She used to be the sweetest girl ever
Now she like sour amoretta
She used to run track back in high school
Now she tricks off the track right by school
- The Sweetest Girl – Wyclef Jean featuring Akon
I make them good girls go bad
I make them good girls go
Good girls go bad
- (I Make) Good Girls Go Bad – Cobra Starship
Lights is blinding,
girls need blinders
so they can step out of bounds quick,
the side lines is blind with casualties,
who sip the lite casually, then gradually become worse,
don’t bite the apple Eve,
caught up in the in crowd,
now you’re in-style,
and in the winter gets cold en vogue with your skin out,
the city of sin is a pity on a whim.
good girls gone bad, the city’s filled with them,
Mommy took a bus trip and now she got her bust out,
everybody ride her, just like a bus route
- Empire State of Mind – Jay Z
Yes, I love pop music. Having been a dancer for a number of years, anything that makes me want to move is labeled good in my book. Now that I have that admission out of the way, my love of pop music results in encountering a stratosphere of jaw dropping messages that pop culture continuously pushes. One theme which has made me particularly chagrined over time is the “good girls gone bad” theme.
This theme is one of those that makes me grit my teeth more than others. Finally upon downloading Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind and discovering it was retread yet again (The Sweetest Girl had me yelling at the radio for awhile.) I sort of boiled over. This ridiculously pervasive attitude springs in part from the idea that men have a biological need for sex and must do what they can to procure it while women are supposed to withhold, do not need sex and should not want it. That the “promiscuous” woman, or the stripper and prostitute are “good girls gone bad” is a double standard that serves to prevent men from being held accountable for what we are all supposed to believe is just business as usual, aka “biologically sanctioned” degradation.
In the same way that the actions of abusers and rapists are erased through the language we use and the victim subsequently gets blamed, the same occurs with this “good girls gone bad” meme. While the “fall” of a woman in particular ways is an event to pay attention to and police, that a man is never held accountable for his side of the equation creates a continuum of behavior that is at best tolerated and at worst encouraged. It’s the promiscuous woman, or the stripper and the prostitute who cause the blemish on society rather than the man that creates the demand. (I’ll hold off on the crazy concept that women also want and like sex for another day.) Same justification Islamic fundamentalists use for the Burqa. We’ve even gone so far as to label places where men traffic in women “gentleman’s clubs” – business as usual when a gentleman participates in le doux commerce – women are just something else to be bought and sold.
Oh, but hey, silly me…. how could I forget that a man’s role isn’t completely erased in this equation……. Life for a pimp is tough! (Life Out There is Hard for a Pimp – Three Six Mafia)
After the tragic day of September 11, 2001, many in Afghanistan thought that, with the ensuing overthrow of the Taliban, they might finally see some light, some justice and progress. But it was not to be. The Afghan people have been betrayed once again by those who are claiming to help them. More than seven years after the U.S. invasion, we are still faced with foreign occupation and a U.S.-backed government filled with warlords who are just like the Taliban. Instead of putting these ruthless murderers on trial for war crimes, the United States and its allies placed them in positions of power, where they continue to terrorize ordinary Afghans.
You may be shocked to hear this, because the truth about Afghanistan has been hidden behind a smoke screen of words and images carefully crafted by the United States and its NATO allies and repeated without question by the Western media.
You may have been led to believe that once the Taliban was driven from power, justice returned to my country. Afghan women like me, voting and running for office, have been held up as proof that the U.S. military has brought democracy and women’s rights to Afghanistan.
But it is all a lie, dust in the eyes of the world.
NPR classifies The Lord’s Resistance Army a “military cult” but fails to note that the army identifies as Christian. And why does the media never discuss the religion of the participants of the Rwandan genocide? Yet they never hesitate to point out terrorists who identify as Muslims. All part of the typical process of default/other.
I just think this so cool that I have to share it, despite the fact that I still consider myself “on break.” I have pretty low tolerance for art world speak and analysis and there are many, many times when I just look at something and go … “wow…. I could do that myself…… that’s… dumb.” You know, the white sheet of paper on the wall or the scribble that an art critic could write an analytical paper on.
Cara at The Curvature did a feminist analysis of Yoko Ono that was pretty good. I had never known much about her other than she’s blamed for The Beatles having broken up and that I didn’t really like her music, but it prompted me to read all I could about her.
