Cracker: Get it Off
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Meh. I didn't want to get into this, but here I am.
The "All men are rapists" is a very annoying unifem-type argument
Yes, it is, if it's used in the way you're talking about. However, people using this as an example of inflexible 70s feminist argument miss the point, since no one appears to have actually read the original work: it is far more nuanced than anyone gives it credit for. The 'all men are rapists' theory does not, actually, say that all men are real, dyed-in-the-wool rapists: it says that most men in society *benefit* from a social structure in which most women live in fear of rape. Which sounds a lot more true than 'all men are actual rapists', doesn't it?
I should have said - why are generalisations such a bad thing in a context where one is talking about gobal concepts - eg gender and sexual politics
I'm thinking it's because we all have a horse in this race, and we're all personally involved, so it makes people uncomfortable to hear 'hey, gender relations? Still pretty fucked up when it comes to sexuality'. People are much more likely to latch on to the 'hey, lots of women I know go to strip clubs, so it's all OK!' thing than to ask harder questions like 'why does this particularly weird aspect of modern life even exist? Why is staring at hot naked women something *all* of us are supposed to do now, male or female, to prove that we're not 'uptight'? Why do we do it more now than we did before? What does it really mean?'
By the way, I've been to strip clubs - and not just the happy, comfortable, postmodern kind we have in Auckland, either. I've been to the more prevalent working-class American kind, where the men gaze at the women like resentful lions on the hunt, and the women can barely conceal their contempt for the audience. The strippers *loved* me: I was no threat. But it's still pretty uncomfortable, that atmosphere. Problematic.
It's all so contradictory, this gender politics stuff. Particularly in music. If you love big, cheesy, popular hiphop, as I do, you just have to let a lot of that lyrical content flow right over you and sort of ignore it. For example, I love Jay-Z's '99 Problems'. But the chorus, 'I got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one' isn't really something that a right-on third-wave feminist like myself wants to, um, 'reclaim' in any meaningful sense. Sigh.
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my concern is not, russell, about how many girls are dressing to fit the raunch culture image. it's about how that culture is effecting their self-esteem, their choices, and their ability to achieve. i'm not interested in their moral state; i'm interested in their physical and mental well-being.
Once again, someone else says it better than me. Ta Anjum! I feel it because I teach in Mangere where most of the parents of the children I teach are very young, and very, very into some of the more "gangsta" and gangster stuff, with all the attendant misongynistic BS that goes with it. I have wee boys that come to me to tell me they're in the Mongrel Mob. That's who some of them glorify . That's a whole other story. These little girls are growing up with these little boys, and the cycle perpetuates.
For example, I love Jay-Z's '99 Problems'. But the chorus, 'I got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one' isn't really something that a right-on third-wave feminist like myself wants to, um, 'reclaim' in any meaningful sense. Sigh.
Love the tune, hate the lyrics? Bit of a bummer, I can see that. But sometimes you have to be black and white about stuff you believe in. These days, that's kind of frowned on, I know. But not everything is okay. If girl children are wearing cutesy slogans on tshirts that are completely inappropriate, that's not okay to me. If women call themselves girls, that's not okay to me. If my niece thinks that only eating lowfat yoghurt is okay, because that's what Granny eats, then I tell her it's not. If women take off their clothes to titillate others, and it's not burlesque, that's not okay to me. There are alot of things about gender politics that people tell me to chill out on, and I guess they tell alot of the women on this site the same thing. But I'm not going to because while I still teach little girls, little Pasifika girls, who are getting thousands of, what I view as, destructive messages each day, it's my job to be at least one of the people in their lives that stands up and speaks the opposing view.
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__For example, I love Jay-Z's '99 Problems'. But the chorus, 'I got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one' isn't really something that a right-on third-wave feminist like myself wants to, um, 'reclaim' in any meaningful sense. Sigh.__
Love the tune, hate the lyrics? Bit of a bummer, I can see that.
Yep, and it's not even all the lyrics. The verses in that tune are clever and complex, especially the one about being pulled over by a cop ("because I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low"). And then he busts this in the next verse:
Now once upon a time not too long ago
A nigga like myself had to strong arm a ho
This is not a ho in the sense of havin a pussy
But a pussy havin no God Damn sense, try and push meSo the ho he's talking about is a man.
If you took the "bitch" out of the chorus, it would actually sound quite different, but I guess the attack of words like "bitch" and "nigga" are part of the impact of hip hop.
