The Cutprice Guignol

The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House

Category: Discussion

December 8, 2015

Labour Pains: Women, Horror, and Reproduction

So, since it’s nearly Christmas, I’ve been watching some horror movies (and yes, those things go together perfectly logically) and other assorted spooky paraphernalia. And I’ve started noticing a few patterns emerging with the way horror treats it’s female characters.

I don’t think it’ll come as news to anyone that horror, as a genre, doesn’t necessarily treat it’s women super well. Not to say there aren’t some exceptions-plenty of movies do well in providing female characters who are just as nuanced as their male counterparts (Cabin in the Woods, Grave Encounters, Lords of Salem, just off the top of my head). But beyond the usual final-girl tropes, I can’t shake the feeling that horror movies just have a problem with female bodies in general.

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Sheri-Moon Zombie in Lords of Salem

And, yeah, I can hear it now- it’s not as if men get off without being stabbed, shot, eaten, or stabbed with a spear mid-way through sex. But women are much more often victimised for their femaleness than men are for their masculinity.

I mean, periods alone have a long and deeply unpleasant tradition in horror history as it is. Menstruation in horror is often used as a way to signify sexual maturity, and generally that comes with the nasty side-effect of turning the woman in question into a raging serial murderess when all she needs is some tampons and a lie-down- from the seminal Carrie (1976), which opens with our protagonist getting her period for the first time and ends with her destroying an entire town, to Excision (2012), where AnnaLynne McCord’s character deliberately loses her virginity while on her period to try and satiate her erotic obsession with blood.. The titular character in Ginger Snaps (2000) is attacked by a werewolf specifically because the smell of blood from her first period attracted it, and Dog Soldiers (2002) has a female werewolf referring to her metamorphosis as her “time of the month”. Basically, if a women in a horror movie gets her period, get out of there, because chances are she’s about to go on a violent killing spree. These movies, along with many others, directly connect menstruation with an often uncontrollable urge to wreak havoc, which is, at best, only 30% true.

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AnnaLynne McCord in Excision, which is spectacularly good and deserves to be far more known that it currently is. GIVE ME AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT THIS MOVIE PLEASE.

I don’t think I need to underline how many times teenagers, and women in particular, are punished for having sex in horror movies- films like Jennifer’s Body (2010), which features a teenager forced to lure her classmates with sex in order to feast on their innards due to the fact that she lied about still having her virginity, specifically pinpoint women’s sexuality as something demonic. It Follows (2014) lands in the same ballpark, with a teenager girl being stalked by a murderous vision because she slept with the wrong guy. I couldn’t really write this article without acknowledging this exists, so jump over to here if you’d like to read more about it.

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Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body. This movie is somewhat better than you think. 

 

And, what comes after sex? Babies. The demon pregnancy trope  and it’s implications have been discussed at great length elsewhere, so I’m going to focus in on a couple of specific movies that take it one step further- firstly, Grace (2009), which revolves around a woman who’s foetus is killed in the womb. She insists on carrying it to term, only to birth it and find out that it’s actually alive- but with a terrible appetite for blood. The film very specifically focuses in on the practical biological impulses of motherhood- labour, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and so on- and subverts them into something unthinkably horrible. In French New Wave horror Inside (2007), a woman loses her husband in a car accident while pregnant, and, just before she is due to give birth, is terrorised by another woman who is intent on acquiring her unborn foetus through scissor caesarean (seriously, you should watch it, it’s fantastic).

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Alysson Paradis in Inside. You have no idea how long it took me to find a screenshot with less than full gore in it.

In both movies, whether literally or metaphorically, the woman in question is being victimised for her ability and willingness to carry and birth children, punished with insane levels of violence or tortured by impossible moral questions for her decision. This can be applied to a bunch of other movies that use demon-pregnancy trope- there are so many films that employ the idea I don’t think I could list them all here- A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989), Devil’s Due (2014), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Ju-On 2 (2004), It’s Alive (1974), and, of course, the one that started them all, Rosemary’s Baby (1969), to name a handful. That’s not to say that the men who feature in these movies get off scott-free- usually the opposite, in fact- but their deaths have less to do with their biology than their female counterparts.

I’m not necessarily criticising every horror film that utilises one or more of these tropes- in fact, I think there are more than a few movies that explore femininity, motherhood and pregnancy in the horror with really interesting results (Most notably 2014’s The Babadook, which you absolutely should have seen by now). But it does get a little bit tiring, in a genre that I love so much, to see women’s biological processes so often depicted as something twisted, demonic, or uncontrollably evil.

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November 12, 2015

Feminism in Time and Space, Part Two: Sexuality and Representation

I swear to God I am rubbing my hands together right now, because this is a topic I’ve wanted to get to for a long, long time: Steven Moffat’s dealings with LGBTQ representation on Doctor Who. Now, I’ve written loads before about bisexual representation (or lack of it) on TV, and it’s something I always look out for in new shows, because bisexual characters-that is, characters who identify as bisexual and aren’t reduced down to their sluttiness, greediness, or, um, lying-ness-are pretty thin on the ground. But Steven Moffat has plenty of characters that don’t fit on either end of the binary, so let’s take a look, shall we?

