Horton Hears A Who Patriarchy

Damn skippy.

"Male-Bashing" on TV from PopMatters

Some time back I ran across or was otherwise directed to (I can't really remember anymore) this article on male-bashing on television from PopMatters, an "international magazine of cultural criticism."

I was pretty skeptical before I started reading the 2003 article, as 'male-bashing' is almost always a synonym for 'bemoaning the loss of male power'.

While it turned out to be in the same vein, it was a little less transparently patriarchal than that.

The central claim of the article:

Welcome to the new comic image of men on tv: incompetence at its worst. Where television used to feature wise and wonderful fathers and husbands, today's comedies and ads often feature bumbling husbands and inept, uninvolved fathers.

...

While most television dramas tend to avoid gender stereotypes, as these undermine "realism," comic portrayals of men have become increasingly negative. The trend is so noticeable that it has been criticized by men's rights groups and some television critics.

OK, so maybe I was being charitable when I said it wasn't transparently patriarchal.
"Men's rights groups" are almost always men who are angry about their perceived loss of power and who see power as a zero-sum game in which female gain = male loss. Males interested in genuine equality tend to end up like Robert Jensen: working against masculinity itself.

Anyway, the obvious question to ask here is why - as in why have comic portrayals of men become 'increasingly negative'? (I am actually skeptical that they've become increasingly negative, but I have neither the the time nor inclination to check that claim out.)

Sadly, the article fails to answer the question - and this is as close as it gets:

"Some feminists might argue that, for decades, women on tv looked mindless, and that turnabout is fair play."

"Some feminists?" Can you say logical fallacy?

Not to mention the fact that this is entirely circumstantial... and isn't even really a reason for the supposed change. Instead, it's a potshot at feminism is general by way of claiming that "some [unnamed] feminists" might like to see men portrayed as buffoons.

So what? Some men might like to see other men portrayed as buffoons too - which is just as plausible if not more so, since, last time I checked, men still control the entertainment industry.

I'm willing to grant the author of the article the benefit of the doubt and suppose he would agree that it's still a problem if men are producing shows that make men look like idiots. But if that's the case, then we've got to throw the silly men vs. women paradigm out the window, and I highly doubt the author is ready to do that.

Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that a majority of feminists disagree with sitcoms as much or more than this poor guy does; after all, no one wins (especially straight women) when the role models for men are frackin' Kevin James and Ray Romano.

Verdict: This is a piece of whiny fluff that attempts to blame women for something women, as a class, have no control over. Mayhap the author should start thinking about why focus groups of men like male characters who are idiots. The answer to that question is far more telling anyway.

For the record, I can't stop thinking about Knocked Up or Superbad in relation to this article. Or Will Ferrell.

Stockings

Sadly, I am not talking about Christmas. From the LA Times:

Even strongholds of sartorial liberalism have not been without their hosiery flare-ups. Last summer, a 25-year-old Berkeley woman (who did not want to give her name for fear of her in-laws) was accused by her new mother-in-law of "indecent exposure" for failing to wear hose on her special day.

The mother-in-law might find solace in the fact that her views are supported by the president of the United States. One of his first actions upon taking office was to reinstate the White House dress code requiring, among other things, that women wear stockings in the West Wing. Exhibit A, Condoleezza Rice, the fashionable secretary of state.

BARF.

Then again, I guess I'm not really surprised so much as disgusted. From later in the story, another ridiculous display of male privilege:

Katie Couric has been one of the most stalwart and high-profile bare-leggers, bringing her tanned gams into living rooms every day with the TV news. But the sight of bare legs is so repulsive to some that a forum has emerged on Stockingshq.com, a website for stockings fans, dedicated to persuading the chipper news anchor to wear pantyhose. Fundraisers, bribes and beatings are a few of the strategies discussed. One man lamented that he'd been forced to switch to Fox, where the legs are rarely naked.

About 70% of the impassioned commenters on Stockingshq.com are male, according to site founder David Bradwell. Their push for hose is about making "ladies" look sexy.

"It's about leaving something to the imagination," he said. "A gift which is wrapped and can then be unwrapped is better."

He also admits he's never tried to wear them.

Look, kids! Women - even news anchors like Katie Couric - are like presents to be unwrapped I mean, sex objects fit for male viewing bound by the patriarchy!

The misogyny on display is mind-boggling.

Note: I couldn't find the aforementioned thread on the stocking website... I wonder if they took it down?

