Rebecca Allen has an excellent post up about why pop culture matters, and why it's important to analyze it.

(and I've been surfing pretty indiscriminately this morning, so I don't remember where I grabbed the link from -- so no hat tip. Sorry.)

Consent

Here's the supposed "nightmare scenario:" a woman suddenly "changes her mind" and all of a sudden the poor innocent man finds himself charged with rape.

And yet, we're told this is a classic "he said/she said," and far from having is life ruined, this man has been acquitted.

I don't want to get into the specifics of this case, but it does strike me as the perfect examplar of one of the fundamental arguments between feminists and society as a whole: if we say that sex with an intoxicated woman is rape, will men start getting criminal records left and right for picking up women in bars?

Please note, before I go on with my rambling, that I'm not saying this particular man is guilty or that the judge was mistaken -- all I know about the case comes from the news reports, and I didn't get to hear any of the testimony. I'm not qualified to offer an opinion, and I'm not a lawyer, either. I just want to talk a little about the situation as described.

The basic problem here is that it's still perceived as okay to have sex with someone who's intoxicated, and severely so. So intoxicated, apparently, that she had to go and lie down. This isn't a case where she'd had a drink or two but was still alert. He had to know that she was pretty drunk, whether she was talking to him or not. Whatever he understood to be happening, why would he think it was okay to make a move in the first place? Why would he even want to?

And I don't mean okay in a legal sense -- I mean why is it culturally okay? This is what needs to change. There's nothing inherently wrong with partying and getting shit-faced, and there's nothing inherently wrong with casual sex and hooking up -- but there has to be a line where too much of the former means the latter has to wait for another day. Who even wants to have sex with someone who was throwing up a few hours earlier? Is consciousness really too much to expect in a sexual partner?

I don't know if this is something that can be legislated -- I'm inclined to think not. Surely, though, we need to shift the cultural attitude. We need to teach our kids and each other that not only is drunk sex not okay, it's not as much fun as sex with a fully conscious, actively and enthusiastically participating partner. Who doesn't taste like vomit (ick).

What's "real", anyway?

I'm somewhat amused at this little kerfluffle over photo retouching in Dove's famous "real beauty" campaign, which, after all, is used to sell smoothing lotions among other things.

Photo retouching is part of our everyday life in a way it hasn't been in years past. Yes, everything you see on a billboard or in a magazine has been heavily retouched -- but so have lots of family photos. Removing red-eye, fixing colour balance -- that kind of thing is easier than it's ever been, thanks to Photoshop and the like. We're getting to a point where there's no such thing as an un-retouched picture.

My outrage is probably lessened, too, because I never thought the Dove campaign was a messianic emanation come to save us from unrealistic body image issues. It is -- it has always been -- an ad campaign, first and foremost. It's a good one, because it gets people talking, and it's certainly nice to see a wider range of female bodies than we're used to -- but it's still just an ad campaign. I mean, for all the claims that it's expanding the definition of beauty, there have never been Dove models who weren't conventionally attractive (even if slightly larger, or older, or of different skin colours than we usually see).

And I think on some level, I always assumed that there was a little bit of retouching going on. It didn't change my feelings about the campaign (which were, and continue to be, mildly positive).

So, do I believe this denial that "oh no, actually, there was no retouching going on"? Not really. But I don't think it matters. We're still asked to judge the picture that's out there, and whether it succeeds or fails as a picture, as an ad. How it got there is a little beside the point.

Why thank you for liberating me from my repression

I'm late to the party on this one, which has already exploded all over the fannish 'net, but I can't let it go by without adding my own (albeit fairly redundant) $0.02.

The Open Source Boob Project, they called it.

Ostensibly, it was an experiment in sexual liberation.

The problem with sexual liberation is that, oddly enough, it so often seems to become men's liberation to objectify women. Theoretically, we're all supposed to be free to express our sexual desires without shame, without feeling dirty. But all too often it starts to feel like an excuse for men to tell women who don't want to take off their shirts or have their breasts groped or have sex with person x y or z that they're "repressed" and that their inhibitions are unreasonable. Women are the objects for the sexually liberated subjects (men) to admire and to use. And that's just unacceptable.

Look, I'm just as much in favour of a utopian orgy world as the next person. But I happen to live in this world. And in this world, we're not all starting from the same place when it comes to control of our bodies. Women live in an entirely justifiable state of fear that they're going to be attacked simply because they have women's bodies. And when we're not worrying about rape, we're worrying about how to make our bodies fit the desireable ideal. We struggle to be attractive without "asking for it". Every decision we make about our appearance and our bodies is made in this context.

