"I don't have enough for a lawsuit, but I do have enough for a broken heart/spirit."

[Content Note: Rape culture; misogyny; objectification; body policing; fat hatred; diet talk.]

This essay by Ally Sheedy, "Stasis," from the new book Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture, a collection of essays edited by Roxane Gay, is a must-read. Following is just a brief excerpt:

It did not matter that I did a good job on auditions, that I was smart, that I had natural ability. My thighs were the "thing."

So I dieted. All. The. Time. I learned that whatever I might contribute to a role through talent would be instantly marginalized by my physical appearance. I learned that my success would be dependent on what the men in charge thought about my face and my body. Everything I had learned back home had to go out the window as I adapted to these new requirements: what I looked like was paramount.

It wasn't even just whether I was pretty or thin; it was that I wasn't sexy. When I managed to land my first part in a big movie, I was given a ThighMaster as a welcome present and told to squeeze it between my legs at least a hundred times a day. A director of photography told me he couldn't shoot me "looking like that" when I walked on set one day. He said it in front of the whole crew. I was too wide, I guess, in the skirt they had given me to wear.

A few years later, I was told point-blank that my career was moving slowly because "nobody wants to fuck you."

...I'm still navigating the sexual appearance standard in professional work. When I am called to consider a role or audition for a role in TV/Hollywood Land, my talent is never in question. The "studio" or the "network" wants me on tape to see what I look like now.

I was never alone in a hotel room with Harvey Weinstein, but I've been at "dinners" that felt like come-ons and I've walked into rooms where I've been sized up and then received phone calls or "date" requests that I've turned down.

Today, if the producer or executive or male director in charge finds me sexually attractive, then I'm on the list. This is how it goes. This is how it IS. If the Harvey Weinstein disaster illustrates anything at all, it illustrates the entirety of the power structure. The lurid details of his rapes are disgusting and yet a shield, in a way, for the greater toxicity of that power structure.

There is so, so much more at the link, and I highly recommend heading over to read the whole thing.

One of the most heartbreaking things about reading this essay is knowing that @allysheedy1 was being demeaned for not being "sexy" enough, while I was a kid watching War Games, Breakfast Club etc. & finding in her work a place where I belonged and a way to value myself as a girl.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 12, 2018

What did I care how sexy Ally Sheedy was when I was watching her be cool and tough and weird and sweet? It didn't escape my notice that she was frequently cast as the girlfriend of the person who got to be the star, and it didn't escape my understanding, even as a child, that that was not a choice she could control. Virtually all the girls I liked were the girlfriend.

But if the Men Who Make Movies were casting her for her thighs, Sheedy imbued her characters with a complex humanity that captivated me. Not that it matters. Girls being captivated by other girls and women onscreen has never been the reason that men make movies.

Which is the cost of objectification to us all — the girls and women who act in movies, and the girls and women who watch them.

We all deserve better.

We all deserve to live in a world in which girls and women are genuine equals of men, in screen-time and complexity and pay and respect; where they are given characters of consequence to play; where they are cast in those roles for their talents alone; where they have equal opportunity to create and write and direct characters of consequence; where we are given abundant chances to watch them; where we all get to see ourselves represented onscreen, in characters who are more than objects or plot devices or sidekicks or tokens.

We all deserve to live in a world where girls and women feel safe participating in any industry that utilizes our labor.

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Very Presidential

[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification.]

I've got a new piece up at Blue Nation Review on Donald Trump's horrendous objectification of his wife, Melania Trump, and Heidi Cruz, who is married to Ted Cruz, in his continuing public game of "my wife is hotter than yours."

Essentially, he is just saying, "my property is better than your property." He might as well have compared photos of their houses or cars. It's blatantly objectifying—and treating women as possessions is one of the most basic forms of misogyny.

Lest you imagine that I'm attributing to Trump an attitude he does not hold, in his 2007 book Trump 101: The Way to Success, he wrote: "Beauty and elegance, whether in a woman, a building, or a work of art is not just superficial or something pretty to see."

Read the rest here.

Trump treats women, including his own wife, as a currency—the ownership of which confers status upon men. We are not our own people, valuable in our own right, but mere trinkets to be possessed by men, and used in their chauvinistic games of one-upmanship. I can't even with this guy.

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GOOD GRIEF

[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification.]

It continues to be a real mystery why Republicans aren't connecting with a majority of female voters:

Republican Sen. Mitch Holmes has seen women wearing "over the top" attire during his decade in the Kansas Statehouse, by which he means, their tops didn't cover over enough.

"A blouse that came way past the rib cage was one of the most outlandish ones," he told The Associated Press in an interview on Monday. He said his dress code was needed to prevent distractions from the legislative process.

But after he was shamed on social media as a "sexist" and "cave man" for telling women how to dress, Holmes dropped his guidelines the next day. His written apology Tuesday said he "meant no offense" by suggesting that "for ladies, low cut necklines and mini-skirts are inappropriate." Failing to apply the code to both genders, he wrote, was unacceptable.

It's at least the fourth time recently that [Republican] lawmakers have retreated from statehouse dress codes that applied to female colleagues, lobbyists, interns, and other citizens.

This story was filed under the headline: "State Lawmakers 'Distracted' by Women's Wardrobes."

Well. If the straight gentlemen who disproportionately fill state legislative positions can't contain themselves and retain their focus in the presence of women who are wearing whatever the fuck we want, perhaps the solution is to replace them with women, who won't get so gosh darn distracted by reflexive objectification.

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The Worst Idea

[Content Note: Body policing; misogyny; heterocentrism; objectification; evo psych; fat hatred.]