While this is going to be about Doctor Who for the most part, I’d like to touch on a couple of his other shows that are relevant to this discussion. The first is Coupling, a so-so sitcom following a fictionalised version of Steven Moffat meeting a fictionalised version of his wife. They have a recurring group of friends, one of whom not-Steven is dating at the start of the series- when he tries to break up with her, she tells him she’s bisexual to titillate him into staying. Her “bisexuality” is played for laughs throughout the series, and then, in the final episode, someone shows her some naked ladies, she’s utterly horrified, and her ruse is shattered.

No relevant pictures for that paragraph, but just LOOK at how early-noughties this title card is.

And then, of course, there’s A Scandal in Belgravia, the Sherlock adaptation of the superb Conan Doyle story A Scandal in Bohemia. In the original tale, Irene Adler becomes the only person to outsmart Sherlock and gets away scott-free. In this version, she’s a dominatrix who spends a good chunk of her screentime naked, and she identifies as a lesbian. Despite that, however- despite the fact she says she’s only attracted to women- Steven Moffat’s self-insert  Sherlock is just so sexy and charming and clever that she falls in love with him and gives the whole game away. How they managed to write a story more regressive than one penned over a hundred years ago is beyond me, but there it is. Not to mention the hi-larious running joke of people assuming Sherlock and Watson are a couple, which Watson must quickly and vehemently deny lest those strangers think he likes men, rue the day.

So, you know, the problems I’m talking about here are not limited to Doctor Who. Far from it. But let’s get into the nitty-gritty of representation in the series.

Bring back Donna 2K15

Firstly, Steven Moffat has confirmed that both the Doctor and River Song are “happily bi”, which is cool, and I’m pleased to hear someone actually use the term for once (even if he did follow that up by saying that bisexuals didn’t need representation because they were having “FAR TOO MUCH FUN” and were to “BUSY!!” to watch TV, but let’s skim by that for now). But the fact is that, watching the show, the references he points to as proving their bisexuality- such as an offhand comment from River about fancying everyone in the crew except one, and her making reference to kissing Cleopatra- are always kind of…brushed over? Sure, the Doctor kisses men once or twice during the series, but it’s never as much more than a joke. Neither River nor the Doctor actually find themselves seriously attracted to a person of the same sex without it being breezed past with a barely-audible “No homo though” every time it comes up. Steven Moffat had to confirm their sexuality outside the show, which proves that what he’s doing inside the show is, at the very most, leaving people confused (but I’m sure they’ll make their mind up when they just meet the right episode and settle down, huh?).

And let’s talk about Clara, who has, on a couple of occasions made reference to being attracted to women. The first time, she’s Oswyn, and comments on her crush on a girl, only to quickly dismiss it as a phase; earlier this season, she spoke about Jane Austen being a “fantastic kisser” (right, sure, give Shakespeare his own episode but relegate Austen down to off-screen kissy-kissy faces). Some people have deduced from this that Clara bisexual, and they’re welcome to this interpretation, but to me it feels like a gross kind of pandering- sure, we’ll mention these things, but we’ll never talk about them again, see how the impacted Clara, let alone actually get an episode dedicated to them. Amy flirts with another version of herself, but it’s mostly shown to be a massive turn-on for her male partner Rory. Again, it’s there, but it feels more like a punchline that an actual attempt at representation.

To be fair, I’m bisexual and I’m SUPER into myself so maybe this is accurate.

I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t make mention of Madame Vastra and Jenny, an openly lesbian couple who join the Doctor on some of his adventures. Broadly, this is obviously good news, as having a long-term loving gay relationship on a show like Doctor Who is excellent for representation. But then again, let’s not forget that the show paints them as generally bickering, with Vastra’s straying eye and Jenny’s still-servant status. And, of course, the fact that the show had Jenny forcibly kissed by the Doctor (who knew she was both gay and in a relationship) before she shared an on-screen smooch with her partner. So, sexual assault comes before lesbian kisses. Good to know where the hierarchy is.

Look, I tried to find a picture of their first kiss but the search just returned a lot of fanart porn and frankly I’m just not up to sifting through it today.

Look, in some ways, I really appreciate that the show is trying to depict non-binary sexuality, and I think they have succeeded before. Even though Captain Jack Harkness (who appeared for the first time in a Moffat episode, but was created by Russel T Davies) kind of fits the hyper-slutty mould for bisexual characters on TV, he’s probably one of my favourite non-binary characters ever because he’s funny and brave and a bit of a sleaze (I worship at his altar in this review of Torchwood, if anyone cares). But since then, the show has treated non-binary characters like a novelty, who’s straightness is the only aspect of their sexuality worth exploring or even seriously discussing. And, considering we’ve got the whole of time and space to explore, I’d happily chop in another Dalek episode for one that actually took a look at the wide range of sexualities Moffat promises us are on his show.

