Quinn Norton writes:
For many years when I walked into a room I instantly counted the women. It told me a lot about what to expect from that room. One day, having lost my best friend over racial politics out of my control, I began to count people of color. That too was for safety, for understanding how my views would be taken. That too told me a lot I needed to know about the room. But it also hinted to me about a whole realm of experience I wasn’t having. […]
Full Story: Quinn Says: Count
Rebecca Solnit for Mother Jones:
Yes, guys like this pick on other men’s books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men.
Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.
I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the trajectory of American politics since 2001 was shaped by, say, the inability to hear Coleen Rowley, the FBI woman who issued those early warnings about Al Qaeda, and it was certainly shaped by a Bush administration to which you couldn’t tell anything, including that Iraq had no links to Al Qaeda and no WMD, or that the war was not going to be a “cakewalk.” (Even male experts couldn’t penetrate the fortress of their smugness.)
Mother Jones: The Problem With Men Explaining Things
I’ve definitely been “that guy” before. I try not to be. (And yes, as Solnit writes, men do this to each other too — we should stop.)
You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!
Sound familiar?
If you’re a woman, it probably does.
Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?
When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling—that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation—pure and simple.
And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.
Full Story: The Good Men Project: Why Women Aren’t Crazy
One day, Kevin came to class with a duffle bag. I thought little of it, until – in the midst of a discussion about men and feminism – he reached into the duffle and pulled out a football helmet. “I know I’m gonna get killed for what I’m about to say”, he announced dramatically; “I brought some protection.” Kevin then strapped the helmet on as his classmates and I stared in shock. I told him to cut out the cheap theatrics, but not before he’d made a powerful point, though I’m confident it wasn’t the one he intended to make.
Kevin’s gag with the football helmet was designed to send a signal about women and anger. The message he wanted to send was, as he told me later, that “feminists take things too seriously and get too aggressive.” The message he actually sent was that men will go to great lengths to try and short-circuit women’s attempts at serious conversation. The helmet was an effort to label those attempts as “male-bashing” or “man-hating.” The hope was that it would shame uppity feminists into biting back their anger; of course, Kevin only ended up inflaming the situation. In less dramatic ways, I’ve seen men use this same tactic again and again.
Full Story: Hugo Schwyzer: Why I Resigned from The Good Men Project
Although we can all agree on the most basic dictionary definition of feminism (the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes), it is rarely ever that simple or straightforward. Despite 150 years of activism in pursuit of women’s rights, and nearly 40 years of modern feminism, “feminism” is still considered by many to be a dirty word. In the mainstream media, when feminism is discussed at all, it’s most often talked about in negative or pessimistic terms: Time’s “Is Feminism Dead?” cover stories; the recent series of New York Times articles detailing how feminism has “failed” because upper-middle-class white women are still struggling with the work/family dilemma; any number of hand-wringing articles about why young women aren’t embracing the label; and so forth. Movie and tv starlets who portray assertive, confident, feminist-leaning characters routinely reject the word—Sarah Michelle Gellar, Drew Barrymore, I’m lookin’ at you—as do female musicians whose work is infused with gender play (Polly Jean Harvey, Patti Smith, Bjork). It’s not that these women aren’t into equality: It’s because they, like many people, are afraid of what the word implies to the rest of the world. Like the current slanderous usage of “liberal,” “feminist” has long been wielded as an epithet—hence many women’s discomfort in adopting it.
You wouldn’t know it from the blanket terms used to talk about feminism, but the movement’s rich history (and current practice) encompasses a slew of ideologies, offshoots, and internal disagreements: radical feminism, cultural feminism, liberal feminism, antiporn feminism, pro-sex feminism, third-wave feminism, womanism—but what does it all mean? A brief primer on the etiology of feminism is sorely needed. The following is hardly exhaustive, and only barely objective, and I must mention that many of the nuances and linguistic turns are still up for debate by and among feminists. So leave your preconceptions behind and join me in this exciting exploration of one of life’s most basic urges: feminism.
Full Story: Bitch: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Feminism But Were Afraid to Ask
There’s a world of difference between being branded a sex object and choosing to be one under certain circumstances. Recall Tad Friend’s classic 1994 “do-me feminism” Esquire article, in which Lisa Palac said, “Degrade me when I ask you to” (emphasis mine). Women’s true desires may not make for perfect propaganda, but sex is justifiably complex. I may like to get spanked until I scream, but I still deserve to be treated as an intelligent human being. Submitting sexually doesn’t equal becoming a doormat outside the bedroom.
