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.

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 ;)