A Post With No Real Title

**Disclaimer** This is not written to or about any guy in particular. But it is something I have been ruminating about, pretty much since I encountered the catalyst for this post.

A little while ago, my friend John wrote a piece on his (now defunct, as an act of protest and personal fulfillment best outlined here) Facebook page about how to react when a woman says something to him like, "men suck". It was, in short, a plea for men to not get their backs up about such a statement, to not feel personally affronted, and to not think that meant action was required. What I think was missing from an otherwise excellent and succinct piece is the meaning of a woman you're close to offering that (and, hopefully, the reasons behind it), to you. It means she sees you as a confidante, as an ally, as someone who is not going to take the experience that generated that response - her experience - and make it about you. It means you are included on a list - sometimes, a very short list - of Safe Spaces, and Safe People.

I'm not personally a fan of "men suck" exaltations, partially because I find, most often, that people in general suck, and also partially because I like to think better of men as a whole than to lump them all in with the assholes who on more than one occasion have made my gas-getting a hellish experience. That's one of the reasons why I'm a feminist. Because I believe men can be better, and should be expected to be better. Just like women. Here, in this space, I feel that it is unproductive to the max, because this is a place where at its best (and oftentimes, it is not at its best), I try to figure out why the things that irritate me about the world we live in are the way they are. And, in short, it isn't because men suck. A lot of men sucking is just one symptom of a larger kyriachical system, and it is that system that needs examining and dismantling on a large scale.

But what I am a fan of are safe spaces. I'm a fan of allowing members of a marginalized group to release the tension and anger and fear they hold toward a group with more systemic privilege (and whose members wield that privilege), in a non-violent, fairly benign fashion. Sometimes, that's saying something along the lines of "members of ______ group suck. A lot". And sometimes, as a woman, it really does feel like men really do suck. I don't mean, "Those guys don't want to date me. All men suck". I mean, "This is the third guy in as many hours who has conversed with my breasts instead of with me. Men suck." I don't mean, "That guy over there didn't hold the door open for me. Men suck". I mean, "I can't hold the reasonable expectation I will not be forcibly groped if I go see my friend's boyfriend's band. Men suck". The difference between those two thoughts are huge. The former in both cases is myopic and petty, and if that is why the girl in front of you is saying "men suck", then she, indeed, is a jerk. Just like a guy would be if he said "Women don't want to date me. They suck". But if it is the latter, if she has chosen to share with you how men suck when you are indeed of the male persuasion, then it means something about you. It means, she believes you are someone who will be sympathetic. You're going to be someone who isn't going to take this moment and say, "Not all men suck. I don't suck". Because, hey, this moment isn't about you. This conversation isn't about you. This conversation isn't about how, in order to not hurt your, Guy She's Talking To's, feelings, she needs to frame it as "The People (Because It Isn't Only Guys) Who Behave This Way Because of the Kyriachy Suck". It's just about her.

And if she's a friend, then sometimes the thing you as a guy have to realize is, what she needs is someone on her team. Someone who will understand that sometimes unwillingly being part of a dominant group of people is a no-win situation, because being enlightened means you (hopefully) are not a random bar groper; but at the same time, you don't have a sticker that says, "HI! I'm An Enlightened Non-Groper!" That is a problem for you, the man of the enlightened non-groper sect, because you automatically get grouped in with those who do grope. That's truly a serious problem. It means that you may not be able to approach a woman in a bar, on the street, after a class, at the library, in an elevator, or a bookstore. It can make it extremely difficult to foster interpersonal interaction with the opposite sex. Because, well, speaking from experience, women may be suspicious of you. Because you are a man. That? Is not fun, and also not fair. And it is logical and completely reasonable for you, as a genuinely nice guy who is a non-groper, to get a wee bit pissed and hate that women may lump you in with those other guys who do those things. It may lead to being pissed that your friend is saying, "Men suck, because they do things that lead me to feeling small, insignificant, and afraid" - because you aren't one of those guys who does that. But, as long as the "men suck" stems from something of significance, generally the "men suck" isn't so much a personal philosophy (unless they're of the Mary Daly persuasion) than a moment of utter personal frustration. A moment of personal frustration she thinks you can handle, because you are her Safe Space. And that ends up sucking doubly for you, because instead of getting a cookie for being an Enlightened Man, what you get sometimes is access to the fear and anger and hurt that the women closest to you may hold, from time to time, toward men, because of the debasing things some men do and say to them. That can become your cross to bear, and it isn't a fun or stylish cross at all.

Now, my view on what "men suck" means comes primarily when it exits a woman's mouth who has an interest in gender and gender construction, or is uttered in response to a sexist act.

There's another side, a side John didn't touch.

And that is the side of women who are either jerks, or who demonstrate a want for men to behave in the traditional masculine way, and who then claim that men suck when they do, actually, act in that traditional masculine way. That? Isn't what I'm talking about here. That "men are stupid because they can't make dinner, so I'll go home and make dinner" bit needs to be challenged, anywhere and any way it can be. Same thing with the jerky, "Those guys won't date me, so all guys suck", and it should be challenged in the same way a guy saying that same thing about women should be challenged. Because the first is a reinforcement of male inadequacy as dictated by gender norms, and the second is a personal myopic moment that has no baring on whether the greater gender in question does suck. Or even if the people who rebuffed the asker-outer suck, because they may not.

Those women are complications in an already complicated matter, because gender inequality is that strange conundrum where men and women are certain to interact. Men have mothers. Straight men have (or want) women as significant others. Women have fathers, and straight women have (or want) men as significant others. Since boys and girls are oftentimes socialized together, due to the phenomenon of schooling and also of the possibility a sister may have a brother, the dynamics are incredibly interwoven. And that's part of why men hear how much their fellow men suck. Because unlike some other groups - where whites can limit their interaction with people of other races (and thus not hear, unless they go poking around, how much they suck), and straights can oftentimes limit their interactions with people who are out and proud (and thus, again, not hear how much they suck unless they make an effort) - men and women are fairly bound together.

Because of that, in the end, I think the guy on the receiving end of "men suck" have the ability to suss out the situation at hand, to see if it is of the "a guy did something untoward, and now I'm hurting" persuasion, or if it is of the "this guy I'm dating can't do his own laundry, and instead of taking him to the washer and teaching him, I'm doing it for him and complaining about how much men suck because they can't do simple household tasks". And from there, decide if this is really the correct moment to go, "But I don't do that" or to be the Safe Space. The choice is, ultimately, yours. As it is for all of us who carry some bags of privilege around.

Monday Reading List

"We Are Not Animals in the Hood":

Lisa Gray-Garcia says the tours “zoo-ify” poor people and people of color, who will clearly not be paying $65 to drive around looking at projects, tags and bullet holes.

Single-Minded:

Does that go back to the idea that being single is seen as a threat to those in relationships? The idea seems laughable, but somehow it always come roaring back. There are also still so many (namely lumped into the category of “relatives”) that find it strange when you don’t bring a love interest to the Christmas party every year.

Why I Hate Label-Hating:

What is a label? It’s a description. It’s a name. Words are the primary tool our species uses to communicate and “labels” are just that: words we use to explain ourselves and others. The wrong word, especially when it is instituted upon a person by the entire culture, can do tremendous damage, and I understand that most queer people are walking around with considerable baggage because of this, myself included. But that isn’t an argument against labels per se. Once again, it’s an argument against coercion.

When Men Were Men, And Burned To Death:

When men were men and film was in black and white, race car drivers died and were injured in crashes with what now seems like shocking regularity. European motorsports resumed after a nearly decade-long hiatus caused by the Second World War, with sports car and Grand Prix racing adopting advances in engines, materials and aerodynamics spurred by military technology, and the cars went faster and faster from the early fifties on. The speeds quickly outstripped the cars’ rudimentary abilities to protect drivers in a crash, leaving ever thinner margins of for lightweight machines with hundreds of horsepower on tracks made of winding public roads.

From Cute Overload:

Yes, Virginia, It IS Victim Blaming

There has lately been a big stink raised about Amy Dickinson's advice to a college girl asking if she was raped at a frat party. I let most of it pass me by in spite of my antipathy for advice columns of late, because, frankly, faster and more precise fingers flew on the issue. But then, a friend was shown an article criticizing Dickinson's advice. And although I've already commented on the post itself, something naggled at the back of my skull. So, in the midst of rewatching A Love Supreme for review purposes, I was compelled to respond to my friend's response.

First, the letter:

Dear Amy: I recently attended a frat party, got drunk and made some bad decisions.

I let a guy take me to "his" room because he promised that he wouldn't do anything I wasn't comfortable with.

Many times, I clearly said I didn't want to have sex, and he promised to my face that he wouldn't.

Then he quickly proceeded to go against what he "promised." I was shocked, and maybe being intoxicated made my reaction time a bit slow in realizing what was happening.

We were soon kicked out of the room by the guy who lived there, who was pretty angry.

I guess my question is, if I wasn't kicking and fighting him off, is it still rape?

I feel like calling it that is a bit extreme, but I haven't felt the same since it happened.