Yesterday, the Telegraph published a gross piece of linkbait [DoNotLink used] titled "'Schoolboys should tell girls their idea of a perfect woman,' says expert." It begins thus:

Teachers should encourage boys to tell girls their idea of a perfect woman in attempt to quell body image issues, a renowned child health expert has said ahead of a teachers conference on Wednesday.

To fight a "neurosis" amongst school girls on body fat, teachers should get boys to tell girls what they find attractive, including other qualities beyond pure looks, said Aric Sigman, author of "The Body Wars: why body dissatisfaction is at epidemic proportions."

He said it was important that teachers picked boys from an older year group because girls look up to them and they are not direct peers so it would be easier to talk about body image issues.

"It would be helpful for them to explain that what they find attractive is not just physical qualities but also qualities like caring, the sound of a girl's voice and her body language."

...More importantly, Dr Sigman said, boys should tell girls "that there are women who appear model-perfect visually but are just not sexy and there are girls who do not seem model material but are very attractive."

Dr Sigman also said the subject of female body dissatisfaction has been exclusively dominated by women so far and that it was time for men fight political correctness and get involved.

There ain't enough fuck you in the entire world for this garbage.

David Perry offers a good response to the article, in which he notes that the good doctor's idea "reinforces the patriarchal notion that what girls should be concerned about is to what extent they are or are not attractive to boys. Attractiveness remains the key arbiter of personal worth. Instead, the way to fight body image issues is to de-legitimize the male gaze as the arbiter of what is and is not 'good.'"

Absolutely. And this, with its admonition that men must take charge and insert themselves into body acceptance work, does the precise opposite of de-legitimizing the male gaze. Instead, it seeks to reify the male gaze as the most important arbiter of female body acceptability.

And this heterocentrist, misogynist, objectifying proposal presumes, once again, that there is a universal—or at most a very limited spectrum—of appropriate, attractive, sexy female body types among men.

This is not true, despite the strong cultural disincentives against male attraction to fat female bodies, the harsh judgment and penalties faced by men with fat female partners, and the pathologization of men who attracted to fat women.

Iain and I are currently fascinated by a show airing on FYI called "Marriage at First Sight," in which single (straight) people participate in a social experiment in which they're matched by relationship experts in an arranged marriage. (This show deserves a whole post of its own, at some point.) A new season just started, and lots of potential participants were interviewed, many of whom were accompanied by family members and/or friends, enlisted to project the appropriate amount of scandalized horror at the very prospect.

One thin white man, who was ultimately not picked as one of the to-be spouses, was interviewed with his very thin white mother sitting beside him. He was asked what sort of body type he preferred, and he responded by saying he liked hourglass and pear shapes. "Pear shape?!" his mother exclaimed, horrified. "Do you know what that means?" He replied, looking suddenly apologetic and embarrassed, that he did. "You don't want a pear-shape," his mother instructed him. "A nice slim girl would be perfect for you."

Even the hint that he might be attracted to fat women immediately resulted in auditing of his preferences and shaming.

So, what is the place for a young man with that sort of preference in the good doctor's proposed program, which is explicitly designed to tell girls that they are allowed to have "some fat," but obviously not too much eww gross yuck. What is the place for a fat girl who is found attractive by men whose preferences exist outside of the limited spectrum of acceptability being defined?

Again, attraction should never, ever, be used as the model of a human being's worth in the first place. But in addition to that fuckery, this program also more deeply entrenches the pernicious idea that there is essentially a universal human spectrum of attraction, which underwrites the pathologization of deviant bodies and transgressive attraction to those bodies.

That ain't helping anybody. Even the mere proposal should be treated with utter contempt.

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OFFS

[Content Note: Sexual objectification.]

Halloween season seems to come earlier every year—and so does my annual Inappropriate Halloween Costumes post, whether it's costumes that uphold the rape culture; costumes that are just a shitty ethnic stereotype; costumes that appropriate people's identities; or some other gross manifestation of Othering for which Halloween is used an excuse.

This year's entry? Yet another in an ongoing series about how women's Halloween costumes have to be "sexy" versions of whatever. You can't just be a nurse—you've got to be a sexy nurse! You can't just be a witch—you've got to be a sexy witch! Etc.

(Unless you're fat. Then do not try to be sexy. If you're a fat woman, you're the costume.)

Behold: Sexy Frozen costumes.

While little girls will be trick-or-treating in Disney-trademarked Anna and Elsa costumes this Halloween, adult women now have the option of showing more skin while dressed as adult interpretations of the characters.

...Yes, even Olaf, the snowman voiced by Josh Gad, has been given a sexy makeover, complete with a fake carrot nose, thanks to the "Funny Snowman" costume.

I don't even.

One year, I asked Deeks what I should be for a Halloween party, and he immediately replied, "Sexy chupacabra." Which made me laugh for one million years, because it is the perfect commentary on the absurdity that is Halloween costumes for adult women.

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OFFS

[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification.]

Marvel is soon to release Spider-Woman #1, the inaugural comic in the "recently announced new 'Spider-Woman' ongoing series from Dennis Hopeless and Greg Land." That's pretty exciting, right?

Except here is one variant cover for the comic designed by Milo Manara:

[Click to embiggen.]
There are so many things wrong with that, I don't even know where to begin. Suffice it to say that Marvel evidently still doesn't give a shit about alienating feminist readers.

[H/T to my friend Mark, who saw it at io9.]

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Man Assaulted for Defending Women from Street Harassment

[Content Note: Violence; harassment; misogyny; objectification. Please note video may begin playing automatically at link.]

Fucking hell:

A man who police say tried to defend a group of women from catcallers landed in the hospital after he was brutally assaulted in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square early Saturday morning.

