Women As Bodies

Or, as objects. Bodies as Objects? I don't know. But consider this the start of a new series, one where I put concrete examples to my assessment of women being seen primarily as bodies. Whether or not I'll keep up with it is anyone's guess.

(h/t Shakesville)

Street Harassment

I don't make eye contact with people I don't know. At least, I try really hard not to. About a month and a half ago, I was at a club/bar with two friends of mine, accidentally met eyes with a guy as I scanned the crowd, and then looked away. I was drunk, and didn't quite realize what was happening when he took hold of my arm and started pulling me toward the exit. I couldn't pull myself out of his grip. Nor could my friends hear me when I cried out, owing to the fact that the band we were there to see was playing. I managed to whack at my sober friend's arm, who had the presence of mind to grab me. What ensued was a short tug of war, and that ended with my head slamming into the bar and my friend's victory. That, in short, is why I tend not to make eye contact with people I don't know.

I stopped making eye contact with people when I started realizing that eye contact initiated comments. I realized that the same tactic my father taught me when I was little of not making contact with pamphleteers and crazy people worked, about 50% of the time, for men. Normally, men don't try to grab me and cart me away when eye contact occurs (though the bar scene wasn't the first time that has happened, and it probably won't be the last); but the comments eye contact started to elicit when I was about 12 haven't exactly been pleasant.

Twelve was how old I was the first time I was cat called. I remember it vividly. I was walking downtown to the library to drop off some books and pick up some new ones. I was walking past the soft serve ice cream shop, and a guy in a pick up truck asked if I wanted to suck his dick. I really didn't.

I also didn't go anywhere alone again that summer. If I wanted to go to the library, I bribed one of my friends into walking with me or I waited until someone could drive me. The next summer, I biked more. But that didn't stop passersby from honking or shouting at me, and I still preferred to go places in tandem.

Going somewhere with someone else, by the way, doesn't stop street harassment. My walking/biking companion didn't stop the honks, the shouts, the "hey baby"s, the requests that I sit on, suck, lick, "take", fuck, etc. guys' dicks. What it did do was provide another warrior. It allowed for a better sense of bravado. It took away some of the vulnerability.

Just this weekend, I was Hey Baby'd while I was out with a friend. On the scale of cat calling, this was admittedly low. However, my friend was seemingly horrified, and said the guy was creepy. "No", I corrected him. "That guy's a creep. He's not creepy."

I've dealt with creepy. Creepy doesn't shout "Hey, baby" from 5 feet away. Creepy is the security systems guy who gave me a slow thrice over and then leaned way in to ask my chest if I was the new secretary. Creepy is the old man who asked me to teach him how to dance, and who, after I refused, continued to come around to dance with me and my friends, and then leaned in to tell me that I looked sad and should try to smile more. Creepy is the guy at the bar who grabbed me. Creepy is the guy who pulled me around the video store when I was 14, talking to me about his ex-girlfriend and trying to get me further and further to the back of the store (in that instance, I nearly garroted my best friend with her hoodie in my insistence she not leave me alone with Creepy 20-Something). Creepy is the guys who come up to me and make sexual comments when I'm trying to pump my gas.

When I first heard of Rape Culture, probably early on in college, I was put off. "I'm not one of those feminists", I thought. "That kind of thing is what gives feminism a bad name." But more and more, it occurs to me that the changes I make in my behavior in order to not be cat called, to not be subjected to dehumanizing harassment, is a product of a culture that does make it so men can ask 12 year olds, jokingly or not, to suck their dicks.

It means I try not to wear skirts if I know I need to get gas. It means I try to get the pump closest to the convenience store when I do get gas, and that I try to get fill up my tank in the morning before work rather than in the evening after work. It means that I don't make eye contact with people, and don't go out alone very much. It means that I've developed a 'radar' for 'sussing out who is creepy and who is just a creep. Admittedly, as evidenced by Bar Guy, the radar is more of a coping mechanism than any true method of discerning who may be an actual threat and who isn't.

I'm lucky in that I haven't been subject to anything worse than street harassment. I'm lucky that, aside from the odd grope, my physical person has never been truly violated. But that doesn't meant that street harassment isn't a Big Problem. For me, and for others.