Am I a victim?

-- Victim? in Virginia

Dear Victim?: First of all, thank you. I hope your letter will be posted on college bulletin boards everywhere.

Were you a victim? Yes.

First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment. Getting drunk at a frat house is a hazardous choice for anyone to make because of the risk (some might say a likelihood) that you will engage in unwise or unwanted sexual contact.

You don't say whether the guy was also drunk. If so, his judgment was also impaired.

No matter what -- no means no. If you say no beforehand, then the sex shouldn't happen. If you say no while its happening, then the sex should stop.

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network Web site (rainn.org):

"Alcohol and drugs are not an excuse -- or an alibi. The key question is still: Did you consent or not? Regardless of whether you were drunk or sober, if the sex is nonconsensual, it is rape. However, because each state has different definitions of "nonconsensual," please contact your local center or local police if you have questions about this. (If you were so drunk or drugged that you passed out and were unable to consent, it was rape. Both people must be conscious and willing participants.)"

Go to your college's health department to be tested for STDs and pregnancy. See a counselor to determine how you want to approach this. You must involve the guy in question in order to determine what happened and because he absolutely must take responsibility and face the consequences for his actions, just as you are prepared to do. He may have done this before.

My friend agrees with Dickinson's advice, saying:

In her letter, the alleged victim initially states that she "made some mistakes." And, based on her story, she's right. Despite what Dickinson's critics say, it is risky for a girl to get drunk at a fraternity party and go off with a fellow she doesn't know very well. This decision reflects poor judgment.

To say I disagree is an understatement. In the aftermath of a sexual assault, it is fairly normal to assume much of the blame. "I made some mistakes" is not an admission of anything more than the feelings of assumed guilt of someone who endured a traumatic experience. "I made some mistakes" is a qualifier for someone who is feeling ashamed and confused and violated. "I made some mistakes" is not, strictly speaking, the mark of mistakes being made. Is it possible she actually did make some mistakes? Sure. Are any of them outlined in her description of the event? Not really.

And why? Because trusting people is not a demonstration of "poor judgement". Because what Amy Dickinson, and my friend, is suggesting something that is not possible.

What my friend and Dickinson are suggesting is that it is poor judgement for women to drink, and for women to meet men while drinking. Sorry, but that's a whole huge swath of human interaction - especially in college - being denied to women on the basis that participating in this type of fun is an exercise in poor judgement.

Look, rape is a difficult crime. You can say that women (and men) should abstain from taking certain risks. But risk is a part of life, and interactions between women and men unfamiliar to them is how one gets to interactions between women and men who are familiar to them.

The same thing that makes rape a hard crime to get a conviction for is the same thing that makes simplistic "well, you shouldn't have gone there with him, and if you did you were a victim of your own poor judgement" absolute bullpucky. And that is this: women like sexual contact. Not always and not always all the way to sex, but a lot of women are attracted to men and a lot of women like to do things like kiss men, and fool around with men, and sometimes they even like to have sex with men. And in order to get to the kissing, the fooling around, and/or the sex, women have to meet men and spend time alone with them. And to be told that spending time alone with strange men is a product of our own poor judgement, but don't you dare think of all men as rapists because that is misandry at work, is such a piece of work.

And then there's this. Say there was a second girl at this precise party. She meets a guy. They're drinking. They're laughing. She lets him take her to "his" room. She makes it clear she doesn't want to have sex. He makes it clear he isn't going to do anything she isn't comfortable with. And he doesn't. They don't have sex. They go precisely as far as she is comfortable with. They're giddy, and having a good time. Soon, they are kicked out of the room by the guy who actually lives there. She laughs at her companion, he explains that he just wanted to spend some alone time with her. She finds him sweet. They see each other again. They end up dating. Was she the victim of bad judgement? Or is the bad judgement of the first girl in the situation contingent upon the events that transpired after she entered the room? I think, it is the second option. I think we foster ideas about bad/poor judgement on women who have already been victimized, when if after 50 years of marriage, the second girl were to write into whomever was Ask Amying it up in the future to tell her "funny, romantic" tale, there would be no "And you were lucky he wasn't a rapist!" anywhere in Future Ask Amy Columnist's response.

Rape isn't like other crimes. We generally don't want our money stolen, our houses broken into, our noses broken, etc. We do, generally, want to converse and mingle and have sex with those who have the power to rape us. And there are no easy answers for why rape occurs or how we can stop it from occurring, if we want to be serious about either. Thomas from Yes Means Yes has written something in the past I find to be quite right, so I'm going to quote it now:

We will also surely see remarks from people who don’t want to be called rape apologists, and who may even think they are not rape apologists while they gyrate wildly to turn the focus on the victim instead of the rapists and their crowd of aiders and abetters where it belongs. These people will almost always start with some version of “of course I’m not blaming the victim and what the rapists did was wrong and all that …” And then will come the key word, BUT.

Then they will make their real argument. And their real argument is that they are unwilling to actually take rape seriously or do anything to hold rapists accountable. What they believe and argue (but will avoid saying outright) is that the rapist’s behavior is unavoidable, as much a natural disaster as a hurricane or an earthquake, and so the only sensible thing is to plan for its inevitability. The argument will proceed from the dreaded BUT to focus on what SHE did, and how wrong and stupid it was, and ultimately conclude that if women just curtailed their behavior in one or several additional ways, the problem would be solved.

My friend, who is a good, kind, and decent human being, is guilty of the same thing I myself have been guilty of, and will continue to be guilty of in the future when I first hear of these events. And that is the "but":

Rape is never the victim's fault, but that doesn't mean that the victim's prior decisions are always value-neutral.

The victim's prior decisions are, in many ways, value-neutral in that the value we assign tends to correlate to the outcome of the situation. And they are value-neutral precisely because those "risky behaviors", those exercises of "bad judgement", are living. Simply living. They are what men get to do, almost automatically. They are what women should be able to do, with the patronizing "Silly women, living's for men!" hanging over their heads. And they are in the course of normal human interaction. The "but" is easy, because it allows us to assign a certain action for a certain outcome. Of course, she was raped. She did X. Of course, she was raped. She didn't do Y. Of course, she was raped. She was wearing Z. She just shouldn't do X, should do Y, and should never, ever wear Z.

Except, that doesn't do anything to answer for why he did A. And why men rape is, I think, a more important question to answer than instructing women on how to not be raped. Because The Rules for that are arbitrary and dependent upon the situation. Because The Rules for that are limiting, and confine women too much. Because The Rules accept the inevitability that if a woman is "stupid" by the dictum of The Rules - that is, if she doesn't conform to what we would consider 'good girl behavior' - she is likely to be raped. Because if every women ever followed The Rules, mini skirts would not be the thing and women would barely be able to exit their homes without being accompanied by a male companion. I like my independence. I like my mini skirts. I like knowing that The Rules are more about the illusion of safety than the promise of ensuring it. What I would like is for more people to recognize that too.

Quote of the Day

I'm one of ten girls in a room with 700 guys, and I'm not prepared for that. It doesn't feel comfortable for me to sit there and watch that.

- Natali Del Conte, summing up in under 30 words the problem with using female nudity to generate excitement at a tech event.

(From Buzz Out Loud, CNet's podcast of indeterminate length, episode 1121).

Seriously, though, Del Conte is discussing an event for the Boxee where the Suicide Girls (just linking the Wiki article for that one) performed. Her description of the actual offending event is about 3 or so minutes into the BOL podcast, but the gist is that there was full frontal nudity and a couple of girls making out with each other.

What this does is set a clear line of delineation about who the tech product (in this case, Boxee, but this is hardly the first time some geekery has gone awry in its gender presentations) is designed for, and who they don't particularly care about building as their demographic. Because even if some of the other 10 girls in the audience were gay or bi and would enjoy a Suicide Girls show, that doesn't change the underlying assumption - and that underlying assumption should, actually, make the gay or bi girls just as uncomfortable.

The underlying assumption isn't "This is for people who enjoy women making out with each other". The underlying assumption is "at a tech event, this is what women are good for". It turns women into objects, and - as Del Conte flat out says - makes the event an uncomfortable space for those women who dare to venture in. Because even if a girl in question is attracted to women, she's still sitting near a couple of dozen guys who are not aware of her inner life or thoughts, and for whom the Suicide Girls show has been performed for.

I'm not all that interested in tech. I buy what Apple tells me to buy, and I go on my merry way. I don't have an e-Reader, and I'm not exactly entirely sure what makes a good or bad interface. But if I were interested in tech, if I wanted to get a job writing about tech for a tech site and talking about tech on tech podcasts, the last thing I would want is to have my minority status demonstrated so blatantly at any event, but especially an event I was supposed to be covering for my work. The last thing I would want is to see that at the very least the product I was about to be covering, if not the rest of the men in the room, didn't recognize me as a journalist or as a potential consumer. I would not be prepared for that, either.

Women As Bodies: Climate Change Legislation Edition

Hi! I'm all into the environment and stuff. I want to help enact climate change legislation! I have womanly parts, and I'm not into the ladies. Want to know how to not encourage my pursuit of a better world? This video!

