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

Tag: Celebrity

In honour of the wonderful Elly Jackson

It was recently Elly Jackson’s 23rd birthday, so I thought we ought to celebrate! (But, uh, ran a little late, apparently!) Who is Elly Jackson, you ask? She’s half of British electro-pop band La Roux, who won this year’s Grammy for best electronic/dance album.

She’s also one of my favourite pop stars, because she refuses to play into a mode of femininity that doesn’t fit with her personal gender presentation preferences. She keeps her red hair sticking up, her clothes androgynous, and doesn’t ever smile for photoshoots. It’s wonderful to see a young woman who simply doesn’t care to be like anyone else, who wears the clothes she wants and makes the music she loves. It’s people like Ms Jackson who show that you don’t have to conform to be popular or, more importantly, to be good at what you do. A very happy belated birthday to her.

You have to check out La Roux’s song “Bulletproof,” which may get stuck in your head for a week solid, just to warn you. Embedding is disabled on the video, so click through to see it. Lyrics here. A transcript follows:

We open with lines snaking across a floor covered with geometric objects. There’s a shot of a pair of shoes, and then of their owner, a red-haired woman dressed in an androgynous style, sitting in a white chair with head bowed to her left side. Her head snaps up and she begins to sing. She rises and walks along a (clearly digitally created) room governed by geometric shapes and lines. The colours of the room change as we move into the chorus – and the same for the next verse – and for some shots she is standing still rather than walking. She’s back in the chair for the bridge, then, for an instrumental section, walking along a black pathway in a white room as a lot of geometric shapes hit the floor and bounce, with an explosion-like effect. Another chorus, as she walks along a corridor, the shot fragmented with a broken glass effect so that we can see her wearing bits of different outfits she has been wearing through the video (a black and white one, black clothes with a white jacket featuring coloured patches, a grey ensemble and so forth). Then there are rapidly-switching shots of her in different outfits. We end with her sitting in a chair, the shot zooming out as the lights go out.

Chris Brown, Still Keepin’ It Classy

Chris Brown made his way to GMA this morning and was riding on the high of being relevant again, what with headlines about his penis and the restraining order against Rihanna being lifted. He’s changed his ways, he keeps assuring us, and those anger management classes were a huge help.

But then GMA asked him about Rihanna and I guess that’s when the high ends, because he lashed out and took his anger out on his dressing room:

[…] Brown stormed into his dressing room and started screaming and tearing the room apart. Workers in the building called security. Before they arrived, insiders say a window in his dressing room was smashed, with the glass shattering and falling onto 43rd and Broadway.

Oh Chris Brown… Please take some time to continue working on yourself and your issues. You really need to stop.

On Charlie Sheen

It probably isn’t super surprising to hear that I can’t stand Charlie Sheen. The fact that Two and a Half Men exists makes me believe that none of us deserve nice things. I think he’s a jackass and an abusive, egomaniacal coward. So while I can’t feel all that sad for him about his very public meltdown (clearly he is BI-WINNING), I’m a little disturbed that his pattern of violence against women never got him booted from any of his projects.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad his anti-Semitism finally got him canned (because contrary to a lot of the reports, it was his emphasis on the Jewish-sounding name of the Two and a Half Men creator that was so offensive, not just the fact that Sheen insulted his boss). But…

In addition to wreaking all manner of havoc on himself with drugs and alcohol that has put him in the hospital and the show on hiatus, Mr. Sheen has done a lot of damage to the people around him, women in particular.

In 2006, his wife at the time, Denise Richards, filed a restraining order, charging that Mr. Sheen had pushed her down, thrown chairs at her and threatened to kill her in person and on the phone. The couple eventually divorced.

Mr. Sheen then had a series of very public relationships with sex film stars, which is certainly his prerogative — talent is as talent does — but he also continued to exhibit a pattern of violence toward women.

Mr. Sheen was charged with a felony for an incident on Christmas Day in 2009 in which he threatened to kill his wife, Brooke Mueller, while holding a knife to her throat. According to the police report, Mr. Sheen “started to strangle Mueller then he pulled out a knife he always carries on his person and held the knife to Mueller’s neck and threatened, ‘You better be in fear. If you tell anybody I’ll kill you.’ ”

Last fall, Mr. Sheen went on a rampage in the Plaza Hotel in New York. A hired escort who had locked herself in the bathroom claimed he had put his hands around her neck and threatened her while his former wife Ms. Richards and his children slept down the hall.

Yeah. When Mel Gibson is calling you to offer his support because you’re such a damn mess, it’s time to re-examine your life. And despite the obvious… troubles… he’s going through, it’s shameful that we’re so willing to look the other way while he abuses women.

