misogyny

WTF? Women: How to Survive 101 of the Worst F*#-ing Situations With the Ladies

gita — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

The first time I flipped through this book, I felt like throwing it in the trash. The humor is crude and the tone misogynistic. But then I sat down and read it more carefully (not that it necessarily requires a careful reading). And I discovered that reading it was a lot like watching the performance of a stand-up comedian. Turns out that's not coincidental, since the creator of the WTF? series actually is a stand-up comedian out of LA, as is his co-author.

I'm not a man-hating feminist. But if I took this book seriously, I'd probably turn into one. Men aren't exactly depicted in the most flattering light. Fortunately, you don't have to take it seriously. And if you're an adolescent boy I think you would find it hilarious.

The 101 situations that are depicted in this book progress through the life cycle of a relationship: from being too shy to approach girls to what to do about sex if you're a senior citizen. After each situation is described, the reader is given several options to choose from for how to deal with it. For instance, #15 is “Dating a Virgin” and the options are: 1) embrace it; 2) run; and 3) sell her because virgins are in demand.

I think there's a lot of honesty in this book about how men do feel about women. But there's also a lot of satire, exaggeration and just plain poor taste. The vocabulary used comes right out of a porn film. If I give the authors the benefit of the doubt, I would characterize the book as a tongue-in-cheek look at male-female interactions. I would even go so far as to say that it says a lot (beneath the jokes) about how clueless and frustrated men are when it comes to the opposite sex. But for those who don't have a sense of humor, it's going to come across as a manual for how to treat women like bitches and sex objects.

That's why you should be careful who you buy this book for. It would be great as a gag gift at a bachelor's party, or as an addition to your bathroom library. But I would definitely hide it from your mother.

Written by: Ellen Keim, March 12th 2011

Nirvana of Pussy: A Conversation with Tucker Max

brittany — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Tucker Max

All I wanted to know was if Tucker Max was for real. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, he is. Explaining that if he has learned anything over the past five years, it is that people are fucking stupid, clearly the infamous Tucker Max was extraordinarily candid when we talked about his new book Assholes Finish First. His candor was particularly astounding, as he knew I was a writer for Elevate Difference, a site with a mission to advance political and social justice, while Max is embodiment of all things politically incorrect. He is particularly known throughout the feminist community for his drunken antics with women, which I personally believe have been consistently misconstrued, and this was my chance to find out if I was right.

Perhaps it was the simple fact that I was dared to read Max’s first book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell that so quickly brought me into his fold, or the fact that reading it made me feel like a subversive sex-positive feminist. More than anything, it was my curiosity about the man behind the controversial books that made this book reviewer seek out the infamous sex writer.

Speaking on the phone, before I even got through my introduction, Max jumped in to explain that his work is not a commentary on male sexuality, but simply writing about his real life. He is a man with some seemingly outrageous stories to tell and us aspiring sexologists should make no further assumptions. Fair enough.

Max believes that we are a society still “too prudish and buttoned-up” to teach sex education properly. He quickly conceded that the next generation of sex ed will largely center on porn and work like his own, and even Tucker Max finds this “shameful.” The fact that anyone is learning about sex from his books and not from school or their parents is truly shocking. Thankfully (or not), virgins across America are turning to Tucker Max for their intellectual and physical sexual education. The fact that thirty-year-olds with no sexual experience and barely-eighteen-year-olds all reach out to him as a sexual celebrity and a familiar person to take their virginity—literally—is surprising, even to Tucker.

Assholes Finish First is Max’s follow-up to the best-selling I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and it takes so-called “fratire” to a new level. Dividing the book into his pre- and post-fame lives—a decision that emerged as he was writing and friends (the familiar Nils and Bunny to fans) noted a clearly different tenor between these stories—gives a new richness to his work. Because these are tales from only one man, the juxtaposition honestly showcases how fame can change one’s life, especially when compared with examples of other celebrity works.

The book’s bonus section contains stories from the women Max has slept with, written from their own perspectives. He knew this would appeal to his female audience—about half his readership. It also gives a different level of credence to his body of work, because as readers we finally get to hear someone else’s side of his stories—something I wondered a lot about and am sure others have as well. Oddly enough, the accounts from both sides line up more often than not.

