California NOW

Of Triggers and the Media

This post is cross-posted at the new site which is NOT quite ready for company yet, but it's coming along, and at my soon to be former blog Polimicks at Livejournal.

 Some of you may have heard of the latest kerfuffle surrounding the Penny Arcade webcomic.  I've already blogged about it here at Geek Girls Rule! and you can read the whole mess over there, if you are so motivated. There are links to the comic, the reaction, and the (bad) comic apology, as well as my reaction. Essentially there's a whole group of people saying that the comic could be triggering, and is a rape joke. I disagree, and you can go to GGR to read about that. But what I'd like to talk about here is something I don't really get into until the end of my GGR rant. I'm talking about the expectation that sexual assault survivors are somehow constructed of spun glass and will completely disintegrate upon being "triggered."

This expectation is, for the most part, not true, and more than a little patronizing. The majority of survivors are more than capable of confronting a trigger, dealing with the reaction, dusting themselves off and soldiering on. Is it particularly pleasant? No. It isn't. But neither is it world ending. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. Trust me, I know. 

And while a "trigger free" existence would be nice, I myself am not a fan of panic attacks, regardless of how quickly I've learned to shut them down, it just isn't possible.

Enough with the Slut-Shaming Already!

 If one were to listen to the strident bleating of the Chastity crowd, I should not be married.  My marriage a fluke, the relationship should have ended in bitter divorce and tears long, long ago.  For you see, not only was I not a virgin when I got married, but I had gone through a period of some serious slutting it up.  As had my husband.  In fact, I slept with him on the recommendation of several of my friends, who had already slept with him... and a little over a year later we got married.  Seventeen years later, we're still married, and frequently mistaken for newlyweds because of the nauseating schmoopiness of our interactions.  Seriously, we're disgusting.  

I tell you this, because according to the myths of the Chastity crowd, THIS SHOULD NOT BE.  I should be alone, and friendless, dying locked in my spinster's apartment, slowly being devoured by my multitude of cats before a concerned landlord finds my rotting corpse, to be buried in a potter's field, no one to care, no one to mourn...  Alone.  (*hand/staple/forehead*) 

Ok, I'm engaging in a touch of hyperbole (not really), but for the love of little green apples, folks, that's what it sounds like.  With all this bleating on about how promiscuity is destroying women, and oxytocin and unwrapped suckers and flowers with no petals, they seem to miss the point that people are people, regardless of gender, and sometimes people want and need different things from other people.  

This latest round of promiscuity panic has been engendered by Jaclyn Friedman's post "My Sluthood Myself", which was posted both at the Yes Means Yes blog, and Feministe.  She wrote about going through the break up of a relationship she had thought was The One.  During the rebound, she figured out that sometimes if you scratch the physical itch so your desire for physical contact is sated, it quits clouding your mental and emotional vision, and you can more clearly see what you really want and need.  This has, of course, brought the naysayers screaming to the fore.  

I don't get it.  

I don't understand why these people care so much about who and what Friedman does with her body. Or who and what I do with mine.  Or anyone's.  What is so threatening about women enjoying sex with whomever they want whenever they want?  

Susan Walsh tells us it's because all of us slutty slutty slut sluts are out there slutting it up, so no man will ever want, date or marry a "decent girl."  You know, decent girls:  The ones who don't have sex.  Which, if you actually research Walsh herself, is diametrically opposed to what she did.  She slutted it up, and then GOT MARRIED to one of her "one-night-stands."  "Hey, Kettle, the Pot called.  Guess what she said?"

Look, I've got nothing against anyone who personally wants to remain a virgin until they get married.  That is their choice.  I've had good friends who held that conviction very strongly.  Some of them even lasted until their wedding night.  And I respect their right to do whatever they want with their bodies and their feelings.  It's what being a Feminist is all about, respecting other women's choices.  I may not agree with your choices, but I'll support your right to make them.  

