The Revolutionary Mindset

I recently finished The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. LeGuin. Though I’d been aware of her for a while as a science fiction writing and feminist, this was the first time I’d ever read anything by her, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I’ll let wikipedia break it down for you:

The story takes place on the fictional planet Urras and its moon Anarres (since Anarres is massive enough to hold an atmosphere, this is often described as a double planet system). In order to forestall an anarcho-syndical workers’ rebellion, the major Urrasti states gave the revolutionaries the right to live on Anarres, along with a guarantee of non-interference, approximately two hundred years before the events of The Dispossessed. Before this, Anarres had had no permanent settlements apart from some mining.

What sucked me in to the book, what kept me so engaged, and what ultimately shook my mind grapes up the most was the subtitular ambiguity. This novel is ambiguous in the very best sense of the word. And by that I mean it is not naïve—not politically, socially, or philosophically. So often in novels—especially science fiction and fantasy—the plot boils down to black and white moralities: white good, black bad; human good, alien bad; organic good, robot bad. This book sweeps all of those easy dichotomies away. The characters might believe in such clear-cut terms, but the book is good to sink them and us into the murky grey area in which we all live.

I also found striking LeGuin’s illustration of the revolutionary, and how easily it becomes mundane. The Anarresti are all supposedly anarchists, but what they lack in government, they make up for in strong communal ties. Anarresti goods and services are free to all, but anyone taking more than they need are quickly called out for their “propertarian” motives. When a famine strikes, even taking a full serving of rations from one of the communal cafeterias is enough to get suspicious sidelong glances. Anyone deemed too self-centered is harshly ostracized from social circles, and in a communal society, if you don’t have the community you have nothing. This knee-jerk need to conform quickly stagnates Anarresti society. After all, it’s pretty hard to innovate when you’re a slave to public opinion. This leads Shevek, a brilliant physicist and the novel’s protagonist, to travel back to Urras and all its propertarian ways.

LeGuin wrote this in 1974, riding high on the second wave of feminism, and it’s a testament to her brilliance that she so clearly foretold what would happen when that wave crested. Just as Anarresti anarchism allowed systems of power and coercion to creep back into their society over the generations, so feminism is in danger of being co-opted back into the patriarchy. I’ll be very clear about what I mean when I say “patriarchy.” I mean the system within our society that functions by way of dominance and submission. Historically, men, being physically stronger and socially and economically wealthier, have benefited most from this arrangement, having the power and connections to dominate their enemies and at times their female “partners.” Thus, a hundred years ago, you could very easily equate the oppressive patriarchy with men—the whiter the better. bell hooks even labels this system as “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

That equation isn’t so simple anymore. The upper-class and people of power are more diverse than ever. But that doesn’t mean the patriarchal system is any less dead. After all, it’s great that women and minorities are holding more powerful positions in our society, but not if they enable the same old system of oppression that we’ve always had. It isn’t a feminist victory for women to become the oppressors, the dominant. The victory comes in removing the need for dominance entirely.

We’ve lost the revolutionary mindset that the 60s and 70s had at the mainstream level. The Anarresti lost theirs over two hundred years, but it only took us twenty. The anti-feminist backlash came in the eighties and nineties and continues today, chipping away at all the earlier feminist victories. One generation—that’s all it took.

A revolutionary mindset—an awareness of where we are in the world and how we affect it. That’s a scary thing. It requires us to be forever open to the realization that we must change—on fundamental levels—and the humility to be willing to make that change. I wonder if we can maintain it for any length of time. It’s an uphill battle for sure, but at least The Dispossessed is great reading for along the way.

New Moon: The Lowest Common Denominator

Any person not living under a rock knows by now that New Moon has been released this weekend– while shattering the single day domestic box office record and the midnight screening record on Friday. Evidently, 87% of the advance ticket holders were women. 87%! Consider also that the Twilight Saga was first written by a woman, followed by a female-written screenplay which was then directed by a woman (well, the first installment)– could this mean anything for women?

Over at Broadsheet, Kate Harding was wondering about this, if it could be a feminist triumph. Basically, women are showing themselves to be a major force to be reckoned with when it comes to the box office and Hollywood should take note and start making more movies that appeal to women.

Hellz yeah! Many, many, many more films should be made (written, directed, generally worked on) by women. For fuck’s sake, women only hold 18% of film jobs!  This is appalling but do I want Twilight used as a benchmark for women-made/oriented films? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

The whole saga of Twilight, besides being, in my opinion, anti-feminist, plays right into all kinds of antiquated ideas about women and what they want. Women will only go to see a movie about a love story (preferably one involving the ”romantic” notion of love at first sight). Women need men in their lives to feel complete, safe, happy. Women want the dangerous guy who will protect her and make decisions for her. Women really want to get married young and skip college. Women should (or would just be plum happy to) ditch their friends and family and any kind of life of their own to be with a man.