What is most striking to me in his post-fame stories is Max’s cognizance about the state of his own life. Most people don’t spend their days writing about themselves; they don’t have that kind of time for self-reflection. Max takes this opportunity and really looks at himself as an outsider. He is in the midst of the common transition from playboy to family man but often documents it as an outside observer. Perhaps most interesting, it is not his own words that encapsulate his feelings about the state of his life but those of his friend (which he does include in the book).

We talked about this quite a bit on the phone. Fame has brought him to this so-called “nirvana of pussy.” The ladies come to him, and they come in droves. What he emphasized was how his life is in transition, from living out his teenage dreams of endless sexual conquests to his adult aspirations for a relationship. He stated outright that, “I don’t know how to live a committed, monogamous relationship, but I want to. Living the life every nineteen-year-old guy wants,” he told me he is now “moving out of it...not fully in either phase.”

More striking was the confession that this “nirvana of pussy” was the “complete opposite” of what he expected. Max’s lesson is an obvious but universal one, even in a book about gratuitous sex: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. He qualified this, saying that it would be “totally disingenuous” to whine about it now. This is what he wanted. The fact that the lived reality was not the same as the dream is a fact of life that needs to be swallowed hard.

After I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell sold over 1.5 million copies, he had unique creative freedom with editors and publishers on the second book, Assholes Finish First. This was why he felt he could include abortion so explicitly, even using the phrase “baby killer.” Though he did not appreciate my take that his story about unintended pregnancy is a PSA for condom use, he did agree he was more actively spelling out advice in his vignette than he usually does. “[I’m] so tired of idiots taking the wrong thing out of what I write,” he said. Lots of sex does not mean lots of unsafe sex. It just means lots of sex.

A big secret: He can quote Betty Freidan. Under her definition, Max is a self-declared feminist. So why the incessant anger from the feminist community? He believes he is often labeled a misogynist because he doesn’t worship all things female. He also thinks “extremeophiles,” those who see all porn as rape, had a large role in much of this labeling. Max estimates that twenty-five percent of his readership is comprised of self-identified feminists, with women as half of his overall readership.

To him, the reality is that that he “makes fun of people,” at-large. Not women, not men, just people that he thinks suck. “Sometimes a woman can be a bitch or a guy can be a shithead, [and they] need [to be called out],” he told me. According to Max, calling someone a slut has nothing to do with his or her sexual experience. It is the power of the label itself. When he’s using such a label, he doesn’t know the reality of that individual’s life. He’s doing it just to get a rise out of someone, because he can.

His most vehement reaction to my series of questions on feminism was around what I see as a common thread in his books, the Madonna-whore dichotomy. Max sees the entire dichotomy as “bullshit” and says it just doesn’t apply to his work.

As our conversation wound down, we talked about his wide readership. Ranging from sixteen-year-olds, who view him as a demigod, to fifty-year-olds reliving their glory days, what makes Tucker Max so appealing? In his eyes, he is simply “objectively funny [and] painfully, authentically raw,” something we don’t see much in media, if at all. He “exists outside the machine.” It shows.

The book launch I attended was at a West Village dive bar, up the stairs in the back, and totally public. Max has no sanctioned book reviews on the jacket of a follow-up to a New York Times bestseller. His Cinderella tale of success—of having his manuscript rejected by every publisher, to building an audience through his blog, and gaining the leverage to write the exact book he wanted—was one of the first, though in the blog-to-book world, has become commonplace. Central to his wide readership, he claims, is his balance between self-indulgence and corporate appeal. He is attempting to create the best art that he can while resonating with his wide audience. Yes, Assholes Finish First is art.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 16th 2010

The Killer Inside Me

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Michael Winterbottom

IFC Films

The song "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" sums up all Jim Thompson’s oeuvre. When he wrote his novels (mostly in the '50s) they were rightly regarded as violent misogynist twaddle. It was only after his death that certain misguided critics mistook his nihilistic, bad-day-at-the-abattoir style for art. Thompson’s writing has all the literary merit of pissing your name in snow. Like Mickey Spillane, he saw two kinds of people in the world: bad men and the women who love them. The mistake director Michael Winterbottom makes in his new adaptation of The Killer Inside Me is to believe Thompson’s worldview teaches us anything apart from bad taste.

