Rant about Hollywood directors, German models and victim support

 

Café Society, the new Woody Allen movie, has come out.  It is apparently “an amusing little picture”.  I’ve not seen many of his movies, but I really enjoyed Match Point.

These days when I see some publicity for an Allen movie I am always reminded not of his undeniable skills as a movie maker, but the fact that according to his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow he sexually assaulted her when she was a child.  These allegations surfaced two years ago, were hardly mentioned in the media on this side of the Atlantic and subsequently disappeared from the public gaze completely.  But even at the time they were making the rounds in the media I was struck by how many Hollywood movie stars came out to defend him.  As if they knew whether the allegations were accurate or not.  To get past this problem time and again attention was drawn to the fact that Mr Allen has never been convicted of anything.  Which to my mind was and continues to be irrelevant.  And if I may be forgiven a smidgen of professional superiority, it shows to me that people who use it do not understand how the criminal justice system works.

There is a difference between the standard of proof that is required in civil and criminal cases.  A civil matter needs to be proven “on the balance of probabilities”.  If an event on the evidence is more likely to have happened than not, then the court will find it to have happened.  In criminal matters the standard is MUCH higher: it must be proven “beyond reasonable doubt” that the defendant is guilty.  In other words, even if the court were to think, hypothetically, that it is more likely than not that a certain Mr Allen sexually assaulted a certain Ms Farrow, it would still render a verdict of not guilty, unless it was almost certain that this had occurred.*

Sexual offences pose particular problems within the criminal justice system.  Most rapes occur between two parties that know each other, and the victims rarely put up a significant physical fight (see for example here and here for some more details).  This leads to the difficult scenario that the only evidence available is the testimony of the victim and the rapist.  In most cases this means that the rapist simply has to be acquitted, even if the court finds the victim’s testimony more credible than the denial of the rapist.  This is unfortunately the way it has to be, because of the grave consequences that attach to a criminal conviction.

This does not mean that the victim is lying and the rape did not occur.  It is for each of us to determine who and what we believe in any given scenario.  Given the obstacles faced by victims in reporting rape, and how little they have to gain by doing so, (see here for an example of police attitude to rape victims coming forward,) I am always inclined to believe a person who says she (or he) has been raped.  I would encourage you to question your reasons if you do not do the same.

As a practical matter, rape victims are unlikely to be interested in my belief in their word, unless they happen to be personal friends, in which case I understand that it matters a great deal.  But this has consequences for the society: there should be an absolute division between the criminal justice system and the assistance and support that is available for victims of sexual assault.  Victims should ALWAYS be believed when they say they have been raped and they should be cared for and assisted accordingly entirely irrespective of whether anyone has been convicted or even accused of the rape.

This simple principle explains why I am so royally upset by the recent case in Germany where Gina-Lisa Lohfink was convicted of falsely accusing two men of drugging and raping her in circumstances that are unclear.  I understand and accept that the accused gentlemen could not have been convicted as the evidence was not sufficient.  But to convict her (and remember here the very high standard that is required for a criminal conviction) is – to use a technical term – FUCKED UP.  It sends a frightening message, does untold damage to future victims of rape and sexual assault in Germany and makes me very, very sad.

 

* This is also the simple explanation for the different results in the OJ Simpson civil and criminal trials.  It was more likely than not that he committed the murders, which is why he lost the civil case, but it was not proven beyond reasonable doubt, which is why he was acquitted of the criminal charge.

Rant about the Power of Stories

I must have been about 12 years old when my mum told me about the nightmare that my brother K, who was 8 at the time, had had the previous night.

I was surprised by this. Not because of the content of the dream, or how it had affected K or mum, but by the FACT that my brother HAD DREAMS. He was a PERSON, not just a little kid who could be a nuisance to me.

Let’s just say I was not the most socially or emotionally precocious child …

I was reminded of this incident some months ago when reading about a grassroots awareness campaign that an NGO was running in some rural Indian village aimed at improving the rights of women.* The program was simple: organising workshops for men, during which they were taught how and why to treat women better. But the level was startling to someone living in my comfortable western, urban, educated bubble. One man, interviewed after completing the workshop, was proudly explaining how he had learnt that he should treat his wife and mother better, because they were people too and had their own thoughts and feelings.

