Feminist Current

If you haven’t yet heard about revenge porn, you’re lucky.

Notorious dickbag, Hunter Moore, is big into the revenge porn game. He can be credited with mainstreaming the concept of punishing your ex by posting their nude photos online without their permission via his website, IsAnyoneUp.com.

Doesn’t take much to get rich these days, just a complete lack of anything resembling a soul.

Not only would Moore post the photos, but he would also post the person’s name, location, and link to their social media accounts, also helpfully facilitating comments under the images critiquing the person’s appearance. Innovative, right!

Eight months after his original site shut down, Moore, committed as ever to cretin status, announced he would be launching a new site: HunterMoore.TV.

Of course, the fact that he manages to keep this up this seemingly “legally questionable” endeavour begs the question: “How is this actually legal?” Amanda Holpuch explains, in an article for The Guardian, that (in the U.S.) under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, “website proprietors are not liable for content that is submitted to them by third parties.”

Even with that loophole, it’s clear that these sites aren’t going to get off scot-free.

Another revenge porn site (Gosh, it’s just a mystery why degrading women via porn is so popular!), Texxxan.com (and their hosting company, GoDaddy.com) is being sued by approximately two dozen women on the basis that the site was “significantly designed to cause severe embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress.”

The deal with revenge porn is that someone you once trusted enough to let take a photo of you engaged in a sexual act or text a photo of yourself naked to, now hates you enough to want to seek ‘revenge’ by turning you into publicly consumable porn.

Now, while the purpose of revenge porn is indeed, as Jill Filipovic writes for The Guardian, “to shame, humiliate and destroy the lives and reputations of young women,”(i.e. not just about masturbation), I would add that the existence of revenge porn is very much a result of a porn culture.

When we look at the ways women and girls are harassed and abused online, we see that it often isn’t just about words, rather it is often about porn. We see this in the Amanda Todd tragedy which happened back in October. While Todd was bullied and harassed, both online and by kids at school, she was also a victim of porn culture. As many feminists pointed out after she killed herself, Todd was not only ‘bullied’, as most of the mainstream media put it, but she was harassed in a completely misogynistic way. What many news outlets failed to mention was that Todd was turned into porn. A man she’d been chatting to online coerced her into showing her breasts via a webcam, later threatening to share the image with her friends and family unless she gave him a “show.” He followed through on his threat, circulating the image of Todd, who was in grade seven at the time, online.

Sound familiar?

It isn’t possible to separate what happened to Todd from this ‘revenge porn’ phenomenon, which is also why it isn’t possible to separate ‘revenge porn’ from ‘porn’.

Revenge porn is about degrading and humiliating women. It doesn’t work on men because men aren’t hated on a mass scale, as women are, and because men’s bodies are not used against them, in order to punish them.

Just as revenge porn isn’t simply about naked bodies, neither is mainstream porn. It’s the power dynamic that’s ‘sexy’ and it’s the degradation that separates both revenge porn and ‘regular’ porn from straight-up nudity and sex. When women are objectified, they lose power and men gain power. The male gaze is a disempowering one.

The fact that pornography is being used as a means to publicly harass and degrade all women (regardless of whether or not the woman in question was compensated for her image and/or the use of her body) should tell us something about pornography and about our misogynistic culture. It tells us that porn isn’t ‘just about sex’ or about ‘loving women’s bodies’ and that it isn’t somehow completely neutral.

The fact that 12-year-old girls are being pressured to text ‘sexy’ photos of themselves to boys and men (as well as older girls and women) is as a result of a porn culture. Porn cannot be separated from larger culture; isn’t something relegated to ‘adult only’ sites. It’s what we’re all supposed to be, as women, and it’s used against us. Feminists say ‘porn harms’ and often the public isn’t sure what that means. Well here’s an example.

Men like Hunter Moore grew up in the same culture that the man who harassed Amanda Todd did and in the same culture boys are growing up in today, learning that to coerce girls to turn themselves into porn gives them power.

It should be clear by now that porn is not about loving women.

Though I occasionally find a good article in Vice, mostly I just find really terrible writing and misogyny/efforts at popularizing pornography. I mean, I like reading about drugs as much as the next person, but I just can’t stomach the constant objectification and glorification of porn (because I’m too fucking uptight or stupid to ‘get’ how objectification is actually artsy and ok if hipsters are doing it).

