Does "this bawdy world of boobs and gams" show us how far we've left to go?

http://www.simonsays.com/assets/authorkey/20079412/C_20079412.jpg

Are we there, yet? Are we there, yet? Are we there, yet? Are we there, yet? Are we there, yet?

Also Ariel Levy's physical attractiveness does not undermine her project. If Ariel Levy posed for her author's photo dressed up like Gina G's album cover then yeah that'd be a bit off. Her point doesn't appear to be "women shouldn't be attractive."

-The Times of London

Thank god for The Times, the only people with the guts to include involuntary servitude among their ideals!

This has been true forever. What has changed is that they now have easy access to contraception, lowering the risks inherent in this ages-old and blindingly obvious strategy.

< /vast generalization as obviously a large portion of women are not psychotic>

That reminds me of a story a friend of mine who taught for a while at a private school told me. Even though the school had a pretty strict dress code, the girls would figure out ways to shorten the lengths of their skirts to the point where they were practically mini-skirts, and so forth.

boy: "Must I pleasure you myself, or will you be doing that part?"

girl: "Just don't get in my way."

boy: "Yes, ma'am."

so what?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805077456/ref=reg_hu-wl_mrai-recs/103-6915026-4933429?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

As for guilty...well here's the thing. I imagine if you already feel it might make you feel guilty or nervous then you probably already have thought about these issues and have some of those feelings already? I feel like Dr. Phil, I'm not asking you to further discuss that, I'm just saying I don't think the book would particularly further those feelings, though perhaps it'd be more of a "think twice for the second time" kind of experience.

There's another book on this, Porn Generation, but it's gotten some pretty tear-a-new-one reviews regarding the author's stance vis a vis censorship.

Sorry.

That's true to my experience, too, Ally. I'm glad Levy's written about this, because it always strikes me as naive when people talk about strip clubs as sex-positive environments, etc.

I'm not going to tell you what you should think, Kate, but if you want to know what I think about Ariel Levy's book, it's here. I basically support her thesis wholeheartedly. It seems to me that "raunch feminism" is what happens when you emphasize the "empowerment" part of the feminist project without emphasizing the "deconstruction of patriarchy" part. It's empowerment purely on patriarchy's terms.

I have to think I too love beauty, and sensuality and joy and love and sex, but when I look into the mass media versions of reality (not very realistic in to my world) I see a more lonely place than any I could ever have imagined...

This basically sums it up for me. Everything is so disconnected and not remotely sexual or, really, particularly empowered, for your average anybody male or female. there was a thing I was reading about Levy earlier that mentioned the Paris Hilton quote, about how her boyfriends think she is "sexy" but not "sexual." Which is clever, they are actually two different things, certainly at this point in our culture.

the most fucked up thing about it is that it's all informed by an industry that, for quite some time now, has been extremely fucked up. I mean the most rudimentary porn studies (hell, you wanna do one yourself go read any ILX porn thread) have basically shown that the industry is driven by consumer boredom, which has advanced drastically since the advent of mass internet. ie remember your first drink? I bet you have to drink a little bit more, if not a LOT more, to get drunk nowadays, right? Same difference, except in this instance most people can't just consume more of the same thing to get the same rush--they start seeking out more "extreme" things. Which, in this industry, has involved a lot of really horrible, occasionally ("") bordering on abusive nonsense--it's not about sex in any way, it's increasingly about power struggles and circus freak shows. Which is a really sick messed up thing to base your culture on or treat as some kind of enlightened thing!

I don't really know what to think of it because I am not pro-censorship or anything like that and there isn't much you can do to reign it in (the best I can do is make known to my personal circle my opinion about certain genres of porn and hope it makes them think and choose some other genre or artist), I just wish people would THINK a little bit before they make pro-porn industry arguments or claims of empowerment. It's not about being anti-sex or anti-masturbation or anti-sexiness or anti-people-wearing-and-doing-what-they-feel-like, I mean god knows I'm not exactly known for my modest dress and demeanor, it's about being against a certain message, which is becoming more and more pervasive...