One of the things she’s known for is her conceptual art. I was not aware there was such a thing until I read about her, to be honest. I guess part of it is that a lot of her art is very much about engaging the audience and the way they contribute to a piece. An example of this is Cut Piece, in which she sits on the stage in her best clothing and invites the audience to come up and cut off a piece for themselves. She says one of the purposes of the piece is in part to promote peace and to challenge racism and sexism. I haven’t really been able to find much analysis on it, but it was fascinating to me to hear that audiences reacted differently around the world.
But I created this post to showcase the white chess set. It is called “Play it by Trust” and people viewing the exhibition can actually play chess with it. I’ll admit that with my cynical attitude towards certain types of art the implications of a white chess set took a bit of time to sink in. I am putting Yoko’s explanation of it under the cut as I think it’s better to think about it on your own first.
Why am I doing this? Because I have learned that those very basics have become so obscured that many men and women no longer see them at all, no longer regard sexism a problem and no longer think that misogyny is a serious matter. I learned this during many recent discussions about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, about sexism and racism in politics and about the post-feminist era we supposedly now inhabit.
In one of those discussions this was said:
Which is why, if I had to choose simply on this basis and no other, I’d rather see a black man in the White House than a woman.
Women don’t get stopped in their cars by cops just because they are women.
The reference here is to racial profiling, and it is a serious problem. So is religious profiling of Muslims or those who are suspected of being Muslims or Arabs. It’s not my intention to downplay the particular problems of racial, religious or even gender-based (read: male) police profiling. But I was dumbstruck by this comment, just dumbstruck, because my first reaction was that women would be a lot less likely to be out driving their cars in the first place, especially alone or late at night. My second reaction was the realization that people mostly don’t see that female fear of the outside as a civil rights issue or a human rights issue. It’s just How Things Are.
Yet the difference in our ability to go out, alone and fairly safely, is highly dependent on whether we are men or women. In some societies women are not allowed to go out alone at all, but only in the company of a male relative. In other societies women may be allowed to go the stores and such on their own but cannot travel abroad without their husband’s permission. In many societies women who go out alone are regarded as prostitutes or fair game for any sexual molester. In most societies women who go out alone at night are at greater risk than men who go out alone, because women have to deal not only with the risk of getting mugged but also with the risk of getting raped. They are seen as prey. So women adjust to this, accommodate themselves to this, stay at home and agree to live lesser lives because of their sex.
….and covering all sorts of things that don’t qualify as news there are things going on in the country that actually need to be covered!! Perhaps to some people this is an obvious statement. Isn’t one of the pillars of democracy a thriving, independent media?
I do tend to live under a rock, but I’m betting this wasn’t covered because everyone was too busy having fits about Britney’s parenting skills. (None of this is a knock on Spears – not interested in helping drag yet another woman through the mud.) A Los Angeles community farm was destroyed in 2006 for the purpose of a warehouse for the clothing store Forever 21. Again, thanks to my feed, from brownfemipower. (I feel like I should just put together a feed of my favorite blogs in place of my own blog, because I consistently just want to link every entry I read and say LOOK HERE!!!)
The fight for the land is still on, but the farm is gone. Apparently the Mayor of LA had championed it during his bid for election, but is now staying suspiciously quiet thanks to 1.3 million in donations from the Forever 21 camp. Hmmmm….. Gotta love democracy.
When developer Ralph Horowitz bulldozed South Central Community Farm in 2006, rumors swirled that the site would be converted into a vast warehouse for Wal-Mart. But now Forever 21 — a clothing chain noted for its flimsy clothes, its past abuses of immigrant workers [PDF] in L.A.’s sweatshop district, its blatant knockoffs of haute fashion, and the fervent Christianity of its owners (John 3:16, anyone?) — wants to lay down roots on the former farm site.
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The L.A. Times piece doesn’t mention it, but Forever 21 got tangled up in a sweatshop scandal in the first half of this decade. While other scandal-plagued brands like Nike and Gap were caught abusing workers in places like Honduras, brazen Forever 21 was doing it right in downtown Los Angeles. In 2001, 19 workers, who worked at sweatshops spread throughout L.A., sued the company for abuse. (The number of plaintiffs later grew to 33.) Here’s what they charged (PDF):
Sub-minimum wages
No overtime
Worked 10-12 hours per day
Worked Saturdays and Sundays
Had to take work home
Dirty, unsafe factories with rats and cockroaches
No potable water No health insurance Fired for asking for small wage increases or for asking for the minimum wage
For three years, Forever 21 denied the charges and refused to pay the hundreds of thousands the workers say they were owed in back pay. Instead, Forever 21 counter-sued the workers, charging them with defamation. The company held fast against a national boycott called to protest the sweatshop conditions. Finally, in 2004, Forever 21 settled with the workers for an undisclosed sum. (The struggle to force Forever 21 to comply with labor law is laid out in the 2007 PBS documentary “Made in L.A.“)
It’s odd to see Mayor Villaraigosa, who won office in 2005 amid much progressive hoopla, hop in bed with such a company. But hop in bed he has, the L.A. Times reports. Villaraigosa recently appointed Forever 21 Senior Vice President Christopher Lee to the city’s Industrial Development Authority. And get this:
Lee and Forever 21 founder Don Chang were two of several business leaders who accompanied Villaraigosa on his trade mission to Asia in 2006. Six months later, Forever 21 gave $100,000 to Villaraigosa’s successful campaign to elect three new school board members. In recent months, the company agreed to give $1 million to Villaraigosa’s Million Trees L.A. initiative, which encourages residents to plant more trees.