Also? I know it’s wrong to inject humor into a post like this, but: Charlie Sheen on Charlie Sheen’s favorite drug:

“It’s called Charlie Sheen,” said one of the highest paid actors in television. “It’s not available because if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

God bless him. Whoever has him in their Celebrity Death Pool is going to be coming up roses pretty soon.

Why under-educated pop stars should probably not try to talk politics.

Oh Justin Bieber, your hair is so pretty but you are not the sharpest knife in the drawer:

In his new Rolling Stone cover story, Justin Bieber tackles the hard stuff: sex (“I don’t think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them”), politics (“I’m not sure about the parties, but whatever they have in Korea, that’s bad”), health care (“Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him”), and the big one, abortion. “I really don’t believe in abortion,” Bieber tells the magazine. “It’s like killing a baby?” But what if that baby (baby, baby, oh) were a product of rape? “Um. Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”

Yes, ladies, everything happens for a reason — including being raped and getting pregnant. Maybe next time the Beebs gets into an accident or suffers an injury, he should tell himself that everything happens for a reason, and so there’s no need to avail himself of Canada’s excellent health care system. Wouldn’t want to interfere with God’s plan. That’s what the Koreans do.

Also, this is why reporters shouldn’t ask ignorant-ass pop stars about politics. Ask him more about hair products. The people have a right to know.

Why Roger Ebert is the best

He is hilarious, and also such a stealth feminist:

“No Strings Attached” poses the question: Is it possible to regularly have sex with someone and not run a risk of falling in love? The answer is yes. Now that we have that settled, consider the case of Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher), who first met when they were 6 and now meet when they’re maybe 26. Busy people. He’s a low-rent TV producer and she’s a medical student. She doesn’t have time for romance, and he’s dating the sexy Vanessa (played by the well-named Ophelia Lovibond).

…

All of this is fun while it lasts. Then the wheels of Hollywood morality begin to grind. There was a time when the very premise of this film would have been banned, but times change, and now characters can do pretty much anything as long as they don’t get away with it. Although “No Strings Attached” might have been more fun if Adam and Emma had investigated the long-term possibilities of casual sex, it is required that the specter of Romantic Love raise its ominous head. Are they … becoming too fond? Emma suggests they try sleeping with others so, you know, they won’t get too hung up on each other. If you’ve ever seen a romantic comedy you know how that works. Experience shows that not sleeping with others is the foolproof way of not getting too hung up, etc.

This is a strange film. Its premise is so much more transgressive than its execution. It’s as if the 1970s never happened, let alone subsequent decades. Emma and Adam aren’t modern characters. They’re sitcom characters allowed to go all the way like grown-ups.

You should read the whole thing. And if you’re bored and looking for more Ebert reviews, I would recommend this old-ish one, where he eviscerates Nicholas Sparks. It’s the best take-down I’ve seen since Bruni reviewed Cipriani.

So Naomi Wolf is just trolling at this point, right?

I mean really.

Wolf argues that rape victims should have their names published in the press, because withholding their names “harms women.” Why does it harm women? Because it implies that rape is really really bad. And also it means that rape victims aren’t accountable to… someone. She seems to say that anonymity in the media means that rape victims will never have their motives examined, and that the context of the alleged assault will never come to light. Which is just not true. In fact, that is exactly what we have courts of law for. And that’s why Wolf’s argument falls totally flat — we do have legal mechanisms in place to counteract all of the harms she alleges occur from keeping rape victims anonymous. We do not, however, have very many mechanisms in place to counteract all the harms that routinely occur to rape victims when we publicize their names in the media. We also have a whole lot of people, like Wolf, who are happy to publicly shame rape accusers, and who in doing so discourage other rape victims from coming forward. And we have a disturbingly low reporting rate for sexual assault, and an even lower conviction rate. And, while Wolf says that the clothing a victim was wearing or who she had sex with previously are “irrelevant,” those details and others are very often trotted out to discredit women who accuse men of sexual assault; rape accusers are routinely painted as sluts or gold-diggers or attention-whores or vengeful bitches or crazy people. No other class of alleged crime victims are so often and so systematically disbelieved and shredded in the media.

Which is why we don’t publicize their names in the media.

But Naomi Wolf knows all of this. Most logical and ethical people can reason through all of this. I sincerely believe that Naomi Wolf, at this point, is not interested in the substance of even her own arguments. I believe she’s interested in reviving a gasping career, and she’s realized that this is a pretty damn good way to get people to talk about her again. She’s the Ann Coulter of feminism, and I’m sure the right-wing-welfare checks will start pouring in any day now. I hope she at least gets a nice house in Connecticut out of it.

Oh right, Bradley Manning.

So the big Julian Assange news today is that he’s being released on bail, and Michael Moore is contributing. In fact, Moore went on Keith Olbermann’s show last night to encourage other progressives to donate to Assange’s bail — the accusations, they agreed, are “hooey.” Because Assange is a flight risk, his bail was set at $315,000, and he was released with a monitoring device to a 10-room mansion on a 650-acre estate owned by Vaughan Smith, the founder of a journalists’ club in London.

