Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Well, dip me in honey and bake me in a cake. Salon’s Page Rockwell and Ilyka Damen’s Ilyka Damen, swell writers both, have not only read my fluff piece on BUST magazine, they’ve demonstrated their discriminating tastes by honoring it with some critical analysis in their electronically published forums. What they write more or less boils down to — and I despair of putting words in innocent young bloggers’ text fields, but really, if you can’t executively summarize a fellow bullshitter, who can you executively summarize? — “Twisty sort of has a point, but damn, her finger-waggin-crazy-talk is gonna ignite another bloody feminist blogospherical feud.”

Can it be true? Have I presented ‘feminism’ in a manner so inflammatory, so instigative, so unpalatable to the mainstream, that other feminists, upon exposure to my seditious dialectic, will be diabolically compelled to rip each others’ blogular faces off?

If you haven’t read the essay in question, the gist is this: that BUST, a young women’s indie-hip lifestyle magazine with a purported feminist slant, merely re-brands materialism as ‘feminism’; that for all its empowerful sass, it’s really just another philosophically empty fashion rag hawking ‘girly stuff’ in the traditional style. Using BUST to illustrate the vacuity of this new ‘fun feminism’, I further opine that feminist ideology, from the point of view of the radical activist spinster aunt, is in fact somewhat less about shopping for vibrators than it is about liberation from the tyranny of white male oppression.

I don’t know whether or not my post has ignited the prophesied fracas (as of this writing Technorati sez not, but of course Technorati is a tool of the patriarchy), but nevertheless, this morning a dark cloud hangs over my troubled bungalow. The origin of that cloud is this:

How come, whenever I write a “What Feminism Means To Me” essay, the other girls cringe and worry that my lonely-out-here-on-the-radical-fringe opinion will launch some sort of global auto-destructo apocalypse? How am I supposed to take that? What’s the hidden cryptic subtext?

That she shall be roundly chastised who threatens, with ideas, the peace and harmony of the other feminists, even as they graze placidly on the patriarchal green?

That I should resign my membership in the Society of Dissident Spinster Rhetoricians?

That, for the sake of ‘the movement’ (if such a thing even exists), I should realign my beliefs with the heteronormative feminine majority, so as not to scare off potential recruits who might still have a sizable investment* in the ideology of dominance and submission?

That discourse can be beneficial, but only when nobody’s feelings get hurt?

That iconoclasts who advocate unpopular challenges to the status quo should just put a sock in it?

Now, don’t misunderstand me; Page and Ilyka aren’t exactly telling me to shut up. They aren’t even taking sides. Their remarks more closely resemble objective reportage, with a little of the old “crap, can’t we all just get along?” thrown in. They describe, based, no doubt, on empirical evidence, a familiar pattern: that whenever Feminist X takes it upon herself to define feminism, Feminist Y (who happens to like lipstick, thank you very much, for its intrinsic value) immediately takes it as a personal affront and dashes off a “Who died and made you King of the Women?” retort. Page and Ilyka, they despair of this phenomenon. An ism divided against itself cannot stand, etc.

Well — surprise — I disagree. I mean, I suppose confrontation is unpleasant; all of us, feminists or no, have been trained from the cradle, as befitting submissives, in conflict-avoidance. And sure, it would be really nice if we could all just agree, once and for all, that I’m right. But we’ll never achieve anything like a consensus until we agree on the nature and extent of the enemy, and that’s gonna take some doing. To wit: patriarchy, though ubiquitous, is largely invisible. Women are understandably reluctant to concede that their deep attachment to the trappings of patriarchy (marriage, femininity, gender, fashion, porn, religion, beauty, the nuclear family, pink tool kits, et al) is not the manifestation of empowered personal autonomy, but rather a survival skill.

So is intramural squabbling ‘wasted energy’? No way. These blogular bloodbaths, tedious though they may be for seasoned professionals who have seen it all a million times, not only aid the intermediate blamer-commenter in fleshing out her views, but they soup up the general feminist presence on the World Wide Web. There’s no such thing, girls, as bad linkage.