The company also gave $150,000 to Villaraigosa’s staging of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Century City last year, a donation so significant that Lee was given a speaking role at the event’s closing reception at the Griffith Park Observatory.
Forever 21 is threatening to leave L.A. altogether if it can’t plunk down a warehouse on the former farm site. The farmers, for their part, are urging the city to require an environmental-impact study before allowing Forever 21 to break ground on the warehouse. In place of a highly productive urban farm, they say, such a warehouse would bring in 2,400 daily exhaust-spewing truck trips to a neighborhood already choked with warehouses and semis.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them “abortion.” These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.
…
These rules pose a serious threat to providers and uninsured and low-income Americans seeking care. They could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services. They’ll also build significant barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those who need it most: low-income and uninsured women and men.
I know it’s a general difficulty to grasp, but please consider that I’m a human being and not a walking fetus incubator. Another more technical post about it here – HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion.
I’ve been encountering more of the “It’s my right to own an SUV” set lately when I listen to Sean Hannity’s show on the way home from work. They were lambasting Obama today because he was suggesting that – get this – people should take responsibility for the maintenance of their cars so they use less gas. Wait, what? Taking responsibility for something?? These people don’t seem to get the idea of responsibility unless they’re shoving it down someone else’s throat. (But then, apparently birth control isn’t good enough. Apologies for missing the patriarchal purity ball, but I’m not interested in abstinence.)
I love the continuous strain that runs through the show of how they (The radical environmentalists and radical left – don’t you know radical is a compliment?) are “taking away our freedoms.” They want to stop you from driving your SUVs! The environmental extremists won’t let us drill in ANWR!!! They’re stopping us from developing nuclear power!!!!! Speaking of ANWR, I found a lovely post the other day on the subject of drilling in ANWR.
Apparently their take on freedom is “I’m a well off white person and they’re not letting me consume as much as I want.” What it takes to maintain this standard of living and carry out these things is apparently inconsequential. That the planned storage site for nuclear waste is Yucca Mountain, Navajo ancestral lands? To be concerned about that would mean you’d have to think of someone other than yourself, and furthermore, people of color. Would also mean you’d have to stop being discriminatory towards Native American religious beliefs, but that’s not something we hear about in the news – especially with a “war on Christmas” to fight. ANWR Drilling would mean possibly destroying the Gwinich’in tribe’s way of life, as it is dependent upon the caribou and their migration patterns. According to the previous link, 229 tribes oppose ANWR drilling. (Shit, now I’m really being a hippy treehugger, huh?)
The Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay (This had been a prison for Haitians with AIDs before its infamy – can be read about in Paul Farmer’s book Pathologies of Power.), and Abu Ghraib on the other hand, do not factor into these people’s definition of freedom. At least some of you can sleep better at night thinking that narrowing civil liberties and torturing/raping people will actually protect one’s way of life (As always, others rot for it and bear the brunt of it – but maybe not for long at this rate.) from terrorism. And while we can’t seem to get our dander up over the violation of these living people’s rights and freedoms we’ll count every (white) fetus that has been aborted (murdered!), whether through the procedure itself or goddess forbid – an egg does not get implanted on the uterine lining because of BIRTH CONTROL! (1. There is NO scientific proof of that. and 2. THAT’S THE POINT.)
Squawking about personal responsibility is just fine when you’re trying to force abstinence on women, scoffing at those who can’t get by on their Wal Mart minimum wage or demonizing immigrants. But when it comes to your damn SUV, your American right (freedom!) to guzzle gas, and a fine cocktail of ignorance and manifest destiny, step aside.
I like beverages. I tend to get hooked very easily. A couple months ago I was getting back into Honest Tea and decided to do some research on their company. I really liked their stuff, it seemed all natural and a company dedicated to environmental and human rights issues. And a catchy name besides!