Police say the 39-year-old man who was visiting from Texas was walking along 18th and Walnut Streets around 2:45 a.m. when he observed several men inside a Black Nissan pull up next to a group of women.

The men inside the Nissan began taunting and catcalling the women, according to investigators, prompting the victim to get involved.

"The male victim took offense to something that the guys were saying to the girls and said 'hey, watch what you're saying,'" said Philadelphia Police Captain George Fuchs.

Police say one of the men inside the Nissan then got out of the car and punched the victim once in the head. The man was knocked unconscious after he fell and struck his head on the concrete

The suspect then ran back into the Nissan which fled west on Walnut. The victim was taken to Hahnemann Hospital where he is currently in stable condition.

"This is a tragic, tragic story," Captain Fuchs said. "Here's a guy trying to stick up for these girls and he gets victimized."

I hope the man who was assaulted has access to the care he needs to recover, physically and emotionally. And I hope that the men who harmed him will be identified.

This story exposes as rank garbage a few of the most pervasive narratives around street harassment and gendered violence against women:

1. Telling women that we should just ignore street harassment, that it's no big deal, is bullshit. Street harassment is a very big deal, because it's underwritten by an entitlement so aggressive that some men will physically harm another man who tries to stop them, in even the most benign way.

2. Telling women that we should push back against street harassers is bullshit. This is what we're risking. Of course not every street harasser will react this way, but we don't know until it's too late.

3. Anti-rape initiatives that disproportionately or exclusively focus on intervention (vs. prevention) put people at risk. Not everyone can safely intervene. Not every intervention will be successful. Sure, it's valuable to have public conversations about not averting one's gaze at the sight of someone being harmed, because there are people who can and do safely and successfully intervene. But that cannot be considered a primary solution, for various reasons, including the threat of retaliation against the people who intervene. We have to focus on preventing harassment and gendered violence in the first place.

[H/T to Shaker MMC.]

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The Problem With Science

[Content Note: Transphobia; misogyny; objectification; dehumanization of sex workers; exploitation.]

The current issue of Science features a special section on Australia's successful* approach to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. To highlight the topic, Science plastered the cover with a photo of the disembodied legs of several women of color. When several people took to Twitter to complain about the dehumanizing photo, Jim Austin, the editor of Science Careers replied:

Okay, sure. In response to an observation about the male gaze, the same editor opined:


Eventually followed by:


So, the editors of one of the world's leading scientific journals used a dehumanizing picture** of trans sex workers of color to advertise a special section on HIV/AIDS, and the editor of its careers journal—whose mission "supports the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) commitment to furthering careers in science and technology, with an emphasis on fostering greater diversity among the scientific community"—made a joke about how dudes would feel after learning they lusted after trans women.

Neat.

I have thoughts on this. I'm probably going to come across as bitter, so first let me give some background.

My so-called career

I had no problems getting into academic science. As an undergraduate, I got a full scholarship to a major research university. When I applied to graduate programs, I snagged yet a prestigious National Science Foundation graduate fellowship. During this whole time, I was in the closet about being trans.

A year or two into graduate school, I found myself in a serious relationship, and began really seriously confronting my lifelong struggle to present to society as a man. In 2005, the fourth year of my graduate program, I finally came out.

By an unhappy coincidence, this was also about the time that I went on the job market. I’m not going to dish too much about my graduate career or my job search (although I do have a book chapter out on the latter), but:

• I endured painfully awkward job interviews.
• I dealt with the bizarrely abrupt termination of at least one proposed collaboration.
• I certainly felt like I had a much, much harder time finding work than any of my colleagues.

I had tons of great colleagues (and even a few genuinely enjoyable job interviews). I'm not going to make anyone specific feel uncomfortable with my praise or criticism (after all, this is about s/Science). But I will say this: If you haven't been a PhD student or come out as trans, they're both pretty impossible when tackled on their own. And I did both at the same time.

While I don't want call out individuals or institutions, there is one exception. The administration of my school (the University of Wisconsin-Madison) offered me very little support. At the time, the LGBT center had no resources (I understand they've improved). Despite having the largest, most prestigious medical school in the state, all UW-Madison could offer me was the assistance (for a fee) of one (awesome!) speech pathology graduate student.

In addition to weekly electrolysis appointments in Madison, I had a weekly therapy appointment in Milwaukee. I found doctors in Chicago, and made regular 150 mile (each way) weekday trips to the city. All of this was at my expense (while, I might add, on a graduate student's salary). This meant that in addition to all of the time I spent researching for and traveling to my medical appointments, I took a second job to pay my medical bills. It didn't take long for my employer to fire me. I don't have conclusive evidence that he let me go because he didn't like the idea of a queer interacting with his customers, but that's most definitely what I think happened.

Still, I managed to complete my thesis. There were plenty of things I would have done differently if I hadn't spent two years curled up on a futon in my apartment, but it was pretty fucking decent, regardless of the circumstances,

I eventually landed a tenure track job. It wasn't necessarily what I was looking for, but it was what was available. And while I worked with some rock star colleagues (and administrators), it was quickly pretty obvious that I wasn't "a good fit" for the institution. I started looking for a new job by the end of my first year. It took me close to two years to receive a job offer in the private sector (I had zero job interviews within the academy during that time, despite primarily applying for academic jobs).

This was also the time that I finished a particularly scarring review process. It was clear to me that if I wanted to keep my job, I'd need to fight for it. This was also the the time that the faculty recommended a (cis male) colleague for tenure on a voice vote without being asked a single question. (He did a ton of paperwork, but it was actually me who had to deal with tough questions from the senior faculty). I took the job offer.

Am I bitter? Absolutely. I am so. fucking. bitter.