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August 19, 2015

How I Slut-Shamed Your Mother

So, I’ve written before about How I Met Your Mother, because it was one of the first sitcoms I truly loved- sure, it might have paled in comparison to Frasier and Happy Endings and Suburgatory and Frasier (did I mention Frasier?) in recent years, but it’s still my baby and I adore it. I last watched it when the final season was airing in 2014, and I kind of forgot about it after that atrocious ending. A few nights ago, the Consort and I were looking for something to do (besides writing Doctor Who reviews, shameless plug), and we decided to watch a few of our favourite episodes of HIMYM. And both of us came away feeling kind of…urgh. I’d never before realized just quite how fucking grim one of my favourite comedies actually is.

I picked a shot with headless women in the background, because SYMBOLISM.

If you’re in any way acquainted with the show, you’ll know that Neil Patrick Harris, the King of my heart and also of this version of Sugar Daddy from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, plays breakout character Barney Stinson, a hyper-horrible pick up artist who treats women entirely as conquests to be slept with then discarded through any means necessary. Obviously, that’s pretty gross as it is, but generally the audience is encouraged to laugh at his pathetically grim attempts to pick up women, not with him. But then there’s the way he talks about women-hos, sluts, hefties, amongst a variety of other terms, all of which the studio audience howl along with. Guys, guys, look how funny it is that he consistently treats women like shit for engaging in casual sex or not conforming to society’s idealised version of them! And that ends up blurring the line uncomfortably between laughing at his convoluted “plays” to hook up with women, and laughing at the women he takes in with them for being so easy. Equally, there are a couple of episodes where less-than-perfect men are derided for, you know, having a sex drive and wanting to be treated like a normal human being.

If every single tertiary female character didn’t look and act like this, I might feel better about the whole thing.

His character might be a caricature, but the use of these terms isn’t, as evidenced by the fact the rest of the characters regularly describe women like that too. But who can blame them, considering the fact that almost every secondary female character on this show is treated like a dumb slut? They’re consistently stupid, drunk, gullible, vulnerable people, just waiting for our main character to swoop down on them, manipulate them, fuck them, and dump them. Or they’re prudes, torturing our innocent male characters with a lack of sex, (seriously, that plotline turns up an embarrassing amount during the series) which is equally awful. I’ve written before about how sitcom’s compressed time frame often cause sexist/racist/whatever-ist stereotypes, but none have done so as consistently as this. Especially when you compare them to the tertiary male characters, who get actual funny plotlines and don’t have to have their tits out to be shown on camera.

To be fair though, Kyle Machlachlan has a recurring role in the series so I love everything about it and it’s perfect.

But hey, I hear you cry, they have two female lead characters on this show (three if you count the titular Mother in season nine), so they can’t be that bad, can they? Well, yeah, I’m not going to dispute the fact that Robin (played by Cobie Smulders) and Lily (played by Alyson Hannigan) are as well-realized characters as their male counterparts, but they’re regularly shown as part of the Not One of Those Girls trope- they drink, they smoke pot, they enjoy sex, and they’re just as happy to describe women as “bitches” or “sluts” as their male counterparts. It’s okay to deride them, the show seems to tacitly argue, because even though they engage in a lot of the behaviours the derided “hos” do, because they shame other women for doing it, too. There’s something uber-grim about women shaming other women for their behaviour- Christ, it took me months to get rid of the involuntary twitch of disapproval whenever I met a woman who was engaging in behaviours I’d been taught weren’t “ladylike”-but here it’s used to show how cool and down these women are. Ladies, take note: dudes will like you if you call other women dumb sluts!

They’re not like those other girls, because the show often makes jokes of Lily’s high sex drive, or has the men encouraging them to perform lesbianism for them, or other characters calling them sluts for hooking up with people “too soon”. And it’s doubly a shame, because HIMYM has done some awesome stuff with it’s women characters- an infertility plotline was handled fucking beautifully, and the way the show treats their careers as just as valid as the male character’s is heartening. But let’s not forget that one of the biggest plotlines of the series revolves around Barney and Robin, and how he manipulates her by lying to her, dating someone she doesn’t like to make her jealous, and telling her they could never be together, only for her to fall at his feet when he proposes and have it treated as the most romantic thing in the world. For everything good they do with their women characters, they undermine it by holding up manipulation, unwanted persistence, and outright cruel behaviour as something women should look for in a man (and something men should be doing to get women).

Josh Radnor, who plays main character Ted, makes decent riffs on Woody Allen films now. Skip Liberal Arts, go for happythankyoumoreplease.

But when it comes down to it, this is a show that consistently shames women for their sexual behaviour, while it holds up men’s conquests as a victory. And that’s a shame, because it’s a really excellent comedy show- which is not to say that I suddenly don’t find it funny, but, with whole episodes revolving around how Barney has cruelly manipulated women into sex and then discarded them, it’s difficult to laugh along quite as heartily. God-dammit, How I Met Your Mother.

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June 6, 2015

Stop Making Excuses for Transphobia

https://twitter.com/joshychoi/status/607011925998899200

https://twitter.com/coreydsomers/status/606692203218522112

If you agreed with any or all of the above statements, you might be transphobic. And I think it’s time we stopped making excuses for you.