If this all sounds rather fraught, well, it is. So you can see why someone asking to grope a woman's breasts isn't just a harmless question. Whether it's respectfully asked or not, whether it's all in good clean fun or not, it's going to make some women uncomfortable. Because they live in the real world where questions about a woman's body's availability are not, by default, good clean fun.

If you're with a group of friends, and you all want to feel each other up, have at it. But for crying out loud, don't do it in public, don't involve strangers, and don't make it a "project" to be expanded to the world at large. Because the world at large already has plenty of unpleasant ideas about what to do with women's bodies and their breasts.

There's been a lot written about this, much of substantially more eloquent than my own semi-incoherent sputtering:

• A link roundup at journalfen
• Kate Nepevu's very eloquent response
• Tamora Pierce's also very eloquent response
• Your cousin Vito proposes some actual action: the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program
• Karen Healy at Girl Wonder weighs in

I couldn't have done it without her

In this article about the new movie Honeydipper, director John Sayles is quoted talking about one of the characters' motivations:

It's not the club Tyrone is afraid of losing, because his wife makes more money mopping floors. It's the fear of losing the idea that he's his own boss, he's not asking to shine your shoes and he's somebody in the community.

(Let me preface the following rant by saying that my problem here isn't really with Honeydipper or with Sayles -- I haven't seen the movie, or even heard all that much about it, and I don't have anything specific to hold against Sayles. But there's something in that quote that I see far too often in our culture, so it's set me off.)

Did you see what was completely skimmed over there?

his wife makes more money mopping floors

So here's the thing. This character can only be "somebody in the community," can only do something that makes him feel complete as a human being because his wife is doing menial labout to put food on the table. Tyrone, like so many men in culture both popular and highbrow, gets to go on a quest for self-actualization because there's a woman in the background worrying about base material reality.

What's really frustrating is that the work of the woman in question (whether wife, mother, or girlfriend-who-might-as-well-be-mother) is usually not appreciated. In fact, it's often used as an example of what a drag the woman is.

Think of High Fidelity, for example. The central conflict of the movie version is that our hero's lawyer girlfriend has become an adult, earning a living, making much more money that our record-store-owning hero. She's essentially accused of selling out. And even though the resolution is supposedly about our hero learning to grow up ... what does he do? He starts a creative endeavour and gets to DJ again. This is growing up? Is he going to be able to do that kind of thing for long if lawyer-girlfriend doesn't keep lending him money?

Practicality, concern for the future, realism -- these are all terrible things that cramp the style of men seeking their true, authentic selves. Just once, I'd like to see a man find his authentic self, and then turn around and say to the woman who's been keeping the bills paid, "okay, now I'm going to work at a soul-deadening job for a while so you can figure out who you really are".

Anyone know of any such examples?

Hide your primary colours! The girls are coming!

I'm sure I've ranted about this before, but you'll have to indulge me. There is nothing that sets me off quite so much as the proliferation of pinkification.

Pinkification is when toy companies take something that was perfectly good and gender-neutral, and create a pink version "just for girls".

We've seen it with Lego (you'll note this is the "girls" category. There is no "boys" category -- the other categories are things like "action figures" and "robotics"). We've seen it with games, like Monopoly and Jenga.

And now, Fisher-Price is making pink versions of... well, see for yourself.

What's most appalling is not that toy companies are making these pink atrocities. It's that parents must be buying them, enthusiastically. It's that a young girl's room can be (and probably is) entirely gender-specific and pink from the moment she's born. Which means these girls never get the chance to think of playing with or doing anything that's not specifically coded "girl". So rather than imagining themselves as real-estate moguls when they play Monopoly, they can only imagine themselves in a "boutique" "shopping" environment.

And now they can only imagine themselves stacking pink things. Before they're two.

Reasonable

The debate on 'reasonable accomodation' in Quebec is breaking my heart. It seems to be bringing out all kinds of barely-suppressed racism and paranoia about Those Scary Muslims. It may perhaps be too easy to point the finger at Hérouxville and their "code of conduct" -- it's becoming increasingly clear that there are plenty of people (and not just in Quebec) who would rather newcomers just start speaking French/English, wearing jeans, and eating Mickey D's like the "rest of us".

