November 2010 – Feministe

Cultural Constructions, Part 1

I want to have a conversation about how race and racial difference are constructed in different cultural contexts. This will be a general opening post. In the next couple, I want to turn the lens on whiteness, that wily, often invisible beast that is nevertheless a highly constructed one!

Race is constructed radically differently across cultural contexts, and it’s often quite a shock to see how much.

The Plight of the Successful Woman

It’s a story as old as second-wave feminism (OLD): Successful women can’t find good men. Female empowerment is killing romance! Poor men, sometimes their girlfriends pay for vacations, and sometimes their wives make more money. That must be hard. Some couples manage it, somehow — she pays for all of the big expenses, but when they’re in public he pulls out his credit card so that it doesn’t look like she’s paying. She may be the one filling the joint bank account, but when the check comes, he lays down the cash. And he always drives.

Of course, women like Bridget Jones and Miranda on Sex & the City were rejected for their success, so that is probably also the case for all 20- and 30-something women (who also all exclusively date men and define “success” as “making a lot of money” and are also mostly successful). Right? Don’t Bridget Jones and SATC have their manicured fingers on the pulse of The Lives of Getting-To-Be-Not-So-Young-Anymore Women?

Dated cultural references aside, it’s not a myth that some men (a lot of men, even) are really, really intimidated by women who make more money than them, or who are more highly-educated than them. Yes, reader, I’ve seen it first-hand. It’s true! I have said “I’m a lawyer” and have had men literally turn and walk away from me in bars (although maybe that marks them as more intelligent than I). But more men that I meet — and I’m definitely dealing with an edited pool, since the “I’m a feminist blogger” thing tends to come up relatively early and weeds out the predictable weeds — want to spend time with women who are intelligent and interesting and aren’t looking for a wallet on legs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman has to be traditionally successful in the makes-a-lot-of-money way, but most men I know seem to want someone who likes what she does and has passions and interests that require some brainpower.

Of course, some also run in the other direction when it comes out that no, I don’t want babies in the next few years (yikes); some run in the other direction when it comes out that I’m a lawyer (understandable). So, you know, the “I’m ok with success” thing can come with strings — success is fine, and intelligence is good, but the other signs of traditional femininity had better be there. A lady with a big paycheck who also shaves her legs and wears skirts and puts on mascara and smiles a lot and downplays her intelligence is less intimidating than a lady with a big paycheck who doesn’t do those things. A lady who is successful at work but will take her husband’s last name and stay home for a few years when kids come is less intimidating than a lady who is successful at work but won’t do those things. You bet that men put “intimidating” on a sliding scale; even a lot of the more liberal-minded ones who wouldn’t think twice about a partner with a demanding and well-remunerated career will balk if you suggest that, say, you think your kids should have your last name if you’re the one to gestate and birth them (yes reader I have gotten into that fight, and it was nasty).

But wait, ladies! There are ways to earn big and still score in the mate department:

Ms. Domscheit-Berg, who is also active in the European Women’s Management Development International Network, has three bits of advice for well-paid women: Leave the snazzy company car at home on the first date; find your life partner in your 20s, rather than your 30s, before you’ve become too successful. And go after men who draw their confidence from sources other than money, like academics and artists.

In all seriousness, that is terrible advice, especially the part about finding your life partner “before you’ve become too successful.” College-educated women are the most likely to have happy marriages, and are the least likely to view marriage as primarily a source of financial security. Men and women who marry later have lower divorce rates and more stable marriages. Financial difficulties put a lot of strain on marriage, and are a leading reason for divorce. And statistics aside, do you really want to end up with a man who is threatened by a successful woman? This is just anecdotal, but from what I’ve seen, insecure, gender-traditional misogynists don’t make the best of partners (weird). Let’s not whitewash the reality that a lot of men are intimidated by successful women, to varying degrees, but enough aren’t that it really isn’t so impossible to find someone pretty great. (Even Miranda did it, right girls?) Or at least, it doesn’t require partnering up early to make sure you snag someone before you could possibly start to intimidate him with your ever-growing lady-brain. It definitely doesn’t require hiding your car (or even painting that shit pink).

Plus, boycotting relationships with intimidated-by-women men will eventually edge them out of the gene pool (and will edge their mentality out of our culture). That wouldn’t be so bad.