And yeah, it really does seem to be the case that the overarching message is that sex=power, which it does to be honest, but now to the point where that is the MAIN or perhaps even ONLY power and you end up with some pretty ugly situations. You can make the arguments that some of the news stories of girls agreeing to do really bizarro shit and then later claiming rape or coercion have been blown out of proportion, except I know from myself and my friends that, while nothing that extreme occurs normally, it does slip into people's heads, the levels of..."Well...I guess we can do that..." answers given to things you don't actually want to do and the amount of shutting up about what YOU want that occurs. A lot of times what is weird is that for the vast majority of people, I doubt they'd have even come up with these "sexy" ideas of things to do had we not been in a culture trying to push further and further into extremes?

When it comes down to it, how is it any different from the traditional "feminine" value of keeping your mouth shut, being agreeable, doing whatever to make people like you? Why should anyone sit there and accept--or emulate for god's sake--the depictions of women prevalent in pornography today? Why isn't it unhealthy and weird to have heavy usage of those kind of depictions in our culture? why wouldn't it fuck with people's heads? A lot of people confuse these questions with saying "People shouldn't masturbate or view any porn at all," but it's not the same argument at all. I wish the word "porn" wasn't just like a code word for crankin it; they're not interchangeable concepts no matter how much they tend to go hand and hand.

I can't quite put my thoughts together coherently, I don't think. I am going to read her book and see what I think.

Critiquing porn that's upsetting in the ways you've talked about isn't tantamount to advocating censorship, though, Ally. (shades of the Danish Muhammad cartoon thread...) I share Levy's and your perception that that sort of critique seems less prevalent, even in feminist circles, than it used to be. Maybe everybody's afraid of sounding like Catherine MacKinnon, but it seems silly to refrain from pointing out that some porn can be disturbing for fear of sounding prudish, or something.

I think your post is completely coherent, and I agree. the only thing I would add is that the talk of female empowerment wrt stripping, porn, spreads in "lad magazines," etc. tends to leave out analysis of the market. This is my problem with a lot of what gets called third wave feminism. I remember having a conversation with another feminist about strip clubs, in which she commented that she supports women's "right to take their clothes off." which really seems like a perversion of rights discourse, not to mention kind of spectacularly missing the point.

This is my problem with a lot of what gets called third wave feminism.

So is Ariel Levy the beginning of "fourth wave feminism"? Wikipedia says that Third Wavers turned the emphasis away from the deconstruction of patriarchy.

The contradictions in Third Wave Feminism are very apparent, as it's defined in that piece, anyway:

"Being female is just as valuable as being male, and equality includes reclaiming all female choices in all areas (as in Riot Grrrl)."

And yet, very next bullet, "it is the definitions of such concepts as gender, sexuality, and feminism that are a major part of the problem. Defining anything, including third-wave feminism, limits it."

So how can you be proudly female if you can't even define gender? In the next bullet, we're told that "ideas, especially those enforced by common language, have essential power (c.f. Queer theory)." So are definitions not ideas?

As usual, it seems to me, fear of essentialism -- the "acceptable" face of fear of groups -- prevents people from building coherent cultures. Or, to put it another way, oppositional movements focus on internal diversity (ie fragmentation, conflicts of minor difference, ego clashes, every woman for herself) rather than group-level diversity (ie building definitions of their collective otherness which make it a strength).

im sympathetic to what Third Wave Feminism was attempting, which seems to me to be a kind of feminism that's not defined by its opposition to patriarchy or masculinity. i guess what's interesting is that destroys itself in that process.

i guess im asking, how do you go about deconstructing patriarchy without encountering the same limitations that led to Third Wavers in teh first place?

"In Derrida's work, and in that of many cultural and literary critics who followed his ideas, there is always a sense that an opposition is no innocent structural relation but a power relation, in which one term dominates another. Even in the case of an opposition as apparently rooted in nature as night/day, there is a hierarchy which ascribes privilege, priority and positive value to one term at the expense of the other. Indeed the very idea of otherness comes to signify this power relation, this secondary and derivative position that one sign acquires in relation to another...