Wow, is that bad. You know what this reminds me of? A post I wrote just around this time last year! I'll just quote myself, kay?

It is demonstrably for the man's pleasure in these adverts; and it is more of a bartering system, a tit-for-tat, than it is an actual expression of healthy sexuality. And that is deeply problematic. Women have the right for their sexuality to be their own; men have the right to not be treated like brainless sexaholics.

And here we are again, this time with models stripping for climate legislation. So, let's revisit this in a little bit more detail, shall we?

Ahem. Women and women's bodies are not bartering tools to get men to do good deeds. This is because women and women's bodies are, primarily, for women. To live in. And reducing a woman's (or even these specific women's) contribution to how hot she can make the guys, actually, more than a little sexist. In fact, it is a lot sexist. As is the implication that the way to make guys do something like focus on climate change legislation (or, as in the last post, voting for Obama) isn't through reasoned discussion or facts but by the chance to see some naked ladies. Because it suggests that (a) a woman's only power rests in her ability to sex up a man and get him to do what she wants, and (b) men are animals controlled by their libidos.

But there are some other problems with it; those are that the men are the actors. Men are the ones responsible for getting climate change legislation passed and done (and I say "men", because I very much doubt the masterminds behind the ad thought about lesbian response). Women are cast in the role of encouraging men to do good and fight the good fight, and then reward the great Climate Change Heros with some nudity.

But I can act. I can act, I can write letters, I can call my representatives in Congress, I can write letters to my local newspaper, I can write blog posts, and I can do all of those things while Being A Girl. And a lot of the girls I know can do all of those things while Being Girls as well. And this ad? Doesn't touch on that. It doesn't encourage any female action other than the getting naked bit. Maybe it is assuming those models have already written their letters. And yet, nada is mentioned about that possibility. Nada is mentioned about encouraging other women to write letters, to agitate for change. And what a way to cut 51 percent of the population out of a larger part of the solution than just being the body worth doing something to see.

Changing Last Names

Over at Feministe, Jill has tackled the idea that women should change their names upon marriage in The Name Game. I like the piece a lot, probably because I agree with it wholeheartedly.

There are any number of unfeminist choices I make on any given day. I wear high heels a lot. That is partially because I have always walked on my toes, so having high heels takes away from my weirdness when I'm in a professional environment. But it is also partially because I like high heels; I like the different styles and I like how they look with skirts, and I like the few extra inches they give me. And yet, all of those things I like about high heels doesn't stop my continued wearing of them to be an unfeminist choice.

But getting married, changing my name, are not unfeminist choices on my list. At the moment, I'm not for getting married. Weddings, and their cost, kind of freak me out. It isn't that I don't like being the center of attention. I so do. It isn't that I don't like pouffy dresses. I like 'em a lot. It isn't that I don't like fancy parties with dancing and sit down dinners. All of those things are cool, too. But what I don't like is the idea that participating in a ritual somehow makes my relationship more meaningful than it was the day, week, or month before.

But if I were to ever get married, I wouldn't change my name. I'm a big fan of my name. I like the people who have my last name. I like the life I've had with it. I like how my first and last names go together. I like that people can find me with it.

But more than that, there is this nagging thought in the back of my head, and it is best summed up in this comment by Another Jill on the (long, long) Feministe thread:

more than that– there are some compromises that aren’t fair. Sometimes someone has to lose in order to to accomplish what both people want.

And the nagging sensation in my head is the one that asks, "And why is it that, in most circumstances, it is women who lose?" A while ago, my ex and I were having a theoretical conversation about marriage, and I told him I wouldn't change my name. He was, in a word, appalled. And at some point, I asked him why he wouldn't change his name to mine. "I like my name" was his answer. Exactly. For those women who want to keep their last names but change them for the ease of compromise, I understand that on the individual level, it is an individual choice. But on the whole, if women are the ones expected to acquiesce in this matter whether or not they wish to keep their own last names, and if the option is a completely foreign one to most men, then the individual decision relates to the system as a whole.

I'm not looking to get married, not now and probably not ever. But if I do, at some point, end up getting married, I'm keeping my name. If I have children (which I'm also not planning on), I'll want to give them my name. Because it is mine, and I like it, and I want it to continue on. I want my children to have my name (although some days, I think about playing around and giving my hypothetical boy children my name and my hypothetical girl children their father's name, or vice versa). It is a selfish desire, to be sure. But just because it is selfish doesn't mean it is wrong. Because Another Jill is right; there are compromises that have to be made in any relationship. I just don't think I'm automatically the one to make them in these specific matters. (Other matters, yes.)

That doesn't mean every woman should keep her name and give her children her name (if she marries at all). What it does mean is that, at this moment, my (theoretical, subject to change) choice is considered radical and/or political, whereas taking your husband's name or giving your children their father's name is considered normal. I want to live in a world where both options are considered normal, where there is a fair mix of husbands taking their wives' names, wives' taking their husbands names, husbands keeping their last names, wives keeping their last names, children getting their fathers' name and children getting their mothers' name.

I think SarahMC summed it up well on the thread when she said,

Men have bad relationships with their dads, shitty memories of nasty childhoods, unfortunate initials and cumbersome surnames just as often as women do. But you don’t see them ditching their names at the rate women ditch theirs. And that’s because adopting one’s husbands’s name is a patriarchal tradition, and yeah, we still live in a patriarchy. Until we no longer live in a patriarchy, that tradition will be loaded.

One reason men rarely think to drop their surnames is because, from the time they are born, their surnames are treated as though they belong to them. EVEN THOUGH they get their surnames from their own fathers JUST as baby girls do. And yet women still claim their surnames are “really their fathers’.” If that’s true, then the same can be said of men.

Exactly, and yet it isn't. And yet, women's names are still the only ones that are transient, when all names should be potentially so.

Edit-

Alara Rogers' comment managed to articulate something that was sort of there for me in my head but almost completely absent from this post, and it adds more (and needed) nuance to SarahMC's point:

One thing I would like to note is that because feminists have fought so hard to give women the option of *not* changing their names, women actually have more options in this regard than men do. The female headspace includes both “change name” and “don’t change name” as reasonable options. And sometimes, as many posters have pointed out, “change name” is a great option to take, because if you do it when you get married, it’s free and it’s symbolic of your Great Love For Your Spouse rather than your Great Hatred Of Your Dad. But men don’t typically have that headspace available to them, and that’s because feminism has opened up options to women, but no one has really pushed on opening options to men. (Largely because the options men already have are the ones labeled as more powerful or better to have, and people don’t think in terms of “you know, it would be really great if I had the option to be weak and subsumed into someone else’s identity!”… but there are actually men who would take that option if they thought they could easily do so.)

It’s never a feminist act to change your name to your husband’s. It may not be a *sexist* act, it may not be a misogynistic act, it may not be an oppressive act, and you can commit that act and still be a feminist. But it’s never a feminist act. That being said, yes, there are good reasons to do it sometimes. The problem is that these good reasons are only perceived by women. Men hardly ever see these good reasons; thus men don’t have the option of cutting ties with their abusive fathers, or escaping the pressure of being a Junior (sweet jesus, I really don’t understand why there aren’t hordes of Dude Name Jr. changing their names to Dude Wifename because my god, exact same name as your father! *My* dad goes by Tetter, pronounced Teeter, to all his friends because his first and last names are the same as his father’s, and he’s not even a full Junior. And how much would it piss off the dad that you hated if you gave up being a Junior so you could carry your wife’s name? But few guys do it, even though there should theoretically be *more* men motivated to do so, as women don’t formally do the Junior thing.)

My ex wanted to change his name because he didn’t even know his dad. But he didn’t want to change it to mine, he wanted both of us to take a new name together, and I told him fuck that noise, my name is my name. You want a new name, great, but I won’t change mine. (In the end we never got married anyway.) My husband already *has* changed his name, to his adoptive father’s, when he was old enough to decide for himself that he would rather be New Dad’s Name than Old Dad’s Name, but this has made him even more attached to his name and he wouldn’t change it for anyone. So I do know men who have wanted to change their names to escape their biological fathers, and funnily enough, neither of them took their wife’s name or wanted to. It’s just not in the repertoire that little boys are raised with.

Emphasis mine. I highly recommend reading her entire comment, as this is only an excerpt from it.

Monday Reading List

Thoughtful Masculinities (Theory & Practice) from Walking Vixen. Choice quote:

The frontier of gender, as I see it, is very much in deconstructing and radicalizing masculinities, it’s in really taking to heart the notion that “gender” doesn’t just mean women and trans-identified people.

Traditional Americans by Mustang Bobby, a rebuttal to Pat Buchanan's assertion that 'they' (namely white, middle class Christians) are "losing their country". Bobby's comeback:

You can't lose what you weren't entitled to think was yours alone. And you really can't lose what wasn't yours to take in the first place.

Right on. As an atheist, not having the Christian faith featured prominently in my school system helped give me a piece of My America, in a way my mother didn't have and my father didn't have, in the way my grandfather didn't have and my great-uncle and great-aunts didn't have.

