Yesss

Feminists have a sense of humor. Here it is:

Fucking Monkeys

(I couldn't resist the title.) I finally got to hear author Christopher Ryan read excerpts from his provocative non-fic, Sex at Dawn, which has been sparking discussion since June.



Everybody could have happily giggled the night away when Ryan dropped quips about "penguin poontang" and "fucking monkeys" but the underlying thesis in Sex at Dawn is no joke. In a nutshell, Ryan has surmised that humans are:

• not "naturally" monogamous, neither men nor women
• women are NOT the choosy, non-libidinous sex
• homosexuality is an integral part of human socialization, not just sexuality
• the status of virginity is entirely a construct of the Standard Narrative (patriarchal society)
• forced female fidelity has been the source of untold pain and suffering (see: stonings under Islam and nearly every Shakespeare play)
• a post-agrarian society that embraces polygamy is as socially stable as a three-legged chair
• homo sapiens are just as closely related to bonobos as we are to chimpanzees
  

But the real whopper in Ryan's argument has little to do with sex. He argues that agriculture and the end of homo sapien's hunter/gatherer nomadism led to war.

It's not excessive promiscuity that sinks us as a species but the lack of it used to form and cement bonds.

Awfully good bedtime reading.

Sexy vs. Sporty Spice

Any time a group of 40-year-old skater dudes support a cause that appears vaguely feminist; I get worried.

At first glance women's roller derby, eagerly goofed on in the Drew Barrymore flick, Whip It, seems like an empowering phenom. Women strap on 70's-style roller skates, and skate around in a big circle over and over again apparently with the goal of out-circling each other (I'm guessing). Occasionally they seriously hurt each other with the kind of blows to the head that would get an NHL player benched for a year.

The fundamental difference between women's roller derby and, say, the WNBA? Guys show up for this. Some of roller derby's most loyal fans are men. Droves of them appear regularly, PBRs in hand, at Seattle's local Rat City Roller Girls meets. Again, this seems like a good thing. For once the boys are willing to let the women show off their athletic prowess via strength and competitiveness; something 95-percent of American men are hardwired not to do.

But all is not right in post-feminist roller girl world. First off, the uniforms. I've seen more spandex on strippers. These aren't clothes that facilitate speed or agility, they're basically saucy cheerleader costumes designed only to titillate. There's absolutely nothing wrong with dressing sexy if you're a stripper or trying to get into the next Girls Gone Wild shamefest, but it sends a creepy, skewed message. A blogger far more erudite than I summed it up best over at Mean Feminism:

If Roller Derby is really about how awesome the girls are at their sport, then it should REALLY be about that. It should really be about how empowering it is to see women being competitive and athletic and downright bad ass regardless of what they're wearing. Why does "embracing your femininity" in this context turn into wearing sexy clothing? Are there no other ways for women to assert their femininity? And if not, maybe we should reconsider what's so great about (socially defined) femininity in the first place. And if it's primarily about playing with sexual norms and doing some kind of Suicide Girls type performance with a little bit of violence added in for spice, well then I think we should stop pretending it's feminist and empowering.

Conversely, our women's pro basketball team just brought home the most prestigious prize in their sport. It was a very big deal, a very big win and somehow these young athletes managed to do it without flashing their tits or slapping each others asses in the prescribed faux lesbian way.

Photo: Erika Schultz/Seattle Times

Yet the Storm's win barely registered in Seattle. Sure, they had their one-time cover pic in the Seattle Times and there was a small parade for the team just up the street at the Key Arena.

But where was Sherman Alexie??? The writer who wasted entire essays in The Stranger moaning about the death of the Seattle Sonics. I'm guessing even for a self-styled "male feminist" like Alexie, a women's pro basketball team (even the best in the country) .... just doesn't rate.

A year ago, as I was walking up past Key Arena, there was a Storm game starting and a few (mostly female) fans were filtering into the arena. A gaggle of college guys in an SUV roared by, hanging out the windows. The guys started chanting "Go Storm!" in hyper lispy, effeminate voices as they cat-called the unamused fans.

And that's the rub: legitimate women's sports is seen as a bad joke in America while entire magazines are devoted to Tiger Woods' philandering, LeBron James' betrayal of his home town and Bret Favre's rather feminine indecisiveness.

A recent indie Canadian film, Breakfast with Scot, revolved around a gay couple adopting a decidedly fem boy. The butcher of the couple is a Toronto sports announcer. When his straight boss threatens to cut his hours, he's told "you'll be covering women's volleyball forever." No small irony, a gay man was being threatened with the ultimate put down of covering women's sports.

Recently, the Universal Sports channel aired women's rugby playoffs held in England. It doesn't get anymore "bad ass" than rugby. When the cameras panned the stadium I was shocked. The stadium was well over half full and the spectators were pretty evenly split between male and female fans. Something we'll never see in America as long as Sports Illustrated runs covers like this.

Remember the first step in dehumanizing is objectification and to create mindless consumerism you must first commodify sexuality. Don't believe me? Watch Mad Men.