The Prodigy's 'Smack My Bitch Up' (sole lyric, "change my pitch up, smack my bitch up" repeated lots) is another interesting one. When 15,000 teenage girls screamed "SMACK MY BITCH UP!" back at the band at the Big Day Out (which they did, and it sounded quite amazing), they weren't talking about being assaulted. It's just a transgressive phrase that means what you want it to mean.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that there's plenty of foul misogyny in commercial hip hop (any act that makes yet another pool-party video with champagne and near-naked models doing ass-claps should be first up against the wall), but Jay Z's got more going on than that, so don't feel too guilty about loving the tune.
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Now once upon a time not too long ago
A nigga like myself had to strong arm a ho
This is not a ho in the sense of havin a pussy
But a pussy havin no God Damn sense, try and push meSo the ho he's talking about is a man.
Yeah, I know. I've analysed that song every which way but loose. But there's a larger point there, which is that a 'pussy' is a bad, weak thing, and a pussy is what women have. It's not what men have. So that guy he's talking about is bad because he's weak, *like a woman*. Which is still pretty offensive, no?
(The verse with the cop exchange is genius, though. 'My glove compartment is locked and so's the trunk in the back, and I know my rights, so you gon' need a lawyer for that.' Heh.)
And it's not as though I don't understand the historical context from which that kind of hip hop springs (black men weren't seen as real men, and they were poor, so they act hyper-manly and hugely materialistic): a lot of it is just rhetorical grandstanding, and a lot of it is pretty hilarious. Ludacris' 'You's a Ho' is just plain funny any way you slice it, and the final verse gives him an out: 'us niggas is hoes too!' Going further back, even NWA's 'A Bitch is a Bitch' or whatever it's called, tends to make things a lot more complex in the verses than you might expect. But then the Notorious B.I.G.'s 'Hypnotize', which I also love, has that whole verse about tying the woman up in the basement, and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Ehhhhh. I am truly conflicted, but I can't live without that chorus hook. And hell, dude is dead anyway.
(I'm actually less offended by the booty-clap as a dance than I probably should be. That's one great ass-maneuvre!)
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Yeah, I know. I've analysed that song every which way but loose.
Cool. Are you familiar with the 'Voodoo Problems' Hendrix mash-up? Totally wicked.
But there's a larger point there, which is that a 'pussy' is a bad, weak thing, and a pussy is what women have. It's not what men have. So that guy he's talking about is bad because he's weak, *like a woman*. Which is still pretty offensive, no?
Of course. But we're clearly on the same page: not everything is what it seems, and there are still gonna be tunes that you hate yourself for loving.
(I'm actually less offended by the booty-clap as a dance than I probably should be. That's one great ass-maneuvre!)
I'll have to defer to your judgement on that :-)
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(Oh, it's 'warrant', isn't it. I'm correcting my Jay-Z quote, post-post.)
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(Oh, it's 'warrant', isn't it. I'm correcting my Jay-Z quote, post-post.)
Maybe I should post the whole verse so everyone knows what we're yakking about ...
The year's '94 and my trunk is raw
In my rear view mirror is the mother fuckin' law
I got two choices y'all pull over the car or (hmmm)
Bounce on the double put the pedal to the floor
Now I ain't tryin' to see no highway chase with Jake.
Plus i got a few dollars i can fight the case
So I ... pull over to the side of the road
I heard "Son do you know why I'm stoppin' you for?"
Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low?
Do I look like a mind reader sir? I don't know ...
Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo'?
"Well you was doin fifty-five in a fifty-fo' "
"Licence and registration and step out of the car"
"Are you carryin' a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are"
I ain't steppin out of shit, all my paper's legit
"Well, do you mind if I look round the car a little bit?"
Well my glove compartment is locked so's the trunk in the back
And I know my rights so you gon' need a warrant for that
"Aren't you sharp as a tack, you some type of lawyer or something'?"
"Or somebody important or somethin'?"
Nah, I ain't pass the bar but I know a little bit
Enough that you won't illegally search my shit
"We'll see how smart you are when the K9 come"
I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one
Hit me -
Alanis Morissette "My Humps" video
Deborah & Danielle you both seem to mean something different from the phrase. Deborah you're saying all young men are rapists, and thereby that all men raped when they were younger - that is a really ugly and unjustifiable view of the world. Danielle this is the crime of 1970s feminism should be answering for, installation of fear in women that they may be raped beyond any real danger. Granted the debate within it has merit.
