Territorial Pissings

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler breaks down the dualistic sex structure by stating that "a culturally specific epistemic a priori establishes the naturalness of 'sex.'" She conceptualizes the body as a social construct--a cultural artifact on which the values of society (or the individual) are expressed.

Given all my thoughts on LeVande's talk, this is somewhat disconcerting.

I had the misfortune of having Beyonce's Single Ladies stuck in my head all day. And the thing is, I had no idea what the hell she was saying besides "If you like it, than you should have put a ring on it" (which incidentally sounds like "Iffyoulikethenyashuddaputtariingownit," just saying). I decided to Youtube the video last night after SAMS, a lip-syncing contest in which the song appeared not once, but three times (one by the dance team, and twice by fraternities--'cause it's funny when boys act like girls). And I was pretty much appalled:

'Cause if you liked it then
You shoulda put a ring on it
If you liked it then
You shoulda put a ring on it
Don't be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then
You shoulda put a ring on it

I got gloss on my lips, a man on my hips
Hold me tighter than my Dereon jeans
Acting up, drink in my cup
I could care less what you think
I need no permission, did I mention
Don't pay him any attention
'Cause you had your turn
But now you gonna learn
What it really feels like to miss me

Hokay. So. The you being addressed here is both subject and male, while the it, the object, is female. And if the subject likes the object, then he should probably mark the object as his own lest another subject encroach upon his territory.

Among many things, what is particularly disturbing when considering this song through the lense of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is the body as a cultural artifact. If the single ladies of this song are indeed cultural artifacts, what's that saying about our culture if cultural artifacts are meant to be owned? Does this once again connect to the fucking prehistoric association of men with culture and women with nature? Are women's bodies meant to be controlled and regulated by patriarchal social, political and governmental forces that have economic interests in keeping women in subjugated positions?!

Although it's hard for me to choose what's most alarming about this song, I'd have to say it'd be how Beyonce portrays this as empowering. She don't need no permission and could care less what you think...but you really, really have should have put a ring on it several times over because now it has the self-satisfaction of knowing that you're in psychological distress over the loss of patriarchal power over it.

Losing My Faith in Humanity One Lap Dance at a Time

This blog began as a rant on why I hate Tila Tequila, but shifted after I joined the Facebook group "Boycott N.E.R.D." I actually hesitated joining at first, because I thought they were probably harmless, and there was no need to make a big feminist fuss about it. Well, upon further investigation, I discovered I was wrong:

You got somethin boys can't deny [here's a hint] / It's like apple pie / Cut ya open and you're just WIDE / You ain't tired / You are the cause of riots who could say no to you? / Wait till they get a load of you /A hundred dollar bills look (at you, at you) / A hundred dollar bills look (at you, at you) / A hundred dollar bills look (at you, at you) / A hundred dollar bills look (at you, at you).

Where to begin. Well, for starters, boys can't deny that those of the feminine gender (I'm hesitant to say 'women' because that connotes personhood) have something they need--because all boys are straight and categorizing them as 'boys' indicates a kind of exploratory sexuality, connoting a variety of experience (and/or partners). Much like apple pie, females are delicious baked goods that are soley for the purpose of consumption (specifically MALE consumption in this instance). And don't forget the intersection of violence and sexuality! 'Cut ya open' implies a forceful opening that is more likely than not, as consentual sex (to my knowledge) does not involve sharp pointed objects (and no, a penis does not count as sharp). Wide has a disturbing connotation to women "wanting it"-- after all, if they're wide open (by sharp pointed intruments or otherwise), they're clearly asking you to sexually violate and degraded them. If she ain't tired, that must mean she's either fucking you like a porn star or she's struggling against you--and although these often get conflated, I think it's contextually safe to suggest it's the latter. Women being the cause of riots makes me think of the devastating effect wars have on women--their bodies are violated as a sign of triumphant victory. What could be better for conquering nations than to spread their victorious seed to the defeated peoples? Wait 'til they get a load of you--'they' being a collective of predatory males and you being a non-being. The final chorus of "hundred dollar bills" is especially disturbing in the video, because it shows women's faces being covered with, well, hundred dollar bills. I wonder what they had to do to get it?