I think it’s time we stopped pretending that people we like, people who are broadly liberal and progressive, need to be cut some slack when they repeatedly misgender someone. I think it’s time that people who claim to support the LGBTQ+ community but staunchly refuse to educate themselves on trans topics need to be told they’re not the allies they think they are. I think it’s time that trans issues weren’t such an omnipresent punchline in the media. I think it’s time we stopped dancing around the issue, stopped tacitly endorsing transphobia, and started admitting that it’s bigotry backed up by ignorance, and that it should never have become the background noise of discussing trans issues.

I’m a feminist and part of the LGBTQ+ world, and in both communities I’ve seen people trying to close down or directly exclude trans people. Don’t bother bringing up trans stuff in general company, as you will find at least one person pulling a face and calling it gross. Whether it’s conservative politicians joking about wishing they had been transgender so they could sneak into the girl’s showers in high school. or famed feminists explaining why trans women are just men trying to impinge on female spaces, transphobia is omnipresent, no matter what political or social groups you align with. And it’s godamn time we stopped dismissing it with excuses- “they don’t understand”, “they don’t mean it”, “they’re allowed to voice their opinions”. All these things could be true, but it doesn’t stop what they’re saying being transphobic. And it doesn’t stop them from contributing to a culture that continually ignores, belittles, or actively attacks trans people. Your ignorance is not a defence.

When you hear people spouting the same tired transphobic rhetoric, call them on it. If you yourself are not sure how to appropriately discuss trans issues, there are some great resources out there- try here and here to start with. Call out the many, many mainstream news sites that promote transphobic articles- including The Guardian and The Blaze. Right now, the attempted suicide rate amongst trans people is at 41%, as opposed to 4.6% for cisgender people. The Human Rights Campaign estimates that 1 in 12 trans people face being murdered in their lifetime. We’re still living in a world where Ruby Ordenana, a trans woman, was found strangled and beaten to death, only for the funeral home to change her clothes from a dress to a suit, a world where a young gender non-conforming man was showered in LGBT slurs as he was beaten, cut, and burnt with cigarettes, only for the police to refuse to work on a composite with him. Only one state in America has officially banned the trans panic defence for the murder or assault of a trans person. Violence against trans people is everywhere, and when we sit back and allow transphobia to flourish unchecked-whether it’s in the media or in our day-to-day lives- we’re further allowing that to stay as the status quo. And we can do better than that- more importantly, we should be doing better than that. Because respecting people as people- no matter what their gender identity- shouldn’t be something we have to debate.

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May 15, 2015

“I Don’t Like Labels!”: TV’s Problem with the Word “Bisexual”

TV, we need to talk. Because, between my job (which involves writing about you) and my hobbies (which involve watching far more than the daily recommended allowance of you), you’re a big part of my life. And you’ve started getting me pretty pissed in the last few months.

Ever since I wrote a blog post coming out as bisexual to the internet (which responded with a shrugging “huh” as I put the Scissor Sisters on an endless loop and filled my flat with rainbow confetti), the way I look at my sexuality has changed. I feel confident identifying myself as LGBT, even though I used to shy away from the label; I’ve had long, productive discussions with people from all bits of the sexuality spectrum about sexuality, gender, and attraction; for probably the first time, I’m confident in challenging people on their insidious biphobia, and I’m 100% certain in yes, this is what I am, and it’s great and it makes me happy that the people close to me recognise that.

So TV, I came to you with my rainbow patches sewn on to my messenger bag(s), and I was finally on the lookout for bisexual characters on TV. And I was disappointed. I’ve written about bi-erasure in TV and movies before, but it was watching an episode of Arrow that really hammered home for me a particular bugbear in the way we depict and talk about apparently bisexual people on TV.

I’ve been dipping in and out of Arrow since season one, but I’m back on board now, and I discovered, to my delight, that one of their major characters-the original Black Canary- had been in a relationship with a woman, and had also had romantic entanglements with men. “Great!” thought I, “an intelligent, powerful, cool character who isn’t a) a vampire (seriously, so many vampires are bisexual that I think I might well be a blood-sucking minion of the undead myself) or b) outlandishly promiscuous, and identifies as bisexual!”.

But, then, of course, I had to go ruin it by looking up what the people behind this revelation had said about her sexuality. The producers had this to say on the matter:

“…we really wanted to approach it like not be salacious, and be sensitive, and be realistic. We actually specifically avoid using the term ‘bisexual.’ We didn’t want to label her at all. Let her be her own person. If the audience wants to label, fine, but we wanted to not make it like it’s that specific.”

Aside from the irritating re-iteration of the “my characters are out of my hands” trope (if you’re creating them, then no, you are entirely accountable for their actions), and the fact that they, inadvertently or not, described bisexuality as “salacious”, I finally managed to put my finger on why this bothered me so much: it’s the “We don’t like labels” line.