Well, they cut a deal with Coca Cola in February in order to have a wider range of distribution. One little sentence in their company profile, all that good stuff goes down the drain. Sadly, the things they boasted to care about get completely nullified by Coke’s egregious abuses in human rights and environmental issues.
Honest Tea, my ass.
Killer Coke – the kidnappings and murders of union leaders in Coca Cola’s bottling plants in Colombia. Child Labor – Sugar Plantations – Coca Cola fails to monitor child labor abuses on the sugar plantations that supply it. Coca Cola’s Environmental Practices in India – Villages surrounding Coca Cola plants have found that their wells have been tapped of water due to the amount the plants use. This water is then ejected back to the surrounding area full of toxic substances. Coca Cola in India also contains extremely high levels of DDT.
As far as feminism, I really haven’t looked much into the topic. Hence, your allusions to specific ideas are lost on me because of my lack of background. However, many of the arguments I’ve heard for feminism appear to be the search for a skapegoat on which to cast the blame for problems. I can understand and sometimes agree with arguments I’ve heard, but this isn’t a one directional issue. In fact, it’s surprising that there isn’t a loud masculanist movement considering many of the unfair expectations and biases against men. I myself wouldn’t subscribe to any such group, but it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to consider its existance.
Consider education. Before feminist movements, males had the large share of educational attention, and had higher scores on average than women. The feminist movement has swung the pendulum in the complete opposite direction, where women are outpacing their male components in academia (at least in early education through high school).Don’t misunderstand the purpose of the statement; the fact that women are performing better in school is an excellent and laudable fact. I’m simply pointing out that there is always injustice and there are always biases, and you must be very careful about which fights you pick.
As you said in your entry, there are so many things wrong with the world, feminism does seem like a narrow focused issue. It’s a real issue (as is, perhaps to a lesser extent, “masculanismâ€), but is it as bold as the pursuit of more impactful issues such as the World Bank and its impositions on 3rd world countries? Or modern colonialism? Environmental impact and sustainability? Poverty and starvation? Worldwide disease?
I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to deal with my rebuttal, but I decided that making a post would be nice, as I would like to make you do some work. I’m adding some supplementary posts to what I had to say originally, as there are people who have said things better than I ever will.
First, I’ll address that there is a “masculinist” movement, otherwise known as the MRAs – Men’s Rights Advocates. The idea that we need an MRA movement is pretty much on par with the idea that we need white supremacists. (Please note that I am not equating the two groups, so much as explaining their existence.) While feminists aim to right a VERY REAL power imbalance going on between men and women, the former groups are looking to hold on to their power and the perceived injustices they suffer when this power imbalance is corrected. When you lose the privilege (<— link) you have of belonging to a certain group you are going to have to give things up to right the wrongs that other people suffer on account of that privilege. MRAs demonstrate a severe lack of critical thinking skills, and it’s difficult for me to do anything besides pity them.
We live in a patriarchy. (<— link) This is a cultural construct in which men dominate. Under patriarchy things flow disproportionately in yes, one direction. We live in an incredibly misogynist (and racist) culture. To be honest, although the feminist movement has done a lot I think it’s significantly stalled and undergoing an incredible backlash and assault. I don’t agree with you that feminism has moved the pendulum to the complete opposite direction in anything at all, actually. If you are talking education, just a few years ago we had the president of Harvard questioning women’s biological capacity to do well in math and science. Imagine that, in 2007. And yet many people still espouse views about women’s ability to do things BASED ON the fact that we’re women. You’re incredibly lucky that you’ve never had to deal with that because of your sex, something innate.
I actually found an excellent article awhile back on the hand wringing that has accompanied the “crisis” our boys are currently facing. He also addresses what feminists have to say about men and the ways they are hurt under patriarchy.
I will expand a bit on the way that issues of poverty and globalization effect women. Most of the sweatshops that have proliferated in the third world employ women because they are seen as easier to control. As a consequence, they suffer countless abuses (<— link) and are paid less than their male counterparts would be. Typical patriarchal ideology in which “women’s” work and time are devalued.
A particularly horrific example of what women deal with in the face of increasing globalization is what is happening in Juarez and other towns along the Mexican border. Many corporations moved their factories, otherwise known as maquiladoras down there to take advantage of cheap labor and an exploitable work force. Women, many of them in their teens (The younger they are, the more pliable!) have moved there for work. This has created a perfect environment in which 450 women have been found brutally mutilated, raped, and murdered over the past 15 years. Hundreds more are missing and it still continues today. There has been no justice for these women or their families. Often the police will write off their murders or disappearance to the fault of their own “behavior” much of which is fabricated. (As if a woman deserves that fate because she was out late partying, or was a prostitute.) These attitudes are also prevalent in the US.