Probably the worst thing about it is the fact that it is so prevalent I don't truly notice the minor stuff anymore. Stuff that would have freaked out 12 year old me now doesn't make a dent unless someone else points it out - like the "Hey baby". Without my friend being there and reacting -reacting the way I used to react, the way I wish I would still be able to react - I probably wouldn't have acknowledged it. It would have just flown right over my head, and it wouldn't have sparked this post. I've become desensitized to it; I've become desensitized to the fact that men - not all of them, but more than enough of them - think that I'm in some way public property; that as public property, I can be commented on and touched. And I shouldn't be. I shouldn't be desensitized to it, and I certainly shouldn't be subjected to 'hey baby' or anything else. Because, hey, it does lend to an atmosphere of fear. It does lend to the feeling that the public sphere is still not a safe place for women - for me. It does lend to feeling humiliated, feeling small, and feeling vulnerable.

There have been times I've been tempted to yell back, to do something - anything. But I stop. Because the last thing I want is an angry man on my hands who can actually take things further than a "Wanna take a ride on my dick?", who can actually, you know, press the dick-riding issue. And that just adds to everything else, because it creates a feeling of impotency, along with an actual need for someone else to be there in that space with you, to bear witness to the attack (verbal, physical) and to offer a bit more security against a possible escalation. What street harassment does, aside from leaving me off-balance, is to threaten my very autonomy. So.

I don't make eye contact with strangers. I wear sunglasses. Like, all the time. I travel in twos or more. I don't wear skirts often if I'm out alone. I wear shoes I can run in if I'm out alone. I drive places I could easily walk to. Street harassment slowly steals from me my ability to fully be me, in public. And that's why street harassment, catcalling, whatever, is not a compliment.

Related readings:

Walking As Rebellion?

Walking As Rebellion? A Follow Up

catcalled

HollaBack Connecticut

Seriously, aren't we over catcalling yet?

Pixar's Up: Uproariously Funny/Infuriatingly Gendered

What can I say about Pixar's most recent offering, Up? Well, after the pure and innovative wonder of WALL•E, Up seemed almost destined to come in second. And yet, I don't think it is in Pixar's power to make a bad movie. Up, the story of Carl Fredrickson, is so moving, so powerful, so slapstick funny, so entirely different than what has preceded it, that it both fits in the pantheon of Pixar films in terms of greatness and reaches those heights independently. Just like all of the great Pixar films that came before.

I can say that Russell is the most believable kid I've ever seen in a movie. From his reason for wanting the last necessary Wilderness Explorer badge, to his complaints about how his knee hurt and how he had to go to the bathroom, Russell was a prepubescent kid. The excitability, the lack of precociousness, the poking Carl in the face when he thought Carl might be dead - all were spot on.

I can say that the twenty minute montage of Carl and Ellie's life together was perhaps the best and most moving piece of animation I have ever seen. It in and of itself could have been a Pixar short, though a rather somber one.

I can say that Carl's reactions throughout the film, from bonking that guy on the head to his obsession with his mailbox to talking to his house as if Ellie were still in it to kissing Ellie's picture, were achingly, heartbreakingly realistic.

I can say that Dug the Dog was an awesome addition to the movie.

I can say that I would watch this movie perhaps more than any other Disney or Pixar film - if it weren't for Dory's "I wish I could speak whale" moment in Finding Nemo.

And yet. And yet there is the "girl problem". I've posted about this before, after WALL•E came out. But Up continues to highlight the problems I've had with Pixar films - and in ways, it goes farther toward making it worse, to making it less female-friendly.

Like, Ellie gets a couple of lines in the beginning of the film when she's a kid, and then is silenced by the (again, thoroughly beautiful and moving) 20 minute montage, a montage that ends with her death. Young Ellie, for all of her 5 minutes on screen, is the only actual speaking role a main female character, partially because there is only one other main female character. And that's a bird. Named Kevin. I've probably posted before about my dislike of boys' names for girls in movies and television shows. Which I was fine with for quite a while. My antipathy for that particular practice didn't develop until I heard Bryan Fuller talk about how giving girls boys' names made them easier for him to write, that it was hard for him to write a 'girl' character. Then I had a bit of a lightbulb moment.