Now, let me be clear: if you’re a person who exists in real life and prefers not to label your sexuality, that’s great. I don’t deny that you exist, and you’re welcome to define your sexuality however you see fit.  The reason this really gets under my skin is because, time and time again, I see characters acting in an explicitly bisexual way- ie, having romantic and/or sexual relationships with both genders- only to be described as simply “not liking labels”. Take Brittany in Glee- described as “fluid” or “queer” throughout the show’s run, the writers continually use bisexual as a stand-in for a confused gay person (see also: this rant). Then there’s the straight/gay characters who have a dalliance with people/persons not of their preferred gender, with the word “bisexual” not even whispered in the next room. Sex and the City’s Samantha has an intense emotional and sexual relationship with a woman after consistently sleeping with men, and that part of her life is simply referred to as “When I was a lesbian…”. In Sherlock, Irene Adler is described solely as a lesbian, even though she admits to having strong feelings for the titular character (then, maybe we’ve got Mark “I think a lot of people who say they are bisexual aren’t” Gatiss to thank for that). The Buffyverse has a handful of examples where someone seems like they could be bisexual, only for the option to not even be considered (Willow, and, later, Buffy, to name a couple). Maybe the most prominent bisexual character on TV, Piper, from Orange is the New Black, is only referred to as bisexual one in the show’s whole run, with characters generally just outright calling her straight or gay. Fox nixed an arc for Marissa in The OC where she came out as bisexual, after one fling with a woman. Then, of course, you’ve got the people who experimented in college, but are now firmly straight and only look at it as a phase; you’ve got the Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss, you’ve got more tropes than you could count where people act in a way that seems to fit with the term “bisexual” but continually skate around the term.  I could go on and on and on and on and on here: if you don’t believe me, take a look at TV Tropes page for No Bisexuals. 

I’m not demanding that every person who has a single flirtation with both genders must instantly be embroidered with a scarlet “B”. I know people who’ve had relationships with both genders, who define themselves as gay or straight, and that’s cool. And I know people who’ve had relationships with both genders, who do identify as bisexual, and, like me, a lot of them are flapping their arms around going “where am I?” when they watch television. We choose to identify ourselves as something, then being blasted by pop culture which tells us that no, we’re just straight and lying or gay and lying. It’s a weird thing, to watch someone who acts like you act, who is attracted to the same spectrum of people you’re attracted too, and then be told time and time again “no, this isn’t you, and if you think it is, you’re wrong”. Considering the number of people who do happily identify as bisexual, constantly skirting the use of using that word is to deny the existence of that community to some extent.  When even the National LGBTQ Taskforce is publishing articles- on Bisexual Pride Day, no less!- encouraging bi-identifying people to drop that label and go with queer instead, it would be nice to have somewhere that embraced the word for what it was- a way of identifying and naming a common sexuality, a word that many people use to describe themselves. And it’s not just bisexuals: pansexuals, asexuals, basically anyone who falls outside of the mono-sexual binary basically doesn’t exist on TV.

So what the hell is TV’s problem with the word “bisexual”? They’ve obviously got no issue calling people straight or gay when they act in a way that stereotypically fits what we define as “straight” or “gay”. And I wouldn’t mind the odd character having a dalliance with someone outside their preferred gender, only to decide it’s not for them. But when it comes to “not liking labels”, the only label that TV writers seem to have a real problem with is bisexual.

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April 27, 2015

Let’s Talk About Rape on TV

Right, before I begin, I’m going to put a big fat Trigger Warning here for discussions or rape and sexual assault. Last chance to bail.

Right, okay, so I was catching up on the new series of Orphan Black last night, and I was enjoying it for being the stridently feminist, utterly ridiculous slice of sci-fi entertainment that I love so much. Then, at the beginning of the second episode, a sexual assault happened. I don’t want to give spoilers as this episode’s pretty recent, but suffice to say that a situation where consensual sex was happening was very quickly turned into one where one party had not agreed to the acts being initiated, and her lack of consent was ignored and caused further violence. The episode cuts to the next day, where the woman has reported her assault to the police and ducks into a cab, never to be seen again.

I’ve had huge, huge problems with the way that television portrays rape and sexual assault for a long time now, because so many shows have no clue as to how to depict them in a respectful way. For example, like the Orphan Black example above, The victim asks if she can have some kind of police protection, voicing her concern that the perpetrators will return and attempt to attack her again, then her violent assault basically is forgotten about so that the characters can focus on how her assault affects their story. The modestly feminist teen show Reign- about Mary, Queen of Scots- did it too, with the writer claiming that having her lead character get violently raped would lead to interesting character development for….Mary’s husband. Vikings has done it, when of their lead cast members was shown violently raping a woman to underline how bad he was. The Walking Dead rounded off last season with a domestic abuse storyline that was there to push forward Rick’s plot. Game of Thrones did it several times in the three seasons that I watched before ragequitting. These are just a few examples, and I’m sure you can think of many more off the top of your head.

