Of course sex sells, but…

Uuuuhhgg.

Sometimes I feel so helpless, women in the world are just shit on, all the time, and shit on each other. I was having a conversation at breakfast this morning with D about the WNBA ’s  latest move to give their players makeup and fashion training in order to market them better. Being the practical dude D is, he says “Yeah, no one watches women’s sports, they can’t make enough money.”

AGH! Why that response? Why is that the practical response, and not the absurd one?! I mean, it’s true–professional women’s sports  can’t make enough money. But it just kills me that it seems like the practical next step for the world is for them to get sexier. And to seal it off, D offered the perfect example, women’s tennis–really fit women running around in really short skirts, it’s a good business model.

Which brings me to my point. The only way a sexier sports player is going to start bringing in the same kind of money as massive male athletes is if a majority of her fans are men. Making women’s sports into such a ridiculous sex show IS NOT going to create more female women’s sports fans, in fact it’ll likely turn off those who are already watching.

The problem is that there just aren’t enough female sports fans who like WOMEN’S SPORTS! Sure there are plenty of women sports fans who like male sports, but just like with the femjock situation, these women have conformed their tastes to what the majority taste is in order to succeed in sports-fandom, which is to like aggressive, beefed-up men’s sports.

So where are the female women’s sports fans? Even in writing this I realize that I don’t watch much professional sports because I’m not interested in how violent hockey, football, and even men’s basketball is. And when I think about the women’s sports I’ve watched, I remember that I enjoy them: women’s tennis (NOT because of the skirts), women’s soccer, women’s Ultimate Frisbee.

What we’ve got on our hands here with women in professional sports is that we just need to make women’s sports more about women, with female fans who will provide ratings and money, and less about getting male sports fans into it. 

Woman as product

Hello friendly readers, I just wanted to let you know that my delinquency here this last week or so has been becasue life and travel have gotten the better of me. I’m delighted to say, though, that Herspective is soon to become a more collective voice with the addition of other contributors. Introductions to come!

In the meanwhile, here’s something to keep you letter writers and women sports fans fueled up in just the right kind of irritated and pissed off way to take more action against the objectification of women:

It’s child pornography. Period.–updated

Disney’s Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus has showed up in photos for the cover of Vanity Fair, with nothing but a blanket covering her top. She’s 15! This is child pornography. Not to mention the photo of her and an older male model (looks to be in his 30s) tangled up in each other in a provocative pose. What THE FUCK!?

Here’s a link to an article. No, no photos posted here–because it’s CHILD PORNOGRAPHY!

The problem with this scandal is that the media, fans, disapproving parents, and the like are blaming Miley Cyrus for being scandelous. But let’s be realistic–15-year-old girls (and boys) are FULL of sexual energy! That is why they need to be protected! Cyrus is a victim of manipulation by a system that insists that young girls and women be sexy and take off their close or lose the lime light. Teenagers make bad decisions and are hopefully guided to some understanding of how not to do it again. Unfortunately, the adults around her are not teaching her that this is a bad way to gain good self-esteem and respect and just a sick way of gaining quick popularity. Shame on the producers and editors of Vanity Fair for this. And shame on her parents who approved of the project.

UPDATE:

I decided to add a bit of actual analysis to why i believe this is wrong. At the time of posting I was rushed and tired, and I’ve since realized that a good rule for blogs ought to be: If you don’t have time to do it right, don’t do it!

Anyway, there are a lot of factors to consider here, as a few of my fellow fems have pointed: 1. she’s 15, post-puberty, sexuality is not a foreign concept to 15-year-old girls; 2.  women are taken advantage of constantly, why is this any different; etc.

I think we can all agree that this is terrible at any age, obviously. The problem I see with Cyrus is that she went to get some photos taken by a pretty powerful and influential magazine, and she got manipulated. It’s common for young girls, they ARE post-puberty and sexual in their own comfort zones, that’s fine. But she’s 15, and she’s being turned into a sex object by adults, for money, and for the comfy cozy reassurance that she’ll be beautiful and popular if she does it.  She is a victim of our society, of the adults around her, and of her parents—one of many, yes, but no less important.