Meanwhile, I must reiterate that I’m just the rhetoric guy. I don’t hold public office, I don’t mold Official Feminist Policy,and I don’t control who gets a membership card. My (arguably negligible) contribution to ‘the movement’ is to articulate principles central to an argument opposing Truth to popular belief. By which I mean, I sit around looking at white male privilege through radical-colored glasses. Then I pinpoint instances of chump-ass patriarchal orthodoxy masquerading to the casual observer as cosmic truth, and reveal my findings in these innocuous essays.

Naturally, if one of’em happens to fuel the fire of dissent, well, that’s just icing on the cake.
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*Dude, the footwear alone can cost a fortune.

A key element of ‘truly embraceable women’s culture’: Marcia Brady hair, and how to get it.

The October issue of BUST rests on my table, next to an empty water buffalo yogurt container. I have to admit, buying it was a mistake. Because I am addled, I mistook the BUST for a Bitch. It didn’t occur to me to wonder “why is there an issue of Bitch magazine in the checkout lane at Whole Foods?” (Before chemo destroyed my brain, I was capable of differentiating between BUST and Bitch, and between the checkout lane at Whole Foods and the magazine rack at Book People. Seriously.)

Anyway. This episode reminds me: several years ago I purposely subscribed to BUST. I was intoxicated at the time. I mistook the magazine’s glossy indie-hip chick-centric schtick for feminism. I did this partly because BUST told me it was feminism, and partly because I wanted it to be feminism. At last! I said, a publication that doesn’t think “feminist” means “humorless frigid ugly bitch who can’t get laid.”

My enthusiasm would wane after a couple of months, however. I had to bail when it became apparent that BUST couldn’t put out an issue that did not contain at least 57 heteronormative articles by “feminist” porn stars on how empowered we all are now that we have our Hitachi Magic Wands (“What, you haven’t bought an Hitachi Magic Wand yet? Omigod, they’re so bodaciously empowerful! Nina Hartley says it, I believe it, and that settles it!”).

BUST, it turned out, was, and still is, written for what a wry blamer recently called “fun feminists” — that is, women who identify as sassysexy young urban consumers of femininity. You know. The Grand Acquisitors. Or Carrie Bradshaw.

As BUST editor Debbie Stoller sez, in the highly imitable girlfriend-to-girlfriend style of women’s fashion magazines the world over, “Of course, we devote space in our pages to typical “feminist issues” such as abortion and equal pay, but we’re also determined to create a truly embraceable women’s culture, so that reading BUST can help you feel good about being a girl.”

Or, more precisely, it can make you feel good about fashion, fucking, and shopping. In this month’s issue the sassy fun feminine feminists can

In printing “all kinds of great girly stuff” BUST may be entertaining, but calling it ‘feminism’ is quite the howler. Feminism isn’t ‘fun.’ It’s not about shopping for cheap campy crap at the ‘Boobtique’ or getting off. It’s about political action on behalf of a class of people who are culturally, socially, politically, inellectually, physically, and violently oppressed, impoverished, abused, enslaved, objectified, raped and murdered.*

In her interview with Amy Poehler, Jill Soloway,** an avowed fan of BUST, inadvertently reveals the grim truth about all this fun-fake-feminism when she admits,

“Well, I’ve always been super-sex-positive and everything, but sometimes I feel like I want to be a Muslim woman in a burka; I feel like the only way I can get my power back is to peer at the world through a strip. Because I feel like women aren’t looking at all anymore – there’s no looking left. We’re only looked at.”

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* What? You say I’m being feministier than thou? You can shove it up your Vinnie’s Tampon Case ($13.95 plus shipping and handling).
** Show of hands: is it just me, or do other innocent young feminist bloggers get weekly spams from sassy sex-positive Jill Soloway hyping her latest book or nightclub appearance or used tampon or whatever?

As a new day dawns over the Twisty Bungalow, I ingest this cheery report* on an apparent upswing in the ratio of sex slaves to non-sex slaves within the Alameda County, California population of teenage girls.

Yup, the sheriff’s department Sexual Offenders Tracking Unit, as part of the dominant culture’s ongoing effort to buttress one of its all-time fave cultural narratives (Virgin vs. Whore), has been “putting the heat on prostitutes.” While discharging these patriarchal ass-kissing duties, they’ve noticed that, although the “trend” is “nothing new,” they feel like they’re arresting more teenage girls than ever before.