The optimist in me was hoping that this would be the only song in which women were not considered to be people. That, however, was shattered upon discovering Lapdance:

Chicks nick-name me pilot / They get high off my dick / I take 'em to my home, they call it the cock pit / Time for take off, their panties they drop quick / Now that's first class fuckin, and that' some fly shit.

Chicks. As baby chickens made no appearance within the music video, this term was decidedly imposed upon those of the feminine gender. Honestly, I don't even need to do an analysis of this--the words speak for their mysogynist selves. What really disappointed me about this song, though, is when you first go through the lyrics, it sounds like it's politically charged:

It's this society / That makes a nigga wanna kill / I'm just straight ill Ridin' my motorcycle down the streets / While politicians is soundin' like strippers to me / They keep sayin' but I don't wanna hear it...

I wasn't really sure about the strippers part, but I figured it could be something along the lines of them selling themselves out for money. That made a lot of sense to me. However, upon viewing the first, say, ten seconds of the music video, I was sadly mistaken. I don't know that I've ever seen more booty/boob/crotch shots than I have in the first seventeen seconds of that video.

I'd like to end with two lyrics that I find to be particularly intriguing:

Oooh baby you want me? / Well you can get this lap dance here for free.

"Oh, wait, you're sexually attracted to my gyrations and booty shorts? Well, let me just tell you that because I have been socialized to devalue myself by patriarchal media, I will gyrate myself towards and onto you for no charge. See, normally it would cost you, because the only value I hold in society is tied to my sexuality, but because you're oppressed as a black man and because you are a societal rebel you can have this for free."

I am astounded that they are bringing this musical group to campus.

Location, Location, Location

I find a lot of what we've been reading over the past couple weeks to be a bit overwhelming, as it is difficult for me to grapple with the isms and posts of different schools of feminist theory. So I think that when feminist authors give me their social location, it helps me conceptualize WHY they've invested themselves in a certain facet of feminist theory. I suppose it makes it a little more concrete (and interesting!) when they specifically relate their life to the theory they're arguing for, and it helps me to evaluate where my own thought and experience falls based on my social location. bell hooks' article does just this, and her explanation legitimizes her personal experience as a kind of feminist theory:

"Growing up in a black, working-class, father-dominated household, I experienced coercive adult male authority as more immediately threatening, as more likely to cause immediate pain, than racist oppression or class exploitation. It was equally clear that experiencing exploitation and oppression in the home made one feel all the more powerless when encounter dominating forces outside the home."

bell hooks is absolutely fucking cool. Not only is she investing the reader in her article by giving her social location, she's also deconstructing the patriarchal belief that theory is only legitimate within broader societal contexts. She is owning her own experience as feminist theory. So. Cool.

One (of the many) things I like best about feminism is that it helps me understand how power dynamics in my family have shaped the person I am today. My mother had me when she was nineteen, and my father was mid-thirtysomething. He was an alcoholic, and because of his gender, economic status, and age, he was a domineering force over my mother. I suppose I can't fault him overmuch on the way he was, as it is a long-standing male Stanko tradition to be domineering alcoholics who tend to emotionally damage the younger generations. This longstanding tradition was influenced by poverty, world wars, and ethnic oppressions that have influenced the power dynamics of my family for more generations than I can count.

So, rather than be pissed off at the way I am because of longstanding mental illness tradition of my family, feminist theory has allowed me to understand and come to terms with the person I'm becoming. It is a vehicle in which I have kind of reclaimed some elements of my past, let go of others, and it's something I hope to share with other feminists (and non-feminists, if they're willing to listen) in the hopes of changing the patterns of anger and abuse I see all too often in my family and in other families.

