52 Comments

1. Stan:

   I don’t want to give the impression that we are simply passing some kind of moral judgement on films or the people who watch, hate, love, enjoy them.

   The value of culural criticism is in watching them, even attending to our own reactions without assigning ourselves a term in a hair shirt, and then critiquing them. bell hooks has made a very erudite, often lyrical, and extremely useful contribution to the struggles of Black folk and women by doing this. Her send-up on The Crying Game is cultural crit at its very best, imo.

   The point of CC is not to stamp approved or forbidden on every product, but to reveal that which is operational but hidden within culture itself in order to give people the tools they need to struggle more effectively… be that struggle poltical, intersubjective, or intraspsychic (’cause these all overlap, eh).

   For Ben, there are quite a few posts on this here, under the Gender catagory, if you page back through them. For myself, Catharine MacKinnon’s book “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State” was a watershed on the difference between abstract equality and unequal power…

   …which is the very basis of maintaining inequality in a liberal society. I actually used MacKinnon’s thesis for a piece on Hasan Akbar once.

   21 August 2006, 8:57 am

2. frank:

   Now that remakes are part of the offerings at theatres these days, they ought to remake, or even re-release Koyannisqatsi- I saw it soon after leaving active duty, geez fifteen years ago?; left quite an impression. Audrey, I’ve heard the film called a “tone poem”- is that so? But the hopi word means life out of balance, no?

   21 August 2006, 11:19 am

3. skol:

   They’ve released the trilogy on DVD after Naqoyqatsi was made.
   Koya - life out of balance
   Powa - parasitic life
   Naqoy - Life as war

   I don’t mean to sound eager, but I couldn’t recommend them more.

   21 August 2006, 11:35 am

4. Dan:

   “Is this something about boys not liking to ask for directions or be seen to be in the wrong about anything?”

   Seems we all give in to the temptation to stereotype, from time to time.

   But isn’t this the point, in a way? Isn’t all storytelling in danger of using the available cultural stereotypes (or archetypes, if you want to use the term) too directly? It’s excuseable, I guess, in a graphic novel, which in a way seems to be a blatant, in-your-face exploration of these archetypes, for (mostly) young boys. But (my personal pet peeve as a storyteller) doesn’t it start to get a little annoying when the critics start telling you “this code means that,” like they have some sort of magic decoder ring (I can’t stand Joseph Campbell — or George Lucas, for that matter).

   I agree that people who are especially sensitive to a particular issue have a viewpoint which can illuminate the cultural “norm”. For example, since becoming a parent, I have a lot of trouble with movies in which children are abused to advance the plot — kidnapping and hostage flicks (”Ransom” comes to mind) are not something I care to watch. But I still think it would be possible to raise the issue of violence against children in a film as a way of generating awareness of it. And I guess I can even see that it would be legitimate to use it, as a plot device, if you were recreating a world in which those types of things happened, to advance consciousness of how things that actually happen in the real world. But I can’t stand to see it used as a mindless Hollywood plot element, simply to enable Harrison Ford to blow away some bad-guy.

   Does this approximate what Stan and De are talking about?

   21 August 2006, 11:53 am

5. skol:

   >>Seems we all give in to the temptation to stereotype, from time to time.
   But not by nature exclusively. One of the goals, I imagine, is to not resort to stereotyping, as it simultaneously stereotypes everyone. I don’t get offended by Polack jokes personally, but the stereotype is applied to every Pole, a weaker example, intentionally. A particular stereotype isn’t so much the problem as stereotyping in general is, being a result of These Systems.
   (Systems I myself don’t fully understand, but I’m gaining in rhetoric ;))

   >>But (my personal pet peeve as a storyteller) doesn’t it start to get a little annoying when the critics start telling you “this code means that,” like they have some sort of magic decoder ring
   Sometimes, the code actually means that. These are subconcious memes, and they manifest without question. The situation (from meme) trumps the context (from plot), unless it’s explicitly about the situation (i.e., plot involves the meme explicitly).

   >>But I still think it would be possible to raise the issue of violence against children in a film as a way of generating awareness of it.
   But it DOESN’T! They’re just there for the ACTION, man!
   The kids are part of the action. I doubt their presense makes many people think about it. They’re just a device (unless it’s about an orphanage, no kidding).
   >>And I guess I can even see that it would be legitimate to use it, as a plot device, if you were recreating a world in which those types of things happened, to advance consciousness of how things that actually happen in the real world.
   There is nothing that happens in a movie that is anything like what happens in real life. The context of film is pathetic compared to that of life. They’re barely comparable. The emotion is as an observer, not as a victim.

   I feel I’m being a little overbearing in this post, so please tell me if I’m being rude or pompous or whatever

   21 August 2006, 1:11 pm

6. DeAnander:

   I did not give Stan permission to publish that private correspondence, nor to rewrite it into a style that does not sound (to me) like me. it is not how I would have chosen to engage Ethan; I would not have written publicly to him in that tone, even though I was (evidently) frustrated. therefore apologies to Ethan — and Stan and I will need to work on our ROE.

   FROM STAN

   I have retracted and publicly apologize. It was very wrong of me, and I don’t know what I was thinking.

   This will not happen again.

   I ask forgiveness of De and the list.

   21 August 2006, 3:56 pm

7. Dan:

   “These are subconcious memes, and they manifest without question. The situation (from meme) trumps the context (from plot), unless it’s explicitly about the situation (i.e., plot involves the meme explicitly).”

   I think this assumes a couple of things I want to call attention to:

   1. “meme” is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, to describe bundles of cultural information transmitted from one mind to another, largely unconsciously. Since then, it seems to have come into vogue as a vague catch-all word to describe what the french critics might have called “cultural construction.”

   2. While it’s arguable whether the real world actually works this way (and I’d be willing to read, if not participate, in that argument if people want to…), in fiction the whole world is constructed by the author. Whether it’s a novel, a comic, or a screenplay. So unless the “world” the story is set in is explicitly a duplicate of the “real” world, it makes sense to ask about the author’s conscious use of archetypes. And, if it is supposed to be the “real” world, it’s still a MAP created by the author, not reality, so the same questions apply.

   3. Unless you’re saying that the author is a victim of her own cultural construction, unable to be self-aware enough to make creative choices about the construction of the world in which she tells her story… I’d debate that point, too.

   21 August 2006, 4:21 pm

8. DeAnander:

   forgiven.

   btw, I love the -qaatsi films and vote that:

   Stan’s penance is to rent and watch them…

   Ethan’s penance is to watch ‘Born in Flames’…

   … and mine is to wait for Elaina to make me really, really embarrassed that I ever said anything nice about BtVS

   but more seriously…

   The context of film is pathetic compared to that of life. They’re barely comparable. The emotion is as an observer, not as a victim.

   which is exactly why we call them “escapism.”

   I do worry about the conditioning — nearly hypnotic — that the mediated experience imposes on us, that we actively participate in. as more than one commenter has noted, the whole “liquid explosives” scare story is Hollywood plot gimmick, not science. security policy based on action movies… an action movie hero as governator of California… war as a cinematic performance (the Jessica Lynch photo op)… commander codpiece posturing on the carefully posed carrier… war rationale scripted as an action movie with cartoon villains… a culture more and more invested in escapism and drifting further and further from reality? many have sounded this alarm before (N Postman, recently). I wonder how much is just a desperate search for a scapegoat to explain the snafus of the time and how much is substantiated. haven’t the elites always engaged the masses’ attention with fairy tales, religious dogma and morality plays, promises of heaven, the cartoon antics of royals, cartoon villains du jour?

   21 August 2006, 5:19 pm

9. skol:

   Dan, I apologize for incorrectly using “meme”. I mean the over-use of these cultural cliches (e.g., Helpless Female Victim and Big Strong Hero as in V).

   And I admit a lot of what I said is just me being cynical about mediocre culture and, in film and music, how they always make to #1 on charts. So I do think some movies raise awareness, but when they’re used in your regular guns-n-bullets films (or something similar), it doesn’t seem right, at least to me. So I apologize for that presupposition, as well.

   22 August 2006, 1:45 am

10. Dan:

    It’s interesting though, isn’t it, that maybe things like movies and graphic novels give you a view of how at least some people (the authors and their audiences) are reacting to cultural stereotypes. I remember when I read (I think it was in Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns”) that the animosity between Batman and Superman was because Superman had allowed himself to become the stooge of American presidents (the one in the boook looks like Reagan), I thought, yeah! That was an example of an author being aware of the cliches, and using them creatively, I thought.

    Movies can be “pretty good,” without going all the way… Syriana failed to deal with the demand side of the oil issue at all. Crash was only a baby-step (was it praised because it made the baby-step, or because it ONLY made the baby-step, I wonder?). Even a movie like the “Devil’s Miner,” about the kids working in Bolivian Silver mines, stops with the attemp to save those particular kids from the mine, and doesn’t really address the fact that as long as there’s a demand for silver on the world market, and incredible inequity in wealth distribution, the poorest and weakest kids will continue to be sent down into the mountain. But at least, they get us started, thinking and talking about this stuff…

    22 August 2006, 11:50 am

11. DeAnander:

    One reason I liked Brother from Another Planet — aside from its many virtues as entertainment, Joe Morton’s charm wit and talent, and Sayles’ (to me) breathlessly funny part as the archetypical Alien Cop — was that it made the connection from drugs on the street to the wealthy whitefellas who are pocketing the big money. It didn’t stop with rescuing the victims… it’s also about solidarity and collective action rather than individual cowboy heroism…

    Another film, far grimmer, not at all funny, that makes the vertical connections is Broken Mirrors, a Dutch feminist film about prostitution, femicide, and Respectable Men.

