Many people, when talking about feminism, talk about the need for equality. The quote below from Anatole France explains why this is a fallacy.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”The point being that the rich have no need to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, or steal bread, unlike the poor.In the same way treating women and men equally would mean that women would be treated the same as men. But women have different needs to men. Countries that have no paid maternity leave treat women and men equally. But how is this fair to women? Pregnant women need time to rest. Women who have given birth need time to physically recover from the birth, establish breastfeeding, and spend time with their baby. Men may want to spend time with their baby, but all of the other needs do not apply to them. Women have different needs. And this does not mean being treated the same as men.Feminism is not about women and men being treated equally or women being treated the same as men.Relevant as ever.
It’s high time that everyone chucks the word “equality” from feminist discourse and replaces it with “liberation.” Name the oppressor, name the oppressed, and specify the goal.
This is beautiful.
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Long hair, boobs out and make up are awesome and all but in plane factory…not so muchI love this image so much.
I’ve seen some women who are offended by this and say it’s ridiculous that her cleavage is showing and things of that sort.
Personally, I think it’s great.
Why should we have an image of a women with her hair tied up and flexing her muscles like she’s a man? (not that that isn’t great too!) In a way it suggests that when our hair is down, our breasts are visible and we wear (GASP) lipstick, we’re somehow lesser than men? We can do it! We can be feminine and successful.
You see what I’m saying here, ladies?
You don’t have to lose your femininity. Being feminine is great. Being masculine is great. Strength is not limited to one way of being.
Yes, thank you.
I never liked the one where she was all masculine, because that’s certainly not who I am. But it doesn’t mean I’m some weak being that can’t work hard.
“all masculine”
“Okay, I have an idea for an update of the old Rosie the Riveter feminist icon.”
- “Oh? Sounds good, maybe a more inclusive series of pictures showing women with different body types and ethnici—”
“No, no, not like that. I was just thinking we could make her the same, just more feminine and pretty. Conventionally attractive white women are always getting shit on by the feminist movement.”
- “Uhm… wait—”
“Yup, okay, first let’s have her strong empowered facial expression changed to a sort of flirty, sultry gaze.”
- “But that’s—”
“Oh, and we definitely need to add some cleavage there too.”
-“WHAT?!”
“Okay, next lets forget the whole ‘strong arm’ thing and have her be fixing her hair.”
- “That is literally the opposite of—”
“Now let’s make her facial features more conventionally attractive and add some makeup!”
- “Wait… what the fuck? So basically it’s now JUST retro fashion pin-up of a white girl with an hourglass figure? Saying YES WE CAN… to fixing our hair and flirting?”
“Yeah, not ALL feminists hate bras and shaving, DUHHHHHH!!!!!!!! You should be a little more inclusive. Don’t discriminate against petite white cis girls!”
Forever barfing at feminist posts that start out well written and with good and relevant points and information…
…ONLY THEN TO DRAW A COMPARISON WITH THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.
Stop comparing oppression. Stop using poc as a rhetoric trick to make your statement. Start reading up on intersectionality.
V/H/S is exactly horror’s best offering in ages, it is exactly where horror is and should be. This is New American Horror. But there are caveats. And there are feminist concerns.
The film features five vignetted found footage horror shorts (with multiple directors) woven into a (found footage) narrative about a bunch of dudes who make gonzo porn for cash. They pick up a burglary gig, tasked with liberating a stash of videotapes from an old man’s house. These five shorts are what they find.
A found footage film’s problem is twofold. It must first address the “hows” and “whys” of the in-universe eye. Does it make sense for this person to be clutching a Handycam during this chase scene? Are we convinced that they would bother? Are all the shots consistent, technically feasible, and physically plausible? Can every light, shot, and edit be accounted for? Does it make sense for the characters to be interacting with the cameras in this way? Are you accounting for how the footage got all the way to our screen in this condition?