The lightbulb moment is this: "characters" are easy to write. "Girl characters" are not. A film about someone bringing his house to Paradise Falls and having a young stowaway who only wants his Wilderness badge is a film the Pixar people can write. A film where a girl does the same thing is not.

In many of the other blog posts about gender issues in Pixar films floating around the feminist ether, some commenter inevitably makes the point that Pixar isn't the only film studio almost exclusively living in Boysville. And that's true, but that (a) doesn't really absolve Pixar, and (b) only demonstrates exactly how prevalent this problem really is - which just reinforces the point that this is a bad and deserves to be addressed. However, the reason I'm picking on Pixar is because the films they make are so imaginative, so talented, so brilliant, so emotionally resonant, that it is all the more disappointing when they either can't or won't write a film with a main character who is a woman - and who isn't a princess. Pixar movies about boys can be chef-rats and toys and superheroes and fish and cars and old men. Pixar movies about girls - the one Pixar movie in the works about a girl - is about a princess. The juxtaposition the complex imaginings of the Pixar oeuvre with the seeming inability to imagine where women and girls fit as individual characters within that oeuvre is profoundly depressing. It is depressing because I believe if ever there was a studio that has the ability to create a universal story with a female protagonist, Pixar is that studio. It is depressing because these are children's films that continually privilege boys, making them the centers of each individual universe, and thus reinforce the idea of Male as default and Female as the other. It reinforces the idea of Woman being the Second Sex.

The Mad Typist has a run down of Pixar films and grades them accordingly in terms of how the women are portrayed, and FilthyGrandeur has another run down of the Pixar dilemma. And again, the problem isn't the films individually. It is incredibly easy to defend the decision to make a film about Flick, or Buzz and Woody, or Bob Parr, or Marlin and Nemo, or Carl and Russell, or Lightening McQueen, or Remy, or Sulley and Mike, or WALL•E. Each individual movie is great. Each individual movie can be rationalized. It is when all of the movies are taken as a group that the issue emerges. Out of the 10 movies that have been released, not one of them features a female protagonist. If we add the 3 movies in some form of production, the average goes to 1 out of 13 movies features a female protagonist. Meanwhile, one is about a newt named "Newt", which just goes further to reinforce that "male as default" thing.

Pixar, because of the power the studio commands, because of the audience their films attract (like, young ones), because of the fact that women make up more than 1/13 of the world population, need to engage in some serious corrective measures. Because as much as I love Pixar, it cuts to consistently see my gender underrepresented or outright erased from the films I pay to see. It hurts to have my gender consistently portrayed as "love interest" or "sidekick" - or both in one character. And to be perfectly frank, it's kind of pissing me off that after the wondrous ingenuity of rats who want to cook and toys who are alive (in a noncreepy way) and old men dealing with grief and life's disappointments, girls once again get the princess crap. As if "Princess" is an underrepresented genre of film for girls. As if "Princess" isn't a problematic description for little girls, if for no other reason than most little girls won't ever be one - because "princess" is something one is and not something one can work at becoming. As Monique Fields said regarding Disney's The Princess and the Frog,

Some little girls are telling anyone who will listen that they want to be princesses when they grow up. If nothing else, I expect a more ambitious and attainable goal from children who haven’t yet learned to read or write.

I have faith in Pixar. I have the expectation that I'll be going to see Pixar films in the theater much more frequently than I will see any other type of movie. I anticipate that, like Linda Holmes, I will adore The Bear and the Bow. But as much as I want Pixar to recognize that there are girls in the world and we're worth their attention, I'd also really love it if they recognized that shorthand for "girl" isn't "princess". You'd think they would have gotten that memo, after making Ellie and EVE and Violet and Dory. But apparently, they haven't yet.

Le Sigh

This is the show that has replaced my beloved Pushing Daisies:

Instead of quirky fun with the Pie Maker and Kristin Chenoweth and Chi McBride, there's yet another 'reality' show on the air. I'm kind of disgusted and appalled, and this post helps explain why.