Stripping as Liberatory

I've never really liked or understood the claim that women who take pole-dancing classes and/or learn how to strip - often suburban, middle-aged, middle-class women - become more liberated or somehow more free.

Friend BZ shared this Jezebel link with me, in which a writer participates in one of the pole-dancing classes. Predictably, I thought it was kind of silly and very misogynist.... but now I think I have a possible answer to the claim:

Learning to pole-dance is liberating because it frees one from the constant pressure placed on women by the patriarchy to conform to the male gaze, to patriarchal definitions of what women are supposed to be like. Embracing one's own self as as sex object gives the illusion of liberation because it brings one into compliance with patriarchal standards.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out, but I'm the first person I've heard make this point in relation to those bizarre pole dancing classes.

Emo

I think this is what I actually don't like about emo, and why I have such reservations about emo fans. It's not that they are "showing emotions" (which is often mistakenly understood as breaking the code of patriarchy), it's that the emotions that are often presented in emo music are dismissive and hateful towards women. Sexist and patriarchal, in other words. It's an interesting out - young men can show emotion, but only if it's hatred of women.

Not that the same isn't true of almost all other music as well.

For the record, I love music that can transmit raw, unfiltered emotions. I think it's rare and wonderful. I just think that it's silly to turn a blind eye towards what emotions are being presented, and how, and why.

From the PunkPlanet archives (minor errors left unchanged):

Girls in emo songs today do not have names. We are not identified. Our lives, our struggles, our day-to-day-to-day does not exist, we do not get colored in. We span from coquettish to damned and back again. We leave bruises on boy-hearts, but make no other mark. Our existences, our actions are portrayed SOLELY through the detailing of neurotic self-entanglements of the boy singer�our region of personal power, simply, is our breadth of impact on his romantic life. We are on a short leash in a filthy yard�we are mysteries to be unlocked, bodies to be groped, minimum wage earners of fealty, harvesters of sorrow, repositories for scorn. Vessels redeemed in the light of boy-love. On a pedestal, on our backs. Muses at best. Cum rags or invisible at worst. Check out our pictures on the covers of records�we are sad-eyed and winsome and well cleaved.

...

And so I watch these girls at emo shows more than I ever do the band. I watch them sing along, see what parts they freak out over. I wonder if this does it for them, if seeing these bands, these dudes on stage resonates and inspires them to want to pick up a guitar or drum sticks. Or if they just see this as something dudes do, because there are no girls, there is no them up there. I wonder if they are being thwarted by the FACT that there is no presentation of girls as participants, but rather, only as consumers�or if we reference the songs directly�the consumed. I wonder if this is where music will begin and end for them. If they can be radicalized in spite of this. If being denied keys to the clubhouse or airtime will spur them into action.

...

The dozens of bands, bands who�s records I knew all the words to, who were comprised of 25-30 year old dudes, with nothing much to say, did not feel like punk rock with it�s arms open wide to me. It took seeing Bikini Kill in an illegal basement venue to truly throw the lights, to show me that there was more than one place, one role, for women to occupy, and that our participation was important and vital�It was YOU MATTER writ large.

Rumor: Warner Bros. Will No Longer Have Female Leads

Via Feministing, from Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily (which I have never heard of, so I am taking this with 1/2 a grain of salt):

Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new decree that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead". This Neanderthal thinking comes after both Jodie Foster's The Brave One (even though she's had big recent hits with Flightplan and Panic Room) and Nicole Kidman's The Invasion (as if three different directors didn't have something to do with the awfulness of the gross receipts) under-performed at the box office recently. "Can you imagine when Gloria Allred gets hold of this? It's going to be like World War III," one producer just told me.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

And kind of sad.

Things That Make Me Go Puke in the Night

As if cross-country practice isn't hard enough:

VALPARAISO, Ind. -- Practice runs for Ben Franklin Middle School's cross-country team are getting scary.

Less than a month ago, a 17-year-old Valparaiso boy was arrested for allegedly shooting at the runners with paintballs. On Monday, a 16-year-old Valparaiso High School student was arrested for allegedly yelling a threat at a girl running with the team.

According to police, a red older-model Buick slowed behind the pack as the girls ran south on Campbell, near Northview, around 3:45 p.m. on Sept. 5. A teen in the back seat leaned out the passenger-side window and allegedly yelled, "Keep going or I'll rape you," at a sixth-grader.

As Jessica at Feministing notes, who says we don't live in a rape culture?

