On Dec. 7, 1989, the day after Marc Lepine gunned down 14 women at
l'École Polytechnique in Montreal, my mother’s partner’s daughter (who was a 30-something lawyer at the time) insisted that Marc Lepine did not kill women; rather he killed “people.” This distinction despite the fact that Marc Lepine had deliberately separated the women from the men so that he could shoot the women, and despite the fact that he had specifically stated in his pre-massacre letter that he hated feminists. Perhaps, as a lawyer, my mother’s partner’s daughter felt that feminism had done its job (for her).
I could see that trying to change her mind through feminist arguments would be fruitless. So I came at the horror from a different angle. I asked her, “If Marc Lepine had separated Jews from Gentiles so that he could shoot at only the Jews, would you say he hadn’t kill Jews per se, rather he’d killed
people?” She's Jewish. The penny dropped like an anvil.
Of course
people were killed. Who else? But specific hatreds seek specific people targets. Why is that so hard to see?
Blind spots are blind spots because we can’t see them. But that which is invisible can have devastating effects, like a virus pandemic.
In the fall of 1991, while a friend and I were sunbathing nude on a deserted beach an hour outside of Kingston, Ontario, a lone gent holding a beer bottle happened to cross our path. We quickly got dressed and decided it was time to return to our car, which was parked on the ridge just above us. Not wanting to pass the guy again, we walked a little farther down the beach before we ascended the ridge. That decision likely saved our lives. Once we gained the top and rounded a corner, we saw a pick-up truck parked across the front of our car, with three other gents leaning against it. Were they waiting for us? It appears so. When we stepped onto the dirt road and into their view, they stood as if to welcome us into their open arms.
We ran in the opposite direction.
The lake was to our left and below us. To our right, a field beyond which lay the main road, but impenetrable brambles blocked it from our view and access.
The guys jumped into their truck and sped down the road after us. My friend, who had been sexually abused as a child, left her body. I know because I saw it happen. It was that obvious. Which left me holding the bag of trying to save our lives. I barked out orders for her to follow me into the field where the grass was tall enough to hide us. I had no plan beyond hiding in the grass. Somehow the guys didn’t see that maneuver, so they drove right past us. Which is when I realized we had a good chance of getting back to the car if we ran like hell. I barked out the next orders for us to run for the car. My friend had the keys, so I had to trust she would know what to do with them when we got to the car. She didn’t. So, I yelled out more instructions. Put the keys into the door! Open your door! Now unlock
my door! Now lock
all the doors! Now start the car! Now DRIVE!
The truck guys saw us in their rear-view mirror and turned around. When they skidded up behind us, they forced us down a different dirt road than the one we had come in on. That’s when my friend finally spoke, “Liz, when they get us, just leave your body. Just leave it.”
I shared her belief that we would not likely get out of this alive (we had no idea where this dirt road led) but the difference between her and me is that I planned to fight anyway. I would not just give in to the inevitable without at least acting on my own behalf. In the end, the dirt road gave onto the main road, which we tore down at top speed. When we looked behind us, the truck had disappeared. At first we drove in silence, our bodies rigid, only our hair danced giddily in the wind. When we realized they were really gone, we broke into screaming laughter. And when that was over, I said, “We need to call the cops.” She said, “No. They are not to be trusted.” I had no idea what she meant, or why she felt that way, but for some strange reason, I let it stand. I thought that as an abuse survivor, she had insight that I didn’t. But to this day I regret that decision. I am alive, but what if some other girl or woman who crossed those mens' path in the wrong place at the the wrong time isn’t?
These are not extreme cases. Nor is being at the wrong place at the wrong time (because, for women, it's a sad reality that too much of the time is a wrong place and a wrong time and a wrong sex to be, which is why I don't feel safe running through a park, which is a huge loss for me). Although in most western countries our overarching social contract and entrenched policies do not overtly condone treating women as objects to be raped and killed, we still dress women up in bunny costumes (extreme example) or sexy business suits (regular example) and create niche (ubiquitous) markets of magazines and movies devoted to sexualizing and commodifying women’s bodies, or even the everyday representations on TV and in adverts that would have us believe women are best served on a pair of four-inch heels with a side of lipstick and a promise of sexual availability, demonstrates that women are still not equal citizens, and definitely not seen as a whole beings -- intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual. Yes, times have changed, and we do have Liz Lemon as a counterpoint, thank god, but we still also have expectations that women be sexy first – even Liz, with her tight jeans and ivory cleavage almost always on display – and smart second, if at all. As for whole being? Almost never.