The Straight and Narrow

I'm straight, but I don't advertise it. In fact, I am aggressively private about my love life. I feel like it's no one's business but my own, but unfortunately, this doesn't always translate well with a certain sect of my biological relations. They're conservative Republicans, you see, and although I love them dearly despite their conserviosity, it genuinely pisses me off when I have to explicitly state that I am indeed not a Big Bad Lesbian. Incidentally, this relates to Wittig's The Straight Mind. Wittig states:

"For heterosexual society is the society which not only oppresses lesbians and gay men, it oppresses many different/others, it oppresses all women and many categories of men, all those who are in the position of the dominated."

Hey wow, I am oppressed for being straight! Now, I'm not suggesting that I am oppressed to the same extent as lesbians or bisexual women. I'm simply stating that I'm oppressed because I refuse to subscribe to touchy-feely heterosexual norms. I refuse to enter a relationship unless I am absolutely certain that it would be egalitarian. Basically, I'm oppressed because I don't flaunt my heterosexuality. I'm not attracted to muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque men; I think intellectual nerds in sweater vests are damn sexy. But, that's a different story.

A certain relation once asked me what my major was. When I replied, "English and Women's Studies," I received what only can be described as the stink eye. Rather than asking me what exactly Women's Studies was, he snidely asked me what exactly I'd be doing with those majors. When I replied that I'm definitely going for a Master's and (hopefully!) a Doctorate, I was then lectured on when and when not to have my children. According to this relative, I should definitely wait to reproduce until after my Master's, but because Doctoral degrees take several years, I could have them during that time. Because marriage is the only option for a woman, and as such, I should care more about my biological clock than my education. After all, my linguistic prowess and feminist inquiry will be utterly useless when pitted against The Infant.

And the heteronormative fun doesn't stop there. Because I am a feminist and believe that women are indeed people and NOT doormats, my sexuality is often called into question. As if wanting equal pay for equal work was a bad thing. Never being in a serious relationship has also raised some serious suspicions. Of course, they're too polite to boldly come out and ask me which gender I am sexually attracted to, so as an alternative, they backhandedly make comments and innuendos to get me to 'fess up. Which is a) really fucking irritating and b) none of their goddamned business.

Essentially, this article made me realize that although I have certain privileges that bisexual women and lesbians don't, everyone is affected by heterosexism: "the straight mind cannot conceive of a culture, a society where heterosexuality would not order not only all human relationships but also its very production of concepts and all the processes which escape consciousness."

I can only imagine what a clusterfuck of greatness would result in the end of heteronormativity.

I'm Just Being Honest, Asshole. I'd Expect You to Know the Difference.

