Category Archives: feminism
Mississippi Morals: So What if Women Die?
When I was 20, exactly 20 years ago this past October 25th, I was abducted, raped, and shot twice by two teenagers on a car-jacking spree. I did not get pregnant, thank goodness. But if I had, and something like Initiative 26 had been in place, I would have been forced, by the state of Mississippi, to bear that child. Giving birth might have killed me physically (the gunshot wound to my lower back was life-threatening), if not emotionally.
That’s from Cristen Hemmins, who became a political activist in Mississippi with Initiative 26 (the “Personhood Initiative”). If that law had passed a woman would not have been able to get an abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or if her life were endangered. Miscarriage could have become a police investigation. And at least some (possibly all) forms of contraception would have become illegal.
Now Cristen is fighting to keep the last abortion clinic in the state open as a new law — ostensibly protecting women’s health – requires providers to have admitting privileges to a local hospital.
She says this standard is both unreachable (the clinic has had no luck getting the hospital to send the necessary forms) and medically unnecessary.
“Medically unnecessary” is an understatement. It is dangerous.
If women must save money to travel out of state, they risk having the procedure when the pregnancy is further along and more dangerous.
Others will resort to back alley abortionists or use coat hangers on themselves.
This is healthier than current Mississippi law?
Dr. Douglas Laube, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, wrote a letter to the editor warning that the law will harm women. He says that doctors in his organization, “know that when women seeking abortion are denied safe, legal procedures, they look for other ways to end their pregnancies.”
In fact, before Roe v. Wade doctors were at the forefront of the movement to make abortion legal, having seen too many women die.
But Mississippi State Rep. Bubba Carpenter doesn’t give a hoot:
They’re like, “Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.” That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over. But hey–you have to have moral values.
So these Mississippi pro-lifers are fine with a law that will cause young women to die.
That’s moral?
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Magic Mike Turns Tables on Objectification, Desire
I must be obsessed with male strippers, you think, with a third post inspired by “Magic Mike.”
Maybe.
I am obsessed with objectification and desire, and that movie offers the rare turning of tables to see what’s on the other side.
In this table-turning do women experience men in the way that men typically experience them? I’ve already suggested that the answer is no.
However, we’re seeing chinks in the armor.
In “Magic Mike” women’s desire is acknowledged and catered to as the camera hones in on glutes and abs to accommodate the female gaze… and as Matthew McConaughey bends over to give us a full-moon shot.
All this in a place with “no men allowed.” Not formally, as Joanna Schroeder over at the GoodMenProject points out, but because most men don’t want to be there. But that “all-estrogen” space can feel empowering.
And for once women are calling the shots (or feel like they are) demanding, “Take it all off!” and letting ‘em know what they like: “Yeahhh honey, do it again!”
Only problem is that objectification is damaging. When women or men are objectified their looks and their sexuality become their worth – in their own minds and in the minds of others.
Those who objectify themselves are prone to body shame, low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders and sexual dysfunction. They even have more difficulty navigating everyday life because they’re so distracted by how their body looks.
And the objectified are treated like “things,” meant to serve others’ desires. They are things that lack thought or emotion, so they are not offered empathy. And when they age and lose their sex appeal they are worth nothing at all.
Do we really want to turn others into objects? (Keep in mind that it is possible to be sexy without being a sex object.)
But looking closer we see the table is only half-turned: women are also objectified, even in this film. While not revealing any male body parts that are prohibited on a public beach, the film hones in on naked breasts from time to time. One of the strippers even passes his wife around and encourages the guys to fondle her breasts because “she loves it.”
Meanwhile, the simulated sex on stage often mimics male pleasure, with women’s heads shoved against cocks and men humping women’s faces or behinds. How about a little clitoral action?
And in a movie that promises to take us out of our boxes we end up right back inside the virgin/whore dichotomy as Magic Mike chooses between the sexually adventurous Joanna and the virginal Brooke. No surprise, really, who triumphs.
So things have changed and they’ve stayed the same, which provokes the question: Where do we want to go?
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Gays Find Strippers Sexy; Women Don’t?
Male strippers have beautiful bodies. And women find them sexy. But probably not sexy in a way that gets them too aroused.
Last week I considered the lack of excitement. Turns out, women don’t get too turned on by male nudity, at all. When sex researcher, Meredith Chivers, wired women up and showed them sexual images, straight women experienced no arousal — physically or subjectively — when looking at fit naked guys working out. Another time women watched a nude man walking and the only thing that aroused them less were bonobos, an ape species, having sex.
Is it because the male body simply isn’t sexually exciting?
Probably not, since gay men did get aroused looking at nude men.
Why are gay men turned on by male nudity when straight women aren’t? There are various possibilities. And it’s not that women just aren’t visual, after all, women were more aroused by a nude woman exercising than by a nude man. And, some women enjoy porn.
