feminist blogs

I recently got a free issue of Men’s Journal. Dwayne Johnson was on the cover. It’s a profile by Allison Glock. I don’t know much about him. He was a football player then a WWE wrestler, he’s biracial, he gives kids of Samoan heritage someone to cheer for, folks say he works hard at being an action star and comedic actor. All good reasons to read the piece.

So the reporter writes that he’s “a modern breed of film star”, “an amalgam of magnetism and marketing savvy.” (So far, so good):

George Clooney minus the smugness. Arnold minus the skeeve. Tom Cruise minus the crazy. Ryan Seacrest, if Seacrest were a man.”

And … we’re done here.

The point isn’t whether a man or woman polices the arbitrary policy that manhood is a privileged status revoked at the slightest infraction. The point is that this conception of manhood is part of the problem, and reaffirming it doesn’t do anybody any good.

Not finishing the article.

The title has an obvious double-meaning. My two-week guest bit is over. See all you folks in comments.

You might already know I Wanna Fuck You from the immense amount of radio airplay it was getting last year, in the censored “I Wanna Love You” version, of course–the distinction here is important, which is why I’m not being radio-friendly. If you’re not, it was the first single to reach #1 on the charts for Senegalese-American rapper Akon and the second for his collaborator, Snoop Dogg. Akon also got attention last year for humping 14-year-olds onstage.

So although I heard Akon’s version about a billion times in 2007, I just found this other live video from spring of last year. It seems that the deeply weird American-French sister duo CocoRosie started performing an inverted version of Akon’s song during their European tour. Like the original, it features a guy trying to pick up a dancer at a club, but from the opposite point of view, far more introspective, and rotated towards their signature Billie-Holiday-meets-fractured-experimental-trip-hop style.

Here are the choruses of the two songs:

Akon:
I see you winding and grinding up on that pole,
I know you see me looking at you and you already know
I wanna fuck you, you already know
I wanna fuck you, you already know

CocoRosie:
You see me trying to smile up on this pole
But I’m just hiding the pain that’s deep in my soul
You wanna fuck me, I already know
You wanna fuck me and toss me back on the floor

I had a series of strong reactions to this song.
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xkcd nails it.

I’ve been meaning to write some more game-related posts, especially in the wake of the very fun presentation that Roy and I gave at WAM! 2008. For now, however, I just have a review of Mighty Jill Off, a free downloadable PC game that I recommend you all check out. It’s bound to be one of the more notable offbeat, indie, retro, lesbian-BDSM-themed jumping games of the year. OK, so it’s probably also the only game that fits those criteria. Ever.

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way: this is not a porn-tastic game replete with breast physics and girl-on-girl action to appeal to adolescent gamer dudes. If anything it’s closer to the opposite, and the theme actually makes a disturbing amount of sense. (And not only because the creator seems to be kind of into BDSM and fetish stuff herself.)

It’s long been noted by game scholars and humorists alike that there’s a masochistic quality inherent in many games. Hemmed in by the demands of an almost arbitary system of constraints and rules, you willingly submit to the system in search of an elusive and transitory experience of “fun,” to the extent where you let most of your thought processes be taken over.
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Like most Project Runway enthusiasts, I love and loathe Christian Siriano. A quick taste of Mr. Fierce himself, for those who are unfamiliar with the show:

Best part? “She’s really fierce. She’s like, one of the fiercest people I’ve ever met. And that’s a big deal, because I’ve met some fierce bitches up in my life.”

He’s entertaining, funny, obnoxious, and narcissistic as all hell. But, you know, entertaining. Except, as Margaret Price points out, what’s up with his use of the word “tranny”?

The first time he said it, it gave me pause. Then he started using it on repeat, and it rubbed me the wrong way too. So if Margaret is humorless, then I guess so am I — because Christian is indeed making a hot mess of the word “tranny.”

The bad news is that serial woman-abuser and exploitation profiteer Joe Francis is out of jail. The good news is that he is now a convicted child abuser, having pleaded no contest to a charge of felony child abuse, and a misdemeanor prostitution charge.

I think it is incumbent on all of us to say a hearty “Ha Ha! Joe Francis is a child abuser!”

What I have not seen is any discussion of whether this will require him to register as a sex offender, though I expect he will not because the top count was an abuse charge rather than a sexual assault charge. I do not know Florida law on this; I will update if anyone has specific information.

I am writing this from memory. More than a decade later, I remember it well. Shannon Wilsey was due to shoot a movie the next morning. As she returned home, she crashed her Corvette into a fence. She broke her nose and cut her face, endangering her career. She needed the money to pay off debts caused by substance abuse and compulsive spending. She called her manager in a panic. Then she walked the remaining block to her house, found the handgun she kept for protection, and shot herself. She was 24 years old.

She spent her short life sleeping with rock stars: Greg Allman (as a teen girl), Axl Rose and Slash, Vince Neal and others on the LA rock scene. By the time she died, these men didn’t return her calls. None of the celebrities she knew and fucked showed up for her funeral: except Paulie Shore. Say what you will about his movies. Shannon Wilsey was his some-time girlfriend, and when she killed herself, he at least had the decency to put on a suit and stand at her grave.

I never knew the woman. She was a porn performer, best known by her stage name, Savannah. I have never seen one of her films. But a cable news show ran a feature on her suicide, and it never left me.

She was a teenage runaway, and then a groupie, and then a nude model, and then a porn performer. She only worked in porn for about four years. She burned out early and hated the job; but her debt and troubles pulled her back in. She was to shoot her comeback feature the morning after her death. When she injured her face, even the grim prospect of making more porn films to settle her debts was extinguished, and apparently with it the last light at the end of the tunnel.