Dissent, that’s what it is.

The other night I got to hear about a friend’s troubles with an old perv she has to work with. She’s been slowly building up resistence, she told us, and was thinking that it was leading to a straight up cut-off, telling him she can’t interact with him about anything but work. The perv in question is twice her age and makes pathetic advances to try to win her attention, calling her his “girlfriend,” and other unmistakably patronizing and objectifying languate. He also manipulates her into paying attention to his “bad days,” pretty often, and she’s begun to respond to his “Oh, I’m not doing so well this moring”s with “Well that’s too bad, see ya!”

It’s interesting to hear about how her voice of dissent is taking formation each day as she thinks about how to approach this and other situations.

Once you become aware of something–whether it is sexism, racism, ageism, abuse of someone–you come to a cross roads where you can choose action and dissent, or cowardace and detachment. Unfortunately, for most people in most cases, we choose to detach. I know that sounds like a generalized cliche, “most of our culture sucks most of the time, blah blah.” But what I’m talking about, my friendly Feminist reader, is YOU! And ME! Us progressive enlightened guys and gals, acting like the jokes people tell and the side comments made, don’t ultimately reflect bigger ideas and concepts that cause discrimination, objectification, and hate.

I’m talking about those times when someone (or you) makes a call to you on the street, and you just keep walking; or when some dude (or you) calls you his sweat heart while excusing himself for bumping into you in a store, and you just roll your eyes at your friend and keep going; or the times when the guy at work (or you) to whom you’ve made it clear that you don’t wish to be friends keeps cornering you at the water cooler for a friendly come-on, and you jiggle it out of your head so as to not cause too much turmoil in the workplace; the countless times someone (OR YOU) cracks a joke at women’s expense, and “it’s just a joke,” so you don’t say anything; and how about those family functions or work parties where the dudes engage you only in that chatty banter about sex or relationships, saving their more intellectual moments for their male counterparts; or how about when you were a kid or when you see kids now, not being chosen for sides during a sport or game because they are a girl or not being given as much credit for a project or experiment because it is assumed the boys around deserve it more?

It happens ALL the time, and there are so many more examples, and the point is: if you’re aware of them, and you brush them off, you are choosing to detach from a personal interpretation of them. You have the “Yeah but he doesn’t mean me!” syndrome. In his Documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhyme, Byron Hurt demonstrates at length why black women tend never to speak up against hip-hops misogyny and rape of its women: because they don’t think the pimps and gangStars are “talking about me,” when they are whistling for their hos, among other things. He explains that these women don’t think of themselves as being targeted for abuse and discriminated against, although documentary-watchers see the statistic on the screen that black women are 35 percent more likely to be raped, and that, yes indeed, those RapStars are talking about them when they swing their bling and call to their multitudes.

And in all of our everyday situations we’re faced with the same things, presented differently from time to time, and we have to choose. My friend is learning how to choose dissent. I call it desent because when you speak out against sexism and discrimination in these small situations, you are not only defending yourself against another, you are speaking out against a system that holds misogyny and sexism as a norm and works against your essential being to feel safe, respected, and free.

Sarah Silverman is Fucking Matt Damon

Just a little funny time!

The problem with dresses

THANK

YOU

FEMINISTING

for this post!

About the sexist New York Times article about why women should keep wearing dresses, and many other cultural references to the pressure on women to dress for men and male standards of femininity.

When I was a kid I often fought with my mom and my dad about dressing and acting “girly.” “Why don’t you ever dress like a girl?” my uncle or dad would say. “Why is it so difficult for you to act like a girl, do you think you’re a boy?” My mom would say. “Becky thinks she’s a boy!” I would get from my sister. All of this was along with being in a patriarchal Catholic environment where sex and sexuality were barely acknowledged otherwise. Why so much pressure to “act and look like a girl” when we weren’t supposed to know we had sex organs to begin with? How can you just skip sex and sexuality and jump right to forcing a gender identity onto someone? Fucking Christianity (and I mean that with as much respect as it deserves). So, I have always felt self conscious in dresses.