While I’m hoping that all of you (men) reading will know that your wives and mothers have their own thoughts and feelings, why is it still that men have stories and experiences and women have women’s stories and experiences? And men are only interested in the stories and experiences of the default kind?

This was bothering me, so I did a test with one of the most casually comfortable male feminists I know, my partner F.** (This means that everything I say from now on has been scientifically proven.) I asked F to name his 5 favourite movies and 5 favourite authors. He named Lord of the Rings, Pride, The Jungle Book, Matrix and Dinner for One (movies) and Daniel Kehlmann, Herman Melville, Erich Maria Remarque, Ronald Dworkin and Karl May (authors).***

This tallies with statistics. Men read books written by men. Women read more books written by women, but because women read more than men in general, in the end this still means that 50% of male authors’ readership is female (while only 20% of female authors’ readership is male).**** I had a quick look at my own reading journal (yes, I keep a reading journal, shut up) and it appears that since the start of 2014 I’ve read 15 books written by men (42%) and 21 books written by women (58%). Granted, a book written by a man is not necessarily about men and a book written by a woman is not necessarily about women, but I am willing to state that the gender of the author (just like other attributes, such as race, nationality, class) does mean something in considering what the stories are that these authors write.

Same goes for movies. Women go to see more movies than men do (source). Here my facts are admittedly more vague and impressionistic, but let’s see if you agree. Women go to see all kinds of movies, including ones that focus on the stories of men (this follows from the stats – as there are many more women who go to the movies than there are movies about women, they must be also watching the stories of men). But I find it hard to even imagine a man going with his bros to see movies about women. This applies across the spectrum, from rom-coms to buddy road trips (Thelma & Louise) to serious drama (think last year’s Still Alice) and even war movies (which are almost by definition about men, but one exception comes to mind, the 2008 Les Femmes de l’Ombre, which is about four French (women) commandoes sent to rescue a captured geologist). If men go to see such movies, it is because their wives/girlfriends drag them there.

Why is that? Why do men not even consider women’s stories interesting enough to watch on screen (or read)? I get it that the most popular movie genre is a white hetero dude saving the world, but why ONLY this story, over and over again? And I don’t only mean douchebags who complain that the role given to Charlize Theron in the latest Mad Max ruins the whole action movie genre (really), but men in general?

I can only pose the question, I think, inviting everyone to provide their thoughts, and to consciously examine their own entertainment consumption habits. I will also continue to drag F to see movies that do not star white hetero dudes and suggest he read good books written by women. If any of you other smart dudes out there want to broaden your horizons and find awesome authors that happen to be women, I am happy to give tips and recommendations!

Because this stuff matters. Media and culture are key to better understanding which is key to better empathizing which is key to better accepting.

Love and peace.

*I read this in a paper article which I can no longer locate, which means that I can neither give the source nor even the name of the NGO. Bad me.
**He recently ran a ½ marathon wearing a “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt, without even mentioning it to me. It was a campaign tee for a Palestinian LGBT organisation. I was so proud of him.
***F told me that apparently info on favourite movies and authors is very personal, so for the sake of fairness, my favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Margaret Atwood, Sofi Oksanen, Mika Waltari and Chimamanda Ngoci Adichie. I've mentioned my favourite movies in another rant.
****Admittedly this is only one study, but done by GoodReads based on the data their members reported, so quite a comprehensive look at avid readers. The Guardian did some good simple analysis on the numbers.

The One You've Been Waiting for: Rant against Marriage (aka "How to Piss Off Most of Your Friends")

Many of you, my dear friends, are married. 

I am not. 

People in Namibia were hardly subtle about their view on this state of affairs.  A common comment from colleagues at the LAC, for example: “You’re not married”, looking at my hand and the glaring absence of the tell-tale ring.  “You must get married.  Soon.”

