Sexual Subject vs. Object

In an interview with The New York Daily News last month, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was quoted as saying:

The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects. If women weren’t sex objects, there wouldn’t be another generation. It’s the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go ‘round. That’s why women wear lipstick and short skirts.

I read about the interview soon after it happened, but I thought of it yesterday when I saw one of Ampersand’s great cartoons at Alas, A Blog.

Objectification is not necessary to create the next generation. It’s not necessary for sex. And yet, when Hugh Hefner said “women are sex objects,” as though it’s a law of nature rather than a law of patriarchy, plenty of folks agreed with him, arguing that being a sex object is not so bad. As the last panel of the cartoon makes clear, sexual objectification is not the same thing as sexual attraction.

It is fallacious to argue that just because you are a sex object that doesn’t mean sex is all you’re good for. That is what it means. It means thinking of and treating a person as though they have no inner life, no emotions, no desires, no purpose besides providing sexual gratification. It is not “objectification” to be hot for your partner (or any person). A sexual person who is multi-faceted is not a sex object; zie is a sex subject. Sex can be life-affirming, but sexual objectification is dehumanizing.

I Ain’t Sayin’ You’re a Golddigger

I suppose I shouldn’t expect much from a discussion about women, men, and money that includes the authors of Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We’re Still Single and Smart Man Hunting: A Fast-Track Dating Guide for Finding Mr. Right.

Correction:  I shouldn’t expect much more than consternation and forehead-slapping.  Because that’s exactly what I got.

This article, Does a man’s salary matter?, is barely worth reading, let alone shredding, but the topic is worth discussing in a feminist space.  I’ll admit that money is a sensitive topic for me (that happens when you don’t have much), and one that is looming larger than usual these days, given my underemployed state.  Love and money are often fraught, even when they’re not all mixed up together.  And when they are?  Hoo-doggie.

Newsflash: Machismo Bad for Women AND the Economy

I’ve been sitting on an excellent bit of analysis from the New York Times for a couple weeks now, but didn’t want to let it slip by without sharing. Titled “Counting the Cost of Machismo“, the article describes how Northern European countries where the culture encourages women’s role in the workforce have fared far better economically than Southern European ones where entrenched machismo has kept women out of it.

Europe’s southern fringe, indebted and uncompetitive, has long been the euro zone’s weak link. But besides a sunny climate and shaky economic fundamentals, it also shares a long-entrenched machismo that is costing it dearly. As it turns out, the share of adult women in the paid workforce in the region lags men by almost 20 percentage points, compared with 12 points across the European Union, 9 in the United States and only 4 in Sweden.

Sexism, of course, is not the cause for Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, and in the short term, the euro’s prospects depend more on the right mixture of fiscal austerity and monetary stimulus than on sisterhood. But in the longer term, women could well hold the key to overcoming a fundamental economic weakness that plagues not just Southern Europe but much of the rest of the Continent as well: An aging population and a shrinking workforce that is threatening to explode pension and health care budgets.

“Gender equality is no longer just a human rights issue, but an economic necessity,” said Maria Stratigaki, who is in charge of gender equality in the Greek government. She is using the budget crunch in her country to lobby for more “gender-budgeting” — rules that ensure men receive no more resources from the state than women.

There’s a lesson in this for the US, too, with its stingy maternity leaves and lousy daycare options:

Even generous subsidies for child care pay off: A 2002 study by the German Bundesbank found that public investment in day care in Germany on balance increased government revenues as more mothers returned to work.

Hair Matters

The Washington Post has an excellent column today by Robin Givhan entitled “In her latest act of defiance, Hillary Rodham Clinton gets a new, longer, hairdo.” The whole piece is worth reading, and there’s a good slide show, too. Givhan points out the not-so-subtle cultural pressures on women to have “age-appropriate” hair, and how HRC’s new ‘do goes against the traditional “mommy chop” associated with powerful career women, especially those over 40. Givhan writes:

Clinton’s hair, now creeping toward below-the-shoulders territory, is practically radical for Washington’s seasoned female power elite. Good for her.

