Can men be feminists?

I feel the need to discuss something that has been weighing heavily on my mind. It is not directly related to popular culture but it is certainly related to feminism. In my sociology of masculinities course last night we discussed the role of men in feminist movements. This is something that I am personally very conflicted about. I concede that we (feminists) need to unite with men in order to produce radical change. Separatism will solve nothing and will most likely alienate a whole lot of people, women and men alike.

That being said, hearing a man call himself a feminist makes me cringe like nothing else. Allowing men into feminism is dangerous territory because we risk losing hard won power. In class someone suggested that we wouldn't want to have white folks at the forefront of anti-racist movements. Theory written by the oppressor is just further imperialism. Yet wealthy, white and male folks who traditionally have had all of the power have a very hard time forfeiting that power to those they have traditionally subordinated.

My point is, how do we know that letting men call themselves feminists will not result in them taking the reins and writing the canon? How do we know that they will not further silence women's voices?

These are things for which I have no answer. I do like to hear men call themselves pro-feminist or feminist advocates. In fact, in class last night I mentioned how I have never met a man who actively called himself a feminist. After class a young man approached me and said "Hi. My name is Randy. I am a feminist." I laughed at him and had a very difficult time believing that he was not patronizing me. After several minutes of conversation it became clear: this young man was sincere. Or as sincere as a member of the privileged class can be.

I guess I will let Randy show me his feminism before I castigate him too severely...

Why is choice not an important issue for 'liberal' TV show hosts?

I have been watching "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show" online rather than doing my homework. In so doing, I have noticed something very disconcerting. There is a certain amount of admiration for republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Yes, Ron Paul voted against the Patriot Act, yes he opposes the war, yes he opposes government intervention into people's private lives, and yes he says he is a constitutionalist and will fight to maintain the integrity of the American constitution. Liberal guys like Jon Stewart seem to be just eating up Ron Paul's rhetoric.
What they continually fail to mention is that Dr. Paul is strongly anti-choice. He claims that he wants to uphold the constitution and that he wants to keep the government out of private affairs but yet he stops short of considering women to be people. Women do not deserve bodily integrity or bodily privacy. This MAJOR discrepancy continually goes un-noticed. And that is not a first for Colbert and Stewart who love to stir the political stew but don't want to bring gender issues onto the table.

I love both of these shows and am very disappointed by this trend.

The Chronicles of Jan

Image of Melora Hardin via.

NBC's version of "The Office" is undoubtedly one of my favorite television shows. It is hilarious and engaging. That is why it is very difficult for me to be critical of it. But there are a few things about this amazing show that make my stomach turn.

Early in the second season there is an entire episode about sexual harassment. Sexual harassment happens on "The Office" a lot but most of it is very satirical. I can dig satire especially since it is somewhat subversive. The harassment is depicted very ludicrously.

I anxiously awaited the third season finale. This episode revealed who got the job at 'corporate' and Pam and Jim finally appear to be hooking up. Yay!

But early in the episode we discover that the corporate job is available because Jan (Michael's boss in NYC) got fired. The level of glee that people felt over seeing that bitch get knocked down a peg is really quite telling. From the very beginning I was impressed that the person with the most power in this show was a woman. She is the boss of the boss. But she has consistently been depicted as an angry, castrating bitch. Only women who reject any shred of stereotypical femininity can make it in the corporate world. Or at least that is the image that we are inundated with.

Jan gets divorced early in the second season and while on the rebound she has a relationship with Michael. In this relationship Jan is domineering to the point of cruelty. We get the sense that she is totally in control. As this show got more popular, and Jan got more powerful, the writers and producers of "The Office" appeared to be stripping Jan of her power. The last episode is the epitome of this.

Devastated that Michael broke up with her, Jan gets breast implants and begs him to take her back. This is when she loses her job and basically has a total emotional break down.

This reminds me of the episode of "30 Rock" that I watched in which Tina Fey's character (a very powerful television producer) has a total emotional break down and needs to be literally carried off by her co-worker.

