July 30, 2010
by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
I like to read reviews after I see movies. Mostly this is because I fear spoilers, but also because too many films have been ruined by badly pitched expectations (Napoleon Dynamite? Not funny, y’all). So when I stepped into a theater last weekend to see The Kids Are All Right, I had only the vaguest inkling of what I was getting myself into. One friend had liked it, another hadn’t; I knew that it was about lesbians and sperm donors, but mostly I wanted to see Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, and to see what all of the hype that I had been avoiding was about.
(Lots of spoilers after the jump)
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July 29, 2010
by Conor Gannon
Earlier today the managing editor of Time, Richard Stengel, proleptically announced the cover to this week’s issue, at right. The woman is Aisha, and she lost her nose and ears at the hands of her husband; her crime was flight from his abuse. Fearing the outrage that has previously met photojournalists who choose not to intervene, Stengel informs us that Aisha is now “in a secret location protected by armed guards and sponsored by the NGO Women for Afghan Women” and “will head to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery sponsored by the Grossman Burn Foundation” and funded by Time. First she will become “a window into the reality of what is happening” in Afghanistan and, however disingenuously Stengel claims neutral intentions, a symbol of the humanitarian and feminist case for prolonged military engagement: in a headline, ‘What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.’
The full story is on newsstands and iPads, not online. But by the looks of the preview and its accompanying photo gallery Time is staking out opposition to the only viable pathway to peace in the short-term: negotiations with the Taliban that would allow them some place in a postwar Afghan society. As the feasibility of the war comes increasingly under question, Time‘s article has Aisha ask its opponents the hard question: “‘They are the people that did this to me,’ [Aisha] says, touching her damaged face. ‘How can we reconcile with them?’” No one can look Aisha in the eyes and deny the justice of her request. Still, there is considerable danger in metonymically representing a military campaign for territory as a cultural campaign for women, or one woman. As Matt Yglesias notes, transforming norms in Afghanistan is not on the United States’ agenda; the very fact that Aisha’s tragedy came eight years into the war proves to Jezebel it cannot be. Time‘s cover thus moves beyond neutrality towards the war, even beyond defense of it, to argue for more or less total war: the complete elimination of the Taliban from society. In recognition of the impossibility of such an end, those waging the war have come to ask the opposite question: “How can we not reconcile with them?”
Of course the fact that Time released their defense of the cover online far before the story indicates that for many the cover will be the story, not Aisha. On that point a feminist’s concern is less with Time‘s effect on children (though we are reassured to learn they consulted “a number of child pyschologists”: a plural number!) than its entrance into the long history of utilizing Muslim women’s appearance to motivate continued public support for war. It may be more consequence than coincidence that, in some parts of the West, Muslim women’s appearance has become the war.
July 28, 2010
By Katie Rodriguez
Lesbians in the media always seem to get the short end of the stick, no pun intended. It’s still somewhat of a novelty to see lesbian characters in films and television shows, and when we do see lesbian characters, we see them as lesbian characters, not characters who happen to be lesbians. We see a few more lesbian actors and TV personalities, yet many times we don’t even get to hear about their lesbianism, for whatever reason (perhaps it’s not moral enough for primetime?). When real (or realistic) lesbian lives are portrayed in television and the movies, it’s a great opportunity for lesbian lives to be normalized. But much in the same way that actors of ethnic minorities are sometimes deemed as token characters, lesbians (as well as other LGBT identities) are token characters, with their stories portrayed as token plot lines, hitting some stereotypes and failing to go much farther.
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July 27, 2010
By Emily Rutherford
Spoiler Alert
Watching the trailer for Lisa Cholodenko’s movie The Kids Are All Right, you could be excused for thinking that you were getting a lesbian movie. The trailer does, after all, advertise a family headed by two women, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), who conceived their children via sperm donation—and what portrayal of lesbian-headed families in the media doesn’t feature some sort of plot point about sperm? Much of the commentary on this movie has centered around various points to do with Nic’s and Jules’ lesbian-ness, whether analyzing the authenticity of Bening’s and Moore’s portrayal of a married couple, or trying to puzzle through a scene in which the couple has sex while watching gay male porn. Relatively few of the reviews I looked at before I saw the film devoted much attention to Mark Ruffalo’s role as sperm donor Paul, and so I expected to see a movie about the modern middle-class American family which is also a lesbian movie, exploring the female leads’ relationships to their children and to each other.
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July 26, 2010
By Alison Thurston
Trigger Warning
Last month, the Department of Justice missed its deadline to formalize standards set by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission in 2009. These standards would, if enacted and enforced, work to end sexual assault in prisons and detention centers in the U.S. The commission is comprised of advocates, prison rape survivors, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, and called for fast action from Attorney General Holder to make the measures standard. Unfortunately, Holder did not act, because prison officials claim that putting these changes into effect would cost over $1 billion each year. That $1 billion dollars would translate to changes in training, facilities, and personnel that would put a major dent in the number of sexual assaults reported in prison– over 60,000 each year, according to the Department of Justice. It outlines a zero-tolerance policy towards prison rape, and methods for prevention, detection and response for facilities. A total revamping of the laws is absolutely necessary—an unacceptable 12% of juveniles in detention centers report being raped in the United States.