Don't Let A Girl Beat You by Renee. I think the title is self-explanatory, but there is this idea that men are really the sporty ones and girls aren't. Still. And when a girl is really super good at a sport (or many of them), it seems like it is a personal affront to the guys playing against her.

Seven Scenes, For A Reason by Melissa. One of my close friends is what one would consider overweight. She is beautiful, healthy (until she discovered WebMD and began diagnosing herself), and she has a lot of jewelry. I have always thought of my friend as the Fashionista among us, because she always looks so well put-together. I've been envious of her gift since high school. But what occurs to me upon reading this is how she uses jewelry. She has a lot of jewelry; I don't. And now I wonder if what I saw as Fashionistaness, going above and beyond, is really just her spicing up what she can find - being a Fashionista out of necessity.

Things To Remember During the Fall Pledge Drive from Lawyers, Guns and Money. I don't like Ken Rudin. At all. I don't like Ken Rudin at all, and things like this are why. He grates me like very few others, and I much prefer his It's All Politics cohost Ron Elving. In this case, it is because comparing a president's actions to Nixon is kind of like comparing someone's actions to Hitler. Only in extreme circumstances does the comparison come close to illustrating reality, and only in rare moments are those specific hyperbolic statements useful. IE, not here. I'm not a fan of comparisons between Nixon and George W. Bush. I don't think Bush was as amoral as Nixon, I don't think Bush was as talented as Nixon, I don't think Bush was as successful as Nixon, and I think it demeans the truly historic and, frankly, horrific abuse of power and government Nixon perpetrated to drop his name willy nilly.

To whit, Weighing in on White House vs. Fox News: An Apology from Ken Rudin's Political Junkie blog. I still don't like him, but I begrudgingly offer Rudin's apology. If I have to give Rudin something, it is that he didn't go the "sorry if you found what I said/did offensive" route. But he did spend the first couple of paragraphs defending his position on Fox vs Obama Administration.

And, from xkcd:

A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "Belonging"

This episode could have been subtitled "What Makes the Nice Guys® So Dangerously Evil". And it was good. The angst, the origin story, the societal implications of demonstrating the horribleness of Nolan, Topher - it was all so good. And, I think it may have had a little something to do with the lack of Echo and the abso-fucking -lutely brilliant performances by Fran Kranz, Enver Gjokaj (of course!), and last but certainly nowhere near least, Dichen Lachman. Oh man. Sierra rocked.

But, since I consistently end with Topher, I'm going to start with him this week. What makes Topher so fascinating is that we are watching him "wake up". We are watching him make up his own moral system. More than watching those figures with compromised morality - Adelle, Boyd, Ballard - or watching those with an established morality - Echo - watching Topher evolve is a brilliant thing. That is partially because there are so few chances to actually watch someone come to morality. Usually, people we watch on television start with a moral code: they falter, they fall, their code shifts to encapsulate new data. But there has always been a code there. Topher has generally been proud of his lack of code, and was able to maintain that lack of code by a lack of contact. He could think of the Dolls as "hot chicks" or "toys". But once contact has been established, once he is pulled from being Science Guy, following orders to the person who has to think and explore and establish right and wrong for the people under his care, Topher runs right smack into morality. And he runs into seeing the Dolls as people, not simply as objects. When he tells Boyd Echo is the one who brought him the painting, tells Boyd that Echo has always been "mother hen" to Sierra, and Boyd asks pointedly if that is something Topher should look into, it flies right past. Because Topher is no longer thinking of Echo as a thing to be fixed but a person with reasons for acting. He is no longer thinking of Sierra as a potentially malfunctioning Doll but as a person with a problem - a problem he is complicit in continuing and one he is determined to solve.

Topher is as asleep as the Dolls wandering the halls. Topher is as able to "wake up" as the Dolls wandering the halls. And Adele's House mostly depends on both Topher and the Dolls not doing that. It isn't like this House is particularly free of the trials and tribulations of compromised engagements, mostly stemming from Echo. But it most definitely depends on the Dolls not evolving into self-aware entities, or Topher getting ooky about sending these people he now sees as people out on engagements. And Topher is getting ooky specifically because there is no one there to play that ooked out role for him now that Dr. Saunders/Whiskey has exited the building. In her, Topher created a safety net, a person who could have and act upon the moral code he lacked. He did it because, as he said, "If you agreed with everything I said, then we would miss something and someone would get hurt." But also, I think, because it allowed him to continue down his amoral path, unthinking of the consequences of his actions because he made sure someone else would be. The burden of being moral, of being vigilant, of caring, was placed on someone else's shoulders so that Topher wouldn't have to carry the load. With Saunders having now absconded with herself, Topher is alone with morally compromised people or immoral people. When he tries to reach out, to provoke some moral stance from one of his counterparts, he's not given what he needs. Instead, his lack of morality is met with the exact lack of judgement he doesn't need and can't work with or through:

TOPHER: You can't let them do this!
DEWITT: They're not going to do it. We are. And when I say we don't have a choice, know that I mean it.
TOPHER: Aren't we supposed to care for these people? Dr. Saunders would never have allowed...
DEWITT: Which Dr. Saunders would that be? (TOPHER RECOILS) The avuncular physician so brutally cut down not five feet from where you were standing? Or the last woman to whom you gave a permanent imprint? The other wounded flower you restored by offering her a new life? Who apparently found you so unbearable, she had to flee the city. Is it that one?
TOPHER: How can you expect me to do this?
ADELLE: You'll do it because you must. The cold reality is that everyone here was chosen because their morals have been compromised in some way. Everyone... except you. You, Topher, were chosen because you have no morals. You have always thought of people as playthings. This is not a judgement. You always take very good care of your toys. But you're simply going to have to let this one go.

And so he, rustily, having never done it before, starts to develop as the counterweight. And we all know (at least, those of us who watched Epitaph One) exactly how well that works out for him.

After attempting to prod Topher into looking further at Echo's problem-solving, art-interpreting, mother-henning tendencies in this hilarious scene (already discussed from the Topher Angle above):

BOYD: Is that where your hunch came from?
TOPHER: Yeah. It's Sierra's. Echo brought it to me. She was going on about a bad man. He's the blotch here, is what I'm getting.
BOYD: Echo brought it to you.
TOPHER: She's always been Mother Hen about Sierra.
BOYD: Should look into that.
TOPHER: I am! And so far, Echo's given me way more than you have.

Boyd decides to do some investigating himself. What he finds and how he reacts is one of the reasons I like Boyd, and yet don't trust Boyd. Boyd goes the same route of "If I don't do it, I am absolved" in the case of figuring out if the Dolls are beginning to evolve. Sending Topher after the intel wipes Boyd's hands clean if Topher comes back with an evaluation leading to a cleaning of Echo's slate or a more permanent home in the Attic. But if Boyd himself is forced to confront the reality of his former charge becoming more and more nascent, then his moral response shifts. He then responds with something more akin to protectiveness and solidarity, because he is forced to face the Echo he is protective of, the Echo he sees as a person, as extraordinary. Of course, I could be reading Boyd completely wrong and he could be the biggest backstabbing asshole in the world. It's up in the air at this point.

As for Echo, well, her lack of role in this episode made her brief moments kind of enjoyable. She had to do nothing other than be a semi-aware blank slate, so I'm sure that helped. But her evolution and her pushing others to evolve is actually - wait for it! - interesting.

BOYD: Echo, when did you learn how to lie?
ECHO: Am I in trouble?
BOYD: Not from me. But there are people who would be very upset if they knew what you were doing.
ECHO: Reading?
BOYD: You brought the painting to Topher. You're pushing. The Actives, the staff... What you're doing could have consequences you can't predict or control. Some people are not ready to wake up.
ECHO: I don't care. Something bad is coming, like a storm - and I want everyone to survive it. They need to wake up.

Maybe it is because Echo is treading upon familiar territory to Whedonites, the person (woman) pushing the story forward. It isn't exactly new ground, and yet it is familiarly comforting. It is where Whedon and his acolytes tend toward their most righteous, and I tend to agree with them. It is in the idea that we are all existing in Plato's cave, that we have to see the shadows for what they are and deal with the fact that the sun shining in our eyes hurts. Because the opposite is to remain chained to UnReality, and that leads to things like entire planets being decimated in the name of a Greater Good and creating monstrous cannibals or beautiful people being commodified in houses so the rich and powerful can pay to play in their own personal Utopian fantasies. And that? Isn't so great for the poor, unconnected individuals who have to live in that world with those forces.