With all the men she fucked, couldn’t one of them have been a friend? Given her a place to stay and some support so she could sober up? Some help controlling her spending? A job that didn’t eat her up a day at a time?

Couldn’t they call each other to say, “hey, I have really bad news. Remember Shannon? She killed herself”? Couldn’t a few of them have put on a tie? Stood there on the grass next to the casket and said something nice to mark the passing of a very young woman, gone too soon?

Nope.

With the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, I started thinking again about Shannon Wilsey, and the discussion of Spitzer and prostitution have brought her to mind again. These were young women with few prospects. The patriarchy dangled a wad of bills in front of them if they would put on sexual performances for men. Then it treated them like shit when they took it. Sex objects, objects of curiosity, objects of scorn. They circled the drain and then got swallowed, and the men who are the consumers stand around and act like it is these women’s fault. Apparently, for women, the wages of sin are death (a self-fulfilling prophesy; being pigeonholed and marginalized and exploited will have that effect). For men, apparently the wages of sin are mild embarrassment at being publicly linked to such women.

I’m an atheist, but I know a little of the Book of Matthew. It says, “Inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me.” (Matt. 25:40, KJV.) Our brothers, perhaps. But everybody treats the sisters that trade sex for money like a hole and a pair of fake tits.

It’s never too late to say that she deserved better.

(Many thanks to Zuzu and Jill for my occasional guest privileges.)

Good Lord I love Ellen.

This segment made me bawl like a baby, but it also made me hopeful. I remember the Ellen coming-out controversy in 1997, and how her show sunk soon thereafter. Ten years later, she’s back on an extremely popular daytime talk show, catering to a moderate “average American” audience, and she’s able to talk about issues like violence against the LGBT community, encourage her audience to vote for candidates who support LGBT rights, and get a standing ovation.

Obviously there’s still a long way to go, but things are changing — and quickly. I can’t speak for all progressive and feminist-minded people, but I know I often get depressed and frustrated by how regressive so much of American society can be. I want it to be fixed now. Stuff like this is a good reminder that while there’s still a ton of work to be done — after all, a child is dead because of his identity — things do improve. Talking about it on daytime TV is a small thing, but it’s certainly significant.

I don’t get the gay, gay gay Logo channel, but thanks to the power of the Internet, I was able to purchase and download their latest entry into the reality-dating show category: Transamerican Love Story, starring a trans woman and eight bachelors who vie for her heart. Before you slap your forehead, know that the setup is nothing like There’s Something About Miriam, a similar show where the entire “haw haw” gag was that the bachelors didn’t know the star was trans. The entire cast knows that Calpernia Addams is a transsexual, and they’re all up-front in the first episode about their own dating histories too. Interestingly, the cast is quite a mixed bag of sexual preferences and identities and experiences (or lack thereof) with trans women. Less interestingly, the guys are mostly a bunch of boring schlubs… but that sort of fits with the “frog prince meets princess” theme they keep subtly inserting.

(Some light spoilers coming up.) The most interesting thing about Transamerican Love Story is exactly how ordinary they’ve managed to succeed in making it. There are definitely more queers & trans people around than usual, and host Alec Mapa alone seems to be deliberately raising the gayness quotient of every episode by 300% percent. But as Addams said in an interview with ABC News, “When they actually see the show, they’re going to be surprised. They’re going to see a girl next door from the south living in L.A. and trying to date.” And that’s pretty much what the show is, more or less the same as “the Bachelorette,” but with a little bit of dealing with trans issues here and there–always getting an important mention, but never allowed to interfere too much. Heck, they threw the creepy “I only date pre-ops” car salesman, who used to have his own (failed) trans-porn site, off the show in the first episode. (And just when I was looking forward to being appalled by his fetishizing “best of both worlds” statements in a future episode…)

The “ordinary straight girl next door” at the center of all this is Calpernia Addams — who, it must be said, is far from your average “plucked off the casting couch” reality-show star. Although she’s certainly not a household name, she’s probably one of the most famous trans people in this country — first entering the spotlight in a brutally real tragedy, as the girlfriend of Private First Class Barry Winchell. Winchell was murdered by a fellow soldier in a fight originally sparked by the fact that he was dating Addams — a story later used for the film Soldier’s Girl. But wait, there’s more! Addams also wrote a book about her experiences, helped organize and performed in the landmark trans-inclusive Vagina Monologues in Los Angeles a few years back, and does activism and consulting related to media portrayals of trans people. And now she’s starring in a reality dating show.

I probably sound a little like a gushing fan. But what really won me over to liking Calpernia Addams was not her creative work or media activism. It wasn’t even the fact that she apparently named herself after Wednesday Addams’ great aunt, who was sentenced to dance naked in public for witchcraft–although that’s kind of awesome in its own right. No, it’s actually the fact that she cracks my shit up with stuff like this:

(hat-tip to Transadvocate)
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I got bored and searched “Feministe” on YouTube, and I found this little gem that I think even those of you who haven’t taken anything past French I (like me) can understand:

I want to love Sex & the City only because the anti-feminists hate it so much. And I’m still confused: Are feminists hairy, ugly man-hating sex-averse lesbians in combat books and flannel shirts, or are we self-indulgent Manolo-wearing single urban man-eating over-sexed females? Andrea Dworkin or Carrie Bradshaw? Someone tell me ASAP, because I need to know what to wear and who to fuck tomorrow.