What I can't support is attempting to impose your choices on other women.  (Oh, I am just waiting for someone to explain to me that my not imposing my choices on them, is imposing my choices on them or some such circular bullshit. You laugh.  I've seen it happen.)  But you cannot call yourself a Feminist if anywhere in your agenda you include limiting women's choices.  

And yes, I know.  There are a raft of people out there who feel like Walsh does, that my enjoying my sexuality means I'm "limiting" the choices of "decent" women.  But hey, guess what?  If a guy is into casual sex with me, and you're determined to remain a virgin until your wedding night, then you guys are probably not compatible, and that has nothing to do with me. 

See, here's this other thing Feminists get that Walsh and others like her just don't seem to get:  The genders are not monoliths.  There is no one true man or one true woman template.  No Platonic ideal of either gender by which all members of that gender must live.  Feminists understand this.  We understand that some men and women are totally down with casual hook-ups, and some are not.*  My Atheist, borderline Socialist husband would never have been a good match for some woman with strong Christian values who believed in no sex until marriage.  And my putting out for him didn't change that. 

Let me repeat that:  My putting out for my husband did not make him a bad match for someone with traditional Christian values.  He already WAS a bad match for that woman.  So why does she care that he hooked up with my friends, and then me, and when we discovered our sexual and emotional compatibility, we got married?  I didn't seduce him away from traditional values.  He had already rejected them, long before he met me. 

So, you'd think those "decent" women would be ecstatic that we're taking these godless heathens off their hands.  

Friedman never says in her post that every woman has to slut it up to discover or heal herself.  She said that it worked for her, and that women should support each other in their choices, regardless of what those choices are:  i.e. celibacy or hooking up.  

What's so threatening about that?

Articles in support of Ms. Friedman: 
Thomas's response to the Slut post at Yes Means Yes

Thomas again Fastened to a Dying Animal, or Sluts stand up and be counted

Amanda's Marcotte at Pandagon's first rebuttal to Susan Walsh

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:  Don't be a slut, you prude 

*I know this has a heterosexual focus, this is not meant to be exclusive of anyone, but rather to address the specific instances of both Friedman's and Walsh's posts.  I recognize that some people are not heterosexual, and that LGBT relationships can have many of the same issues.  I also recognize that some folks are just not into sex with anyone regardless of gender.  

Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.

Disney Needs Adventure Girls!

Apparently Disney has decided to target its latest Princess movie to boys.  Now that it looks like the Rapunzel film isn't about Rapunzel as much as the newly created male lead, one wonders if Disney really knows how its financial bread gets buttered.

Disney has found major franchises in their Disney Princess and Disney Fairies brands.  These brands are driven by girls. It is obvious to anyone paying attention that Disney has never succeeded in creating the same kind of character-driven franchise for boys. The Pixar films are very boy-centric, but they don't have the same merchandising strength as the Princess or Fairies lines.

The decision to change Rapunzel to Tangled was apparently made because The Princess and the Frog didn't do as well financially as Disney had hoped. I can't help wondering how much racism played into that. 

I say that not just as someone who recognizes the intersections of oppressions, but as someone who stood in line, waiting to buy tickets to see The Princess and the Frog with my daughter and mother. A girl a few years older than my daughter came in with her mother and stood in line behind us.  The girl said, "The Princess and the Frog! I want to see that!" "No," said her mother, in a disgusted tone, "We are NOT seeing THAT movie."  I do not think it was a coincidence that the mother and daughter were white, and I wonder how many times that conversation was repeated in movie theaters and homes across the country.

I have numerous problems with the way Disney markets towards girls, and especially with many of the official Princess storylines, but decentering the heroine of the Rapunzel story so much that her name is no longer the title (the first time, by the way, that this has happened with one of the Princess movies), is not a solution.