But a found footage film is only really good if it pushes toward new possibilities for the diegetic device, proposes lots of “what ifs,” finds creative ways to justify the genre. While The Last Exorcism—my favorite found footage feature of the last decade until I saw V/H/S—made a lot of mistakes when it comes to tenant #1 of the genre, it offered one of my favorite examples of Handycam innovations when a possessed girl used the camera itself to murder a household pet. Found footage horror often uses a camera’s headlight as a narrative tool to delineate space and decide what the viewer can see, but it is also frequently (as in Rec, The Blair Witch Project or The Devil Inside) a crucial light resource for the film’s characters, thus justifying why the hell they are bothering with a camera in a time of crisis.
The found footage film, in embodying an in-universe gaze, also offers a conversation with feminist visual theory. As I mentioned before, V/H/S’s hoodlum bros make and sell gonzo porn videos—you know, the kind where women are attacked on the street and their breasts exposed—and there are clips of these scenarios between the short films. There are other unsettling gazey in-universe nonsequiturs, like clips of one of the men secretly filming sex with a girl, and her discovery of the hidden camera. They’re the film’s least redeeming feature, and you should be careful if you choose to watch. But, if they do serve a purpose, it is to remind us of the camera’s penetrative potential.
Before I continue, I want to warn you that there’ll be spoilers, and I really want y’all to enjoy this shit, so proceed cautiously. More importantly, though, I wanna put a trigger warning on the rest of my words and a big fat TW on this film. There is a lot of conspicuous assault, bad consent, emotional abuse, blood, and regular ol’ violence. Even though I think the film is really good in spite of this, it can be tough to watch, and I’m pretty uncomfortable recommending it to most of you unless you’re prepared or feel okay about it. The worst of it (in my opinion) is in the first five minutes, just so you’re warned.
Let me say this, at least: this film, directed by nine dudes in total (and no women), wanted to be a “feminist horror film.” I’m not wholly unsatisfied by the results, and in fact am thrilled by some of them, but it reeks of Horror Film Dude Trying To Make Right With The Women. That kind of director doesn’t take a shot at producing a feminist film by, say, workin’ real hard to write a woman character and trying not to flash her tits too much. Most of them, instead, try to craft a feminist redemption by fleshing out sexism, abuse, rape, misogyny, and then inserting a female character that is allowed to overcome these things. That’s the rape revenge film in a nutshell, like I Spit On Your Grave or The Last House On The Left (where it’s the father who enacts the revenge), and we call it “exploitation” because the redemption is designed to justify the gratuitous sexualized violence.
So many contemporary horror, genre, and exploitation films which posit themselves as (or are lauded as) “feminist” follow the same violence-retribution arc—Teeth, Kill Bill, and Hard Candy most of all—and that’s pretty much remained the standard model for a “feminist” horror film made by men. (Maybe it is more accurate to say “‘feminist’ horror film that gets made at all.” Very rarely are these films made by women, but there are cases like Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body.) (I’d hate to ignore stuff like The Grudge and Audition in this conversation, but those come out of a different tradition and it wouldn’t be fair to analyze them in the same way.)
Four of the five shorts in V/H/S are essentially “about” women and have really good women characters. At least two of them are abuse-redemption narratives.
Let me take a second to talk about the most famous of these nine directors, Ti West, and why I love him so much. The House of the Devil is a film by West that I will ceaselessly praise as crucial American horror. It has a Final Girl who is in conversation with but not subsumed by Final Girls of yore. She is more than a trope. She survives but is not necessarily a Strong Female Character. Like Jamie Lee in Halloween, she is at times both competent and helpless. She is a victim without being sexually exploited for our eyes. She is allowed to keep her clothes on, mostly. She spends most of the film alone, and the bulk of the film’s psychic tension is developed through her emotional interactions with herself. That’s just it, that’s why Ti West is so great. In House as well as his latest solo feature, The Innkeepers, he writes films about women for relatively non-political reasons, he writes films about women whose bodies aren’t mutilated for our viewing, he writes films about women who survive without becoming a trope, and when he writes women he grants them lots of emotional and mental space. But Ti West’s segment in V/H/S is a feminist redemption narrative.
