"I'm starting to think that a burka is a far more appropriate (and feminist) form of dress than a g-string bikini or leather hot pants."

haha james' blunt never failed me yet

This is a really touchy topic for me, so I'll try to keep from really ranting, but- after wearing a skirt & heels to a big technical meeting once, I had someone come up & say to me afterwards that they thought I was a admin assistant b/c I was "dressed too nicely to be a programmer." A boyfriend of a friend once told me that the only reason I was offered an internship at a company was because I was young & they wanted some office decoration, and another friend told me that I took unfair advantage of the fact that it was easier for me to call in favors from other teams- I could go on with these stories. It hurts hearing these from some guys, but I just can not believe it when I hear it from other women. I'd like to note that these were all from companies that I'm no longer at, and probably indicitive of bigger cultural problems, but still.

Hiding the fact that you're a woman is not feminist to me, it's someone who has issues with their identity. nb: I've not read the sex is evil/down w/ Christina thread. So I might be reading this incorrectly.

</rant>

In a perfect world we could all wear feather bikinis and be judged on our professional expertise or whatever. But at present when I am working it is more important to me to be seen as capable than to be seen as a woman so I dress appropriately.

i'll talk to a couple of my friends in the physics department. they might have a time travelling machine available. I'll tell 'em its for 'research' purposes.

the roundabout reverse racism implication is silly and you know it james

this is not a sexuality issue -> its a gender issue

i will get back to you

One interesing point is a recent ad for Ash's hits comp, I think, with actor James Nesbitt showing his arse in a way that I've not seen from a woman in an ad - but, and this is both urgent and key, it's comedy when we see his bum, but imagine switching him with any of the actresses from Cold Feet (the show for which he is best known), and it's not comedy, it's titillation. We are still far from equality.

I'm not sure how big an issue this is, in some ways, but it doesn't seem to me completely unconnected with the kind of thinking that leads some men to think that women are supposed to be available; or that a woman in a short skirt is somehow inviting and authorising any sexual behaviour on a man's part. It's not the ground which I'd particularly choose to make a stand, to fight these battles, but I think it is something that still has plenty of room for improvement.

I'm not saying women who get raped "deserve it for wearing tight clothes" or anything like that, not at all, because that is not asking for it and there's no defense. But women who are looked at sexually - just, simply, visually looked at - while wearing tight, short clothes basically can't expect not to be unless breasts and asses somehow cease to be sexual body parts, which would be sad. And isn't that the point of tight clothes anyway - to highlight these? I don't think it would fix society's sexism for women to be able to wear thongs wherever they feel like it without being sexual objects, I think that would ruin sex because people's bodies would have to cease being interesting. It would be better if people would just keep parts of the body that are obviously sexual parts (breasts, asses, crotches, etc.) somewhat covered in situations where they do not want them to be noticed. This doesn't mean dress like men, but there are basic limits people observe for different social situations.

need a thread feminity/masculinity (sp) does it still exist?, how is it expressed, why is it expressed etc.

is anything "natural" though? sure - women and men have different bodies and they operate differently. most feminists would not deny that one iota. but the point is: what these gender differences mean is getting exaggerated for the sake of defending the status quo.

re: dividing it all up into one or the other - what about differences between womens bodies? they don't get emphasized - pretty much minimised as if women are all the same (haha except the unsexy ones). what about differences between mens bodies? why are they not emphasized? what about people who fit neither category?

James: I guess I can attack Britney Spears' portrayal of sexuality without thinking that I must be anti- all or any displays of sexuality because I don't believe that it is a true representation of her sexuality/identity.

Instead I think it's a parody, a kind of lowest common denominator of sexiness probably designed to make money.

Not to cause problems but has Mr. Falwell ever taken young scantily clad women who aren't Madonna (since she used explicitly religious imagery in her videos, I don't think she counts as someone who raises the ire of the Falwells of the world solely on her wardrobe choices) to task?