    The British mini series Traffik (not the Hollywoodised US version) also made connections…

    22 August 2006, 4:28 pm

12. Julian Real:

    Hi all, with special notes to De and Ethan. I’ll divvy this up into two separate posts:

    I’ve been away for a while, and am not sure if I’m back. We’ll see. Life is an unstable adventure in trying to survive, for me right now.

    I’ve read over some of the comments here, and first want to recommend a book to anyone who hasn’t read it called “Reel To Real” by bell hooks, which contains a lot of smart movie reviews.

    Regarding V for Vendetta:

    I was offered the chance to see this film on DVD at a friend’s home recently, but refused. Why? Because what I knew of the film triggered me deeply. “THE” image of this film that I’d see around, in promos, trailers perhaps?, and on shows like Entertainment Tonight maybe (I can’t recall where this image was widely shown, I can only say it is “THE” image of the movie that I have in my triggerable head, that I believe was popularly distributed before and during the release of the film):
    The V is for (CRAP-designated) Very Pretty White Afraid, Trapped Girl-Woman character (who supposedly has a personality and does stuff in the movie), Natalie Portman, is sitting in a chair, an unusual chair. Her head is being shaved. That’s it. That’s “THE” image in my head about the V movie. Never mind that V stands for vagina and violence. Let’s move along. I am not young and not old. But I remember this well, and suspect De will too. Back in the earlier, pre-FACT days of the feminist antiporn movement, there was one of several especially controversial “pictorials”–as I think they were called, in Bob Guccione’s Penthouse magazine of a young-enough woman, a white women, being imprisoned, probably stripped, put in an orange outfit maybe, walked into a room where there was a chair. An unusual chair. In this case it was a “mock” electric chair. She was held down in place and manacled by some tough white men (as I recall) and once “secured” in that unusual chair got her head shaved. And then she was electrocuted. I remember the final image which was about as disturbing to me as anything I’d yet seen out of the likes of Penthouse: it was of her electrocuted self with smoke and the word “Poof” or something like that, indicating she’d been “fried” to death. I found this level of overtly hostile misogyny not only contemptible, but traumatic. It and a few other mainstream heteromale pornography mag spreads remain etched in my brain like a car accident at age seven that killed one or both parents. This, surely, was evidence that these mags weren’t only “pics of naked chicks” as all the hetero men I knew at the time claimed. (Of course YOU’RE not interested in those magazines,” they’d say to me, as if being sane and unoffensive, “These are magazines with pictures of NAKED CHICKS.” I would alert them to the fact that they were not in fact that at all, or rarely were only that. I’d point out “How do you explain Penthouse’s pictorial of Asian women bound and covered almost entirely in white cloth appearing dead, strewn across rocks on a shoreline, as if dropped there off a cliff?” Where’s the “naked chick” in that “spread”? They didn’t like this line of questioning. They didn’t want to have to interrogate what turned them on, or the sexual and racial politics of what they were actually being aroused by.

    But the V for Vendetta-like image was contained in a storyline with a gynocidal ending, fully eroticized for “[heterosexual] men’s entertainment”. I was so traumatized by that electrocution pictorial that the re-presentation of that image in ads for V for Vendetta, made me want to run, not walk, from anyplace that was showing it. I wonder about the age of the filmmakers, and whether they too once saw that Penthouse spread. I wouldn’t be surprised, or, maybe, chances are, over a quarter of a century, at least two “C-dVPATWW” (CRAP-defined Very Pretty Afraid Trapped White Women) would end up getting their heads shaved, in mainstream cinema and/or mainstream pornography. Whitemale God knows, there’s now a whole genre of “shaved-women” in pornography, from head to toe.

    The faux “vendetta” of the early 1980s was pornographers and other whitemale supremacist pimps “vs.” feminists, meaning the movement for dignity and freedom of all women. AS IF feminists were at a peer-feud level with patriarchs, ever, in the history of male supremacist uncivilization. There was no “vendetta” then. There was an amping up of institutionalized, interpersonalized woman-hating to crush out any attempts to make men weak by making them humane, while women sought to set women free.

    To De: would not these films best be called “Dick Flicks” or “Prick Flicks”, depending on preference of terminology?

    23 August 2006, 3:02 pm

13. Julian Real:

    To Ethan.

    Thanks for starting up a MAR group on your campus. My commentary is likely coming to you too late, but what they hay…

    First, I think men using the term feminist for ourselves is problematic, while admirable. Radical feminist women I know and respect hold very differing views on this matter. I think there is basis for sound differences of opinion about whether it is wise and useful for men to call themselves “feminists”. I am speaking as a male who once identified as a feminist (for decades) and who only does so now depending on the context. In some contexts I find it highly problematic, such as on this blog, which has a strong feminist presence. This is specific to how I have seen men here use the term for themselves, while remaining utterly unaccountable to feminist women here for their sexist actions, here.

    In spaces that have a preponderance of antifeminist presence, I find it useful for “anyone” to call themselves feminist, as it’s become THE F WORD in many social circles I’m familiar with (like when at some family gatherings, or in “pro-sexxxism” queer community), and anyone stating “I’m a feminist” is disarming, alarming, and cause for some antifeminists to check their speech and other actions now knowing “one of THOSE kind of people” is in the building. So, having said that context is very important, in my experience of who uses the term “feminist” and when, I’ll note a passage by Pearl Cleage, which I suspect gets at Stan’s uneasiness about men using it, or at least speaks to the issues of self-identified Black feminists and a few white feminists (note: all women):

    From Deals With the Devil, page 28: “Although men are allowed to call themselves ‘feminists’ in some of the more liberal circles, I do not endorse this practice. Men can be enlightened, but I have never met a man who did not cling to and exemplify sexist behavior from time to time in spite of himself. Letting them dub themselves ‘feminists’ tends to lead to smugness, self-satisfaction and the feeling that the man who is struggling to overcome his own sexism and the sexism of his brothers has somehow achieved a more exalted status, a safe conduct pass that allows him to be a little less rigorous on himself, having demonstrated his good intentions. I am reminded of my grandmother’s admonition about what paves the road to hell.”

    (That the term “feminist” is also contentious among anti-patriarchal activist women of different races and regions needs to be considered. “Feminist” for many women of Color, means “a practicioner of white/racist feminism”. I think of myself now as a humanitarian activist working to support radical feminist and Womanist and Third World Women’s efforts to end racist patriarchy. But you’re not going to hear that run-on statement out of my mouth, as it’s too damn wordy!)

    I also take issue with the “many genders” matter, as if there are more than two, really– meaning, in socially-politically privileged and unprivileged reality. I know personal experiences of self are all over the map now, and I am happy about that to some degree–that the binary is being questioned and tampered with at all. But what few tend to note is that the map is almost entirely male supremacist (and, in the U.S. it’s whitemale supremacist). With this in mind, gender needs to be seen as the political hierarchy it is, not some mutable, shifting- around sense of self that people genuinely feel (myself included), which serves to make gender seem more like the identities people passionately have about the foods they do and don’t eat. I know and respect trans people–I respect the trans people I know far more than most non-trans people I know, but please read “Unpacking Queer Politics” for a good assessment of the antifeminist/antiwoman/propatriarchal dangers of the current Academic (and beyond academia) production and promotion of “more than two genders”. “All genders” means what, exactly? And are any of the sexualities anti-male supremacist? Or are they all variations on a male white supremacist/misogynist-racist theme? In my experience, there is one dominant sexuality here, and it’s male supremacist to the core. Hetero, gay, and lesbian cultures have seemingly grabbed onto this sexuality as if their life depended on it, while, in reality, it depends on girls’ and women’s mass dehumanization and death.

    And, “intersex” gets confusing in that first paragraph. As it is the current preferred term for those of us who used to be called “hermaphrodites”. So “intersex solidarity” even with the hyphen, seems to me to invisibilize actual intersex people, while genuinely intending to do the opposite.

    Re: Although anyone can be a victim or perpetrator of sexual violence, rape is predominantly a violent act committed by men against women.

    I think it is more accurate to say that rape is always a sexual act for men experienced as an act of violation and degradation by women. The “rape is violence not sex” feminist line of the past, has been updated by the likes of MacKinnon, as she notes that normal heterosexuality impels and condones rape. Rape is not so much “sex gone violent” as it is “sex gone male supremacist”, which is to say, rape is common, not uncommon. Almost no woman I know is unraped (and none are unviolated or undegraded by men in many ways). Not all heterosexual intercourse is rape, of course, but what divides the two is often confusing to the man who is getting off while using/abusing a woman he thinks he’s having consensual sex with. And we cannot delineate “rape” from “consensual intercourse” solely by the “intent” of the raper, can we? Because when patriarchal heteroboys are patriarchal heteroboys, they can be mighty delusional about what “cues” the girls and women they are obsessing about are “giving them”, especially, it seems, when the woman is passed out. This is all part of normal heterosexuality. Heteromale #1: “Did you see that Bill, she just looked over at me! Clearly she wants me.” or “She’s kissing me–I’m gonna gettin’ some pussy tonight.”

    Consent is no longer a meaningful indicator of when sex is or isn’t rape, even while whitemale supremacist laws haven’t gotten that far yet, nor will they ever. (I mean they barely allow for the prosecution of any rapist.) Consent never has been a meaningful indicator of whether rape happens, btw.