In a dusty, nowhere little town in Texas, a young sheriff likes to beat women. He was raised to be bad, by his no-good daddy and his paedophile half-brother. Even his babysitter was a sadomasochist. Now, cloaked by his badge of office and spurred-on by legal impunity, he plots the death of a rich boy who manslaughtered his sibling. Since we’re in Jim Thompson-country, he can’t just kill the rich boy, of course. He must kill a few chicks along the way (because he’s bad and women want him, badly). He’s got two women in his life: a good girl and a whore (one girl, if you read Freud). They both worship him enough to inspire hate, and to turn him on to murder.

I shut my eyes when Casey Affleck beat Jessica Alba to death. Even listening for a minute was tough. This scene, which has stirred the critical backlash against the movie, is true to Jim Thompson’s lurid vision, but watching it doesn’t tell us much. In interviews, Michael Winterbottom has argued that ultra-violence is moral, because it’s unattractive to most people. The trouble is: it’s only unattractive to moral people. (Wife-beaters love watching women get punched in the face.) Does Winterbottom think we’re under some illusion about what beating a woman to death looks like? Jim Thompson wasn’t a feminist, for Pete’s sake. He wrote what he wrote because lurid violence sells. His work only seems insightful because psychos have so few thoughts. Pity the man who wants to see women battered.

As the sheriff, Casey Affleck has a coward’s smile. His signature look—like Ben Affleck if he’d killed somebody—is used to good effect here. He’s got eyes that seem to die on people. His voice is permanently curled into his throat, waiting to be kicked. Everything about him is wounded. Unfortunate women think he’s “vulnerable.” Men mistake him for a servant. But both ways of seeing him look like weakness from his point of view. His wounds aren’t there to be healed, or to be used against him. He’s long past that. His wounds are, in fact, the only reminder there is that he was once a child. For him, feelings are what he fakes, the way a hunter baits a trap.

There’s no such complexity to the women’s roles. (The old action movie maxim: “Any woman is superfluous to the plot unless naked or dead” was probably invented by Jim Thompson.) Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson do their best, but their roles are pretty much confined to the bedroom (or the grave). They are the women who’d sing "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)". Every woman in Jim Thompson’s fiction has a taste for male dominance and bloodshed disguised as sex. The only difference between a murder scene and a sex scene for Thompson is that his killers actually enjoy murder. Sex might be hot for these guys, but it’s always foreplay to death.

There is an audience for this kind of thing. In the '50s—hell, for most of human history—men wrote violent misogynist twaddle, and people lapped it up. As in rap lyrics today, there’s a supposed authenticity in boy-on-girl spite. But woman-haters are all liars. And not even interesting liars at that. Misogyny is the thinnest veil for self-doubt. Women are everywhere, after all. How big a man’s fears have to be to encompass an entire sex! (So big they dwarf him.) The makers of The Killer Inside Me know their anti-hero is a personality void, so they accentuate violence, like real misogynists. This can’t hide the littleness of the man, or how empty the movie is.

Cross-posted at Movie Waffle

Written by: James Tatham, June 12th 2010

The Pregnant Widow

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:01:00 +0000

By Martin Amis

Knopf

I’m so upset that I’m not at Hay Festival right now. Because the lineup looks phenomenal. Not only is Stephen Fry doing a talk, but Zadie Smith and Martin Amis are both on the lineup. Now, Smith is awesome for all sorts of reasons, and, coincidentally, I actually read White Teeth at Hay Festival last year. But this year I’d be more interested in seeing Amis—which is surprising given that he is a grumpy old man with a penchant for misogyny. Or so the legend goes. He, in fact, denies this claim, and tells us that his book, The Pregnant Widow, is "very feminist"—although he admits it will get him in trouble.

Indeed, it has not been received particularly well from the lovely group of people at BBC 2's The Review Show. Supposedly about the feminist revolution and the destruction that it wreaked on the people who were affected by sexual liberation, I found (as, it seems, did Germaine Greer) that there was an awful lot of focus on body parts. Scheherazade has big tits. Gloria has a big arse. And Keith’s girlfriend Lily has neither. That seems to be all that matters for a lot of the book. Keith’s main mission is to sleep with as many of the girls as possible, and then (spoiler alert) he marries all of them in succession.