I do think that Di's post was a pretty succinct summation of why seeing the parade of navels—and if you think we're just talking popstars here you're being naive and haven't looked in your local bookshop/magazine store/new york times magazine photo spread lately—is so dismaying to those of us who might not fit the physical profile. And yeah, there are male bimbos too now, hooray for equality? Why do I feel like so many of the repercussions of feminism are great leaps back for everyone involved in humanity?

Also James in response to your 'but it doesn't bear out in sales ergo the move towards overt sexuality must be 'authentic'' idea: The fact that it doesn't bear out in sales doesn't mean that record labels don't enjoy the gobs of ink image changes like this spurt out. Or have you forgotten the old line about there being no such thing as bad press?

Also, I don't view this as a "norm" and think that viewing it as such is destructive and leads to bad self-image issues etc. Also, I think that that isn't the ONLY way to be sexy (though damn it's sexy sometimes) and its as much the display of sexuality (telegraphed through, among other things, scanty clothing but also dancing, etc.) as the body-type which is appealing.

I don't think that appreciating thin near-naked sexy chiXor and respecting women as people and not expecting them all to look thin and near-naked all the time are mutually exclusive. Also, I think the preponderance of these images and lack of mainstream dealing with the rest of it can be v. bad and make holding both views more difficult/rare than it should be.

Also, I think that the combative rhetoric vs. these sexy chiXor is sometimes less than helpful. sample reason why.

militant feminist: those scantily clad perky sizeable breasts aren't sexy, they're perverse and scary!

dude: no way, they're totally sexy! go breasts!

Also, it tends to make girls dealing with these body image issues less able to. "militant feminist person tells me that that isn't sexy, but she's clearly wrong since guys dig it. and I do want guys to dig me, so I guess I should try to look like that..." as opposed to putting the two in balance and understanding that a guy should ALSO want you for the rest of you, but that doesn't mean that denying you have a body or sexuality at all will get you very far -- for yourself even.

Personally, I think Britney and P!nk look darn good in their videos and find their outfits no more risque than those in the average fashion editorial. There has always been strong cross-fertilization of pop music and fashion, and some aspects of fashion have always been about sex and flaunting your body. P!nk in particular is very clever about combining designer clothing with street style, which I think IS feminist, since she does not exactly have model proportions.

When I turn on the television, I want to be entertained. I find eye candy of any sort very entertaining. (Have you seen how tight those baseball pants are?)

With respect to dressing in the real, non-music video, world, lyra is OTM.

It's proved by the fact that when wearing a burka you almost can't judge a woman on/value a woman for her physical attributes (other than height & bulk), you have to judge her one what she says and does.
The problem is that so long as people feel the need to objectify women and obsess over them physically, when burka-ed her voice and the way she moves would become more open to sexual interpretation - like the way ankles were in Victorian times or how women's eyes and hands are in cultures where they are all that is revealed.

The problem is that we a programmed in such a way that when we see a woman's body we are distracted by it to the point that it affects everything about how we perceive that woman, her ideas, her behaviour etc.

It doesn't happen so much with men's physical presence on either a social, sub-cultural or individual level.

The arguement is that it is not inevitable and natural, rather that it is a result of our society/culture/upbringing/religion/media or whatever and that by reducing the structures, language, media (and art?) that perpetrates the current response to and influence of the female form all women will be released from the currently imposed burden of having a female body.

-- toraneko (torakoneko@hotmail.com), October 7th, 2002.

I mean this in the nicest possible way, but give women some credit. Why is having a female body necessarily a burden? It's pretty easy to distinguish men who are attempting to engage your chest in conversation from those who are actually talking to you.

A few things I've noticed from personal experience:

The hotter a woman is, the less confidence she has in herself physically - due to the fact that she knows that she is being valued for how she is physically and so if her body or face (or what's currently in fashion) changes, she will no longer be valued.

The hotter a woman is, the lower her self-esteem is, regardless of her intelligence, expertise and personality - due to the fact that she is aware or thinks she is aware that she is being valued first and foremost for how she is physically and that should her body or face etc. change she will no longer be valued - despite her lovely personality and/or her intelligence & expertise.

The hotter a woman is, the more likely she is going to display false self-confidence and bravado in public and the more likely she is actually hiding depression, eating disorders, drug use, phyically abusive boyfriends and a history of sexual abuse.

