earphones are my arsenal and insurance against any strangers looking to shoot the breeze with me. But I shouldn't really say 'strangers' when what I am specifically reacting to is 'strange tail'. Yes, loose men endlessly scanning the faces of women, assessing who is feminine, friendly or fuckable. I'm not using my bitchface arsenal to repel anyone else really, not children, not the elderly, not other women (who have never commented on my lack of a smile), and not dudes who aren't scared of books and bitchfaces.

These afficianados of the feminine smile don't much like seeing you with a book either. The combination of a book and a neutral face can be quite alarming to some, particularly if that unsmiling bookworm happens to have a vagina too! The term 'bitchface' might be considered negative by some. Not me, I like it. In truth the evolution of the face is simple, it's a face in repose, a thoughtful face, a reading, writing or relaxing face. Sometimes, in the public sphere though, make no mistake, it is a bitchface. Bitchface is, for me, and I suspect many women, insurance against public annoyance in the form of unwanted (usually male) attention. Who the hell wants to chit chat with that dour faced, humourless lady? Well, turns out there are lots of them, but first they all want you to smile!

So come on ladies! SMILE! Chances are your face won't break, it won't happen, and you might just make someone a little happier, because that is now your responsibility!

Feminism, Speciesism and my little Doom's "spay"

Bear with me I have to ruminate on my dog's spay. They call it a spay but if she were human we'd call it a 'total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral oophrectomy'. She had a general anaesthetic and I gather some pain relieve post procedure, but since then (Monday), nothing. I asked the staff about pain medication and they said they prefer them to feel some pain so they don't overextend themselves. I guess that makes sense. It didn't make me feel any better though when she screamed while trying to get up on a bench, or climb stairs, position herself on the sofa or really do anything, that first day. I do know that my 4 yo dog didn't have the same pain response, or didn't express it that way.
I guess dogs are like people, with a certain level of sedation they get either dopey and, well, sedate; or they get a little agitated. Poor Doom was the latter.

But getting this done reminded me of how sometimes when you ask people what gender their dog is they'll say something like "well he used to be a boy/girl"--the implication being that the spay/neuter procedure erased the gender. And I think that's fucked up!

I just finished reading a great book called 'Living Dolls' by a UK author Natasha Walter. It's sort of generally about a backlash of sexism as manifested partially in this kind of body fascism that encourages and rewards women for looking like dolls.
She goes into detail about this, plus other stuff about how the trend of de-gendered toys in the 1970s that was a legacy of second wave feminism is kind of done and over. Now it seems that gender roles are even more rigidly circumscribed.

The last part of the book she talks about how research into gender differences is one of the best-funded types of non-pharmaceutical type research (ie; research that a drug company isn't banking on to make them billions of $). And goes on to explore why, who's invested in scientific evidence to demonstrate that women and men are difference physiologically and psychologically. She talks about how studies demonstrating how women/girls prefer pink and men/boys prefer blue; or studies that attempt to show women's superior language skills, men's superior math aptitude etc etc are continually reported on whereas studies that disprove these differences (even if these studies are bigger, more scientifically sound/replicate-able etc) are more ignored. So when you see a headline that says "SCIENCE PROVES WOMEN PREFER PINK'--it's worthwhile to examine what the sample size was, whether the study is published in a peer reviewed journal, and if it's ever been replicated. Basically she's saying that science (and western culture) is very invested in perpetuating ideas of gender differences. It's a little like eugenics I guess.

But getting back to Doom, it made me think about how gender is completely ignored in animals! I mean I can't imagine me getting a hysterectomy etc and then claiming that I'm a neuter, or genderless, because my 'plumbing' is gone. But for animals not only do we think there is CLEARLY no difference between a female and a male dog, but the procedure of removing reproductive organs is coded as erasing that gender completely. It's so stupid. I mean, either it's important, or it's not. I guess part of it is that we live in a culture that devalues animals outright, and part of it is that we live in a patriarchy that has a great deal invested in maintaining the status quo.

Anyhoo, it made me think again about feminism and speciesism, and how both are fucked up and fucking wrong.