The characterisation of the female characters is weak. Scheherazade is a ridiculous appropriation of the "poor little rich girl" stereotype, lifted from a piece of chick lit where marriage is the only goal. (I am aware that comment is derogatory to chick lit and, as I am reading a book about that very subject at the moment, I thus present this long back-covering disclaimer.) Scheherazade is the only woman who ends up happy, because she gets married and has kids, ignoring the sexual liberation movement. Woop. Well done, girl.

Violet, however, Keith’s free-spirited sister, gets destroyed. Killed off because she has too much sex. She is apparently based on Amis’ own sister, Sally, whom he is convinced was killed by her promiscuity, or some other such ridiculous reason. Maybe it had actually nothing to do with feminism, and neither does the demise of Violet, who appears to have mental health issues and is dire need of help. That is why she dies—not because feminists allowed women their sexual agency and made it less (not completely) shameful to have sex as a woman.

Keith is an overly whiny character. He needs to get some courage and just deal with his issues. He always seems to want to blame someone else for his own failings in life—and it’s irritating. He is not a lovable character and, quite honestly, I’m not rooting for him for most of the novel. Or any of it, actually.

Despite all this, and despite Amis’ desire to elevate his own (or Keith’s own, although it’s supposed to be semi-autobiographical) struggle to a higher level by associating it with 1970s feminism, I really enjoyed The Pregnant Widow. The personal is not always political, which I think Amis might need to think about before he tries this sort of thing again, and despite it making me angry every now and again (particularly the pretentiousness of Keith’s character), I liked it.

The Pregnant Widow is evocative, well-written, and clever, and the story is enjoyable. (Although I do feel it tapers out a bit when we get into serious mid-life crisis territory.) It’s not the usual "zOMG look how postmodern I am" offering from Amis, and I really liked it. Maybe even loved it.

Written by: Amy Elizabeth Richards, June 11th 2010

Iron Man 2

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:17:00 +0000

Directed by Jon Favreau

Paramount Pictures

Before Iron Man hit theatres in 2008, most of us thought of Jon Favreau as the guy who was so money, baby—and he didn't even know it. Critics and audiences expected little from yet another Marvel Comic-inspired film. So when director Favreau delivered an entertaining film with tons of personality (mostly in the form of the amazing Robert Downey Jr.), it was an underdog smash. And what should logically follow an over-performing film (or an under-performing one, for that matter) but a sequel?

Iron Man 2 reintroduces weapons contractor and physicist extraordinaire Tony Stark as the unmasked Iron Man, combating politicians who want Stark to share his Iron Man technology with the U.S. government for security. There's plenty to glean about private property rights and government corruption in this conflict, but you'll have to visit some other blog to satisfy your government paranoia.

While Stark tries to keep his intellectual property out of U.S. government's and the military's hands, he's also contending with an old, Russian grudge-holder (Mickey Rourke), a suspicious but ogle-worthy new executive assistant (Scarlett Johansson), and his ever-nagging, inexplicable love interest Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). All the while, he's scrambling to find the combination of elements that will power his suit and his heart without slowly poisoning his blood.

There are plenty of feminist elements at play here. First, we deal with the Pepper problem. The original film featured the frigid and nagging yet doggedly loyal Pepper Pots in a supportive role to the womanizing and sarcastic Tony. The only thing that really distinguished her was that she slut-shames the women Tony sleeps with, and Paltrow looks bad in bangs. In the sequel, Tony promotes her to CEO of his company on a whim. Although she faces major scrutiny for her complete lack of experience, she deftly handles the company's affairs in a turbulent time. Unfortunately, Pepper's main purpose here is still to hurl more insults at the reporter Tony slept with in the first film (Leslie Bibb), whose investigation played a key role in the plot, and glare at the new women Tony wants to sleep with: Natalie Rushman. After Tony meets Natalie for the first time, he declares, "I want one."

For her part, Natalie could have been the classic femme fatale. Her character is smart, accomplished, all business, and completely badass. She's an excellent employee, and although Tony attempts to play Pepper and Natalie off each other in a competition of feminine wiles, Natalie doesn't seem interested in anything but getting the job done, even in spite of Tony's constant sexual harassment. The two women do briefly talk to each other about something other than a man a time or two, so Iron Man 2 does (barely) pass the Bechdel Test.