Fringe and The Exceptional Female

I have an odd relationship with the show Fringe; I don't find it to be particularly good - or compelling. I have no real reason to like it, having never seen a full episode of either Felicity or Alias. I never watched much Dawson's Creek, so Joshua Jackson isn't as big a draw as it is for others. The dialogue is, at times, painful. The names given to the various nefarious institutions and individuals by the FBI ("The Pattern", "The Observer") are often unimaginative - and also painful. And yet, something keeps pulling me back in. I actually want to see the new episode. Not live, of course; but via Hulu, the show is palatable. It is my new guilty pleasure (my last one was Bedford Diaries, but that was pretty much summed up by the name Milo Ventimiglia). And when the main character, Olivia Dunham, was captured after a rather poor escape/fight attempt, I was prepared for it to become my former guilty pleasure. I anticipated an episode of Olivia in captivity and enduring valiantly various procedures, with her friends and colleagues desperately trying to track her down to save her at some point later on in the episode. But the show - and Olivia - surprised me. She escaped; and not far into the episode, but before the end of the teaser. She escaped, and she had the foresight to grab some evidence from the facility and bury it as well. She orchestrated her own rescue, before many people even knew anything was wrong in the first place.

That was pretty amazing to see; and the show does manage to have aspects that make it pretty good, from the "woman as main character" part of it. Olivia is confident; she is good at her job; she doesn't allow any negative perceptions of her devotion, her skill, or her person to go unchallenged. And she frequently proves that no matter what aspect of her the person in question deems unlikable or unprofessional, her methods work. She works. And she is tough; unlike the eponymous character Sarah Connor of The Sarah Connor Chronicles (played by Lena Headey), Anna Torv actually looks tough. She's still a twig, but she is intense; she looks like she could take anyone down that tried to stand in her way. She had a relationship with her partner, but that does not detract from her good standing in the FBI. And her closest companion even in the period of time before we are shown is a man. And there seems to be no sexual component to their relationship.

And yet, I am still hesitant to place Fringe as a show in the "feminist friendly" airspace of television. I wish that I could. There are so few shows and movies that actually qualify. And the show does manage to pass that famous Rule; Olivia speaks to Astrid and Nina really only about the cases in question and rarely even touches upon her personal life with anyone except her friend Charlie. But here is really one of the places this show utterly fails. There are only two other women present in the show who are even recurring characters. This last episode introduced us to Olivia's sister (who will presumably be staying for longer than the one episode); but in the whole of the FBI, in the lab scenes, on the ground, everywhere, there is a dearth of women. Forget women of adequate roles, but women in general are scarce in the various institutions. And with Astrid being relegated to the lab even though she is a federal agent and Olivia's assistant, we are left with only Olivia as a dynamic and (semi) three-dimensional character. Nina, the shadowy woman in a seat of power in a suspicious organization, is also relegated to scenes primarily taking place in her office. Which lends to the reading of Olivia as the exceptional female character.

In Olivia, we have a full character; a character with wants and desires and strengths and weaknesses. She's not a particularly compelling, but most of the characters - by virtue of the writing - have more in common with cardboard than humanity in general (I should point out that this aspect seems to be evolving, but whether the writing is actually getting better or I'm just getting more used to it is up in the air). However, with no other woman characters around her she ends up looking more like an exception to the rule rather than an example of one. Instead of showing that women are capable, we see that Olivia is capable. Instead of really recognizing that women have a place in these different, historically male-dominated, fields, we only see that Olivia has a place in these fields. Olivia and her place on television is not truly all that progressive or awe inspiring. After all, we've had Julie Barnes from The Mod Squad and Emma Peel from The Avengers. And it is somewhat frustrating that there is only one bright woman in the presence of men who are more than bright, who are by any conceivable test intellectual giants. That juxtaposition only further highlights Olivia's exceptional femaleness, and how even being an exceptional female does not place her in the upper tiers of empirical greatness. And if Olivia looks like an idiot savant next to Walter and Peter Bishop, Astrid disappears entirely due to being merely a "just a". Walter betrays her trust and doses her against her will and without her knowledge? She is back in the lab acting buddy-buddy again over the course of the next episode, her trauma and her story ignored in order to further examine Walter and Walter's motivations. Because while Astrid is just a woman and Olivia is the exceptional female, Walter is unequivocally exceptional.