If a woman dresses sexily, she will be harassed by those guys who respond to her overt sexiness.

If a woman dresses dowdily, she will be harassed by those guys who think that she's an easy target because she lacks confidence/doesn't know she's attractive or that she'll be flattered by them noticing(harassing) her, that they'll be doing her a favour by noticing(harassing) her etc.

If a woman dresses like a boy, she will be harassed by those guys that respond to this as a threat or a challenge or think they are special for seeing through the boyness to the femininity underneath.

If a woman dresses as "normally" as possible - nothing too sexy(tight/short), dowdy or masculine, wears a small amount of make-up, has mid-length hair (just below shoulders) usually worn tied back etc. (works best if you're tits aren't too big) then she is almost invisible and will only be harassed by that small number of guys who respond totally to and obsess completely about the girl next door type.

The last option is the least likely to induce harassment but unfortunately when it does, it is of the most obsessive, stalker type.

Other girls might have different experiences than I've had but I'm at a loss as to how to stop guys from harassing me.

It's that horrible feeling of having to run the guantlet of leering, sniggering and sexual thoughts. It just gets me down - and most of all because there seems to be no escape from it. And I'm not saying it happens every day, but it happens every week and that's enough for it to be a problem.

(James, I think the reason no one's answering your questions is because they are completely ludicrous when read at face-value and I don't think anyone has/had the energy to decode them to figure out what you actually meant.)

And Dan: clearly some of the questions are ludicrous, but shouldn't that make them easier to dismiss with the obvious answer instead of just going 'you're an idiot'? And so, the only one I really want answered (because I don't believe a woman who chooses to wear a burka is a victim any more than a woman who chooses to be a housewife) the one question I would like to see answered - why is it unfathomable that an attack on an individuals expression of sexuality could be considered anti-sexuality?

You know, the core issue to what Toraneko's said is the following. If we assume that at the present date there really is an element of men responding improperly to female sexuality -- and obviously there is, though I imagine Toraneko and I would disagree about its prevalence -- then which is the more "appropriate" and "feminist" response of women: to (a) take on the potential "burden" of hiding themselves, avoiding those improper responses by adapting themselves to the negative behavior of men, or (b) refusing to hide themselves and telling men to get over it and quite acting like idiots.

The danger of (a) in the Muslim world has been that it only justifies the bad-male behavior, and removes responsibility from men -- suddenly it's the role of the woman to hide herself and adapt herself and not incite urges that men aren't expected to have any duty to control. As such, it can never change that behavior. So I essentially disagree with Toraneko -- the burka strikes me as an admission of defeat, a very decision that men are inherently this way and that there's nothing for women to do but armor themselves and hang on tight. And the essentialism behind that decision doesn't strike me as helpful, either: looking again to the Muslim world, the rigid separations of the sexes meant to solve this problem in some places has only resulted in generations and generations of men who have no understanding of women, no real contact with them, no capacity to sympathize or empathize or see women as anything other than Other.

That statement might be ludicrous but nobody has said it and Toraneko herself has clarified the statement so why are you still arguing about 'your reading' when nobody else is? Toraneko might have been using the words for shock value but she was also using them for their practical meaning re covers-everything/covers-nothing.

It would be illuminating to see how the workmen in question behave towards people other than Toraneko. There's a temptation to see certain kinds of behavior as fundamentally anti-female/misogynist because of the form they take, but there are plenty of people in the world who will simply fuck with you on any grounds they can find -- gender, race, age, culture, speech patterns, weight, or anything else -- and to assume that their key motivation is based on hostility for the group in question would be a mistake: it's far more undifferentiated than that, and sometimes comes more from a desire to "test" people, to bust their balls a bit and make them prove that they can stand up for themselves. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but I think it would be a mistake to see it in binary terms, too -- i.e. my guess is that there's probably an element of it, and on some level these workmen may well want Toraneko to best them, to come up with a putdown scathing enough to earn their respect, which is something they don't give anyone by default.

(Or they could just be total assholes who are undifferentiatedly hostile to people/women/non-SWCMs, who knows.)