However, these two female characters face some sexism individually, in addition to some more general woman-hating. At one point, the leader of the secret 'good guys club' (Samuel L. Jackson) uses the fact that Tony "made a girl your CEO" to prove that he is going off the deep end. (The other reason was that he got drunk, and basically destroyed his house with his Iron Man suit.) The problem isn't that Pepper has no experience leading a multi-billion dollar company or that she doesn't have the necessary leadership style, it's that she's a "girl." (Although Pepper's age isn't specified, Paltrow is 38-years-old, by the way; she is hardly a girl.) Apparently it's just as stupid to hire a 'girl' to be a CEO as it is to basically drunk-drive a weaponized suit around dozens of party guests.

In another scene, creepy contractor Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) asks his colleagues to get "these bitches out of here" when Pepper and Natalie take over the reins of Hammer's weapons demonstration that turned deadly. Luckily for my temper, Natalie puts him in a headlock moments later, and the two women clean up his mess before Pepper has him arrested.

Finally, in a well-trodden cheap shot at married women (oh, what ballbusting harpies we are), Hammer describes the potential for utter devastation held by a missile he's selling to the U.S. Air Force. What does he dub this harbinger of death? The Ex-Wife.

There's more to say, especially about Pepper and Tony's fraught and completely uninteresting flirtation (I know how to shut her up: I'll kiss her), but I've hit on the main points: slut-shaming, sexual harassment, girls are stupid, girls are bitches, and marriage sucks the life out of men. Thanks for making analysis so simple, Iron Man 2.

Yes, it's possible to like a movie and still deplore its messaging on women. But be aware of what you're watching.

Written by: Hannah Moulton Belec, May 13th 2010

44 Inch Chest

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Directed by Malcolm Venville

Image Entertainment

Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone) is a pot-bellied British gangster happily married to Liz, his wife of twenty-one years (Joanne Whalley). The problem is she’s not happily married to him. When Liz tells Colin she’s leaving him for a lover, he slides from incredulity to rage. Marital delusions wrecked, he resorts to gangster methodology. He assaults his wife (mostly off-screen) to get the lothario’s name—a studly French waiter (Melvil Poupaud).

Colin has a four-man crew with whom he toils at their underworld trade. Meredith (Ian McShane), Archie (Tom Wilkinson), Mal (Stephen Dillane), and Old Man Peanut (John Hurt) comprise the crew. The five men kidnap Liz’s lover and spirit him blindfolded to an abandoned building in some skanky corner of London. After severely beating the Frenchman (also off-screen), the men stuff him in an armoire (hence the film’s title).

As night passes in this lonely place, the crew decries Liz’s infidelity and assuages Colin’s wounded ego. Much of their embittered talk insists on the holiness of marriage and the treason of adultery. As they prattle on, the film feels somewhat like a bizarre, kvetching men’s group. This lends a comic edge to the proceedings—despite the kidnapping, hallucinatory episodes interspersed with realist scenes, and threat of imminent murder.

44 Inch Chest has received positive notices. Reviewers have praised its sharp, plentiful dialogue (in strong British accents), and fine acting. The script is by the duo who penned Sexy Beast, a superior gangster film from ten years back in which Winstone also starred and Ben Kingsley played the scary villain. The dialogue and acting in this new film are, indeed, superb; however, the ending has been described as weak, limp, and anti-climactic.

I beg to differ with this judgment on the last ten minutes of the film. On the surface, 44 Inch Chest seems to be a revenge narrative and gangster piece—both of which demand a boffo finale—and this doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen because whatever its genre tendencies, this movie is not about underworld types locked in mortal combat. Rather, 44 Inch Chest is an exposé of misogyny, homophobia, and machismo. This makes the film a rara avis in the history of cinema.

Colin and his crew make much of marriage and the sacred bonds between men and women. They ground their intent to murder Liz’s lover in his betrayal of marriage and the sentiments upon which marriage is founded. As the film progresses, though, we discover that only Colin and Old Man Peanut, who has a history of spousal abuse, are married. Archie lives with his mother, Meredith is a gay man who prefers emotionless sex, and Mal would like to bed Liz—the very reason the waiter may be killed. All the crew betray themselves as violent hypocrites and sanctimonious egocentrics.

In Lady Chatterly’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence set about to liberate the c-word by using it in a context of love and sensuality (the c-word derives from cunnus, Latin for “nest,” a lovely etymology). These gangsters employ the c-word to describe each other and other men. The epithet occurs so many times, and always in a degrading and violent way, that its effect and meaning grows and compounds. While spouting their clichés about love and marriage, these men actually seem to hate vaginas and the women attached to them.