The magazine has really nailed the whole ‘irony masks racism and sexism‘ thing. It’s also spawned a whole faction of idiot hipsters who think that their writing is deep because it makes no sense. It’s the emperor has no clothes redux. NOBODY SAY ANYTHING JUST SMILE AND NOD AND PAT YOUR BUDDIES ON THE BACK BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL THE RIGHT HIPSTER CONNECTIONS AND HAVE NEVER WRITTEN ANYTHING BEFORE AND DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE ANYTHING INTERESTING TO SAY BUT TODAY THEY DECIDED THEY WERE A WRITER AND HAHA DOES ANYONE HERE REALLY KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON HAHA NO BUT WHATEVER HA THAT CAPTION DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE.

ANYWAY.

Bad writing aside (yeah whatever, people in glass houses, yada yada), I’m getting fucking sick of the whole misogyny disguised as irony thing.

Earlier this week I saw these photos posted from a local hipster night that I’ve actually attended on many occasions. It’s awkward to say so publicly because Vancouver is a small place and because friends of friends etc, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?

It’s one thing to put up your party photos in your outfits trying to impress one another. It’s absolutely another thing to put up images of girls who are clearly fucked up and wasted spreading their legs for the camera. Did you ask their permission ONCE SOBER whether or not they minded having these images posted publicly? Because if it were me I would fucking mind. Acting like a trashy idiot whilst drunk is par for the course. We ALL do it. Ok, so I do it. But once actions become imagery, said images could possibly be construed as porny and it’s not your GOD GIVEN RIGHT because you know how to work a fucking camera to post this shit on the internet.

And even if all those women did give permission, in sobriety, for you to post their crotch/boob shots online, these images, whether or not you think they’re hip or ironic or funny or whatever, are fucking porny.

But I digress. The initial reason for this post was actually to address Jezebel’s new sex advice columnist, Karley Sciortino, who’s blog, Slutever got her a show at Vice under the same name.

In her inaugural column at Jezebel, Sciortino addresses facials and something called “pussy whipping” (Which I didn’t know was a thing either. APPARENTLY it’s “when someone hits your vagina with a whip”. Good to know, good to know.). And whatever, do what you want I guess. But for someone who is a) writing a sex advice column, so like, one would assume we would have thoughts and opinions on things and issues relating to sex, and b) writing a sex advice column for a feminist-ish site, responding to the issue of pussy whipping by saying:

In my mind, asking my view on pussy-whipping, or facials, is equivalent to asking, “What are your views on can openers?” These are all just things that exist in the world, and we don’t need to take a stance on them. There are certain matters that deserve careful consideration (i.e. casting an actress to play yourself in the movie version of your life); some casual jizz on your face isn’t one of them.

Um, what? Pussy whipping is the same as can openers? HAVING OPINIONS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS IS SO STUPID YOU GUYS.

She goes on:

People — women in particular — really need to get over the “is this degrading?” thing. If you have to stop and think about whether something is degrading or not, then it probably isn’t. I understand there are complex emotions involved in sex, so everything isn’t always black and white, but I also think that sometimes girls’ brains become so clouded by bullshit “feminist” ideals — “thou shall not be treated like an object,” “thou shall always be offended by men’s pervy remarks” (as if we are not equally adept at dismissing them, and dishing them out) — that we spoil our own fun.

Ok so no. Women do NOT in ANY WAY need to get over the “‘is this degrading?’ thing.” They do not need to stop thinking about things and questioning things like objectification and misogynist comments AKA SEXISM IN ACTION. That isn’t to say that you can’t like what you like or do what you want in the bedroom, but to suggest that thinking about and questioning our behaviour and sexuality is a stupid waste of time because, I don’t know, IT’S ALL SO IRONIC AND WE’RE SO BLAZÉ AND APATHETIC ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE THINKING ABOUT THINGS AND CARING ABOUT THINGS IS SO LAME, is the worst, most thoughtless, boring-ass “advice” I’ve ever heard.

And then there’s the dig at feminism. That one really takes the cake: “Sometimes girls’ brains become so clouded by bullshit “feminist” ideals…” Really? REALLY??? Our brains are clouded by oh-so-powerful feminism? That’s like saying our brains are clouded by thoughts. “Oh y’all are just thinking to much. Let patriarchy take care of this for you.”

When the response to perfectly valid questions about whether or not a sexual act may or may not be degrading (and no, that doesn’t mean it is black and white – there can be BOTH nuance and critical thought for people who are ok with using tools such as critical thinking — BUT EW GROSS THAT’S FEMINISM ISN’T IT??) is “don’t worry your pretty little head about that”, that pretty much means that we’re supposed to let patriarchy do the thinking for us.