I'm a child of the Trudeau era. I believe in multiculturalism, and that our country is strengthened, not weakened, by a variety of people with a variety of backgrounds. And if sometimes that means I have to see someone wearing an outfit that's aesthetically unpleasant to me, well, I deal with it. Whether it's a leather micro-mini or a hijab*. And if what someone chooses to eat doesn't appeal to me, well, I just eat my own dinner, and let them do their own thing. I mean, seriously:

Regardless of the shape of the animal or its hooves, regardless of the shape of the fish, be it covered by scales or a shell, we will enjoy eating its flesh if it is prepared properly and presented tastefully.

Is Hérouxville banning rebellious teenagers from taking up vegetarianism? (Probably)

And given that we have laws against killing and hurting people in general, it seems unnecessary to specifically ban stoning.

Every time I hear about this apparent problem with multiculturalism, I feel as though I'm mising something. What, exactly, is wrong with people speaking their own language, wearing their own clothes, eating their own food? I suppose the fear is that if people aren't assimiliated into the dominant culture, they'll suddenly turn into EVIL TERRORISTS or something. But it seems to me that the greater problem would be the people we're not accepting because they haven't assimilated "perfectly" (whatever that would mean).

When you tell someone they have to change, completely and utterly, in order to be accepted, they're just going to get stubborn and determined not to change AT ALL -- not even those things they were thinking of changing themselves. We'd get a lot further as a society if we just accepted people as they were and let exposure to the wider culture expose them to new ideas and ways of doing things. That way, each and every one of us could, with time, pick the things that work and discard the things that don't, without feeling like we're betraying our entire history and ancestry.

But I'm just a crazy idealist, right?

* not that a hijab is aesthetically unpleasant -- I've seen some truly beautiful ones. But you get the idea.

Summer camps are a truly wonderful thing. Unfortunately, the Municipality of the District of West Hants, N.S. has a pretty skewed idea about what summer camp should be -- at least for girls.

It never fails to amaze me when I see something like this happen. Surely, by 2007, we've figured out that girls sometimes like the outdoors. Sure, an outdoorsy camp probably wouldn't appeal to everyone -- but to have it strictly gender-segregated like this feels like a massive throwback. Are we really still that stereotypical in our outlook? Apparently.

They say they surveyed the children to findout what they would like to do. What I'm wondering is, did they ask the girls what they would like to do, or did they ask "what would girls like to do". 'Cause the answers to those questions are often very, very different.

For anyone looking for outdoorsy activities for girls, I strongly recommend getting involved with the Girl Guides of Canada. They can be a little on the flaky side sometimes, and a lot is dependant on what unit you end up with. But they're a great organization, and they start with the fundamental belief that girls can do anything they set their minds to. I have many great memories of my years in guiding, and can't recommend them strongly enough.

Polygamy and Feminism

This may be the very definition of "can of worms". Here I go anyway...

The question of polygamy is not an easy one to resolve, particularly, I think, for feminists. Or at least for people like me, who believe simultaneously that people should generally be free to make whatever romantic/sexual/matrimonial choices they want and that women should have just as much freedom, power, and agency as men.

In Canada at least, polygamy is largely discussed as a religious issue, almost always in relation to Bountiful, B.C. Bountiful is a "Mormon"* community in British Columbia headed by a couple of authoritarian patriarchs named Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler. Plural marriage is practiced extensively; the leading men of the community have multiple wives, many of whom are "married" when they are very young to much older men. Religiously-linked polygamy is also often discussed in relation to Islam. As this Vancouver Sun article makes clear, the two categories of religious polygamy are related, or at least are seen to be.

You'll notice that we're talking pretty much exclusively about poygyny (one man with multiple wives). Polyandry (one woman with multiple husbands) doesn't seem to come up much in the discourse. Maybe if it did, we'd be better able to separate the polygamy issue from the women's rights issue.

Because it seems to me that the problem with religiously-based polygamy is not the multiple marriages in and of themselves. If more than two people want to devote their lives to each other, how does that hurt anyone, after all? The issue is with the way polygamy is practices in sects like Bountiful, and is perceived to be practiced in Islam. The issue is with girls and women being raised in a tightly-controlled patriarchal environment, and offered no choice in the matter. The issue is with marrying girls off at such a young age that it's perilously close to child abuse. The issue is with the control, the power. It's not the marriages per se.

Similarly, I don't think there's anything inherently evil with multiple Muslim women marrying a single man, if that's what they want, and everyone's happy with the arrangement. The issue is with force, coercion, and disempowerment of the women. That's what we need to address -- not the marriages themselves.

