In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: July 2005

Thursday Reads, and My Family On Blogging

Physician, Heal Thyself: Legislating Morality
Fact-esque: Rock, Paper, Scissors Man-on-Doggie Style
Alas, A Blog: Femininity and Motherhood
Pharyngula: Gilder Still Wailing Over His Spanking
Suburban Guerilla: Sea Change
To Be Determined: Why Don’t The Muslims Just Condemn Bombing?
Lawyers, Guns, and Money: The Unbearable Logic of the “Pro-Lifer”

During last night’s dinner at a local Mexican restaurant, the only time I have ever seen my father tipsy (64 oz. margarita), the discussion turned to blogging. My father insisted that Powerline is the best blog in existence, and accused me of being a DKos shill. Then he said he doesn’t like my hair.

It’s too bad my mom feels unable to give my father my blog address. It’s the foul language, she says. He would thusly know that his youngest daughter is skeptical of and not at all in line with most of the Daily Kos community. Further, he would probably be bothered that she is far left of Kos himself.

This week I’ve been helping my mother watch the baby girl of a family friend over at my parents’ house, during which time I have seen my father surf message boards with threads consisting entirely of “TAKE THAT YOU LIBRAL MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!11!1”

Clearly, it isn’t about the language.

He also regularly checks on blogs such as Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Wonkette (for research purposes, I suppose), Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, and a blog named “two chicks and a” something or other, and referred to the writers as “smart young ladies.” I wish I could say the margarita inspired his adulation of radically right-wing blogs, but it wasn’t the alcohol.

I must be adopted.

My sister then brought up the topic of Air America, which she listens to for “entertainment value,” and how ridiculous she finds the commentators. Jerry Springer makes more sense than Al Franken, she said. This isn’t good. I thought about detailing my daily jaunts to wingnuttery by detailing how I listen to Limbaugh and Hannity for outrageous entertainment, but stayed mostly silent to keep the peace, in part because I was outweighed 3 to 1 on the political spectrum and they already think I’m nuts.

The worst part is that I was unable to jump in to explain the nature of blogging, expertise and community. My sister asked how many blogs I read a day — ten? twenty? She balked when I told her I read over two hundred blogs a day. My sister wanted to know the reason “reading people’s opinions” is so compelling. I got no further than the 30-second story, two-minute in-depth coverage criticism of national news media before the topic of conversation was forcibly changed.

I contemplated making a list of moderate and conservative bloggers for my dad to peruse, blogs that I respect despite our differences, but then I realized that it was I, when I first tried to explain to my father what a blog was, who showed him Instapundit in the first place. At that time, I didn’t want him to find his way to my site and chose a site very unlikely to link to mine. But yesterday, I saw him reading Wizbang, a conservative blog with which I have long-term connections, and realized we were crossing paths anyway.

For further reference, my father didn’t know how to turn on a computer before he hit the age of sixty.

The Point and the View

My new favorite blog is BAGnewsNotes, a blog dedicated to analyzing news-based visual representations of politics, politicians, and what essentially functions as propaganda. These images are so often thrown in my face that I forget they are loaded with pro-Bush II administration sentiments.

See today’s post on recent uses of the flag, and a paranoid but amusing post analyzing pictures of John Roberts through the years ( I must say I disagree with the author’s conclusions). For a particularly good post, see the analysis of Time Magazine’s Anne Coulter cover from this April.

Hillary v. Xbox: Long Ramble on Video Games, Movies, Representation, and The Gaze

Dear Sen. Clinton,

I’m writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious “Grand Theft Auto” series.

I’d like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.

I’m talking, of course, about high school football.

Of course I’m not too hot on GTA:SA. I haven’t played it myself but have spent enough time watching friends play to get annoyed. I was curious, especially having read some of Dr. B.‘s research on race representation in video games. This short post got me a-thinkin’.