The 60's were hugely misogonist & yet we happily sing along "... she's just 17 do you know what I mean?", "I'm just a juvenile delinquent (of course this had greater meaning back then)","Bing bam baloola she's my baby, bing bam baloola I don't mean maybe" Again had a greater meaning to it than reads today. I'm not defending the bitch & ho & note that free to air TV bans guns in music videos due to the gangsta element but not misogonistic video images/lyrics.
Is 35yr middle aged?
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'Be-Bop-A-Lula' isn't misogynistic: it's about how Lula is really attractive to him, and how she's really good at having sex. I'm thinking those kinds of lyrics weren't misogyny, but rather compliments to his girlfriend.
I'm not really interested in answering for the 'crimes' of 1970s feminism, since that movement gave me the freedom to own property, have my own career, and have control over my own body. Those feminists also gave me the right not to be raped or beaten by my own husband. Second-wave feminists also gave us all a wonderful body of complex, nuanced thought which people seem determined to oversimplify without having read any of it. I salute those feminists, dammit.
I am also on a download quest for the 'Voodoo Problems' mash-up, Russell. :)
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'm not really interested in answering for the 'crimes' of 1970s feminism, since that movement gave me the freedom to own property, have my own career, and have control over my own body. Those feminists also gave me the right not to be raped or beaten by my own husband.
Absolutely. And I think that a great many other things have shifted as part of the same process.
One thing that has changed is that the men don't get to have all the fun any more. When you look back at our supposed counterculture heroes, you tend to see women in the background trotting around cooking and looking after the babies. I saw a documentary about the Merry Pranksters and their bus trip, and it was extraordinary the extent to which the bold adventurers in consciousness were sexist pricks who expected sex on tap.
Even the Blerta story basically washes up as the women dutifully doing the dishes. And, much as I love Rex Fairburn et al, they also had their fun while the women tended. I'd like to think that to their counterparts today, that all looks pretty lame.
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It does look pretty lame, Russell, and it was, you're right. We have come such a long way, and that's what concerns me. That we're about to lose a large chunk of it.
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Danielle
We're in more agreement than not & I'm not trying to get you to answer for the crimes of the past be rather acknowledge them, rather than justify them.
The vast majority of what you've attributed to the '70s can be attributed to the suffrajets. 1972 Equal Pay & 1973 commision into womens rights conceeded.
That songs possesive & sexist, although great fun. Never let the facts get in the way of a good ... song?Jackie
Wow you're working at the coal face there. The whole society are more disatvantaged than I suspect anyone involved in this discussion. -
Not the coalface, Michael. The coal face is the children we don't get to see.
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The vast majority of what you've attributed to the '70s can be attributed to the suffrajets.
No, it can't. The suffragettes concentrated on exactly what their name implies: suffrage. The vote. In fact, suffragettes often had what we would consider quite reactionary ideas about what the vote would mean: 'ladylike' women would stop men acting like 'animals' in the body politic, for example. If you're talking about things like equal pay for equal work, the ability to own your own property without your husband's interference, more equitable distribution of unpaid labour like housework or child-rearing, or less restrictive concepts of gender and sexuality for both men and women, then that's our second-wave friends from the 1960s and 1970s. (There were some pretty awesome Marxist feminists in the early twentieth century who dealt with some of those issues, but they were by no means the majority of first-wave feminist thinkers.)
What I find quite irritating about your argument is that I'm meant to 'acknowledge'... what? That second-wave feminism made some people uncomfortable, and still does? Of course it did: it challenged things that most people accepted unquestioningly. What are the 'crimes' for which second-wave feminism can be held responsible, exactly? Because I think that what you've come up with so far can be attributed not to feminists, but to poorly argued second-hand analysis of feminist ideas.
(I like the idea of 'suffrajets': they sound space-age!)
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Deborah you're saying all young men are rapists, and thereby that all men raped when they were younger - that is a really ugly and unjustifiable view of the world.
Michael, that's a complete misrepresentation of what I said. I said NOTHING like that whatsoever.
Here's what I said.