"Poststructuralist approaches to the binary opposition produce a kind of critique that unmasks power relations, that seeks to oppose hierarchy, that refuses to isolate the sign from the discourse in which it operates, or for that matter that refuses to isolate the opposition from the more general discursive context in which its associative and suggestive potential is formed. If we take these two developments together, the liberation of difference from opposition on one hand, and a kind of critique that exposes hierarchy as it operates in discourse, we have a useful preliminary account of the characteristics of what came to be known, in the 1970s, as deconstruction.

"In Positions (1981), Derrida describes deconstruction's approach to binary opposition as having three phases. The first phase is the exposure of a hierarchy, of the assumed superiority of one term over the other; the second phase is the reversal of that hierarchy, that is, the promotion of the secondary and derivative term to the position of superiority for strategic reasons; and the third phase is the reinscription of that opposition, which involves the disruption or reconfiguration of the difference between the two terms."

Mark Currie, "Difference" (The New Critical Idiom, Routledge, 2004)

Personally, I would suggest that the word "mother" should become something like the word "hero" is right now. It could become the ultimate goal of all humans to resemble mothers. This would be Matriarchy. After all, we're mammals; a class of creature defined by the fact that we nurture with our breasts. Rather than the dystopia of "Brave New World", where Huxley imagines "mother" as the dirtiest, most shameful world in his shiny test-tube baby soicety, we could imagine -- and engineer -- a utopia where "mother" is the word that sounds nicest, most aspirational, to men and women alike.

In a recent entry about the Japanese mother complex on my blog, I quoted the scriptwriter of a Japanese drama called "Mother and Lover" saying:

"There's too big of a gap between the reality that men are actually the weaker-minded of the sexes and the demand that they be manly. Men should act more naturally in showing their love for mothers and women."

what troubles me about it is that it seems to suppose (as you do perhaps?) too much "subjectivization" (to use heidegger's ugly word)--in other words it supposes deconstruction as a means to obtain mastery over language (and perhaps Being?) in that third phase. for example, with the word "mother" you possibly smuggle in all kinds of nasty shit you wouldnt expect?

why not see deconstruction as imbedded in it's historicity and context as anything else? so yes, by all means use it, but beware its limitations and own contingencies.

i guess im suggesting that the deconstruction of patriarchy has already happened, and already failed perhaps.

Which is to say that it's about a v. traditional masculinity too that encourages guys to be stupid too, or at least "clever" as opposed to say, actually knowledgable and smart.

Today's ultimate feminists are the chicks in crop tops
Raunch culture is not about liberation gone wrong; it's about rediscovering the joy of being loved for your body
Kate Taylor, The Guardian
Men, you can relax. You are no longer the enemy. Instead, judging by recent events in America, modern feminists have a much shapelier target in their sights - other women. Specifically, scantily clad women who use their sexuality to get ahead. I don't know if this is a PR campaign to get men to finally pay attention to the cause, but it's certainly stirring up trouble.

It all kicked off with the publication of Female Chauvinist Pigs, a rant against "raunch culture" by the New York magazine writer Ariel Levy. In the book, she argues that the recent trend for soft-porn styling in everything from music videos to popular TV is reducing female sexuality to its basest levels. In short: "A tawdry, tarty, cartoon-like version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular."

Which is all fair enough, until Levy starts to list the ways in which today's women are allowing their sexuality to be sold short. Thongs, for example. Crop tops. Lap-dancing classes. Maxim and FHM. Playboy T-shirts. The word "chick". Levy thinks raunch culture is a feminist movement gone terribly wrong. We are, in her eyes, doing all these things merely to show the men that we are "one of the guys" and "liberated and rebellious". Naturally, she finds this confusing. "Why is labouring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?"