There was shame. There was self-loathing. And there was a lot of anger and frustration.

I seriously had this look on my face a lot as a kid.

I got to give it to my brother, though, he didn’t seem to mind either way and we had fun playing together growing up, even as I kept stride with him by boycotting leg- and armpit- shaving as well as wearing any clothing resembling “girly” throughout middle school. I’ll thank him for that someday…

Every summer especially, year after year, I was told that since I was a girl certain things were expected of me and certain freedoms and trusts were not granted me. I can barely think about the sexist and prejudice parts of my childhood now without feeling really self conscious and angry, and without it painfully challenging the core of who I now know myself to be. I didn’t wear a dress willingly until I was about 23 years old…why? I had spent the years until 19 or so hearing about how butch I was and how I wasn’t worth much feminine-wise; and then from 19 until 23 I had left home and begun to redefine my world view and expectations of myself. Through this period I dealt heavily with homophobia, sexism, my anger and my own sense of self-worth–as a “tom boy,” a “loud mouth,” a “..oh I thought you were a lesbian or bi or something…” all while still being very much straight and seeking sexual partnerships with men.

I still have problems with dresses, earrings, shoes, really anything “for women” as far as appearance goes, it’s like I don’t believe my identity can actually include those things–I still have a lot of shame about my sexuality and femininity. Last summer I think I hit a record though–I bought at least 8 dresses throughout the season, and mostly I wear them because they are easy and cooler but also I know I look prettier in them. But like Venessa suggests at the beginning of her post on Feministing, plus some, I have HUGE anxieties about wearing dresses– pervs staring at you, people making assumptions about your sexuality, etc. But I keep upping my “girliness” as a healthy exercise in not being bound by childhood oppression and cultural standards. . . and so I can find my comfort zone someday.

But all my ideals and boycotts and loud-mouthed dissenting aside: I still have a horribly invasive desire to look sexy to my partner–a progressive, “Wouldn’t date any woman not a feminist”  dude, and yet still a dude of all dudes, who doesn’t understand, for example, why I got upset by the comment: “Yeah, now that’s the way ladies should look on a bike!” which he said once while we were biking–me in a skirt. He thought it was a compliment–him calling me sexy.

As for me, I’m not sure if it was more about the language: “you SHOULD look a certain way because you are a lady”; or if it was more about my insecurities that if I didn’t “dress like I should,” he would inevitably find some other women who do dress like “they should,” since most women dress like they “should”–I’m pretty sure it’s a mixture of the two, my objection to lady “shoulds” and my insecurities about not “should”ing enough still.

Girls Rock Camp

What a great review of a documentary featuring what sounds like a great camp for girls!!

“Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em!”

Well, not for these lady fish:

Fish That Doesn’t Have Sex Baffles Scientists

Nicole Kidman is good news for UNIFEM

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23590522-2703,00.html

More on Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Compound

This week all of the over 400 children (all but 24 of whom are female) will be getting DNA testing, and are being held in the court’s custody until further notice. I won’t go further into the case because you can find info. about it just about anywhere.

But I do want to point out the video below, which is just one installment of Larry King Live’s exclusive with some women of the compound. My heart cries out to these women, they are obviously terrified, and are being fed lines. However incapable of speaking truthfully about their own condition, I am SO SO pleased that this story is getting so much coverage, and that these women are being asked to talk to the press. Women are so often silenced. I think in this case, though, the men of the compound know that the public will be kinder to the women, while they keep out of sight.

But while lot’s of outcry and press is good—fuck if the press so damned insensitive? These women keep their eyes down and cower like beaten dogs, and yet the press for the most part (especially Larry King, who doesn’t transition his tone or approach at all) treat them as though they ought to be capable of sitting in front of a gazillion hounding questioners and not pee their dresses.

These women should be treated more tenderly, just like so many female victims of sexual and other violence. Now’s the time for them to get out.

Is anyone out there advocating freedom or help for these women? If so, please let us know via a comment or an e-mail to me.