And then, of course, you’ve got the other side of portraying rape; when a powerful female character is disempowered through rape or sexually assault. Game of Thrones did this with Cercei (and, more disturbingly, were reluctant to acknowledge that a scene in which a person says “no” to sex was actually rape); Sons of Anarchy did it with Gemma. Elizabeth in The Americans, Robin in Top of the Lake, Clare in House of Cards, even, arguably, Lagertha in Vikings, who is an immensley powerful character, is sexually assaulted. I’ve never quite got my head around why this is such a persistent trope- that when a strong, well-written, powerful female character gets a couple of series in, she’s often the victim of rape or assault. There’s a lot of arguments to be made for the reasons behind it, whether it’s an attempt to soften the hard edges of strong women to make them more palatable and pliable to viewers, that rape presents a shorthand for an interesting, emotional plot that is bizarrely specific to women (and therefore also erasing male assault and rape victims), that it’s a quick way to get across the fact that your show is edgy and adult. Whatever the reason, what I’m trying to say is that television- even television with great female characters- has real trouble depicting sexual assault and rape. Not just because they often seem to be employing it for the wrong reasons, but because they often refuse to acknowledge the effect that kind of event can have on someone’s life- rape, after all, can have a devastating impact on the lives of victims, as well as the nightmare many victims face trying to get justice.

So, television is bad at portraying rape and sexual assault. Television’s not meant to be real, so it’s no big deal, right? The problem is that we, as a society, have no fucking clue how to address rape and sexual assault. Whatever the gender of the victim, tacit victim blaming (what were you wearing? Had you been drinking? Were you leading them on? How much do you masturbate?) is a classic feature of the way we treat survivors of crimes like these. And that’s utter bullshit, and it makes me so angry that I can’t think straight. Every time a show fails to realistically portray rape and the impact it has on it’s victims, it’s missing out on the chance to fix something that the media is catastrophically failing at- whether it’s a Fox News anchor mourning the “poor boys” who had been convicted of the gang rape of an unconscious girl, or a talk show guest explaining the difference between date rape and, y’know, “real” rape. Television is pushing boundaries all over the place, taking on things that the rest of the media wouldn’t go near, and has some of the most grown-up, respectful, and interesting stories and characters you’ll find anywhere in fiction. But writers and directors are still flinching coming out of the gate in the way they portray rape- by othering it, by making it something that wouldn’t happen to someone like you, by refusing to show the impact it has on the lives of survivors. Come on, TV, don’t fail me now- you can do this, and more importantly, you should.

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April 16, 2015

I Don’t Care If You’re A Feminist

You know something that really pisses me off? The whole “Do you believe in gender equality? Then you’re a feminist” angle. Now, I’m a feminist myself, and I reckon we need to re-evaluate the way we define feminists, and why we feel the need to put that label on them.

I have friends who are feminists and I have friends who are not. And I understand fully why people might not want to associate with feminism, especially now, with a toxic mush of Twitter screenshots and appallingly handled rape reportage feeding into the idea that feminism wants to make women victims and men villains, to strip women of any responsibility for their actions and cast every single man as a potential rapist. Even as a feminist myself, I look at what some of the bigger feminists (such as Jessica Valenti or Laura Bates) are saying, and don’t always agree with it. I can openly admit that sometimes feminists will target small issues, like someone wearing a slightly misjudged shirt, and hold them up as indicative or a larger problem, and that I don’t think that’s the best way to tackle the issue. But I associate myself with feminism because there are a large number of feminists I seriously respect- everyone from my own mother to Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the feminist collective who spearheaded the changing of rape laws in America to include male rape. By calling myself a feminist, I accept that I am both associating myself with the good side of the movement, and of the often more publicised bad side. And I’m happy with that.

But I’m also in no rush to force the label on anyone else. If you’re an egalitarian, fantastic. If you want to focus your efforts on dealing with gender-based problems that affect men, great. As long as you are actively working towards gender equality, and doing so with activism in the areas that mean most to you, you go for it. If you fight for the causes that mean most to you (and are not getting in the way of genuine gender equality by doing so), I’ve got no reason to try and foist the label that I’ve decided to go with on you. In fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s important that we encourage anyone passionate about gender equality to work alongside feminism, even if they don’t want to directly identify with it themselves, because by excluding people who do not go for the feminist moniker we’re cutting out the opportunity to absorb new experiences, new information, and new issues that help move towards gender equality into the movement.

I know a lot of people who are not feminists, but who are equally as passionate about gender equality as I am. They’ve come to an informed decision about what they choose to term themselves, and that’s fine by me. Proving the legitimacy of feminism doesn’t come down to how many people we can browbeat into actually calling themselves feminists; it comes down to how we as a movement can make steps towards gender equality, and how we can work with other people aiming for the same goal. And that’s the last I have to say on the matter.

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April 10, 2015

“It’s Just a Book!”: Examining the Influence of Fifty Shades of Grey and After

So, my apologies for the lack of posting in the last week- I’ve been snowed under with university stuff and computer problems, so the blog had to take a back foot while I caught myself up. But I’m back, bitches, and this week’s Friday discussion is about the classic defence for problematic literature- “It’s just a book!”

I was thinking about this earlier today when I came across the #SuspendAnnaTodd hashtag on Twitter. For those who don’t know, Anna Todd published a wildly successful One Direction fanfiction on Wattpad, which was later purchased by Simon and Schuester and turned into a real-life book series. Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s pretty much the same path as that EL James wound up on when she published Fifty Shades of Grey. And that’s not the only thing the books have in common- they both depict seriously abusive relationship, presented to the reader as romance. You only have to jump on Twitter to see the scores of fans starry-eyed over the thought of their favourite romantic hero, with hundreds of tweets about how they want their own Christian Grey, or how they envy and want the relationship depicted in After.