I miss teaching, but I've realized that it's not a profession that's valued (neither in K-12 nor in the academy).

I miss research, but I also realize that there's no real support for the kind of research I'm interested in (theories of evolution that question the primacy of heterosexuality, among other things). I realize there are people who studies those things, but there's no way I could build a career on such studies. I'd be biased.

There are really great things about no longer being in the academy (although most of these are grounded in not having to deal with the academy). I get to spend time with my kid, for example. Actually, after my kid was born, I spent a lot of my time in grad school with hir—my university didn't provide affordable child care. I used to do this thing where I'd drive hir to my speech therapy appointments, then nestle hir in the car, crank the heat all the way up, and drive around campus until ze was asleep. That way ze napped in the projection room for the duration of my class. Then I went home to work.

It's entirely possible that part of the reason my career sputtered was that I was missing all of the awesome networking opportunities at my school while I was busily working overtime to make up for UW's lack of support. Maybe those opportunities just didn't exist for people like me. I don't know. It doesn't matter—certainly not now.

Am I bitter? Yes, we've covered that.

Do I think that my career would have gone better had I waited until tenure to come out? Absolutely, if I would have survived, I could have probably had a career of some sort.

If I had it to do over again, would I have done things differently? Probably not.

But really, what's my point?

My point is that trans women have good reasons to be suspicious of colleagues

If you're not acting as my ally, my vocal ally, I have nothing to gain by trusting you. My experience just doesn't bear that out. I'm sure you're probably a good person and that you have great intentions, but that doesn't do me a bit of good.

Are you going to fight for my ability to take care of myself to the point that I can focus on doing my job?

Are you going to make it clear that I'm welcome, or are you going to make bigoted jokes?

Are you going to "play it safe" by staying silent and assuring yourself that nothing was meant by so-and-so's off the cuff remark?

Are you going to base your science on hackneyed, sexist, heterosexist, and cissexist stereotypes and then get defensive when folks question your assumptions?

It's a serious wonder that there's anybody in the academy who isn't a cis white guy. I know plenty of white cis women in the academy, and as far as I can tell, a lot of them spend second unpaid careers just navigating the structural bullshit that generations of good people have put into place to keep them from having careers in the first place. I know a lot fewer people of color in the academy. (Imagine that.) Trans women? There are a few. I think I can name one who got tenure despite being openly trans. She must be the most exhausted person on the planet. I think her publications should count double (she's also not a scientist, but still: her publications count double, assholes).

That Science cover isn't ambiguous. As soon as I saw it, I thought "wow, somebody definitely wants me to think that these are exotic sluts." When I saw that the special issue was about HIV/AIDS, I thought it was a pretty good guess that they were trans women in the sex trade.

If I were interested in talking about the very serious issue of HIV/AIDS among trans sex workers of color, I might actually bother to get a picture that included the women's faces. There are trans women who do sex work and know about HIV/AIDS. There are activists, even. I probably would have talked to them. Oh, and I definitely would have listened to them. It's possible that members of the population with one of the highest rates of HIV infection would even be able to teach scientists a thing or two. (It's not inconceivable to be a scientist and sex worker at the same time, BTW.) But what do I know? I'm not an academic.

What I do know is that more than one person reviews a cover before it goes to press. It's not like some guy really fucked up and decided to run with this picture while everybody else was on the can. Nobody realized there might have been a problem with that cover, hmmm?

This doesn't speak well of one of the industry's leading publications. It also doesn't inspire a lot of confidence (which, as I've already explained, I'm short on) that the folks making or breaking careers by deciding which papers are "sexy" enough to publish are going to have the professionalism to ground their decisions in something other than a creepy desire to excite their presumed readership of straight white cis guys.

And for the record, I don't give a fuck what some cis dude might think when he finds out the woman he's ogling is trans. I'm more concerned about what he might do to the trans woman. I'm also more than a little concerned that the editor of one of the world's preeminent journals on how to build a career in science thinks that jokes about trans women are, well… that he thinks about these jokes at all.

I'm not saying that transphobia forced me out of the academia or that I deserved a specific job or any job at all, to be quite blunt. However, I will say, and I'll say it until it doesn't need saying: I don't regret leaving. I regret feeling the need to make that decision, but I simply don't think academy is a safe place for people like me. It certainly isn't a respectful place (if you're wondering on what I'm using as a baseline, I work in IT these days), and there isn't a week that goes by that I'm not reminded how hard folks are fighting just do be able to do the jobs that they're more than qualified to fucking do.

I remember the exact moment when I decided to go into biology (and not some other scientific discipline). I was fourteen, and I was sitting in my parents' living room reading the Washington Post weekly edition when I read that there were far more women in biology than in fields like chemistry and physics. I knew what that meant for my future. At fourteen, I was used to paying attention and making calculated decisions about my future. After all, it's a survival strategy.

People are watching you, science. They're not just keeping track of who's doing the dehumanizing shit, but also who (and it's a lot of you) is sitting on their hands while it goes down. Remember this the next time some administrator wonders aloud about why efforts to summon diversity out of thin air just aren't working.

If science (and the academy writ large) is serious about improving the quality and diversity of research, teaching, service, and faculty (and I have no real reason to believe this is the case), folks have got to dismantle the systems that allow this shit to keep happening. It's not just one publication or one guy with a Twitter account. Hostility to the bulk of society is endemic in the academy, and irrespective of whether or not the place is filled with nice people, I need to see consistent evidence of progress before I'll believe it.

-------------------

*Supposedly. Due to issues with the Science website, I haven't actually been able to read the findings.