Here’s how you can tell that women are still not valued and are at risk – from catcalls to death. A friend of mine – educated, moneyed, the executive director of an organization that does gender-equality work in developing countries, in possession of international connections with powerful people, never mind all the personal and professional respect and mobility a person could want – became an object worth less than garbage on a beach in Cuba one morning when she decided to watch the sun rise in her bikini. All her power and privilege were invisible to the pack of young men who approached her as they returned from a night of drinking. There was no one else around. My friend’s husband was asleep in their hotel room. In that moment, she realized she had became nothing more than a body, and a body these young men felt entitled to, despite the fact that if they were all in an office setting, she’d be their boss's boss. She knew that if her husband had sat on the beach that morning in his swim trunks, he would not have had to wonder if his life was at stake because someone decided to help themselves to his body.
On the bedroom wall of a pre-pubecent boy I know hangs a
Star Wars poster that depicts the male heroes, villains, and aliens like Victorian aristocrats, collars up to their necks, while the lone woman (princess) is clad in the most unprotective gear imaginable – a bikini: her chest and belly exposed, her vulnerability laid bare.
She is not a position to do battle. Her arms are down. She is looking seductively at the viewer. Would the men in this poster feel powerful, or safe, fighting in tiny Speedos? Their value in the film lies in their Jedi mind power and physical strength, while her "power" lies in her sexual promise, her ability to fight being mostly figurative. I don’t care what the storyline of the movie really is, the image tells a story that all women have been told to swallow since women have been told to swallow: the one that says, above all, a woman should be sexually pleasing, a feast for the eye, and sexually available, something to consume, some
thing to provide pleasure for others.
Recently, I watched an updated version of
Animal House called
Van Wilder, featuring a rich kid who refuses to graduate from college. He purposely fails his courses, but manages to become the campus sweetheart due to his zany fundraisers (e.g. nude marathons) in order to save the swim team, or basketball team, or some other “disadvantaged” campus group. A stereotyped South Asian undergrad begs to become Van’s assistant because his greatest aspiration is to get laid and he thinks the fastest route to his goal is through Van, and through trading on the stereotype of North American girls as loose (funny that men who get laid are still considered studs, while the women they have sex with are still considered sluts). The heroine of the film is a journalist who writes a searing profile of Van Wilder that pisses him off enough to wake him up. And, predictably, to fall in love with her. He finishes his degree to impress her. That’s his gift to her. Her gift to him? Showing up at his graduation party in a bikini top and sarong skirt and whispering in his ear, “I’m not wearing any panties.” He has turned his life around to fulfill all his intellectual promise. And she has demoted herself from crack journalist to dummy hottie who attains her ultimate frat-boy-movie worth as a fuck bunny.
These are the women role models my three-year old niece is growing up with.
A few days ago, I heard an interview on CBC with the woman who recently made a
documentary film about Hugh Heffner in which he's portrayed as a gay-rights supporter, as well as a women's liberation and civil-rights activist. The discussion on the radio was about how Heff made huge contributions to shifting the socio-cultural landscape for unpublishable writers (mostly men) and black people (mostly men) who were not accepted into the mainstream for all kinds of biased reasons we wouldn’t accept today. That Heff shifted mindsets and effected cultural change may be true, but these mens' talents and causes and accomplishments were leveraged on the backs of naked women. I’m sorry, but I cannot see redemption in exploitation as a means to a social-justice end.
Why is it so obvious that children should not be sexually exploited (or exploited as labour), and that racial groups should not be exploited in any form, and that our mothers, sisters and daughters should not be exploited, but that anonymous women are still fair game?
For those of you who have read my posts before, you'll know that strip clubs happen to be one of my bug bears. Many of my male and female friends have been to strip clubs, and many would call themselves feminists, and some would even argue that the women at the clubs make truckloads of money and perhaps even control their own sexual power. While I'm sure it’s true that some women in strip clubs make truckloads of money and control their sexuality, the vast majority are economically disadvantaged, often from abusive home situations, and often under the gun to perform sexual favours in back rooms, or else lose their jobs, or maybe their lives. But this is a reality strip-club goers would rather not consider because it kind of puts a damper on their viewing pleasure. But let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that all the women in the strip clubs are there to fund their college educations. I don't think the people who go to strip clubs are there to help these women achieve their academic goals.