At Your Service: Latin Women in the Global Information Network by Coco Fusco – This is an incredible essay that touches on so many things – corporate co-optation, racial hierarchies, Juarez, misogyny masquerading as art. I saw Ms. Fusco speak. She is simply incredible.
A Small Post at Brownfemipower about the plight of women farm workers.
US: Dyncorp Disgrace – Men from a U.S. corporation enslaving and raping women overseas.
And here I’ll sidle into territory where I’ll probably hear from most people “wow Erin, you’ve really lost it this time.” When it comes to the abuse and degradation of women, there are no “bad apples.” This is all part of a continuum. Instances like Juarez are at the extreme end of the continuum, (Dyncorp and BFP’s post, not so much) granted, but they are part of a larger system and pattern. When I see this, it is the result of cultural constructs that categorize women as “other.” It is the result of ideas that brand us as commodities, always sexually available, that we are not full human beings. It is the result of the culturally sanctioned devaluation of women. These ideas are manifesting themselves fully in a place where breaking the law comes with no consequences. Further, though white women have been lucky to at least get their issues out there, women of color are pretty much nonexistent in the greater scheme of things. (Scratch that – women of color are visible when people feel the need to tell them to “stop breeding”, and when they’re generally being connected to harmful stereotypes!)
To me, there are VERY FEW isolated incidents. Perhaps that is my greatest weakness. My love for studying culture and making connections has made it very difficult for me to let the “little” things go. I can not walk past a group of men who are laughing at how wasted a woman got the other night, hear “dude, you should have taken advantage of her” and see this as merely a classless group of guys. I can’t see men belittling and degrading other men by likening them to women – by using words like “pussy”, and not see that as part of a much bigger system that routinely belittles and degrades women in BIG ways, ways that hurt. It continually amazes and disgusts me how misogyny is built into our language and the way we express things. I can’t write off the way that things classified as women’s interests are routinely regarded as frivolous and off limits to men, while it’s perfectly ok for women to take up “men’s” interests that will never have the same stigma. These are the “little” ways that reinforce the structures and thought processes that our lives are built around everyday.
I had a whole laundry list of additional issues, both globally and in the US… but I think I’ll leave you with this post, which will give you just a sampling of some more of the crazy shit that women have to deal with. As well, I like what she has to say about anti-feminists and MRAs!
The U.N. reports that most of the 800 million illiterate adults in the world are women; most of the 100 million children not in school are girls. Women earn three-quarters of what men do and their unpaid labor would, if calculated, equal trillions of dollars. Women hold only 17% of the parliamentary seats in the world, but they constitute 70% of the people living in poverty.
For reference, I am throwing in my response comment to you, since it was meant to go in my rebuttal. As well, I’d like you to think about it.
A big problem is the idea that women are “special interest.†We’re not. We’re roughly half the world’s population. This is part of patriarchal ideology – that issues that effect men are important issues, while issues that effect women are peripheral, “special†and generally ignored. This springs from the pervasive idea that man is default and woman is “other†and part of the reason a person can honestly ponder the idea that standing up for women’s rights is not “bold†enough, not “impactful†enough, or that it’s “too narrow.†What makes standing up for a woman, a human being, and the issues she faces in particular, any damn less urgent than standing up for the environment or poverty? Apologies if I seem combative here, but that idea just really frustrates me. As well, as a side note, if we’re speaking of poverty I can probably make a very good case that it’s women who bear the brunt of the negative effects of poverty worldwide.
What I’m most interested in at the moment is intersectionality. In short, making connections between these oppressions – of women, people of color, gays, lesbians, transgendered, (Ok, if I wasn’t already a newb in matters of race, I’m a TOTAL newb when it comes to LGBT stuff.) of class matters, of poverty. Etc. etc…. I really want to focus on things where I deal with and try to uproot it all.
I feel like I haven’t properly addressed some of the points you brought up, such as scapegoating etc. But honestly, every time I think of the concept that feminism is merely “scapegoating” my brain implodes. Perhaps I didn’t truly answer your comment either. I feel as though I explained the little things and big things, but didn’t quite connect the two with middle ground. And the argument that things aren’t “one-directional issues”, again, bit of a brain implosion there.
I’ll leave you with that, as I’ve proof read and been editing/adding to this thing for about 8 days (it is 6 pages in word) and though I don’t feel like I accomplished my goal, I’m thoroughly sick of this post!!!