In fact, if the issue is the bottom line, I'd like to propose a solution to satisfy both Disney's money-machine and my feminist mom desires.  Since it's clear that multi-film heroine groupings are a winner, I propose, Disney Adventurers! This would let Disney resurrect and cash in on some of the older characters, and appeal to parents who don't like the Princess or Fairy lines as role-models.  I know I'm not the only parent who would love to see a mainstream character line that I could support without reservations (or at least with fewer reservations). 

Now if only Disney could convince Pixar to make a movie with a female lead...

Beauty and the Marketing of "Effortless" Perfection

Our website and newsletter are listed in various databases of news outlets, and as a result we get a large number of press releases targeted to women's media. For some unknown reason, most of them seem to be related to fashion, weight loss, and dating and not to, say, passing the Fair Pay Act, environmental causes of cancer, or the benefits of public preschool programs.

A couple of these have recently caught my eye, because of the contrast between what they claimed to be and what they actually were.

Tips to make my Summer hair look like a star on the red carpet?  Tip #1: Be rich enough to  hire a personal stylist whose job is to make me look good all the time. Another promised 9 beauty tips for women on the go, and yet among the suggestions were beauty regimes that would add easily an hour or more a day to the schedule of a busy woman already struggling to cope with her commitments.

It estimated that the average stay-at-home mom works 98.9 hours per week, and that mothers who work outside the home log 60.5 hours of work at home each week in addition to the 40-plus hours they put in at the office.  In total? Most women are working 100 hours of a 168-hour week. No wonder women are chronically sleep deprived.

So thanks, media PR people, for giving me a new set of things I need to do in order to be a successful and attractive woman!  I'll add that to the giant list of how to meet an unattainable standard that is constantly shifting.  Now we're expected not only to spend precious time keeping ourselves looking "perfect" at every moment, we're also supposed to pretend that process is effortless.  And it's not as though attempting to meet that standard comes without costs.

Women in Hollywood Face Serious Hurdles to Equality

Some depressing statistics on women's work in front of and behind the camera this week, leading up to Oscar season and the possibility of the first woman Best Director.



From the Los Angeles Times:

Women may make up 51% of the population, but actresses nabbed only 29.9% of the 4,379 speaking parts in the 100 top-grossing films of 2007, or so says a new study released by University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, which was conducted by professor Stacy. L Smith.

According to Smith’s study, 83% of all directors, writers, and producers on those films were male. Not surprisingly, the number of female characters grew dramatically when a woman directed a film — up to 44.6% from 29.3% if a man was behind the camera.

From Women and Hollywood:

Dr. Martha Lauzen of San Diego State (the guru of stats about women in Hollywood) has released her annual Celluloid Ceiling survey looking at the women working behind the scenes on the top 250 grossing movies of the year and not surprising, women make up only 16% of directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors. That number is down 3 points from 2001 and is the same as 2008.

Women directors are now at 7% down from 9% in 2008 and is the same percentage as it was in 1987 (the year that Dirty Dancing and Baby Boom were released and Cher won her Oscar for Moonstruck.) So while we’ve all been talking about the prominent women who were recognized this past year, the opportunities for women to direct declined.

Women writers make up only 8%. That means that 92% of the films are written from a male perspective.

More stats:
Women make up:
17% of all executive producers
23% of all producers
18% of all editors
2% of all cinematographers 

From the Women's Media Center:

Women are 51% of the population but are losing ground in Hollywood. Even as we celebrate Kathryn Bigelow's "Best Director" nomination, in 2009, women comprised only 7% of all directors, 8% of writers, 17% of all executive producers, and 35 percent of 2009's top films had no female producers at all.

And it bleeds into children's programming too. From Jezebel:

The statistics in the SMH piece are startling: Three male characters for every one female character; 87% of narrators are male.

So what can we do about it? Start by signing the petition at the Women's Media Center, and make a pledge to support movies that feature women in front of an behind the camera. 

Jay Smooth on John Mayer & Celebrity Racism

We've posted videos from Jay Smooth before, and his take on race issues, and the ways in which real work on them gets derailed by the latest celebrity racist moment, is too valuable not to share.