Animated! Now with more robotic voices!

If you aren't some grad student contemporary English lit geek, you probably won't get this. If you are one of the above, please don't send me hate mail. I do like some of David Foster Wallace's stuff, specifically his short story Forever Overhead which is a sublime piece of prose.



And P.S., I'm sorry he's dead. It would have been nice to verbally spar with him. Now all we have is that stick in the mud, Franzen.

Best Alternet Essay EVER!

Boys can't handle this.

I'm jealous of 'anonymous', wish I'd written it. I especially like the beginning.

And here's yet another Alternet essay I'm jealous of:

Stella ... where is your groove?

Amanda Marcotte hits point after point when discussing hetero women's sex drives (or the lack of) but this one really stood out:

To add to it, sexual desire in our culture is almost solely contextualized as something straight males have and not anyone else. Images of nubile (presumably straight) women with no clothes on still signify "sex" in our culture. Half-dressed women greet straight men everywhere they turn with beckoning smiles and lidded eyes, titillating men and inspiring men to think about sex constantly. Straight women don't get near the provocation on a daily basis -- is it any wonder that 60% of the men who answered the Consumer Reports survey thought about sex once a day, but only 19% of women?


One for the hetero girls

Half the World

I'm like the last feminist on earth to find this. Joss wrote it last year and it's a flawless essay on women's rights. Anyhow, better late than never.

Whedonesque.com

I'd like to re-post it here but I don't wanna step on any toes. Those BtVS fans are defiant, touchy people and they guard their websites ferociously.

If you only click on one single link the whole three seconds you spend surfing my blog, it should be the one above. I have complete essay envy. I wish I'd written it.

The Two 'F's or Why I've Hated Hollywood Since 1986

Last night while Hollywood was 'quietly judging' poor Jon Stewart as he steered the ol' Academy Awards back into port at it's usual social iceberg; I remembered when I first decided the Oscars were just plain shit.

In 1986, I was just 21 and living in the 'big city' of Sacramento. One day, on a whim I wandered into a mostly empty art house theater in the downtown area. I'd never been in an art house theater before, and aside from the uncomfortable chairs and the 1920's architecture, I initially thought it was like any other Cineplex, just smaller. I saw a movie I'd never heard of by a South American filmmaker I'd never heard of starring one actor I'd vaguely heard of (William Hurt). The movie was Kiss of the Spider Woman, and as the cliche goes, it changed my life.

For the first time I thought maybe movies (and storytelling) could actually do something. Forget that it was Raul Julia playing a political prisoner in an anonymous Latin American prison. And please forget that it had William Hurt deftly playing the most mincing and effeminate of drag queens. Because if you think that's all that movie was about, 1) you slept through it and 2) you're an idiot. Kiss of the Spider Woman was William Golding-ish in scope. It asked THE big questions: why do people do the right thing versus the wrong thing? Are they only inspired by selfish lust or does something more altruistic prompt people to risk their lives for the intangible good?

Within a year, I was living back in Nevada, far from the balmy winters and art house theaters of Sacramento. I watched the Oscars with my mother and sat there in dumbfounded shock when the Best Picture for 1986 went to Out of Africa; a bland movie about lily-white people loving and dying of syphilis in dark-brown Africa. I realized what a lot of other people already knew about the most self-congratulatory and self-censoring business in America. Hollywood has been bending over for conservative America's big raging paranoia hard-on for decades.

Last night Brokeback Mountain lost to an over-blown, wanna-be controversial film about a car accident because Brokeback has fags in it. EeewwW!

While Howard Stern had it right, the 'L' word (lesbians) equal money; the 'F' word sends legions of worried, ignorant Americans scampering for the exits. Both fags and feminists upset the patriarchal dynamic paradigm and it's high time the boys from 'Ave. G' realized that. The patriarchy likes things they can quantify, objectify and above all else, control. Homosexual male sex upsets them enough because it hints that masculinity, like femininity, is a myth and because it implies that male beauty must subscribe to some of the same cruel rules feminine beauty has slaved uselessly under. Men might just have to be as trim, young and pretty as women and where would that leave all these fat, ugly old patriarchs? But male homo love sends the gippers sprinting for their Mercedes SUVs! If some men actually LOVED each other there'd be no ... violence ... no ... war. Wouldn't that fuck up every Halliburton shareholder's day?

I like all of filmmaker Ang Lee's movies. For an Asian working on a green card, he sure can take America's pulse. I quite enjoyed The Ice Storm and the way he showed the hypocrisies of the 1970's without losing empathy for that film's unlucky characters. (Imagine Neil Labute if he had a heart.) But Brokeback Mountain is flawless. Lee took a broadly sketched Anne Proulx short story and made it flesh and blood. And Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal did what actors are SUPPOSED to do. They took a big chance. Who gives a shit if Lee went home with one less trophy last night? I predict this movie will be much like the big ones of old. Like Inherit the Wind, no one will soon forget Brokeback Mountain.

-- Mz M.