The answer is, labouring to look like Pamela Anderson is not empowering. We're not trying to be empowered. The twentysomething women I know don't care about old-style feminism. Partly this is because they already see themselves as equal to men: they can work, they can vote, they can bonk on the first date. For younger women, raunch is not about feminism, it's just about fashion.

Another reason for the rise of raunch is that women are rediscovering the joy of being loved for their bodies, not just their minds. Today sexes mix a lot more than they used to, so boys grow up having girls as friends. They tend to listen to what women have to say, and when they marry they don't consider sharing the housework to be castrating. Instead of desperately longing for the right to be seen as human beings, today's girls are playing with the old-fashioned notion of being seen as sex objects.

This is not terrible news. In fact, to me, this is the ultimate feminist ideal, which Levy would realise if she stopped shouting at MTV for a moment and thought about it. She proclaims that boob jobs and crop tops "don't bring us any closer to the fundamental feminist project of allowing every woman to be her own, specific self". But what if a woman's "own, specific self" is a thong-wearing, Playboy-T-shirted specific self who thinks lap-dancing is a laugh and likes getting wolf-whistled at by builders? What if a woman spends hours in the gym to create a body she is proud of? Is that a waste of time, time she should have spent in a university library? No.

Levy is not alone in raging against raunch. The f word, a British feminist website, last month launched a tirade against lads' magazines such as Loaded, Zoo and Nuts; they "relentlessly promote the message that women exist solely for the sexual gratification of men and boys", argued Rachel Bell. "By internalising this one-dimensional male construct of sexuality, both sexes are losing out; but it is girls and women who will pay the heavier price."

I've worked for GQ and the Sun, and in neither place did I see women being exploited. Does Bell have any idea how much money women make when they take their clothes off? How much freedom and independence these girls can earn in an hour? Abi Titmuss and the new breed of totty generally own the copyright to their naughtiest photos, so with each publication they rake it in. Look at lads' mags from a different perspective and you see that what's being exploited are men's sexual responses, to give money to women.

It has always been like this, and it always will be, because men's achilles heel is that they go to pieces when a woman drops her top. Old-style feminists never understood this, but their way is not the only way to achieve equality with men. The world is different now, and we should follow the trends instead of waving the banners of 20 years ago.

That version of feminism will never regain its popularity as long as its proponents insist on lecturing, instead of leading. We should be working together to support women in this country and across the world whose rights are still ignored, instead of squabbling and catfighting. Men are great at working together; they are self-congratulatory and supportive. We are not. That is our true weakness, and feminism exemplifies this flaw - witness the countless factions, all fighting for different things, from sex-positive feminists, who believe nudity is OK, to third-wave feminists, who think eyeliner is misogynistic.

If a thong makes you feel fabulous, wear it. For one thing, men in the office waste whole afternoons staring at your bottom, placing bets on whether you're wearing underwear. Let them. Use that time to take over the company. But even if you wear naughty lingerie for you, for no other reason than it makes you feel good, that is reason enough to keep it on. True feminism should celebrate femininity, and make you feel wonderful to be born a woman. It's a shame some feminists today can't do the same.

· Kate Taylor is the author of A Woman's Guide to Sex and formerly wrote the Sex Life column for GQ

"Does Bell have any idea how much money women make when they take their clothes off?"

and

"third-wave feminists, who think eyeliner is misogynistic."

and, well, I kind of wish I could set her on fire.

Reading this on the way to work this morning made me want to blow up the fucking tube train.

otherwise it is misogynistic.

The world is different now, and we should follow the trends...

Feminism should work by going with the flow! Awesome logic.

Does Bell have any idea how much money women make when they take their clothes off? How much freedom and independence these girls can earn in an hour?

The follow-up article will presumably be about the shocking discovery that prostitutes and strippers traditionally suffer from low self-esteem and are emotional trainwrecks, despite the fact they should be overjoyed by making money through sex.

i love ariel levy btw; glad she is all up in the new yorker these days

http://i26.tinypic.com/fu1h14.gif