I was really hesitant to write about this, mostly because it makes me feel like I'm being condescending. Which, incidentally, I kind of am, but I'm not really trying to be...it's just kind of how it is. See, after my first Women's Studies course (Spring 2008--Women, Suffrage, and Political Participation with Nina Kasniunas, who is epically awesome), I really started growing into and becoming more comfortable with feminism. In fact, I thought it was the absolute bee's knees, as did my two best friends who also took Women's Studies 100 that same semester. During first semester of Freshman year we were like, "Feminism? Piffle! That's for bra-burning crazies." We went under a kind of feminist transformation during the course of Freshman year, and by the end I had decided to take on a second major in Women's Studies.
Okay, so this is the part where I connect my seemingly irrelevant story to our class, via Joreen's BITCH Manifesto: "...Bitches who have not succumbed totally to self-hatred are most comfortable of all only in the company of fellow bitches. "These are her true peers and the only ones with whom she does not have to play some sort of role. Only with other Bitches can a Bitch be truly free."
The thing is, this is really, really true, and in a lot of ways that feels frightening to me. I love my friends from home dearly, but try as I might to get them interested in feminism (I've even loaned out my beloved copies of Jessica Valenti's ""Full-Frontal Feminism" and Inga Muscio's "Cunt") it doesn't seem to be sticking. I usually get this kind of glazed-over look when I start talking about the pay disparity, and when I try and explain what androcentrism and heteronormativity are to my family members, they kind of dismiss it as me trying to sound more intelligent than they are. Granted, I am intelligent, and I can understand why they think I'm just being an ass, but feminism is something that has completely transformed my life and is constantly challenging my own assumptions and how I view the world. It's just so fucking awesome and I want to share it with everyone that I love and care about because re: FUCKING AWESOME.
So back to why this is relevant to the BITCH Manifesto. Around non-(not to be confused with anti-) feminist family and friends, I often feel uncomfortable bringing up why I don't think it's okay that gays and lesbians are denied the right to marry, why pro-choice is actually pro-life because it's pro-people-who-are-already-alive-who-have-every-right-to-do-with-their-bodies-as-they-see-fit, and just what exactly Women's Studies is. I have not and will never deny that I am a feminist, but I feel like I'm forced to play a role when put into certain social (usually surrounded by Republicans) situations. I have never felt this way around my best friends, nor in any of the Women's Studies classes I've taken. Even if I don't agree with someone's views, I never feel as if I'm playing games around self-identified feminists, because like them, I've Just Said No to patriarchal bullshit. It's only around the feminist types that I feel truly free to be myself, and while that's empowering in many ways, it also makes me feel limited in other social situations with people I care about. And honestly, I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Period Control

Margaret Sanger's "Birth Conrol--A Parents' Problem or Woman's?" addressed the historically controversial issue of maternal regulation of infant production. She argues that women have been enslaved by their biological reproductive function, and she alone has the burden of "carrying, bearing and rearing the unwanted children" (139). Yet because the nature of human reproduction requires two parties, she urges that "responsibility of controlling the results should not be placed on the woman alone" (138). Although concluding that birth control is indeed a woman's problem seems to be contradictory to her "persistent urging" that it should not be, it actually highlights an underlying issue in regards to sexual activity that continues today. If consensual, the responsibility of safe sex should fall onto both parties. Logical, right? Unfortunately, because of biology and patriarchy, the responsibility more often than not falls on to the woman.

And you've just gotta love a society with heath care coverages that offer aging men the chance to recover some semblance of their erectile masculinity (Viva Viagra!) yet deny sexually active women of all ages the right to control and regulate their baby makers as they see fit.

Although Sanger's article still (unfortunately) continues to be relevant in the so-called "liberated" twenty-first century in terms of birth control being a "chick" thing, there isn't as much outward social resistance to birth control as there was in her time. Sure, we've got relgious right-wing extremist groups like Army of God who declare that "women using an oral contraceptive are committing abortions on themselves," anti-choice pharmacists that deny medical prescripions on the basis of brainwashed conservatism, and papal denunciations, but for the most part, birth control has become a socially accepted practice. That is, if you're using it to control your periods.

Sarah Haskins, a writer and performer for the 24-hour news channel parody Current has a bi-weekly segment entitled "Target Women." For approximately three minutes, Haskins shows media clips on a specific topic (Yogurt, Weddings, Sarah Palin, Number Two, etc.) and points out how sexist and stereotypical ads are that targeted to women. She did a segment on birth control, and how it's marketed as period rather than baby control: "Fewer periods, yaaay. Now we don't have to leave the tribe and go sit in that hut for a week. That was a bummer." Although satirical in nature, the birth control segment of Target Women illustrates Sanger's main argument that birth control is essentially a woman's problem. However socially accepted period control is now, there continue to be threats against women's control of their bodies. Until sexual responsibility is shared between partners and the religious right dissolves, women's access to affordable birth control and safe abortions will continue to be compromised. Though we still have far to go, it's important to remember that we've come a long way and to continue to fight for Margaret Sanger's reproductive justice: "Woman must not accept; she must challenge."

http://current.com/items/89157733/target_women_birth_control.htm

Feminism: A Many-Headed Monster?