According to the disturbing reports of survivors it appears that the sources of abuse of prisoners are both manipulative prison staff (who clearly have no business being in positions of power, so it’s obvious more stringent hiring processes and employee reviews are needed) or by other prisoners, often in large groups. The tales they tell are quite graphic, and to read their stories–of being trapped in the place where they were assaulted, seeing their rapists day in and day out, and finding no recourse even when they find the courage to speak up with counselors—is quite painful.
Reading these accounts only further proved to me that prisoners need to be protected, and that for many, our prison system is the kind of psychological hell no one should experience, no matter their crime. But after a look around at popular television shows and the comments sections of the very articles I read for this article, it’s clear that not everyone agrees. One of my favorite shows on television, The Boondocks, broadcast a tone-deaf episode entitled “the Booty Warrior” this June that was basically one, looooong prison rape joke. Main character Huey’s neighbor, Tom duBois, has an irrational fear of prison rape, faces his fears by visiting a prison, and throughout the episode, faces down mean and menacing Black prisoners who try to get his “booty” without his consent. This drags on for thirty excruciating minutes. Creator Aaron McGruder is slipping hard if he thinks that this “creative expression” was more funny than tragic. It wasn’t. It only further trivialized the plight of men in prison, as if nonconsensual sex was okay as long as the assaulter didn’t want it “in a gay way.” By reducing this problem to a series of stale soap jokes, he slapped in the face the survivors fighting for recognition and justice. Gang rape is not a joke, and advice about holding on to your body wash in the shower is not going to cut it.
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July 22, 2010
By Elizabeth Cooper
For once, I applaud the fashion industry. Usually, when I think of fancy magazines and runways, I want to cry or yell to express my frustration at their generally limited portrayal of beauty as white and skinny. But recently, I had something to smile about. Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci cast his transgender personal assistant, Lea T., in his ad campaign. Best of all, it seems like he didn’t do it as a ploy for diversity, but rather because he respects her, considers her “part of the family“ and thought that having a transgender person “exemplifies the masculine-feminine dichotomy” that he tries to portray through his line.
As a result of his decision and amongst a lot of hype, French Vogue, apparently the “the hipper sister of American Vogue,” has chosen to profile Lea T. with an article and a nude portrait in their next issue. As Salon’s broadsheet piece beautifully describes:
She is simply, arrestingly bare. With her long hair draped over her shoulders, Lea looks straight out of the Garden of Eden — and that is perhaps what’s most subversive about the photo: its ability to make us re-conceive of what we think of as “natural.”
Beautiful. Congrats, Riccardo Tisci and French Vogue.
July 20, 2010
by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
I just watched Woman of the Year (1942, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) and hated it so much and for so many reasons that a) I wanted to share and b) am currently not capable of articulating anything beyond quoting directly from the film’s third act and giving my own summary of its final scenes.
MAIDEN AUNT: “You can’t live alone in this world, Tess, it’s no good. Success is no fun unless you share it with someone. I’m tired of winning prizes, they’re cold comfort. This time I want to be the prize myself.”
Climactic scene: feminist political commentator quietly cries as she learns the true meaning of marriage vows.
SPENCER TRACY: “You mean you’re going to live here with me and kiss me goodbye in the morning and wait for me to come home at night loaded down with pipes and slippers and stories about what you and the girls did all day?”
KATHARINE HEPBURN: “Yes, Sam!”
TRACY: “Gonna run up little curtains and sew buttons on my underwear?”
HEPBURN: “Yes!”
TRACY: “Cook and sew and put on your rubber gloves and wash the dishes on the maid’s day out?”
HEPBURN: “Yes, darling!”
Final scenes:
HEPBURN: “But Sam, you don’t understand! I’m going to give up my job.”
TRACY: “What are you going to do, run for president?”
HEPBURN: “I’m going to be your wife.”
Goes to make husband breakfast as proof of obedience and love. Husband smirks and watches from behind paper. Failure to make waffles correctly is tacitly equated to failure at womanhood. HILARITY. Husband and wife agree that wife can keep maiden name as surname, despite dangerous emasculation that this implies.
July 18, 2010
by Nick Cox
This is the second in a series of articles on women in popular music today; the first was about Ke$ha.