So what have we learned from this sex advice column, folks? Caring about and thinking about things JUST ISN’T COOL. And whatever, that’s fine for Vice. We expect that from them. We expect casual misogyny because giving a fuck isn’t a thing that the cool kids do – but for a site like Jezebel, which sort of aims to provide feminism-lite style commentary on issues and events, to hire a sex advice columnist who tells women to stop thinking so much and then slags feminism for brainwashing us into using our powers of critical thought is total bullshit.

Time to start caring about shit, hipsters. You look like a bunch of assholes. LIKE YOU CARE.

Generally when questioned about how sexism could POSSIBLY EXIST in this MODERN DAY AND AGE when ladies are allowed to wear PANTS and have abortions (MAYBE IF YOU’RE LUCKY) and HAVE SEX ALL THE TIME, LIKE, WHENEVER, I respond by saying that the thing about sexism today is that much of it is less overt than it perhaps once was. Less measurable. Things like objectification, the male gaze, compulsory sexuality, and silencing are not necessarily the kinds of things you can prove via statistics or math (also, my feelings towards math generally exist somewhere along the “I’m confused” to “fuck math” spectrum. I have a calculator in my phone that I use to figure out important things like how much to tip my hairdresser. AMIRIGHT LADIES?).

But lo! A study! Researchers found that “when a group collaborates to solve a problem…the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation – amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke.”

So while this study was specifically looking at group decision making in work/organization-type settings, I think the dynamic they found is applicable to a number of other settings wherein the menz and the women commingle.

People often ask me when I first began to identify as a feminist. And honestly I can’t remember. What I do remember is when I started to notice and get pissed off about sexism. And one of the primary places I began to notice the phenomenon we now know to be patriarchal fuckery, was in the classroom.

My mom is a professor of education and is a feminist. So when I was in elementary school we talked about gendered dynamics in the classroom. As such, one of the first things I began to notice was the ways in which boys spoke up while girls remained silent. One of the reasons this happens is because of the ways girls and boys are socialized. Girls are taught to be polite, to wait their turn, and to be passive and obedient whereas boys are taught to be sure of themselves and that being a loud, obnoxious, dick will be excused with a “boys will be boys” type of response. I’m oversimplifying a little, but there’s also a ton of research that shows the how socialization in the classroom is super gendered.

How Schools Shortchange Girls: The AAWU Report (published back in 1992, though there is more current research that shows that these dynamics persist) showed exactly what my mom was talking about and what I was noticing as an angry little 11 year old:

A large body of research indicates that teachers give more classroom attention and more esteem-building encouragement to boys. In a study conducted by Myra and David Sadker, boys in elementary and middle school called out answers eight times more often than girls. When boys called out, teachers listened. But when girls called out, they were told to “raise your hand if you want to speak.” Even when boys do not volunteer, teachers are more likely to encourage them to give an answer or an opinion than they are to encourage girls.

When I talk about sexism and socialization in the classroom, I’m not talking about success or achievement in terms of grades. I’m talking about teaching femininity and masculinity. I’m talking about teaching people gendered behaviour and teaching people whose voices matter.

Fast-forward to 2012. Now I’m a less-little, more-angry, 32 year old.

This shutting up of women with their dumb thoughts and ideas and their trying to say things all the time with their mouths totally happened to me last weekend (as well as for, basically, all twelve years I spent in public school. I was only really relieved of this experience in the classroom when I started taking Women’s Studies in college — Feminism in academia! It’s good!) when I ended up at a friend’s apartment after the bar and there were several dudes already there who had come from a strip club. Because every once in a while (sometimes at what may seem to the naked eye to be an inappropriate time, for example while drunk at 3am) I decide that it is my responsibility to have conversations about such things with people who might have otherwise never considered the possibility that they could be sexist pigs, I decided to try to engage one of the dudes (as noted earlier, I’m the most fun at parties). Because hey! Having conversations never hurt anyone, right? LIES. They hurt dudes who love strip clubs and want to continue on believing that they can be simultaneously nice and fine and good while frequenting strip clubs.