In West’s short, “Second Honeymoon,” a woman, Stephanie, and her huge asshole of a boyfriend, Sam, tape record their romantic Out West getaway. The Camcorder encloses a tense, unkind domestic space while constantly teasing and alluding to an unknown external terror. (That’s another thing Ti West does really well: he never tells you what you’re supposed to be afraid of until the very end.) After a creepy run-in with a local, Sam violates Stephanie with the camera and tries to coerce her into sex. That night, both bodies are shown—filmed by a third, intruding party who picked up the camera—sleeping in separate beds. The unnamed third eye pulls Stephanie’s sheets down, ogles her panties, and leaves. It’s a really gross male gaze moment, but.
The fear in “Honeymoon” is a slow, kneading tension. Ultimately we are asked to determine whether we are afraid of the interiority of the relationship or of an external threat from which we are unprotected. In the end, the terror is both and neither. In the final scene, the camera’s handler slits Sam’s throat and she (she) retreats to the bathroom to kiss her lover, Stephanie. They leave together.
It’s a queersploitation scenario, and falls into the abuse-redemption trap. But “Second Honeymoon” is a really great feminist horror short because of the ways it constructs domestic fears, refuses to portray female sexualities as static, and manipulates gazes. And, while ultimately an abuse revenge scenario, the short does not use the concluding “redemption” as an excuse to gratuitously exploit female bodies in the exposition. In fact, Ti West manages to largely separate the violence—emotional and physical—from the sexuality. When Sam tries to coerce Stephanie into taking off her clothes, the audience sees no nudity, only a frumpy sweatshirt and an unsensationalized cold resistance. In fact, the only actual violence in the entire short is the blood oozing out of Sam’s neck in the dark, a cold, brief gore immediately followed by a tender, swift, unsexualized kiss between the two women.
The other abuse-redemption short in V/H/S is David Bruckner’s “Amateur Night.” Its premise immediately begs the question of the violating gaze. A bunch of fratty bros buy a pair of glasses with a hidden camera embedded in them and scheme to film a secret amateur sex tape with some unwitting drunk girls they pick up at a local bar. If I can say anything in favor of this short, I will compliment the impeccable drunk acting and the use of the camera to allude to intoxication. I was fully convinced. But, in case you haven’t guessed, Trigger Warning: rape attempts. The bros bring two girls back to their hotel room. One of the women passes out, and a dude paws at her, his bro mutters something about rape, and they give up. The other girl is a succubus ready for action.
That’s man-made feminist horror film, I guess. Spoiler: the men die, the gore is brilliant, and we get to see a convincingly severed penis. But we also had to watch a drunk bro undo the garters of a half-naked woman passed out, you know? “Amateur Night” is good horror exploitation, but it’s not a particularly feminist venture. Even in spite of the “feminist revenge.”
In a review of V/H/S, tumblr juvenilecinephile draws “Amateur Night” into a narrative about masculinities which includes each short as well as the film’s overarching plot:
All four of these segments run well in the universe of critiquing modern male behavior. Much of it is a power imbalance of control and abuse displayed by these characters against others. Even the second segment having a plot twist that might go against this thesis does not negate the sort of the desperation of the male character in that tape, in a real masculinity crisis.
V/H/S’s closing short, “10/31/98,” directed by Radio Silence, is the only segment without any real female character. I really loved this short, a joyful and creepy bro comedy/horror that feels in many ways like an all-male extension of The House of the Devil. A group of fratties stumble into a maybe-haunted house and intervene in some sort of sacrificial rite to save a White Girl In A White Dress that’s being tortured. They liberate her, but it doesn’t exactly work out for them. As juvenilecinephile points out, “10/31/98” is an alternately masculinist bookend to the rape culture in “Amateur Night” and offers “a spin on man children compared to ‘Amateur Night’ but shows just how much the behavior of chivalry in an equally medieval situation may not be the best road to take.”
