Thoughts on Battle of the Sexes

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM BATTLE OF THE SEXES

There was never any question of my going to see this film; I consider myself someone who has proudly fought against "male chauvinist pigs" (my, how antiquated and angry that phrase sounds in the face of so much modern blanding out of feminism!) since the first time I called out sexism at about age 8 (the culprit was my grandfather, blowharding about his prejudice against Woman's Hour). However, what you quickly realise is that the story of tennis legend Billie Jean King beating the crap out of the so-ostentiatious-as-to-be-ridiculous Bobby Riggs in 1973 isn't a straightforward tale of feminist warrior vs sexist warthog.

Riggs isn't actually King's problem for most of the film. He's a tennis has-been and an incorrigible gambler perpetually seeking his next thrill; King is battling to hold on to her status as World Number One as her private life becomes increasingly complicated by the fact she is married to a man but attracted to women. By the time the two actually meet, the worst of the sexism is actually over; King has already had to fight the American Lawn Tennis Association for equal pay for female players, having been told to accept 1/7th of what male players were earning. She threatens to take her talents elsewhere, and the LTA promptly blackball her.

King is told that the men's game is more exciting and draws more crowds, even though she patiently sits across from three old white men and tells them that the women's games have been selling exactly the same amount of tickets. It's clearly not a matter of economics, but these men are trying to weasel out from being accused of contempt for women by playing the old "men are more interesting to watch" card. As part of the roller derby community, a place in which the women's version of the sport came first, this is particularly amusing to watch. If you tried to advance this theory in derby you'd be promptly laughed out of a sports hall. But in the sexist 70s, such ideas held a disgusting amount of traction, and when they're coming from the top of your own sports association, what options do you have left?

So yes, King exhibits massive bravery in telling Jack Kramer, the intransigent head of the LTA, to get fucked when he tries to hold her game to ransom, and doing it far more coolly and politely than most of us would manage. She rallies her fellow big name female tennis players to create their own tournament, knowing it will cost them their LTA association and rankings. Kramer is left looking like a bitter, spiteful misogynist who was so incensed at the idea of female tennis players refusing to kowtow to him that he did everything within his power to torpedo their careers. Riggs, meanwhile, is actually bankrolled by his rich wife and--thanks to Steve Carell's wonderful ability to humanise otherwise cringeworthy characters--comes across as a maverick, a buffoon, a man with too much energy and nowhere for it to go. The sexism he plays up is clearly for the cameras, and is so comical as to be easily dismissed. From early on in the film, there's no question of who really looks a fool--the middle-aged man dressed up as a shepherdess playing tennis as sheep run around him, or the understated, cool-as-a-cucumber King, who plays along to an extent but mostly lets her game do the talking.

The film is by no means perfect; it plays fast and loose with chronology at times, and the cast is pretty white. The need for a sports film about women of color has long been apparent--I couldn't understand why average white failure Eddie the Eagle got a whole film to himself last year when no one has ever bothered making a picture about the majestic Florence Griffith Joyner aka Flo-Jo, the fast women ever. It angers me that after all so much lip service has been paid to progress in terms of whose stories get told in cinemas, audiences are still expected to happily root for a white guy, and are expected to swallow the notion that his struggles truly are "against all odds." Pffafff. What odds would those be, exactly? Odds steeper than those posed by entrenched racism and sexism, which cuts you off at the knees and then tells you you're just not trying hard enough?

It's not only sports movies where this is a massive problem, either; while I loved watching The Theory of Everything, and as a former carer for the disabled am intrigued by the premise of Breathe, I'm still waiting to see a film tell the story of a disabled woman whose husband bravely stays by her side, encourages her to do groundbreaking work, and happily puts his life on hold so she can be the star of the show while his life is merely a supporting act. Can you name me a mainstream movie in which this happens? Because I cannot think of one. A same-gender couple would also be fine with me; the point is, I want to see male characters take the backseat and a woman's stellar trajectory take center stage. Battle of the Sexes is immediately head and shoulders above the glut of hackneyed films simply because it does show this. King is the star here; all other characters are rendered either a supporter or detractor of hers.

Battle of the Sexes is an even-handed, funny, incisive and brilliantly cast take on a story that probably should have been told a lot sooner--after all, Title IX had its 40th anniversary in 2012, and given Billie Jean King's pivotal role in ensuring the legislation was put to proper use by mandating equal pay for athletes regardless of gender, that seems like it would have been the perfect moment to put out this film. Its take on feminism is so mild as to be inoffensive; in one exchange with Riggs, King turns down his offer to join in a media circus, and adds "By the way--I shave my legs!" before putting the phone down on him. Don't worry ladies, is the message; you can take on sexist twunts and kick their arses but you can also retain your femininity. You can view this as a watering-down of feminism, or you can view it as a funny, ultimately human moment.

King is not portrayed as overtly political, but the speeches she does give are memorable--she turns on a reporter quizzing her about the game and asks him if he thinks his father is better than his mother. When he mumbles "No," she retorts "That's what you're saying if you think women should be paid less." She then storms off leaving him and all the other clamoring journalists in her wake. It's simple, it's unambiguous, and it avoids the endless debates about labeling oneself a feminist, or a women's libber, or what those terms mean. King's message is clear: you either walk the walk and treat women equally, or you're a sexist and you can get fucked.

Emma Stone is reliably great as the lead, showing the understated, media-shy manner in which the great tennis player dealt with a level of media attention for which she was deeply unprepared. Austin Stowell as Larry, her husband, also does a great job of humanising the man who could clearly see that his wife loved women, but did not turn on her or desert her for this. He's pragmatic: he recognises that King's parents are old-fashioned and would not accept a lesbian daughter, and he also sees that the sexist, homophobic media which followed his wife around would use the information to crucify her. So he continues to support her and her tennis, and all but gives his blessing to her affair with Marilyn, the team hairdresser. This is a much more nuanced portrayal than I was expecting; I thought I was going to see a sexually threatened, insecure husband lashing out at his wife for betraying him, and instead I got something that felt much more realistic. Again, this reminds us that the lines draw in the 'battle of the sexes' are never exact, or clear, or ineradicable. Since so much fraternising with the 'enemy' takes place, it's inaccurate to call it a battle most of the time anyway.