And now, Sierra. A while ago, Emily at See Emily Blog wrote about George Sondini, and Kate Harding's No More Mr. Nice Guy article. Why am I bringing this up? Because one of the first scenes in Belonging is:

NOLAN: Sneaking out?
PRIYA: I was just looking for you to say goodbye.
NOLAN: Why are you so eager to leave? I mean, everyone is here to adore you.
PRIYA: Enjoy the painting, Nolan.
NOLAN: Come on, come on. Stay a little longer, Priya.
PRIYA: The painting's yours. My job here is done. I'm going now.
NOLAN: Why? So you can give it up to some guy you just met?
...
NOLAN: I've pulled out all the stops. I mean, this is our big night. We've, we've, we've -
PRIYA: No, this isn't our night.
NOLAN: We've planned for this.
PRIYA: There's no we.
NOLAN: No, look, I have - I've offered you everything. What else do you want?
PRIYA: I want to walk out the damn door.
NOLAN (stopping her from walking out the damn door): Hey. What did you expect, huh? Day after day, just dangling it in front of my face, seducing me.
PRIYA: Seducing? You're crazy, Nolan. It's all in your head. Get off me!
NOLAN: I'm sorry. I'm not going to take no for an answer. Alright? I'll do anything.
PRIYA: Stop it! You disgust me. Nothing in this world could ever make me love you.

And the tension I felt, sitting on my couch, just praying (figuratively, of course) Priya wouldn't be quite so wonderfully assertive, wouldn't be quite so open and honest with her very own Nice Guy®, stems from what Emily writes, namely

In the times I’ve been alone, I definitely don’t want to risk making the man angry, or having him come after me in any way. I’m sure few, if any, of these men were capable of violence, but it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take, even if some of them deserved a firm “leave me alone right now.”

Being assertive, being unwilling to smile demurely and go along with the uncomfortable levels of attention and uncalled for expectations of ownership, sometimes takes a horrific turn. Not that every girl ends up pumped full of anti-psychotics and then mind-wiped and brain-washed, but the threat of violence, of retaliation and retribution for something you haven't done is very real. And it is there. And every time a guy goes to the equivalent of, "But I did X,Y, & Z, so why didn't she fall into my bed?" it demonstrates the idea that women can be bought, can be controlled, and can be persuaded to stay, to love, and to give a lot of sex to people they Just. Aren't. Attracted. To.

But what I like about this is, well, how clearly it lays out the whole Nice Guy® thing. Becoming makes it absolutely clear Nolan is someone who, actually, doesn't like women very much. And that's highlighted by the Confrontation Scene:

PRIYA: I'm not your lab rat any more, Nolan. I'm free, clear-headed. It feels good.
NOLAN: What, and you uh, came here to get revenge for a year of loving every minute of it?
PRIYA: Did I love it? Must not have been very memorable. I remember you poisoning me, locking me up, but I have not a single memory of the year where I apparently liked you.
NOLAN: Oh, we-we had some good times.
PRIYA: Mmm, I got filled in on all the details. Brainwashing. Talk about desperate. You know, they even programmed me to think it was endearing how quick you were.
NOLAN: You were mine.
PRIYA: I'm sorry. I don't think I was faithful to you.
NOLAN: Yeah, I let them whore you out to anyone.
PRIYA: No, it's something else. It's someone uh, someone I trust. He helps me. He thrills me
NOLAN: Yeah, I know, see, it worked. You told me that you love me a hundred times. I changed you.
PRIYA: No, it's not you. I managed to fall for someone else.
NOLAN: You think this is cute?
PRIYA: It's absurd. I don't remember meeting him or even spending a moment with him. But I can feel it stronger than anything. I'm crazy about him! I love him so much more than I hate you.

The vitriol Nolan spews at Priya when he says, "Yeah, I let them whore you out to anyone" is not the typical statement of someone who loves women, or even a specific woman. It is someone who thinks you can dirty a woman by making her have a lot of sex. It is someone who thinks that victimizing a woman somehow demeans and delegitimatizes her. It is someone who is very clearly not a nice guy; instead, he's just a guy who is willing to spend a lot of money on objects for someone he considers his own object. Kind of like buying outfits and accessories for your Build-A-Bear. He - and those Nice Guys® like him - fancy that they are bringing some pleasure to this person they want, that the pleasure they supply somehow gives them power and control over that person, and that if the person rejects the gifts or rejects the man after accepting the gifts, she has not followed protocol and deserves to be punished. Because, obviously, the very act of lusting after a woman means that she (a) intended you to, and (b) you have an implicit right to her - her attention and her body. That person? Is the epitome of not a nice guy. And watching Priya, being made to see the world and story through Priya, makes it clear exactly how not nice a guy, how creepy, that guy really is.

Things of Note:

• Dichen Lachman is incredible. Going from Priya to Wiped Sierra, there was palpable change on screen. I'm still on the "Yay Ra-Ra Enver Gjokaj" team, but Dichen is quickly creeping up on the Whoa Factor.
• What in the hell was Priya thinking, in the whole not tying Nolan up first before confronting him?
• "We gotta run. We gotta run. We've gotta get out of here." Was Topher preparing to run completely away with Priya? If Boyd hadn't shown up, would there be three members of the Dollhouse "going rogue" (sorry, I couldn't help myself) this season?
• Topher on telling Adelle about Priya: "We gotta tell her. She's gonna flip her biscuits. Unless she already knows..." In the beginning, Topher declared you couldn't have a conspiracy theory while in the employe of the conspiracy (per the unaired episode). I guess those days are gone.
• So many backward references! Awesome!
• Sierra and Victor's love! Aw!
• I'm impressed if anyone made it this far into the post.

And, done.

Grade: A+

Quote(s) of the Episode:

PRIYA: Am I allowed to have beer in here? Or is this my last one?
TOPHER: No, you're allowed. On special occasions.

A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "Belle Chose"

Episodes like this one are why I adore Tim Minear; episodes like "Omega" (an episode I still haven't reviewed! Gah!) are not. That's the line of delineation. Well, truly, episodes like "Epiphany" and "Out of Gas" and "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been" are why I adore Minear. This one just kind of confirms that I'm right to. First, though, I'm going to jump in with the bad.

Every week I watch Dollhouse, and I see problems. Last week was the whole structural-vs-episodic nature of the show. This week? I'm back to ragging on Eliza Dushku. It isn't that she's bad. Okay, it is that she's somewhat bad, but she isn't totally bad. She just isn't versatile. At all. As a serial killer, she rocks. As a person fighting off serial killer personas and trying to keep some women alive, she also rocks. As Kiki? There is no rocking. What there is are a bunch of stereotypical bounces? and hair twirls? and ending each sentence like it is a question?, but no actual Kiki. There is Eliza Dushku not understanding how to make Kiki a character. There is very clearly Eliza Dushku playing the stereotype of a possible former non-rocket science cheerleader, whose wit (and she does have some, what with the "Scarlet Lady" remark) doesn't make it clearly into the presentation. Which is strange, because Buffy the Vampire Slayer could have easily been Kiki the Vampire Slayer. Going back to the books and watching how Sarah Michelle Gellar or Mercedes McNab or Charisma Carpenter managed to be ditzy and human, recognizing that there is more to that girl than the hair twists and the awkward delivery of sentences would have been a real help. This line:

Okay, so I probably never should have taken this course to begin with. But I figured it was Mid-Evil lit, not Advanced Evil. How hard could it be? So I skipped Intro to Evil or whatever, but how is it I get an "F" when this guy that we're reading, Chauncy, can't even spell?

was so incredibly painful to watch. Made even moreso by the fact that Enver Gjokaj managed to pull off a much more complete Kiki later on in the episode, and most of that was just dancing his heart out - and his tearful reunion with Paul. I long to see Gjokaj in the above scene with the professor, just to show Dushku how to knock it out of the park. As an aside, I join the list of people who think Enver Gjokaj is the most talented member of that cast. That, by the way, is probably the end of the bad from me this time around. Unfortunately, that bad is the star of the show, and should be able to pull off ditzy/dumb-but-beautiful better than she does. The rest of the episode? Aces.

Here's why: this episode succeeds in doing what I just complained the Dollhouse episodes weren't doing in my last review! See how that works? It is an amazing thing. It's more of an amazing thing if you've seen Epitaph One (And if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Go. This review will be here when you get back). But it is amazing all the same in that it is substantially a stand-alone episode that explains a majority of how the Dollhouse works and what it does, and advances the end game. I should also point out that this episode was supposed to be 2.02 and was bumped to 2.03 for the not-so-goodness that was "Instinct", for whatever the reason. We're introduced to a large portion of the procedure part of the Dollhouse through Ballard navigating his first assignment as Echo's handler. The explanation about the "R" for Romantic Engagement, seeing how the Dolls are dressed, all cool, and lead to this tickle-the-funny-bone exchange:

RANDOM HANDLER: I won't even do this for my wife.

BALLARD: I was trained at Quantico.

This brings us to Ballard. Who is, in a word, a creeper. The somewhat pornorific slow shots of "Kiki" taking in her new outfit with pleasure while being watched by Paul wasn't very pleasant. When Boyd came to take Ballard's place as the Handler, I was with Ballard in his "Serial killer? Thank God" remark. What makes the tension kind of wonky (and quite probably in an intentional way) is that the show makes it hard to tell if Paul is upset by the fact a dirty old professor would be making a student to seduce/be seduced by simply because it is Echo and he has a thing for her or if he would be just as revolted if any Doll - say, Victor - were to be put in this play situation. After all, he felt fine making an Echo to be married and sexed up when he was in control. And that, my friends, is why I can't like or trust ex-agent Paul Ballard - too much.