In our cultural vocabulary, long hair signifies youth, femininity and sex appeal. By contrast, shorter hair is serious, sophisticated, strong.

Cultural pressure to submit to the scissors after a certain age seems rife with an unkind and unspoken subtext that because long locks are a sign of vibrancy and sexiness, it’s a social contradiction to see such styles on women who have wrinkles and crow’s-feet.

When I was 15, I cut my long hair because I wanted to look serious, sophisticated and strong. I wore it that way for almost 20 years, sometimes in a cut so short that even my lesbian boss referred to it as “butchy.” Then I dated a man who loved long, Barbie-style hair. He encouraged me to grow out my chin-length bob. Unfortunately, his campaign for longer hair felt controlling, so I rebelled by keeping it short.  When our relationship crashed and I started dating again, I grew it long. (Why yes, there was an element of “fuck you” to that decision. How’d you guess?). Now, it’s halfway down my back. But will I have to cut it short again someday to conform to society’s stereotype of middle-aged women?

Judging by this week’s FFT, we’re all quite proud of our glorious manes.  Feel free to weigh in on long vs. short and whether “age-appropriate” applies to hairstyles.

Poetry Saturdays: Gwendolyn Brooks

I felt I might want to live up to some of my own principles this week and bring you something written by someone other than a white man.  More on Brooks and other poems here.

The Lovers of the Poor

arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You’d better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching-post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor—passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is—something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle’s bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it’s all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they’re told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Not homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they’re done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They’ve never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this “flat,”
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered. . . .)
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . .
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin “hangings,”
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies’
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!—
Where loathe-love likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.

Friday Fun Thread: You’re Hot.

It’s Friday, it’s later than usual, I’ve spent the whole morning jacking around with bureaucratic nonsense, and I need some cheering up.  I intend to go through all those awesome funny video links you posted some time ago, but what make me really happy would be to focus on some good things.

Specifically, because it’s Friday, and vanity threads are pretty super in their fluffy, feel-good way, I would like for each of you to tell me what’s amazing and beautiful about yourself.  Not what you do that’s awesome, but about your amazing, wonderful bodies.  Tell me  about your beautifully freckled complexion or elegant hands or strong muscular legs or luxurious hair or amazing smile…or whatever you like to see when you look in the mirror.  Your smile lines.  Your scar.  The twinkle in your eye.

Ya gotta be careful though, no comments like “well, my bright blue eyes distract people from the dark circles underneath them,” or “My butt isn’t too bad, I guess.”  NO GOOD.  I’m talking unadulterated praise.  You can praise whatever you like, even (or especially?) if it doesn’t measure up to the Hollywood/ladymag standards.  What are your standards?

So I guess I should go first, if only to give you permission to be unapologetically self-loving.  What’s hot about me?  O. M. G. SO. MUCH.  I have a pretty slammin’ figure, and seriously, my ears are very pretty.  I admire my ears and I always wear earrings.  And my calves and ankles are shapely.

This isn’t the easiest thing to do, and it’s really hard to resist the urge to qualify, ameliorate , or take the edge off your crowing.  CROW, MY PRETTIES.  What’s hot about you?

“What’s This We, White Man?”: I Write About Franzen At The Awl

My motivation for posting that Adichie video was that I was in the middle of drafting another post at the Awl, about the kerfuffle between Franzen and women writers Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner:

Which brings us to the question of why praise does tend to aggregate around white men, still, in a way that it doesn’t for other kinds of people. I obviously don’t think that Tanenhaus, and Michiko Kakutani (not precisely a white guy herself) sit around their little cubicles by the atrium plotting how they’re gonna keep women and people of color (and trans people!) out of the halls of literary power. As in most cases where social prejudice is really firmly entrenched, there is no Man Behind the Curtain. Otherwise, this would be a simple issue to solve: we could just fire the people in cubicles like theirs, and sexism and racism, and transmisogyny and ableism and every kind of unfairness under the sun would be over.

But life isn’t like that. Instead of men in rooms we have timeworn, and as such unquestioned, ways of thinking and evaluating.