Now, I’m glad Assange was released on bail — there’s no reason to hold people in prison (especially in solitary confinement) if they don’t pose a threat to others and if they can be reasonably guaranteed to show up at their trials. Bail away, I say. Does Assange have a target on his back, and is the US undoubtedly trying to get him into the best possible position for extradition? Yessir, I would guess yes. Is that totally fucked? Yes, yes it is! And does Michael Moore have every right to contribute to Assange’s bail? Sure he does.

But let’s not pretend that contributing to Assange’s bail is a neutral act, and that Moore is only contributing because he can. Bail doesn’t help Assange fight extradition. It doesn’t do anything to forward his WikiLeaks-related plight. It gets him out of jail for the rape accusations. Moore also can contribute that $20,000 to RAINN, but as far as I know he hasn’t gone on Olbermann to tout that giving spree.

Moore could also use his platform to stand up for, say, Bradley Manning — who is also being detained, by the way, in pretty deplorable conditions. Manning, though, doesn’t have a name that has become synonymous with the WikiLeaks project; he doesn’t have the same cult of personality surrounding him as Assange. In fact, you can’t even blame lying bitches for his incarceration. To talk about Manning, we’d have to talk about the actual content of the information posted by WikiLeaks; we’d have to get into whether states ever need secrets, and what degree of transparency we should be demanding, and how much the public has a right to know, and whether anything should be obscured from public view. We’d have to address a figure who did some complicated things, and who doesn’t have the enormous support that Assange does. We’d have to talk about the fact that WikiLeaks is way, way bigger than just Assange. We’d have to muddle through conflicting ideals of transparency and safety and freedom and security. We’d have to do the hard stuff, in other words, the stuff that doesn’t fit as cleanly into back-patting blog posts and one-time donations. Moore, to his credit, publicly supports the release of Bradley Manning, and spread the word about pro-Manning protests on his website. But Manning certainly hasn’t gotten the attention from the left that Assange has; he hasn’t become the poster boy for free speech and transparency. The accusations against Manning — stuff that actually relates to WikiLeaks — have been largely obscured.

I’m glad that some people — Glenn Greenwald, for example — are doing the hard stuff. I certainly can’t claim that I have been, at least not in any public platform. But it’s disheartening to see someone like Michael Moore, who claims to be the champion of the little guy, so quickly forget that there are a lot of little guys here who are in a lot of trouble and who don’t have the world watching. There’s Bradley Manning. There are all of the rape survivors who are hearing the same old shit about how women ask for it because we went here or we talked to him or we consented to something sexual or we fell asleep in his bed or we wore that or we must have wanted it because he’s so important. There are the two women who accused Assange of rape, who have had their names and addresses and personal information distributed across the world, and at least one of whom has fled Sweden.

Oh, right. Little guys.

Sadie has more on this, and has started a Twitter campaign. Go read.

Naomi Wolf: Assange captured by the “dating police”

Naomi Wolf
Photo via http://bluebears.tumblr.com/post/2135052468/privilege-denying-naomi-wolf

Way to fly that feminist flag, Naomi. As Jessica Valenti points out, it sounds like Wolf just doesn’t read the internet or do much of anything in the way of research before she suggests that Julian Assange is accused of sexual assault because he was texting and a bimbo got mad. It’s embarrassing.

Now, I don’t doubt that Interpol’s response to the sexual assault allegations against Assange were politically motivated (does anyone really doubt that?). No reasonable person is under the impression that Interpol regularly scours the continent for every man who is accused of assault — Interpol can hardly be bothered to track down big-time human traffickers who sell women and girls to men who pay to rape them, so it’s not like they got their act together because Assange’s alleged predatory behavior was so horrible that they had to act swiftly and thoroughly.

But just because the vigor with which Assange was pursued was clearly politically motivated doesn’t mean that the accusations against Assange are totally incredible, or that it’s unjust that he will have to face them. It doesn’t make Interpol the “dating police.” It doesn’t mean that the women are motivated by “personal injured feelings.” In fact, it is totally possible to support the WikiLeaks project and to think that the international response to Assange and the project is thoroughly fucked up and to think we should withhold judgment on whether or not Assange is actually a rapist and also to think that we should withhold judgment on whether the women are lying, and to not discredit the women involved, and to not create a hostile climate for rape survivors, and to not play into every tired old stereotype about women and rape.

Seriously, we can chew gum and walk at the same time.

Some thoughts on “sex by surprise”

There’s a lot going around in bloglandia and on the interwebs about WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange’s sexual assault charge in Sweden; commentators are saying that Assange didn’t really rape anyone, and these are trumped-up charges of “sex by surprise,” which basically means that Assange didn’t wear a condom and so days later the women he slept with are claiming rape. Totally unfair, right?

