Feminism is an interesting phenomena. I'm supportive of equality for all people, in theory, and I realize that our society is permeated with patriarchal ideas and attitudes, which most people absorb without ever realizing or remarking on. But just how those issues are dealt with, and how society is formed or reformed, is a subject of much debate. I consider myself a feminist, in that I'm pro-equal rights, and I try to treat women equally to men. In fact, I tend to much prefer the company of women to men, and not just as potential romance partners; I just find women more interesting to talk and interact with.
Treating people equally doesn't mean the same, of course, and that's where things get interesting. Does a man who offers to pay for dinner and/or a woman who expects him to display sexist attitudes? Is an individual's feminism compromised by their tolerance for or appreciation of old-fashioned cultural mores? It gets more complicated when it comes to tolerance for potentially offensive material. I ran afoul of some site's attack squad of arch feminists last year when I posted a bemused blog entry about those humorously-stupid "Man Law" beer commercials, and the (IMHO) way over the top hatred they were inspiring amongst some feminist bloggers. My opinion was that the spots were sexist and stupid, but basically amusing in their mythology, and that it was a waste of time and downright foolish to spend time attacking them, in a world full of real, actual, harmful sexism.
As my post concluded:
I can get behind using a dumb beer commercial as the starting point in a women's rights essay/blog entry, or at least an essay on men being humorously stupid (which is pretty much what all Miller and Bud commercials are about, being as their beer isn't good enough to compete on taste) but there's clearly some baggage being unloaded on a bunch of fairly innocent and clever commercials. "Poke it and own it" or not, these Man Laws commercials wouldn't even crack the top 50 most sexist beer commercials I've seen this decade. Overreactions to minor foolishness like this is what gives real assholes like Rush Limbaugh grist for their "feminazi" mills.
Like most of my blog posts, that one was written about as quickly as I could type it, and I thought it might attract one comment, if that. To my surprise, there were quickly over a dozen, most of them from highly-passionate women eager to defend their hatred of that beer commercial and equally eager to insult me for thinking them silly. Some feminist blog (I never bothered to figure out which one.) had clearly posted about my post, with predictable rabble-rousing results. At the time Malaya strongly suggested that I just let it go, so I didn't reply to any of the comment attacks, much though I yearned to. She was probably right, since after a couple of days of not poking the hornet's nest, things settled down.
At the time I was annoyed, but more than vexed, I was perplexed. I like to think that women are more reasonable and rational and balanced than men, and here my comments were filled with misdirected vitriol. I thought my blog post was (relatively) reasonable and logical, and I even agreed with the feminists on the issue; I just thought they were being foolish by making such a stink over something virtually everyone else regarded as beneath notice. I never dreamed a good dozen intelligent women would come along and turn the last line of my post into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's a useful window of insight into extreme points of view, though. Most of us think we're pretty mainstream in our thinking, even when that's demonstrably wrong. I realize that my thoughts on religion and a lot of societal issues are way, way out on the edge of the bell curve, but since most of the people I know, and lots of bloggers I read, agree with me on those issues, I get reinforcement and think anyone who doesn't see those issues the way I do is misinformed and/or delusional. I retain enough of a grip on reality to know that they feel the same way about me, and I don't become angry when people speak things I think/know are wrong, though I do often mock them on my utterly uninfluential blog.
For many extremists though, part and parcel of being an extremist means not knowing you are one, or at least not caring. They're so deeply inculcated into their ideology that it seems perfectly natural to them, and that results in beer commercials that the rest of us ignore, or chuckle at for their silly absurdity, setting them off like bomb fuses. And when they see someone (especially a man) defending the commercials, and saying they are silly for being upset by the commercials, that's a red flag. (I hate that metaphor, by the way. Bulls are colorblind; the particular strain of animal abuse they've been raised in has simply trained them to charge at a waving flag of any dark color.)
This digression brings me around to a more current issue, and an illustrative blog entry about it.
Pandagon, a group blog I read semi-regularly, is best known for its most prominent poster, Amanda Marcotte. If the name's familiar, she had her 15 minutes earlier this year when she was hired by the John Edwards campaign to be their official blogger, and had to
resign after a week thanks to a sustained campaign of faux outrage launched at her by various conservative religious political groups such as the Catholic League, and piggybacked on by right wing bloggers and media figures like Michelle Malkin and Bill O'Reilly. They were (allegedly) upset with Marcotte for her past comments on religion, and especially the way it's been politicized in America and used as a tool by patriarchies. Like the Catholic Church.