Sarah Silverman is also fantastic as Gladys Heldman, King's agent, publicist and chain-smoking, nasal guardian angel. I remember wo-manning a table for Ms magazine at a rally against the War on Women in 2012, and Silverman approaching us shy young interns and offering to have her photo taken with us. It was a moment where Hollywood and real life collided, where it occurred to me that the women who inhabit such seemingly faraway, ethereal worlds may actually share some of my concerns, passions and sources of rage. 

Battle of The Sexes has pulled off no mean feat by making feminism and equal pay seem like spiky, shiny topics worth examining and yet still funny enough to lose yourself in for 120 minutes. Two thumbs up from me.

Preaching to the Perverted: How Did I Miss This Film?!

Last night I watched the fantastic British comedy film Preaching to the Perverted (1997), of which I had been blissfully unaware until a brilliant lady in the kink community recommended it to me. 

My first reaction was "HOW did I miss this? This film includes EVERYTHING I wrote Thinking Kink about, and yet I didn't know about it til now!" My second was to laugh, hoot, snort, raise eyebrows and repeatedly think how accurate and incisive this colourful, anarchic film is.

Here's what I liked in particular:

1) It quickly moves beyond the obvious tropes

In the first five minutes, when the House of Thwax is being accused of spreading filth and feminists are condemning it as exploitative of the female form, Ricky Tomlinson's character pipes up and points out he's seen "more men's hairy arses" in the secret film from inside a kink club, than any naked female bodies. And he's spot on. If you step inside any BDSM event, you will see bodies of ALL shapes, sizes, genders and ages. Yes, the scene is agonizingly white and could do a lot more to be ethnically diverse. But it has no rules on who's allowed to take their clothes off and parade around for others. Which is great, because it means we see plenty of old, male, chunky, skinny, hairy, wobbly and generally real-looking bodies in the kink scene. It really is time pop culture caught up to this, instead of opting to show rail thin white females in black PVC every time kink is mentioned.

"Gentle Face" by istoletheTV, via Creative Commons

2) It's very, VERY British

The majority of pop culture artefacts I looked at in Thinking Kink are from America, because that's from where the majority of our mainstream TV shows, movies and music originates. This is slowly changing, but British movies, TV shows and art are still lagging behind when it comes to global recognition--with some notable exceptions such as Dr Who and Sherlock, but they have the weight of the mighty BBC behind them. So it was incredibly refreshing to see a British-made film full of actual British actors running around grimy streets and stately homes in THIS COUNTRY. A lot of kinks are very specific to Britain: caning and spanking have strong connections to the disciplinarian boarding schools of yesteryear, as do the corresponding schoolboy/girl fantasies. The idea of a buttoned-up, repressed people who secretly love to wear stockings and bend people over desks is also extremely British, and is explored heartily in the film.

3) It nails the hypocrisy behind British laws

As someone who has just written 75,000 words on the insane state of Britain's obscenity law, it was fantastic to watch a film that points out how much of an ass our laws still are when they try to prevent consenting adults seeking pleasure. In this film, the kinksters, freaks, pervs and dominatrices are pitted against the government, the police and a press eager to humiliate people for a headline. Obviously the real situation is much more nuanced, as the protagonist Peter discovers, but when the law comes for you and your sexual freedom, you have to decide what you care about more - money and public image, or personal integrity. Preaching to the Perverted nails this perfectly.

4) It shows the value of group living

The House of Thwax comprises a huge warehouse/living space where a lead dominatrix is served by a houseful of slaves. It's the kind of efficient, clean and well-ordered set-up that most of us can only dream of enjoying at home or work, but because everyone knows their role, it functions smoothly. That's not to say there aren't malcontents, complaints, misplaced affections and a fair bit of topping from the bottom, but that's life and that's human beings; this film does a great job of showing that even 24/7 kink has its limits. However, when a baby is brought into the equation, everyone in the house takes turns to look after it, rather than the responsibility all falling on to the knackered mother's shoulders. Yes, the baby is being walked around a house full of chains, crosses and spanking benches, but it's receiving love and attention from multiple caring adults who clearly adore it. Why isn't this kind of parenting shown to us more often?!

5) It emphasises consent and safety

Naive and young protagonist Peter enters the kink world undercover and soon ends up out of his comfort zone, clad in PVC and getting his nipples pierced in order to blend in. However, he is regularly asked what he does and doesn't want to do, and when he says he is afraid of pain, his mistress respects this. When he says he is a virgin, she also respects this. She regularly tells him he is free to leave or say no if he does not want to participate. Although this should be bleeding obvious to both kinksters and vanilla folk, there clearly is a problem with how pop culture and wider Western society understand consent. It's rarely shown as an ongoing conversation that involves regular check-ins. We're still struggling to get to the point where all men believe no means no, rather than "try harder because women play games, you see", let alone the point where sexual partners are seeking active, enthusiastic consent from women ("yes means yes" and anything else should be seen as no). So it's mighty important for films, books, music videos, and any other art depicting kink to keep emphasising: YOU DON'T JUST GRAB SOMEONE AND START WHIPPING THEM. YOU ASK. AND ASK. AND ASK. AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. AND YOU RESPECT WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU, OR YOU ARE AN ABUSER AND A CRIMINAL.