The fact that gay culture celebrates and eroticizes the male body in a way that straight culture does not could play a role.
And then there’s repression. Men are rarely slut-shamed for being sexual. On the other hand, gays are too often taunted as fags or queers. Still, research on men and women who have lived in repressive cultures, like Victorian England, find men less affected (perhaps because they are also less repressed). But even gay men are less affected than lesbians by homophobia-induced repression (even though homophobia is more strongly directed at gay men). Maybe because the male sex drive is stronger, due in part to higher levels of testosterone, while twice as much of their brain is taken up with sex.
Meanwhile, men’s bodies give them better feedback than women’s do. When blood rushes to the penis a man knows it. He feels very excited. But when blood rushes to a woman’s vagina, she can be clueless. Again, this difference may be biological, or due to greater female repression, or because men are less affected by repression, or all of the above. Indiana University researchers believe that women are less responsive for both anatomical and psychosocial reasons.
We don’t have the definitive answer on why gay men get aroused by male strippers when straight women don’t so much, but here’s a little food for thought to munch on.
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Real Photos for Real Girls in Seventeen Magazine
17 magazine real girl cover girl
Few young women have good body image. The trouble starts early, thanks to Photoshopped pics in magazines like Seventeen — or even grown-up fare like Cosmo, or your typical billboard — all creating impossible standards that even models cannot achieve.
This is especially a problem for young women who are just beginning to develop a sense of themselves, and whose self-esteem is too often based on their looks.
Even Penelope Cruz knows the agony, having felt insecure as a young woman. Angry now, she says:
I would close down all those teenage magazines that encourage young girls to diet. Who says that to be pretty you have to be thin? Some people look better thin and some don’t. There is almost a standard being created where only thin is acceptable. The influence of those magazines on girls as young as 13 is horrific.
Consequently, too many young women starve or go under the knife in anxious attempts to feel good about themselves. But you can’t compete with Photoshop.
Fourteen-year-old Julie Bluhm knows this. She knows that girls her age are not all slim with glowing skin and shiny hair. And she tired of her friends’ endless rants about their “imperfections.”
And so she began an online petition on Change.org asking Seventeen to use at least one unretouched spread in each issue.
In her “David meets Goliath” moment Julie won – at least a few points. After collecting more than 84,000 signatures, Seventeen published an eight-point “Body Peace Treaty” promising to “celebrate every kind of beauty,” and pledging not to retouch girls’ bodies or faces, instead showing “real girls as they really are.”
Julie won a battle, but necessarily the war. As Ms. points out:
The letter overtly confirms that Seventeen will continue to retouch photos. And (the editor) still claims that Seventeen “never has never will” alter its models’ bodies–a statement that contradicts the very accusation Bluhm (and her 85,000 supporters) made with her petition.
At the least, Julie has gotten a conversation going that has clued many young women into knowing that things are not always what they seem, and learning that they need not strive to meet the nutty body ideals sent down by the gods of media — and the money to be made by offering helpful “fixes” after making women feel bad about themselves.
Goal one has been achieved: be empowered, don’t just take it.
Now we must work on goal two: critiquing looks as the major source of self-esteem.
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Why Aren’t Male Strippers Sexy?
Channing Tatum in “Magic Mike”
The typical atmosphere in such an establishment isn’t one of arousal and longing, the kind that reliably fills the air in a female strip club. As far as I can tell, female patrons are typically cracking up, shielding their eyes in mock horror or cartoonishly objectifying male dancers as a performance for their friends.
Her observations come by way of the new movie, Magic Mike, which gets a lot right, she says, but shows male stripping as it mostly is: “goofball, absurd and sometimes repulsive,” which is how she describes her own first – and last — male strip show outing:
Onstage was an overly tanned dark-and-handsome type dressed like a race car driver. He slowly unzipped his onesie while popping his knee to the throbbing techno music, which was accented by sounds of a car engine revving. Once naked, he took his flaccid penis in his hand, stretched it out as far as he could and let go; it snapped back to his body and flopped around as he wiggled his eyebrows at the crowd.
And so she asks why these strip shows are libido-killers and offers her thoughts. On some points we overlap, on others we don’t (for instance, I think evolutionary psych is full of crap). Here are my own musings:
Some of what I’ve written before applies here. For instance, male bodies aren’t sexualized in our culture. Since I’ve discussed this in pieces like, “Men: Erotic Objects of Women’s Gaze,” or “Women Seeing Women as Sexier than Men.” I won’t dwell on the point. But whether out of homophobia or because women have only recently become involved in creating media, literature, art, or anything else that could eroticize the male form, we see few sexualized images of men. So lusting after men isn’t something that women learn to do.
Some say women are just more erotic, yet breasts are only sensualized in places where they are either hidden or selectively hidden and revealed. The U.S. is so obsessed by the secreted breast that even women can develop a fetish. There’s no biological reason for that.