I sympathized with Marcotte's situation, especially since I already dislike Bill Donohoe and fundamentalist nuts of his stripe. At the same time, I had to chuckle at all of Marcotte's furious protestations and the seemingly genuine offense and surprise her supporters showed at how things turned out. My only surprise was that the Edwards campaign was foolish enough to hire an official blogger without more thoroughly vetting her past posts. The fact that I agree with Marcotte's opinions on religion and its role in American politics is irrelevant; I know my views and the blog comments I've made in support of them 100% exempt me from working on a major or minor political campaign, since assholes like Bill Donohoe are always out there to whip up the rabble (with a healthy assist from the scandal-hungry media) against anything that can even remotely be construed as anti-religious. I don't know much about Marcotte's personality, but the fact that she honestly thought she could blog things like she had and remain viable as a national figure tells me she's either impossibly naive, or outright delusional.
A quote:
Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?
A: You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.
No one can run for higher office in the US without constantly professing their Christian faith. I'm sure a large percentage of them are lying (they are politicians, after all) but it's a requirement of the job, at this point in US history. I think there's one admitted agnostic and one Muslim out of the 600+ congressmen and senators now in office. It's not fair, and it sucks, but there's no way an outspoken, snarky, frequently Catholic Church-insulting blogger can work for a presidential candidate's campaign. At least not in an upfront, name-attached job like the official blogger. And anyone who wasn't aware of that last year certainly knows it now.
I sympathized with Marcotte's position; she'd obviously gotten a nice raise and had her hopes up high to make a difference for a politician whose views she supported, and then all that was snatched away from her. What I don't sympathize with is the narrative she's constructed since the events, in which she was persecuted primarily for being an outspoken woman, and secondarily for making numerous comments that can only be described as political suicide. Marcotte has a (not unfounded) Jesus-sized feminist persecution complex, but it amazes me that she and her most adamant defenders are able to maintain the belief that her gender factored into her losing the job. It might have been some small percentage of it, since the people who were out to get her were largely misogynists, by training, if not intent, but there are countless women in similar jobs who aren't singled out for anything. Perhaps the fact that they are not foul-mouthed, vituperative, atheist bloggers might have something to do with that fact? That Marcotte was a woman was largely irrelevant, IMHO, but then again, I'm the one who didn't think the Man Law commercials were worth anyone getting upset over.
This long preamble was necessary to provide background for a new post by Marcotte, and my comments on it. The post is about the cute brunette on that Disney high school musical show, who recently showed up nude all over the internet. Vanessa Hudgens is her name (I had never heard the name a month ago, I can assure you.) and I'm not going to post a pic since I can't be bothered with some lawyer sending me a C&D, but you'll have no trouble
finding the photo(s) if you Google around a bit. All 5 are in the NSFW thread I just linked to, but don't worry. The photos are very recent and she's 18 now, so it's not a felony to look at the non-jail bait on display within them.
If Hudgens has offered an explanation for the shots, or their leakage, I've not heard it, but her PR person did admit that they were authentic. Since then Hudgens has offered apologies to her fans and Disney, hasn't been fired yet, has become exponentially more famous, and has received lucurative job offers from the Girls Gone Wild franchise.
I'd be curious to hear Hudgens spin the photos, but it doesn't seem like she's going to bother trying. I don't know how they could have been explained away; the girl was clearly lying around, alone in her bedroom and feeling frisky, and she used her camera phone to take some sexy pictures. It's not known if she sent them to her boyfroiend (who is allegedly her Clay Aiken looking costar, but I wouldn't be surprised if their romance is as authentic as the one the first 2 American Idol winners had, which lasted just long enough to give them a publicity boost for their albums and movie) or if someone saw them on her camera and stole them there, but however it happened, they were leaked and now everyone's seen them. They're not porn and she's not Paris Hilton, but she poses in various bras and pantie outfits, before offering up some full frontal nudity. Although her uncharacteristically full bush means she might as well have on a bikini bottom in the nude photo, she's clearly nude and clearly a willing participant in the photos. And that's where Marcotte, her blog, and her arch-feminist, anti-religious, "women are always especially persecuted in our society"
attitude comes in. Her post is hard to encapsulate in a quote since it's mostly a rant and is all over the place, but here's the conclusion.