Let’s make it clear: I’ve already done numerous breakdowns on the abuse in Fifty Shades, and read the first book of After, in which Hardin Styles terrorises heroine Tessa with his violent posessiveness, bargaining with her virginity, and dangerous levels of jealousy. These are the kind of relationships which would be undeniably abusive if they existed in real life, the kind of relationships you hope no-one you know ever ends up in.

But it’s okay, though, because they’re just fiction, right? And the defence that gets thrown my way more than any other? “It’s just a book.” “It’s just a book.” “IT’S JUST A BOOK”. And on the surface, that’s a pretty good defence; after all, I watch the Saw and Human Centipede movies, but it doesn’t mean that I’m more likely to go rip someone’s head open in a bear trap or sew someone’s mouth to someone’s, um, moving on.

But the difference between violent media and books like After and Fifty Shades is that they’re not being sold as romance. These novels are being marketed as books depicting an enviable, if fantastical, romantic relationship. Here, we’re encouraging readers to read these books and go “yeah, that’s something I want for myself!”. We’re training them to see obvious signs of abuse as signals that someone loves you, which is fine in the world of the story where a writer makes it so the heroine comes to no real harm. In these books, the author has it so when the heroine loves the hero as passionately and meaningfully as they can, the hero loves them back (often not actually changing their abusive behaviour) and they all live happily ever after. Anna Todd and EL James direct the action from behind the scenes, making sure Ana and Tessa don’t end up getting physically assaulted or killed; in real life, where two women in Britain are killed per week by a partner or ex-partner, we’re not so lucky.

It’s reflective of the society we’re in that books like these could achieve such astronomical fame and fortune. And the thing is, I’m not saying that they should be censored or banned or that everyone who likes them MUST STOP READING IMMEDIATELY. The problem is that these books are fantasy being sold as reality. You’ve probably heard a lot about the romanticizing of abuse in books like these, and that might sound like a lot of hot air; after all, most people are smart enough to tell the difference between what they enjoy reading on the page and what they want in real life. But when you’re being screamed at from all sides that this book will save your marriage, fix your sex life, sweep you away on a romantic journey-by publishers, film companies, and every scrap of advertising that has leapt on these books (which includes, lest we forget, washing powder)– that line can get blurred. So it’s important that we keep shouting about the problematic elements these books have from the rooftops, not because people shouldn’t be reading them, but because we’re living in society where emotional and verbal abuse is swept under the carpet with a “well, he/she should have just left”.

It’s not just a book. They’re books so popular that they begin to influence marketing decisions, popular culture, and, yes, real people. Books like these, whose stains seep into every corner of the media (lest we forget, Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest selling book of all time), start to instill the idea that if we or someone we know is being treated like the heroines in this book, then they’re lucky. If someone stalks us, acquires personal information about us, lies to us, manipulates us, ignores our boundaries and deliberately makes us uncomfortable, that’s love. The effects of abuse, whether emotional, physical, sexual, or an combination of the above, are long-reaching and sometimes devastating- and if we can convince just one less person that that’s the way they should expect to be treated by someone they love, then we’ve succeeded.

 

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March 21, 2015

TERF Wars: Trans Exclusionary Radicals and Feminism

This article originally appeared on Witty Bitches, so head over there to join in the debate and support a cool new feminist website.

I think it’s time that we talked about TERFs. Anyone involved in the feminism movement in any kind of way will probably have encountered this phrase a few times before- whether spitefully thrown out as a way to dismiss someone’s opinions (“ignore her TERF trolling”) or as a disclaimer (“feminist, not a TERF”) but what exactly that acronym means- and what kind of implications it has for feminists in the broader sense- is a factor that’s often obscured. So let’s take a closer look.

First off, what is a TERF when it comes down to it? Like all political ideologies, there are a bunch of sub-sections that bicker beneath the main banner, but those letters stand for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (and also spawned a million “TERF war” pun headlines whenever they clashed with the more mainstream movement). That sounds pretty self- explanatory-but there’s a lot of confusion about what precisely a TERF is. For a lot of people, it’s just a radical feminist who believes that trans people (specifically transwomen) should not benefit from or partake in the feminist movement, and should be denied access to women-only spaces (like bathrooms and refuges). And I’m not going to come right out and sweep everyone who identifies with this group under the transmysoginist or transphobic carpet, because I’ve read some interesting pieces by TERFs who vehemently argue against those terms, but I will say that a rotten bunch of people who DO identify as TERFs have been involved in pretty nasty behaviour. By which I mean, repeatedly and apparently deliberately misgendering transpeople, outrightly denying their gender, suggesting that lesbian transwomen cannot actually be lesbian, and saying some pretty repulsive stuff about the bodies of transpeople. Which is all pretty grim and unacceptable to most sane people, and most feminists.