Feel free to discuss in the comments here, as always.

Feminists: Revel in Your Profound Power!

The brilliant Liss posted this under her “This is So the Worst Thing You’ll Read All Day” at Shakesville, but I must respectfully disagree.

This is comedy fuckin’ GOLD.  I want to go though and hug individual lines and phrases (like “New York Times columnist and radical feminist Maureen Dowd”), and write little poems about each completely cracked idea:

• Feminists love the new Aniston-Bateman vehicle “The Switch” because it diminishes men’s role in reproduction!
• Feminist-controlled schools are leading our boys to sit down to piss!
• John Wayne was a real person, not a character played by an actor named John Wayne!

I really can’t stop grinning at how effectively the left-wing, gay-lovin’, feminist, socialist, baby eatin’ cabal (BOOGA BOOGA) is apparently destroying America.  It’s merely a matter of weeks before we enslave all the God-fearin’ Christians and force them to read Marx and have abortions.

Harpy Seminar: We Buggin’

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Bed Bug & Beyond
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

This week, Jon Stewart sent up the New York bedbug epidemic (with a truly freaky-deaky appearance by Isabella Rossellini narrating the horror that is bedbug sex). The bedbug invasion has been lavishly covered in the press; long story short, they used to be commonplace, then people used tons of DDT and they went away, then we realized DDT was a Bad Idea and quit using it, so now they’re back. And unfortunately, these little nocturnal bloodsuckers have invaded two Harpy nests. Join Becky and PhDork as we tell our (not so) harrowing tale in this episode of Bedbug Confidential!

Mom Will Clean it Up!: A Rant

My boyfriend laughs whenever a cleaning product commercial comes on the television, knowing that I will soon be clicking my tongue and/or throwing my head back in disgust. “Here comes mom to clean it up!!!” we exclaim, when the lady of the house cheerfully grabs her [product] and cleans whatever mess her child or husband (same dif, right?) just created.

It never fails. The formula must be set in stone somewhere. Never appeal to men when selling anything that’s used to tidy a house! And I get it; I do. Men and women are not equal on the home-front. Women do more housework than men, and are still responsible for most domestic chores when they live with a man. It’s understandable why a company would market directly to those people who are most likely to use their product in the first place. But it doesn’t have to be so fucking insulting. They aggressively push the wife/mother = maid narrative, and the actresses in the commercials are always ecstatic when they get the opportunity to do laundry.

One Lysol commercial is particularly egregious. Mom arrives home to find dad and the kids turning the family kitchen into a salmonella lab. Unacceptable. Dad turns around and shrugs his stupid shoulders. Cut to mom wiping all kinds of nasty substances off various kitchen surfaces. Everyone has a good laugh. The end. Why couldn’t dad clean that mess up?! They could just as easily have shown him reaching for the Lysol after a fun afternoon of culinary experimentation.

Men cleaning house are presented as a fantasy. I would be loyal for life to any company that presented them as a reality in its advertising.

Chimamanda Adichie on The Danger of the Single Story

Women Mourn, Men Replace?

I remember my mom saying “women mourn, men replace” years ago, but I don’t remember in what context.  I put it in the same mental box as “a daughter’s your daughter for all of your life.”  (That would be the “harrumph!” box.)

Anyway, here we are however many years later, and my mom, divorced since 1995 or so, is in some kind of relationship with a fella who is a widower of maybe a year, and is waaaay into mom, talking marriage and everything.  She seems to like his company, but is uninterested in his profession of life-long devotion and legal entanglement.

I was discussing this with Becky, whose family has its own anecdata to add to the pile of men-replace, and the Dude overheard me and  was really offended by the idea, saying “that’s just a stereotype!”  He claims not to know anyone (presumably other than MamaDork) who fits the profile.  Fair enough.  But then why is this one of those sayings?

Is this due to the fact that despite cultural messages about women’s desperate hunger for weddings and commitment and blah-blee-bloo, men need women more?  That marriage is actually better for men than women? That dudes always want a mommy? That in the dark all cats are grey? And is this idea on its way out, as marriage and gender relationships are changing?