One of the reasons I can’t lose myself in gaming is the inability to feel represented by the characters, part of the reason I find myself resisting movies as well. As per a comment I left on Pandagon today in response to watching The Woodsman, a movie in which the audience is compelled to sympathize with a pedophile after he is released from prison:

“One thing that truly bothers me — and I know there will be a number of people who will feel compelled to throw out examples once I’ve said this — is that this was another case of telling a martyred man’s story with a sympathetic eye while the victimized women serve only as catalysts for his internal change. I’d like to see more stories about realistic characters told overall, but I think the movie industry is ripe for change when it comes to the telling of hard, challenging women’s stories.

“I have to say that when I saw the movie, the protrayals of survivorhood really bothered me. The female characters didn’t need to be treated flippantly, but neither did they need to be damaged beyond repair. Further, I have a hard time sympathizing with child abusers and rapists. But that’s intensely personal.

I watched that movie, reluctantly, and when it was over I felt like shit.”

Granted, there are plenty of games and non-Lifetime movies that focus on women’s realities, but more often than not, women in entertainment mediums serve as tools for male advancement and enhancement. Part of this is the perceived audience, the production’s mental images of men lining up to buy movie tickets and video games, and only reluctantly tagging along with their female significant others if a woman’s face graces the accompanying promotional poster.

And so, when I commented on Pandagon again on the GTA:SA “Hot Coffee” mod, I said:

“I hate to be a buzzkill but for the most part no one seems to care about perpetuating tiresome stereotypes of urban African-Americans (or for that matter the poor, hick white folks in the game — and Glory Hole Park anyone?), and if the game does anything, it re-presents these stereotypes in a new, exciting! way.

And unfortunately the game sticks to these stereotypes in all the ways in which choice isn’t an option — the charaters’ ridiculous catch phrases, for example, which as far as I know cannot be turned off. It’s tiresome to play and to listen to, no?

“And again, even though the game is ripe for criticisms of race representations, all anyone wants to notice is the violence and the sex. Is it because of the imagined audience?

“Sure the game is interesting and has useful innovations for tech and gaming, but the story and world itself is pretty fucked up, especially if you realize that the world you have to act in is actually quite limited.”

The limitations of sight, story, and representation are one of the hardest things for me to get over when I am supposed to immerse myself into an alternate world. The choices are too limited, the gaze too focused. Books have a different effect on my brain — as a reader I am free to create any picture of the characters, scenery, and actions I like, even differing from the author’s vision as I see fit. The brain alters any act or vision it finds abhorrent to fit the reader and modifies a full, but base, storyline. Oftentimes, when I read, fictional characters lack a face or body at all, and move about in words and empty space.

The jump to watching movies and playing video games is difficult, in that that there is a visual representation, complete with a gaze that almost never matches my own. It is not only irreconcilable to me that I am not represented in form, but that the gaze does not represent mine.

Like Senator Clinton and other congressional prudes, I resist these kinds of games and movies, but for totally different reasons. Too often these media are an attempt to shock us back into feeling after having been made numb by preceeding exploitative “entertainment.” I can’t be entertained by active promotion of racism and sexism and respond negatively to such shock. As with watching The Woodsman I leave the experience feeling like shit.

[Editorial via Chuck‘s post on Correlation v. Causation]

The End of the Hair Experiment

My father has taken to calling me Cruella Deville.

This is, perhaps, the only nickname I’ve ever gotten that could stick. For awhile, several of my friends took to calling me Loretta after the Nick Cave song “The Curse of Millhaven,” and if you know the song this could clue you in to my bad temper.

But my nieces and nephews seem to really like this nickname and I have caught them calling me Cruella behind my back this week. It might have something to do with me not being cool with watching them bowl over my mother’s rules. Grandma may be outnumbered, but Aunt Lauren is mean. And boy, can I be mean. Somewhere along the way I have developed a threatening voice and an evil eye that I can put on with a moment’s notice. I reserve this demeanor for all interactions with other people’s small children.

But the worst part about my father’s new nickname for me is that it is visually apt. When I went from this blond to this brown, I hesitated for a bit wondering if my hair was truly naturally blond.

But judging from the thin skunk stripe running down my head, very blond roots on dark hair, I think I can draw a decent conclusion. It looks like I’ll be going to the salon soon.