I’m really not interested in rehashing the details of the latest installation of l’affaire Goldstein, but if nothing else, it made me aware of this bizarre post by Dr. Helen (Mrs. Instapundit), in which she argues that Jeff’s response to Deborah Frisch actually strikes a blow for women’s rights everywhere, because he stood up to her just like a man and didn’t let her get away with hiding behind the anonymity of the internet!
Never mind, of course, that Deborah Frisch uses her real name on the internet, so she wasn’t hiding behind anonymity.
In any event, it’s not Dr. Helen’s deliciously batty interpretation of the whole hoo-hah that I want to discuss in this post (for that, check out Tbogg’s post on the subject).
Nope, I want to talk about tits.
Dr. Helen:
Have you noticed how many women think they can use the internet to make threats against toddlers, flash their tits, and air their dirty laundry in public, all without repercussions? I have read that women are often afraid to comment on blogs because they do not want to stand up to criticism. However, it seems that there is also the opposite extreme: those women who think that they can say and do anything and no one is supposed to take notice or hold them accountable.
I followed the link about the tit-flashing. Dr. Helen seemed to be all up in arms about the very idea that a woman might flash her tits without repercussion. I was picturing some kind of Girls Gone Wild thing, or a story about someone getting a job offer rescinded because she had pictures of her tits plastered all over her MySpace page.
Not exactly (warning: link has photos your boss might not want you looking at).
Like countless women with digital cameras and a bit of moxie, Dr. Diana York Blaine has three topless photos of herself on photo site Flickr, along with 147 other, more pedestrian, shots. The first, taken at Burning Man, shows the 44-year-old jumping in the air topless, part of a journey she undertook specifically to prove to herself she could appear naked in public. The others were taken by her husband in homage to similar works by 19th-century artist Ingres. Why is this news? Because self-proclaimed “buttkicker” Blaine is a senior lecturer in the writing program at the University of Southern California and has found herself embroiled in controversy over her right to bare boobs.
A controversy, it should be noted, that was manufactured by a right-wing blogger who had a fit of pique over something Blaine wrote in the campus newspaper (something feminist!) :
Blaine’s Flickr account (flickr.com/photos/dianayorkblaine) predates her website, which she started to have a wider forum for her teachings on feminist theory and to brand herself as a public intellectual. Originally posted late last year, the photos received minimal attention until Blaine was targeted by anonymous blogger, Cardinal Martini (cardinalmartini.mu.nu), who was angered by an editorial Blaine wrote in the Daily Trojan proclaiming that “every single male on this campus has the responsibility for stopping rape,” in response to a rape charge brought against a USC football player. On May 8, Blaine’s local NBC affiliate ran a story on her photos, which they’d learned of through Martini’s blog.
Emphasis mine. Cardinal Martini probably thought she was saying that all men were responsible for rape, because of course some feminist somewhere said something sort of like that sometime. So, apparently, he went looking for dirt on her and found the photos at her flickr account, which isn’t linked to her personal website. Martini’s made quite the crusade out of Blaine. He says he’s not criticizing the nudity (or not only the nudity), just her statements about men’s responsibility for stopping rape. Actually, it appears that the nude photos provided a nice pretext for going on an extended tear about feminism — and getting attention for that. Hey, look at what a nice quote he has from Instapundit up on his blog. Bet those nude photos did more for his traffic than anything else anti-feminist he’s ever written.
Also, this goes against Dr. Helen’s little theory that it’s the anonymous women we have to watch out for. Blaine’s not anonymous, but Cardinal Martini is.
Dr. Helen seems to be annoyed (and Cardinal Martini seems to be absolutely incensed) that USC hasn’t fired the untenured Blaine. Their stated policy is that personal websites are personal websites. Blaine has taken the position that, even though she never intended for 100,000 people or so to look at her breasts, they’re out there and she’s going to leave them up as a statement:
“The fact that I can embrace my unmutilated breasts, and eroticize and enjoy them, is an act of resistance against patriarchy. That’s something I’ve achieved; it wasn’t handed to me and has taken a lot of work,” she says.
This, of course, will not do for Dr. Helen, who sniffs that Blaine thinks she can just flash her tits without consequences, and for Cardinal Martini, who mocks this self-acceptance, repeatedly (along with any other feminist thing Blaine says). And then there are those who leave comments on her Flickr page:
What’s striking about the comments left on Flickr and her personal site is how many instantly leap to highly subjective discussions of her breasts—their flaws and their fuckworthiness. One would-be suitor left an e-mail address, telling her, “I wish my wife’s body looked as hot as yours does” and saying he’d like to see Blaine’s breasts “up close and personal.” Another stated, “I like your spirit but you’ve got too much junk in the trunk and your tits are saggy.” Strangers are totally willing to judge Blaine’s body, as well as her age, sexuality, and teaching status.
Blaine, being a feminist, has probably given some thought to this kind of reaction and what it means. The fact that strangers feel so entitled to comment on her body and on her fuckability goes to the way that women, and women’s bodies, are viewed as public property, and that female nudity in film is hardly anything shocking anymore (but get a penis on the screen and suddenly everyone’s gasping). So for good or bad, everyone’s a critic. And we have our inner critics as well who never seem to be satisfied with our breasts or our bodies. Just look at those of us who write for this blog — I think my tits are too big, Jill thinks hers are too small, and piny’s are proving inconvenient. That’s not the sum and substance of our collective body issues, but it just goes to show you that there’s always a way to find yourself lacking.
It’s a bit paradoxical that Blaine could have found such self-acceptance in putting her breasts and body on display and then leaving the pictures on display after Cardinal Martini discovered them and publicized them. After all, women’s bodies are considered in many ways public property, up for criticism. But there’s something freeing, I suppose, in the very act of exposing one’s body regardless of what anyone else thinks of it, of refusing to be ashamed or fearful of what people think, of worrying about whether the male gaze finds you attractive, of not worrying about the male gaze at all. Of not worrying about the repercussions.