I immediately dubbed that an example of backlash but have been much more reluctant to do the same about a show that is so dear to me. The season three finale of "The Office" demonstrates anti-feminist backlash. The powerful women is fired because she is too emotional (which was NEVER demonstrated prior to this episode).

Also notable, when Jim and Karen witnessed Jan's breakdown Karen was delighted because Jan is "crazy" and self-destructive. I am not sure that any of this exemplifies self-destruction as much as the logical conclusion of male domination. Jan was destined to fail from the very beginning because she was a woman in 'a man's world.'

The very best part of all of this (and this completely proves my point that this was intentional misogyny not just good story writing) is that Ryan, the young temp. worker, gets Jan's job at the end of the episode.

Even in a show with egalitarian writers and characters, even in a show that I adore, misogyny is rampant. Still, I eagerly await the season premier. I will most likely address this issue again at that point.

SVU: WTF?

I watch a lot of TV shows that I hate, like Dr. Phil. And I actually really enjoy watching them. I think the enjoyment comes from the level of rage that they incite in me. It is actually the reason that I started this blog; I needed an outlet (other than my personal blog) for my anger.

Last night I watched two episodes of Law and Order: SVU. I do not know why I enjoy this program but I can say that it never ceases to upset me. The entire premise of SVU is sexual assault in its many forms. It is an excellent platform for politicizing institutionalized abuse of women but is used instead as a cheap ploy to attract and retain viewers. The show is far from challenging or even remotely political.

Many, if not most, of the episodes of this show that I have seen paint women as lairs who manufacture stories about rape for their own selfish benefit. The episode I watched last night, entitled "Design," was about a young women who date-raped men to 'steal' and sell their sperm and then told police that she was raped. The audience sympathy for the rape victim shifts to the poor male victims in an instant.

If you are reading this blog, I do not need to tell you about the absurdity of the premise. Rape is a very real crime that disproportionately affects women. According to RAINN, nine out of ten victims of rape are women. This reality is not reflected on Law and Order: SVU. I do not have exact percentages but I have watched the show enough to tell you that many of their cases end up painting women (particularly adult women) as bitches who set the poor guy up. Another common theme is child sexual predation. This is certainly a problem but I wonder what the ratio of child predation is to instances of sexual violence against women. I imagine sexual violence against women and girls is MUCH more common. Ignoring these realities must make viewers (and therefore, advertisers) feel more comfortable or it would not be so prevalent.

As for depoliticization, shows with neat clean happy endings, that do not challenge prescribed notions of gender, sell more products by making consumers feel safe and comfortable. Who wants to buy an iPod after discovering that rapist are very unlikely to be brought to justice and that vicitms are not always cute little white girls?

The rapists and other assorted criminals are almost always brought to justice on Law and Order: SVU. I have already argued that this does not represent reality at all. But it is also problematic in that it does not challenge institutionalized patriarchy. We all go to bed easily after seeing the evil child molester brought to justice. But how often to we ask why child molesters exist, or why rape is such a prevalent and socially acceptable (treatment of rapists and victims in this country reflects this truth) crime?

Law and Order: SVU would not be a show if we did not live in a patriarchy, yet the show never acknowledges the prevalence of patriarchal ideology. In fact, I would argue that it contributes to patriarchal hegemony by presenting rape victims and rapists very narrowly.

And finally, the popularity of this show certainly raises the question: why are we so fascinated by sex crimes? The delight that viewers get from watching child rapists and deserving bitches get theirs is very telling.

Sexism on the CTA (part 1 of 1,000,000,000)

Image via Flickr. Ignore the random dude.

These advertisements are all over Chicago. Specifically, all over the CTA. I am posting it here because I think that it is the perfect marriage (excuse the pun) of patriarchy, heterosexism and capitalism. This ad plays off of insecure masculinity. How do you make wedding rings macho? Why, you equate them with testicles of course.

This ad campaign assumes that all women want engagement rings, that only men can (should?) purchase engagement rings, and that only real men get engaged.