6) It shows a variety of genders in a variety of roles

Images of submissive men, beautiful male bodies naked, chained, roped, guys being humiliated and strong women whose bodies aren't served up for the male gaze are still far too often absent from pop culture portrayals of BDSM. Not so in this film! The House of Thwax is decorated by chained, muscular male subs, the kink parties have plenty of older, saggy male flesh on show (much like your average real BDSM play party!), and apart from the mistress herself and her shaven-headed female slave, we see very few female bodies throughout the film. We also see plenty of young Peter in compromising positions, which makes a refreshing change from filmmakers' persistent belief that 'sexy' only means 'what straight men find arousing.'

7) It's just bloody funny

Lines such as "Stop electrocuting Peter! We were wrong to leave him in the road," had me hooting and snorting throughout. This is a film that doesn't take itself too seriously, and recognises that a sense of humour is essential to survival in the BDSM world. Sometimes you'll spill the poppers, knot the rope wrongly, trip over the spanking bench or end up look at a ball sack covered in clothes pegs when you really didn't want to see it. You have to be able to laugh, first of all at yourself, but also generally at this crazy community where we gather together to humiliate and beat each other, and then have a cup of tea and chat about it afterwards. Preaching to the Perverted shows that BDSM players are regular folk with jobs, lives and bills to pay, but they simply get their kicks from playing on the edge; not unlike anyone who does extreme sports, or--as someone points out in the opening scenes--boxing, a pursuit from which no law or government has ever tried to save men.

So what are you waiting for? You can buy the remastered version of the film here. Watch and enjoy!

American Pie - a secretly sex positive film?

In my constant search for pop culture artefacts that aren't horrifically sexist, perhaps I've become desperate or lowered my standards, but re-watching American Pie as it happened to pop up on my TV the other night, it struck me that what is often seen as nothing more than a gross-out teen movie is actually surprisingly sex positive.

Caveat: obviously it's a film about nice-looking, able-bodied, white, heterosexual kids in one of the richest countries of the world. We're not going to be able to get away from that, I'm afraid. But for what it is, I was struck by how, nearly 18 years since I first went to see it at the cinema, this film contains a lot of secretly feminist attitudes to sex.

1) It acknowledges that girls masturbate and have sex drives of their own

Firstly, through the conversations between Vicky (Tara Reid) and Jessica (Natasha Lyonne), which also propel the movie past the boundary for passing The Bechdel Test. Granted, they start off talking about whether Vicky's boyfriend Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) has ever given her an orgasm (and pretty realistically for a 17/18 year-old couple without sexual experience the answer is no), but the conversation then moves on to the more likely scenario of Vicky giving herself an orgasm. Jessica clearly has played solo before, Vicky is slightly scandalised at the thought of loving herself. And the exchange premiered the wonderful euphemism for female masturbation "to double click one's mouse." Women not talking about men but instead about how they can please themselves? Feminist and sex positive tick!

Secondly, through Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth)'s explorations when she's on her own in Jim (Jason Biggs)'s bedroom, a scene which also acknowledges that women also look at, and get off on, porn as she helps herself to some of his magazines to aid the experience. And finally, through the revelation Michelle makes when Jim is sitting next to her at the prom after party, bored senseless by her band camp stories, and she tells him that she used her flute as a dildo, causing him to spit his drink everywhere in shock. She shrugs "You think I don't know how to get myself off? That's half of what band camp is," speaking to a million horny teen girls tired of not seeing their own desires, but rather only those of boys, represented on screen.

2) It tells teen boys that they're douchebags if they try to pressure girls into bed

So, the boys' sex pact may seem a bit problematic: Kevin's rousing speech ("No longer shall our penises remain flaccid and unused!") contains some elements of entitlement, as if the boys are owed sex and girls should give it to them. However, the whole premise of the film is that it isn't going to be that simple; the boys are going to have treat girls like human beings if they stand a chance of getting themselves sexual partners.

This is emphasised on several occasions. Firstly, through Jessica's conversation with Kevin, where she tests him by advising him that telling Vicky he loves her is the best way to get her into bed. "That's how I was duped," she adds, and Kevin immediately responds that he doesn't want to "dupe" Vicky, but rather to please her. Jessica recommends giving her what she's never had before...

...which leads to Kevin calling up his older brother Tom for advice. Rather than us seeing blokey blusterings, the two have a surprisingly sensitive conversation where Tom says he's not interested in helping if Kevin is just trying to get his girl into bed. Again, Kevin emphasises that this isn't the case, and. as if Kevin has proven himself worthy of the knowledge, Tom then gives him access to the 'bible' of sex tips hidden in the school library, compiled by generations of boys. The most important section? The "Home of the Tongue Tornado", which although slightly terrifyingly named, leads me to the fact...

3) It acknowledges that for many women, oral sex is the best way to an orgasm

It's already been established that Vicky hasn't experienced an orgasm, either at her partner's hands or her own, but this all changes once Kevin goes down on her. Cue the pretty shonky joke where Vicky's dad comes to her bedroom door to call her down to dinner, and thinks her cries of "I'm coming, I'm coming!!" are her response, when of course it's because Kevin's down south working hard with his tongue. But considering how many books or movies make out that penetrative sex alone will always and easily lead to an orgasm for women--Yo, Sex and the City! Yo, Fifty S***** of ****!--American Pie is pretty damn good at emphasising the reality; that for the vast majority of women, just having a penis inside them ain't going to cut it. When Vicky and Kevin later do have sex, it definitely doesn't seem like an orgasmic experience for her--which again, is a pretty realistic depiction of first time sex, especially between two inexperienced teenagers.