The Simpsons Movie

Ezra Klein says almost exactly what I was thinking about the Simpsons movie:

It was a film during which the lead female character realized her husband was a senseless brute who would always put his happiness before her own, and where her son realized the father was an abusive drunk who was continually denying him the emotional support and family environment he needed. And unlike in most Simpson's episodes, both characters recognized these truths fully, and abandoned Homer to begin new lives elsewhere. And shortly thereafter, both took him back, tossing away their opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment despite there being no evidence of an enduring change in their tormentor's psyche. It was a tremendous demonstration of the self-destructive mentality of the abused, and in that, quite unsettling.

The only thing I take exception with is that I think The Simpsons is pretty much par for the course when it comes to the portrayal of heterosexual relationships on television, i.e. pretty pathetic. Certainly it was no worse than, say, Family Guy.

UPDATE: I should add that I was really, really happy when the family ditched Homer, but I just knew that it being The Simpsons, they would get back together again before the movie was over. It always works that way in our patriarchal culture.

Nevertheless, a tiny bit of me held out hope that they would ditch the bum. One good deed - saving Springfield - in no way makes up for so much bad behavior.

Shame is Not a Good Thing, People

I was about to go get some lunch when I ran across this BB post. It led here:

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.

...

"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor," said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

"(Hello) Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It's not something macho police officers want covering their biceps," Pongpat said.

Fantastic. There are so many things wrong with this I'm not even going to try and unpack it. Instead, I'm going to have a sandwhich.

In Which I Fail To Understand the World Yet Again

From Pandagon, some fucked-up shit:

ATLANTA — Emelina Ramirez called police to tell them her roommates were attacking her, punching and kicking her in the stomach. When the police arrived, they handcuffed her, took her to jail and ran her fingerprints through a federal database. She is now in an Alabama cell awaiting deportation.

Did they check and see if she was OK first? I could find no evidence in the story the police did. And it gets better:

Ramirez, 30, was three months' pregnant in June when, she says, her roommates attacked her. The Carrollton police officer who arrested her did not speak Spanish. He charged her with simple battery and took her to jail.

Justice, my ass. This looks like a really screwed-up sense of priorities to me: Racism and faux "national security" over the health of a pregnant woman.

But it gets better still. From Xicanopwr:

After further investigation, it seems like this is the case for Emelina. According to an old Google cache from Congress.org, from Congress.org, it appears that she was previously married to an US Citizen who abused her. Ironically, her former husband happens to be police officer. During their marriage, they never had her immigration status adjusted. The marriage ended in a divorce because he was an abusive towards her. Since her divorce, she is still stigmatized and branded as an “illegal.”

Yup. Racism in the United States is a thing of the past. Just like patriarchy.

Turns out that the original police officer is acting under a new Georgia law that instructs local officers to enforce federal immigration laws. That makes this institutionalized injustice rather than just personal.

And don't go pulling that "but she is illegal!" crap. She's still a human being, and if that doesn't trump her location on this planet, then you've got some thinking to do.

Sounds Like Another Excuse to Attack Feminism To Me

Apparently I'm on a mission to out bad upcoming TV shows. Via Feministing, a new Fox show called When Women Ruled the World.

Full stop.

Feminism isn't about women ruling the world. Well, most feminism, anyway. There are a few strands....but I digress. Let me repeat that:

FEMINISM IS NOT ABOUT WOMEN BEING IN CHARGE OF MEN.

From the Fox website:

The unscripted series will reveal how women and men react in a world where women are in charge and men are subservient, and each gender’s ability to adapt to a new social order will be put to the test.

Is that an admission we live in a patriarchy? It sure sounds like it to me. Quick - some body tell Fox News! It's true - hordes of old white guys actually does count as a society where men are in charge, no matter how much they complain!

Sorry about that. It's early, and I'm tired and cranky. No coffee yet.

Anyway, I get the feeling this is all a giant platform from which to bash women. Why would I say that? Well, here's another excerpt from the Fox site:

How will the men react? How will the women treat the men? Can women effectively rule society? [emphasis mine]

And since Fox will undoubtedly pick a bunch of folks for whom it will be impossible to get along - it wouldn't really be a show if it worked, now would it? - the answer will inevitably be no.

UPDATE: A comment on the show from Echidne of the Snakes:

Feminists are all about equality, not about reversing the power relationships. But Fox is all about male dominance, and this show is intended to prop that up.

