Today's been a real bummer for me, internetwise. It started with punkass marc providing a horrifying glimpse into the world of rape porn and, really, it may as well have stopped there, because, well, RAPE PORN: What more do you need to bum you out after that?
Nevertheless I endeavored to bum myself further by reading three nauseating thumbs-up reviews of a new television show called, I'm not kidding, "Ugly Betty" (starring the totally not ugly actress America Ferrera)--the "plucky guppy" label was a particularly nice touch from the NYT. Fucking brilliant.
I did perk up briefly while reading Twisty's review of Bust magazine, but I bummed back out again minutes later when I was struck by the likelihood that this post would set off another round of "but it's my choice to enjoy fashion, fucking, and shopping" versus "but no choice is so sacrosanct as to be exempt from feminist analysis" feuds throughout the feminist blogosphere, and that likelihood weighed in at somewhere around "extremely fucking likely;" whereas I assert that if we can't agree that an ostensibly feminist magazine sporting an ad for a $13.95 tampon case is "extremely fucking silly," then we can't agree on anything.
Of course the rape-porn post was clearly the worst of it all. I'm just saying none of the rest of this stuff exactly helped.
So I tried to cheer myself up by thinking of other songs William Shatner should cover, because that seemed to me the most natural thing to do in a crisis. Listen, we've all heard his versions of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "Rocket Man," but those songs are o-l-d. It's time for some fresh rhymes from MC Shatner. I think he should consider spoken-word versions of "This is How We Do It," "Golddigger," and, most necessarily, Madonna's "Borderline." Come on--you can hear it, can't you? Can't you?
Borderline
Feels like I'm going . . . to lose . . . my MIND!
You just
Keep on
Pushing . . . my LOVE
Over
The
BORDERLINE
Right? It's not just me, right? Tell me it's not just me.
And the other thing that cheered me up was thinking of phrases and concepts that should be banished from porn (or erotica, if you prefer, but me personally, I kind of consider it all porn, which is not necessarily bad) forever. Like, for example, the whole "good to the last drop" theme: Every woman who ever sucks a dick in pornotica always has to be described as swallowing every last drop, like heaven forbid they don't explicitly state this, and we get the mistaken idea she might have discreetly spit some into a Dixie cup to save for a rainy day, right? Just once I'd like to see a woman not be described as sucking dick Maxwell-House style, even though there's no way to have her not do that that wouldn't wind up killing the mood. But it'd still be worth it to me to just once be surprised, you know? Seriously, how often are you ever surprised in porn? Never! It's always the same. It's all porn-by-the-numbers.
So that's where I've kept my head at today in order to prevent me thinking about the kinds of dudes who pay money for rape porn: Shatner, and porn. Well, 1 out of 2 ain't bad.
UPDATE: Also.
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13 comments:
But, they say that they "suck it all up" and such, but, I've never seen one where the woman swallowed; instead they always do the icky icky and spray it all over, then do lots of loving close ups while I'm trying to keep my booze down.....it's certainly not truth in advertising....
The rape porn issue is interesting in light of the woman that just got arrested (convicted?) for having a website in which she detailed child rape and torture stories for paying customers. Did they arrest the (primarily) men who were paying for that, too (I think the woman should have been publicly flogged and executed, but someone was PAYING HER TO DO IT, right?) It all comes back to blaming the vile temptress, doesn't it? Women should be raped because they are dancing, wearing clothes that show their figures, and otherwise tempting the animals, who obviously cannot help themselves. What sluts!
instead they always do the icky icky and spray it all over
Oh yeah, I'm talking more about the written stuff (what can I say? I'm old school). Maxwell House or spastic sprinkler, those seem to be the two choices. Tiresome.
Do I want a link to this woman-arrested-for-child-rape-site thing, or would that just force me to think of more Shatner tunes? Decisions, decisions.
Re: Your update. Maybe Mr. Shatner should cover "Shock the Monkey." Or, ummm.....golly, I'm trying to stay on subject here, must not think about the world we live in...
You know, I considered going into that whole "women have rape fantasies" thing, but suffice to say, the contents of your average bodice-ripper are entire galaxies away from what punkass marc turned up.
My theory on the rape fantasy, which I know I have stolen from somewhere else and which was probably articulated much more clearly than I'm about to, is that it isn't women wishing away their consent so much as it is women wishing away their responsibility for The Consequences. I've screwed around enough to know that women always Suffer The Consequences, even if, like me, they miss the big ones, pregnancy and STDs. But there's no free lunch in this world and for women at least, ain't no free fucking, either.