Radical 80s Prom benefitting WAM, this Friday in NYC

This Friday, December 3rd, join WAM!NYC for a radical 80s prom to benefit the fantastic organization Women, Action and the Media. It’s at the Bowery Poetry Club and starts at 10 pm — be there in your best 80s gear, and get ready to get down. I’m one of the costume contest judges and I already have my Designing Women-inspired outfit ready to go, sequins and all, so you’ve gotta top me if you want to win (and I may or may not have purchased an eyeshadow palette called “Azure Dream” and “suntan” Leggs pantyhose from Rite Aid last night). So show up and look fly.

You can RSVP on Facebook here. All proceeds benefit WAM. And here’s a little INXS/Madonna sweetness to get you geared up.

Nicki Minaj and hip-hop misogyny

Such a great piece – just go read it. A taste:

Often praised as one of the most talented MC’s — female or otherwise — in today’s ever-evolving rap game, Nicki Minaj has an indisputably tight flow, swag for days, and the kind of business savvy that would make even Jay-Z proud.

And her unique blend of feminine hip-hop sensibility is poised to pan out: the hype surrounding this week’s release of her debut album, Pink Friday is palpable.

However, the mainstream commercial acceptance she’s already achieved with her over-the-top, multiple-personality, plasticized, black Barbie persona ought to make us all think twice.

At what point does the narrative of an aggressive female hip-hop artist with crazy sex appeal, and solid street sensibilities become just the opposite — a tale of faux-bravado, empty rhetoric, and deceptive stage gimmicks that only thinly masks a desperation to transcend the confines of one’s true identity? And what does it mean for our music and our people if mainstream black culture can’t tell the difference?

Why men rape

1 in 3 men in South Africa admit to committing rape; 78 percent of men said they had committed some act of violence against women.

Two-thirds of the men surveyed in that study said they raped because of a sense of sexual entitlement. Other popular motivating factors included a desire to punish women who rejected or angered them, and raping out of boredom, Jewkes said.

It’s standard knowledge on a feminist blog that rape isn’t about sex; it’s about power, entitlement and violence. It’s about keeping women in their place, and keeping women as a class fearful. It’s at least a step forward that large media outlets are catching on, and aren’t characterizing rapists as simply sex-crazed maniacs.

Don’t you hate it when…

This is a guest post by Dr. Buckshot Rackoribs. Dr. Rackoribs is the chair of the Male Studies department at Miskatonic University.

A bit of intro:
When I read “Don’t you guys hate it when…” linked by Feministe last Tuesday, I couldn’t help imagining that lurking behind that really, really long sentence was the infamous Privilege Denying Dude himself. After all, the author seems to have decided to ignore not only reasonable standards of punctuation but also any notion of how his coffee-shop amour might feel about his advances (and subsequent retreat). In an effort not to be privilege-denying myself, let me say that I realize I’m not entirely qualified to be inside the head of this (or any) woman. The sketch I present here is a purely imaginative exercise– a fictional speculation as to what might have been going through the head of our French friend while she was being accosted.