**I'm not reposting the cover here because it's not clear to me that the women consented to being photographed, but it's easy enough to find.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism] New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan is expected to sign a bill passed by the state senate "to create a 25-foot buffer zone around clinics that provide abortion services. SB 319 was filed in response to over 60 complaints by patients of Planned Parenthood of Manchester since the start of 2013. The complaints detailed verbal harassment, intimidation, and passage-blocking by anti-choice protesters. It had largely bipartisan support when it was introduced." GOOD. Although 25 feet is hardly enough.

[CN: Carcerality; abuse] A whistleblower raises the red flag on inadequate healthcare in Arizona's prisons, and an investigation finds "dozens of cases of neglect in Arizona'€™s privatized prison health care system. ...Since the state privatized its prison health care, medical spending in prisons dropped by $30 million and staffing levels plummeted, according to an October report from the American Friends Services Committee, a Quaker social justice organization. It also found a sharp spike in the number of inmate deaths. In the first eight months of 2013, 50 people died in Arizona Department of Corrections custody, compared with 37 deaths in the previous two years combined."

[CN: Carcerality; coercion; racism; class warfare] Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff makes the case that harsh mandatory minimum sentences are creating a system in which innocent people take plea deals just to avoid long sentences. Naturally, "many federal defendants face the same problem, with poor black and Hispanic defendants bearing the brunt of it," and, notes David Patton, executive director at the Federal Defenders of New York, which provides lawyers for defendants who can't afford to hire their own, "the charges that carry mandatory minimums tend to be the type that involve poor people: drug, firearms cases. These are where you have the most coercive situations."

[CN: Misogyny; objectification; hostility to consent] Men Who Read Magazines That Objectify Women Are Less Likely to Respect Sexual Boundaries: "The researchers point out it's certainly possible that guys who already have 'dismissive' attitudes toward women are drawn to reading magazines that objectify women. But they also suggest that the media can contribute to larger cultural attitudes about sexual relationships." Culture: This is how the fuck it works.

[CN: Misogyny; body shaming] A Utah high school arbitrarily edited female students' yearbook photos in order to make them more "modest." Because of course they did.

[CN: Discussion of disease] So, apparently a bunch of dudes have started drinking breast milk, because they believe it's like the best energy drink ever. Jan Barger, a lactation consultant, is doubtful: "Since it's designed to feed infants, she pointed out, it has a tenth of the nutrients a 200-pound man would need. When I mentioned Anthony's breast-milk rationale, she laughed. 'Well,' she said. 'We can talk ourselves into just about anything!'"

LeVar Burton launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to bring back Reading Rainbow, and they raised over $1 million in a single day! Here is a video of LeVar Burton watching the donations hit $1 million, and it might make you cry! If you are anything like me!

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual objectification; heterocentrism.]

"I have a theory about She-Hulk. Which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men, and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So the Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It's like, most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids who were getting the shit beaten out of them every day—'What if I became giant, and could clap my hands and create a sonic boom?' And so then they created She-Hulk, right? Who was still smart. So it was like, I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk, you know what I'm saying? …She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it's like, if I'm going to be this geek that becomes the Hulk, then let's create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck."—Screenwriter David S. Goyer, on the latest episode of the Scriptnotes podcast.

There was immediate pushback against Goyer's remarks, including by Stan Lee, co-creator of She-Hulk:

Unsurprisingly, Lee's recollection of She-Hulk's creation differs greatly from the scenario presented by Goyer. "I know I was looking for a new female superhero, and the idea of an intelligent Hulk-type grabbed me," he told The Post. (The generally accepted backstory has more to do with Marvel's concerns that CBS might create a spinoff of the live-action Incredible Hulk television series starring a female counterpart, a la Bionic Woman, giving the network ownership of the character.)

In any case, She-Hulk was not conceived as a fucktoy for the Hulk. In fact, as Alan points out at The Mary Sue, She-Hulk "is not portrayed as the only woman the Hulk can have sex with because first and foremost, they're cousins."

Anyway. Goyer's comments are manifest garbage, but what I find most interesting about his "theory" is that it not only demeans a female superhero by reducing to her a sex object, in the very same way that female superheroes are demeaned all the time, but also that it demeans She-Hulk, a very explicitly large, strong, and physically powerful woman, on the basis that she's fuckable only by the Hulk.

Or, to be very specific, little boys and men imagining themselves to be the Hulk.

The men who demean other female superheroes this way—female superheroes who may have intimidatingly powerful superpowers, but still look like idealized versions of human women—don't imagine they have to be superheroes themselves to fuck those superheroes. But give them She-Hulk, and it takes a Hulk to fuck her. Or want to fuck her.

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Perfect

[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification.]

Daniel McCawley owns a restaurant called the Atomic Grill in Morgantown, West Virginia. Recently, a customer posted a review on UrbanSpoon demanding that the female servers at the Atomic Grill "show some skin." And this is how McCawley responded:

By posting an image of potato skins!
And he didn't stop there:

"It was brutish. I was upset. I’m a father of a 12-year-old girl and I’ve got five sisters," McCawley said. "The way that women are treated is pretty personal as far as I’m concerned."

...From now through Memorial Day, Atomic Grill will be offering a potato skin special for $7, and 100% of the proceeds will go directly to the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information Services.

"We took offense to the review and wanted to flip it in a positive way," McCawley explained.

If you'd like to offer a virtual high five to McCawley and some support to his female staff, the Atomic Grill's Facebook page is here.

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"Blurred Lines"

[Content Note: Rape culture; objectification.]

A bunch of folks have emailed or tweeted me to ask what I think of Robin Thicke's new song "Blurred Lines," which is all about how a girl at the club totally wants to have sex with him, even though she hasn't said so, and the video for the song, which includes topless supermodels dancing around Thicke and the song's featured artists, Pharrell and T.I.