    When a group of average run-of-the-mill hetero college dudes were asked, in a study, “If there were no negative, punitive consequences (to you), would you commit rape?”, an alarming number (or not alarming, depending on what you already know about male supremacist sexuality) of the males said they would commit rape. This points out that women are not real to men, often, as actual human beings deserving of human rights.

    Re: One objective of MAR is to expand the “face of feminism” to include what one might traditionally perceive as “masculine identity,” recognizing that masculinity is not necessarily inherently antagonistic to feminism but can in fact be predicated in large part upon feminist ideals.

    In my opinion, re: the academy, its culture, and feminism, the “faces” of feminism that need to be confronted are those which are married, old-fashioned style, to Liberalism, to Abstract anti-activist Post-Modernism (note: I do not mean all of post-modern theory), and a whiteness that doesn’t name itself and its privileges as such, let alone be appropriately responsive to radical women of Color. These three forces within the academy and beyond it, have helped (with some on-going oomph from old-fashioned patriarchs and their supporters) disempower what many white people call “feminism” as a viable movement to free women from patriarchy. A man’s “masculinity” that is not antagonistic to feminism, is, in reality, about as likely as a white nationalist not being a racist, in theory and in practice. Unless we’re talking a stereotype of a butch woman here, which I know you’re not.

    I welcome your feedback, and appreciate and applaud your efforts, sincerely. It is my understanding that you can obtain my email addy from Stan, if you ask him politely. ; ) (Stan, I give you permission to give my email address only to Ethan, non-publicly.) I’d be happy to work with you, via email, on your efforts to get MAR going.

    I’ll leave you with two passages from Catharine A. MacKinnon’s book, Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws (2005):

    (pg. 131): Unlike the law of murder, however, before the rape law is administered, it is biased on its face. Rape is typically defined as intercourse with force against one’s will. Apparently this is not considered redundant, implying that women consent to sex with force all the time. Given this sadomasochistic definition of sex at the line between intercourse and rape, it is no wonder that the legal concept of consent can coexist with a lot of force. Crystallizing in doctrine a norm that animates the rape law more generally, the defense of “mistaken belief in consent” defines whether a rape occurred from the perspective of the accused rapist, not from the perspective of the victim or even based on a social standard of unacceptable force or of mutuality. To a degree unlike any other crime to the person, the credibility of the victim is the issue on which turns whether any harm was done. Only in sexual assault cases is it believed, against the victim’s statement to the contrary, that she may have consented to forced acts against her. The view that women seek out and enjoy forced sex is pure special pleading for the accused. Yet it is a perspective the law has often taken.

    (pg. 243): A lot of not-yes-saying passes for consent to sex. The accession to proceeding known as legal consent that makes sex not rape can, in addition to an express no that becomes a legal yes, include the resigned silent passive dissociated acquiescence in acts one despairs at stopping; fraud or pretense producing compliance in sex for false reasons or with persons who are not who they say they are; multiplicity triggered by terror or programming (so that the person who accedes to the sex is just one inhabitant of the body with whom sex is had); and fear of abuse short of death or maiming or severe bodily injury (such as the loss of one’s job or not being able to graduate from high school, including the jurisdictions that do not consider rape itself a form of severe bodily injury) resulting in letting sex happen.

    Outside settings of war and genocide, and those exceptions are recent and slight, little to no legal attention is paid to whether the parties enter sexual intercourse as social equals.

    (See also MacKinnon’s book, Are Women Human? which was published this year.)

    23 August 2006, 3:03 pm

14. Dan:

    That’s a difficult set of criteria from p. 243, isn’t it? It spans a range all the way from an explicit “No” which is not respected, through an “oh, well, dammit, go ahead then” all the way to a “personality A said yes but personalities B, C, and D object.” Slight exaggeration, but aren’t these three responses different enough (and representative of different issues) that they might better be looked at individually? So after making the point that there are probably a lot of less than satisfying sexual encounters for women given the power relationships in modern society, doesn’t it make sense to then sharply distinguish to the ones that violate law and ought to result in immediate prosecution, and the ones that require structural social change? Or, another way of saying it, are you (is MacKinnon) REALLY willing to equate “passive dissociated acquiescence” with violent sexual assault?

    23 August 2006, 6:05 pm

15. Stan:

    “So after making the point that there are probably a lot of less than satisfying sexual encounters for women given the power relationships in modern society”… but that is not the point that is being made. This is not only a trivialization, it is a premise shift.

    It is not the same thing to say that there is a common source of social power (whether the violence is latent or actual) underwriting passive dissociated acquiescence with violent sexual assault, and that they are exactly the same thing. Obviously, she describes socially unequal sex acts in various ways, and she does not in any of them mention women’s sexual satisfaction. Men can beat rape raps by “proving” that they might not have known that no meant no. Is there “violence” when a man has sex with a woman who is passed out? Is it “violence” when a male boss has sex with a female employee who desperately needs her job to feed her children?

    Less than satisfying???

    The critique is of the legal concept of “consent,” and how it is structured in a way that preserves and protects male power over women. This is precisely MacKinnon’s critique of the whole project of liberal law, applied here to gendered power. She says that there is “little to no legal attention is paid to whether the parties enter sexual intercourse as social equals.”

    This is also what Pateman says about contracts.

    23 August 2006, 7:17 pm

16. elaina:

    If a man has to talk a woman in circles in order to get her to “acquiesce” to vaginal intercourse, and he goes on and does it, even though HE HAS THE SENSE TO KNOW she is doing something she doesn’t want to do or he wouldn’t have had to talk her in circles, the male in the situation is actively dehumanizing the woman in the situation. He’s forcing himself into her body, when he knows better. Thing is, under “law”, it’s ok for men to do that, as long as at some point the woman says “yes” or something that sounds like “yes.”

    That kinda smacks a lot of men in the head, when they hear it, because a lot of men DO that.

    How a man can think, or convince himself, that a woman who’s tried to tell him “no” one way or another is suddenly completely in agreement- if it’s been that difficult to convince a woman to submit to sex- and then go ahead with it is kinda beyond my comprehension.

    That men are more concerned with “getting” sex and feel that their sexual satisfaction is more important than whatever reason a woman might have for denying it via her own body, doesn’t that say enough? I mean, to let y’all know that it ain’t right?

    So what I’m saying is that the requirement that something “violates law” doesn’t really work, because “law” allows for this kind of sociopathic behavior. And expanding “law” upon it’s extant framework doesn’t work either, because it’s the liberal, abstract framework that allows the linguistic loopholes that deny women’s full humanity. Around these parts, anyways.

    So the focus doesn’t just stop with “how do we get men into jails that do these acts,” because if we jailed ALL the men that do these acts AT SOME POINT in their lives, all men will be in jail. Or at least most of them.

    Men have to convince other men to stop thinking and acting as if this kind of sexual encounter is acceptable. The steps, IMO, that might lead to this, could include some sort of social deprogramming- activism against the porn/sex industry. The kind of activism that would work would have to be highly introspective- it would involve men, in large numbers, ceasing to participate in porno-culture, dissecting their own lives consciously to rid themselves of behaviors that stem from living in said porno/patriarchy. Like not trying to “talk women into” sex. And don’t knock giving up sex for a while, if that’s what it takes to get out of the whole patriarchal rhythm of it- men AND women are trained from birth to engage in oppressive ways when it comes to sexuality, to “courtship”, if you will. Men have to hold THEMSELVES accountable, since they’re the ones who are privileged by liberal law.

    That a system exists that allows men to dehumanize women by just simply “presuming” that at least one of us “has” to “let” them put their penises into our bodies, because men “have” to have sex- that there is no law that says that women have a right to X, whether X is to have sex or not- illustrates the privilege inherent in being male under this system of law.

    In order for the rape culture to start to go away, men will have to willingly give this privilege up, say that it’s something they don’t want anymore, not just with words but with the ways that they act and spend their money and participate in all aspects of culture.

    Whether or not that’s a “difficult” set of criteria is really moot in light of the “difficult” criteria that women deal with, on a daily basis. And just how many social causes are “easy” to win, anyways? None, last I heard.

    And a lot of us are tired of thinking that “being one of the boys” is the goal- which is kinda the point where liberal “feminism” stops, which is the form of feminism which seems to mesh best with Gringo-libertarian law. Which is why liberal “feminism,” IMO, don’t work.

    Anyways.

    23 August 2006, 8:36 pm

17. elaina:

    And if I could just strike the “vaginal intercourse” from the above and replace it with “any kind of ’sex’” that’d be great.

    And the point I was trying to make was that in most of the films I’ve seen, this whole liberal “feminist” “I’m just as good as the boys and can do all the self-indulgent, solipsistically pleasing shit that they can do, like kill people, and so therefore I’m empowered” is the main “feminist” vein that swells up all varicose out of the body of different films, I’d imagine it’s that way in the “V” movie, though I’ve not seen it. It’s this sort of cultural regurgitation of false goals from a hijacked movement that kinda lubes up the synapses for accepting certain definitions of “liberation” that aren’t exactly true.

    And keeps us in the rape-rinse-repeat cycle, till SOMETHING different comes along to dissolve what it is that we usually see.

    23 August 2006, 8:43 pm

18. Dan:

    Agreed, it is not the same to say that there is a common source of social power and to say they are the same. But maybe I misunderstood the context of the quote — I thought she was a lawyer speaking about the legal definition of consent.

    I get that there are power inequalities, and they are hidden by a legal system that does not pay any attention to power inequality (and I see the extension to contract law). But I think that by placing it alongside rape, you run the risk of …well, trivializing rape.

