I've been thinking a lot about slut-shaming over the past few months, possibly more so than usual because I've had my first unpleasant experiences of it in my own life, and nothing makes you realise how the personal really is political quite like your personal experience of being negatively labelled by other women. Rashida Jones learned the hard way that people are a lot less tolerant of public slut-shaming these days when she tweeted "This week's celeb news takeaway: She who comes closest to showing the actual inside of her vagina is most popular. #stopactinglikewhores".
Naturally there's been some major facepalms, a lot of vocal objection and many articulate takedowns from the feminist community on why Jones' choice of words and targets were extremely ill-judged, so I don't feel like there's a lot to add to it. However, when I read Jones' response in Glamour magazine, I did find myself agreeing with some of her points. I certainly don't agree with all of it, especially the unfortunate decision to use Lily Allen's recent cringeworthy video in her defence. I also don't buy her claim that she wasn't hating on sex workers by connoting 'whores' with despicable, undesirable, anti-feminist behaviour. I think she was probably just using the word without even thinking, so entrenched in our culture is a hatred and suspicion of women who don't have sex in the same way as us (i.e. those who have 'too much' sex, or too little, or kinky sex, or sex with women, or sex for money). I think that, unfortunately, much as I can believe that she really is trying to be a feminist, in using the word 'whores' to condemn other women, Jones has fallen victim to the kind of respectability politics that I wrote about in my last post, the ones which make women clamour to differentiate themselves from "other" women who are too slutty/fat/poor/working class/whatever just in order to get a pat on the head from society.
All this said, I do feel Jones is right on the money when she says "...let's be real. Every woman's sexuality is different. Can all of us really be into stripper moves? The truth is, for every woman who loves the pole, there's another who likes her feet rubbed. But in pop culture there's just one way to be. And so much of it feels staged for men, not for our own pleasure". I agree with these words so much, but I feel wrong-footed by the fact that this kind of thinking often comes from anti-porn, anti-sex work feminists (sex-negative, if you will). I feel like as a sex-positive feminist, I often end up stuck between a rock and a hard place when I try to suggest that there must be a middle ground between draconian, right-wing censorship and neoliberal acceptance of the total pornification of culture. Yes, I want to see female sexuality celebrated rather than shamed. But as Jones points out, what we're seeing is not real female sexuality - it's prepackaged, heterosexual, slim, white (or occasionally, horrendously stereotyped hypersexual bootylicious black), abled-bodied, young, cisgendered sexuality. It's hairless, it's odourless, it's flawless. It's also soulless, and bears very little relation to the experiences or bodies of the vast majority of women in the world.
You may say it's not my right to decide what version of sexuality is 'acceptable', and while that's true, I think it's just utterly insincere of any feminist to pretend that the saturation of popular culture with the same tedious writhing, panting image of female sexuality is not problematic. Yes, I want to support other women's right to do whatever the fuck they please and not be judged for it. I may not like what other women choose to do with that right, I might not even like the women themselves, but none of that should matter. Men enjoy the privilege of the unexamined life - when did you last hear a man upbraid Robin Thicke for 'letting the side down' by being such a consistently sleazy douchebag? - and if we want true equality, we should be supporting the right of women to make their own choices, even make their own mistakes, free of finger-wagging from the sisterhood.
But. But but but. I remain sceptical of 'choice feminism' precisely because no choice takes place in a vacuum, and as I pointed out in a recent post, this supposed 'freedom' that Miley, Britney, Beyoncé, Rihanna et al are supposed to be emblems of actually boils down to the freedom "to wear little, say even less and do whatever's going to sell records." And yes, those women have the right to do all that without judgement, but don't call that a feminist victory. Call it a capitalist victory, call it a neoliberal victory. Call it evidence that pop culture is ultimately about nothing but the lowest common denominator. But until Janelle Monae appears on my video screen in a tuxedo as often as Rihanna does while clothed in a few scraps of cloth, or Adele is considered as sexy as Miley, don't tell me feminism still doesn't have far to travel. Female pop stars are doing what they can within the restrictive parameters they're allowed, and fair play to them - it's not up to them to carry the weight of responsibility to all women on their shoulders, and Rashida Jones may well have missed the point and fucked off a lot of people in the process of expecting them to. But she was right to point out that it's utterly fucked up that women in the public eye are still offered such limited choices if they want to be successful, and she was right to demand better.
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