Out damned spot

We have a house guest at the moment. It was such a relief for her to get here because it meant I could stop neurotically cleaning.

I kept thinking of every inevitability of what the visit might entail. I imagined her throwing something away in the kitchen and noticing the dirt under the sink, which necessitated me getting on all fours to clean the space under the kitchen sink. I thought of her walking into the basement to do laundry and wound up vacuuming the entire space. Suddenly I was acutely aware of the fact that we have NO matching drinking glasses, no matching mugs, and all the cutlery is different. I have cloth napkins, but no two the same. When I mentioned it to my sister she called me bourgeois. The old me, of two weeks ago, would agree.  She was a little taken aback, and actually said "that's not like you!" I think she means it's not like me to care what someone else thinks. This is usually true. Since when have I ever pretended to be Holly Homemaker? Worrying about the grime on the bottom of the blender can really suck the joy out of cooking!

I must say emphatically I was not raised this way. My mom was a second wave feminist who got the message loud and clear that unpaid domestic labour was no way to spend your time. It was kind of a joke in our family. As soon as we were old enough we did our own laundry, cleaned our own rooms, did dishes, washed floors--everything. Part of the point of having kids, right? And my mom had 4 of us. That's a lot of mess, a lot of thankless work. I still remember she had a screed against homemaking taped to a cabinet, something like “I will not spend hours doing what a toddler with a plate of crackers can undo in 3 seconds”.  The house was never spic and span, and nobody cared.

Another horrible side of cleaning for guests is anxiety about which home decor choices might be cause for visitor alarm--the innumerable artistic odes to black metal? The black dahlia 'living dead doll' in her place of honour in the kitchen? The handmade Manson family that I created for my partner's birthday years ago? The poster of a knife slashing through a bible with the quote 'This is the enemy'? The watercolour of me and my partner drawn as Chucky and Tiffany from the Child's Play films with the quote "Friends to the End" written in 'blood'? It's a cornucopia for the eyes. The problem is trying to figure out what would offend a visitor. Maybe nothing, maybe all of it. My sister once told me she had her own concerns trying to edit her apartment for a visiting date--"I tried getting rid of the books I thought made me look weird, then I gave up. I realized I didn't know what was weird anymore, and was probably getting rid of the wrong things".

Cleaning for family is a similar anxiety. The avalanche of mailing envelopes that occupy the back room, the hundreds of beer bottles we're saving for homebrew, everything starts to look insane. And what impression am I trying to give? Sanity, above all; possibly hygiene, good taste will be impossible under the circumstances.

I was reminded of a passage in the book 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol' where he records a conversation with Brigid Berlin that's basically a long monologue about her cleaning routine, on speed. It’s a 25 page ramble about the minutiae of cleaning.  I read the book first as a teenager and the passage always stuck with me for some reason. I could totally relate. I find cleaning a little overwhelming because even when you try to just do a little, it because impossibly complex. You clean a smudge on the wall and then you have a clean patch that necessitates doing the entire wall. Or you go to dust the bookshelves and then get waylaid for 4 hours alphabetizing everything, or organizing by subject, then realize the records and DVDs need the same treatment. Where does it all end?  It’s totally relatable—you start with the counter and realize the cupboards now look gross. You open the cupboards and enter another circle of hell as the inside of those is now a problem. On it goes, until you’re vacuuming pencil shavings out of the junk drawer. Except I'm not on speed! Which explains why it takes me so damn long and why I find it so tedious and soul depleting.

But when a guest is coming, particularly a female relative of your partner, it all becomes more fraught. It’s not just about hygiene, it’s about an image of hygiene. I don’t think anyone would assume I’m the cleanest person alive, with my friends and family the cat is out of the bag. Not so for my partner’s mom or aunt—they have no idea that brown scum is the norm in our shower—and they must never find out the truth. Why? I don’t know why. I’m sure a good therapist could help tease it out for me. I don’t have time now though, I need to go vacuum the crawlspace in the basement.

The Art of Repelling Men Through Fashion

Goddamnit I love this.

The Art of Repelling Men Through Fashion