What about strong female characters that won’t tolerate a boyfriend who ignores her wishes? Or who don’t want to change their lives to suit their boyfriend’s? Or who don’t want to get married and have children? What about female characters who have goals and desires and interests of their own that don’t have anything to do with a guy?

Unfortunately, New Moon is demonstrating that a whole shit ton of women still want some dramatic, sweeping love story (with a vapid heroine and a super hot, controlling hero). But this is by no means defines or suits all women’s tastes, just like bromances don’t epitomize all male relationships. More women need to be involved in the film-making industry, in writing and creating projects that give voice to the varied experiences and interests of women everywhere. Vampires optional.

Dita Von Teese and Feminism

I’ve been fascinated by Dita Von Teese, the burlesque superstar, ever since I read about her several years ago. I was captivated, by her look and, yes, by her job. She has porcelain-fair skin and brunette hair; she dresses and does her make-up like a glamorous hollywood star of the 1940s, emulating a time period and the films I love watching. I loved that she dismissed, even at the behest of others, the blonde-hair, tanned-skin beach babe look in favor of what she wanted, what she found beautiful.

She performs in extravagant burlesque shows, with expensive, meticulously made, Swarovski-studded costumes and sets and takes pride in being a performer, in striptease. (Her most famous routine involves a giant martini glass. Others involve a carousel horse, a giant tube of lipstick, an opium den.) She is a smart, talented, and creative woman. She works on designing her own shows as well and is very successful– successful at doing something shy, introverted me couldn’t conceive of actually doing myself. Stripping.

Hmmmm. Stripping. Despite all my admiration for this strong, successful woman, there’s a little voice nagging at me- my feminist voice- wondering if I should really be so full of admiration. What’s bothering me is this: is it feminist that a woman takes off her clothes for the pleasure of a crowd?

First, I want to be clear. I’m not denouncing Dita Von Teese or any burlesque dancer or stripper. I’m simply wondering, when it comes to taking off your clothes for entertainment, where is the line between your local strip joint and burlesque? What really makes them different from each other and is one “better” than the other and more acceptable for a feminist?

When you’re involved in an industry where beauty and sexiness is power, what happens to you when you lose that which most people who aren’t Sophia Loren eventually do? In pornography, a woman’s value is reduced to her looks, some cookie-cutter standard of “hot” that’s supposed to get the dudes off. And if she doesn’t adhere to those standards then beat it, doll face. Dita Von Teese, however, defies this in many ways. She’s 37, for one, and certainly doesn’t look like or behave like the average porn star. I couldn’t imagine her taking part in a recorded (or photographed) session of gratuitous moaning.

The more I think about it, the more Dita Von Teese seems to have more in common with a ballet dancer than a stripper. And ballet is another industry that demands women look a certain way. Careful attention paid to costumes, sets, routines?  Check. Ballet Shoes? Check. High level of physical fitness? Check. It’s just ballet dancers run around in skin-tight leotards and don’t remove them on stage. (And it is much more of an established art form.)

Maybe I’m just thinking about this way too hard. Got caught up in the whole nude thing. Like professional dancers, Dita Von Teese too makes her living with her body. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad, or anti-feminist thing. What do you think?

For the Team ?

I’ve been following the debate churning around the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and this whole idea that keeps getting spit out, the "take one for the team," defense is driving me nuts. Reminds me of something Josh Lyman from the ‘West Wing’ would have said. (I’ve been watching a lot of ‘West Wing’ DVDs lately). And he totally would have been behind the amendment because he understands the system in a way that the ladies just don’t seem to get. We need better health care now, he’d explain, which is just more important than half the country’s population getting affordable access to an abortion- a very common, legal procedure. Josh Lyman and his political, Democrat cronies (so many white, male and privileged) would give away the farm just so they could keep a single hog and call it a bi-partisan victory. What ludicrous bullshit.

Katha Pollitt has a great piece in The Nation about this. She said everything I wanted to say about this, especially after reading Peter Beinart’s noxious cow-pie in The Daily Beast justifying the "big-tent" Democratic Party. Never mind its pandering, sexist shenanigans if it can score a few votes.

Hmmm… the party that invited a whole bunch of conservative, anti-choicers on board… anyone thinking we need another party?


Take a look at Katha Pollitt’s piece, Whose Team is It, Anyway? at The Nation.