There is another really good short in V/H/S, a stand-out next to “Honeymoon.” Directed by mumblecore bro Joe Swanberg, it’s called “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” and critics hated it for a really good reason: Skype. Skype. How the fuck did Skype recordings end up on a VHS in the house of an old guy who never made it past the VCR? And why? Why the hell Skype???
But, you know what? I’m going to defend the deconstructive potential of the Skype short, even though it makes no sense. “Sick” is a string of Skype conversations between a woman named Emily and her long-distance boyfriend. Emily thinks she is being haunted, Emily is curious and only a little afraid, Emily defers most of her opinions to her boyfriend, Emily neurotically picks at troubling bumps on her limbs with a fork. (As a person with body-repetitive impulse disorders, this was one of the most visceral things I’ve ever seen.) Emily is a great character.
We view the conversations from his perspective, the tiny man face in the lower-right-hand-corner of the screen. The medium briefly tricks us into thinking there is no directional gaze, even as we watch Emily strip for her boyfriend. The medium also allows us to suspend an understanding of distance, when we view (in the background of a passed-out Emily) that the allegedly long-distance boyfriend is actually sneaking into Emily’s apartment to help aliens implant fetuses into her body. The medium additionally allows us to swiftly re-orient, as when we see, in the end, that the boyfriend is enacting the same scenario on a second long-distance girlfriend. We watch her strip on Skype.
Not unlike Rosemary’s Baby, “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily” is exceptional in the way that it uses the supernatural to manifest very real abuse dynamics. “Gaslighting” becomes “aliens,” “reproductive abuse” becomes “weird alien fetuses.” Emily tells her boyfriend that she was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, that she is “crazy.” She says this is why she keeps picking at these sores under her skin, this is why she can’t remember how she got bruised and beaten. She apologizes to him for how difficult she is. He says “you’ll be okay,” he tells her not to pick at her sores, he never says “I love you” back. It’s an excellent commentary on manipulation and construction of feminine madness. And it’s an abuse narrative without redemption.
The only short I haven’t mentioned is Glenn McQuaid’s “Tuesday the 17th.” This is the sloppiest segment, but it’s another remarkably woman-centric horror short directed by a man. A girl, Wendy, brings three friends camping in the woods so she can bait the man who murdered her companions in those woods years earlier. Not quite a revenge scenario, Wendy is looking for a final showdown with the man who killed her loved ones. But it’s “not as therapy,” she insists. It’s almost sadistic. If nothing else, it’s a new proposition, a prodding “what if” for the horror genre. And, honestly, that’s all I ask for when I watch this stuff.
In “Tuesday,” there is one scene that I can’t stop thinking about. On the way to the campsite, one of the guys in Wendy’s car swings the camcorder around to the backseat to zoom in on his friend’s tits. The violating camera lens is ubiquitous, even in horror. I am reminded of a similar scene in April Fool’s Day, where a particularly pervy soon-to-be-body euphemistically feels a girl up with his camera. April Fool’s Day is really nothing but a mid-eighties campy exploitation slasher, and that particular cinematic ogle was nothing but the genre’s conventional impetus to cram as many boobs as you can fit into an R-rating. I wonder about McQuaid’s intent in that moment. If nothing else, it reminded us that the camera was there, that it was embodied, and that it can be violent.
I’m not fully convinced that this is the “feminist” question these directors had in mind, but it’s as legitimate as anything. It’s certainly more legitimate (if less entertaining) than the succubus castration rape revenge.
Agreed on all counts except that I really enjoyed “Tuesday” because of the questions it asks about what we can or can’t film and why. I thought it was a nice fourth-wall nod, and also had some interesting in-universe technospookiness which I enjoy a lot.