The first dude I was talking to seemed relatively open (albeit a little frightened) to having this conversation like civil people who may or may not share differing (yet still potentially valid and informed!) opinions and experiences and so things went ok for a little while. Alas, the other dudes got wind of our anti-boob conversation and felt obligated to explain to me very loudly how I was wrong because ACTUALLY if you go to strip clubs YOU WILL REALIZE how very, very happy and empowered and liberated all of the sex-loving ladies who work there really are. STUPID GIRL, you are so wrong about our boners, they said. Their boners were justified boners because of girl power.

Now, I’ve heard this argument once or twice or one thousand times before and have also had this argument once or twice or one thousand times before. It isn’t a particularly interesting argument to have, particularly not with the 101 types. But I know the argument. There is nothing that a dude who loves strip clubs can say to me that is going to BLOW MY MIND. What’s that? You’re lonely? Aww. Sad. Misogyny will comfort your penis. Ohhh, you’re helping out some poor girl with her tuition and diaper bills? Generous! Allow me to introduce you to my good friend, socialism. Really? Stripping is feminist because the internet/postmodernism/Slutwalk told you so? Well I never. I’m the new sexist. Now is when we thank the dudebros for their enlightenment. Free blow jobs for everyone!

Like I said. I’ve had these conversations once or twice before. Excuse my lack of interest in your  justifications for misogyny.

What was so funny and interesting (read: not at all interesting or amusing or even tolerable) about the way the ‘conversation’ went was that there was an instant assumption that I had no clue what I was talking about regardless of what I said (“Why, yes! I have been to many strip clubs!” “Why, yes! I have heard your dumbass argument before!” “Why, yes! I have thought about these things once or twice before in my life!” “Feminism is what I do for a living, asshole!”). All three of these dudes took it upon themselves to educate me all together and all at once about how feminist and awesome and empowering and PERFECTLY FINE AND NORMAL AND NATURAL AND GOOD strip clubs are. Yelling and interrupting and talking-over ensued. Assumptions that I simply did not understand their side of the argument (“But, Meghannnnn, we have boners. BONERS.”) and/or that I had not educated myself enough on the topic abounded.

So I gave up. Silencing successful!

Now, I don’t see myself as a particularly passive or silenceable person. I have a voice and I use it often. I’m not going to spend a lot of time whining about how my voice is always being silenced because that really isn’t true. I write about things I think and feel and believe on the internet all the time and often I am given the opportunity to say things out loud. Empowered voice is intact. And yet often I give up. And often I don’t even try.

Lindy West wrote about feeling something similar in reference to this study:

I (and, I suspect, pretty much any woman) can access that feeling really quickly and vividly—when you find yourself in conversation with a circle of men and, against your better judgment and all your feminist impulses, you just turtle up. You retire. You forfeit, because their lungs are bigger, they’re groomed for assertiveness since birth, and you’re groomed to assume that nobody will take you seriously anyway. You wait for a pause in a room of interruptors. Sigh. I do it like crazy, and I am a fucking loudmouth feminist yelling machine.

I love to hear myself talk, sure. But in a room full of dudes who love to hear themselves talk more, often they are the ones who win out and I leave feeling like a feminist failure. I let them go on and on and though I may have had oh-so-many things to say, I said nothing. Knowing that I’m going to have to deal with getting talked over, shouted down, interrupted, and mansplained until I want to stab something definitely encourages me to sit and stew, quietly glaring until my entire night is ruined. I go home angry, wondering why I didn’t just yell at them: “YOU GUYS ARE SO STUPID THAT I’M EMBARRASSED TO SHARE THIS EARTH WITH YOU! AND YET YOU ARE ENTIRELY CONVINCED THAT YOU ARE ONE MILLION TIMES SMARTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! AND THAT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ON THIS EARTH THAT YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT!”

Man I hate dudes (Jokes! There are about ten of you that I genuinely like *fist bumps*).

Sexism is a real-life thing. We can change laws till we die (and yes, let’s continue to do that), but the kind of sexism that happens on a day-to-day basis – the sexual harassment, the silencing, the gaze, the fear, the intimidation – will continue so long as masculinity continues to be a thing that’s encouraged and rewarded. My suggestion to dudes? Every once in a while consider shutting up. Consider how your behaviour impacts other people (quick recap: women count as people now). Oh oh! And don’t explain to feminists that strip clubs are the new female empowerment. I know this is the first time you’ve heard this, but you’re wrong.

According to a recent article in The Daily the new hot thing for marrieds or soon-to-be-marrieds is porn. Ha! Obviously right? But this isn’t just any porn, it’s fiancée porn! Starring you!