Now you’re thinking “sure, but Namibia is a banana republic, this is not how we civilized people think”. WRONG.  Here is, just as a taster,* the Supreme Court of Canada:

 

“[The] ultimate raison d’être [of marriage] is firmly anchored in the biological and social realities that heterosexual couples have the unique ability to procreate, that most children are the product of these relationships, and that they are generally cared for and nurtured by those who live in that relationship.  In this sense, marriage is by nature heterosexual.  It would be possible to legally define marriage to include homosexual couples, but this would not change the biological and social realities that underlie the traditional marriage.”**

Ah, the good old “traditional marriage”.  What the HELL is that?  The “traditional marriage” is about ownership of land and movable property, such as women.  Marriage was the social construct that permitted men to police the sexual conduct of women and in this way try to ensure that the son who would inherit the land was in fact the product of their loins.  

And WHEN did this lovely “traditional marriage” exist? Well, it was prescribed in the Marriage Act of Switzerland UNTIL 1988 that wives had a legal obligation to obey their husbands.***  Nice. 

 

So the marriage that most of you have entered into, and which is based legally nowadays on the equality of spouses but apparently still tied to popping babies (or at least the theoretical possibility of doing so), and therefore not available to homosexuals, is a fleeting concoction of a few decades.  Before then marriage was something quite different.  Some of this “traditional” stuff still remains.  How many of you ladies were “given away” by your fathers as part of the ceremony?  The symbolism of THAT particular gesture is hardly subtle.

 

When I make these points in discussion, everyone (married) gets defensive and tells me that all this is nonsense and meaningless to THEIR very special relationship, which they are entitled to define for themselves.  Sure, everyone is indeed entitled to define their relationship as they wish.  But they are not entitled to define their “marriage” as they wish.  You see, the society has made a huge deal of ensuring that homosexuals CANNOT define their very special relationship as a marriage.  So once a (hetero) couple has decided that “marriage” is the relationship they wish to have, they are plunging into a structure that is predefined by law and society.  “[T]he words ‘I do’ bring the most intense private and voluntary commitment into the most public, law-governed and state-regulated domain.”****

 

Until the institution of marriage changes, becomes truly equal and keeps its nose out of my procreative designs, the society can keep its stinking marriage.  I indeed define my own relationship (well, F has a bit of a say as well…), and “marriage” is a definition I want to steer well clear of.*****

 

Now PLEASE tell me you were provoked enough to leave some comments.  Rebel! Protest! Tell me that my views suck and you never want to hear them again!

 

 

*You REALLY don’t want to get me started on the comments that were made during the debates in the Finnish Parliament when the Marriage Equality Bill was being debated.  It is remarkable how unashamedly regressive supposedly modern people can get when they oppose the human rights of others, but just don’t want to say that this is what they are doing.

**Egan v. Canada, [1995] 2 S.C.R. 513, p. 536 (La Forest, J.).

***A good short introduction to the development of the law on marriage in Switzerland is provided in Baddeley “Le droit de la famille, un droit en constante evolution”, in Chappuis,Foëx and Thévenoz, Le législateur et le droit privé : Colloque en l'honneur du professeur Gilles Petitpierre. (Genève, Schulthess, 2006) pp. 39-56.  Amusing in a painful way.

****Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another (CCT 60/04) [2005] ZACC 19; 2006 (3) BCLR 355 (CC); 2006 (1) SA 524 (CC) (1 December 2005) (Sachs J).

 

*****Cue in smugness from friends from countries such as Canada (which changed its mind quite quickly after the Egan decision quoted above), France and the UK, where an equal marriage is of course already the reality.  I hereby raise an imaginary toast to C in Canada and T in England on their recent engagements to enter into an equal marriage!

Rant in Defence of Nasty People

For them marriage outside one’s own caste is punishable by death, and too much contact with non-believers is in general polluting, and to be discouraged.  Only men can become chiefs and once they do, they may take several wives.  They believe they are descended only from Adam, not Eve, with her undesirable feminine ways.

If I had been the head of marketing at the murderous terrorist organisation ISIS (an interesting thought experiment…), the above would have featured quite heavily in my recent propaganda.

You see, this is from the Wikipedia description of the Yadizis, the people that ISIS has been genociding in Northern Iraq in recent months and for whom we have all been feeling very sorry as a result.*  Would we have been feeling quite so sorry for them, if we had known that they are not necessarily the nicest people on earth themselves, but have some practices and beliefs that we feminists actually find quite objectionable?

I really hope the answer for everyone is “yes”. 