Incidentally, speaking of technospookiness, I watched “The Cabin in the Woods” immediately before “V/H/S”, so that back-to-back was kind of intense both cinematically and critically. As it stands, I give the edge to “V/H/S”. As visually cool as “The Cabin in the Woods” was, the fourth-wall critical engagement was pretty ham-handed. It also seemed like they were cribbing heavily from “Cube Zero”, and I highly doubt Joss hasn’t seen it. Not that “Cube Zero” is the first movie to go there, but from what I remember the concept is pretty similar.
Also, while watching “V/H/S” I tweeted that I always secretly hope that men in film (especially genre horror) will get misandered to death, but that I’m rarely satisfied in that regard. Then someone’s dick and balls were ripped off. I was satisfied.
I really loved Teeth, but I guess I never really saw it as a horror film, per se.
I typically avoid horror films because I watched a lot of them as a kid and now have adult-onset-afraid-of-the-dark-ness. I can’t even watch Shaun of the Dead by myself, and that’s not actually scary. I *do* enjoy suspense, though, so I tend to go for psychological thrillers: you’re on the edge of your seat, but people aren’t likely to get slashed to death by evil killer dudes or horrifying-looking creatures or creepy young girls. I also tend to avoid paranormal scary stuff. That shit is the worst.
Anyway, Chris and I decided to wind-down our weekend with a double feature of The Cabin in the Woods (which I highly recommend) and V/H/S. I liked them both, but probably only appreciated the latter because of the above analysis by feministfilm. I liked the former better because—as someone who is, like I said, iffy with the creepy paranormal shit—it allowed me a sense of control from the get-go, like there was a reason for all this terrible scary shit to be happening. (There was also a cameo from my fave video game character, the Boomer from L4D and L4D2 *and* some of my fave Whedonverse actors were in it.)
It was interesting to watch these films together given the “feminist” bent of V/H/S and the sorta-sometimes-but-maybe-not-really feminist stylings of Joss Whedon (who co-wrote and co-produced The Cabin in the Woods). It was more than a little disheartening to see that the male version of ~feminism in film~ looks like at least 5 pairs of bare breasts, multiple nudity situations for ladies with ~babely~ bodies, lots of objectification in general, etc.—basically, not that much different from standard, non-feminist media.
Both movies seemed to have been written by folks who have at least been exposed to Laura Mulvey at some point in their lives, though. Scopophilia (the pleasure we derive from looking) is alive and well in the horror genre, and these films had fun with it—exploiting our voyeuristic tendencies (the viewers of each film as well as the characters in the films who did the viewing) to enhance meaning.
Okay well I have to pee and it’s late and I’m not a movie critic so I’m gonna end here.
We also ate some super garlicky fries and hot razzleberry pie with vanilla ice cream, so all in all I would say it was a pretty good day.
I saw “The Cabin in the Woods” and thought it was entertaining, solid horror, but no revelation. I thoroughly enjoyed it though.
I really want to see V/H/S, even though I can tell from the TWs above that I might have a really hard time watching it. But then again, I go to school for media studies and regularly watch stuff just to be able to form an opinion about it. Also I like movies that make me suffer, that challenge me, not in a masochist way, but in a “I like a movie to be work for me.”.
Under the pretense of “pushing the envelope”, a fashion editorial can acknowledge the hypocrisy and exclusion of the industry from which it springs, without actually changing anything. (File next to: Vogue Italia’s all-black issue, and June plus-size cover.) It’s a cheap move that only maintains the status quo.
- stephanie’s “the girlification of fashion” (august 2011) in at one sleepless night. this whole article is pretty awesome, i love that she addresses these really pervasive complex problems without resulting in alarmist boring tropes. why am i just finding out about this blog now? new favourite. (via garconniere)
”El feminismo no quiere imponer un matriarcado basado en la violencia contra el hombre, como ha sido el patriarcado hasta ahora. No desea dejarlos sin voto, ni violarlos en las guerras, ni mutilar sus genitales en pro de una tradición cultural, ni confinarlos en el ámbito doméstico, ni quiere matarlos por adulterio.