Whether or not this anecdotal evidence is indicative of an actual teen prostitute riot (the Sexual Offenders Tracking Unit to which I allude above is basing its theory of this “sudden trend” on their having arrested four girls in the last couple of weeks) is only marginally of interest. Two aspects of this “news” item that particularly chap the Twisty hide are (a) the dogged persistence with which proponents of the status quo engage in the wholly asinine activity of jamming up hookers of any age, and (b) the collaborateurism of news media in reporting these bogus teen hooker roundups.

Why is arresting prostitutes asinine? Any moron can tell you that the sex industry exists to service pervy porn-sick male violence. That same moron, if he is not a complete tool, can also tell you that arresting prostitutes doesn’t do jack to mitigate that pervy porn-sick violence. All it does is perpetuate the myth that slutty fallen women are to blame for male sexual aggression**. The community can look itself in the mirror if it believes that its henchmen are tough on crimes that threaten ‘family values’ while blissfully ignoring the fact that the johns who buy sex are their own menfolk.

Why is the concomitant reportage asinine? It almost universally misrepresents girls and women, rather than pimps and johns, as the ‘problem’, and it does so with titillating details about “sudden trends” and “thirteen-year-olds having sex!” In the Tri-Valley Herald piece, for example, we learn all about the teen sex slaves (“Most are runaways who are being taken advantage of by older men”; “The pimps convince the girls that they love them”; “The young girls are physically and sexually assaulted by the men before being forced into prostitution”; “These guys just prey on young girls.”), but not until the last two sentences is there even a half-assed mention of the pimps (“detectives do what they can to have the men prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”), and no word whatsoever on the slimebags who pay to rape these girls.

The Alameda County sheriff’s department, therefore, shows remarkable forbearance when it dares to wonder whether justice is really served by “tossing” these exploited 13-year-olds into juvy when they could maybe get them into support programs instead. That the Tri-Valley Herald reporter calls this a “delicate dilemma,” when in fact it merely describes a systemic reluctance to extend basic human rights to teenage girls, just shows to go ya.

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*The Tri-Valley Herald places punctuation low on its list of journalistic priorities — just a heads-up for those who haven’t had coffee yet.

** Before protesting that not all men who use prostitutes are aggressive, please recall that prostitution represents the pinnacle of human civilization’s endemic misogyny, and that any act involving the exercise of dominance by a member of a privileged class over a member of an oppressed class qualifies as aggression.

Alien on his way to the Delta Quadrant, or model at a Michaal Kors show? You decide.

Breaking news at the NY Times: fashion models may be dangerously thin.

Well, knock me over with a feather.

Here’s an excerpt, since free access to this gripping article will disappear in a couple a days.

“At a Vogue party on Monday for a young designer competition, the model Jessica Stam expressed [...] dismay. ‘There are a lot of girls doing the shows who are very thin and frail,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if they are healthy or not, but I don’t think the frail, fragile look is very feminine, and I don’t think it’s attractive.’ ”

Dismayed young Jessica Stam knows what time it is. She knows that, despite the urgency with which one modeling agent remonstrates against couture’s eating-disorder culture (“We are minutes away from a catastrophe!”), nobody really gives a rat’s ass about the actual health of runway models; femininity and attractiveness, those fluid concepts defined according to the whims of misogynist male designers, are all that matter.

Femininity and attractiveness: the ultimate measures of success in the cut-throat world of competitive womanhood; the logos of the sub-humanity to which all loyal subjects of male dominance aspire. Loyal subject Jessica Stam “expresses dismay” about sick-thin models, not, one suspects, out of humanitarian saintliness, but out of fear. Hers is the fear shared by all members of the sex class: that the misogynist asswipes who call the shots have changed the beauty rules again. That they have redefined femininity and attractiveness such that Jessica Stam will no longer be able to qualify. After all, it takes a real commitment to fashion/patriarchal ideology to follow it into anorexia. Young Jess may not have the cojones.

But once enough women learn that ‘near-death’ is the new ‘pretty’, models who can breathe on their own will become passé, and designers will raise the bar again. Next year, look for Michael Kors’ models, skeletons on life support, to be wheeled down the runway on gurneys, gurgling.