As I mentioned in my post about LGBT rights some weeks ago, human rights are for everyone, not just nice people.  This is why I don’t get the reaction of the islamophobic trolls that fill the comments sections of any news involving Muslims, for example.  They think that if only they educated me about the fact that women are discriminated against by their menfolk in the Gaza strip, I would – as a feminist – accept the Israeli bombing of them.  How silly.  I’m well aware of some problematic aspects of Islam, and I’m happy to have a conversation about anyone on the Gaza strip about them, but PLEASE STOP BOMBING THEM FIRST.  I am also happy to have this conversation with any Muslim in Finland or Switzerland, but PLEASE STOP DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM FIRST. 

In short, someone not being herself or himself an angel is no reason not to grant her or him the same rights as everyone else.  And I should not have to pretend that they are an angel in order to convince everyone that their rights merit protection.

This hit me quite hard last week, when I received some torture campaign material from Amnesty.  Torture is wrong; I hope all of us agree.  So why do they have to only include nice people among their list of examples of torture victims?  One is described as a father and a husband, another as a prisoner of consciousness.  Who cares?  They should not be tortured whether they are saints or terrorists.

As the well-known saying goes: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”**  That should hold true for every right, and for every person.***

 

*Although not doing much else than feeling sorry but that is another story.

**Often misattributed to Voltaire, but actually the phrase is apparently from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, his biographer.  A woman’s wise words being attributed incorrectly to a man, how surprising.

***Well, maybe not quite the death part, but you get the general sentiment.

Rant about African Women Part 2 - Josephine Baker

 

 

The second stereotype of an African woman is the wild and erotic “Josephine Baker”.*  Her whole being is mystical and sexual, and since sexuality is scary it must be contained.  One of the first things the colonising Europeans did in the 19^th century in many parts of this continent was to impose western, puritan dresscode on semi-naked tribeswomen.  Nowadays this seems so ridiculous.  The Himba women, for example, in their traditional outfits are beautiful, but not particularly erotic.  Most modern Europeans (the same can’t be said for Americans … the nation of the “boobgate”) can tell the difference between nudity and sexuality.

 

I began to get an idea of the power and scariness of the Josephine Baker, though, when I spent just over a month frequenting a Windhoek gym.  Again, this is not “Africa”, it is just Windhoek, but there were women from different tribes, of different ages, shapes and sizes there.  They all appeared to have one thing in common, though: they were admirably at ease with themselves.  The whole atmosphere in the changing room was just very different to what I have seen and experienced in any part of Europe.  The self-consciousness that a white woman does not seem to be able to escape was almost entirely lacking.  So I began to think that the power of Josephine Baker has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with self-confidence.

 

I wondered why that was.  We are supposed to be more emancipated and aware of our rights in the North.  Yet the bombardment of images of how we should look like – and do not look like – is so relentless that it it nearly impossible not to be self-aware, and consequently ashamed of our imperfect bodies.

 

The tabloid press is a lot less developed in the parts of Africa I’ve been to.  The images of perfect women that ARE portrayed are likely to come from Hollywood, where the pictures are either those of white women or of black women whose beauty adheres very closely to white standards (think Beyoncé or Halle Berry).  Maybe this has less of an impact on the self-confidence of a woman who just looks very different.  Recently the standards of beauty have been ever so slightly relaxing, when women like Lupita Nyong’o have entered the common consciousness.  Ms Nyong’o is strikingly beautiful.  However, her beauty is of such different kind to what I could ever be that I can just admire it, without her images on some sub-conscious level chipping away at my confidence.

 

So maybe that is partly it.  While women in many African cultures are traditionally supposed to be less assertive, and subject to male authority, once they can break away from that and enter the public sphere, they do so with confidence in themselves that is not constantly being undermined by a bombardment of insidious messages of how inadequate they are physically, and how important it is to be physically more adequate.  Hence they are less held back, less apologetic of who they are and what they are capable of.

 

I therefore have come to think, tentatively, that Josephine Baker is in fact Mama Africa.  They are the two sides of the same confident coin.  I have also come to appreciate my time at the gym changing room.  Comments about time spent looking at other people at the gym changing room can come out the wrong way, but even at the risk of that I must conclude that I hope some of the chuzpah those ladies had rubbed off on me!