And yet, I do like him. I acknowledge that Tahmoh Penikett, has, as Maia says, "so little range it’s embarrassing". He's an "upset-frown, confused-scrunch up your face" kind of actor. And yet, for Ballard, it kind of works. It could just be that he continually gets lines that are inherently funny, like:

So... Terry. I gotta ask and I think you know I gotta ask. Have you been practicing dentistry on large cats? Leopards? Pumas?

Out of the many things Ballard had to ask or that Terry knew he had to ask, I don't think that was even on the list. He is also one of the most forthright in being able to put in direct terms what Terry is, and as a by-product, what with the intercutting scenes of Echo's engagement, what the Dollhouse is and caters to:

No, you're weird, Terry. But what you're not is special. It doesn't take a criminal profiler to figure you out. Maybe a pimp. It's ordinary. You're ordinary. Maybe you got bottle-fed, maybe you got dumped. It doesn't matter. At some point, you decided real people weren't worth it. You pushed them away. Alienated everyone in your life so you could surround yourself with the fakes, the copies. It made you feel like you had some control.

Since Ballard is both a criminal profiler and a pimp, he is uniquely qualified to diagnose Terry.

Now, let's jump to the very thing Ballard is describing, the engagement. The Dollhouse operates under the premise that it gives people what they need, when instead it becomes clearer and clearer that they generally traffic in what people want. Case in point: the engagement of the week. I can't imagine that a professor ever truly needs one of his students to sleep with him. I can imagine that a weaseling one like the guy we see may want one of his students to sleep with him. To the point where he'll actually make a fake student to seduce through the words of Chaucer and sleep with her, all the while asserting the student is in control of the situation, and making that clear to her:

DIRTY PROFESSOR: No, [Alisoun]'s not a whore.

KIKI: You're saying she uses sex to get what she wants.

DIRTY PROFESSOR: Yeah, I-I'm saying she's a lusty, bawdy, self-aware woman. She doesn't allow men to define her. She knows she's the one with the real power.

KIKI: What power?

DIRTY PROFESSOR: The same power that all women have.

This is one of my favorite scenes, because it demonstrates the lie the professor weaves. The professor is the one with all the power, both because he created Kiki to play out this fantasy and because he is the one who has the option of turning that "F" to an "A". He is the one who wields his intellectualism like a weapon; he is the one who is determined to 'teach' Kiki about this inherent 'power' she has over him. But the only power she has is the power he is willing to grant her. She isn't allowed to have an alternate reading of the text. She isn't allowed to argue her point in a salient manner or to ask if she can rewrite the paper with his critiques in mind, if she can do extra credit. Her power is purely relational to his attraction to her; her power is purely relational to how far he is willing to allow that attraction to go. Her power is wholly contingent upon him. And in one scene, the meme of the sexy worldly woman who successfully seduces the men powerless before her is revealed as a sham. Because the men she seduces aren't powerless, and because her power is determined by how much they are willing to give her - how much they are willing to take. And the professor may truly believe that he - and men - are helpless before the power of women. But that just makes him, well, wrong.

This connects to Terry, the serial killer. He also is under the mistaken belief that women are incredible masterminds - that the women he abducted orchestrated his getting hit with a car and then transferred into Echo. He's the one who the show opened upon, arranging his very own, slightly more mannequinesque fully human dolls. And, by the by, with my mannequin fear, I'm not going to be able to go to a department store for a very long time. It is exceedingly clear who has the power, and it isn't these women being used as Terry's playthings. As Uncle Bradley put it:

There have been other... indiscretions. Women, "survivors", I should call them. And when you have a survivor, you have a person who might be persuaded - monetarily or by other means - to stay quiet.

The rich and the powerful get to do their thing and have their way with the women of the world, and it is swept up and under the rug by money or other means - because the happiness of the Terrys and the Dirty Profs are inherently more important than the women; you know, those women with all the power.

Boyd, either because he's a better person than most in the Dollhouse (and that includes Ballard) or because he's an ex-cop, has issues with that before the whole "potential serial killer" thing comes rattling on out:

BOYD: Do we really want to wake this guy up?

ADELLE: Mr. Langton, have you no charity? We are working to reunite a desperate family with their wayward loved one.

BOYD: By "wayward", do you mean that they've been looking for him ever since he skipped his last bail hearing?

ADELLE: A bail hearing over a minor matter which has since been resolved.

BOYD: And, by "resolved", do you mean -

ADELLE: Yes, yes. A judge was bought off. There is no need to continue to translate me.

And is it just me, or is Boyd becoming more and more Oz-like? All I could think of in this scene:

BOYD: What are you trying?

TOPHER: Uh, a remote wipe?

BOYD: Why?

TOPHER: Oh, well... Victor's loose, doesn't have GPS and apparently he's a serial killer?

BOYD: Ah.

was how Oz would have a remarkably similar reaction. Well, that, and how Fran Kranz's nervous, making-statements-into-questions thing also put him in the running for being able to create a more believable Kiki than Eliza Dushku.

And we're jumping to Topher, who I've saved for last (perhaps erroneously, if no one has managed to get this far) because he has become my absolute favorite. Topher is one of the least complicated moral agents in the Dollhouse, and one of the most complex characters. He's one of the least complicated on the moral front because he won't do what he feels is ethically unsound. He's one of the most complex characters, because the list of things he feels are ethically unsound so far begins and ends with purposefully waking up a serial killer. Also, we have learned that Topher is not, in point of fact, a sociopath or a psychopath. Which makes where his ethical divides begin and end slightly more problematic. And, I have to give the scene, because I love Tim Minear's writing:

ADELLE: Good news on the coma front?

TOPHER: Uh... yeah. Good news is that he's in a coma.

ADELLE: I beg your pardon?

BOYD: Just show her what you showed me.

TOPHER: This is a brain - a healthy brain. Frankly, an overly smart brain. It's my brain. And this is Terry Karrens' brain. See these dark areas? How they extend all the way out to here? You know what that looks like that? That's because Terry Karrens doesn't use that part of his brain. And that'd be where you find stored such things as empathy, compassion, an aversion to disemboweling puppies. Basically, this is what some of your more famous serial killers' brains look like.

ADELLE: You're quite certain of this?

TOPHER: Certain enough that I have serious ethical problems trying to wake him up.

BOYD: Topher has ethical problems. Topher!

One of the questions that arises from this scene, as well as from the scene in "Vows" with Dr. Saunders and the broken Topher we see in Epitaph One, is when does Topher's moral code grow beyond that? When does he recognize that just because an idea may be intellectually brilliant, it can also be morally bankrupt? That, and Fran Kranz, is why Topher is my fav.

The other scene I loved with Fran Kranz was when he is encouraged by Adelle to create the tech know how that will eventually bring about the end of the world as we know it, the remote wipe:

TOPHER: A remote wipe? It can't be done!

ADELLE: It can be done. Alpha did it with Echo.

TOPHER: But he used a tonal interface! Serial Killer Victor would need to have a phone. I need to have a tone. I'd have to get him to answer the phone. Do you have his number?

ADELLE: Obviously not.

TOPHER: Well...?

It is odd to know the end game, and to see the beginnings of the evolution of the tech start as a way to save people, and Victor. It is odd that, for all the Dollhouse does that is destructive, that we can assert is actively destructive, it is this thing that is hard to characterize as such that helps bring about the dystopian version of the future.

Now, to the character the show is ostensibly based around: Echo. Echo is able to reassert control just as Terry Karrens is about to kill his next victim. Which inevitably leads to the question: Does Echo have some form of control?

If she does, is her willingness to go along with engagements now a tacit acceptance of that engagement? Is it a coerced (unknown, to the Dollhouse at large) consent based purely on a need to survive and the understanding that if she broke rank under almost all circumstances other than smashing someone's head in with a croquet mallet, she would be either wiped thoroughly or sent to The Attic? Or is her ability to assert control minimal, only in situations that go against the very core of who Echo/Caroline is, that there are certain imprints that won't take simply because they are so far removed from the lingering persona that makes one Active #1 over another?

I don't think she ever will have the ability to accept or reject an engagement while she is in the Dollhouse, but I do wonder if she is making a deal with the devil on a conscious level or if she only comes out to play when she glitches or when something occurs like a serial killer tries to murder some people whilst in her body. Either way, it is pretty interesting.

Grade: A

Quote(s) of the Episode:

BOYD: Then what? Just leave him out there in his Doll-State? Totally wiped?

TOPHER: He'll be an empty-headed robot wandering around Hollywood. He'll be fine.

ADELLE: We cannot allow Victor to be used as Terry Karrens' vehicle for abduction and murder.

TOPHER: I'm personally against it.

All Things Equal...