Well, I think Robin Thicke is gross, his song is harmful, and his video is objectifying garbage.

In the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen, there is no fucking excuse for writing a song that essentially just sets to a catchy tune the ancient rape apologia that is "your mouth says no, but your body says yes."

When there are actual rapists using this very line of bullshit to defend having raped an unconscious young woman at a party, it is the worst kind of shameless, contemptible indecency to turn "Talk about getting blasted / I hate these blurred lines / I know you want it, but you're a good girl / The way you grab me, must want to get nasty" into a summer anthem that might have been played at that party.

Thicke defended the execrable video thus:

Thicke told VH1 that it was [director Diane Martel]'s idea to do a "Terry Richardson kind of video." At first he might have been skeptical, but he said, "'Hey, you know, let's go for it.' 'Cause for me, nudity is the least offensive thing in the whole world. Guns, violence, war? That's offensive. A woman's body has been painted and sculpted and talked about since the beginning of man. What I enjoy about the video is that we're not ogling and degrading them, we're laughing and being silly with them."

...Thicke has insisted, a bit guilelessly, that by having the women naked, he was pushing the boundaries. "We pretty much wanted to take all the taboos of what you're not supposed to do—bestiality, you know, injecting a girl in her bum with a five-foot syringe—I just wanted to break every rule of things you're not supposed to do and make people realize how silly some of these rules are."

Rules like: Only have sex with someone who has given enthusiastic and explicit consent.

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J.J. Abrams Doubles Down on Objectification Equivalence

[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification; hostility to consent.]

On Tuesday, I noted that one of Star Trek 's writers, Damon Lindelof, defended the gratuitous and consent-hostile scene of Dr. Carol Marcus (played by Alice Eve) in her underwear by drawing an equivalence between female and male nudity and giving pathetic lipservice to critics in an attempt to diffuse the criticism while clearly standing behind the scene.

Last night, director J.J. Abrams was a guest on Conan O'Brien's show, and doubled down on the same strategy in an awkwardly staged segment designed to feign concern about the criticism while implying in every conceivable way that critics are oversensitive hysterics. The scene is pitched at O'Brien's show site with: "To answer charges of sexism in 'Star Trek,' J.J. shows a cut scene of Benedict Cumberbatch showering." Which pretty much sums it right the fuck up.

O'Brien: We had the beautiful Alice Eve on the show last night—

Abrams: Yes.

O'Brien: —who does a terrific job in the movie, and I guess [clears throat] you've been taking some heat for a scene—

Abrams: Yeah.

O'Brien: —I didn't personally see what the fuss was about; I was quite happy about the scene—uh, but, um, there's this scene where, uh, Alice Eve—Kirk gets a quick look at her in her underwear—

Abrams: Well, she's changing—

O'Brien: Yeah.

Abrams: —and the idea was, the intent was it's Kirk, who was always a sort of womanizing character.

O'Brien: Yeah.

Abrams: The idea was: Have a beat like that in the midst of all this action and adventure—

O'Brien: He takes a quick peek, yeah.

Abrams: —have a scene where he looks and then looks away. I don't think I quite edited the scene in the right way, but, look, she, she—to me, it was a sort of balance—there's a scene earlier where he's not dressed, either, so I felt like it was a sort of, you know, a trade-off. But some people did feel like it was, uh, uh, you know, exploiting her [gesture to indicate he thinks that's absurd], and, while she is lovely, I can also see their point of view.

O'Brien: Okay, well, there is—I think we should explore this more. This is the photo still of her in the scene. [puts up still shot from film of Alice Eve in her underwear; laughter and applause] Very beautiful. Uh, and I, you know—

Abrams: Yeah.

O'Brien: And you defended this—you can take it away, that's okay; our director wanted to keep it up— [cuts back to the show; laughter]

Abrams: I'm not defending it, but, but, but, but I think there's a picture of Kirk, who's also— [puts up still shot from film of Kirk, shirtless in bed, with a disrobed female character behind him, her arm wrapped around him, gazing at him] And the other thing—he, he's like, he's [inaudible] for girls—

O'Brien: Yeah, so that's okay, that should balance it out.

Abrams: We had a scene—this is true—we had a scene, a shot, of the, the, the villain, played by Benedict Cumberbatch— [edit] We had a scene with him where we saw him actually, uh, taking a shower. And, uh, I actually brought a piece of the clip—

O'Brien: This didn't make it—

Abrams: It's not in the movie, but we had this, and this is one of those things we ended up cutting, so we can show it…

O'Brien: Let's take a look at this. [footage of Benedict Cumberbatch from mid-chest up, taking a shower, with a very serious look on his face and accompanied by serious music; cheers and applause] Wow. He's not enjoying that shower very much. [laughter]

Abrams: No, he—that was a shower of evil.

O'Brien: Yeah. A shower of evil. [laughter] You know, I saw that just seconds before the show, and I thought: That would look better with different music.

Abrams: What do you mean?

O'Brien: This is just—well, take a look. [same clip, but set to porn music; laughter and applause]

Abrams: You know, uh, I—I would've used it if we had had that music. I would've kept it in the movie.

O'Brien: [laughs] You didn't have access to that kind of—

Abrams: That's true!

O'Brien: I have a budget here that you could never dream of.

Abrams: [laughs]

Again, women's bodies and men's bodies are not objectified in the same way, and that is a truly contemptible argument that anyone should be embarrassed to make in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen. Even if they were (AND THEY ARE NOT), the scenes of Marcus in her underwear and Kirk in bed with a naked woman (who has no other role in the film) are fundamentally different in that Kirk breaches Marcus' consent by looking her in direct contravention of her explicit request that he not look. That's not showing Kirk to be a "womanizer"; it's showing Kirk to be a predator who's committing a sexual assault.