Repressed sexuality may also make it more difficult for women to respond to the visual. I don’t have data on this other than personal experience and talking with other women about it, but a few of us were better able to respond to visual stimulation when we were very young and less repressed.
Forces of repression? I’ve discussed this before (so see refs), but it arises as women are told that sex is bad – for them – and slut-shamed, from being the ones who get screwed and f’d, from being told not to touch themselves (males are more likely to figure out pleasure sources due to differences in anatomy), and from sexual abuse.
Making matters worse, when men do show skin they can look “gay.” This seems to occur because women are so used to nudity being meant for the male gaze that they come to see nude males through male eyes, too. That’s jarring, not a turn-on.
Men doing women-things (stripping) might be jarring, too.
Another problem is that straight women get more aroused by being desired than by desiring men. (Being desired by men they’re interested in, not by any ol’ guy.) Probably due to culture. While women don’t learn to see men as sex objects, they do come to see themselves that way. So in a convoluted form they can become aroused by experiencing how men are experiencing them. Yet another factor preventing women from desiring men in a fetished way.
And then floppiness could add to the problem, erasing any fantasy of being desired by the stripper. Flaccidity – at least on a twenty-something — communicates that he’s just not that into you. (Maybe a male strip clubber’s fantasy is helped when no obvious bodily sign tells him that the female stripper’s not into him.) But standing at attention might not work with a whole houseful of ladies anyway, since he’s still not necessarily into you.
Also, even if the stripper were erect, women may still have the same reaction that they have to strange men who flash or sext them: repulsion, trauma or laughter.
Yes, women have a very different reaction to the male member on a stranger than the men they love.
There are plenty of reasons why women think men look sexier fully clothed.
But why do gay men find male strippers sexy when straight women don’t? I’ll visit that question next week.
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sex in the third person
Poet, Susan L. Daniels @SusanDanielsEden, was inspired by my post “Sex Objects Who Don’t Enjoy Sex” to write this poem. Thank you Susan.
if I and you
shifted to she and he
when we should be
just us
lost in the heat
of this we
fusing
there would be no
true union
just she
filtering feeling
through a camera lens
a voyeur
assessing performance
from across the room
Susan L Daniels is a firm believer that politics are personal, that faith is expressed through action, and that life is something that must be loved and lived authentically–or why bother with any of it?
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Are You Pro-Life, Or Just Want To Control Women?
When I first heard feminists say that pro-lifers actually wanted to control women, not prevent abortion, that didn’t make sense to me. Now it does. I don’t think that everyone who is pro-life is disingenuous. But some are.
Take Plan C, emergency contraception. Plan C can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex, and is 98% effective when properly used. The drug stops fertilization by preventing eggs from being released.
Some pro-lifers protest that Plan C brings us one step closer to “over the counter abortions,” though medical studies prove otherwise.
These same folks say stem cell research equals abortion. Yet they don’t worry that fertilized eggs are thrown in the garbage if they aren’t used for research. But then, garbage isn’t constantly publicized, helping to make “killing” fertilized eggs seem okay. If they really thought that destroying fertilized eggs was abortion, they’d be up in arms about humans being murdered and thrown away.
Pro-lifer, George W. Bush, didn’t seem to have a problem sending young men to die in Iraq and Afghanistan, either. But as one cartoonist put it, “No stem cells were hurt.”
I once heard Christopher Reeve pose the following question: if you were in a research lab with a two-year-old and a fire broke out, would you save the child, or would you leave her to die so that you could save thousands of stem cells (people)? I suspect most of us — all of us — would save the child.
Utah Senator, Orin Hatch, says it’s fine to use fertilized eggs for research. But destroying eggs implanted in a woman’s womb equals murder. In one case a woman’s body is controlled. In the other, it isn’t.
Pro-lifer, Pat Robertson, opposes a woman’s right to choose in America. But he supports forced abortions in China. Once again controlling women is the only common denominator.
Pro-lifers don’t seem to be too concerned with making sure poor women get prenatal care, or that their babies have food once they are born, either.
Pro life? Looks like it’s all about controlling women.
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The Constricting Bodice as Empowerment and Imprisonment?
Angela Fortain, Bodice
“The bodice, the corset and the bra can be instruments of empowerment, or torture.”
– Angela Fortain
In her series “Overt Underthings” artist, Angela Fortain, considers a paradox: Distorting the body can both liberate and imprison, she says. Society dictates constraining fashions which, once dawned, create power over others.
Power over others?
By way of men’s desire, women’s envy.
The power to shape space as others turn in our direction.
Favors.
Lower status bowing to higher. Standing based on beauty – and what to make of that?
The power to gain love? Or sex? And must one undergo body-torture to attain either?
How might power become less available inside the constrained body?