The triumph of 44 Inch Chest lies in its revealing of the misogyny and machismo that can lie beneath the surface of men’s attitudes. Apart from its considerable artistic triumphs, the film deserves to be seen for this reason alone. As to that ending, it’s perfect: surprisingly compassionate considering all that has gone before and optimistic about the ability of humans to change.

Written by: Neil Flowers, January 27th 2010

The Woman In The Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory

admin — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:35:00 +0000

By Catherine S. Ramirez

Duke University Press

I have always associated the zoot suit with Cab Calloway and the big band, jazz, and swing era. Never did it occur to me that this type of suit would be the focal point of a movement or two, faceously put. I also thought the trend of wearing loose clothing, as an act of rebellion, was taken from the prison population in which the usage of belts was not allowed. Little did I know how central it was to the Mexican American identity, from the 1930s leading up to the Chicano movement.

Catherine S. Ramirez’ The Woman in the Zoot Suit, brings the reader to another place in American history that leaves us to question, yet again, who we chose to leave out, as valuable contributors to this heterogeneous anomaly we call a country. Pachucas and Pachucos were Mexican American women and men, respectively, who wore zoot suits during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as part of the Pachuquismo subculture.

For the Pachuca, the zoot suit was a central part of the subculture and consisted of a cardigan or V-neck sweater, pleated skirt, fishnet stockings, platform heels, dark lipstick, and foam inserts to lift the hair into a high bouffant. They were often second-generation children of Mexicans who immigrated to the United States, during World War II, to find work, education, and better lives for themselves and their families. Many Mexican American youths around that time were not part of the Pachuquismo subculture, but readily identified with the ideals of a rejection of the racism, classicism, and sexism perpetrated against them. In a way, Pachucas were considered as much outsiders as the aforementioned because of history’s neglect to include them in such an integral part of the Mexican American history they helped create.

Ramirez explains how the Sleepy Lagoon incident (which is, by itself, necessary of further research) and the Zoot Suit Riots thrust the Pachuca into the search for an identity within her own culture. Pachucas were forced between the rock of an outside prejudice, and a hard place that came in the form of a prejudice within the subculture they could most easily identify with. In a subculture in which they could contribute the most, they were often relegated to the forgotten, because of the role they were expected to fill as the quiet, unassuming Mexican housewife and mother.

Ramirez presents the unique history of the Mexican American Pachuca, whose situation takes into account the religious, gender, and non-U.S.-born ramifications that they inherited. Not only did they have to fight against the politics of a racist, sexist society alongside the Pachucos, but they also had to fight the misogynistic politics of their brethren from within. Ramirez presents a well documented and informative work on the Pachuca, thus helping to bring us out of our culturally-induced slumber.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, May 22nd 2009

Misogyny and the Emcee: Sex, Race, and Hip Hop

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:42:00 +0000

By Ewuare X. Osayande

Machete Media

In light of recent events, when speaking about the state of misogyny in hip-hop, it would be inappropriate to ignore the media frenzy surrounding Rihanna and Chris Brown, each sweetly young, fabulously charming, and wildly successful hip-hop stars in their own right. If you don’t read the CNN ticker, or guiltily sneak a peek at People.com, you could have missed the news that Brown allegedly assaulted his girlfriend the night before the Grammys. Likely, if you absorb media along a spectrum, you’ve heard about everything from the couple’s post-fight rendezvous at Diddy’s Miami condo to teen girls who remain steadfast in their Chris Brown devotion. You may have even seen that heartbreaking photo of Rihanna’s battered face.

Writer and cultural analyst Ewuare X. Osayande begins his brilliantly concise collection of essays by dissecting another high profile case of a badly behaving hip-hopper: R. Kelly. Kelly’s progression (and Brown’s accelerated one) is all too common among young Black rappers, who go from lyrically degrading women to—in Kelly’s case—actually peeing on them. The original proceedings against Kelly were not so much about whether he had abused a girl; his defense aimed to prove she was eighteen at the time of the encounter. Pissing on a woman—sickening misogyny—was not a crime as much as her potential underage (and thereby “girl”) status. Kelly, no stranger to this type of sex scandal, has yet to be found guilty in a court of law. The court of public opinion is another matter.