A common lament in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death last summer was that, at his peak, he had achieved a level of universal popularity that would be impossible today because of the fragmentation of popular culture in the Internet age. That seemed plausible enough at the time, but now I’m not so sure. Gaga, to be sure, is no MJ—after all, he was already one of the greatest musicians in the world at the age of nine. But she has still gotten more popular, more quickly, more thoroughly excluding nearly everyone else, than any pop star has in at least ten years. She is, without a doubt, “The One”—no one in music today can even begin to compete with her star stature, and we may have to go back almost as far as the King of Pop himself to find someone who does. It is almost as though, after he died, his spirit took up residence in her body in recompense for the opening slot on his tour that he promised her shortly before his death.
Regardless of whether or not you believe in this sort of quasi-reincarnation, Jackson’s death, just over a year ago, was right when Gaga really started happening. She had already appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone that winter, but back then she was little more than a novelty act with a few decent hits—“Just Dance” and “Poker Face”—and a lot of weird outfits, and there was little reason to imagine that she’d have much of a future. But less than two weeks after Jackson died, “Paparazzi” dropped and it all started coming together. “Bad Romance” came out in mid-October, followed a month later by The Fame Monster, and all the while Gaga’s fame was growing inexorably. All of a sudden it seemed like she was all anyone wanted to talk about. Her name flowed more and more effortlessly off of people’s tongues, as though they had been saying it forever. More than anything else, this strange familiarity was the sign that Gaga had made it: by February it was like she had always been there—if anyone but her had kicked off the Grammys, it would have felt wrong. Six months earlier she had been little more than a novelty act, and already the world was inconceivable without her.
Gaga’s overwhelming popularity is something of an enigma. Last year, when she was clearly on the rise but had not yet taken over the world, most critics settled on the theory that people liked her because of the way she expressed, or maybe just epitomized, the image-obsessed world of the rich and famous. For some this was a good thing: this Entertainment Weekly blog praised her as a “guilty pleasure,” calling her “our modern guilt personified.” Others, like The New York Times, snarkily derided her for what they saw as nothing more than showy pretension without substance, and made fun of her “outfit made of bubbles”. Both camps were quick to draw the convenient comparison between her and Madonna, and even the pro-Gaga camp clearly did not take her all that seriously. Neither one could have guessed that in just a few months she would appear alongside Bill Clinton on the cover of Time magazine’s ”100 Most Influential People” issue.
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July 14, 2010
There have been so many relevant news articles in the past couple of weeks. Here are some of them! (Thanks Laura for finding all of these great articles!)
Stoning too excessive a punishment for adultry? How about hanging?
Scary and icky: hacker remotely searches women’s computers for homemade sex tapes and naked pictures, and tries to extort them for homemade porn.
Would you freeze your eggs to keep your having-a-biological-baby options alive, people with eggs? Apparently, many people would! Especially med students.
There have been a lot of HIV-related stories lately:
The Global Fund pledges to stop the mother-child spread of HIV. Meanwhile, in Namibia HIV positive women are accusing the state of forcibly sterilizing them. In Asia, gay men are routinely denied treatment for HIV/AIDS.
Lately there has been a slew of stories about governments and corporations setting “quotas” of women in upper levels — and naturally, there’s been a lot of debate over whether this is fair and whether it is effective. They’re complicated issues! Here’s France setting quotas for women on corporate boards, India setting quotas for women in their legislature,Iraqi women taking on a larger role in politics , and Germany setting a quota for female managers. If you poke around on Wikipedia a bit, it turns out quotas are actually pretty common, for gender and also for marginalized ethnic groups and (in India) castes.
The Supreme Court ruled that public schools can withhold recognition from Christian (or other) groups that exclude gay students. Just Friday, a federal court in Massachusetts ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional, in a bid to push it to the Supreme Court.
Image from Matt Callow’s flickr.
July 13, 2010
by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
President Obama’s new strategies have a way of taking on epic proportions, even when their proposals are actually pretty modest (inadvertent pun – no, not that kind of “modest proposal”). Such is the case with the new National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS), which was unveiled today. The NHAS is the product of a 15-month fact-finding mission, in which members of the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP – so many acronyms, so little time!) criss-crossed the country, holding community forums and meeting with experts to discuss the proper way to implement the first national strategy on AIDS (I know – it’s staggeringly difficult to believe that after 30 years, this is the first national effort to combat the disease). Its three-fold mission, to reduce the number of people infected with HIV, to increase access to care, and to curtail HIV-related health disparities, is both ambitious and bizarrely limited.
Although the strategy (you can read the report here) is centered around the admirable goal of reallocating and re-targeting resources and funding that have been used ineffectively or incorrectly, the near-omission of any mention of comprehensive sex education (or teens and young adults generally) is downright puzzling, considering the fact that young people between the ages of 13 and 29 comprise a quarter of new infections. The report also does its best to disguise the fact that although the strategy will be dedicated to making sure that the $19 billion currently allocated for domestic HIV/AIDS programs is used more efficiently, there won’t be new money coming in.
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