Don’t you hate it when…

… for the umpteenth time, some random guy musters up the nerve to talk to you in the hipster coffee shop where you go to get in some relaxing reading time, because he thinks you’re “cute,” but not too “hot” to be off-limits to him and he starts talking to you and he seems remarkably willing to assume you want him to join you there despite the fact you’ve met only moments before, and you laugh uncomfortably, but at least he’s making a good-faith effort to look into your irises instead of down your blouse, and you can’t think of what to say so you mention you noticed him chuckling to himself earlier, which strikes you as sign that he’s either easily amused or possibly unstable, and when he shares what he was laughing about earlier, you realize he’s not crazy, just pompous and self-absorbed, and you laugh, too, because it would be rude to just get up and walk away, and he asks where you’re from and you tell him your family’s from Toulouse, and his blank look tells you he has no idea where that is so you explain that it’s in the south of France, and he asks if it’s near Monte Carlo, and before you can explain that isn’t really at all, he launches into a story, which means that now, for the thousandth, irritating time in your life, you have to listen to someone talk about the prince of Monaco, even though this is like telling a story about the time you saw Bill Clinton on the street in New York City to someone who lives in Toronto, but he seems to have already slid into it without a backward glance, awkwardly cramming it inside the conversation in a way that makes you realize he must be terrible in bed, since he seems much more interested in going through this performance than in whether you actually give a shit, so you giggle self-consciously and think “please shut up!” and look at him in that incredulous way, trying to remember if the story isn’t actually just the plot of the James Bond film you saw last week on late-night TV, until he finishes, and you can’t think of what to say so you tell him what an amazing story that was the same way you used to tell your ex what a mind-blowing orgasm you’d just faked, and he tells you “I know,” and then, with the end approaching closer now, you both start to get up to leave, and in your head you start anxiously worrying why he’s staring at you like an entomologist staring at a butterfly he’s about to collect and his cocksure manner is starting to get more than a little wearisome, and you’re thinking to yourself how wonderful it would be to meet someone who could see you for more than just an exotic romantic fantasy dreamgirl, some auburn-haired Audrey Tautou, since just because he knows you’re French doesn’t mean he knows anything about you at all, and why can’t you meet someone articulate, smart, interested in more than just your looks or your passport, but this guy you would hesitate to even take home to your apartment if things were ever to get that far with him (which deep down you know they won’t, and deeper down you worry that you’re going to have to find a new coffee shop), and then, after all this, as the conversation is going down in flames and you are staring into your now-tepid coffee, agonizing over each passing second, with only a few words separating you from the bidding him adieu and taking your interrupted book someplace else — after all this, you both stand up, and it turns out you’re 3 inches taller than him, and the look on his face, surprised and creeped-out, you look at the floor and even though he’s kind of an ass, you feel judged, and then you feel crummy for letting that bother you, and just because being shorter than a woman makes him feel insecure doesn’t mean you should let yourself feel like some kind of freak, but it’s hard not to when every guy you meet can’t imagine being seen in public without being able to put his arm around your shoulders, and you look back at each other (him up from your chest, you down at him), and you awkwardly, finally say that it was nice meeting him, and he smiles and agrees, but before he’s even done agreeing, you’re turning away and walking out of the coffee shop to finish your damn book in peace?

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Leave a short description of something you’ve written this week, along with a link. Make it specific — don’t just link your whole blog. Happy Sunday!

On Stealing Social Justice Work

I want to talk about a blogular phenomenon that has been irritating me no end for… I can’t even remember how long. This phenomenon is plagiarism. Now, plagiarism comes in a lot of forms. A pretty common one is just plain old incorporating other people’s ideas into one’s work without credit. Today, though, I particularly want to talk about out and out stealing of full posts.

Sometimes, I find posts from feminist blogosphere writers have been copied and pasted onto other blogs or onto Facebook pages or some such.

Tuesday Pile-On

Someone’s parents should have told him, “Sweetie, just because a thought crosses your mind does not mean that it is such a brilliant special snowflake thought that you should broadcast it to the world. Think, edit, speak.” And someone should have told the editor of the Chicago Tribune that the Creative Writing for Beginners coffee-shop musings of twenty-something guy with a Napoleon complex and a boner for French chicks are not necessarily op/ed-worthy.

So go ahead, pile on, and share your thoughts about the longest sentence this side of James Joyce.

Bike Lane Scrooges

Apparently bike lanes in New York City are wildly controversial. Setting aside the fact that bike lanes aren’t actually that controversial – the linked article indicates that bike-lane-supporters outnumber the nay-sayers 4 to 1 — who are these scrooges who are against bike lanes? I understand you want your three lanes of traffic instead of two, and you want to be able to double-park your van without getting a ticket, but come on. This is a big city with incredible public transportation and a whole lot of people; cars are necessary for some, but certainly we should be taking steps to make sure that all New Yorkers are able to get around cleanly, greenly, efficiently and safely. Bike lanes don’t eliminate the ability to drive a car; they aren’t “taking away your rights as a driver,” as some have claimed. They just make you drive a little bit slower (if even). And let’s be real: Drivers of cars are not regularly injured and killed by cyclists; it’s the other way around. With a growing number of people cycling, it’s imperative that the city offer bike lanes so that cyclists aren’t run over, doored, hit, or otherwise injured because they lacked sufficient street space. Drivers can take a deep breath and recognize that in a large and diverse city, sometimes you have to make way for your fellow citizens.