Are the powers bestowed – or removed – substantive or superficial?
Finally, Fortain muses, “Separating the sensual object that once transformed the wearer into an object of sexuality allows us to examine the object, and our own desire.”
The power of objects… our own desire?
Fortain’s work provokes more questions than answers. As art should.
For more on Angela Fortain’s work go to ARTslant.
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Sex Objects Who Don’t Enjoy Sex
Sexualizing women can have its perks in the bedroom, with breast fetishes and butt fetishes heightening men’s arousal.
But surprisingly, sexualizing women can have the opposite effect, harming both men’s and women’s enjoyment. And in many ways. Here’s one: self-objectification.
Drowning in “sexy women” images, men and women can both come to see women as the sexy half of the species. So what happens in bed? Because men aren’t seen as especially sexy (at least by comparison) men are focused on women and women can be focused on themselves.
Caroline Heldman, assistant professor at Occidental College, found that some women become preoccupied with how they look instead of the sexual experience. “One young woman I interviewed described sex as being an ‘out of body’ experience,” she said. “She viewed herself through the eyes of her lover, and, sometimes, through the imaginary lens of a camera shooting a porn film.”
Sounds a bit like Paris Hilton: “My boyfriends say I’m sexy but not sexual,” she mused. “Being ‘hot’ is a pose, an act, a tool, and entirely divorced from either physical pleasure or romantic love.”
Heldman feels that girls and women are learning to eroticize male sexual pleasure as though it were their own. She feels they need to explore their sexuality in more empowering and satisfying ways than this vicarious act.
Cultural theorist Jackson Katz has similar concerns. “Many young women are now engaged in sex acts with men that prioritize the man’s pleasure,” he reflects, “with little or no expectation of reciprocity.”
When having sex, these young women may be enjoying themselves, and how great they look. They may gain a boost to self-esteem as they dwell on their “hotness.” But they’re not enjoying sex.
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Brave Princess Fights Men, Women Holding Her Back
Bold, boisterous, untamed hair that will be ruled by nothing and no one suits Brave Princess Merida just fine.
Some try to control and limit her. Merida will have none of it.
Brave mirrors the story of women letting off shackles and moving into independence and empowerment even as societies – and some women – fight to sustain the status quo. It’s also a story of women at odds reconnecting.
As a young girl, Merida was let out of the gender box when her father, the Scottish King Fergus, gave her a bow and arrow. Riding horses and shooting, she lived a life of freedom and adventure. Her big confidence made her seem bigger than she was, as Manohla Dargis at the New York Times described it:
She’s a wee thing but her flaming hair and fiery daring — she shoots from the saddle, bull’s-eyeing targets — make her seem bigger. When she takes a breather, surveying the land (this is her land, you sense) while her horse rolls on the grass like a puppy, you see her at peace with herself… She slips into the ecstatic when she scrambles up a rock wall and twirls on its summit, laughing, happy, free and alone.
All to her mother’s chagrin. The Queen has a long list of DO’s and DON’T’s. Do: rise early and always be perfect… Don’t: chortle, raise your voice or place your weapon on the dining table…
Oh, and DO marry whom I want and when I want.
When Merida is told to marry a young prince among the kingdom’s royal allies, she refuses. Her mother tries to change her mind by telling of a prince who forsook his duty, causing his kingdom to crumble.
A contest is made for a worthy suitor. But Merida enters, herself, insisting she’s eligible to compete for her own hand. And in so doing, she fights for her life, her heart and will.
Her mother is furious.
So Merida runs away and meets a witch who casts a spell to “change her mother.” Unfortunately, mom is changed more than expected, leaving Merida to reverse the spell, which is finally broken through love and reuniting.
Brave makes me think of women’s march to independence and autonomy.
Once was, women had little control over their lives. They rarely had a career choice, motherhood being a hallowed, but lone, option. (Motherhood’s not the problem, having no option is.) Unable to make money, women relied on husbands to care for them, leaving many focused on financial security and not love.
It’s all reflected in a slew of novels portraying young girls as free and adventurous (think, Faulkner’s Caddy Compson) who grow into young women that are all about sexuality (think, Caddy Compson) and who move into motherhood, dissolving into household routines that tell them nothing about themselves and who they might be. Little wonder that moms in fiction so often disappear, mostly sick or dead (think, Caddy’s mom).
No wonder the brave princess rejected that script.
Even now, some women fight to cut off possibilities for other women. Like Merida’s mom, my own mother wanted me to focus on marriage and not career. She felt it was the right thing to do. What both God and Society wanted.
Others may be jealous of opportunities that they are, or were once, denied.
Some want other women to obey the men they control, as an overbearing mother-in-law might.
And some control women to gain favor with men, as some sorority sisters do.
But Brave also holds the possibility, and reflects the reality, of women working from a place of love and not fear or envy, uniting to help each other move forward.
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