4) It emphasises safer sex

Think how many sex scenes you've seen on TV or in films interrupted by characters stopping and searching for a condom (not including the likes of Grease or  Knocked Up, where lack of protection is central to the plot). Then think how many more you've seen where contraception is never mentioned, hinted at or used at all, but the characters just glide from kissing to foreplay to penetration with nary an awkward scrabble around in the nightstand or the guy stopping to put a condom on. I'm guessing the latter group is much bigger. The amount of films that never show even a quick "are you on the pill?" or "have you been tested?" conversation is depressing, and makes it irritating that the porn industry gets blamed for irresponsible sexual behaviour when Hollywood carries just as much of that blame, if not more, for making out that contraception and STI protection somehow magically happens without anyone ever talking about it or hopping out of bed to "wrap it up before you slap it up" (copyright Tim Westwood, some terrible lost time in the 90s). American Pie, by contrast, shows the four boys making their sex pact official by swearing on a box of condoms, which they all then take some of, and we later see Jim having a good old look at one of his rubber friends, Kevin pocketing a condom before the prom, and also Michelle having brought her own condoms to the after party.

5) It shows first time sex in a variety of ways, good and bad

Hollywood is rarely good with nuance, and subtlety definitely isn't what you expect from a gross-out teen sex comedy. Yet by showing the four different teen boys having four very different experiences, American Pie dodges the trap of depicting first time sex as either all doves cooing and choirs singing or all awkwardness and inconvenient bodily fluids. As mentioned above, Kevin and Vicky's experience is a bit quiet, a bit painful, but nothing terrible; it's pretty much how you'd expect it to go for two first-timers. Oz and Heather have the more stereotypically sensual experience with lots of slow, lingering touches and loving looks, all against the background of a beautiful lake, but (we later find out) don't 'go all the way'. Which is kind of nice in itself, seeing how goal-focused and phallocentric our definition of sex can be; it's important to see all the other things you can do with a partner depicted as appealing, without it necessarily having to end in PIV. It also sees Oz telling Heather about the sex pact and admitting he doesn't care about it; being with her is more important than reaching a 'goal' of sex to impress his friends (could we ask for any more 'right-on' behaviour from a horny teen boy?!). Finch, as we all remember with a smirk, discovers a mutual attraction with Mrs Stiffler and, having found an older woman the right match for his maturity (which is usually read by his peers as eccentricity) ends up having great fun on a pool table. And of course Jim is met with the highly sexual, confident Michelle, which again emphasises that teen girls have sex drives all of their own and a sexuality that isn't constructed as a passive response to male desire.

****

So yeah, there's still the pie scene, and the jizz-in-the-beer scene, and the coining of the term "MILF", and the usual homophobic ribbing one expects from teen boys (although this is confined to Stiffler, who we're generally supposed to see as an idiot anyway). But in amongst all that are a lot of sexual politics more progressive than in many films I see today, 18 years later. While some things need to stay in the late 90s - dial-up internet, belly chains, Aaron Carter's pop career, all-white, all-straight teen movies - there's clearly a lot of other stuff that we in the jaded 21st Century could still stand to learn from the class of '99.

Feminism ruins everything

Feminism has been accused of a lot of ills. It's been said that feminism causes women to leave their husbands, take up witchcraft and become lesbians (seriously). Feminism has been accused of emasculating men and boys, demanding special treatment for women, wanting to institute a matriarchy and much, much more.

As a feminist, obviously I can see these accusations for what they are; the resentful cries of those who benefit from the status quo disliking the fact they might actually have to cede some spaces at the table of power. I recognise that feminism has only ever benefited my life, as well as that of the men and women around me. Do I have rights over my own body? For that, I need to thank a feminist. Do I have the freedom to have my own bank account, passport and own property? Yup - and for that, I need to thank a feminist. Is any job I wish to do open to me? Yup - thank a feminist. Am I educated? Thank a feminist. Am I free to choose a life without marriage or children should I wish? Thank a feminist. And so on.

However, one way in which I will concede that feminism seriously arses up one's life is when it comes to dealing with popular culture. Once you start becoming aware of the myriad ways in which pop culture perpetuates sexism, it becomes very difficult to enjoy any of it any more. I love music videos, but I've given up flicking through the music channels because I'm tired of the fact that female artists don't seem to be permitted to wear more than a few handkerchief's worth of fabric in them any more, while male artists are of course, always fully clothed. I love films, but I can't watch any of them any more without considering if they pass the Bechdel Test (and pitifully few still do); I was also seriously depressed by the fact that the last two films I went to see at the cinema (The Big Short and Deadpool) both contained totally unnecessary scenes in strip clubs, yet again using the sexualised female form as window dressing to films whose storylines gained absolutely fuck-all from the inclusion of those scenes.

"In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you." 
- Lindy West

Recently, I tried watching Blazing Saddles, the famous Mel Brooks cowboy film spoof from 1972 that everyone tells me is so hilarious. Given the era, I expected the humour to be somewhat retrograde, but in the end I lasted about 15 minutes after hearing racial slurs against black and Chinese people and homophobic slurs pepper the dialogue so casually that it turned my stomach. I gave up watching; I just couldn't find it funny. It was too vile. Seeing privileged white men leaving two black men up to their necks in quicksand didn't seem like a funny relic from another time - it seemed more like an eerie metaphor for what's still going on in many parts of the USA today.

Intersectional feminism has given me such exacting standards for pop culture that it's ultimately very hard for anything to measure up. I still haven't bothered watching Jessica Jones because 1) I'm tired of being told to be grateful any time a 'kick-ass' female protagonist features - after all, are men expected to cheer every time a man who's not a total twat features in a film or TV show? I think not - and 2) because I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to be so progressive about another young, long-haired white woman who's so slim she looks like she'd struggle to lift a spoon of cornflakes kicking the crap out of baddies. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was showing that nearly 20 years ago. Also, I was pretty dismayed, but not surprised, to read about fat-shaming in Jessica Jones. Seems you can be a heroine as long as you're not fat, or unfeminine, or not conventionally attractive. Woo fucking hoo for progress.