Diablo Cody, who wrote the sleeper film ,
Juno, put herself through college with stripping, and then she became a writer. So, here's my question: if she loved stripping so much, why did she leave stripping to become a writer (not exactly one of the most lucrative pursuits)? I'm guessing either stripping is not as lucrative as all that, or writing just might be a more desirable vocation. After all, you get to keep your clothes on and garner attention for your creative and intellectual output, as opposed getting hooted at for how well you put out. You do the math.
There’s a very simple test for blind spots if you are curious about your own. Just ask yourself, would you feel good dressed up in a bunny suit? Would you want to strip in a bar full of patrons who see you as their toy? If not, why not? Why do we think it’s okay for others to be strippers and then make up stories to justify our visual pleasure at the expense of someone else’s dignity? Would you want to sell beer at a restaurant that forces you to wear pants so tight that patrons can see the outline of your cock and balls? And would you feel like a whole human being when you knew your clients came to that establishment
not because of your exceptional service, but because you and your coworker's genitals were on display? And please don’t tell me that men would jump at the chance to be sexually objectified. That’s an offensive argument only someone who has never been objectified would make. It comes from a place of privilege. Your patrons would not be the Cindy Crawford of your fantasies, or any facsimile thereof. She'd be the last person you want to have sex with, or to be objectified by, and yet you'd have to put up with her eyeballs and innuendos and, more than likely, a pat on the rump or squeeze of the cock, in order to get a tip for your services.
But that’s the whole trope of porn, isn't it: it’s made to look as though women
enjoy being fucked by strangers or, really, whoever, so that viewers can fully enjoy their pleasure without guilt. It’s a trick of justification that’s as old as slavery. If you want to do something to another human being for which you don’t want to feel any guilt, simply dehumanize them, frame them as sub-human, animals even. Like a bunny. That way, they are not you. They are more like pets, for your viewing and doing pleasure.
When I see a poster representing a scantily clad woman thrusting out her rear end in a way no woman I know would stand, I see slavery. When I see a woman represented in a “business suit” (read: tight skirt that hugs her hips and tight jacket that exposes her cleavage) with pounds of make up on her face and ridiculously high heels on her feet, I see slavery. Would the men who lust after this image ever want their daughters, mothers, or sisters to feel that their greatest achievement/asset is to become someone else’s eye candy, or that their value lies in their sexuality only, and not even a sexuality these girls and women get to define for themselves? More basically, would these men enjoy walking around in heels that hurt their backs, legs, and feet? I’m going to assume the answer is no, because I have faith that humans have good will in their heart of hearts, but have just temporarily lost their critical thinking skills, which is easy to do when society does not demand it of you, but rather hands you the privilege of dehumanizing someone else as if that kind of behaviour is as benign as mowing the lawn.
It’s not rocket science. Look around you. By and large, men’s clothes are lose-fitting and concealing. By and large, women’s clothes are tight and revealing. Why is that? Because the practice of sexualizing women is so embedded in the culture it is invisible, and yet it is so powerful that no one who derives pleasure from it wants to give their pleasure up, despite how it may adversely affect the “object” of that pleasure. People don’t bother to question what impact their behaviours and internalized beliefs, values, and visual desires have on the women in their lives, never mind women in general. And that’s because no one makes us ask ourselves. Society doesn't require it of us because society doesn't care about women. Even sadder, no one seems to ask how our choice to exploit women hurts the exploiters? In her article,
The Porn Myth, Naomi Wolfe compellingly and eloquently describes how porn is detrimental to boys and men. I cannot do this topic justice so I give you the article above.
Here's another test for blind spots: if you replace gender with race, exploitation suddenly becomes visible. If you went to a club where people got off from seeing Orthodox Jews remove their
kippahs, a scull cap that is a sacred religious symbol that distinguishes humans from God (think of these Jews as so socially disadvantaged that they are desperate for money, enfranchisement, self esteem and, therefore, willing to betray every value they hold most dear to earn a living), most of us would feel sick at the thought of debasing members of this group for a non-member's (or even another Jew's) viewing pleasure. But that’s strip clubs in a nutshell. Which just goes to show that no one really cares about what women hold dear. They don’t want to hear it. It puts a damper on the show.