    I have a sister, a wife, daughters. I want to fight institutional and cultural gendered power. But I think there’s a big difference between actual physical assault (which there’s only one way to deal with) and cultural expressions of inequity, which probably require complicated long-term restructuring of society to correct.

    And obviously, there’s violence in having sex with an unconscious woman. Or with a woman too drunk or high to make a choice. Or with a woman who desperately needs a job. I don’t think any honest man or woman would argue those points.

    So is the question, how do the courts deal with the dishonest, who DO deny those points? By insisting on the truth. NOT by dragging the question of endemic gendered power into the courtroom. This gives them the “out” they’re looking for, because it allows them to evade the fact that these issues are very simple, and focus on discrediting the overall cultural critique (which may well be true, but isn’t helpful in this case).

    I haven’t read the book, only the quotes. So maybe there’s something else I’m not getting. I thnk it would be helpful to identify if we’re talking about criminal law, cultural critique, movies, or what.

    23 August 2006, 10:46 pm

19. Dan:

    Stan said something in another thread today about challenging ourselves and each other. So I thought I’d finish the thought I started in the previous post. Maybe it’s not something thaat’ll fly in this community — we’ll see:

    “Almost no woman I know is unraped (and none are unviolated or undegraded by men in many ways). Not all heterosexual intercourse is rape, of course, but what divides the two is often confusing to the man who is getting off while using/abusing a woman he thinks he’s having consensual sex with. And we cannot delineate “rape” from “consensual intercourse” solely by the “intent” of the raper, can we? Because when patriarchal heteroboys are patriarchal heteroboys, they can be mighty delusional about what “cues” the girls and women they are obsessing about are “giving them”, especially, it seems, when the woman is passed out. This is all part of normal heterosexuality.”

    No, it isn’t part of normal heterosexuality. Saying it is grossly misrepresents the situation. Seems to meet all the requirements of the type of speech (about african american hair adjectives) everybody here seems so intent on avoiding. Is there a double standard?

    “A man’s “masculinity” that is not antagonistic to feminism, is, in reality, about as likely as a white nationalist not being a racist, in theory and in practice.”

    Last time I checked, “masculinity” is an adjective which means “pertaining to males.” So you’re saying that all males are antagonistic to feminism. Do you think this is helpful?

    I really think in the interest of making some progress on these issues you might want to think about getting a grip on the hyperbole. I’d never call myself a feminist (but then, I’d never call myself anything that ended in “ist”), but I love and respect women. Individual women — I have this trouble with groups… But the message that comes through here is that this is not enough.

    And maybe that’s true. Maybe I could be doing more. Since you don’t know me, or what I’m doing, I guess you’ll just have to assume that since I’m a white hetero male I’m a knuckle-dragger who’d be a rapist if I just thought I wouldn’t be caught…

    Give me a break! If I alluded to “a study” and said “When a group of average run-of-the-mill black college dudes were asked, in a study, “If there were no negative, punitive consequences (to you), would you commit rape?”, an alarming number of the males said they would commit rape.” (same as above, except I substituted “black” for “hetero”), would Stan and the regulars here have let it pass without a comment? Wouldn’t it be called out as not only unsubstantiated bullshit, but just FALSE, DUMB, and WRONG?

    24 August 2006, 1:11 am

20. Stan:

    This is actually progress, methinks. First a story, then a critique-point.

    My three youngest kids are African American. Two are boys (all grown now). When I was raising them, I felt obliged by what I knew about the power white folks had over them and what I knew about white culture geenrally. I explained to them that they could never give white people the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. This was not prejudice. I am white. This was responsbile parenting for the real world.

    Now I have heard the objections to this from white folks (never from Black folks), and I have to say, don’t take it personal.

    White supremacy and other systems of power are, well, systems of POWER. Prejudice without power is pretty toothless. Black folks don’t fear and hate the ingorance of many whites, but the power that goes with it. I also taught my kinds that if they are ever pulled over by cops to put their hands visibly on the top of the sterring wheel and never remove them until the cop told them it was okay. Husky young Black males have bulls-eyes tatooed on them in this society.

    There can be no equal-sign between Black prejudice agaisnt white folks and white prejudice against Black folk. Prejudice means pre-judge. The pre-judgement of whites against Blacks is about preservation of existing social power and privilege. The pre-judgement of Blacks against whites is about both oppression and survival under oppression. I taught my kids to pre-judge whites. Not to hate them (c’mon, they can see me, eh), but to know that white skin privilege is real and a weapon used agaisnt them in this culture. If this inconveniences a white, on in my daughters’ case, a male, so be it. That’s the price of privilege; and if those of us who are white, male, well-off, hetero, et al are serious about transforming society, then part of that is recognizing this privilege and accepting that price… as well as deploying that privilege against privilege generally to undo it.

    The liberal abstraction that Elaina refers to above, and that MacKinnon has called out so effectively in her legal writings on gender, is an *abstract equality* that is not mirrored in social reality. It teaches us, as an ideology, to do just what you’ve done in your last paragraph. This is not a character flaw in you, but a reflection of an ideology that every one of us has been subject to until we looked closely enough at it to see the power that was both concealed and preserved within it. It suggests that there is an abstract equal sign between Black and shite, between male and female, etc., even as we have to acknowledge that in the real, practical, day-to-day world, there is a vast inequality of social power… more than merely inequality, but a structured relationship of dominance and subjugation.

    The irony of the liberal worldview that is supposed to render us all equal is that it protects and conceals power… and the supreme irony is that the struggle against this AS INEQUALITY has played straight into the hands of people like David Horowitz and his ilk, who make claims of “reverse racism” etc etc, based directly on this implicity (abstract) equality that removes actually existing social power from the equation (no pun intended).

    24 August 2006, 8:16 am

21. Dan:

    On the story: makes perfect sense, I would do the same thing. And as a southern european who is frequently mistaken for mexican or (really) arab here in white minnesota, I always keep my hands in view, and I stay close to the speed limit.

    On the critique: I think I get it that the liberal worldview conceals power. Maybe I still have to work out some of the practical applications of that knowledge in my life.

    But the context of these posts is not life. I’m not talking to my kids, and you’re not talking to yours. We’re talking about political struggle and rules of engagement or just common sense between adults who are all presumably close to being on the same side.

    My objection is still that unlike your post, the previous discussion does not call the questions into any type of constructive use. It doesn’t even accurately describe the questions, because it indulges in imprecise, emotional, and untrue statements. Statements designed, I think, to vent frustration in the expectation that, as we’re all oppressed people of color here, it’s okay. Another irony is that, although in society at large white males have the power, in many micro-societies, other groups hold it. Often they fall into the same behavior (sometimes toward white males, sometimes toward others) that they criticize. The sad part is that, since these groups are frequently about resisting, they fulfill their prophecy of being misunderstood and disliked by moderates because they dliberately alienate them.

    Maybe power corrupts everybody. But I think that, like “V” there’s a cathartic property to political speech that has its place, but sometimes gets mistaken for analysis. “Don’t trust anyone white, male, or hetero” is fun to say (and I say something close to that to my teenage daughters, too), and builds some solidarity among those who aren’t. But it doesn’t present an accurate analysis of the conditions on the ground if your objective is to try to find levers for change. But solidarity is a good thing, and I guess if that’s what you want to do here, I’ll withdraw and wish you well.

    24 August 2006, 9:53 am

22. Doyle Saylor:

    Stan writes;
    The critique is of the legal concept of “consent,” and how it is structured in a way that preserves and protects male power over women. This is precisely MacKinnon’s critique of the whole project of liberal law, applied here to gendered power. She says that there is “little to no legal attention is paid to whether the parties enter sexual intercourse as social equals.”

    Doyle;
    One of the issues that caught my attention from Nussbaum about the law is how she followed the influence of how some states of feelings presented itself in the law. Shame and disgust were her themes, but in a larger sense, the law is really a regulatory system for emotional connection between people.

    Much of the discussion here about rape and power is too narrow to give a clear picture of what gender inequality rests upon. I’ll sketch two main historical forces. Religious regulation of ‘morality’ and legal rules of conduct.

    In some ways in Rome the situation for women was pretty bad. Infanticide was focused on female children, death in child birth was rampant due mainly to social practices and so on. The Judaic book of community history and evolution of their moral view favored a more family centered culture that women could better flourish in. The theory of the God in that system was really suitable as a theory of the mass mind in the Roman culture including how emotions were distributed. The God of bible was angry and vengeful or intense emotional mentality. Which represented how the family dynamic expressed the inner emotional climate of Roman times.

    Thous shalt not kill regulates the expression of anger. Aimed at everyone but in reality not the state monopoly of violence the moral injunction forces everyone to attenuate their anger within certain sorts of bounds God says are his ‘laws’.

    This is some of what is being said in this conversation about rape in the sense that the attenuation of sexual desire with force between genders is the problem.

    Since the state monopolized force, apart from the Church then various states competing for social control made rules about how they governed. The mass theory of mind that God represents was replaced with the God like king’s social rules. The legality evolved from there on, but in substance did the same thing as the bible morality taught yet went beyond the biblical texts which were too limited or ambiguous to rely upon.

    My main concern here is not so much that patriarchy is built upon force as exemplified by rape or coercion, as by the limited attention being given in the discussion here to the larger question of how the left might move on from legality.

    Legality does force a lot of compliance. Marginalization tends to break down the law for example the law around homosexuality was grounded in the narrow margin being ‘ruled’. I mean by narrow that a small percentage of society was willing to break the rules about same sex activity.