Whenever I watch a film, I'm not just looking out for whether it passes The Bechdel Test - even though it is seriously depressing how few films still contain two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man, I mean how fecking LOW is that setting the bar! - but I'm looking out for whether it portrays women as anything other than slim, young, white and femme.  I'm also asking myself questions like: does the female lead constantly have perfect hair and make-up even when she's just woken up, or is supposed to be trudging through a war zone? Points off (and yo! Jennifer Connolly in Blood Diamond). Are there any old, fat or butch women who are allowed to be full, richly drawn characters? Orange is the New Black has torn up the rule book on how TV shows can depict women, now it'd be nice if film-makers would catch on to the notion that there's a captive audience happy to see women portrayed just as they actually are and give us some female ensemble movies. It'd be even nicer if we reached a point where female ensemble movies were no longer considered worthy of comment. A male friend of mine watched the criminally underrated movie Set It Off the other day, and remarked how he didn't even really notice that the four leads were women.
Maybe that's because women are people, and when you write roles for them that treat them like this, rather than like some exotic, incomprehensible species, gender is irrelevant to whether they're good characters or not.

So yes, I blame feminism for making me aware of all this. I blame it for making me unable to watch the trailer for Eddie the Eagle without thinking "FFS, another underdog film about a man's story. Where's the fucking film about Flo-Jo, or the Williams sisters?", for making me head straight home after watching The Big Short and going online to find out that one of the major players who predicted the 2008 financial crisis was actually a woman; Meredith Whitney, who features precisely erm, nowhere amongst the main (all male) characters even though she was in the book that the film is based on (and also, CHRIST how badly did that film waste the fantastic Marisa Tomei?!). I blame it for making me not willing to give a pass to men who tell me they "just didn't notice" or "just didn't think it was that big a deal" when I mention the above to them, and invariably leave me having to bat away their bruised egos and butthurt demands that I don't lump them in with AllOtherMen when I suggest that perhaps not noticing and not thinking it's that big a deal are actually pretty typical reactions when you're not a member of the group being shat on.

But I thank feminism too, for giving me the confidence to not put up with any of that shit, to not give my attention and money to media that demonstrates little but contempt for my gender, to not tolerate in my life men who are immediately hostile to any mention of feminism while simultaneously demanding to be acknowledged as Nice Guys, to go out and buy books by women, about women, see movies directed by women, starring women, and not just twenty-something slim long-haired white women sporting perfect make-up, but women of color, fat women, butch women, punky women, gay women, trans women, completely average women, ugly women, old women, consume TV series that do more than just pass the Bechdel Test, support art made by women, and pretty much fight the stereotype of the passive moronic consumer who will just take what they're given and therefore justify executives saying "we have to keep making more of the same thing because that's what people WANT." I thank feminism to alerting me to the fact I have a choice in what media I consume, and a choice to make people aware of it (they too, of course, have the choice to reject this awareness and paint me as unreasonable and reactionary, but that itself is also a silver lining because it alerts me to the fact this is a person with whom I probably don't want to have much interaction). I thank feminism for showing me there are other options.

So yes, in one way feminism ruins everything. But it also forces you to wonder: was that "everything" really worth so much anyway? Was it really "everything?" Or was it just the sexist, racist, heteronormative, capitalism-loving slice of mainstream media you were taught to blindly accept?
Long may the ruination continue.

Trainwrecks, woman-children and expectations of feminist gratitude

If there's anything more likely to prompt a display of wilful ingratitude, it's being told that you should be grateful for something. The meal that the seven year-old was happily eating a minute ago gets shoved to one side as soon as their parents point out that they that should be thankful for it because kids in the developing world are starving. Someone says "well, at least you have your health," when you're bitching about some other aspect of your life, and you want to say "FUCK MY HEALTH, I'M TRYING TO HAVE A GOOD OLD COMPLAIN HERE!" And of course, there's the enraging response to any woman who dares to suggest that feminism in the first world still has a way to go: "At least you're not in Saudi Arabia/Sudan/DRC/Iran, women there have it much worse."

Sometimes I feel like these expectations of gratitude (which often are really saying "Be grateful, even though the bar is set so low for what you should be grateful for that it's frankly insulting" or "Be grateful, because I'm just not interested in hearing anything else") come from inside the feminist community. Every so often a woman or TV programme or other media artefact will come along that will have everyone buzzing about what a game-changer it is. Case in point: Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that managed to feature a strong, non-sexualised female lead, pass the Bechdel test with flying colours, and feature enough guns, explosions and fast vehicles to please action movie buffs too. Yet, great as it was to see such a film emerge, it was depressing that its success was even worthy of comment. It's 2015, for fuck's sake - why should a female lead in an action movie still be noteworthy? Why should we have to be pleased that Charlize Theron's character didn't prance around in a catsuit, and that women with actual wrinkles and grey hair got some decent airtime during the movie? These things should be the very damn least we can expect from a movie, not something we should feel grateful for, and the fact we're still expected to speaks volumes to me about how feminism still has to go.

I was reminded of this reading a friend's status on Facebook this morning. Heather Carper, who amongst various talents is a social justice activist (and someone who provided some invaluable input to my book) wrote:

I officially don't get the point of Amy Schumer. I understand that being "fat by Hollywood standards" is a thing, and being blunt about being sexually voracious is potentially an anti-slut-shaming/ fat-shaming thing. But ultimately it mostly feels like things that should have been scandalous/gross/ funny when we were in Junior High. . .

This echoes my own thoughts on the matter. Now, granted, just because we're all women/feminists doesn't mean every woman's work is going to be our taste. Perhaps Schumer's comedy is just not the type my friend and I enjoy. That doesn't make it bad, or anti-feminist, and she has every right to be putting it out there and enjoying her success. But the fact that Schumer is being held up by the media, and by many feminists (she was Ms. magazine's cover star this summer) as a trailblazer for women is the part that really doesn't sit right with me. 