So I think the whole "I can't help it, he ravished me!" thing is about dodging the repercussions. I don't think, if a woman sits and thinks about it a bit, that she'll really conclude she wants to be taken against her will. What she wants is the appearance of being taken against her will so she's got a cover. She wants plausible deniability, not an actual rape.
And any woman who disagrees with me is invited to check out some of the gems Punkass Marc excerpted (I'm not brave enough to actually click the link he provided, myself). Because I'm pretty sure things like
"There is nothing more precious than a sexy bride on her wedding day… except when she has a huge cock buried in her tight ass and one in her cunt at the same time while she screams and cries for mercy!"
. . . are not really what she had in mind. You don't see too much of that action in even the bawdiest romance novels.
Good goddamn, where the fig is the support for common-sense feminism?
I get you, but personally for me it's a whole hell of a lotta fun. It's just not "Candace Bushnell fun" or "$600 fuck-me slingbacks fun" or "designer tampon-case fun."
While it's certainly true that people do imagine things they wouldn't do in real life, nonetheless, I have to question anyone who gets really turned on by the thought of violence against another human being. I have to wonder where that comes from.
On another topic, Darleen, in a different thread you mentioned that you used to participate in the Yahoo! boards. Did you ever participate in the Politically Incorrect Cafe? Because I've lurked around a number of blogs, and something just seems naggingly familiar to me about you. So I was wondering whether there was anything behind that nagging thought or it's just one of those things.
People are drawn to taboos. The more society tries to demistify sex and make it less taboo, the more taboo fetishes spring up to compensate.
There's a good deal worse out there, just take a look at Japan, and it'll get much much worse until we actually realize we're screwing our own society up.
Maybe if we kept a little more things private, it wouldn't spill over into things like this. It's not the fault of women or men but of a society that thinks sex and nudity are entertainment.
Oddly, this time around hardly anybody has jumped my shit for suggesting that consumerism is not the equivalent of feminism. I know it can't be because suddenly people agree with me, so I'm pretty baffled.
And, man, I saw "Ugly Betty" and had to wash my eyes out with hydrochloric acid afterward. You just know in the end she'll live happily ever after with her boss, who she will have changed from a dick to a prince with her ugly heart of gold. But not until she gets a makeover.
Darleen: what is this "movement" to which you allude, the one that my opinion is supposedly driving young women away from?
You just know in the end she'll live happily ever after with her boss, who she will have changed from a dick to a prince with her ugly heart of gold. But not until she gets a makeover.
A classic Cinderella tale? It is as I feared, then. Barf.
Haven't seen the American version of Ugly Betty, but I used to watch the Colombian version from time to time to brush up on my language skills. It is, as you feared, a classic Cinderella tale.
I think Twisty's "feminism isn't fun" comment is spot on. Unless political action is fun, which I suppose it could be. The point, as you mention, is that feminism is not paying vast sums of money to conform to patriarchal ideals.
Oh, and William Shatner should totally do a cover of Rock Me Amadeus.
Since you brought up William Shatner, I feel compelled to mention his 2004 album, Has Been. It's less goofy than Tambourine Man or Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, but he still doesn't sing.
http://www.amazon.com/Has-Been-William-Shatner/dp/B0002RUPH4/sr=1-1/qid=1159663215/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3338316-7626426?ie=UTF8&s=music
The antithesis of common sense in this case would be to pretend that BUST is anything but your typical rag mag dressed up in an empowerful sports corset.
It's that quote by Deborah Stoller that makes me pull a grim face, just personally: ". . . reading BUST can help you feel good about being a girl." Point one: I am not a "girl," nor have I been for almost 20 years now. Point two: If I need to buy shit merely to feel good about being the sex I am, then clearly there's a problem beyond the ability of Marcia Brady hair to solve.
pxwsaBUST has often been disappointing. I prefer Bitch magazine. and point taken about the "girl!" crap; still, it does have a certain erm demographic as its target, i expect.
I haven't read it in a while, but I also had the impression that it used to be better, and that it's been gradually but inexorably sliding toward the vapid-er end of the scale over the years. I could be wrong.
I think that there's a fine line to walk between everything-has-a-price-tag-and-that's-just-swell! and Renounce All Such Frivolities In the Name of the Righteous. Both extremes have their roots in our common Puritan ancestry, funnily enough.
I think there is nothing wrong with materialism in the *real* sense: wanting to live well on this our material plane (good food, good wine, good fucking, basic needs and maybe even a bit of luxury and aesthetic pleasure). The problem is that a lot of what we collectively think of as "materialism" actually isn't. It becomes symbolic for something else. Status. Power. Something even more ineffable than that, perhaps, sometimes. As such, it doesn't work. Which is why it's never enough.
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