Full Story: Village Voice: Fucking and Feminism
Ariel Levy’s 2005 book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture argued that, in fact, women themselves were turning to self-objectification in shocking numbers, noting that the signifiers of what she called “raunch culture” — strip aerobics classes, T-shirts printed with the words porn star, Girls Gone Wild, and more — had been adopted by women themselves. But rather than leading to real freedom, women’s adoption of “raunch culture” simply duplicated patterns of disdain for and objectification of women. Levy’s quest to find out how the new sexual liberation differed from early-model sexploitation involved talking to everyone from the HBO executives responsible for the likes of G-String Divas to the producers of Girls Gone Wild to high-school and college women who have felt pressure to make out with other girls in bars “because boys like it.” Ultimately, Female Chauvinist Pigs yielded far more questions than it answered, and the main one was this: If the standards and stereotypes by which girls and women are judged haven’t changed, could it really be called empowerment at all?
Pamela Paul struggled with a similar question in her 2005 book Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families; a year later, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting took it on in Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. Along with Female Chauvinist Pigs, these books pointed out the distinction that lay at the heart of many feminists’ discomfort with raunch culture: Liking sex and performing sex are two very different things. And as Levy put it, “If we’re going to have sexual role models, it should be the women who enjoy sex the most, not the women who get paid the most to enact it.”
Full Story: Alternet: “Do-Me” Feminism and the Rise of Raunch
Fantasy author Jim C. Hine tries posing as both male and female characters from fantasy novel covers. His conclusions:
- Men on book covers are indeed posed shirtless in ways that show off their musculature. However…
- Male poses do not generally emphasize sexuality at the expense of all other considerations.
- Male poses do emphasize the character’s power and strength in a way many (most?) female cover poses don’t.
- When posed with a woman, the man will usually be in the dominant, more powerful posture.
- Male poses do not generally require a visit to the chiropractor afterward.
Jim C. Hine: Striking a Pose (Women and Fantasy Covers)
Jim C. Hine: Posing Like a Man
See also:
A contortionist/martial artist says he can’t imitate that female fighting pose from comic books
The Criterion collection has a bunch of David Cronenberg memorabilia on display, including a photo gallery of these props from Dead Ringers: the so called “Instruments for Operating on Mutant Women.”
Also check out this feedback card from a test screening for Videodrome.
(via Justin)
See also: David Cronenberg on Gender
From the Women in Comics Wiki:
Ah ! Nana was a French comics magazine published from October 1976 to September 1978, running nine issues. It was published by Humanoïdes Associés, best known as the publishers of Métal Hurlant, or Heavy Metal. It was the first French publication featuring work entirely by women (though each issue invited one man to contribute) at a time when comics were still almost exclusively male environments. It included work by such French cartoonists as Chantal Montellier, Florence Cestac, and Nicole Claveloux, as well as Americans such as Trina Robbins. It sold 15,000 copies on a print run of 30,000, before the ban on sales to minors proved fatal, due to its frequent taboo and controversial material.
Women in Comics: Ah ! Nana has covers and a history of the publication.
(via Popjellyfish)
Previously: Leah Moore on Women in Comics
Great rant from Leah Moore, co-author of comics such as Raise The Dead Hardcover and The Thrill Electric (and, yes, Alan Moore’s daughter):
Everyone knows fangirls rule the world, they pay for most of it. Drifts of Twilight cushions and Harry Potter scarves, Legolas action figures, obscure game character cosplay outfits, nyancat lunchboxes and kitten mittens. The world is literally awash with Things Girls Like. We are surely never further than 2m from a Hello Kitty.
So what is it about comics that’s different? What makes comics suddenly this great thrusting phallus of masculinity? […]
If comics is to survive the financial turmoil we are all suffering under, it doesn’t matter if it’s paper comics or digital, trade paperbacks or floppies, it’s about “ARE THE COMICS ANY FUCKING GOOD?” and “ARE WE SELLING THEM TO AS BROAD A MARKET AS POSSIBLE OR ONLY 50% OF IT?” If we continue to try and sell crappy comics to half the population based purely on what they keep in their underpants and nothing else then we are totally doomed.
What is required is an all hands to the pumps mentality. Action stations! Let’s find some new blood, let’s find some new ideas, new characters, and most importantly new readers kind of plan.
I honestly think that anyone who doesn’t see women as a rich untapped potential source of ideas, or labour, or cold hard revenue must be delusional. Why should comics sit in a sweaty locker room of ignominy when novels and films and games skip about hand in hand with wealthy teenage girls? Doesn’t that make comics feel a bit sad?
Leah Moore: Thank Heaven for Little Girls
As I’ve mentioned before I don’t even think the current comics model is addressing 50% of the addressable market for comics. There are a lot of men who don’t give a flip about objectification of women in media, but still find the idea of being caught with a pile of garish floppy books full of bizarre female anatomy quite embarrassing. And more importantly, how many parents want their kids buying that stuff, or even going into comic stores? The youth market, both male and female, is getting pushed out as well.
I have no problems with sex or nudity in comics, or even flat out pornographic comics. The trouble, as many have pointed out, is a lack of variety, or at least a scenario where much of the variety gets swept under the rug while publishers and retailed double down on a dwindling demographic. Comic stores have been man caves for far too long, and even the men are getting embarrassed about it.