The other question that's not getting asked is: what is it that has led these men to want to act this way? To put it differently, this kind of behavior strikes me as expressing a lack of belief in a good-faith relationship between the sexes. Why do these men see the male-female relationship as an adversarial one? From their point of view, why are they acting the way they do?

My own theory on this is simply that desire thwarted becomes rage at worst, and resentment at least: for most people in the modern era, the experience of sexual awakening is one of desire that's continually excited, but never fulfilled -- men because they're continually told "no", and women because they're told "don't". The dominant public expression (through the media) of this experience is one that necessarily depends on the commodification of sexuality, and casts men in the role of pursuers, and women as pursued -- a relationship of overt aggression vs. passive (covert) aggression, and one that breeds resentment on both sides because it turns sexuality into a power struggle. Each ends up believing that the other is acting in bad faith, and so we end up with threads like these.

The anti-modernist impulse in Islam is designed to do an end-run around this problem, but it will never work, of course, because it runs from the key issues rather than confronting them (as Nabisco points out). The only solution that will ever really work involves the more-or-less complete renunciation of power on both sides -- which, as it happens, is something that (I believe) happens in every loving relationship between equal partners -- but I have no idea how that would take shape on a social/national level. I'd like to think that in a world of perfect contraception and health, things would be promising, but I've really no idea how to keep it from turning into Brave New World. I don't think a "less heterosexual" world would solve these problems; it might ameliorate them in some ways, but the problems of aggression, power, and desire transcend gender. Similarly, a world in which gender inequalities in the law, the workplace, and so on were remedied would probably do a lot to reduce the powerful resentment which I suspect many women must feel, and which no doubt fuels this conflict. But again, I think this is a human problem at root, and I think as long as we as a society lack the critical and emotional resources to resist the messages we're being sent -- a resistance which would probably stop the messages, for want of an audience -- then the problem will continue.

Or, in any event, brokering a contract that works for both parties. A relationship of equals is what I want, and have always wanted, but I don't necessarily believe that all relationships in which both parties happily agree to a power imbalance are pathological (though many of them probably are).

James, I thought you began this thread with valid points but your hyperbole and selective reading ability is quickly eroding your credibility.

lyra, isadora, donna, maura, Elisabeth and I are all "ladies" who have spoken up and responded to your questions as requested. And surprise! we all had different things to say from each other and from di and toraneko.

You had said upthread "Opening your mouth and talking should do the trick." But if you don't appear to be interested in listening and responding to what we say -- even in internetland where clothing isn't an issue -- what makes you think this "talking" trick will work any better in real life?

So bullshit bullshit bullshit and all this stuff about radical Islam's respect for women is crap and just coz girls might actually buy these post-hoc justifications doesn't make them right anymore than I can respect roman catholocism for teaching us that sex is dirty and constraception is bad or hell the "positive" qualities of Aztec human sacrifice.

isn't this interpretation (esp the last bit) only a modern rationalization by liberal westernized muslims? isn't the motivation in most of the islamic world, and the likely original motivation, the idea that women's bodies are property to be owned by their husbands?

also, I was responding as artiste was (more coherently) to nabisco's position on islam's central motivation behind veiling of women. the historical roots are in women as property, and the current manifestations may have RATIONALIZATIONS behind this, but those rationalizations tend to be dud too. I have a pamphlet with this stuff around my house called "Islam and the liberation of women" or something passed out by Muslim Student Unions around the country and other "awareness groups" and it specifically justifies why the "division of labor" in traditional family forms -- i.e. man brings home the bread -- is "more liberating" because it frees up women's time. Not all 1950's housewives (who are partly a post-hoc invention anyway cf. "The Way We Never Were" by Koontz) thought they were oppressed by playing to gendered roles, just as not all chiXor who emulate Xina to day think but thad doesn't mean they necessarily *aren't* anymore than some gal in a veil who tries to convince me that it liberates her. Howabout equal employment for equal wages and free childcare for liberation instead? much more real.

also what is this about sexuality being more than just breasts/butts/crotches? well, sure there's more but its that too. If there was a wave of foot fetish videos coming out, ppl. would complain about that just as much.

also why has nobody taken Torenako up on this:

"What because they're put off by intelligence? There are some guys out there that see that as an added bonus - they actually like talking to girls as well as fucking them."