The CTA is FULL of sexist advertisements. The first one I saw was for the movie Captivity. There have been several more since then but I couldn't find them online. I am sure there will be more to come.

Labor Inequalities on Labor Day

Via Feministing.

I read an article this leisurely Labor Day morning and felt compelled to comment. The Financial Times website recently discussed a study which concluded that 2 million professionals leave their jobs every year because of covert racism, sexism or homophobia. Of course, the Financial Times is concerned mostly with the economic cost of these departures more so than the social implications. They focus largely on racism, homophobia and ethnocentrism making only a small mention about sexism at the very end.

The authors of this article reveal their own misogyny:

Compared with heterosexual white men, who account for the majority of US managers, non-white people were three times more likely to claim they had left after being unfairly treated, while homosexuals were twice as likely.

What about female managers? The only mention of sexism was at the end when a woman left her job because she was too harshly criticized for her attire and her "large breasts." Yes, women, you had better not have large breasts lest you fail to comply with office dress code.

In order to survive in the patriarchal, white, business world one must assimilate. Message to minorities and women: you do not belong here.

Another Reason to Abolish Marriage

After my long hiatus I have returned to my blog. I just needed a short break before graduate school starts.

I believe that feministing covered this article (or one similar to it) but my partner sent it to me and I feel the need to comment.

Researchers at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. and North Carolina State University in Raleigh discovered that married men do less housework that live-in boyfriends. This could suggest either one of two things. Either gender roles really are not innate but are rather socially constructed in cultural institutions like marriage. OR couples who do not buy into oppressive social institutions also do no buy into stereotypical gender roles.

I am sure that it is actually a combination of these two factors but it has brightened my day either way. Marriage is a heterosexist, patriarchal, misogynist institution and studies like this one only provide further evidence that marriage is a mindset and women pay the price (as we have for thousands of years).

I'm with Jessica Valenti. I will never wed.

To Short Skirt or not to Short Skirt

I was on 'vacation' from Chicago sitting in the living room in my parent’s Green Bay home when my father said “You would think that a feminist would wear a shirt that covered her cleavage. You should wear t-shirts and sweatshirts not tank tops like that.” I could not believe my ears, my father is usually fairly liberal guy and I have never heard him criticize me like this before. This elicited quite a debate between both of my parents and I.

My parents seem to believe that when women dress a certain way they make themselves targets for abuse. This is classic victim blame. As if changing the way that women dress would change the entire institution that allows for their systematic abuse to begin with. I have argued, time and again, that all of the pepper spray and self-defense classes in the world are not going to ‘protect’ women. Women will not be safe in this world until we are considered autonomous human beings with full bodily sovereignty as men are.

I am a feminist. I also like to wear low cut shirts, high heels (occasionally), mascara and skirts. I do, of course, understand that these are tools of the patriarchy. I know that painful shoes force women to walk slower and limit their movement. I know that cosmetics are a huge industry that survives by making women feel ugly unless they are made up. I know that low cut shirts might catch male attention and cause some people to take me less seriously. I also know that men are not restricted in these same ways. These are all reasons that some feminists do choose not to adorn themselves that way. But is that really the answer?

This is one of the many gross double standards that plague women every day. Are my parents right, should I not wear revealing clothing because it puts me at risk? Or should I not allow the terror tactics of the proverbial man to keep me down? It seems to me that most women are not consciously aware of the subtle ways that they alter their lives to protect themselves from male violence. Yet we still live by a strictly prescribed ‘rape schedule.’ As much as I fought my parents on this issue, I know that when I am at home in Chicago I will not wear my mini-skirt out at night. I know that I will not wear low cut tops when I have to walk alone. I know that I will carry my pepper spray in one hand and my cell phone in the other every time I hop on the L after dark.

Whether we like it or not, fear of male violence infiltrates almost every aspect of women’s lives. Even seasoned feminists have to maintain a delicate balance between fighting the patriarchy and protecting ourselves from it. Until the day that women are considered to be autonomous human beings capable of giving and denying consent, until we live in a world that is free of male sexualized violence against women, until women are no longer the sex class, we will never be able to wear our mini-skirts and cleavage bearing tops without even a shred of fear.