I went to see Trainwreck, the Judd Apatow film starring Schumer, a few months ago, and let's just say it's a good thing it was a free screening because I thought it was such a poor film that I would have been angry had I spent any money on it. It wasn't funny. It wasn't feminist. It centred around a fairly dislikeable, one-dimensional, self-absorbed white woman who happened to be slightly chunkier than the average Hollywood actress. The latter aspect was about as feminist or trailblazing as the film got, because otherwise it seemed like an attempt to shoehorn every possible cliche about sad spinsters into 120 minutes. It showed Amy being desperate for love, having various unfunny sexual mishaps, and eventually changing herself (and dressing up in a "sexy" cheerleader's outfit - WTAF?) to try and please a man. Oh, and it was kind of homophobic too, Paging Emma Goldman, I think we lost our feminism somewhere...

Now the defence of this is that, if we've truly achieved equality, films should show women as equally flawed and capable of making mistakes as men. But that's not really what was going on here. Rather than suggesting that women can be imperfect and still be OK, the film actually just reinforced a load of conservative cliches about women and relationships: as Nicholas Barber pointed out in The Independent, 

Amy’s hedonistic streak must be erased so she can end up with her Prince Charming, Bill Hader’s clean-cut doctor. Transformed and reformed, she ultimately gives away all her alcohol and drug paraphernalia and confesses her envious admiration for the married-with-children sister she once mocked. . .Yuck. For a film that spends so much time subverting romcom conventions, it’s amazing how lovingly it ends up embracing them.

Women still aren't allowed to be imperfect without them ending up "fixed" in some way - via a makeover or a man. While it'd be a great start to see more body shapes like Schumer's on screen, the behaviour of her character doesn't seem particularly rebellious, any more than say, Hannah Horvath, Lena Dunham's character in Girls, whose main flaw is her mind-boggling self-absorption.

This, as Heather pointed out on her status today, is a privilege only afforded to some women, namely white, middle-class women. Being inefficient and immature is not a risk many women can take. Writing about the new trope of "woman-child" as embodied by characters such as Hannah, Amy and Annie from Bridesmaids in the current issue of Bitch magazine, Sarah Sahim says  

In Western society, people of color must often work several times as hard for the same amount of success and recognition as a white person, often at the price of cultural assimilation. (And then watch while white mediocrity is hailed as an edgy new stereotype). . .If a woman of color was presented as a woman-child [in a TV show], all-too-familiar racist rhetoric would start to play out. A young woman of color who slacks off at work and smokes pot would be dismissed as lazy and ungrateful.

Heather wrote something similar on her status today, pointing out that the risks are simply different; Amy Schumer may still run the risk of being slut-shamed for talking graphically about sex, but she won't be "presumed a wanton babymaker that must be controlled because of your skin colour." I also agree that the individualistic philosophy that interprets one woman having the platform to publicly caricature her sex life as somehow sex-positive progress for all women needs taking down. How exactly is an awkward sex scene between Schumer's character and her dim boyfriend (who is apparently closeted gay - someone explain to me why that's meant to be funny rather than just horrible?) a step forward for womankind?

This brings me to a point I think can never be made enough - because there is still such a dearth of films where women are the default characters, not just helpmeets for the male characters, not just a romantic mirror for the male lead to see himself in, not completely absent and not just a token Smurfette (Yo, Sicario!), there is still such a big fuss made when films like Trainwreck and comedians like Schumer come along. We fall over ourselves to call them feminist and progressive when, judged against any objective standards, they're actually pretty poor. No one looks at Mad Men's lead character Don Draper in all his conflicted, repressed, cowardly, philandering glory and says "He's such a complex and flawed man - what a great MALE character," because they don't need to - male characters are considered the default. No one holds Jon Hamm up as a fantastic role model and ground breaker for men for playing such a character. Men aren't expected to be grateful that such an actor or role exists. Because it's just presumed that they will exist. Of course male actors will get to play complicated and richly painted roles. And of course their characters won't be held up as something all men should be grateful for. Wow, Seth Rogen and Zach Galifanakis have done SO MUCH for the right of men to be chubby and bearded and still appear in movies, haven't they? Yet no one tells men to be grateful for that. Because  actually, they kinda had that right all along.

So, good luck to Amy, Lena, Sarah Silverman and all the other female writer and comedians out there putting their energies into depicting women who don't have their shit together. But don't confuse the fact that they're able to get their work out there (which does spell progress) with their work being progressive (which it generally really isn't). And don't tell me to be grateful for their success. I'll be grateful when the bar isn't set so low any more that I stop being expected to fawn over any successful woman just because she's a woman, rather than having the luxury to stop consider whether her work is any good and whether it uplifts other women, or just her own self-image and bank balance.

Women as window dressing

If you're a woman, and especially if you're a feminist, and you object to the way that female bodies and body parts are regularly used as window dressing in films, TV programmes and music videos as well as in advertising, magazines and newspapers, you're likely to be accused, at some point, of being a prude. Of being jealous. Of being anti-sex. It's a quick and easy way to shut down valid complaints - telling someone, "You're boring. You're uptight. You're 'square'." And since in our heavily sexualised culture, women are regularly told that the worst thing they could possibly be is sexually unadventurous, that insult does tend to carry some weight. Still, it won't stop me from identifying the unnecessary, tedious and sexist hijacking of the female body that I see in popular culture around me.

 

If someone wants to accuse a feminist of being anti-sex, they might not want to pick a polyamorous, sexually active woman who makes no secret of her desire for physical pleasure without the restrictions of monogamous relationships. They might also want to pick a feminist who hasn't just written a book about BDSM and, while researching said book, spent a fair amount of time in kink clubs surrounded by moaning, writhing, sweating individuals, PVC, leather, floggers, chains and spanking benches. They might want to pick a feminist who hasn't written at length about various pursuits of pleasure, including visits to sex shops, why men's violent sexual fantasies are not necessarily a bad thing, casual sex and the female orgasm. If you're going to try and tell me that because I'm tired of bums, boobs and thighs being scattered all across popular culture like autumn leaves after a high wind, that must mean I have a problem with sex itself, you're going to be on a losing streak.