Having said that, I don't know what the best way to deal with something like Bountiful is. I would like to believe that we could lay charges on the basis of child abuse and unlawful confinement, or something that addresses what strikes me as the real problem. I've no doubt, however, that Blackmore and Oler are clever, devious men, and that they're staying within the letter of the law to avoid providing any grounds for such charges, leaving only the polygamy charge. They're gambling -- and I'm sure they're right -- that the polygamy charge won't stand up to a Charter challenge. If all we can charge them with is polygamy, they're going to get away with it, and they're going to be free to continue their repressive, abusive little cult.

I don't believe polygamy should be illegal. I believe that, if people want to spend their lives together, they should be allowed to make vows to support that, no matter how many of them (or what combination of sexes) there are. I would love for multiple marriages that are loving, egalitarian, and functional to be out in the open. It's just the abuse that I want to see stop. And we're not going to stop the abuse by focusing on polygamy, which is ultimately a symptom, not a cause.

* very important to note: they're not part of the mainstream LDS Church; Mainstream Mormons disavowed polygamy quite some time ago. Bountiful's more of a breakaway cult using the Mormon name for legitimacy.

Can't live without me

I was greeted this morning by the news of two murder-suicides: one involving a pro wrestler, and one in Toronto. Not really how I prefer to wake up in the morning.

In both cases, although all the facts are not in, it seems the men involved killed their female partners, and other members of the family (a child in one case; the woman's mother in the other). Steroids are being mentionned as a possible contributing factor in the wrestler's case; in the other, the only explanation so far proferred is that the man recently lost his job.

There's something particularly horrifying about this kind of murder-suicide. Of course every case is unique, and we really don't know what happened yet, but it reads to me like the logical outcome of a viewpoint that makes women appendages to the men in their lives. So depressed or crazy you want to kill yourself? Better kill her, too. After all, she's a part of you. She shouldn't be able to live without you. You'll be together forever...

A little bit of baby fat

From the Globe and Mail:

Is your child too fat? Your doctor may be the only one brave enough to tell you.

Give me a break. If you or your child is "too fat" (by whatever arbitrary standard you choose), all of society will feel entirely free to tell you. And tell you. And tell you.

There's been a trend lately in "obesity epidemic" stories of claiming that people don't know when they (or their children) are overweight. It's insane. No one whose BMI is even the slightest bit outside that arbitrary "ideal" range is under any illusions. Some of us struggle to lose weight. Some of us struggle to be healthy (not necessarily the same thing!). But we're all aware that we're part of the "obesity epidemic" (yes, even those of us who are technically "overweight" rather than "obese"). And it's just as true of children. This idea that "tough love" is needed is just heartbreaking. As is this quote:

For the longest time, a little bit of baby fat was okay

Did you notice that? Not even "a little bit" of baby fat is acceptable anymore.

Junkfood Science is the go-to blog on the absurdities of scare stories like these, so go there and read through her archives. She does an excellent job of highlighting what's wrong with the BMI, the "obesity epidemic" and the trend of weighing and measuring school kids.

Housework and the Division of Labour

After reading Jill's thoughtful post on the subject, there may, at some point be a post about marriage (it is wedding season, after all). This isn't it. This is a post about housework, prompted largely by Thomas' thoughtful comment (#32, if the link doesn't work properly).

The division of housework is one of those feminist person-is-political issues that it seems we should have resolved already. It seems so obvious: assuming both members of a heterosexual couple are working outside the home (and thus have similar out-of-house responsibilities), they should each do 50% of the housework. Easy, right? Especially if both partners have good intentions are are committed to an ideology of equality.

Not so much, as it turns out. Women still, consistently, end up doing more. It's been confirmed in poll after study after anecdote. Why?

For starters, there's the "she has a higher standard of cleanliness/she notices the dirt more" argument. I don't think I need to spend much time on this, since it strikes me as a pretty obvious cop-out. Bachelor pads to the contrary, most adult men don't want to live in pig-stys, and thus benefit from women's supposed "higher standard". Of course, culturally, women know they're the ones who are going to be criticized if the in-laws come by and see a less than pristine environment. And as long as men "don't notice" the dirt, they can get away without cleaning it -- it's all very passive-aggressive, although I'll grant that for many men it's probably at least partially uncounscious.

But the big thing, for me, is what Thomas mentions: the keeping track. It doesn't "count" as a chore if you're the one who constantly "notices" that cleaning needs doing -- it only counts when he responds to your request/nagging.

This turns the woman into the primary cleanliness monitor, and the man into the "helper". It becomes her responsibility to stay on top of the housework, and if she's not paying attention, asking him to "pitch in", it doesn't get done. And that's exhausting. It's a constant monitor-layer, over and above a woman's "fair share". And, of course, the woman's the one who has to ensure "fairness" is maintained in the "equitable" division of the "actual work" (odanu has a great comment at pandagon to this effect).