El feminismo no pretende que los hombres sean propiedad de sus madres y luego de sus mujeres, ni desea que los hombres cobren salarios más reducidos, ni tampoco querría desterrarlos de las cúpulas de poder mediático, empresarial y político. No quiere traficar con cuerpos masculinos para el disfrute de los femeninos, ni desea que los niños varones estén desnutridos o abandonados en orfanatos, ni, por supuesto, promovería su marginación social o económica. Tampoco vetaría que los niños varones pudiesen ir a la escuela, ni les prohibirían el acceso a la sanidad y la Universidad. Comprendan que eso es una locura que no promueve el feminismo”.
-Coral Herrera Gómez
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Feminism doesn’t want to impose a matriarchy based on violence against women, like the patriarchy has done up until now. It doesn’t want to take away their right to vote, rape them in wars, mutilate their genitals in the name of cultural tradition, confine them to the home, nor murder them for adultery.
Feminism doesn’t pretend that men are the property of their mothers and later of their wives, nor does it want men to earn reduced salaries, or banish them from the halls of medical, business and political power. It doesn’t want trafficking of male bodies for female enjoyment, or want male children to be malnourished or abandoned in orphanages, and, of course, promote their social or economic marginalization. It would not veto the rights of male children to go to school, nor prohibit their access to health care or universities. Understand that this is madness that doesn’t promote feminism.
-Coral Herrera Gómez
(via scienceweasels)
My Life as a Band Wife: Are women with tattoos classless?
Are women with tattoos classless?I was perusing Facebook this evening and found this article posted by one of my friends. It was written by Lisa Khoury for The Spectrum. Here is her argument for why it is classless for women to be tattooed:
I get it. It’s the 21st century. You’re cool, you’re rebellious, you’re cutting edge, you have a point to prove, and you’re a woman. Awesome.
Ladies, I know you’re at least at the legal age of making your own decisions, but before you decide to get a tattoo, allow me to let you in on a little secret. A secret you may have not fully realized yet thus far in your life. What you must understand is, as women, we are – naturally – beautiful creatures.
Seriously, though. Your body literally has the ability to turn heads. Guys drool over us. We hold some serious power in our hands, because – as corny as this sounds – we hold the world’s beauty.
But something girls seem to forget nowadays, or maybe have not been taught, is that women hold the world’s class and elegance in their hands, as well. So what’s more attractive than a girl with a nice body? I’ll tell you what: a girl with class. Looks may not last, but class does. And so do tattoos.
An elegant woman does not vandalize the temple she has been blessed with as her body. She appreciates it. She flaunts it. She’s not happy with it? She goes to the gym. She dresses it up in lavish, fun, trendy clothes, enjoying trips to the mall with her girlfriends. She accentuates her legs with high heels. She gets her nails done. She enjoys the finer things in life, all with the body she was blessed with.
But marking it up with ink? That’s just not necessary.
I’m not here to say a girl should walk around flaunting her body like it’s her job – that’s just degrading. Instead of getting a tattoo, a more productive use of your time would be improving and appreciating the body you have been given, not permanently engraving it.
Can you get meaning out of a tattoo? Arguably. If you want to insert ink into your skin as a symbol for something greater than yourself, then maybe you are proving a point to yourself or the rest of the world.I just hadto try to find this girl on Twitter. I didn’t, but I didfind this awesome counterargument from Danielle Hampton on Sometimes Sweet:
First of all, I have to congratulate you on breaking down the female role so simply- we are here to make men drool! To turn heads! We hold some serious power in our hands! So thankful you let me in on this, because frankly, while typing this I was looking down at my tattooed arms feeling lost…and now I understand why I’m happily married, raising an intelligent child, hold two degrees, and live a wonderful life. Oh, wait…
I think the biggest, most glaring problem in your article is that you are saying that women should not get tattoos. Not men. And with that comes a laundry list of things that are wrong with your argument. You say that tattooed women are lacking class, yet I find it interesting that the person who is making such a broad and judgmental statement is the same woman who is calling “wearing high heels” and “getting your nails done” a productive and good use of time. Your ignorance is almost shocking to me, and I kept holding out for the “just kidding, guys! I’m really not this crazy!” all the way to the end. To put it simply, I just can’t find the logic in any of your argument.