Throughout Misogyny and the Emcee, Osayande repeatedly asserts the most fundamental arguments for healing sexism within the Black and hip-hop communities. He argues that while many insist that discussions about specific community-based violence and degradation be silenced or ignored, the Black community’s “dirty laundry” should be aired, washed, and cleaned—or to break with the metaphor, discussed in public, critically examined, and resolved. Black men must critically challenge their violent oppression of both Black women and other Black men. Repeatedly citing bell hooks, Osayande begs Black men to answer her call: “assuming responsibility for ending [sexism]” (hooks, From Margin to Center). The call to redefine betrayal must also be heard: Black men who violate Black women, he argues, must be seen as the traitors they are. Black women are not marginal; Black women are the community.

Osayande’s short, powerful volume is polemic for good reason. Taking on the spectrum—from BET and misogynist white rappers like Eminem, to organized religious institutions that harbor similar (if more subversive) hatred for Black women and blame women’s sexuality for their supposed myriad sins—it is easy to see that corporations and legislation will do little, if anything, as long as the community remains permissive and turn a blind eye.

Most invigorating, Osayande calls for a boycott of misogynist rappers and their entertainment industry counterparts. When men degrade women and stand to profit from their actions, we should send a signal: no more. No more Academy Awards for songs about how hard it is for a pimp. No more Nelly videos featuring a man swiping a credit card down a Black woman’s ass. We can do better than that.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, April 27th 2009

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:39:00 +0000

By Siddharth Kara

Columbia University Press

Besides weapons and drugs, sex trafficking is the most profitable type of illegal trafficking in the world. In Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, Siddharth Kara takes the reader on a disturbing global tour of Coalition Against Trafficking in Womensex slavery, traveling to India, Italy, Thailand, and several other countries.

An overarching theme that Kara mentions repeatedly is the deep-rooted cultural misogyny in so many of the countries he visited. Although poverty, war and social turmoil create a fertile ground for sex trafficking, the author identifies cultural attitudes toward women as the primary reason that sex trafficking occurs. In his words: “Millions of women lived in a world that overwhelmingly disdained them."

One of the most interesting aspects of Sex Trafficking is the circumstances that led the author to write it. He first became interested in trafficking as a college student, when he spent the summer of 1994 in a Bosnian refugee camp in Slovenia and learned about the trafficking of Bosnian Muslim women. Although he has been interested in sex slavery for many years, he is not an academic, nor does he advocate for anti-trafficking work professionally. Kara is a businessman, and funded his trafficking research trips around the world using personal savings. During his research trips, Kara conducted hundreds of interviews with slaves. In order to find sex for sale, he usually talked to cab drivers, posing as an interested client. In most countries, finding cheap sex was easy, and Kara usually found conditions indicative of sex slavery where he found cheap sex. The book's revelation that legalized prostitution often acts as a cover for sex slavery was very disturbing, especially in the chapter about slavery in Amsterdam.

In one of the most devastating passages of the book, Kara locates sex slavery at a “massage parlor” in Los Angeles. The young woman he meets was trafficked from Thailand with promises of a job as a waitress. Once in the U.S., she was told that she owed $20,000 to the “massage parlor” owner she was sold to, which she would earn by having sex with several men a day. At first she refused, but was beaten and raped into submission. Most of the money she makes goes to the owner, except for a small portion that is sent to her parents. Kara offers to help the woman by calling the police, but she refuses his help because she is afraid the trafficker will hurt her parents in Thailand. The author talks about the anguish he felt about whether or not to contact the police. He ended up not doing so, but still isn’t sure if this was the right choice.

The reader might wonder if the author handles these situations in the most appropriate manner, or whether his presence makes matters worse. Although I am sure that Kara had the best intentions, I have to wonder about the ethical limits of this type of research. At times he puts himself, and possibly the women he interacts with, in dangerous situations. He is essentially powerless to help the women that he comes into contact with, other than giving them educational pamphlets or phone numbers for shelters.

Kara describes the way that the industry operates, explaining that money is the prime motivator for sex trafficking, which is dominated more and more by organized crime rings and networks of corrupt public officials who can be bought off. Using economic theory, he argues that the best way to shut down the industry is to make sex trafficking less profitable.