Although this video addresses race issues, we could make the same points for dealing with issues of sexism. It's much more important for us to be doing the front-line work to eliminate sexism on a societal scale than to address one individual's denigration of women. At the same, time, we recognize that addressing the casual racism and sexism that slips out of celebrities' mouths can be important too, because it helps to fight the societal acceptance of that kind of language and sentiment.

The Superbowl, Pam Tebow, and My High-Risk Pregnancy

The feminist blogosphere is on fire over the fact that CBS has stated that they'll let an anti-choice advocacy ad from Focus on the Family air during the Superbowl.  In the past, CBS has absolutely refused to allow advocacy ads to air during the Superbowl, including ads from PETA. MoveOn.org, and one from the United Church of Christ taking an LGBT-friendly stance.  Now they say they've changed their policies and will allow "responsible" issues ads to air. 

Unfortunately, their definition of responsible is not mine.  Personally, I think suggesting that women should continue high-risk pregnancies against the advice of their doctors because everything will work out and your child-to-be will grow up to play football (or cure cancer, or whatever) is pretty irresponsible.  And I say that as a mother who went through a high-risk pregnancy herself. 

But I wouldn't attempt to force my choice on anyone else.  I'm glad I had that choice, and if my life circumstances had been just slightly different, I would have chosen abortion as the safer option, despite very much wanting a pregnancy at that point in my life. I'm glad that I didn't get ordered to two months of bedrest and 24-hour medical care, like Pam Tebow, because then I would have had to have an abortion; unlike Tebow, I couldn't have afforded the time off or the medical care.  I'm glad I didn't get legally forced to undergo bedrest, like this woman in Florida, because I would have lost my job and that would have been just great for a new mother.

No matter what your convictions are, if your doctor tells you, "You may die, and your fetus may die anyway, if you choose to continue this pregnancy," that's a hard decision to make.  It is also an immensely personal decision.  I cannot understand how any woman who went through that could believe that her choice would be right for every women, or every family.  I cannot understand how any woman who faced that choice could believe it would be right to take it away from anyone else.

The fact is, anytime we restrict women's ability to control their own bodies and lives, women suffer, children suffer, and families suffer.  Having the right to choose to continue a risky pregnancy is part and parcel of trusting women with all the potential choices that a pregnancy entails.

You can take actions asking CBS to reconsider airing this ad. 

Send an email with the Feminist Majority 

with NARAL 

and with the Women's Media Center 

and email CBS directly. 

Interesting update, apparently Pam Tebow's life was not actually at risk from her pregnancy.  Instead, she was taking drugs to treat dysentery which could have adversely affected fetal development. Again, no one should tell a woman that she *must* take that kind of risk. Not every woman or every family has the mental, emotional or economic resources to raise a child who may need special medical care.

Sunday Comics: For Better or For Worse Jumps on the Retro-Sexism Bandwagon!

Click the strips to enlarge for easier reading.


Lynn Johnson who writes the comic strip For Better or Worse has been doing reruns of some of her classic early strips, but I have to wonder if we really needed to see strips like these again.  The thinking behind this humor seems to be, "Hur, hur, women are completely screwed by sexist expectations! What a laff riot!"  Frankly, I get enough of this BS in life already, I don't need it in my entertainment.

Feminist Mom Film Review: The Princess and the Frog

Over the holidays I took my daughter to finally go see The Princess and the Frog.

Before the movie came out I touched on some of the controversy around it, and pretty much decided that I would see it and let the movie stand on its own and judge it based on what I saw. Now that I have, it really intrigues me that there aren't more feminist voices speaking out and praising this movie. (Note: I am not going to summarize the story here, but the Wikipedia entry does a decent job.)

Even setting aside the huge step forward of having an African-American princess (and I love the conversation here that shows the impact of that) this movie tears down so much of the standard Disney "princess" formula, and even openly mocks some of that formula's most problematic aspects, in a way that should have feminist moms cheering.

Target Women: Lessons 2009