My, that's a lot of scare quotes in that paragraph. I fear my sarcasm is showing.

The other effect of the monitor-role is to turn the woman into Mom -- after all, it's Mom who assigns chores and asks for help around the house. And you can't be an equal partner when you're being Mommy.

Bitch PhD's suggestion for dealing with the housework issue is to "be a bitch about it" (and that's reductive, so go read her entire post -- it's a good one) -- effectively, to draw attention to the amount of work being done so that the male partner can't pretend not to notice. It forces the man to untimately internalize the workload in the way women are socialized to from childhood. It's good advice for a certain kind of person, but I have a hard time separating "being a bitch" in this way from "nagging", and, for me, it's psychologically and emotionally exhausting, even if it pays off in the long run. Nagging also puts the woman in a kind of Mommy role that I'd prefer to stay well out of. But I don't have a better suggestion.

Is true domestic equality impossible, even with an egalitarian-minded partner? Surely not. But it does take a lot of work, and a lot of goodwill, especially on the part of the man (who, after all, is being asked to give a privilege that's pretty deeply ingrained).

So -- ideas, comments, suggestions? How do you get a male partner to really truly pull his weight? Without mind games? Assume good intent and a desire for equality on his part, because we've got to get this kind of thing straight with our allies before we can hope to do any good to the more traditionally-minded folks.

The Wage Gap

It comes as no surprise to me that, according to Statistics Canada, the wage gap between men and women has not substantially narrowed.

The wage gap is one of those hydra-headed gender issues that never seems to go away. We don't hear as often these days about women being paid less than men for doing the same jobs, but it's still generally legal and acceptable to pay substantially less for jobs that women tend to do (secretarial work, nursing, teaching) than for jobs men tend to do (janitorial work, construction). And why are these jobs so gender-specific, anyway? And would they still be as undervalued if men tended to do them?

So what's the solution? Do we need to work harder on encouraging girls to pursue traditionally lucrative fields? Yes, absolutely. But we also need to work on accurately valuing the work that women are doing now. 'Course, if we paid teachers what they were worth, I bet we'd see an increase in the number of male teachers...

The inevitable Big White Wedding Post

Maybe I am, as Judy Gerstel would have you believe, an "old-fashioned proto-feminist". Or maybe I'm just a grinch. But you're not going to convince me that huge white consumerist merengue weddings are somehow worthy of my support just by waving the word "choice"* around. As Twisty would say, not all choices are feminist choices, and being a feminist doesn't require me to endorse every choice a woman makes.

Gerstel, along with the wedding industry as a whole, would have you believe that a wedding is an idealized expression of the bride's identity, a realization of the princess dreams she's had since childhood (courtesy of Disney and Barbie et al, of course). But there's nothing original about the Big White Wedding -- it's a highly codified ritual, with very strict requirements. The social and familial pressure to meet expectations is enormous. When was the last wedding you went to where the bride wore a colour other than white?** And no, ivory doesn't count.

I'm not calling for us to harangue brides who choose to follow the script. I have family weddings this summer, too, and I'll show up ready to celebrate the happy occasion. I don't blame any of those brides for going along with what society expects of them. But let's not pretend that there's anything empowering or feminist or individual about BWWs, or that it's something women naturally want that we should just accept. Because come on.


*and incidentally, what is up with using the word "choice" against feminists as if it were some kind of trump card?
** the white-dress thing is a particular irritant to me. It's become this huge symbol of "virginity" and "purity" (snort) and tradition, but its popularity dates only to Queen Victoria wearing a white dress to her wedding. Before that, wedding dresses were just one of your best dresses, not a one-time-only white confection.

So punching boys is acceptable, then?

This past week, a visiting hockey fan was punched by one or more Senators fans for making a joking comment about the game.

This is, of course, an appalling display of violence and sports-related stupidity. Taunting the opposing team is a time-honoured part of competitive sports, and taking sports overly seriously is a time-honoured display of lack of perspective. I should think it goes without saying that punching people is not okay. And that if our devotion to our team is such that we'll punch people for saying bad things about them, perhaps we should lay off the beer and take some deep breaths.

But hockey fans do stupid things and get into stupid fights all the time. Do you know why this story really made the news?

Because the victim was a woman. And, as everyone knows, you don't punch girls.

I agree: punching girls is a bad thing. I would go so far as to say punching anyone is a bad thing. So why does this kind of display of poor sportsmanship have to be tied up with archaic notions of chivalry and protection of the "weaker" sex?