Maybe it’s all for the best and the collapse of the big two and the current retail model has to happen (the big two are supposedly quite toxic environments for women. That sort of crash would put a lot of people out on the streets though.
Anyway, like Moore says trying to run a comic company that’s run comics “for girls” is probably not a viable option at this point, but comics that appeal to a broader audience, I think, is.
Previously:
As a follow-up to my post about male superheros drawn like female superheros here’s a blog documenting all the paradoxical anatomy that shows up in comics. But most interesting are the redraws showing a clear alternative to how many of these comics are drawn.
(via Lupa)
See also this:
Metafilter has a great round-up of depictions of male comic characters depicted the same way female characters typically are (See here if you don’t understand why all those beefy Hulk-like characters aren’t equivalent to the way women are portrayed in comics, though yes I do think there are pop cultural portrayals of men that are also problematic).
For example, this one by kevinbolk:
… which is a parody of this Avengers poster.
There’s also a gallery at Gammasquad, which features gems such as these:
I’ll add to this list these images from a great Comics Bulletin article:
Also, this was a real New X-Men cover:
I wonder what the mainstream fan reaction was. Anyway, it seems to be a real outlier.
So why does this matter? Marvel and DC are free to publish whatever trash they see fit, and the fans are free to buy it. And if males are having their perceptions of women warped, actual pornography is probably much more damaging. And for females, there are far more damaging portrayals of women in mass advertising campaigns, where women actually see them. Can’t avoid seeing them, actually. And really, not that many women will ever see most many of these comic book images.
I guess that’s what bothers me – seeing the comics industry slit its own throat. Here’s a great comic from Shortpacked about why the Starfire reboot was stupid from a business perspective. That Comics Bulletin piece breaks it down as well.
But would comics with less absurd women actually sell? Well, first of all even as a male comics reader you could be put off by this stuff, even if you’re not in the least bit gender progressive. As someone pointed out in the Metafilter comments, stuff like the Starfire comics would be downright embarrassing to be seen reading in public in a way that something like a Sandman comic wouldn’t. You could be the most sexist, body-negative mofo on the planet and still not want to buy this stuff.
Also, let’s take a look at some (relative) recent comics history. Look at these covers from Harbinger from the early 90s (actually that last one is the cover to a more recently published collected edition, I think):
Harbinger, now nearly forgotten, was one of the hottest titles of the early 90s. Yes, there’s a scantily clad woman there, but there’s also a bigger girl – something that wasn’t often seen then or now (though the fact that her name was Zepplin [“blimp,” get it?] doesn’t really help matters). The Valiant Comics line had a meteoric rise, with both commercial and critical success. Those books sold well in a climate where comics it competed with stuff like this:
I don’t know the history of Valiant’s demise, but it was after it was sold to the video game company Acclaim. Even before the sale, the company was starting to “Image-ize” its comics with titles like Bloodshot and Ninjak. But those old Valiant books, from before the acquisition and before the Image-ization, had a huge following and proved that there was a market comics featuring something other than the cartoonishly distorted anatomies of the Image founders.
I suppose, given the recent shabby treatment towards creators on Marvel’s part and the history of abuses by DC, I should be happy to see those companies self-destruct. It’s probably just nostalgia keeping me from wanting to see these corporations get eaten in the market. On the other hand, the comic industry in general hinges in a lot of ways on those two big companies and I don’t think it would necessarily be a good thing for smaller publishers to see Marvel and DC implode any further.
See also:
(photo by Toru Kogure)
Greta Christina writes:
Fashion is one of the very few forms of expression in which women have more freedom than men.
And I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s typically seen as shallow, trivial, and vain.
It is the height of irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental… and are then derided as shallow and vain for doing so. And it’s a subtle but definite form of sexism to take one of the few forms of expression where women have more freedom, and treat it as a form of expression that’s inherently superficial and trivial. Like it or not, fashion and style are primarily a women’s art form. And I think it gets treated as trivial because women get treated as trivial. […]
If you don’t personally care about fashion and style, that’s fine. We don’t all have to care about the same art forms: I could care less about grand opera, and it’s unlikely that I’m ever going to. I do think people should be aware that what they wear communicates something to other people — something about who they are and how they feel about the world and their place in it — and I think many people would be better off if they made that communication intentionally instead of un-. But again, we all don’t have to care about the same forms of communication. If what you want to say about yourself through your clothing is, “I wear clothes so I won’t be naked,” that is entirely your prerogative, and none of my business.
But if you think other people — especially other women — who do care about fashion and style are shallow, trivial, or vain for doing so?
That is my business.
Greta Christina: Fashion is a Feminist Issue
(via eecummingscapitalized)
Great post, though some might dispute the conflation of “fashion” and “style.”
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