Another thought - raunch culture makes things very difficult for boys and young men too. I'm told that many, if not most, teenage boys and young men think / fantasize a lot about sex. And at the same time, here are (some, not all) girls wearing incredibly sexy clothes, sending a heap of signals that they are sexually available. So what's a young man to do? Yet some of those girls may not really want to be sexually available - they just like the clothes, or feel that they have to wear the clothes in order to fit in. The young man propositions them, and gets turned down, or comes on too strong, and the young woman feels forced into a situation she doesn't really want to be in (in the worst cases, we call this rape). Now of course this is not what happens all the time, or even a lot of the time, but I assume that it happens at least some of the time. What a terribly confusing and risky position for young men to be in.
I am shaking with shock that you could think I ever, ever said anything remotely like all young men are rapists. What a terrible view to attribute to me.
You say you are too scarred by 1970s feminism to give weight to my views. For goodness sake, that was 30 years ago. Feminism has moved a long way since then. And even in the 70s, no one claimed that all men were rapists. As Jackie said above, and I have said months ago on PAS, it was a much more nuanced, and subtle view than that. The caricature of the 1970s view, and your caricuature of what I was trying to say about the difficult position young men have been placed in, are both ridiculous.
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Here's the comment where I talked about the caricatured 'all men are rapists' claim back in April this year.
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Danielle
You have acknowledge the slogan "All men are Rapists" is wrong,(still held onto by Deborah) but then excuse it . The excesses of these campaigns have led to murder (Gaye Oaks) & false convictions due to recovered memory etc.In my view '70s wave of feminism was primarily one of a change of attitude & interpretation of existing law attempting to give sexual equality to the middle classes.
As such can we agree to disagree on the history of feminism?
Spelling is fluid & shud be fun. My fave from a few days back was Armerica.
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You have acknowledge the slogan "All men are Rapists" is wrong,(still held onto by Deborah)
THAT IS NOT CORRECT! I DO NOT, AND HAVE NEVER, HELD THAT VIEW.
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Sorry, but I'm not going to continue arguing with someone who can't actually comprehend what I'm saying. (Or what Deborah is saying either, for that matter.) And, um, 'agree to disagree' about the historical facts of women's rights in the 20th century? OK, sure. I suppose it all comes down to 'truthiness' with you anyway, right?
I despair. :)
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wow. got back to my pc and walked right into a 'theatre'.
michael, not entirely sure where your accusations against deborah are coming from. other than a perhaps deliberate misinterpretation of that comment waaay back on another page?
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Sorry I really didn't mean to offend.
Popin off to do something else in the middle of typing can create a few problems as well.Deborah I accept your view of what you've written. I think guys & gals can traverse those issues with less danger of missunderstandings.
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Let's get this right, shall we Michael? Deborah has never said all men are rapists. I remember the slogan because I used it. I was a Unifem in the mid 80's and we were still using it then. It's not about the fact that every man rapes a woman. Patently they do not. It was, as Danielle has so correctly stated, about the patriachal society that seemed to condone rape at the time - rape in marriage was not yet illegal, rape was very hard to prove in court, rape crisis was underfunded, stranger rapes were on the increase - being a society that by and large gave you huge amounts of mana simply by dint of having a penis. Penis = power. That was the basis of it. Other feminists of the time may argue with me on that, but in the Auckland University Feminists thinking, that was the logic. And if you were a young woman at that time, it wasn't an entirely unreasonable conclusion to draw, I might add. Women at the time, of my acquaintance and in my experience, were less empowered than they are today. Some of us were more political, some of us were not. Not all young men frightened us, but some did. I can think of countless examples of parties where young men used their "power" and our silliness to their advantage. I'm afraid, Michael, that no really didn't mean no. Which is why I spent hours, along with my Unifem mates and others, chanting that exact slogan in marches up and down the city. Would welleducated women in their early twenties let that stuff happen to them nowadays? Not from what I hear from my acquaintances of that age. This is what irks me so. There are young women who take for granted that young men respect their wishes, that they should be able to flash their tits around, and it's all just good fun. That they have immense sexual power over young men, if not all men. T'wasn't always so.
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I should add, it's not the power that women have gained which irks me, obviously. It's the complacency with which it's existence is viewed which does. Things can slip away very quickly when you're not looking.
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Represent!
I am very aware and grateful of the gains that were won by feminists in the past and I agree that you can't take any of it for granted. I am sometimes shocked by some people's lack of knowledge on the subject and it is then that I feel that my education has been a privilege.
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Back to my fabulous sunny weekend, I hope when I get back there is more to read.
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