 

 

*Yes, I know Ms Baker was not from any part of Africa, but French-American.  Her “brand” is fitting for this post, though.

 

Rant about African Women Part 1 – Mama Africa

 

I ranted earlier about the western “exoticiation” of everything “black” and the consequent blindness (including my own) to differences within Africa.

 

One area where this has manifested itself very clearly is the creation of the stereotype of the “African woman”.  In the western collective imagination a woman from any part of Sub-Saharan Africa is one of two types.  She is either a physically and mentally imposing matriarch, the “Mama Africa”,* or an oversexualised semi-wild creature, who I will call the “Josephine Baker” for short. 

 

I will rant on this occasion about Mama Africa, and return later to Josephine Baker.

 

Based on my limited experience of spending in total just over half a year in two Sub-Saharan African countries, I would tentatively suggest that there is some truth to the Mama Africa stereotype.

 

Taking as a starting point the undeniable fact that due to structural sexism there are not many women who have managed to make their mark on the world stage to begin with, the European ones are likely to be somehow still soft and “feminine”, no matter how “tough” the job, situation or decision.  This is for example how Angela Merkel or Christine Lagarde come across.  Even Margaret Thatcher would fall into this category, as would Finland’s own Tarja Halonen.

 

This is not the image the impressive African women have.  They are more like Wangari Maathai, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Fatou Bensouda or Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.  It is hard to pinpoint the difference, but these women appear to have an aura that their northern counterparts lack.  It is not just because they are physically more imposing (partially undoubtedly due to their wardrobes – it takes bucketloads of charisma to pull those outfits off, and they always do), but you will have no trouble imagining them taking charge.  Of a situation, of a family, of a country.  European women have to battle much harder to achieve that appearance that instinctively invites confidence.

 

The other thing is that, on a continent many parts of which suffer from more sexism than most of Europe, it was easy to come up with several examples of such impressive women who have put their stamp on the world.  So with the same or lesser opportunities, African women seem to be better at achieving positions of power.

 

There has been no shortage of examples of Mama Africas here in Namibia.  I do not want to belittle the problems arising from sexism that this country is still facing (such as high levels of gender-based violence, traditional roles, lack of educational opportunities etc.), but you see powerful women everywhere.  They are on boards of companies and they run government ministries.  Admittedly I have also met women, like a young university student who told us that she hated studying and really just wanted to marry and become a housewife,** who do not fit the stereotype of Mama Africa, but there are enough Mama Africas (to varying degrees of course) for me to notice it.  The first among equals is Libertina Amathila, whose memoir I am currently reading.  She is an inspirational figure for Namibian as well as other ladies.

 

I have been racking my brain over the past few months to try to understand why this is.  I’d love to be able to export some of that back to Europe, as the sisterhood could and should learn from best practice everywhere.  I don’t want to make any facile and racist assumptions that these women have been molded by their difficult childhoods, since in most cases I know nothing of their childhoods, which may have been overwhelmed by privilege and love.  Probably they have been on very different journeys and would have different stories to tell.  But something about the way capable, bright African women are brought up, or educated, appears to create confident, all-imposing Mama Africas that rock the world.

 

 

*I hope nobody takes this as an offensive term, it is certainly intended with the utmost respect.  I got the idea for it recently when reading a book called Mama Namibia by Mari Serebrov.

**In a weird way this young lady exemplified a positive development from a feminist viewpoint.  It really should be for everyone to decide on their own dreams, and (a) this means that wanting to be a housewife is a permissible future plan, and (b) it is a plan that should be available to women in Windhoek just like it is in Geneva.

Rant about St Galentine

Valentine’s Day is a tough one.

On the one hand, love is always good and never celebrated enough.  Realistically speaking we all need the occasional nudge to voice our appreciation to the special somebody whose “special-ness” might get neglected in everyday drudgery of work, family and a mountain of dirty laundry.

On the other hand, the whole business is uncomfortably hetero and not a little sexist, suggesting that a woman’s happiness depends on a loving man.  There is an unmistakably “feminine” (in the derogatory sense of the term) whiff of desperation and clinginess about Valentine’s Day.