And you might also find yourself on the receiving end of my riding crop.
But I digress.

Last night I was slumped in front of Netflix watching The Dallas Buyers' Club, the true story of Ron Woodroof, a Texan man who, on discovering he was HIV positive in the mid-80s, went on a quest to get decent treatment (however illegally he had to do it). The film was OK; it went on a bit long. It had an interesting premise, and I learned a bit about how effective treatments for HIV were trialled (sometimes extremely inefficiently, and on the most vulnerable members of society, sadly). The character of Woodroof (played by Matthew McConaughey) was generally pretty dislikeable: selfish, violent, homophobic and largely out for himself, qualities which are not mitigated by the fact that he might have helped a lot of poor, black or gay people extend their lives by giving them access to decent treatment. After all, he only did it to make money, and one does wonder why a film gets made about a white straight man with HIV when everyone knows that the black and gay communities remain the ones disproportionately affected by the condition. Also, does anyone ever mention how it was a woman who pioneered the first successful HIV treatment? Of course not, because those who run the show control whose stories get told. Privilege privilege privilege - twas ever thus.

But what wound me up more than any of this were the unnecessary tits and bum shots included in the film, which added absolutely fuck-all to the storyline. Yes, Ron Woodroof had a lot of sex, and that's how he contracted HIV. The first shot of the film is him having sex. We get the picture. So why do we see various women's boobs and arses but don't even get a glimpse of Matthew McConaughey's nipples? If the inclusion of writhing bodies is meant to signify that Woodroof is promiscuous, then why is it never his body that's shown naked or nearly-naked - only those of women? Women, by the way, who don't even have speaking roles and don't even get named, reducing them to literally naked extras, begging the question of why they need to be included at all?

In my post where I despaired over the totally disappointing nature of Kick Ass II, which reversed all the fantastic feminist good work done by the original Kick Ass movie, I pointed out that people will still - amazingly! - come to see films without the promise of female nudity in them. So why are film makers so timid about ringing the changes and leaving out totally unnecessary shots of the unclothed female body? Why does every film about a "troubled man" still have to include the obligatory strip club scene, and why is the audience always treated to a table dance regardless of whether any of us want to see it or not? I didn't need to see the thong-clad behind of a nameless woman grinding towards Matthew McConaughey for several agonising minutes on my TV screen last night. I would've paid good money not to see it. And I do pay good money to watch Netflix, so why is what I and millions of other women would like to see never a consideration in the minds of pop culture producers? Why does the shitty, objectifying dollar speak louder than the one that would like to see just a few more fecking films that pass the Bechdel test, and a TV screen free of women's bum cracks?

As I observed in the earlier post, perhaps the way the female form is constantly used as window dressing to the "real action" in films, TV and advertising is so prevalent that it "can anaesthetise intelligent, sensitive people to a point where they don't even realise how their art is throwing women under the bus until someone points it out to them." That's maybe the most optimistic possible answer. The worst case answer is that pop culture producers know that what they're making is tedious, objectifying and sexist, but they don't care. Or they actively want it to be that way, to keep women in their places. Yep, Jennifer Garner may be wearing specs and playing an intelligent, fully clothed doctor in The Dallas Buyers' Club, but she's merely the other side of the virgin/whore coin that women are still trapped in by the limiting portrayals that mainstream films offer them. Matthew McConaughey's character gets to run the gamut of emotions and bad behaviour yet remain the hero - the women characters get to be either good or bad girls. The bad girls, of course, are reduced to their bodies and their sex drives and don't have names. The good girl resists the sexual charms of Ron Woodroof and cares for AIDs patients. In terms of progressive portrayals of women, this film might as well have been set in 1885, rather than 1985.

And yet, it could've been improved in a few simple steps.
1) If you're going to show sex scenes, either film equal amounts of both parties' bodies, or don't show them at all.
2) Cut the strip club scene. Not just from this film, but from every film ever. PLEASE. Just ditch this shit. No film actually needs it. We know if a guy's sitting slumped at a bar swigging whiskey, it's a sign he's troubled. That's enough. That'll suffice.
3) Give more than one fecking female character a name.
4) And hey, maybe even have some dialogue between them!

If you're too lazy to do any of those things, then just admit it. Just admit you want to work a bit of soft porn into your film and you have no intention for apologising for it. Just tell us that you do really think of women as either whores or saints, and that's why you can't depict them as anything other. Come out and say that you do think the best way to portray the sleaziness of Ron Woodroof's existence was not to show his naked body humping and covered in sweat, but rather the bodies of the women he had sex with, because they're really the dirty ones. Just tell us. Rather than pointing the finger at me and saying I'm the one with the problem.

Because I don't hate sex, or men, or the women who take their clothes off in a film or on a strip club stage for money. I do, however, hate that the latter options are far too often the only ones offered to women, and that this is propagated by a massive and powerful industry capable of doing so much good, yet which chooses to be lazy, unoriginal and continue to perpetuate the notion that women are unimportant, that they're sluts, that they can either be beautiful or clever, or sexy or good, but never both, never rich and full and flawed and nuanced, and that it's fine to reduce our beautiful, amazing, sexy, pleasure producing-bodies to personality-devoid slices pasted randomly across films like motel wallpaper.