A long while ago, my friend posted a link in the comments section of this post, saying, "I think men and women are equally likely to be harassed. And women are only slightly more likely to be stalked." And he may be correct, in the definition of harassment the report he cited used. But I was talking about street harassment, the kind I detailed before, and the kind that has seemingly ignited a firestorm of posts from places like Racialicious and Feministe and The Angry Black Woman (twice) and Blog of Champions, as well as those that were linked in my previous piece. What I'm saying is, street harassment, otherwise known as cat calling, is a problem. And it is a problem that isn't unique to women (in that it can and does happen to men as well) but its effects are unique to women. What I'm saying here is that even if the amount of cat calling was theoretically 50/50 - if that was completely equal - the issue would still present a unique problem for women men don't typically face.

This same friend brought up the emerging market of sexually objectifying men on posters and in advertisements our junior year of college, and I argued my point - with various pictures of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and my poster of Josh Hartnett (I never said I wasn't hypocritical) - that just because women are starting to do it too in greater numbers doesn't mean that it's right. That it is equally wrong to do turn men into sexual objects as it is to turn women into sexual objects. But right there? I missed my winning argument completely (even if it wouldn't have been the argument that won him over), the argument I would have felt strong and confident in making, because what I should have said is that men and women aren't treated equally, aren't seen as equals, aren't valued in the same ways in the same spaces. And yes, men shouldn't be reduced to muscular arms and flat, tan stomachs and shouldn't begin to enter the world of debasement women have been living in for such a long time, that reaching equality at the lowest common denominator is no way to reach equality. But that men - white men, I should specify - are still generally seen first and foremost as people. Therefore, being reduced to an object is still a terrible thing, but its cultural impact is not the same if the same image is with a woman. Because, as much as I wish all things were equal, women are still primarily seen as bodies first. It is a function of not being seen or treated as equals, the differing levels of impact. A ubiquitousness of semi-nude guys on posters is a problem, partially because it turns the guy into an object and partially because it creates a negative body image for many men and can lead to eating disorders, which is never good. But women are still generally reduced to objects for consumption. The most important thing isn't whether or not the woman in question is good at X,Y or Z. It is whether or not she is attractive. Take, for instance, Jessica Lange - who's arms are too flabby for the San Francisco Chronicle. This isn't something that was said of, say, Philip Seymour Hoffman, was it? I don't think so. Meanwhile, Peter Bart of Variety compares two female directors by saying,

Jane Campion, 55, made a quintessentially romantic picture in “Bright Star,” but in person she is cerebral, somewhat severe, leans toward post-hippie attire and seems perplexed by the rigors of the award circuit. Kathryn Bigelow, 57, is tall, model thin, a one-time art student whose gracious manner belies her proclivity for tense, even violent films – “The Hurt Locker” is her contender.

As Melissa Silverstein of Women & Hollywood (who gets a h/t for this) asks, "Would anyone EVER think to write this about a male director?" I'm guessing, "no". I'm guessing, and it may be a stretch, that when the nominated (or in the running for being nominated) male directors are compared, their looks and attire aren't really given much thought and weight. And that's where the big deal lies. Because although the trite phrase is "clothes make the man", clothes - and looks - define the woman. Are there men whose looks (and weight) are criticized? Yes. Are there women who are generally left alone about their looks? I don't know of any off of the top of my head, but I'm sure there must be. However. The exception of a few men who have to deal with this shit and the few women who don't doesn't disprove the rule. And the rule is, women have to deal with more shit when it comes to people policing their bodies.

Which brings us back to street harassment. My friend's report seems to be looking at conventional harassment - like what I do when I constantly pull him out of the line up to spark a huge blog post. It probably gets to the point of harassment at times. Street harassment is the little "hey baby"s women get throughout the day. The wolf whistles, the "Where's your boyfriend at?"s the "Smile"s, and on and on and on. Cat calling. I read the report, and didn't see any indication this kind of "low level" harassment is included in the numbers. But. Suppose it were. Suppose men have to deal with women groping their crotches on the subway and asking where their girlfriends are on the street, or shouting out, "Damn, honey, you're looking good" when they're wearing their grimiest clothing because they're just running out to pick up a pizza. Even with that being equal, men still have more power, both physical and in terms of their place in society. Thea Lim explains it incredibly well in the comments on the Racialicious piece I linked above, saying,

It’s like any number of racial slurs that white folks call POCs – there is no racial slur for white folks that is an equivalent. Because white folks are the dominant culture, and the point of a slur is to “put people in their place.” If your place is top of the food chain, nothing that a person below you says can cause the same hurt, as you can cause to them.
On its most basic level, what street harassment from men to women does is remind women of their place. It reminds them that – as Ndidi so eloquently pointed out – you can be an accomplished, intelligent and complex person, but to the world at large women are only valued based on their eff-ability.
I teach freshmen and had a problem with a student who persisted in making approving comments of the way I dressed. I spoke to several different people about this, and almost all the men I spoke to said something along the lines of “Tell him it’s flattering but inappropriate.”
They all assumed that any woman must be flattered to be told she is attractive.
It is NOT flattering. It is dehumanising and – whether or not the men realise it – it is profoundly deflating. You are reminded over and over and you have absolutely no value to the world – beyond the sexual pleasure you might bring to a man.
There’s no quick quip, no reversal of this situation that can establish that.
Think of it this way: could you make a movie that would show white folks how it feels to be a man of colour facing racism, simply by portraying a universe where white folks don’t have power?
I don’t think you can – as long as we live in a world where skin colour and gender is a determinant of power, you could make 100 films flipping the binary and it wouldn’t illustrate anything to anyone – who didn’t already get it.

That's really the problem. Men are starting from a place where their worth is, for the most part, established. Their place on the chain of deciding who is fuckable and who is not is not is not suspect. Their control of the public space is tantamount. And yes, cat calling may seem like it is at times just delivering complements - at high volume - to women walking down the street. But the question becomes why did the cat caller think s/he had the right (or responsibility) to give his approval to the callee in question in the first place? It is because his/her perceived right to the callee's attention is more important than the callee's right to be left the hell alone and to be treated as a human being and not a fuckable body. The fact that the cat caller's right ever supersedes the callee's right to exist without being called out to is a problem in and of itself. The fact that it is not recognized as a problem, and that it is a large scale one facing a multitude of women, is even more troubling.

For men, street harassment may be prevalent, and it should be fought against for the same reason treating men as sex objects on posters and magazines should be fought against - because equality in negative treatment isn't the equality we're fighting to achieve. But street harassment for men doesn't carry with it the same "private sphere - public sphere" baggage, doesn't carry the same weight that being consistently being seen as a sexual (or sexualized) object does for women. And again, there are women for whom cat calling doesn't happen. There are women who are barred from the sexualized object camp. And there are men who are treated as such often and who are perceived to be more sexual plaything than human being. But for the most part, even if the rate of cat calling is equal (and I really don't believe that it is), the fact that the rest of society is not equal means there is disparate impact amongst men and women. And that needs to be acknowledged if we want a fuller, more nuanced look at what happens and why.

Also, for your viewing pleasure, two videos about street harassment:

I love them both.

As Long As It's Out of "Love"...

Here's the thing. I have this idea in my head that I love television and television shows a lot more than I actually do. When the television is free in my house (which happens once in a blue moon, since my parents get up earlier than I do, my sisters and my father get home before I do, and my sisters stay up later than I do), I will sit there and desperately attempt to find anything on worth watching. I'm here to say - there isn't much.

I also watch a lot of shows on Hulu, because I don't spend *enough* of my time in front of a computer screen. This mostly happens when I should be writing something but am too tired, should be writing something and am awake but have no ideas, want to be writing something but have nothing gelling, or when my family has descended into chaos beyond my bedroom door. That last one happens quite a bit, what with the "two teenagers in the house who share one tiny bedroom" thing.

So, what invariably ends up happening is that I watch some bad television, like Dark Shadows, and some television I would never watch if it contained the normal length commercial breaks, like Royal Pains.

I started watching Royal Pains because it had Cliff Calley from The West Wing. Or, more precisely, the actor who played Cliff Calley. Who also played Simon Stein in In Her Shoes, and Isaac in Defiance. I really like all of those things, and I really liked Cliff/Simon/Isaac in all of those things. This may not be a great reason, but since I like the newest addition of the Cliff/Simon/Isaac line up - Hank - it's working out okay so far. But Royal Pains has never been a show I'd sit down at 10 o'clock on a Thursday night to see 'live'. And it is quickly becoming a show I will stop watching on Hulu, because it sucks. It sucks, specifically in its portrayal of the male-female romantic relationships among the minor characters.

Take, for instance, the relationship between Sofia and her husband Javier in "Crazy Love". Javier pays for Sofia's breast augmentation - and does so in order to plant a radioactive GPS tracking device without her knowing inside her body. The scene where Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank confronts Javier with the evidence is pretty okay:

HANK [Holding up a glass tube with the tracking device inside]: What do you know about this?

JAVIER: Nothing. What is it?

HANK: A piece of metal that almost killed your wife.

JAVIER: What? It was supposed to be completely safe.

HANK: Yeah, not when you put it inside a magnet 50,000 times more powerful than the Earth's magnetic field. We're lucky it didn't rupture a major organ. Just one of the safety hazards when you implant metal in someone without their consent.