I wonder how other women deal with this double bind....

Racism and misogyny reunited again.

A professor of mine just e-mailed me the above cartoon. Apparently, it caused quite a stir in Jacksonville, Florida.

I understand that editorial cartoons are often sarcastic and call attention to problems by over-dramatizing them but this seems a bit over the top even for the editorial pages.

Having done a good deal of research on hip-hop culture and on its general misogyny, I can say that the word "ho" is far from uncommon, I can even understand how this cartoonist meant to sarcastically draw attention to it. Where he loses me is in his ignorance of location politics.

A critique as blatant as this needs more sensitivity and more attention to the voice of the cartoonist. In a piece like this his race, class, gender, ethnicity, and more are relevant. I wonder how often little girls are called 'hos' in hip hop culture. I suppose it is not a huge stretch, but does this cartoonist really have the authority to say that?

The cartoonist was critiquing a so-called "no-snitching" culture. Hip-hop certainly plays a role in perpetuating a mistrust of authority but one also has to ask are authorities always deserving of trust? In a community where police abuse is rampant mistrust seems natural. Perhaps a cartoon about police brutality would make more of a statement about the "no-snitching" mentality.

I also wonder why the use of the word "ho" was even necessary here. The cartoonist might be calling attention to the fact that young people are increasingly influenced by the imagery of hip-hop and that they are perpetuating mistrust after hearing their favorite rappers talk about it. But, again, what does calling a little girl a "ho" have to do with any of that?

The use of language in this cartoon is just plain racist. The word "ho" was unnecessary and probably misused, a mistake an ignorant white guy might easily make. I think that Isaiah Rumlin was right on when he said that if this paper has more African American staff making these big decisions, this cartoon never would have been published. It is something to consider.

Yay for being ahead of the news!

I was just a few hours ahead of the news apparently. They covered the Guardian Angels story today. As is unfortunately true of many news sources, they add very little to the discussion.

Guardian Angels in Chicago

On Saturday, August 11th another woman was raped in my neighborhood. This one occurred at 11:30 in the evening on Fullerton, a very populated street, about a block from the DePaul campus. The Chicago police have released a sketch of the offender. His description matches the rapist in four of the other cases that happened this summer.

This attack has Lakeview residents even more on edge, and rightfully so. I am terrified, this one happened on a street that I walk down regularly! Every attack makes leaving my home seem scarier and scarier. All of the pepper spray in the world does not make it any easier.

Of course with any tragedy there are opportunists waiting to benefit. Today my room mate encountered a group called "The Guardian Angels." They are a group of militant men who escort women around the city to 'protect' them. I cannot find a website for them other than this from Hawaii. Basically they are a group of guerilla misogynists.

As far as Sarah and I could discern, the service is free. Still, I maintain that they are opportunists. They instill fear in women by telling them that they are not safe unless they are escorted by a man. If this is what America is coming to I wonder how different we really are from Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan where women are not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative in tow. Already we are told not to walk alone, not to walk too late, not to dress provocatively, to carry pepper spray. How much more terror must we be subjected to?

I wonder why the solution to sexual assault is always changing the behaviors and attire of women. These changes suggest that we are somehow responsible for our own rape if we fail to comply. Why does the discussion NEVER focus on why MEN rape and how to stop it? Why are women expected to live in terror and to live by a rape schedule that limits their movement? Men do not have to do this. In all of my life I have never heard a man talk about the consequences of wearing an article of clothing or going to a bar alone.

Rape and other sexualized violence against women is terrorism. Rapists are terrorists and need to be regarded as such. Until women can wear whatever the hell we want to wear, until we can walk home alone, until we can leave the pepper spray in our purses, until we do not have to have a 'cell phone' buddy and a rape schedule we will never be empowered as full human beings. This is one of those things that so many men just DO NOT get and the Guardian Angels prove it (I am sure that they are well-intentioned in their own phallocentric way). Living in terror changes a person. What would women be like if we did not live our entire lives in terror?