Who knows who leaked them? But I won't be holding my breath to see if we get an apology about violating her privacy if it's found out who leaked the pictures. Which just drives home the lesson for the kids, which is that treating women like garbage is not nearly the same kind of crime as being a woman with a normal, healthy sexuality is.
...In a better world, Hudgens would have released a press release reminding everyone that the person who leaked her private photos to the world is the person who owes her an apology and she doesn’t owe anyone an apology, since she didn't actually do anything to hurt anyone. "I'm really sorry there are horrible people out there who get a rise out of humiliating women, but I'm not sorry for what I did, since I was the victim not the perpetrator. I'm sorry that I was naive enough to believe that people would not abuse my trust in them, and I hope that I have better friends in the future." That sort of thing.
*Parents who do this: Everyone is laughing at you, because we're like, "How the hell did you get your kids, then? Prayed really hard in your separate bedrooms?"
I agree that young women are held to a very different standard than young men, and that it's all the worse if they're celebrities, but Marcotte is (intentionally) leaving out one key aspect of this whole thing. Her argument was fine when Paris Hilton's porn tape was leaked, (ignoring the fact that the porn tape was the best thing that ever happened to Paris' career, and that she would undoubtedly go back in time and leak it herself if she had to) since Paris was just some stupid, fame-grasping socialite. She had every right to behave in any way she wanted, and criticism of her for being a sexual being clearly stemmed from patriarchal societal attitudes that condemn female sexuality almost as vigorously as they jerk off thinking about it.
Vanessa Hudgens taking and losing nude photos of herself is very different though, because Paris Hilton wasn't famous for being a child star, and wasn't being paid millions of dollars to retain a wholesome, family-friendly image so the crappy songs she lipsynchs and the crappy TV shows she prances her way through could be marketed to the hordes of 8-14 y/o girls who worship her on the Disney channel. Regular people who get arrested for drunk driving or drug use don't get suspended from their jobs for 6 months. Professional athletes do, since they're role models for children and public figures in an entertainment product, and their employment comes with great benefits, but also with bad behavior clauses. I have no idea if Hudgens and her costars have such clauses in the contracts they've signed with Disney, but I would be shocked if they do not. I'm sure Disney would have been completely within their legal rights if they'd fired her ass last week, so that's certainly one reason for her to apologize most fervently.
The other is even more obvious, and it's the one Marcotte spent so many words denying and fighting against (in regards to Hudgens, but also in reaction to her own self-authored downfall). Conservative, religious people have a lot of political, economic, and media power in this country. This is not news to anyone, and you're free to protest reality all you wish, but don't pretend it doesn't exist. When a public figure does something like constantly insult the Catholic church and the concept of religion in general, and does it in a crude, intentionally-insulting manner, there are going to be repercussions. And when a young female actress whose target demographic's age is in the single digits is caught taking nude and suggestive photos of herself, she's going to get into trouble and have to make a lot of apologies.
Even beyond that, the vast majority of parents, no matter how liberal or irreligious, do not want to have to explain to their 9 y/o why that girl they love on that TV show is taking nude photos of herself. Nor do those parents want their 12 or 13 y/o daughters seeing this and thinking it's the sort of thing they should do with their camera phone. Sure, there's some sexism in the condemnation, but how different would the reaction be if her male costar had been stupid enough to photograph himself posing seductively in underwear, and fully nude? He'd be in just as much trouble, and in fact would probably have been fired already. At least Hudgens can play the female sympathy/victim card and claim she didn't mean the shots to get out. A guy in her situation would be assumed to be fully complicit in the distribution of the photos, and while he might not be shamed as vigorously, he would not be permitted continued employment on a children's TV program.
Remember Pee Wee Herman? He's still in exile, though Paul Reubens has returned to sporadic work, years and years later. And no one even saw him nude, and his children's show was weird and subversive and enjoyed by more adults than children anyway.
Labels: celebrity nudes, feminism