    The Anglo European law is also slow and has never successfully represented equality against discriminatory rules in the law. The real reach of the law is mainly to economic power not to ordinary people. The law is a ’shape’ upon the emotions of the public. Get angry and break something, hit someone, etc, and the law ‘punishes’ or sanctions you.

    The sense of the person in that is of two types, one is that bad people don’t change and jail is for punishment. And the second type is of the person who can be taught to control their anger and not do a bad thing again. Rehabilitation of problems in behavior.

    To me the working class needs much more than a legal system of protection. That is where I think this discussion ought to point. Too much of the way women are oppressed is outside the legal system and protected in a private sphere of the family. Rape is widespread as a tool of coercion because family structure is too much beyond the ‘law’.

    To resolve this in my view we need a wide answer to a crisis in the emotional framework of society. It is not enough to end rape, because the system of power is not just that form of coercion. Bullying to marginalize people in schools is done by both males and females. That indicates that the U.S. emotion structure is not shaped to end a similarly widespread emotional abuse dynamic. That certain sorts of emotional abuses are not gender based either. So that emotion is not being looked at in those cases where a more general action might also be put in place.

    I think emotional abuse and rape is an example of a wider issue of ‘emotion abuse’ must be limited very quickly in real time. It can’t wait for reporting to the police. It must be virtually seen at all times rather than able to retreat into privileged sanctuaries like the family. This of course suggests a big brother like world. So if we talk about that to address emotional abuse we must broaden the issue much more.

    A whole society with that much connection is really unlike the world we live in now. It’s possible with embedding RFID tags under the skin that tracking people for real time coercion by the state is just over the horizon. I would tend to think that what would emerge is group power as opposed to how any one person would have rights. In other words that connection (and connection in humans is really emotions) would rise as the chief form of human right.
    thanks,
    Doyle Saylor

    24 August 2006, 12:12 pm

23. DeAnander:

    “the rape-rinse-repeat cycle” — elaina that is quotable!

    haven’t time to respond in depth at present but wanted to thank you for saying a fair amt of what I woulda/shoulda said. while I understand the difficulty of conceptualising and implementing legislative responses to patriarchy, dismissing coercive situations as merely a case of “an unsatisfactory encounter” is imho not helpful.

    just for the historical record there is a long tradition of men claiming that women only “cry rape” after a sexual encounter that was merely disappointing or physically unsatisfying (for the woman, that is), or regretted the morning after. if we wanted to find statements that were “false dumb and wrong,” this theory of reported rape would be high on the list — it has been used repeatedly to obfuscate real instances of coercion and extortion of sex. as has the implicitly threatening “you will trivialise *real* rape if you insist on talking about these other kinds of coercion.” [here of course the (usually male) critic of feminist discourse claims the authority to decide what qualifies as *real* rape. it is usually the kinds that he himself is happily conscious of not having committed. btw the implicit threat is “I, and those like me, will withdraw our support from any kind of anti rape work if you don’t keep your political analysis of male power within my comfort zone.” very similar to the huffiness of car drivers who say they will stop supporting environmental causes if carbon activists don’t stop “moralising” about public transit and carbon taxes and make sure to stick to “achievable goals” like more Priuses and “clean coal” (i.e. goals which do not infringe on car culture and its various privileges).]

    but it also leads me to ask, what is “unsatisfactory” about such an encounter? obviously not merely the absence of female orgasm — though that in itself might be an indicator of arrogance/selfishness on the part of a male partner, a surface sign of an abusive pattern. but orgasm can be physically achieved even under emotionally adverse and unhappy circumstances, as julian has pointed out in other discussions. so the fact of physical orgasm doesn’t guarantee a happy experience.

    what is behind the euphemism “an unsatisfactory encounter”? for euphemism it surely is, when compared to the deep misery or numb dissociation of alienated sex.

    perhaps the experience of being treated as less than fully human and intersubjective? in which case, the “unsatisfactoriness” of the encounter has everything to do with patriarchy and power… and why should critique end with coercion as defined under laws made by men to defend male privilege? it was not so long ago that a man was entitled to beat his wife with a stick no fatter than his thumb — any thicker stick was theoretically illegal, but thumb-size or thinner was illegal. was that a rational place to draw the legal line that defines battery?

    I’ll try to come back with some actual thought experiments on the line between ethical opprobrium and litigation… meanwhile, yes, I do remember the appalling necrophiliac photo feature from Penthouse, of a woman being shaved and electrocuted. and yes, I’m sure that the scene in V did subliminally remind me of it, and that it was, consciously or not, included to appeal to the same sensibility: the Slender Young White Woman in Danger, lovingly lit, totally powerless, enduring physical humiliation while we (the audience) watch… compare with the nearly unbearable rape scene in Bandit Queen which is filmed *from the woman’s point of view*… not as a spectator sport for male theatregoers.

    24 August 2006, 3:46 pm

24. Julian Real:

    In response to Dan:

    Dan: No, it isn’t part of normal heterosexuality. Saying it is grossly misrepresents the situation.

    Julian: On what basis do you make that truth claim, Dan? Prove to me that my statement is incorrect, would you, please? And try to hold down the defensiveness, as if someone were talking about “YOU”. It’s not about “YOU”. Get it? (Unless it is.)

    I once organized an action on Father’s Day, about twenty years ago. I held a sign in the center of town, for a couple of hours or so that read: “Make it a Happy Father’s Day: Stop Raping Your Daughters.” I imagine you would find this equally distortive and offensive, yes? You let me know. What you seem to miss is that what I am addressing is not institutionally, systematically addressed. The perspective from which I speak is banned/censored out of all mainstream media, and practically all media period. The only proponents of said views are the holders of those views.

    Liberal understandings of rape and such, which I see your perspective being part of, is institutionalized, well-promoted in media of all sorts, held in policy and law.

    So what are you getting so defensive about? Your views are upheld by the mainstream, or parts of it at least. Mine are not. When radical feminist views, or my views–whatever we wish to call them!, are expressed in whitemalesupremacist liberal- to conservative-land, those voices tend to fall on closed or bewildered minds, minds (and hearts) that cannot, truly, comprehend what is being said. You are, in my opinion, overreacting to what I wrote, but I will accept your confusions and questions and attempt to answer them, with more of MacKinnon’s words, not mine (coming soon, in a separate piece).

    Now, try listening and reflecting, and asking more questions, instead of moving yourself into such a defensive posture that your frustration or incomprehension or your assumptions of my views as preposterous bring you to leave the room. You can walk out of this room, so to speak, into a world that uphold your liberal understandings of rape, even while it still does nothing about rape, which is, really, rather the point here. What public or private space can women walk into or out of where rape is not a possibility?

    I am asking you to stay in the room, and stay in the conversation. You are free to go, of course, as you are free to never listen to radical points of view about anything, while watching TV and movies all day and night for the rest of your life. This is not “personal”, Dan. That you are prone to see it as such concerns me, quite frankly.

    During my Father’s Day action a few really pissed off fathers came up to me–adamant, steamed, furious dads stormed up to my face, utterly overwhelmed with rage that I would have the intersexed gonads to hold up such a sign. “How can you state such a demeaning thing to Fathers???!!!”. I was afraid they would physically as well as verbally assault me. But with Dworkin in my heart, I stood up to them: Do you rape your daughters?, I asked. “NO!” they’d assure me. Then why are YOU so touchy on this subject? You know some fathers DO rape their daughters, right? I asked then. “Yes, but your sign makes it seem like we all do.” Well, I’d respond, the social world makes it seem like none of you do. How upset are you about THAT? You seem far more upset about my one piece of painted cardboard stapled-gunned to a stick of wood than the reality that SOME fathers do RAPE their DAUGHTERS. What does that say about your ethical and political priorities, hmmmm? Then they’d walk off in a huff. Interesting how NO FATHERS came up to me and said, “I’m aware there is a problem of father-daughter incest, and I’d glad you’re bringing attention to the issue, as it is not discussed among the fathers I know.”

    I learned a long time ago, after the sexual molestation, incest, and sexual assault, after the years of bullying, after all the blatant homophobia and heterosexism and anti-Semitism, to not put up with white Gentile hetero men’s CRAP. I am angry about what men do to women, yes. That not every man does it to every woman doesn’t reassure me about the racist patriarchal state of affairs we all find ourselves in. As I said, I know of NO WOMAN who is unassaulted, in some ways, systematically and traumatically by men. Now wouldn’t you say THAT is something to be a little more concerned about than my hyperbole??

    Dan: Last time I checked, “masculinity” is an adjective which means “pertaining to males.” So you’re saying that all males are antagonistic to feminism. Do you think this is helpful?

    Julian: See, here we have the problem: you checked a dictionary, and I checked social reality. I know of NO men, except Stanny, who do shit about CRAP. None. Not the sweet, nice, meek boys and men, not the gym-addicted, adrenaline-rush-loving men, not any men of any form of masculinity. Socially, what I see is men who behave as “the good Germans”. Some of them are worried about their levels of inhumanity, some are not, and none are fighting radical feminist causes on the street, and in systematic ways, to stop CRAP. Not one. But, as you seem to know all these wonderful pro-feminist men, name six who are systematically fighting CRAP (or whatever you call it), while being accountable to radical feminists. Just six. And sex-liberals don’t count, btw.

    Dan: […] the previous discussion does not call the questions into any type of constructive use. It doesn’t even accurately describe the questions, because it indulges in imprecise, emotional, and untrue statements. Statements designed, I think, to vent frustration in the expectation that, as we’re all oppressed people of color here, it’s okay.