Why Teen Girls Read Twilight

A couple days ago, The Guardian had a post about Twilight and why “teenagers like to eat the Twilight novels.” (Really, these teenagers “eat” the books.) And by “teenagers” the writer, Tanya, means teenage girls. We have a psychoanalyst’s predictable take that it’s all about sex (these young readers are nurturing dark fantasies of “penetration” in their girly subconscious) and then a psychologist’s idea that the vampires-sucking-on-blood-schtick is really a cozy “metaphor for how much we need love and how much we need to be needed.” And another take is that it’s about power because the readers can be “strong and vulnerable to darker forces.”

So, when Edward Cullen stalks Bella, shows up unannounced in her bedroom and refuses to honor her decisions, young girls are supposed to feel empowered? Oh, and when he leaves her after, what, a year of knowing each other, and she collapses into a depressive, wallowing self-pity puddle because she (one among billions) experienced a break-up and then behaves one tenuous step removed from suicidal, she’s being strong? Empowered? Both? Sounds more like the “need to be needed” take. Or from a psychoanalyst’s perspective, maybe Bella is just so pissed and sad that she’s deprived of her (subconscious) sex outlet she must want to kill herself. Really, what else is there to live for?

Young readers don’t understand any of this, of course. These secretly penetration-craving, needy girls are outsiders, “uninformed and sickened by cravings they struggle to satisfy." Damn you, subconscious! If only you would let these poor girls know that’s why they’re spending hours reading badly written, trite books about pretty, glittery vampires (is it at all convincing that something sparkling in the sun like diamonds is called a monster?) via a rambling narrator so they can act on their impulses in a more stimulating and pleasurable way. It’s making them sick! Thankfully there’s Twilight, which at least gives them a vampire to identify with so they can vicariously experience the vulnerability and the thrill of power and sexual fantasies (with snuggles afterward.) But the sex will have to wait until marriage, of course. I mean if Edward, The Vegetarian Vampire, can wait, surely any human can too.

Why have teenage girls been bitten by the Edward Cullen bug to devor the Twilight novels? Guardian

Feminism and Gail Collins’s “When Everything Changed”

I mean, is it reeeeeeeeeally ok that a woman like Sarah Palin  should be called a feminist just because she has a vagina? Sure, she has a pretty powerful career, but what about all the  anti-choice and just plain nutty, paranoid brand of politics she peddles?

Check out Ariel Levy’s piece in the New Yorker on today’s feminism and its “politics of identity.” As in today, mainstream feminism is all about just having vaj rather than the 1970s’  “politics of liberation” (equal pay for equal work, reproductive rights, etc).

Feminism and Gail Collins’s “When Everything Changed”: newyorker.com.

Face it

From the awesome Kate Harding at Broadsheet-

Face it: The Democratic Party is not for women

On how the attitude of compromise espoused by the Democratic Party is compelling women to forfeit, nibble by nibble, reproductive rights.  (Think the “Stupid Shits” amendment).  Maybe it’s time for women to finally say “no.”

Posted using ShareThis

Girly Men

They like to eat cakes, shop, have female friends, cook. They’re not interested in designer labels, fancy cars, or career competition. They are Japan’s growing group of young “girly men” who eschew their culture’s role as traditional men. (They’re also called “herbivorous males” because “real” men eat meat and femalish men eat grass). Some also like to wear bras and skirts, some want to stay home with the kids and cook while the wife goes to work, some aren’t interested in marriage. And I think these gender-bending, role-bending men are friggin’ awesome.

But the machismo! Masahiro Yamada, a professor of sociology at Chuo University in Tokyo is worried how girly men will affect future Japan, “ as young Japanese men become more timid and more averse to taking risks, it will affect the energy and vitality of the society.” His sexist assumptions are obnoxious, yes, but telling of how Japan views men and women: men are the energy and vitality of a society; being timid, shy, introverted, uncomfortable at risk-taking is a bad thing (especially for men); and women won’t be able to handle the kind of high-pressure jobs that risk-taking men can handle.

Those ideas aren’t all that surprising coming from a society where birth control wasn’t legalized until 1999, where a trademark of the traditional, carnivorous male is a trophy wife, and where, thanks to exported Western culture, a man is supposed to be “macho and purchase products to win a woman’s affection."(Doesn’t seem so far removed from American society, does it?)

A resent article in The Economist noted the link between the economy and gender roles in Japan: fewer men and women are marrying young and the birth rate has fallen sharply– largely due to“poor job prospects for men—and for women who marry.” In the coming years, this will prove to have an adverse affect on the Japanese economy. Again, the jobs go to the men and the women’s contribution to the economy is through marriage, as an object to be bought for.

When a society is set up like this, is there any wonder why women would yearn for strong, masculine manly men? If we agree with Hiroyuki Kobayashi, the creator of the samurai adventure video game "Sengoku Basara," (Devil Kings) popular among Japanese women, then that kind of man is what women want, the big wage earners, the providers. Not the humble girly men.