Well, no, I’m not sure it’s that straightforward. The actual details of what happened are hard to come by, and are largely filtered through tabloid sources that are quick to offer crucial facts like the hair color of the women (blonde) and the clothes they wore (pink, tight), but it sounds like the sex was consensual on the condition that a condom was used. It also sounds like in one case, condom use was negotiated for and Assange agreed to wear a condom but didn’t, and the woman didn’t realize it until after they had sex; in the second case, it sounds like the condom broke and the woman told Assange to stop, which he did not. This is of course speculation based on the bare-bones reported description of events, but it’s at least clear that “this is a case of a broken condom” isn’t close to the whole story. (It’s also worth pointing out that the charge is actually a quite minor one in Sweden, and the punishment is a $700 fine).

Withdrawal of consent should be grounds for a rape charge (and it is, in Sweden) — if you consent to having sex with someone and part of the way through you say to stop and the person you’re having sex with continues to have sex with you against your wishes, that’s rape. That may not sound entirely familiar to Americans, since the United States has relatively regressive rape laws; in most states, there’s a requirement of force in order to prove rape, rather than just demonstrating lack of consent. Consent is more often used as a defense to a rape charge, and it’s hard to convict someone of rape based solely on non-consent. Some states, like New York, have rape laws on the books which include “no means no” provisions for intercourse — basically, if a reasonable person would have understood that the sex was not consensual, then that’s rape. It seems obvious enough, but those laws are not used nearly as often as forcible-rape laws; they aren’t on the books in many states, and they’re difficult to enforce even where they are.

Withdrawal of consent gets even trickier. It’s an obvious enough concept for feminist thinkers who have spent more than 10 minutes considering the realities of sex and sexual assault: If you consent to sex but then at some point during sex withdraw that consent by telling your partner to stop, your partner should stop, and if your partner doesn’t stop then that’s assault. It’s not too hard, for those of us who have had sex, to imagine how this works — I have a difficult time imagining any decent human being hearing their partner say “Stop!” in the middle of sex and not, you know, stopping. I can’t imagine hearing my partner say “Stop” and not stopping. And if your partner is saying “Stop stop stop stop!” and you keep going, yes, you are raping them.

But the concept of withdrawing consent seems to be a little tougher for folks who think of sex as something women give to men (or men take from women); it’s definitely a tougher concept for folks who think that sex inherently sullies women. I suspect that the thought process goes, If the damage (penetrative sex) has already been done, then the situation can’t possibly turn into a rape, because the initial penetration itself occurred consensually, and it’s that penetration that’s the basis of the harm in any rape case. Consent, in that framework, isn’t the point. The U.S. is a bit of a patchwork when it comes to withdrawal of consent laws, with some states recognizing that withdrawal of consent is valid and that it is rape if you keep having sex with someone after they’ve said no, and other states either not touching the issue or not recognizing as rape situations where consent is withdrawn post-penetration. Making the Assange story juicier blog-bait in the U.S. is the fact that we’re deeply wedded to the notion of rape as forcible; despite many of our best efforts, a consent-based framework for evaluating sexual assault is not yet widely accepted. So we hear “she consented to sex but only with a condom and he didn’t use a condom and now she’s claiming he raped her” and we go, “say what?”, because that’s so far removed from the Law & Order: SVU sexual assault model. When, really, if you evaluate sexual assault through the lens of consent rather than force or violence, the picture starts to look a little bit different.

Whether withdrawal of consent is what actually happened here is impossible to tell, so I’m not suggesting that Assange is a rapist or that these charges are 100% definitely on-point; I have no idea. But neither do the commentators who are saying that Assange did nothing more than have sex without a condom. And it’s important to counter the “haha sex by surprise those crazy Swedes” media narrative with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it’s agreed that the only kind of sex we’re having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner’s knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you whenever and however.

I’m not particularly interested in debating What Assange Did or Whether Assange Is A Rapist, and I’d appreciate it if we could steer clear of that in the comments section. Rather, I’m interested in pushing back on the primary media narrative about this case, which is that women lie and exaggerate about rape, and will call even the littlest thing — a broken condom! — rape if they’re permitted to under a too-liberal feminist legal system. In fact, there are lots of good reasons to support consent-based sexual assault laws, and to recognize that consent goes far beyond “yes you can put that in here now.” It’s a shame that the shoddy, sensationalist reporting on this case have muddied those waters.

UPDATE: As greater clarity is brought to these charges, it sounds like it was a lot more than “they agreed he would wear a condom and he didn’t.” According to the Press Association, “The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner … The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.” Emphasis mine. Kate Harding has more.