    Julian: Perhaps it was too much of a teaser. I’ll put out. Hold your horses.

    I’ll try and type up all of or most of the chapter of MacKinnon’s that deals directly with your important questions. I’ll probably ask Stanny-poo to post it separately, as this conversation was about movies.

    I look forward to your thoughtful, considered replies.

    Julian

    24 August 2006, 4:01 pm

25. DeAnander:

    btw Dan, to suggest that “masculine” is merely a synonym for “male” or “male-pertaining” is as silly as suggesting that “feminine” is merely a synonym for “female” or “female-pertaining.” maleness is chromosomal, masculinity is a cultural (and hence a political, a social, an ethical) construct. “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” is about masculinity. “Men are at Risk from Prostate Cancer” is about physiology — maleness.

    “femininity” is about the ritualised display of qualities some of which — a preponderance of which — include powerlessness. “masculinity” is about the ritualised display of qualities some of which — a preponderance of which — include or are predicated on power. feminism — the politics which challenges the structural empowering of men at the expense of women — cannot avoid coming into conflict with these durable memes, and those who hold them dear cannot avoid coming into conflict with feminism… whether with external feminist or the voice of feminist critique and resistance in our own heads/hearts.

    24 August 2006, 4:13 pm

26. Julian Real:

    Regarding Crash (2004):

    I will state here that this was one of the worst films about racism ever made. And one of the better films about how some forms of bigotry play out interpersonally in a liberal fantasyland called dominant Amerikkkan Cinema.

    This film has nothing useful to say about RACISM. Some of us are systematically slaughtered, and sometimes the survivors are, well, bitter. (And may the whitemale God damn them for being anything but cheerful and grateful to be, well, alive, sort of.) This film invisibilizes the systematic and systemic power of racism, turning it into something that amounts to “holding some negative views about people who are different than me”, as if that’s what racism is. It isn’t.

    To add much injury to insult, we have a white male cop, played by Matt Damon, with whom we are led to empathize, because, after all, he’s a human being with a human (Irish) father. Was there any doubt? There were no antenna emerging from his skull, no large protruding oval eyes surrounded by green scaly flesh. I think that he is human is a given, but just to make sure we don’t get too upset about the fact that, while in uniform, and with full intent to humiliate and degrade her, he sexually violates a very light-skinned Black woman who doesn’t violate Hollywood’s norms of white female beauty, we need to know about his struggles in caring for his dad. (Insert heartfelt compassion.)

    THEN, later, we have the violated woman, played by Thandie Newton, caught in a burning car, and guess who shows up to save her? The Violator. He pulls her to safety, hero that he becomes when tearing off the eyeglasses of his racist-misogynist perp personae. They embrace. Then they put THAT image on the cover of the video, because, really, isn’t THAT what racism (and sexism) is all about?

    To promote this film as being a serious film about racism is like promoting Seabiscuit as a serious film about Animal Rights.

    In the words of liberal creep John Stossel, “Give me a break!”

    24 August 2006, 4:25 pm

27. DeAnander:

    Typo Correction

    any thicker stick was theoretically illegal, but thumb-size or thinner was legal

    24 August 2006, 6:08 pm

28. Dan:

    Julian, No. I’m not taking it personally. Do you need me to be taking it personally, and getting all upset about it, to vindicate your mental picture of me?

    Count how many assumptions you made about me and specific references you made to your image of my mindset. Then count how many I made about you. Who is personalizing this?

    About the burden of proof: you claimed that “heteroboys…can be mighty delusional about what “cues” the girls and women they are obsessing about are “giving them”, especially, it seems, when the woman is passed out” is normal heterosexual behavior. The only way this gets by is that you are part of the power group here. Well that’s just great, for you and the other regulars who are all up to speed and have bought all the party-line. You’re going to have a lot of trouble expanding your base to those of us who (you assume) are slightly less evolved, though.

    No, I don’t think I care to continue, here. The air’s a little too rarefied. Feel free to believe what you need to about me in order to make this okay. I really don’t give a shit.

    24 August 2006, 7:03 pm

29. DeAnander:

    No, it isn’t part of normal heterosexuality.

    Depends whether normal here means “how things are in our actually-existing society” or “how we wish/think they could/should be in a saner, less brutal world.”

    Popular media, personal testimony, phatic utterance, economic and legislative history, etc. all indicate that a relation of dominance (masculine dominant over female, feminine, and feminised) has been normative and normal for millennia in the imperial cultures.

    Whether this dominance is really “natural” to us as mammals or primates is hotly contested. But that it is “normal” in the sense of commonly accepted, prescribed, normalised, valorised, culturally encoded and promulgated, enshrined in tradition and in the individual’s construction of persona and identity, I think cannot be denied without serious brainstrain…

    I mean, there’s a reason why it’s called ‘patriarchy’…

    24 August 2006, 7:33 pm

30. DeAnander:

    Now I’m gonna engage with the part of Dan’s posts which I think I share, i.e. a puzzlement over where legislation appropriately stops and private morality begins.

    “Obviously” there are some sexual interactions that we recognise as abusive/criminal (as rape, in other words), which the polity should respond to with some kind of intervention/sanctions. So let’s start with those and work our way out to the less culturally accepted forms of rape.

    Rape by means of main force overpowering a struggling victim; gang rape; rape facilitated by menaces involving superior physical force and/or lethal or frightening weapons. I think we can all agree that these are criminal acts, if we believe in the idea of common law or a social contract or “rules of the game” at all.

    Rape of a body rendered compliant by means of: sleep or unconsciousness; alcohol OD; drugs; physical or mental disability. Here the courts are iffy, as shown by recent bizarre rulings in the case of the “sleep-raping” perp in Euroland and difficulties experienced by victims of roofie-rape in pressing their cases against their abusers. Rape of a body rendered compliant by excessive trust in authority vested in the rapist, as in the abuse of children by adults, especially parents, priests, teachers, cops, and other adults children are taught particularly to respect, fear, and obey. Rape of a body rendered compliant by extortion, i.e. threats against another person or persons (a wife who consents to sex in order to protect her daughter from a husband or boyfriend’s sexual “appetite” and sense of entitlement, for example, or a woman who does not fight a stranger-rapist because he threatens to kill her child sleeping nearby). All these I think most people would recognise as rape, and support some kind of legal sanction (civil and/or criminal) against the perp.

    In each case what we’re seeing is that the abuser has “an edge” over his target and exploits it. He takes advantage of a power differential between him and his target. All crime is essentially opportunism, we merely make distinctions of degree based on the amount of harm done and the type of benefit being ’stolen’ or coerced out of the victim — and the privileged or nonprivileged social position of the perp. (Capitalism for example valorises the opportunism of the wealthy.)

    Now for the subtler cases. If the victim, say, gets drunk or takes drugs voluntarily in a “party spirit” and appears to consent, or becomes inarticulate or disorganised enough not to be able to present a strong objection or defence: not an unconscious victim but, perhaps, a young woman who has got a bit more drunk than she expected to. If a man takes advantage of a woman in such a state, is it “rape”? Is it “taking advantage of” if she got drunk or high voluntarily?

    The law (tending to sympathise with men and blame women) usually says no. I take issue with the law on this. Having sex with someone who is clearly suffering from severely impaired judgment is not, in essence, much different from having sex with a developmentally disabled person or a child: it is taking advantage of their impairment. Should be at least exploitation or fraud, just as it would be to meet someone who was in a drunken state and then get them to sign over their life savings or take their wallet.

    The libertarian argument will immediately be that people who get incompetently drunk should be very careful about the company they keep; that this is not a “no fault” condition like an illness, a congenital deficiency, an injury etc., but a voluntary act (drinking oneself into incompetence); and that therefore the blame should really fall on the victim for behaving unsafely and putting herself at risk.

    However, there is (imho) a world of difference between the blameworthiness of doing something foolish that puts oneself at risk, and the blameworthiness of doing something predatory that takes advantage of another person’s vulnerability. The first may be unwise (we may uncharitably say “stupid” even) but the second is wrong, it is literally anti-social, it erodes the network of trust that enables reciprocal altruism and a civil society. We can’t legislate against stupidity but we can legislate against predation. The whole concept of a civil society is that we do not, in fact, take advantage of every little opportunity to rip off or harm our neighbour; if we do, our society is considered a “failure” or a “failed state” — one in which no one is safe from anyone at any time, a Hobbesian nightmare of all against all. For men to take sexual advantage of bad judgment in others — to see every moment of vulnerability as a legitimate opportunity for predation — is to make the sexual life of the culture a failed state, a Darfur lurking under the respectable veneer of civil life.

    The next thing to consider is coercion, which when physical is (nowadays) grudgingly recognised by the courts: being terrified into submission is now recognised as “being raped” even if the victim was too frightened to fight, does not show signs of a severe beating, did not suffer near-fatal injury, etc. However, coercion and extortion can be achieved with money-power as well as with muscle power. We recognise (grudgingly again in many cases) that the boss who threatens to fire an employee unless she provides him with sexual services is a criminal. We have laws against “sexual harassment” in the workplace… i.e. the extortion of sexual contact or sexual expressions of domination, using money-power as the weapon with which to frighten the victim into submission. There seems to be a general consensus that threatening someone with deprivation of livelihood is coercion: and rightly so, since under industrial capitalism almost no one has community or individual self-sufficiency: access to food, water, shelter, clothing and personal security can only be achieved by wage labour. Deprivation of livelihood is a very effective means of extortion in a state without a social safety net.