It could have been, in part, the current uncertain, economic climate that saw the growth in the numbers of girly men. Slate and Times Online articles note the “bubble” period in the ’90s when the economy was thundering and jobs were secure that saw so much rampant conspicuous consumerism. But now, there’s a generation of men that show little interest in what it might not be able to get.

Regardless, rejecting the consumerism that so reinforced gender roles makes me cheer these girly guys on even more. It’s fucked up that your worth as a man is in buying shit (and being aggressive enough to earn that top job that allows you to buy the shit) and, as a woman, in having a rich enough husband to buy you expensive shit.

This, of course, spells doom for the Japanese economy. Per Times Online, Japanese “sociologists are worried about the effect on the shrinking population of a generation of men who are not interested in girls.” These girly men aren’t interested in buying expensive goods for themselves, let alone girls and of course, marketers are scheming on ways to get this nontraditional group to buy things. Also, if men aren’t marrying, they aren’t having families, and without families, there can be no children (and even less people to buy for), natch. But really, why, again, must a woman, or a man, be married to have a child?

Instead of trying to box a group of young people into old ways of behavior, why not realize (and accept) that old, traditional views of gender and old masturbatory ways of spending aren’t sustainable or suitable for the majority of young people– and this could be a good thing. Wasn’t it the carnivorous, aggressive greed of a whole host of people, most certainly in the U.S., that got the world into this economic downward spiral in the first place?

There needs to be a new way of doing things. A new economic model, for one thing, that doesn’t hold up absurd spending and credit and debt as a measure of a person’s success. Maybe Noreena Hertz’s Co-op Capitalism that values "co-operation, collaboration and collective interest” would be better? But whatever the answer, traditional, out-moded notions of gender need to change, too. The girly men are on to something and they’ve got plenty of people taking. Now we just need more.

Further Reading:

Girly Men of Japan Just Want to Have Fun (Times Online)

The Herbivore’s Dilemma (Slate)

Japan’s Samurai Culture: The Need Another Hero (The Economist)

The New Co-op Capitalism (Daily Beast)

10 reasons abortion must be covered

10 reasons abortion must be covered

Posted using ShareThis

Marry Me?

With all the blogosphere chatter this past week about feminist Jessica Valenti’s resent nuptials, I’ve been thinking about why people want to get married. To marriage my initial reaction is a humdrum “eh.” I don’t really care if others get married or if they don’t and don’t much care if I take a stroll down the wedding aisle one day.

But I’m baffled why people want to get married now. The patriarchal notions of marriage, of a domestic life headed by a man, the breadwinner, and woman, the cook, cleaner and caregiver, should be outmoded and passe, but the fact that in many households where men and women both work, the woman does a disproportionately greater amount of the chores and child-rearing. This indicates that marriage, even now, can reinforce pernicious gender stereotypes.

It boggles my mind, then, why feminists would want to entrench themselves in this kind of system, but, on the other hand, if anyone would be aware enough and willing to demand an egalitarian household, it would certainly be the feminists. One would hope anyway. There’s also gay marriage where the traditional gender stereotypes don’t play out. Maybe these are ways in which the institution of marriage can finally shuck off the patriarchal reins and change for the better.

In terms of gay marriage, having the state legally recognize that love and commitment is a potent symbol that says there’s nothing wrong or “unnatural” with the way two men or two women love. Gay men and women should be allowed to marry and given the same legal rights as straight men and women. Aside from that, though, I see marriage today as unnecessary. Anyone can live together, share their lives, love, finances. Even have children– without marriage.

Signing a legal document committing to be with and love another person forever strikes me as hugely stupid. Especially for someone in their 20s when there’s potentially fifty plus years where something could go horribly wrong. Affairs, abuse, simply growing apart, or falling out of love. Over 40% (maybe even more than half) of the marriages in the U.S. end in divorce so the odds work against any enraptured couple. Break-ups are hard enough so why add the legal problems on top of it. (That’s not to say no one wouldn’t experience any kind of legal troubles in a non-marital break-up, especially if children are involved, but you couldn’t help but involve a lawyer with a divorce).

Is it a question of commitment? Am I less committed to my boyfriend if I say I don’t want to marry him? No, I don’t think so. A piece of paper, and the bells and whistles that come along with it (a ring, a ceremony with a special dress and cake and pictures) are fleeting, material things that won’t change my feelings for him. And the brouhaha made about the wedding ceremony these days a la Bridezillas underscores how material (and I’ll even say unnecessary again) the institution has become.

Aside from the potential benefits in the legalities of marriage, which I imagine only a few couples contemplate, why do people get married? I don’t mean to trash the whole idea, or anyone who is married, many people I respect (including feminists and family) are married. I’m genuinely curious: why?