Abrams' claim that the scene of Marcus isn't exploitative is further undermined by his attempt to equate it with a deleted scene of Benedict Cumberbatch in a shower, which is "improved" by setting it to porn music. Of course he knows it's exploitative garbage that isn't the same as a scene of a disrobed man; that's why it takes broadcasting on national television a pornified deleted scene of a male character to try to "balance" its inclusion. In his pathetic attempt at defending the scene, Abrams underscores exactly why it's indefensible.

Finally: I find utterly reprehensible the idea that, if only we try hard enough!, we can somehow sexually objectify men just as effectively as we do women, in order to justify the continued objectification of women's bodies. That's not progress. That's a step forward only in a race to the bottom, and there is little to be gained by pretending that service to the lowest common denominator is a favorable equalizer.

Sexual objectification is dehumanizing. I don't want things to be "just as bad" for men. I want things to be better for us all.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Objectification; dehumanization; misogyny; rape culture.]

"The women we feature in the magazine are ornamental. I could lie to you if you want and say we are interested in their brains as well. We are not. They are objectified. We provide pictures of girls in the same way we provide pictures of cool cars."—Alex Bilmes, editor of Esquire magazine.

I don't guess I need to point out that equating pictures of women with pictures of "cool cars" reduces women to items to be possessed, and ownership leaves no room for agency or consent. It leaves nothing but consumption at will.

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Culture of Kyriarchy

[Content Note: Misogyny; rape culture; objectification; racism.]

Last night, during some sporting event between two institutions about whom I couldn't care less, including one that is currently enjoying national indifference to its sports-related rape scandal because the victims are adult women, Jess caught a gross bit of banter between commentators Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit, who were leering over Katherine Webb and Dee Dee Bonner, who are respectively the girlfriend and mother of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron.

"If you're a youngster at Alabama, start getting the football out and start throwing it around the backyard with Pop," observed Musburger, after the men had drooled over the two women.

Jess makes all the great points about how demeaning the sexual objectification of Webb and Bonner is, and how potentially alienating to women (and men) watching.

I want to additionally note that, in one fell swoop, Musburger draws the boundaries around football as a space for straight men whose reward for throwing around a ball with "Pop" (because Ma would get her girl cooties all over it) is beautiful light-skinned women (because the Objectification Cam never lingers on dark-skinned girlfriends and dark-skinned mothers, while commentators sexualize them and talk about them like trophies).

Heterocentrism. Sexual objectification. Treating women like prized property to which men who are talented at ball-sports are entitled. Men throw around footballs together. Women are there to service the men. That is, if they're pretty enough. Dehumanization by pedestal or invisibility—ladies' choice! Either way, the point is that women have more in common with the football, a plaything, than they do with the men.

Yeah, it's a real mystery why male athletes imagine they can rape women and get away with it.

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Nestlé Has a Funny Idea of "Health and Wellness"

[Content Note: Rape culture, reproductive coercion, misogyny, homophobia, fat-hatred, body policing, food policing, demonizing of body hair, classism, objectification, fake German.]

Shaker IndyM sent me the link to this advert for Lean Pockets, part of a series in which David Hasselhoff plays a character named Günther, aka "Mr. Lean," who offers "advice" about why it would beneficial for people to eat Lean Pockets. In a series about terrible advertisements that is now well over 100 entries, this is one of the biggest garbage disasters of them all, failing on just about every conceivable level.

[Complete transcript below the fold.]
Fake German accent complete with fake German words? Check. Playing gay? Check. Body policing? Check. Food policing? Check. Sexual objectification? Check. Fat hatred? Check. Mocking people with body hair? Check. Equating thinness with happiness, attractiveness, and personal success? Check. Ridicule of large families? Check. Classism? Check. Heterocentism? Check. Reducing women to weight- and sex-obsessed nincompoops? Check. Stereotype of the sassy gay mentor? Check. Treating food as a moral choice? Check. Treating a thin partner as a reward for moral eating? Check. Treating a fat partner as punishment for immoral eating? Check. Implying fat women do not deserve and cannot have love and contentment? Check.

A rape culture trope about a woman under the influence reluctantly "consenting" to sex/marriage and bearing multiple children against her will? Checkity-check-check.

I could go on (and on and on), but the point, I feel, has been sufficiently made. That is a lot of contemptible shit to pack into two minutes.

Lean Pockets' Facebook page is here. Lean Pockets is, however, a Nestlé brand. Nestlé promotes itself explicitly as a company interested in "nutrition, health, and wellness," but apparently does not consider body-shaming, which is demonstrably associated with disordered eating that kills people, or antigay stereotyping, which is demonstrably associated with the violent homophobia underlying hate crimes, or rape culture narratives, which underwrite epidemic sexual violence, to be inconsistent with "health and wellness." You can contact Nestlé directly here, and/or tweet at them here.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual objectification; heterocentrism.]

"There's two kinds of men. There are men who are fucking misogynist pigs, and then there are men who just really love women, who think they're the most amazing people in the world. And that's me. Maybe the reason I was promiscuous, and wanted to sleep with a lot of them, is that I love them so much."—Adam Levine.

LOL FOREVER! I love the idea that there men who are misogynist pigs, and men who love women, and, according to Adam Levine, the men who sexually objectify women and fuck tons of 'em are in the latter category. Sure.

Not being a misogynist pig is not defined by fucking lots of women. It's not defined by loving women, or even liking them. Not being a misogynist is defined by respecting women.

Which Adam Levine clearly does not.