    Coercion by threat of deprivation (rather than by threat of harm) is also obvious in the multiple scandals of UN aid workers in “trouble spots” who extorted sex from local girls and women by with-holding essential items like bagged rice or clean drinking water, which were supposed to be distributed for free. These aid workers took advantage of the deprivation of their victims and their own petty power as gatekeepers to survival supplies. Again a pretty clear case for criminal action, as the activity is absolutely parallel with other forms of extortion by withholding. [though of course some wingnuts have argued that labour actions are extortionate because the workers withhold their labour in order to coerce concessions from management. I’m not going there for obvious reasons… life is short.]

    Most of global prostitution is extortionate in this sense, in that poverty among women is epidemic on a global scale, and profiteers move opportunistically to take advantage of the vulnerability of women who lack the basic securities (food, water, shelter, clothing, personal safety). The theft and withholding of passports from trafficked women is a classic case of extortion and coercion, and imho alienated sex extorted under these circumstances should qualify as rape.

    Now we come to cases where I am not sure the law can intervene without our becoming some kind of totalising state. When non-survival rewards are at stake for example: let us say a young woman who is conventionally attractive decides to keep company (social and sexual, or just sexual) with an older man not out of any particular affinity or fondness, but for the simple reason that he is very wealthy and treats her to a luxurious lifestyle or gives her luxurious gifts. Say that she is adequately provided for without his intervention, but chooses to seek greater affluence by “an easy path”. This is prostitution (whether marriage is involved or not) — a relatively rare form of prostitution, since the market in wealthy old men is pretty small and the percentage of women “lucky” enough to strike this kind of bargain is correspondingly tiny compared to the millions of poor and coerced prostitutes worldwide. As prostitution it may incur our ethical disapproval. But it does not seem like coercion, since survival/safety issues are not at stake; and though I could say that the woman’s choices in this situation are conditioned by patriarchy, I could not call these negotiated, cryptocommercial sexual encounters or arrangements “rape” in the same sensethat the use of coerced/enslaved prostitutes is quite clearly rape.

    A form of coercion which I think the State dare not intervene in, is the coercion of romance and love in relationships. How many women agree to alienated sex with a husband or lover because of the implicit threat that if they do not, his sense of entitlement will lead him to break off the relationship and withdraw his affection, support, etc.?

    Having said that, I must however note that material and financial necessities are never far from formalised relationships, particularly where there are children. For married or partnered women, particularly with children, financial coercion starts to play a part; when contemplating the possibility of “losing” a male partner, can a mother really be influenced not at all by thoughts of the difficulties of single-momhood, the loss of whatever affluence or advantage their joint salaries (or his salary) are providing for the children, etc? An important function of alimony and child support payments is to reduce the degree of sexual coercion experienced by women in marriage. And this is perhaps one reason why so many men are bitterly opposed to both, and to the State enforcement of both; alimony and child support laws are one way to prevent marital sex from being rape with financial coercion, to prevent husbands from using financial threat to extort sex from wives. State/legal intervention is effective here in removing or at least blunting the coercive weapon, which may be more effective than criminalising the man who inflicts the alienated sex on his partner in this setting.

    In areas where personal safety is dubious or absent — such as failed states, “bad neighbourhoods,” etc., “protection racket” may be the form of coercion that extorts alienated sex from a more vulnerable person for the benefit of a stronger person. Prison sex is one obvious example, but billions of women live under conditions where their personal safety is marginal without a male “protector”, and the threat of being left alone is backed up not merely by social angst or loss of social standing, but by imminent physical danger. It is hard to say whether any sexual relations under these circumstances can be considered non-coerced. It is significant that so many romance novels for women focus obsessively on this theme of the Strong Male Protector and Rescuer. (As do “hero action” films such as V, which is where we started this wandering discussion.) The trope of the rescued woman providing sexual service to her rescuer in payment or gratitude for her life or safety is durable and considered “sexy” and “romantic”. I would consider it a case of coercion, and taking advantage of another person’s vulnerability or sense of obligation. It might be impossible to legislate against “grateful alienated sex,” but I think not impossible to legislated against sexual extortion by the threat to withdraw protection (we have laws against protection rackets and racketeering, why should they not apply?) — but the most effective response would be to remove the weapon of extortion by guaranteeing women’s safety from the more egregious general predation which enables the protection racket to continue.

    But another common kind of extortion — the emotional threat of breaking up if one’s partner does not provide sex on demand — cannot, I think, be legislated. Friends of a woman being so coerced may easily say that the guy is a jerk and not worth her time, and she would be well rid of him; but people form attachments on many grounds, rational and irrational, and the fear of losing a romantic/loving attachment may well cause a person to consent to alienated sex rather than suffer the grief, pain, etc of a breakup or the (perceived) dangers or loneliness of single life. This kind of coercion seems to me beyond the reach of law; it is also, perhaps, far less strongly gendered, as emotional dependency in intimate relationships is not always on the female side. The fact that it is less strongly gendered suggests that it is more idiosyncratic and individually negotiated, which in turn suggests that it’s not reliably a feature of patriarchal power structures and therefore falls into the realm of private ethics rather than social rule-making.

    And then there’s fraud (the other half of the Force and Fraud duo which Veblen correctly identifies as the essence of “manly exploit” as valorised by the ruling classes). The law traditionally recognised Breach of Promise (failure of a man to marry a woman as promised, especially if she has had sex with him on the understanding that marriage was guaranteed, and most certainly if he has impregnated her); and folk law recognises the Shotgun Wedding as a variant of same. But the only reason these frauds are identified as such is the patriarchal tradition by which marriage is a woman’s only means of support — i.e. she has entered into a coerced contract, but by her submission to the patriarchal rules she has “earned” the right to have that contract honoured and enforced by the patriarchy.

    Should the law have anything to say about fraud in sexual relations? For example the man who pretends to be single when he is actually married, in order to gain the sexual favours and affections of a lover? If the element of coercion or extortion is absent I think the law must remain silent on these unethical dealings; otherwise it must start to intervene in every lie we tell each other for social advantage… otherwise we might see men suing women for lying about their age or number of previous partners, etc.

    Maybe someone else can take this and run with it — I’ve just been on call dealing with a minor crisis for my employer, intermittently throughout this message, and I’ve run out of focus and ideas.

    24 August 2006, 11:28 pm

31. Anne Xiety:

    ‘No, it isn’t part of normal heterosexuality. Saying it is grossly misrepresents the situation. Seems to meet all the requirements of the type of speech (about african american hair adjectives) everybody here seems so intent on avoiding. Is there a double standard?’

    Oh, come on.
    I can’t believe I just read that comment here.

    There is no such double standard. It could not even exist.

    ‘Normal heterosexuality’ (+patriarchy. obviously) is what lets men do whatever the hell they want to women, children, and other men. All under the guise of ‘fun’ or ‘pleasure’…and even ‘female empowerment’ through being sexxxy.

    About ‘empowerment’:

    See, my mom used to read the news naked (it sounds so stupid when i type it now) on the internet. She did that when I was 13 until I was 15. I remember sitting on my bed reading a book, and she was talking to a friend about the job on the phone, which she had not started, and which I did not know about then. She was talking about fancy underwear and stuff, and I thought she was going to do porn, and I thought it was my fault, because she was/is a single mother. I don’t know why I thought that then, the bit about porn. And I cried, and I ran into the bathroom. So she got off the phone and told me what her job was.

    Anyway. The point is, she did a lot of interviews.

    She said the job was fun, it was empowering…etc. She only worked 2-3 hours a day, a lot better than the job she had before. I actually saw her after school. We could talk. It was nice. She made a lot more money.

    And it wasn’t until maybe 2 years ago (i’m now 19) she told me that she lied, they told her to say it was empowering. She said the job was fun, though. But her male boss would make ‘jokes’ about how all the women (aka ‘newscasters’) were pmsing when they complained they were not getting paid enough, etc. That’s why she left.

    But that is all normal in a patriarchy, normal with heterosexuality, even. It’s ‘normal’ for women just to be naked for men to gawk at. If you question the ‘right’ men have to stare at random women (naked or not, sexxy or not) around a bunch of hetero men well, chances are it won’t be pretty. But I guess people want to believe the lies women tell, those lies men make women say. While, of course, ignoring the truth.

    But truth isn’t sexxxy, is it?

    I know the thread is supposed to be about movies, really!

    So, Step Up is really awful. In the first few minutes there is a bunch of CRAP…men fighting because one was dancing with ‘his’ girlfriend. Homophobic jokes. Racism.

    John Stossel is gross.

    25 August 2006, 12:51 am

32. Doyle Saylor:

    DeAnander writes;
    This kind of coercion seems to me beyond the reach of law; it is also, perhaps, far less strongly gendered, as emotional dependency in intimate relationships is not always on the female side. The fact that it is less strongly gendered suggests that it is more idiosyncratic and individually negotiated, which in turn suggests that it’s not reliably a feature of patriarchal power structures and therefore falls into the realm of private ethics rather than social rule-making.

    Doyle;
    But this is precisely my arguments above you negate. All the isms cannot be regulated unless you can immediately address what is being emotionally set up. The fact of the ‘less gendered’ process is precisely why it is so powerful. Because it is the foundation for Patriarchy, or any other sort of inequality.

    And that it can’t be legalized is a direct reference to the problem with the law. The law is slow, it does not represent broad interests of the people and so on.

    The private sphere is going to be breached by computing tools. That is a record in real time will be constructed of everyone over time. It’s too useful not employ by the state. Your id is constantly monitored everywhere you go. Etc.