And after watching that film, I think I might even hate Matthew McConaughey a bit.
But give me a few days, and a viewing of A Time To Kill, and I may yet recover ;)

Why there is no 'ironic' objectification

About a year ago, a screenwriter friend of mine asked me if I would take a look at a script he had written. I asked him if it was likely to inflame my feminist rage, which is often aggravated by Hollywood, the films it produces and its generally shitty treatment of women. He said he had chosen me deliberately as he wanted a feminist viewpoint, so I took a look. It only took a few scenes before I started to lose patience. Obligatory sex scene with focus on body of nubile young woman - check. Totally unnecessary scene showing faux-lesbian pornographic frolics - check. At this point, I told him that my mellow was getting thoroughly harshed and I didn't really fancy reading on, so I handed it back to him for possible re-writes.

 

My friend tried to mitigate my rage by explaining that the script was about a superficial, amoral man living a worthless life full of shallow pleasure-seeking, and that he would get his comeuppance later in the film. OK, fine. Job done, scene set. But how many female bodies had to be thrown under the bus before the audience understood that this man was going down the wrong path, and would shortly be shown the error of his ways? My point was, even if we as the audience were meant to see the objectified female bodies in the film as evidence of the protagonist's shitty, vacuous life, we still saw them. Trying to make the point that this man objectified women by objectifying them further is a pretty lame tactic. I made some suggestions - when showing how the media frequently uses faux-lesbianism to appeal to straight men, why do exactly what the media does and show the women in their full scantily-clad glory (feeding each other ice cream, as it happened)? Why not have some class and just show two pairs of feet interlinking, or block the audience's view with something totally boring and just intrigue us with the sounds of giggling and slurping? Point made, objectification dodged. It seems so easy, yet is so rarely practised.

 

I got to thinking more about this when I went to see Kick-Ass 2 last night. I wasn't expecting feminist miracles from the film, although the fact that the first Kick-Ass was surprisingly pro-woman was what made me a) actually watch it with some interest on a plane when I'd usually be unable to take in any forms of media after 36 hours without sleep and b) give the second film a try. However, aside from the uncomfortable regularity of homophobic insults being flung around (waaaay too many unconvincing uses of 'cocksucker' and similar epithets from Hit Girl), the cringeworthy effort to wring comedy out of an attempted rape scene, and the fact that of the four female superheroes in the film, two were scantily clad, what got my goat the most were two scenes of totally unnecessary objectification of women. 

 

Now, much like in the example I gave above, the random peppering of 'exotic' dancers and topless prostitutes in two scenes with baddie Motherfucker/Chris D'Amico were designed to show that the character in question was a Bad Guy. Trashy, evil, immoral. Look, his layer is decorated with table dancers and women gyrating in cages, what a douchebag! And yet...we're complicit in his douchebaggery, because those women are exposed for our delectation as much as they are for his fictional leching. We can see their teeny bikinis, wiggling backsides and taut thighs too. And our options are either to join in the perving, or judge the girls for being slutty pawns in a baddie's masterplan. Same goes for the eye-poppingly random scene whose function appeared solely to be 'Get some tits into this film', where we see Motherfucker cavorting in a swimming pool with two topless women who...let's just say they look very much like they work in the adult entertainment industry, with the surgical alterations you might expect to accompany such a career. Apart from ticking the 'LOOK, BOOBS!' box that is apparently so essential to a film's box office success that you might as well scrap your film if you don't have one topless female in it, the point of this scene seemed to be to further illustrate Motherfucker's role as a decadent and pretty idiotic villain.

 

But all that's really been achieved is that those women have been used as window dressing, the audience have been made complicit in treating them thus, and nothing whatsoever has been added to characters or plot. The audience KNOWS Motherfucker is a baddie, for fuck's sake. What gave it away - the name, the fact he's dressed all in black (even KIDS know the guy in black is always the baddie, jeez!), the fact he maims, kills and attempts to rape the good guys? Why do we need totally superfluous scenes of him surrounded by "sluts" to illustrate his badness?

 

I know it's pretty pointless to hope for nuanced understandings of gender issues in a film that treats prostitutes as either amoral whores or innocent victims, that at times seems to be playing racial stereotype bingo (Russian women are steroid-pumped no-shit-taking communists! Oriental men are ex-Triads and child molesters, and it's fine to call them 'spring roll' as long as it's a baddie saying it!), and that will only let its female protagonist be fully clothed because she's technically underage. However, is it really still beyond film-makers, in 20-fucking-13, to realise that this imagined need to inject every film with a dose of sleaze and sex, ALWAYS in the form of a scantily clad, slim, white, young, pneumatically-breasted woman, is just that - imaginary? I watched the film last night with five other people, three of whom were female. Did any of us four women rush to the cinema because we wanted a dose of tits? Amazingly, no. Would the two men who came with us have said 'Fuck no, I'm not bothering' if they'd've been told before viewing that the film contained zero objectified female bodies? I think not. So who exactly are Hollywood catering to when they continue to pump out this tired bullshit, except themselves?

 

It's hard not to get paranoid that there is a misogynist agenda at work in so many things that permeate our culture, because for all the people willing to stand up and say 'I reject this shit', that 'shit' keeps being produced. Sometimes it goes unquestioned, but increasingly people are objecting to it - and yet it keeps coming, apparently in service of a mysterious, unnamed audience who still want to see nothing but big guns and bouncing boobs. But as my experience with my screenwriter friend showed, the machine is still powerful enough that it can anaesthetise intelligent, sensitive people to a point where they don't even realise how their art is throwing women under the bus until someone points it out to them. And it was powerful enough to get me to watch a movie that regularly pissed me off with its retrograde politics. I can protest now, but I've already paid my money and added to the film's box office statistics, so what use is pointing out its sexism when the makers are deaf to the sound of anything but chinging cash registers? I guess it's to remind myself to never stop noticing this shit, in the hope that one day enough of us will notice it to effect change, and then we can go watch a film where the only thing that denotes a baddie is the fact he's stroking a cat. (And maybe has a British accent - j/k).