...

I'm the polite blogger, yanno. Well, I've just had my fill about politeness today. Fuck those Fox assholes. Fuck them for making fun of the real injustices and troubles the majority of women have to endure in this world. Fuck them for making it into a game to prop up their own petty feelings of threatened masculinity. Fuck them for their disgusting slimy bias and their silly little commercial brains. Fuck them for having the empathy of a toe cheese.

And most of all, fuck them to the deepest hell for suggesting that the only alternative to the current system is some perverse upside version of more of the same.

I think she captures how I feel pretty well.

My Heart Can Only Shatter Once Per Day

...and this is what caused it to fall into little pieces today.

From a dissenting opinion:

After closing arguments, the court found that it was in Simone D.’s best interest to administer ECT even though it acknowledged that she would probably never “get better” [italics added]: “she perhaps could die. Perhaps she wants to die. But that’s not for us to determine. We must prevent her from dying.”

To sum up:

1) Women are subject to electroschock therapy 2x-3x as often as men.

2) ECT doctors are 95% men; patients are 70% women.

3) The women in the story doesn't speak English.

I call white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal bullshit.

Stupid American Racism, Continued

Eric recently posted about a new show from CW - go read his post, then mine, because mine is essentially an extended comment/reaction/liveblogging of the trailer (which can be viewed here):

So I'm trying to play the devil's advocate...maybe the folks at CW think they are 'humanizing' the Pakistani Muslim kid?

...

Watching the trailer....*puke* It's going to be bad. It has that feel, like it would have been bad in the 80's (but at least it would have fit in).

Did they really just imply that the most shunned kid in school (who is nevertheless good-looking and smart) is ten times more acceptable and "normal" than a Pakistani Muslim kid by default? They did. Shamelessly.

I am speechless. This kind of shit really fucks with high school students who really struggle in the hell that is the high school social world.

Did they just have a student accuse the protagonist of being gay because he didn't view his sister's breasts as sex objects?

Barf.

At least now I know where the high school students I worked with last spring got all the crap they were spewing at each other.

...because it's totally natural to be freaked out by Muslims and/or Pakistanis.

"If I ordered a coffeemaker and I got a toaster I'd return that." - the mother, as a reference to unexpectedly hosting a Pakistani Muslim exchange student (rather than a tall, Nordic, blond dude).

It's almost too obvious to have to say, but: When you make a joke like that, the reason it's funny is that you just objectified a human being and made them into an object - and then rejected them. When combined with the fact that the person making the joke (except she wasn't joking) is white and the person on the receiving end is a person of color, wow! RACISM!

...One More Time:

The teacher on the first day of class: "For one year, we will be in the presence of a real live Pakistani." The catch is that we're supposed to view the teacher as backwards and ignorant, but the only reason that's in the show is that it validates the ignorance of the viewer. It doesn't really work otherwise - 'Oh, since no one else knows anything about Pakistan or Muslims, it's OK if I remain ignorant.'

Um, no.

The teacher also called Islam 'Muslimism.'

/liveblogging. I couldn't take any more.

This kind of shit leads to Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and a thousand others.

This kind of ignorance leads to fear, which encourages dominance and hierarchy of the "unknown Other," which leads to pain, violence, and death.

It also prevents the development of empathy and compassion, since they are predicated on deep knowledge of other people, and this is predicated on stereotypes and caricatures.

In other words, I'm with Eric: This show needs to be canned (and the creators fired). Now.

TwistyFaster

This is as good as an excuse as any to get y'all to read I Blame The Patriarchy:

For my part, I have stated on numerous occasions (following the materialization in my personal sphere of a pair of nieces), children are an oppressed class. Their universal and legitimately reviled unruliness is not natural. It is a product of neurosis generated by patriarchy’s two main replicatory units: the nuclear family, which directly supports male dominance, and the single mother household, which indirectly supports male dominance a) by acting as an underclass dependent for its survival on paternalism and b) by incubating a ready supply of disadvantaged candidates for membership in the all-important working and military classes.

Of course kids are obstreperous hellions. They dislike oppression as much as the next guy.

I'll drink to that.

Knocked Down

Katha Politt (she writes for The Nation magazine) explains why I didn't go see Knocked Up.

In short, I'm really, really tired of the male fantasy bit, be it show or movie in which the hot chick falls for the loser guy who's sole claim to fame is really that's he's supposed to be everyman. It's like porn with clothes.