JAVIER: I asked the surgeon to put in the GPS, but he said she'd be fine. He said she'd never find out.

HANK: Well, sure. Otherwise putting a GPS in your wife's implant would just seem crazy.

JAVIER: You must understand. Haven't you ever done anything foolish for a woman?

Except it takes a turn for the worse when Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank doesn't call Javier the fuck out on the fact that paying a surgeon to implant a GPS in your wife's breast without her consent isn't a foolish fucking thing he did "for" her. It is something he did "to" her; it is something he did "to" her without her consent, and it is something he did "to" her that nearly killed her, and it is something he did "to" her because his "need" to keep track of her overrode her humanity and her ability to decide that she might just want to dump his lying ass.

Instead, Hank looks slightly chastened. Not put upon, not "you fucking psycho, I'm calling the cops", but "yeah, I guess I've done something foolish for a woman" - which completely fucking fails to acknowledge that doing something like planting a GPS in a woman's body without her consent isn't 'foolish'. Well, it is. But it isn't a benign act of foolishness. It is an act that would be reprehensible even if Sofia never found out about it, even if she'd never in her life needed an MRI, even if the tube never broke and gave her radiation poisoning. Hank ignores the fact that Javier's 'foolishness' is a criminal one, one that not only put Sofia in grave danger but one that failed to recognize Sofia as an autonomous human being who is deserving of the truth and of respect. Javier's 'foolishness' was an act of violation, and it should have been treated as such by the doctor standing before him. Because even if he were only a relatively decent human being, Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank should recognize behavior that is this profoundly fucked up as profoundly fucked up. However, Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank is presented not as a relatively decent human being but a out and out good one, one who will doctor the sick regardless of who they are or their ability to pay. And because of that, his lack of adequate response to the situation before him is even more galling. Because I think we can all agree that surgically planting loved ones with tracking devices is just not cool.

Except. Maybe we can't all agree on that. I can so see Edward Cullen doing that to Bella. After all, when this starts showing up on bedroom walls (ganked from Mzbitca's What A Crazy Random Happenstance):

obviously our ideas about proper male romantic partner behavior is fairly screwed up. This is even furthered by Sofia's reaction to Javier's atrocious and potentially deadly behavior. When Javier comes to see Sofia when she is recovering from radiation poisoning in the hospital, all is swept under the rug:

JAVIER: I didn't know that thing was poison. I was just so afraid of losing you.

SOFIA: I can't believe you did that to me Javier. I had no idea you loved me so much.

[HANK and DIVYA smile]

To which I say, "Whaaa?" Again, Hank just stands there and offers tacit approval for a continuing relationship where the guy almost killed his wife (accidentally) because he was a big enough jackass to believe he was in the right to know exactly where she was and where she was going even if she didn't tell him. And Hank, our Hero, accepts the continuing of this romance. Sofia, our patient, almost revels in this gross violation and the fact that Javier couldn't just be a Big Boy and talk to his wife about the problems he was going through.

Earlier in the episode, Sofia gives a description of her rings:

He bought me this one [giant, expensive ring] because he stayed away too long on business... And then this one [another giant, expensive ring] just because he thought I looked beautiful one afternoon. You want to know what I see? I see this [small, inexpensive pink ring]. When we met in Caracas, this was the only thing he could afford. He bought it from a street vendor, and I love it.

It is sweet, and demonstrates that Javier's fears in regard to Sofia leaving him once he has lost his fortune are ungrounded. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't leave him for his crappy treatment of her. And it was, beyond crappy. It doesn't mean Javier should be forgiven, just because she loves him. What it does mean is that if Sofia had left him, or had even just suggested that planting a GPS in her chest without her knowledge was a not okay thing to do and that they would probably have to do something like get Javier's ass into some intensive therapy sessions, it would have been fairly obvious is was because of Javier's duplicitous, dangerous, and dismissive behavior in regard to his wife. It would have been hard to argue that Javier lost the woman he loved because he lost his money, instead of losing the woman he loved because he took Edward Cullen-esque stalking up a few notches.

"Better Check That Calendar On The Fridge To Find Out If Its YOUR Birthday!"

It has been a long time since I posted a Sarah Haskins video. I'm a terrible person. But here's the latest one, which I (of course) love:


Crankosaur had a great post about this very thing a long while ago, and I think that between the two, both she and Sarah Haskins sum just about everything up.

The American Family, Kate & Allie, and Co-Parenting

I recently bought my father the first season of Kate & Allie, a show he (inexplicably) loves and that focuses on two divorcees raising their children together in New York City. It was a present for Father's Day or my parents' anniversary or something of that sort, and rewatching it - along with the reruns of Kate & Allie that are forever playing on the WE Channel - while reading Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life by Dolores Hayden seems to have left some subliminal messages in my head.

Because when I was listening to yesterday's Talk of the Nation today (via podcast) about Geoffrey Canada's organization Harlem Children's Zone, something clicked. The thing that clicked is this: Canada said,

I was raised by a single mom, and it is so hard to raise children by yourself. There are so many obstacles, and yet we have this crisis in the country. There are lots of families that there's only one adult raising a child and they're trying to work and take care of the child at the same time. And the country has not made the kind of investment to help families who really have no other support. You know, when I grew up, my grandmother lived three or four blocks away, so we could stay with her and still be in sort of the loving confines of a structured family environment. Many families don't have this today, and so one of the real challenges is to make sure that we encourage fathers to stay with their children, support their children, stay with their spouses; and mothers to really make sure that you're forming relationships that will last for this child. So that these young people come up with two parents.

What clicked is that we as a culture are so focused on the ideal nuclear family, and that may not always be the absolute best possibility. I was with Canada up and through "encourage fathers to stay with their children, support their children". But I don't think that fathers (or mothers) have to stay with a spouse in order to continue to support the children, and that in many cases, there is a valid reason why the romantic (or sexual) relationship responsible for creating the child in question ended. Canada goes on to say,

It doesn't matter what the family looks like; there just needs to be two adults always focused on this child to maximize the chances.

And I agree with him.

I was raised in a two parent home, but I wasn't raised by two parents. More specifically, I was raised by a lot more people than just my two parents. My father has three best friends, two of whom have wives and one of whom who has an extremely doting mother. My mother has one best friend. My father has a sister, and had his parents - along with a fairly large extended family. I was the first child born in my generation, and for a long time I was one of the centers (or close to it) of almost all of these people's lives. They were frequently present, to the point where one of my uncles came on vacations with us and had his own room in our condo. My birthday is used for pin numbers and passwords, both for the people I'm related to and the people I'm not. I had (and have) a structured family environment, even though I'm not biologically related to a great deal of that support system.

Which brings me to Redesigning the American Dream, a book about architecture and community planning, and how America's development boom after World War II both reinforced gender norms and our isolated society. In it, Hayden explores why Levittown became the American Dream, as well as other, more innovative and diverse, housing projects in America and around the world. Some of the ideas in the book seemed alien while I was reading and after I had finished reading, like the Danish housing project Tynngarden, where "each family gave up 10 percent of its allocated interior square footage to create a shared neighborhood center for ten to fifteen families" and whose courtyard " contained mailboxes, the washing machines and dryers, a community kitchen, and a large two-level space for activities planned by residents". Seemed alien, until I started thinking about housing, how expensive it is, how expensive electricity is, and how expensive and time-consuming maintaining the ability to afford a residence is, especially when there are children.

Canada's program does an awesome job for low-income children, but I started wondering, sitting bored in my little cubicle, if his organization and countless other communities could be helped if we started rethinking our vision of housing and our idea of what constitutes a family, and what it means to be a community. Which is where this circles back to Kate & Allie. Kate and Allie had it slightly easier. They were childhood friends. But in today's world of internet access and social networking sites, there could be some sort of Harmony or Match.com for single parents (or even singles, low-income or otherwise) that could match up similar parenting philosophies or needs. There could be apartments buildings constructed with these kinds of created families, this kind of structured family unit, in mind. Apartment buildings that had adequate - if not huge - living spaces, that could support two co-mingling, co-parenting groups, or three, or more. If we stop thinking about the romantic couple in the nuclear family as the absolute most solid support system for a family, if we start accepting that mothers (and fathers) can form other types of relationships, platonic relationships that will last and be good for the child, then other ways to mitigate poverty and inadequate child care/supervision could develop, as another way to make a parent's and partner's absence less devastating.

This is in no way an attempt to prove fathers useless. I think fathers are important. My father is one of my favorite people, and I am who I am because of him. He has been my greatest cheerleader, my favorite sparring partner, my book buddy, my best friend, my confidante, my history teacher, my ethics teacher, and when I was younger, also my playmate and my song and story man all in one 6'2" package. I think Canada is right, other organizations are right, to push for fathers to remain in their children's lives even if they are no longer in their children's mothers' lives. But that doesn't change the fact that fathers do disappear, and working to make it less acceptable for them to do so is only half the battle. The other half is providing for those children and partners left behind.