Linkspam
I’m about to head out of town for the next four days (I know, my loyal readership of three will miss me), but I wanted to do a bit of a linkspam post before I go away. I often put these in my LJ, so this is a combination of several of them over the past several weeks.
Do y’all remember that latest “Rape Jokes are Funny” post I did a few weeks ago? (And how sad is it that I have two posts about entirely different “rape jokes are funny” incidents? If I get a third, do I get a free bad student newspaper?) If you’re curious here’s a bit of a follow-up
From Ian Van Den Hurk, Editor-in-Chief:
“I wish to formally apologize for hurting Western students, the University Students’ Council, The University of Western Ontario and members of the greater community… While the issue was not written with malicious intent toward any individuals or groups, nor the reputations of either the University of Western Ontario or the University Student’s Council,I fully understand and recognize the pain it has caused. I am truly sorry.”
The post I linked to talks about a Town Hall meeting about the whole thing, and is an interesting read. To quote:
I watched him [University Administrator Paul Davenport], in his speeches and speaking to him afterwards as well, really struggle for the “right” language to talk about these issues, and he clearly just doesn’t have it. Again, he doesn’t get it,but he’s also not, it’s clear, had the education or exposure necessary for him to really understand where everyone is coming from on this one.He hasn’t had that “ah ha!” moment where it clicks and he gets it, and he hasn’t had clearly any kind of education in issues that would allow him to speak with any intelligence, let alone authority on it.
Which, I might add, is no one’s fault but his own. It’s not our responsibility to educate him, it’s his responsibility to listen and to learn. Which is why his responses “we can do this but we need your help” (of course you need our help, you don’t understand, but you need our help to help you understand, and then you’re the one who has to take responsibility and action… but who exactly is “your” [in “your help”] in that sentence anyway? women? faculty? students?) … and “men must be front and centre on this issue” (what? I think he’s trying to say that men can’t think that this is only a women’s issue, which of course it ISN’T, but to say that men need to be front and centre on this, while so many dedicated women have been organizing and mobilizing around this for the last week, just wanting the big powerful men like Dr. D to listen to us, not to tell us what to do - is just insulting).It was also clearly a linguistic failure (rooted in an ideological failure) when he said he was glad to see so many groups “working for the weaker people of our society,” which (not surprisingly) attracted around of boos. His choice of the word “weaker” there, so clearly echoing “the weaker sex” was just so wrong.
[I think I’m going to end up coming back to that post in the future for a few other interesting quotes from it, mostly because I’ve recently been in conversation with a male friend of mine who is having trouble with the “getting it” aspect of how different life is for men and women - the sudden shock he experienced when he was confronted with the fact that most rapes are committed against women by men they know, rather than by strangers. I’m paraphrasing his reaction, here, but it took me a while to figure out that his reaction wasn’t doubt that women are usually raped by men they know, but that he had never really had to internalise that idea. I really want to talk about that, because I think it’s important, but I’m still working on expressing it well.]
A few links around or via LJ-land to share:
I’m talking about girlfriends dying. Not side-kicks, not people who know the risks in a real and gritty way, but girlfriends.Girlfriends that are somehow easily replaceable because they’re not a family member or team member and who seem to come with the ready made excuse that either they weren’t the main characters true love or worse that they were.
It’s like those stories about a boy and his dog. One dog dies but it’s more than possible that if the right smart, caring dog came along, the boy’s heart will be healed and all will be well until the next time we want to pluck said boy’s heartstrings.
It’s something interesting to read after the post I linked to last week about the “You Touched My Stuff” aspect of so many “revenge” movies out there. Willow’s talking specifically about comic books in this case, but I can think of similar attitudes in books and on t.v. - that someone is really just there to be The Girlfriend That Is In Peril to goad the hero into doing the right thing.
To completely change the subject once again, yet another bit of political news from Finland that might interest (and cheer up) some people on my f-list: The names of the ministers in the new government were revealed the other day and history was again made in when of the twenty ministers twelve were women.
Is Finland part of the EU? Can I move there? Can I speak English and live there? Cuz that’s just cool. {More details on what that means in the broader picture in the link.}
I’m been bouncing this post around in my head today about the temptation to infantilize victims of oppression and the kind of bad shit that plays into, but man, I just didn’t have a hook, other that the llama drama of a few days ago. [snip]
But their also survivors. My co-workers only meet these women on the worksites. That means that they doing hard physical labor,volunteering, to make a better future for the little girls in their hometowns. They aren’t broken shells of people, waiting for well-meaning white folks to swoop in and destroy the sex industry.They, like many exploited women in the sex industry, and like so many oppressed people around the world, are fighters. They need allies from those of us who benefit from so much suffering.
A relatively short post, but lots to think about in it.
I haven’t really examined my own attitudes about women who are trafficked into sex work around the world. I tend to just think of it in terms of “this is a tragedy that needs to stop”, without thinking about the women in question much beyond that. Which is really not much better, I suppose. The post has made me think about that more, and I’m assured that thinking is no bad thing.
I can’t quite remember where this one hit my radar from:
On Tuesday, May 1st - or as near to as you are able - post something on the subject of Disabilism, Ableism or Disability Discrimination (see Language Amnesty).You can write on any subject, specific or general, personal, social or political, anything which states an objection to the differential treatment of disabled people.
“Disabled” does include the mentally ill, for those of you who want to participate.
{More behind the cut}
Fems Rule: How A Chinese-Canadian Went From Anti-Feminist to Feminist:
I was one of those many who bought into the bad PR of feminists, who believed all feminists were the shorn-haired, bra-burning, unhygenic women who advocated a rejection of the phallus in favour of lesbianism and sperm cryo-freezing to propagate the species. I believed that to be a feminist was to be White, fervently pro-woman, anti-man, angry,unapproachable, overly-academic, and insular. There was no way that I,a woman, who considered herself “normal” (i.e. not one to shun traditional female identities) in almost every way, who chose Disney over Dworkin, who appreciated a little dose of chivalry once in awhile,who, well (and not to be crass) loves some good dick every now and again, could be a feminist!