Sex Trafficking paints a very bleak picture of the status of women globally, particularly for women from poor countries. Urgent action is required to end sex slavery, and my hope is that people who read this book will be moved to action.

Written by: Liz Simmons, April 21st 2009

Strange Piece of Paradise

admin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:05:00 +0000

By Terri Jentz

Picador

When I picked up this memoir in early July, I was expecting to navigate a woman’s difficult journey from surviving a brutal, anonymous trauma into an enlightened state through making peace with the crime scene and its effected community. What I did not anticipate was the systemic analysis of social problems, personal depth and conscious processing that this book contains. Trying to describe Jentz’s words with my own feels trite and insulting, but because this is one of the most important books I’ve ever read, I owe this story’s survivor that much.

On a summer bicycle trip across the country in 1977, Jentz, along with her traveling companion and college roommate, were attacked by an axe-wielding cowboy in an Oregon park. Surviving the attack with only large laceration scars on her arm as physical proof, Jentz and her friend were shuttled home and the case was never solved (those two details are somewhat unrelated). After long years of unprocessed traumatic grief and anger took their toll, Jentz decided the only way to attain peace was to retrace her steps, solve her own attempted murder and confront the community that was left in the wake of her personal tragedy.

But in addition to Jentz’s own remarkable journey back to small towns in rural Oregon, she positions her passage in conjunction to problems far larger than her own. With a poignant deconstruction of misogyny—“mass psychosis in humankind everywhere that devalues women”—alongside a very revealing look at the survivor, Jentz transports you into a world where deep emotions are commonplace, tragedy touches everyone, and community is real. She also speaks to the very real anxiety many women face daily, just in living their lives, and many times, I would have to limit how much I would read in a day or week to prevent my own neurosis from overtaking me. This is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to the depth and breadth of Jentz’s work. Collective consciousness should be forced to bear the weight of women’s fears in a way it currently does not, and by communing with this story of total reclamation and survival, I felt less alone in a world that doesn’t yet morally or legally protect us.

Often left speechless when trying to summarize Strange Piece of Paradise, this is one of the best books of my lifetime. Terri Jentz’s reflexive, powerful words can be retraumatizing at time, but I’ve never felt safer putting my own experience within the context of someone else’s. May her words travel as far as she has.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, October 2nd 2007

Girls in Trouble with the Law

admin — Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

By Laurie Schaffner

Rutgers University Press

“I was like four or six when my babysitter molested me... I would just freeze... Like I thought if I froze it would not have happened.”

This 16-year-old girl’s memory is an all too familiar one for Laurie Schaffner. Her multi-year, qualitative study of girls involved in the juvenile corrections system, Girls in Trouble with the Law, quickly revealed that virtually all of the girls interviewed had witnessed or experienced some form of violence, abuse, or neglect—trauma that can be directly linked to girls’ later lawbreaking, Schaffner argues.

Employing a self-described “feminist sociology,” Schaffner seeks to give voice to a largely-invisible population of detained girls, interspersing their accounts of the abuse in their lives and experiences within the legal system with vastly informative analysis on the various processes at work in these girls’ lives. Schaffner’s interviewees, like all American girls and women, were affected by a hyper-sexualized, consumerist culture thriving on the eroticization of young women. Often living in “empty families” where abuse and neglect were commonplace, the girls also dealt variously with poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia and a lack of quality education and emotional support.

Scaffner also examines the rise in violent crime among girls, an inevitable outcome of living in violent environments according to the girls in the study, but often characterized by others as a violation of conventional norms of femininity. “A dramatic amount of resistance, rebellion, and rage had developed among girls in trouble,” Schaffner writes, concluding that the violence the young women perpetrated was a type of “power of the powerless.”

The immense amount of sadness in these girls’ lives was overwhelming. They had no time, energy or resources for grieving after they had been raped, witnessed the beating of a mother or lost custody of their child. Many of them had much-older boyfriends, were forced to parent their own parents, experienced sexual harassment at school and in their communities and echoed a culturally-constructed attitude of misogyny toward other girls.

What at first glance seemed to be a dense, academic work was actually very readable, incorporating detained girls’ artwork and poetry with Schaffner’s convincing arguments on behalf of troubled young women. Schaffner’s work is honest and focused, and immensely enlightening to those who are not daily faced with the same struggles as these girls on the margins.

Written by: Anne Wilmoth, May 15th 2007