Contrast this show to Bones, another Fox show not truly rooted in the reality of science, and the difference is incredible. There is a truly exceptional character on Bones, who happens  to be female. And she is in the presence of other brilliant minds, several of them also female. She interacts with them, and their stories are also highlighted. Angela is an expert in her own right, and exists separate from the other characters as well as in conjunction with them. Cam's addition is a comparable achievement. There are other women who are studying to do what Brennan does. There are women present in the FBI; there are women present in almost every arena the show traverses, from the lab to the people investigating the crimes scenes to the prosecution. Brennan travels in a world replete with women - and men. There is a healthy mix not present in Fringe. And Fringe is less for it. All of this lends itself to one conclusion: Olivia Dunham may be in the running toward becoming someone we can look to as a feminist icon, but Fringe itself is not a feminist enterprise. Its lack of women amid a plethora of men is a detraction from the show it could be. And that, the conventional invisibility of women, is upsetting.

Those Quiet Moments

Harry Shearer, better known to the public as Mr. Burns (or perhaps Ned Flanders - or even Waylon Smithers), is also an artiste. Not in that he actually puts pen or charcoal or paint to paper or canvas or anything else, but he is a modern artist. His newest exhibition is called The Silent Echo Chamber, and it is video and images of individuals in the moments before the television camera roll and we see their public facade. John McCain, Barack Obama, and Chris Matthews are all present in this exhibit. I heard about it from Talk of the Nation, and it seems like a fairly cool and inventive idea. We all know what these people look like and what they personify once the cameras are hot, but what about in those moments - those sometimes terrifying moments - before? The question of whether or not we can see anything from these public-private snippets is an interesting one; can seeing John McCain stare unerringly into the camera really tell me anything more about the man, or even myself? Or is the exhibition just a reprieve from the countless jaunty, somber, "personable", funny, and almost always vocal. In our world made up of a cacophony of sounds, it is those silent moments that are most rare. Like most modern art, The Silent Echo Chamber is probably more of a human Rorschach test than anything else. We probably only see bits of what we already assume the various people to be like rather than who they actually are, because the silence before the talk grants us very little conclusive evidence. But it still seems like an interesting venture - and it is being presented at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, so I may actually be able to go see it.

Another exhibition, though this one easily accessible due to its on-lineness - is sleepingchinese.com, which occupies a perpendicular angle to the the first exhibit in that these are photographs of private citizens in public places. Which, as the name suggests, are images of sleeping Chinese. I discovered this on Racialicious, and at first I was horribly appalled at the idea, mostly because I - in my Americentric way - thought that the pictures were being taken here. If they had been, it would have been entirely Othering, and more like a weird safari than any really meaningful work. But since the pictures are being taken in China, it becomes both less problematic and more problematic in a different way. The artist says,  

“They talk about ‘The Sleeping Giant’. About ‘The Birth of the New Super Power’ or ‘The Awakening of the Red Dragon’. Often with a strange kind of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely looks more peaceful.”

It sounds as though the photographer is attempting to demystify the Chinese populace to the outside world to me. It sounds as though even while mentioning the Othering stereotypes, he's pulling from a common ground in an attempt to connect us all. No matter what our idea about China and the Chinese are, we should be able to take something from the fact that we all have to sleep and that we all look fairly similar when we sleep. There is a common humanity in sleeping by that virtue alone. Whether or not someone recognizes that when they look upon the images - or whether it is ethical to utilize a population for the intent of going beyond and behind the rhetoric - is something else entirely.

Why We Believe What We Believe (And How)

Over the summer, I saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull because I love Indiana Jones, I love Harrison Ford, I love Shia LaBeouf, and I had faith that Steven Spielberg would be able to stop George Lucas from doing anything that would destroy the Indiana franchise. And I enjoyed it. I mean, I wasn't enamored; but at the same time I didn't have as adverse a reaction to it as I did to Episode II, where I sat in the theatre with the silently horrified thought of, "I don't like this. Tell me I don't like this. Are the other ones like this? The other ones can't be like this" racing on repeat through my head. This may not sound like a ringing endorsement of The Crystal Skull, and it isn't. On my personal list of Indy films, it comes in before Temple of Doom sheerly because Temple of Doom was gross, boring, and had a heroine whose main purpose seemed to be to perforate my eardrums. There are iconic moments to Temple of Doom, but those aren't enough to make me ever want to see the movie again.