Terrorism for Women is Different (adapted from an assigned project)

When I moved to Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood nearly two weeks ago, I had no idea what I was getting in to. My roommate and I are paying an astronomical amount of rent to live in this ‘upscale’ neighborhood with trendy stores, well-lit streets and comparatively low crime rates. We were ill prepared to discover that there is a rapist lurking in our cozy neighborhood. In the past three weeks three women have been accosted. Two others were raped earlier in the summer. Chicago police currently do not have enough evidence to believe that the incidents are related. However, the victims’ descriptions of their attackers are eerily similar. Between 2 and 2:30 a.m. on July 23rd a young woman was thrown to the ground and nearly raped by a man she described as Hispanic, 25-30 years old with short hair. At 4:30 a.m. on July 29th a young woman was attacked as she was entering her apartment building. The attacker struck her in the back of the head, took her into her apartment and raped her. She described him as being 25-30 years old and Hispanic. The most recent attack occurred on August 3rd at 2:30 in the afternoon! On a busy street, this man offered to help a young woman with her grocery bags. When she declined, he followed her up to her apartment and attempted to assault her. She described him as being about 175 lbs., between 28 and 32 years old, and white.

In the past few years “terrorism” has become quite a buzzword. It is in the news on an almost daily basis from local ‘terror-alerts’ to terrorist activity abroad. When many of us imagine terrorism we think of September 11, 2001. We think of foreign men attacking us, we think of religious extremism, we think of war. But how often do we think about the terror that we live with every single day? I am talking about the terror that all women live with; the fear of assault and attack that shapes our daily lives and our entire experience of this world. I ask you, why is sexual assault not considered to be terrorism? Why are rapists not considered to be terrorists? And why is punishment of sexual assault so lenient?

Only in a society that eroticizes hierarchy and power can crimes like this continue to be so pervasive. One need only watch television for a few hours or flip through a Maxim magazine to see that women’s bodies are the erotic toys of men. This is the ideology that nearly every member of American society is inundated with. It is not surprising then that we have so many attacks on women’s bodies and on their bodily sovereignty. This is a culture that does not believe that women’s bodies are their own. Our bodies are tools of the patriarchy: tools for reproduction, tools for male sexual pleasure, tools to make the lives of men easier at whatever cost. Our bodies are tools but they are not our own. That is the message that we get over and over again. Is it really so surprising then that men use our bodies that way?

FOX news reported on March 15th that a forty-two year old man convicted of raping a young women, a man who plead guilty, mind you, is being released after only spending six months in prison. Why, you ask? Because he apologized. He said he was sorry, he was an alcoholic at the time and is now in AA. Could you even imagine that happening in a murder case? I can sense the chiding ‘rape is not the same as murder’ response. Women who are victims of sexual assault never get their lives back. Do you think a woman who was raped can sleep at night knowing her rapist is free, enjoying his life? According to Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), rape survivors are three times more likely to suffer from depression, six times more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, thirteen times more likely to abuse alcohol, twenty-six times more likely to abuse drugs, four times more likely to contemplate suicide and many suffer from sexual dysfunctions for the rest of their lives. It hardly seems fair that all he got was six months.

The BBC reported back in June that an English man got a two-year sentence for raping a ten-year-old girl. What was the rationale behind this sentencing? The man said that she was ‘dressed provocatively.’ And we are back to victim blame. This time the victim was a child. It seems too barbaric to be true, but in phallocentric society, little girls' lives have significantly less value than adult men’s.

On March 3rd, in San Jose, California, a seventeen-year-old girl was gang raped. There were plenty of eyewitnesses and even airtight DNA evidence. The San Jose District Attorney wouldn’t even try the young men in this case. Why? Insufficient evidence.

Do you need more proof that rape is not taken seriously in much of this country?
How about this doll. Or this 'joke.' Or this fashion advertisement.