The resourceful ladies in the feminist movement in the US of A have resolved this conundrum by adopting the cringe-free version: Galentine’s Day, introduced during the second season of Parks and Recreation.  Galentine’s Day is a celebration of that underappreciated virtue that is a woman’s friendship with other women.  There is a misperception that women are all jealous bitches in the workplace ready to trample any ambition seen in their female colleagues and jealous bitches in their private lives pretending to be friends with other women only to try to steal their husbands/boyfriends.  Really, I’m not exaggerating.  Try to think of a few examples of positive representation of women’s relationships with other (unrelated) women in the media and you will draw a blank.  THIS is why Sex and the City was so revolutionary.  (Here is a good recent article on this phenomenon more broadly.)

So hooray to Galentine’s Day.  Because in real life all us lady people are surrounded by numerous other lady people providing us with happiness, support, advice and laughter.  I can tell from professional and personal experience that lady people are GREAT.

But as great as Galentine’s Day is, it is still a bit exclusionary.  Not all of our friends are women and some don’t like the gender binary to begin with.  Really, who cares who your friends are, as long as they provide all the wonderful things that a friend provides?  So Galentine’s Day is an improvement, but it is not quite there yet.

Finnish readers will know by now where I’m going with this, because Finns have solved the whole thing decades ago.  You see, Finns were wary of the icky pinkness of Valentine’s Day from the beginning.  The joke goes like this:

The wife is mooching so visibly that even the husband notices, prompting the compulsory question of “What’s wrong?”  “You never tell me that you love me” the wife responds.  “I told you at our wedding ten years ago, didn’t I?  Well, I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”

So Finns have never celebrated Valentine’s Day in the romantic sense of the term.  Instead, 14 February in Finland (and in Estonia) is Ystävänpäivä (Sõbrapäev) – Friendship Day.  It is a day when we give cards to our friends and hug them and tell them how awesome they are.  What could be better than this?  Not everyone has a “valentine”, but everyone has friends, and everyone loves to tell their friends that they’re great, as well as hear this in return. 

I don’t think the idea is patented or even copyrighted, so feel free to implement it in your countries!

Hyvää ystävänpäivää everybody.

Rant about Domestic Gods

Feminism makes some people – both men and women – a bit queasy.  There is this inherent fear of “man-hating” behind this reaction, that promoting WOMEN must mean pushing down MEN, as if it is some kind of a zero-sum game.

The latest craze in feminism seems to be about allaying these fears by reminding everyone that feminism isn’t only about women’s rights, it’s about men’s rights too.  Men don’t really need to have their rights promoted (by women) in the corridors of power, so the troops are marching to battle to promote men’s rights in the one sphere where women still dominate: the home.

The most notable thing about this movement is that it is driven by women.  I see the cunning in the argument:  Anne-Marie Slaughter’s widely publicised views on the structural blocks to (American) women combining work and family become less threatening, and she appears smarter and her views more acceptable, when she follows them up with an impassioned plea for the rights of men to have a say in the home.  It’s OK, she is not a man-hater after all.  Similarly Riikka Venäläinen, the Editor-in-Chief of the biggest Finnish newspaper, decides to celebrate Father’s Day with an editorial about the need to treat fathers as equal parents with equal rights (and presumably equal duties, although she is less clear on that).  She is a woman in a man’s job, I understand that she must get the boys on her side, and some of her earlier writings, hinting at feminist views, must have caused a stir.  This piece was a good counterweight.  

I’m sure you’ve all seen other examples of similar writings in recent months, as they have proliferated in the media.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these ideas – most of them are in fact very good.  But what I don’t get is why it all has to come at the expense of blaming women.  Here’s Ms Slaughter:

“You know, women are hypocrites this way, because we would go crazy if men treated us in the workforce the way we typically treat them at home – if a guy in the workforce assumed he was more competent than you are, and told you what to do – but that's the way most women treat men in the household.”

While men sometimes have specific gripes about their own spouses (which is all entirely normal, at the end of the day it is for each family to decide how they handle their own domestic arrangements), they do not seem to be getting up in arms and blaming the womenfolk in general for keeping them down and preventing them collectively from having a say in domestic decisions.  So why do women do it?  As if most women don’t carry around enough guilt about trying to be perfect employees, bosses, mothers, wives and a thousand other things as it is.  They clearly need the extra guilt, heaped on their heads by other women, that they are preventing men from blossoming into domestic gods.