[snip]
Male feminists? Feminist gamers?Feminists who wear makeup? Feminists of colour? It sounds crazy, but I honestly didn’t think it was possible. The word, feminism, itself,seems to hide that true meaning, sounding more like “female supremacist” to my pre-encounter ears than “gender activist”. My stereotype of the feminist was so monochromatic, so monotonal and one-dimensional that I wasn’t aware of even the possibility of a complexity in the term.
{I love the bit in the comments where a 14 year old boy from the Southern US comes along and tells her that she’s stupid and should shut up. Sometimes, when someone comes along and tells me what “all feminists” are like I want to ask them if I can lump them all in with everyone who claims to hate feminism. Which perhaps isn’t fair, but neither is making a huge category, calling it “feminism”, and then deciding that everyone who calls themselves a feminist is defined by common societal meme that “all feminists hate men”. We ain’t a monolith, folks. Maybe I should link to more posts showing that. I’d be happy to, if people would like to see a broader cross section of feminism than what is, admittedly, my upper-middle-class white North American self’s idea of what’s important to link to. I’m started reading more blogs by Feminist Bloggers of Colour, and I’m attempting to track down more non-North American links to read. I’m also starting read Feminist Ally blogs, which are blogs written about feminism by men. Which isn’t to say that I don’t think men can be feminists, because then I couldn’t give BlueRevolutionist that “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” t-shirt for my birthday this year. Man, someone should talk away my parenthesis.}
Links on various things. Read the whole posts, they’re all very interesting. Some days I think I should just pack up shop because I really can’t say it better than someone else can.
Faster Pussycat Kill Bill! [as a note, cuz I don’t like violence, I haven’t seen this film.]
Not long after seeing the film, it hit me that I’d finally seen a female version of a “You touched my stuff” film. Amazing! I never thought I’d actually see one in the mainstream.
Let me tell you a bit about this kind of story. It’s the simple formula:
Man + Dead/Violated Wife + Thirst for Violent Vengeance = Movie
I broke it down like this in conversation with friends after we’d just seen the film The Salton Sea, which follows the formula to the letter. Man’s wife is killed by druggies, as shown in flashback. Man wants revenge.Cue movie. And as I thought about it some more, I realized that the same cheesy formula is the driving force behind a number of films. Memento. Gladiator. The Punisher. A Man Apart. And so on.
In my cruder moments, I began referring to this plot formula as “You Touched My Stuff” because in these films, the woman is treated as an object. She’s a Macguffin. For all of the depth with which they explore the woman’s personality, she is movie furniture. The bad man/men who are the object of revenge might as well have burned down the hero’s business, shot the hero’s partner, or strung up the hero’s dog. Think about it - what can you tell me about Leonard’s wife in Memento? What can you tell me about Maximus’s wife and child? Can you tell me what kind of music they liked, or their favorite foods? No. Because of this, they are objects. They are not people - they are representative of “happier times” or “home”, the things that made the hero happy and were taken away from him to make him sad. They are stuff. The hero’s motivation becomes “Hey, you fucked with my stuff.”
If Freedom Ring was black, or Hispanic, or Asian, or if he were a she, then Kirkman might have been accused (rightly accused) of implying that Freedom Ring was incompetent because he was black, because she was a woman.
But no one would reasonably say he would have died because he was male, or white, or straight. For storytelling purposes, a straight white male is neutral, contains no value that informs or overwhelms other, subtler personality traits.
It reminds me of something I read in… a book whose title escapes me now,but I’ll remember later. Anyway, it said that you can’t start a joke “a woman walks into a bar…” unless the joke was about her being a woman. If the punch line is “I was talking to the duck” then the listener is left wondering why you specified the lead as a woman. This does not happen if you say “a man walks in to a bar…” “Man” is a blank template, and if his sex is not essential to the story, no one tries to figure out why you brought it up. For some reason, “man” is less specific that “woman.”
My friend spoke up during the question period.
“Your talk was incredibly inspiring and I’m so glad you spoke about this. However, I’m troubled by one thing you said near the end, and I want you to understand that I don’t mean to be harsh, and I hope everyone here bears with me for a minute. It might seem unrelated to everything we’ve been discussing this weekend, but I don’t think it is.You said ‘I’m not being feminist’. Now, I know that there are at least three women in this room who consider themselves feminist. I wondered why you said that? Everything you just talked about is feminist. Feminism means fighting against inequality for women, against gender stereotyping - it means different things to different people,and a feminist can be a man, woman, transgendered person, straight,gay, bi, pink, blue, yellow, whatever…”
She put it well. Another woman spoke up afterwards as well. The speaker herself, apologized and commented that she was speaking in terms of the stereotype of feminism - braburners etc she said. Again,we had just had a workshop on getting rid of our stereotypes in which she took part.
These were recced from someplace - can’t remember where right now, I think on a discussion about “Why isn’t there a Feminism 101 blog” (as a note, there is, called “Finally a Feminism 101 Blog”, but it’s relatively new).
Thoughts? Opinions? Cookies?
Wanted: Female Comic Book Legends
Status Report, which is about the Status of Women In Canada.
Who Are the Patriarchs Anyway? - a primer on “The Patriarchy”.
We Are What We Do - about how to change the world one step at a time (which leads me into this whole thing about how individuals aren’t really who need to be changing here, we’ve go the whole issue with corporations and companies, but that’s for later).