Last semester in WS100, we did an activity where we had to ask a few people what their definition of feminism was. Naturally, I wanted to know what my non-feminist friends and family thought it meant, considering all the times that I've gotten those glazed over and uncaring stares when I get on a tangent about societal injustices committed against women. I got a couple "I don't knows" (which really bugged me, because hello, I've explained it how many times?) and generic "women who fight for women's rights" (which is true, yes, but it's so much more than that). I'd have to say that the most interesting was from my grandmother, who said that while she thought they did some good things (equal pay...which, incidentally, I didn't bring up the twenty-four cent disparity on the grounds that she a) probably doesn't care and b) is retired), she thought they took some things too far. She was rather ambiguous on what exactly the thing they took too far was, but she did say with some degree of certainty that she doesn't like their short hair because it isn't feminine enough. So, in shifting from my socially conservative grandmother to my liberal feminist textbook, I was somewhat taken aback when feminism was described as

"A many headed-monster which cannot be destroyed by singular decapitation. We spread and grow in ways that are incomprehensible to a hierarchial mentality."

Now, maybe it's the overly imaginative English nerd in me, but the words "decaptation," "spread," and "grow" were somewhat unsettling to me. Decapitation makes me think of the loss of head, which is incidentally where the brain is located. The brain is an important organ not only in terms of the whole "living" thing that humans do, but going along with bell hooks' article, it is also essential to feminist theory and to our early feminist life experiences as well. Spread makes me think of incurable diseases, namely the Black Plague, and grow (within the context of the sentence and being right after spread) evokes mental pictures of those weird pus-filled boils that grow under the armpits of plague victims. Essentially, this disturbingly visual definition took me back to the plague-infested fourteenth century rather than our so-called "liberated" twenty-first century.

After we discussed it in class, however, I did consider it from a different standpoint. The many heads of feminism fight on many different fronts to fight against patriarchal injustice, and because there isn't just one head (or rule of the father), hierarchies are powerless to stop or contain it because it doesn't understand feminism's multiple mentalities. Although I still don't care for the definition based on the heebie jeebie factor, I can understand what the author is trying to convey about the nature of feminism. Incidentally, this happens to be one of the really great things about feminism. Because of the multitude of different theories and opinions of the meaning of feminism, you (as a feminist) are forced to think outside of your own experience (and oftentimes, comfort level) to listen to the experience and views of others. On the same token, however, this can also be a downfall, because many self-identified (and some non-identified who still fit the general "yea women's rights" definition) feminists disagree on fundamental women's issues, the most obvious being choice. I identify myself as ardently pro-choice; I'm all for easy and affordable access to all forms of contraception, including abortion if the woman so chooses. Although I myself would probably not choose to have an abortion, I recognize that not all women are as fortunate as I to have a family support system with all kinds of financial and emotional aid. On the other hand, I have a friend who was Catholic School pro-life brainwashed who still identifies as feminist (gotta love publicly-funded sex education programs that scare the abstinence pants onto unsuspecting young pubescents). I personally don't believe you can be feminist if you don't support a woman's choice to do what she feels best for her family and for her body. But who am I to say that just because I have a fundamental belief in a woman's choice that someone else who believes in the "sanctity of life" (which, in my experience, loosely translates as "women aren't people, because their bodies aren't their own sanctuaries") doesn't have the right to identify as feminist?

Because there are so many different feminist identifications and definitions, I like to stick with my own. It's short, simple, somewhat inappropriate, and really reflects my personality. It implies a sort of stubbornness that results from many, many years of taking too much patriarchal bullshit; it has a confrontational nature in which efforts to contain and control will be met with resistance; and finally, it has a conclusiveness that lets the perpetrator know that its power is limited and its days are numbered.

Feminism is a big fuck you to patriarchy.