It’s called boudoir photography and the idea is that, supposedly, gifting your husband with his very own wifey porn will stop him from consuming strange lady porn online.

The Daily quotes Dallas-based wedding photographer Lynn Michelle as saying: “A lot of women do boudoir because they’re afraid their fiancés are looking at porn and they’d rather them be looking at her.”

First of all, that strikes me as all kinds of stupid. If your husband/fiancé wants to watch porn he’s going to watch porn. I seriously doubt that, just because you’ve produced your own private monogamy-themed porn for him, he’s going to give up his online porn habit. It seems to me that the kinds of relationships wherein the female partner is passively and hopefully trying to discourage their partner from watching porn, all the while knowing and understanding that their partner is currently watching and has always watched porn, are the kinds of relationships wherein porn consumption is accepted and acceptable. In fact, becoming a porn actress yourself seems to encourage the idea that porn consumption is just a natural part of being a man.

Here’s a thing. Men who get laid for free still seek out prostitutes. Men who have sexy wives still watch porn. Men whose wives take pole-dancing classes for funandkicks! still go to strip clubs. No amount of playing the game is going to discourage a man who likes to objectify women from objectifying women. If you want to marry a guy who doesn’t watch porn your best bet would likely be to marry a guy who doesn’t watch porn. In terms of effecting change, the if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em technique has never worked in the history of ever.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all men watch porn and frequent strip clubs and buy sex. I’m also not saying that men can’t or don’t change. But it’s more likely that a man is going to stop objectifying and exploiting women (or never do it at all) because he arrives at some understanding of the the fact that the sex industry exploits and objectifies women and isn’t useful in terms of building an ethical, egalitarian world (other possibilities that may contribute to ending men’s exploitation of women includes creating a system wherein women can survive and thrive in our world without having to resort to selling sex). He’s not going to understand any of those things because you dress up in sexy wedding-themed lingerie (also, ew?) and take photos.

Somehow we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that emulating porn stars and strippers is something that is fun and sexy (see Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs for more on that postfeminist phenomenon) good time lady fun. So, instead of coming up with things that might actually be fun and sexy and liberating for ourselves as women, we give up and tag along behind the boys. For all of our supposed sexual freedom, we sure are an unimaginative bunch.

Another example of this lies in the difference between popular activities for stag and stagette parties.

The typical/stereotypical stag party often involves the buying of sex in one way or another. The bachelor celebrates his ‘last day of freedom’ by celebrating women’s lack of freedom. He goes to a strip club, is provided with lap dances and/or more elaborate sexual services. Not all men do this, of course. Many men I know can come up with much more interesting things to do than sit around in a skeezy room with a bunch of dudes with half hard-ons, buying over-priced drinks and paying bored women to pretend they are even remotely interesting or attractive. But I think it’s fair to say that this is a popular activity for many pre-wedding bachelors.

In contrast, the most popular trend for stagette parties as of late is to pretend to be strippers for a day. Also known as pole dancing or lap dancing classes. How this is ‘fun’ I will never understand. I mean, let me get this straight — while your soon-to-be douchebag husband is off watching strippers (because, let’s not forget, male bonding is based on celebrating male power and, therefore, female subordination WHOOOOO!), you and your girlfriends are practicing to be strippers yourselves. Not because you need a job, no no. But because our twisted world has manipulated us into believing that playing with objectification and pretending that women’s subordinate status in our society is actually empowering because we’ve volunteered to objectify ourselves is fun! So true. Having to sell sex to creepy drunk losers for a living is SO MUCH FUN.

This also plays right into that virgin/whore dichotomy patriarchy is so fond of. Men get to marry the ‘virgins’ who behave publicly chaste but privately will behave like ‘whores’ for their husbands’ pleasure. The real ‘whores’, of course, don’t get to play this privileged game because their livelihood is dependent on behaving like and being labeled as ‘whores’ publicly. As we can see, this stripper-for-a-day crap is offensive and oppressive for a variety of reasons.

I mean, come on. Can’t we do any better than this? Are we seeing the ridiculousness that is taking pole-dancing classes while our male partners are off watching pole-dancers? Would this be an appropriate time to mention the word irony?  While our partners are out being creepy assholes we are busy practicing how to perform for them. Gross. And do we really believe that becoming the porn our boyfriends or husbands watch is going to stop them from watching porn? Does this strike us as slightly illogical?

Can’t our lives please revolve around more than male fantasies? Please? Let’s at least try.