Come on ladies.  We can do better than this.  Just like feminism is not about hating men, let’s not make it about hating (other) women either.  Let’s remember who the real enemy is.*  The enemy is the patriarchy, the structures that prevent equality from being achieved in any and all spheres of life. 

 

*For those who recognised the quote: yes, I’m ridiculously excited about the new Hunger Games movie.  Almost as excited as I was about Two Towers back in 2002.  The trailer already passed the Bechdel test!

Rant about Brains in Hollywood

I love movies.  I mean, who doesn’t?  While I have some friends that go for the “artsy” types shown in little independent movie theatres, I’m an unapologetic Hollywood girl.  My favourite movie is the Lord of the Rings.  Next in the list are the Usual Suspects, Shawshank Redemption and Madagascar.  A powerful Kiwi movie called Once Were Warriors probably makes it to the Top 5, but that’s about it, as far as non-blockbusters are concerned.

The problem with movies is that if you go to see them for “pure” entertainment and diversion, you must be able to switch your brain off.  I’ve recently been struggling with that, and the biggest culprit is a comic artist called Alison Bechdel.  In her 1985 Dykes to Watch Out For she introduced a test to see whether a movie had THE BARE MINIMUM in terms of women’s presence and storyline.  The test, which has become colloquially known as the “Bechdel test” is composed of three very simple criteria.  The movie must:

(1) have at least two named women in it, 

(2) who talk to each other,

(3)  about something besides a man.

Knowing how often in real life women talk to other women (err... all the time) and how often those conversations don’t concern men (err... all the time), you’d think the test would be a walk in the park for most movies, right?

WRONG.

Trying the test out in action, here are the movies that I’ve seen in the past couple of months:

1. Monsters University;
2. Now I see You;
3. Hair;
4. Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest;
5. Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark;
6. Iron Man;
7. Silver Linings Playbook; and
8. Viva Riva.

Guess how many passed the Bechdel test?  Three.  Guess how many of those three were Hollywood?  One.  Silver Linings Playbook scrapes by with a single dinner conversation between the sisters played by Jennifer Lawrence and Julia Stiles.  Ironically enough,* along with the one Swedish movie on my list, passing the test with flying colours, the other one that does is the Congolese one.  And before anyone gets to say anything like “obviously action movies like Indiana Jones and Iron Man will not pass it, chicks don’t do action”, I can inform you that Viva Riva is a violent crime thriller.  But what do you know, apparently in Congo women can get a piece of the action too, and might even have a conversation or two with each other while they’re at it!

The problem with the Bechdel test is not just that it irks the feminist in me.  It is that once I became aware of it, and started applying it to the movies I saw, and liked, I began being also aware of the numerous other failings in them.  Apparently there is an ethnic diversity version of the Bechdel test as well: 

(1) Are there at least two named non-white characters in the movie,

(2)    who talk to each other,

(3)    about something besides a white character?

Most Hollywood movies fail again...

Is it really that only the stories of white heterosexual men are interesting enough to be told?  Why do other characters in movies only exist in relation to the storyline of the main white dude, as if they have no interesting stories of their own?

So basically the Bechdel test has ruined movies for me.  Because once I have it in my head, I can’t help but notice how shallow and stereotypical all Hollywood movies are.  My top 5 of all times listed at the top?  Yeah, you guessed it, they all fail, apart from the Kiwi one.  Thanks a bunch, Alison Bechdel.

PS. Going back to the feminist in me that gets irked, I will give a big thumbs up to the first person to think of a movie that would fail a “reverse Bechdel” test.  I doubt it has been made.

*I say “ironically enough” because we in the North have this tendency of thinking that we’re the most progressive people on the planet.  On everything.

Rant about a Particularly Hot Piece of Ass

My cousins A and P told me that they were watching the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest held a few months ago in Malmö, Sweden. (Hooray to great cultural traditions!)  Apparently in the Finnish broadcast one could send text messages to the production company and these would scroll along the bottom of the screen as the finalists were performing.  A and P noted that many of the comments were lewd and openly sexual, saying nothing about the songs, but focusing solely on the physical attributes of the artists.  Once they noticed this, they began following the comments and discovered that they related solely to the men – without exception.  Nobody made comments about the looks of the female artists (or at least none were published), many of whom were trying just as hard as the men (if not harder) to look sexy.