Not long ago, I discussed this case in which a young woman who was raped by her boyfriend's brother. She gave 'consent' to having sex with the man she thought was her boyfriend not to the man who tricked her. Again, the man was not prosecuted because women who say that they are raped are not taken seriously. RAINN reports that of "the 39% of attacks that are reported to police, there is only a 16.3% chance the rapist will end up in prison." Message to rape victims: do not bother reporting your assault.

Women who hear these news reports night after night, women who live in Lakeview who see signs with drawings of rapists all over their community, women who have survived rape only to have their attackers walk free live in terror every single day. This can be evidenced by the existence of rape schedules. Many women do not know what a rape schedule is, but they all have one. Ask any woman you know what she does to make herself less vulnerable to sexual assault (because we are taught that that is our responsibility. It is not a man's responsibility not to rape, in fact sating his sexual appetites is encouraged). You will get a lot of responses like these:
-carry pepper spray
-don’t walk alone at night
-carry keys in hands
-don’t wear low cut clothing
-have a cell phone buddy for walking
-cross the street when a strange man is approaching
-don’t stop, don’t answer questions, don’t make eye contact
-lock doors immediately
These are things that women do every single day without even questioning. These are things that years of living in terror has taught us to do without a second thought. These are things that restrict our movement in ways that (heterosexual) men never have to.

The Chicago Tribune and local news channels are covering this topic on an almost daily basis. Because Lakeview is Chicago’s “upscale” neighborhood, a rapist on the loose is huge news. Until this man (or men) is caught this issue is going to be on the minds of women living in this community. Because the rapist(s) has not yet been apprehended, residents, especially women, in Lakeview are still on high alert. There are flyers all over the streets, in coffee shops, grocery stores, and college campuses, there are concerned groups handing out pepper spray and instructing self-defense courses. The underlying theme of this discussion is male violence against women. These rape cases are just another example of it. Because Lakeview is a wealthy (white) neighborhood, these attacks are incredibly newsworthy. But we cannot forget that sexualized violence is an ever-present threat whether it be in Lakeview or Back of the Yards.

I suspect there will be some disagreement as to whether sexual assault is an act of terrorism. Terrorism is an act of violence committed for political or ideological gain. I would argue that keeping women in a state of constant terror serves the patriarchy by keeping women in prescribed roles. Our very lives are in danger if we challenge the status quo or if we step out of line. The “she was dressed like she wanted it” line of defense has worked in enough cases to tell women that we are deserving of sexual violence if we step out of line. This is a form of psychological terror, enforced by physical terror.

Thousands of women (approximately 50,000) live in Lakeview and all of them are on guard following these attacks. We can never forget our position as second-class citizens. We can never forget that men are more powerful in this society. Rape is a crime that proves it. There is no male equivalent. At least, men are not terrorized in the same way that women are by this gender specific crime. Nothing forces women back into their homes, into invisibility, into less revealing clothing, into earlier bedtimes, into hiding quite like the threat of sexualized violence. Rape reminds women of their place. By keeping us scared, they are keeping us weak.

Father Knows Best

This might be the most fucked up thing I have ever heard. Gross.

Murder Chic: Misogyny is High Fashion

Dismembered bodies, blood, murder, starvation, mental illness, battery, sexual assault and… death. Sound sexy? According to Vogue magazine and America’s Next Top Model high fashion and brutalized women go hand in hand. I have written at length before about this America’s Next Top Model spread. All of these women were made up to look as though they were brutally murdered and then were praised for their ability to look sexy. At the time I held out hope that it was just a passing fad but then Italian Vogue released these photos (to glowing praise no less).

When did murder, rape and misery become high fashion? I cannot look at these images without wondering ‘how did these women end up beaten, abused, and murdered?’ Actually, I know how. According to Jean Kilbourne in her text Can’t Buy My Love, more than one-third of women slain in this country die at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends. Though the photographers may not intend for them to be, these images are very political. They are representative of a greater cultural illness.