But I started really thinking about why Crystal Skull didn't match up to Raiders or Last Crusade. And although there are many reasons for it to not measure up, the major one, for me, is the suspension of disbelief. It was harder for me to believe that there were supreme alien life forms who came down to earth and left their crystal skulls that hummed and could impart knowledge to humans than it was for me to believe that there was a chest that could kill anyone who did not avert their eyes or a wooden chalice that could take ordinary water and make it the elixir of everlasting life that could also heal a bullet wound. Those two ideas have a weight, a gravitas, a solemn power, to them - whereas alien life forms just seem silly. And this differentiation would make sense, if I weren't an atheist. I'm an atheist born to atheist parents, who did their best to allow me to pick my own path. That meant doing things like sending me to Catholic kindergarden, which profoundly messed with my ability to tell my right from my left (because everyone writes with their right hand, even if they happened to be, as I am, left handed). But the religion thing didn't stick; and I didn't become an anti-theist. For the most part, I'm not even straight up atheist; that's not to say I'm agnostic. The closest thing that really defines what I am is an apatheist, because I don't believe in anything, and more importantly I don't care. I don't want to infringe on anyone else's beliefs, but I don't want to be inundated with them either. Whether or not there is a God or alien life doesn't really impact my every day life, and I go days without the thought of God or there not being a God, and weeks without contemplating the alien question.

So the idea that certain forms of belief in the supernatural deserve more weight and respect than others is a little strange to me, and yet I find myself subconsciously doing just that. Those culturally appropriate beliefs in the supernatural garner more respect than others. How often do we react with sympathy or respect to someone who claims they've been 'visited' by the spirit of a loved one who has passed on? How often do we offer that same sympathy or respect to someone who claims to 'know' that the truth is out there, Mulder-style? The same sort of thing goes down when we are discussing different religions. One of the recent community posts at Feministing is by a Mormon feminist, who discusses her feelings of duality and also her reaction to the protests of her church by gay rights activists. It is an interesting post, but what is also interesting are many of the comments left there. Some comments question the ability to be part of a patriarchal religion that oppresses the rights of women and homosexuals and be a feminist at the same time. Others outright state the inability to marry both. But what is interesting are the comments that mirror OhMissJulie's struggle to be both Mormon and feminist and Muslim feminists who undergo the same sort of balancing act. And while there are those who were calling for OhMissJulie to renounce Mormonism, calling for someone to renounce their Islamic faith would not be so readily acceptable. And I think part of that stems from how we see Mormonism in this country; for the most part, Mormonism is still seen as something of a crack religion. We can still make jokes about Mormons like we do about Scientologists. We don't grant them access to the same tier as "respectable" religions, just as we don't grant the same respect to the theory that aliens could exist and sustain human contact as we do the idea that a man who had been dead for three days could rise again.

Why I find this interesting, aside from being on the outside looking in at this phenomena than holding allegiance to any one religion or alien theory, is that new scientific research suggests that all of these impulses stem from the same place, brain activity-wise. In a Newsweek article, "Why We Believe", scientists examine why we not only place our faith in the supernatural, but also often actually and actively see and feel the paranormal - things like the hairs raising on the back of your neck when you're out for a walk or seeing the Virgin Mary's face on a slice of toast. According to scientists, one answer lays in the evolutionary function of the "hypersensitive agency-detection device"; the theory being that the presence of a living being is "something we default to when what we perceive could be alive or inanimate." Or, "Whether it's a rock formation or a hungry bear, it's better to assume it's a hungry bear". We believe in the feeling of being watched because it was safer to do so than to assume we were being paranoid. We see faces on toast because our brain instinctively seeks out faces, and also habitually "takes messy, incomplete input and turns it into a meaningful, complete picture".

All of this suggests that those who believe that aliens are real, do abduct people, and did help build Stonehenge and were the inspiration for the sculptures on Easter Island are not crazy; their belief stems from the same place as someone who believes angels are among us. It is our cultural reaction to those different beliefs that place them in the "acceptable" or "not acceptable" columns. And that suggests that crystal skulls should be just as plausible to an atheist as chalices that can heal and arks that can destroy. And yet, I imagine that it will be quite a while before that is true, even with articles like Newsweek explaining the phenomena of false positives and how the brain is to blame for our belief in the irrational.