[Previously: The Voice of Misogyny.]

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Objecting to Objectification

by Shaker koach

[Content Note: Objectification.]

I came out as a lesbian in college. One day in class, I was completely distracted by the woman next to me: She was idly twirling her foot around, swinging her clunky sandal from her nicely tanned foot with bright red nail polish. I was mesmerized. And suddenly I realized…I like women! I love their bodies! I love looking at them! It was a revelation to me, and as I gradually absorbed the idea, parts of my past suddenly started to make sense. This strange sense of unease I'd had for most of my life around other women—it was attraction. The unnamable discomfort I'd been feeling for years was lust.

For example, I played sports throughout my adolescence, and I always felt uncomfortable in the women's locker room. Now I saw that it wasn't the same sort of discomfort that most other kids felt. Instead, I was uncomfortable because there was all this female flesh around, all these lovely body parts that I wanted to look at. The idea that someone might look at me in some stage of undress was uncomfortable to me only because it turned me on. A few years ago Liss wrote about her high school friendship with another girl, and, wondering what made her different, wondered if she was attracted to this girl. I had several friendships like that throughout middle and high school, but it's only with the benefit of hindsight that I was able to see that I was attracted to several of my female friends. Sure, I thought they were smart, kind, and witty, but I also desired them.

Accepting my identity as a lesbian meant accepting that I was attracted to women, that I found (and find) women's bodies lovely and fascinating and marvelous. When I looked at a beautiful actress, I was checking out her hips, her ass, her breasts, her thighs, her shoulders, her jawline, all the breathtaking curves and angles that exist on a woman's (on every woman's) body. Accepting my identity^ǂ as a lesbian meant, at least in part, accepting that I lusted after these very parts.

Gradually I became more explicit and open about my desire for women and their lovely bodies. When a woman with a great, large ass walked by, I'd turn to watch her go. When my waitress had nice cleavage, I checked her out. (Yes, there was a time when I might have enjoyed National Cleavage Day, because I enjoyed letting a furtive glance at cleavage turn into a lingering one, even though I would have been and still am opposed to giving social sanction to men doing the same.) I admired feet, arms, hips, faces, eyes, everything. What can I say? I dig women, and every woman has something unique, something beautiful, something worth a second glance or an extended gaze. I didn't discriminate: I loved fat, thin, and in-between bodies, tall and short bodies, bodies of all colors, disabled and temporarily abled bodies, butch, feminine, queer, and trans* bodies, covered and uncovered bodies.

Fast forward a few more years, and I'm walking across campus on a beautiful spring day with one of my best, straight, female friends. She said something about all the young women out exercising in their sports bras and tiny shorts, how it motivated her to start exercising. I chuckled lasciviously and said I had very different thoughts when I looked at the women sweating in their skimpy clothes, then waggled my eyebrows suggestively. She stopped in her tracks and looked at me in surprise. She said, "You only see them as bodies to ogle?"

It was my turn to stop in my tracks. I saw, suddenly, that my appreciation of women had become demeaning. Though I was a lesbian, I was looking at other women with The Male Gaze. I was objectifying them. I realized a lesbian reducing a woman to a nice ass was no different to the woman being objectified than a man doing so.

To be clear: There's nothing wrong with noticing. To be attracted to other people means one will experience attraction. But one can be attracted without objectifying.

This is pretty hard to admit. I'm a feminist and I was before I knew the word; I wholeheartedly and as continually as possible support women in any way I can. I'm in a field where most lower-level positions are filled by female people and most senior- and academic- level positions are filled by male people, so the empowerment, encouragement, and non-objectification of women is personal as well as political and philosophical for me. In the past, I've pointed out problematic male objectification of women to my father, brothers, and male friends, to try to sway their behavior and thoughts. I respect and honor women and I'd never objectify them—so I thought.

This has been hard for me to untangle and I'm not all the way there. My recognition of my "homosexual tendencies" has been tied up in recognizing my desire for women and their bodies. Yet I know there are other things that draw me to women, that turn me on, that keep me fascinated. For example, I love thinking about and talking about the ways that different women have found to respond to societal expectations about roles, dress, and behavior. Some women embrace these expectations, some reluctantly accept them, some challenge them, some subvert them, some overturn them, or some combination thereof, and all of these individual, varied responses intrigue me. I love all the uses to which different women have put their intellectual capabilities or their passion or their strength. I think I celebrate womanhood in its broadest, most diverse, least-monolithic sense.

And yet. When I'm looking at a woman and reducing her to a nice ass or great breasts, I'm not doing that. I'm treating women as one class, with various physical attributes that are more or less pleasing to my particular eye.

Being consistent and true to my feminism has meant that I have to call myself out when I'm objectifying women. If I repudiate men doing that (and I do), then I need to repudiate women doing it as well. Objectification is objectification. Reducing anyone to a body part is offensive and demeaning. Reading the Today in Disembodied Things series and this post have helped me think through this and reaffirm my objection to objectification. If I'm admiring a sexy pair of legs, for example, but I stop there, without considering the woman as a whole, without wondering about her personality, what drives her, her dreams, what makes her laugh, well, I'm pretty close to viewing her as a passive object there for my viewing pleasure. So I try to remind myself that behind every attractive physical attribute lies a person—a person who is not a passive receptacle for my gaze, but who deserves respect and consideration.

-----------------------------

^ǂ This acceptance wasn't easy for me, because I grew up in a Midwestern conservative Christian household where sexuality and lust were forbidden topics; the story of how I did eventually accept and embrace my sexuality is long, winding, and not the topic of this post. Suffice to say, I have gotten to the point where I am comfortable, happy, and proud to be a lesbian.

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