This is of course what I did at the end of my last post on football.  I made a very thinly veiled crass remark about the looks of professional male football players.  Had I been a man, and making a similar kind of a comment about, say, a female swimmer or gymnast, it would probably have come across as stupid and more than a little sexist.  But I will hazard a guess that that is not how it came across when I made it about men.

Why is that?  Is it not a double standard?  Why do women feel the need to make sexist remarks about men’s bodies, and why are these tolerated?

I gave this idea some thought, and while I don’t have any definite answers, my guess is that it is some kind of a reclaiming exercise.  “Reclaiming” is what black people have done in appropriating the previously used derogatory term “nigger” for their own use, just like women have done with “bitch”, handicapped people with “cripple” and gay men with “fruit” or “queen” – just to give a few obvious examples.  So what I think has happened with the whole objectification thing is that women have taken a practice formerly reserved for men and appropriated it for their own use.  While men are no longer permitted to do that with impunity (remember what recently happened to BBC’s John Inverdale and his blooper about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli?), women are cheekily turning the tables and giving men a taste of their own medicine.  What we are in effect saying is “I don’t give a damn whether you have talent / brains / sense of humour – I just see you as a hot piece of ass and it is my right to objectify you in this way”.  

The fad will undoubtedly die down, but for now, I may just take advantage of it a few times before it is gone.  So all overpaid famous men beware: I couldn't care less about you, your skills, opinions or personality.  What I want to know is whether I am getting some eye candy or not.  

I'm sure all Wayne Rooneys of this world are quietly crying into their beers having learnt this harsh truth about my wishes and intentions. 

Rant about Scarves and Shoes

I have always been uncomfortable with my relationship with shoes.  More particularly shoes with high heels.  Most of you know that while I do not spend ridiculous amounts of money on them, I am unreservedly a fan of a nice pair of heels.  More than that, those that have come across me in a work setting know that my professional persona is clad almost exclusively in trouser suits coupled with a fairly high pair.  All day, every day.

I know all the feminist arguments against heels.  They’re uncomfortable.  They’re not healthy for feet or for posture.  They make it harder to run away from an attacker, thereby weakening women’s independence and agency.

But they look so much nicer than flat shoes!  And they permit me to look down at most men, at least physically if not figuratively, in a profession where the vast majority of the movers and shakers are still men.*  There is also something to be said about the power portrayed by high heels.  Stilettos are not a self-evident part of the dominatrix wardrobe for nothing...

OK, you weren’t entirely convinced.  Neither am I.  But I will still continue wearing my heels.

The topic of today’s rant is actually Muslims.  What is the connection between Muslims and high heels, you ask.  Here’s what: The headscarf of an intelligent feminist Muslim woman is like my pair of heels.  A personal choice that may not seem to coincide perfectly with our feminist ideals, but will not make us any less feminist in the grand scheme of things.  I can’t really dismiss the feminist arguments against high heels, but I will continue to wear them nonetheless.  Similarly, I can probably win the argument against a Muslim woman about the cultural significance of the scarf as a tool of women’s oppression, but it is unlikely to make her take it off.

And that is just fine.

I have for a long time felt annoyed at the “scarf debate”, both in France and here in Switzerland, because it has taken an extremely patronising attitude towards the women who are most concerned by it, assuming that the choice to wear a scarf CAN’T be theirs, they must have been forced by a man to do it.  I have an idea: If you want to know why Muslim women are wearing scarves, ask them, dammit, don’t assume you know better than they do! 

I was thus really pleased to read the comparison between headscarves and high heels in an interview with Isla Lehtinen, a Finnish Muslim feminist.  I liked it immediately.  It may not make men understand why a Muslim may want to wear a scarf, but it might resonate with women.  The majority of us feminists are not scarf-wearing Muslims, but many of us wear heels at least sometimes. The desire to wear less-than-perfectly-feminist shoes will hopefully make us more understanding and tolerant towards the less-than-perfectly-feminist clothing choices of others without questioning the agency and free will of the persons themselves. 

 * Even though my employer is much better than most in that regard.