But the real problem I have with it is suggesting that feminism is a girl’s club-specifically, a cisgender woman’s club. And I’m certain there will be TERFs who disagree with this interpretation of it, but that’s the way I see it. Sure, the majority of feminists who I’ve met during my lifetime have been women, but I also know personally (and know of, more broadly) a good number of non-cisgender women who are feminists. And that’s a pretty vital thing about feminism. Even if the movement is broadly focused on women’s issues because women suffer from the most systematic gender inequalities, it doesn’t mean that feminism is a movement for women’s power. It’s a movement for gender equality. Let me repeat that: IT’S A MOVEMENT FOR GENDER EQUALITY. As soon as you start excluding people from feminism on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or, well, anything other than the fact that their ideology just blatantly doesn’t sit well with feminism, the ground upon which feminism is built shatters. It’s vital that we call out those people who come up with tenuous reasons to try and stop people from supporting feminism, because by not doing so we’re tacitly agreeing that feminism is something that only applies to cisgender women. And that only they can participate. And that only they can benefit. And that’s bullshit, and I don’t like that idea at all.

Look, when it comes down to it, I just feminism to stop being such a dirty word. I want to throw window open and invite everyone to come and join the feminist party. Gender equality requires input from all genders, including those outside the gender binaries. If you can’t handle the thought of your little feminist clique being blown open to anyone who wants to join a long and drawn-out battle to end discrimination based on gender- whatever that gender is- than I’ve got some bad news for you: you might not be as feminist as you think.

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March 13, 2015

Why Feminists Should Watch Sexist TV

I spend my entire life hunched in front of a screen, and that isn’t something I’m ashamed to admit. I work as a freelance writer, and most of my money comes from reviewing TV shows, movies, and various other little offshoots of pop culture. And that was all well and good, until I became a feminist.

Last year, I had my big feminist awakening, which began with a few quiet mumblings about the representation of women on TV and grew into an all-encompassing ideology that permeates every part of my life, and, for the most part, I love that. But it’s made my job- which essentially amounts to pointing and laughing at bad TV, and screaming the praises of Hannibal from the rooftops- that much harder. Because sexism of TV kind of comes with the territory, and it’s impossible to turn off those feminist spidey-senses that start tingling whenever there’s a sexist representation or stupid trope or annoyingly retro stereotype on display onscreen. So, can you enjoy the shows you love and still get your feminist card punched? Well, I certainly think so- in fact, I think that it’s important for feminists to engage with sexist television.

With so much casual sexism at play on TV, it’s basically impossible to find a TV which has spotless feminist credentials (for my money, Sleepy Hollow is one of the few shows that pulls the elusive mix off). But that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to enjoy sexist TV .  The issue here is balancing the critical part of your brain with the one that just wants to be entertained, and it doesn’t mean that you have to wave goodbye to America’s Next Top Model, The Big Bang Theory, or The Bachelor in the process.

It can be difficult, in an era where being a feminist has become a loaded weapon of an ideology that spurs vitriol whenever it’s brought up, to accept that we live in a very sexist society. So sexist that most major forms of entertainment are going to be sexist in some way. Is that okay? Of course not, but millions of us all over the world engage with pop culture, and that makes keeping impeccable feminist mindsets almost impossible. And that’s why many of us, rather than speak out about the sexism in the shows we love, choose to shun them into a “guilty pleasure” corner, which gives creators further free rein to produce content that reinforces damaging stereotypes because hey, no-one’s taking this stuff seriously, are they?

So, how do you engage with sexist TV without letting it get the better of you? The balance that I’ve come to terms with in my head is being able to acknowledge sexism, and identify why it’s bad- which is always a useful little defence mechanism when someone demands that you explain why Game of Thrones is sexist (because, well, duh). I’ve honed down the innate ability to separate sexism from what I enjoy within TV shows, and appreciate that the people behind these productions aren’t necessarily raging sexists by proxy, but just misinformed and probably relying of stereotypes because they’re a quick way to get a character across in a limited timeframe. You can get pissed off that Penny in The Big Bang Theory goes to college so she can be smart enough to date her boyfriend, and still find Sheldon utterly hilarious. You don’t have to boycott shows that subscribe to sexist stereotypes, as long as you’re confident in calling out the casual sexism that’s rife on television screens today. It’s important that we take television shows seriously, as they can bring together people from all over the world and stimulate fascinating conversations about the nature of the characters and the way the show is created. And by admitting that hey, I like X crappy sexist TV show too, we can start dialogues with over fans about sexism and feminism on TV. Pop culture is something that almost everyone in the world has access to on some level, and that makes it a perfect place to start conversations about innate sexism in our culture.

For me, it boils down to that irritating chant of “if you don’t like it, don’t watch it” that’s directed at people who point out sexism in popular entertainment. If I decided to boycott every single show that depicted sexism in some way or another, there would be a lot less reason for me to have Netflix.  A show can still be really entertaining, or well-made, or interesting, or thought-provoking, while still tapping into stupid sexist stereotypes that would rile up any feminist. Maintaining my job as a critic hasn’t required me to switch off my feminist side when I watch sexist TV, but rather to engage it even more than usual. Because it’s vital that we keep watching, critiquing, and reporting on sexism in pop culture, and the only way we can do that is by understanding the universe the show has created and looking at it from an authentic fan perspective. So, don’t be afraid to stick with your guilty-pleasure sexist TV shows- just be prepared to bring the small screen to account when it needs it.

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