To really understand what it must be like to be a woman living in a world that devalues us all the time -- if you really want to step into our shoes -- you have to forget that you have power and agency and privilege. You have to imagine that no one cares about your mind, your money, your cars, your degrees, or the respect you get at work (or the respect you get simply because you are the preferred gender, whether or not you have money, status, or a job). You have to imagine that you are only as valuable as your genitals and your ability to provide sexual pleasure, even if only as an object of fantasy. You have to imagine what it's like to be equated to a cute, furry animal that looks helpless, and which is famous for fucking. And when your voyeurs are done looking at you, and fantasizing about you, and toying with you (they don’t care about who you
really are – your goals, dreams, hurts, whatever, don’t register at all) you may as well be invisible, because your welfare will no longer be of any concern. In fact, it never was. Then, imagine a whole lifetime of seeing that image of your gender EVERYWHERE. Yet your friends of the opposite sex, who get socially acceptable pleasure from degrading your gender publicly, tell you to “relax, take a chill pill, you’re not THAT kind of guy anyway, you're the kind we can take home, those other guys are cheap sluts” while they continue to participate in exploiting your gender just by watching movies, reading books, or trolling porn online that continues to exploit your gender: how would you feel?
For me, it’s like there’s this parallel universe of women that exist as cultural (male) fantasies and then there’s the flesh-and-blood women walking around wondering how their doubles could be so different, so alien, so alienating. I feel desperately sad when I see women trying to look like their doubles instead of pulling the sheet off this whole devastating chimera. I’m in such constant shock and pain over the fact that my gender’s welfare is a blind spot, especially when the blind spot belongs to the people closest to me. Where do you start to explain what it's like to someone who does not see it, and who does not
want to see it, because it will mean giving up his (and, yes, her) pleasure, or, at the very least, make him (or her) question them?
What continues to devastate me the most is, why would anyone who cares about me
want to participate in something that hurts my gender since I am a member of that gender (never mind that it hurts
people, as my mother’s partner’s daughter would say, and she’d be right)? Yet the men in my family do participate, and many of my male friends do participate in the blind spots that are harmful to women. Men who think they respect women participate every time they talk about how they love the way a high-heeled shoe tightens a calf and thrusts out a rear end. They are choosing not to see how that shoe can injure a spine. I'm not talking about the extremes of snuff movies, I'm talking about all the small, insidious ways women are put on display, even by men who claim to love them. I believe these men love their wives, sisters, daughters and friends, but I don’t believe they love women. How can they? How can you say you love your slave house-girl-turned-lover when you still think it's okay to keep slaves on your plantation? How can you expect
her to believe you love her when you still treat her kith and kin like animals? (Want a more contemporary example? Even the Cylons in Battlestar Gallactica understood that their human lovers could not truly love a Cylon when they considered every other Cylon a "toaster." Cylons understood just how at risk they perpetually were. You could see it in their eyes.)
What the ‘70s feminists missed, and what my younger women friends seem to get, thank god, is that women can and do enjoy all manner of self-chosen sexual expression, including submission, without feeling or being exploited, and that's thanks to a little thing called agency. The power to make our own choices and to represent ourselves. I’m not trying to remove complexity or subtlety when I talk about women’s representations and the reality of their lives in this complex world. I'm not anti erotica, or even anti complex power relations in and out of the bedroom. I’m trying to expose what’s missing when women’s representations are reductive. The clearest example of agency I can think of is in SM sex: the deep respect that comes from having a safe word, an “out” that lies with the “submissive.” The so-called bottom actually holds equal power: the power to stop the top. For me, enshrining safety and respect in any interaction, sexual or otherwise, is the cornerstone of seeing and honouring the other person’s humanity. It demonstrates an understanding that the other person is not an object, but a human being with an emotional/psychological life that should be protected, a WHOLE person. And one who is in control of his or her sexuality and its representations.
This is not an old issue, a dead issue, a developing-country issue, or anything else we might think to call it in order to make it go away so that we can get back to our porn. It’s an issue that affects the lives of your friends and family, as well as strangers on the street. It is alive and well at a restaurant called Hooters, or in our favourite action films, or in novels, ads, and in the daily interactions among people who care about each other. Misogyny cuts across everything. Despite equal access to education, advances in the workplace, and, for some, fat pay cheques that adequately compensate women for their abilities, they can, in an instant, be reduced to a nameless, valueless body up for grabs. Although I am sure women and men with Phds can do a much more trenchant analysis on the issues than I have accomplished here, the fact of the matter is, this is not an issue. This is about people's lives, mine included, as well as the lives of my friends, my mother, my niece, my sister in laws and women around the world. I may not be a sophisticated thinker, but I am the living result of the negative and unrealistic women role models I see everyday who I can't, don't, and never hope to live up to. Until our cultural blind spots are made more visible, I don't think I will be able to keep quiet and play along. Would you play along with something that hurt someone you love? I sincerely hope not.
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