I can sense the “Relax, it’s just a picture” response that I am sure to get. The problem is that these images do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in a cultural climate of intense anxiety and backlash. Backlash against women’s movement into the workforce, backlash against women’s sexual agency, and backlash against women’s bodily sovereignty. These images exist within the context of white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy and that means that they are saturated with meaning.

I know that even when I am not conscious of it, I am always thinking about my safety. I know that there are some places that I cannot walk alone and I know that there are some articles of clothing that make me a target for male violence. The women over at feministing call it a rape schedule. We know where to walk, what to wear, and when to have our keys in our hands. We know to lock the doors behind ourselves and we know that elevators, parking garages, and stairwells are places to avoid. We are constantly aware of the threat of male violence and images like those in Vogue or America’s Next Top Model contribute to that anxiety. They keep fresh in women’s minds the logical result of male violence. This type of emotional and psychological terrorism serves the very specific purpose of keeping women in their place through the constant threat of violence, specifically sexualized violence.

Further, these images contribute to the normalization and fetishization of violence against women. When we are inundated with images of annihilated, abused and murdered women we become desensitized to it in media and in real life. These texts contribute to the dehumanization of women. They are insane! They enjoy being beaten! They are not real people! The America’s Next Top Model shoot presents women being murdered in a variety of ways. One woman is pushed off of a rooftop, one is poisoned, one is stabbed, one is drowned and wrapped in plastic, one is pushed down a flight of stairs, one is strangled, electrocuted, shot in the head, decapitated, and perhaps most horrifying one has her organs stolen. Her individual parts are literally more valuable than her person as a whole.

As I was researching images for this piece, the sheer volume of images that I saw overwhelmed me. The advertisement posters for the new movie Captivity are an even more brazen example of this normalization of violence toward woman. Can you imagine driving your mini-van filled with children past this image every day? What would you tell your daughters? I wonder how people can continue to tell me that these things have no effect. How do we look at images like these and feel nothing? The trend of abuse toward women as fashion is terrifying and yet not really surprising. It is a slightly more obvious version of the dismembered female bodies that we see in mainstream advertisements every single day.

After all of that how can we even pretend to be surprised when a story like this crops up? These boys live in a society that devalues women to such an extent that gazing at their corpses is high fashion! There is no other conclusion for young men to draw than that women’s bodies are (a) their property and (b) ultimately valueless. These young men are perfect products of their society and, sadly, as Kilbourne’s statistic proves, they are not alone.

Why I Do Not Go to Movies

I recently wrote a review of the movie Knocked Up. You can read the review here. What I was unable to say in the review was that the movie itself was not nearly as upsetting as the trailers that preceded it. I really think that they deserve as much, if not more, analysis than the film.

Apparently there is a new Die Hard movie with Bruce Willis. The trailer for this film was an orgy of male violence and of course, the token helpless female who must be saved by the machine-like homicidal manic/hero. Score 1 for the patriarchy.

The next trailer was for some movie about a dude who has the magical ability to help women find their soul mates... by fucking them. So women just throw themselves at him in the hopes that their true loves will propose. Does that not just reek of male fantasy? Desperate, hot women seeking one night stands with some douche-bag so that they can become the sexual maidservants of some other man for the rest of their lives. Score 2 for the patriarchy.

The next trailer was for Ben Stiller's new gem The Heartbreak Kid. This fella is a commitment-phobe who finally takes the plunge with a hot blonde environmentalist, only to find his true love, a hot brunette, on their honeymoon. Beyond the totally ridiculous plot this film just adds to the miasma of male cultural domination.

All of the films advertised were presented from the male perspective, with women as the incidental characters they happen to act upon. The women in all of these films are creations of male fantasy. They are either totally helpless and virginal (ala Bruce Willis's daughter) or they are desperate whores who are willing to do anything for a good fuck so long as they end up being Mrs. maidservants for the rest of their lives. Hollywood is really one of America's most sexist institutions. Broadcast television has made leaps and bounds toward better gender representation compared to the patriarchal wasteland that is Hollywood.

Twisty Faster in her infinite wisdom refers to Hollywood as the patriarchy's communications department. One night at the movies proves it.