    In order to do something radical then it is the loss of privacy that begins to shade not into an abstraction about privacy but the reality of about how the broad public or people feel about such close contact to the state.

    No rich person need fear someone who is monitored. But the poor where are their rights? I’m not talking in terms of traditional rights, but the sort of stuff that composes real connection to a human world in which abusive coercion structures all our personal lives day to day.
    thanks,
    Doyle

    25 August 2006, 3:56 pm

33. Julian Real:

    Hi Anne. (Great screen-name!)

    Thanks for bringing up Step Up. And noting that opening sexist scene.

    I agree with you about the film. I was trying to sort through all the sexual and racial implications of this film, but there are so many dynamics, the most obvious one being that the tall, handsome Gentile/white obligatorily non-gay guy gets the obligatorily non-lesbian Gentile girl-of-a-not-entirely-white-ethnicity (played by Jenna Dewan, who certainly doesn’t violate any dominant Amerikkkan beauty standards).

    It tries to do a good job around noting that “not all Black men are thugs and drop-outs” while perpetuating those stereotypes at the same time, while humanizing some characters rather wonderfully (like musician Miles Darby, played by Mario Dewar Barrett), while not humanizing others beyond their stereotypical locations, even while I did care for most of the somewhat three-dimensional people of Color in this movie, and much less so about some of the two-dimensional and utterly boring white-but-”cute” males. Also, we did have the requisite some-sort-of-Asian woman with violin or piano, didn’t we? And the attempts at class-responsibility seemed a little too tokenistic and forced for me to believe.

    Problematic, to say the least!

    And, as you note, the on-going “tee-hee, ha-ha, isn’t talking about being gay (when you’re not) so hip and funny” was disgusting to me, as well as the fact that NO ONE in this film seems to BE gay or lesbian. Not one person… in a school of visual and performing arts, this seems odd to me, anyway! Not even “the fag-as-clown” (Will and Grace) character, or “the gayboy-as-lovable but eternally lonely soul” as in the movie Fame. I defy anyone to show me ANY college where there aren’t ANY gay or lesbian students. The world this movie portrays allows male homosexuality to be joked about, but not embodied–as non-human other or as human being. It’s a “joke about/don’t show” policy re: gay men, and a “don’t joke about/don’t show” (completely invisibilize) policy re: lesbians.

    How far we haven’t come! The place was so utterly queerless, I began to wonder if I was observing the fantasyland of some bizarrely heterosexist screenwriters.

    25 August 2006, 5:04 pm

34. Gary:

    I’ve seen the film. And if I may, permit me the space to connecting the dots into a divergent diagram for diametric discourse draped in diffuse dialogue. First, I must admit to not having much experience with feminist writing. This unfortunate fact may or may not flaw my ability to lend credibility to this exercise. You must decide. For those who don’t favor the studies of Joseph Campbell . . . please forgive the references. It’s one of the few literary tools I have to work with. Anyway . . . here goes.

    Starting with the physical plane of my experiment; western science has admitted to the startling fact that within the human body, at inception, we contain both male and female sexual forms. (Homophobic response goes here) Why we develop a particular physical gender during gestation is quite another topic so I will leave that for later. Suffice it to say (I actually got a chance to use that hackneyed line) our bodies contain both forms. As we move up to the astral plane to look at human energy in play, permit me to use the Hindu chakra system as reference. Chakras are energy “wheels”(chakra meaning wheel) superimposed over areas in the physical body where nerve ganglia converge in distinct centers up the spine. A symbol from the chakra system mirrors the physical in the Male/Female (Lingam/Yoni) sign located in the lower chakra, which resides in the pelvic basin. So our bodies, existing on more than one level, contain both Female and Male energy. This is quite verifiable through systems of yogic practice and meditations.

    In Buddhism, energy interplay is reflected in the Yin/Yang symbol. The black/white swirl within a circle. In the black swirl is a smaller white circle and in the white swirl is a small black circle. This symbol reflects a methodology human’s use for recognizing ourselves within the “Other”. We experience it because the “Other” is within us. There is no such thing as experiencing or recognizing something deemed as totally “Other”. There wouldn’t be a reference point. This is also the very point at which the three great western “religions” begin to fall apart.

    Question; can you have a creator, a god that is totally “Other” and at the same time be able to experience or even recognize it as the creator? Guardians of biblical thinking would have us believe that having “faith” is the answer to the question. The power of FAITH! With faith, our work is done. Unfortunately, faith is based on experience not emotional manipulation. So, the workaround is; if we agree that God is totally “Other”, then we won’t experience God until we shuffle off the mortal coil. This allows the ability to interpret divine scripture. Now we’re talking real power! The power to devastate women and subjugate nature at will. I need to lift one of these interpretations to apply it to the film. (Yeah . . . I’m getting there!)

    In the Upanishads, it is woman who is the giver of forms and instructs the gods. So too in the physical plane, woman gives birth to forms. In the Old Testament however, man has replaced woman. HE has taken over her roll. Even in the physical. As Adam slept, God stole a rib and since “HE” didn’t have any barbecue sauce (sorry), “HE” created a woman. Ahhhh . . . woman is born out of man. Nifty trick, yes? Let’s transpose this to the film.

    V is most certainly a Hollywood archetype. And an Old Testament archetype it seems, at least on the surface. At the highpoint of the film, V “gives” Evie the ability to create physical forms by “letting” her blow up Parliament thus creating/recreating physical form. But, let’s look at this from the male/female energy focal point. V was created/born with a MALE/female skewing of his energy system. (Old Testament again) However, in his plot to seek revenge on the social order that created him, he bumps up against a FEMALE/male energy system. (Evie) This act balances V’s “out of whack” energy through recognition of the “Other”. Evie’s energy is less described, but we do get a sense of energy being shifted. So, again in the defining moment, V doesn’t create form. He recognizes Evie as the true giver of form and releases his illusion of creator.

    I experienced this message from watching the film. Whether it was intended or not, I can’t say. I do know that is not some obscure mental “masturbation” on my part to condone violence, rape or pornography. It is also not a well-worn form to secure my male dominant place in the world with a much repeated “hero” image. On the upside, the “entertaining” part of the film for me was watching Hugo Weaving emoting from behind a mask. I thought he gave a great performance. Aside from that, if I haven’t been able to communicate my divergent diagram rationally, I take full responsibility for wasting your time.

    And that’s my V cents worth.

    26 August 2006, 4:48 am

35. DeAnander:

    a sense of energy being shifted

    is this how we describe a woman being imprisoned, terrified, and tortured?

    and guys say women’s discourse is constrained by euphemism

    26 August 2006, 11:20 am

36. Gary:

    Pardon my euphemism.

    26 August 2006, 7:44 pm

37. Julian Real:

    Hi Gary.

    I give you bonus points for “And that’s my V cents worth.” I enjoyed that.

    A fact, seen from a worldview or paradigm which can only see dualistically, about reality of something we call maleness and femaleness is a theory. One that is held in fundamentalist-science’s quirkier hands as natrual/God-given Truth. (Never mind who birthed whom–or we secularists may be discussing chickens and eggs soon enough. Yang and Yin are symbols, as are the Lingam and Yoni. Only in Sanscrit does the Lingam refer to a gender. Otherwise it is a term for a phallic object. The Yoni is a term for the vulva, which, in Hinduism, seems to require a phallus to penetrate it (from whichever vantage-point) to make it meaningful as an object.

    From dictionary.com:
    yin and yang: 
    (in Chinese philosophy and religion) two principles, one negative, dark, and feminine (yin), and one positive, bright, and masculine (yang), whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things.

    yang: The active, male cosmic principle in Chinese dualistic philosophy.

    Note two things: we are talking philosophy, symbols, and names, and we are talking about some which carry racist/sexist ideology, or, perhaps, lend themselves well to racist/sexist ideology and practice, in the sense that some of Heidegger’s philosophy was “useful” to the Nazis, of which Heidegger was at least a cowardly supporter, firing all Jewish professors when he got the status to do so.

    The question is this: are you open to other understandings of how the world works, that renders women’s suffering (systematized and routine) “suffering”, the way white privileged men’s suffering is suffering, except that it includes forms of painful experience white privileged men never know systematically and routinely?

    Because if not, there is no real communication happening that will be useful to liberating women of all Colors, in my view. And if that is not every man’s goal, to see to it that the liberation of women from CRAP happens responsibly and effectively, then one has to wonder what being humane means, at this time, in this place.

    28 August 2006, 1:46 pm

38. Ethan:

    Note: This was a response to Stans original response to my response to DeAnander…I see the discussion may have moved beyond it but I’m posting it anyway

    Stan:

    For the sake of this argument (hopefully we can agree): “Feminism”–consciousness of the direct relationship between the construction of gender identity and power relations in a given society or culture

    I apologize for not further defining “lay feminist”–I meant as folk in whom I see critical consciousness of patriarchal structures and the tendencies thereof (e.g, in cinema), who might or might not self-identify, and who don’t necessarily read regularly or intentionally in feminist discourse. And equality IS an issue–not in itself (as a rediculous standalone notion) but in the context of power and domination and the destruction of those co-dependent roles and their replacement w/partnership.

    It is then very intriguing to me that these people (myself included) can appreciate a movie while still consciously acknolwedging that it comes from out of that patriarchal context.

    You are essentially seem to be arguing that context is king, i.e., “yet another brick in the wall.” I agree completely. However, there are plenty of people who bring non-patriarchal interpetations to a product of patriarchal culture/society, whatever. To me, this is somewhat of a separate issue, where someone with a different reading may or may not have the tools and training necessary t