"I think most people would agree that as far as their faces go they've all got substantial bow-wow factor anyway"

I think people have been a little harsh on james. I appreciate toraneko's subsequent clarifications, but the way she phrased her point originally:

What's the deal with the near-nakedness that is going on in so many video clips?
Is it meant to be part of the war against terrorism or something? Is it the American media flaunting their country's "freedom" to the world?

I'm starting to think that a burka is a far more appropriate (and feminist) form of dress than a g-string bikini or leather hot pants.

was (hem hem) provocative and i thought obv contrasting the social contexts in which women wear burkas vs. where women wear hotpants. i realize this is a bit of a dead issue now; i just didn't think it was fair that one person get reamed for their flippancy while another person got commended for theirs.

I just dont think a large group of *working class* young men in public- workmen who in an occupation with a culture and history of boorish behaviour ( I sure spent enough time on building sites with Albanians and Irishmen) is good reflection on all men or even most men. Toraneko seems to equate workmen= all men and thus have a paranoia of men that I think is a bit over the top.

We dont often find large groups of *working class* women working in public areas like men do. Not that I can think of anyway? Would they behave in a similar way- quite possibly Im not sure though.

Again I can see Dis basic point I just think there is so much more to male sexuality than is being expressed here. ie all men are slobbering pigs.

That said I mentaly undress most most young women I see but Im not about to feel any guilt about it- lord knows Ive got enough of that to deal with already.

i think what philmasstransfer said is very wise, but the power issues are complicated by the fact that the sexual power games most of these girls played seemed to be trying one-up EACH OTHER (i.e., they weren't really interested in the boys themselves at all - 'boy attention' was just a particularly effective type of social cache).

Again I can see Dis basic point I just think there is so much more to male sexuality than is being expressed here. ie all men are slobbering pigs.kiwi core blimey, you are making the same ridiculous leasps of logic that james was earlier. any acknowledgement of the harassment and leering women face from some men = attack on men, cf. criticism of christina's video = attack on christina, sex and sexuality.

Di Um backtrack grovel... I didnt really mean you directly I just feel the general tone of the thread seemed to be saying this. thats not clear from my words though. thinking about these type of things is all a bit new to me- womens studies has never been top of my priorities- as if it wasnt obvious(Lincolon Uni moleskin boy). Where do people find the time to post here all the time(im jealous)- does anyone ever do any work?

Also, they picked up the gun and fought a civil war to defend their rights.

there's an in-between ground when it comes to dress, there are more options than just burka or hot pants, so women don't HAVE to hide but it's just stupid to flaunt their bodies and then go "oh no i'm being LOOKED at!" Hot pants are flaunting and when you dress that way you are setting yourself UP for being perceived as a sexual object, which is fine if you're looking for sex or a date or something but there are social boundaries that people need to be responsible for following. Sex doesn't need to be in everyone's faces all the time. If you go out in a miniskirt and a blouse that shows all your cleavage you really can't expect that men won't look at you and think of sex (although if they harass you about it, then yes, that is not your problem, it's theirs). And having the only women in the public eye for the most part (people like Marilyn Albright not being pop-culture heroes) dressed in thongs is putting forward a bad public perception of women.

you are right maria in that there is nothing wrong with being looked at, but there is a difference between getting checked out and getting leered at. leering is foul.

No, that's a hijab. Hijabs are very common in my community, but I think I've only seen an actual burka once.

Here are some definitions I found:

Niqab: The face veil; styles of dress that involve veiling the face.

Hijab: The modest dress of the Muslim woman; the word is sometimes used to refer only to the headscarf.

Burqa: A veil that covers the face and entire head but with a place cut out for the eyes

Afghan Burqa: Covers the entire body and has a grille over the face that the woman looks through. May have slits for the hands

Chador: A type of outergarment that covers the head and body comes down to the ankles or the ground. May have slits for the hands