Are people who make outdated critizims about other peoples life choices that don’t effect anyone else embarrassments to themselves and everyone they know?
Survey says yes.
According to a study done by the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film, In 2010, women comprised just 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films (In the United States of America). The study analyzed behind-the-scenes employment of 2,649 individuals working on the top 250 domestic grossing films (foreign films omitted) of 2010 with combined domestic box office grosses of approximately $10.5 billion.
Here is a summary of their findings:
- Women accounted for 10% of writers working on the top 250 films of 2010. 83% of the films had no female writers.
- Women comprised 15% of all executive producers working on the top 250 films of 2010. 65% of the films had no female executive producers.
- Women accounted for 24% of all producers working on the top 250 films of 2010. 33% of the films had no female producers.
- Women comprised 7% of all directors working on the top 250 films of 2010. 93% of the films had no female directors.
- Women accounted for 18% of all editors working on the top 250 films of 2010. 77% of the films had no female editor
- Women comprised 2% of all cinematographers working on the top 250 films of 2010. 98% of the films had no female cinematographers
The initiative would protect a prenatal person regardless of whether or not the prenatal person would live, grow, or develop in the womb or survive birth; prevent all abortions even in the case of rape, incest, or serious threats to the woman’s health or life, or when a woman is suffering from a miscarriage, or as an emergency treatment for an ectopic pregnancy. The initiative will impact some rights Nevada women currently have to access certain fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. The initiative will impact some rights Nevada women currently have to utilize some forms of birth control, including the “pill;” and to access certain fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. The initiative will affect embryonic stem cell research, which offers potential for treating diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, and others.
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A Nevada District Judge decided that the Nevada Prolife Coalition’s description of effect didn’t inform voters well enough. This is the language he required them to use…. because he’s fucking awesome, and he realized the true implications of what a “life and conception” amendment would mean for uterus-possessing people.
No seriously, ask yourself: do you want to live in a place where any abortion would be deemed illegal, even if it saved your life? I mean…why is a fetus that isn’t even viable more important than my life? I mean, this beyond insulting. This is terrifying.
(via adventuresofporter)
(Source: The Huffington Post)
The Male Vamp: Edward Cullen, Tate Langdon, and Female Seduction
When I first learned about Theda Bara, the legendary silent film actress for whom the term “vamp,” was coined, I made the assumption that because of her vampiric reputation, all of her films were horror films. When I finally was able to watch A Fool There Was, the movie that created her “vamp” image and launched her to stardom, a movie in which her character is only known as “The Vampire,” I was surprised to learn that there was nothing supernatural about it. Theda plays a classic seductress who ruins a happy family and mercilessly destroys a reputable man. She conforms to the male gaze: she’s voluptuous, raven-haired, and ready to put out. She performs what feminists refer to as “the patriarchal bargain,” exploiting her sexuality for personal gain, only this time with disastrous results for the men who seek to exploit her. She is female villainy embodied: everything that men fear.
While the seductress is such a common character that she’s a recognized archetype in global mythology, it’s often made like the opposite can’t exist: the male seductor, who women willingly throw themselves at and readily ignore his faults, no matter how terribly he treats them. This character very much does exist; he just exists in a different form than the classic seductress. The female gaze and female fantasy differ greatly from the male gaze and male fantasy, as this wonderful edition of the web comic Shortpacked illustrates:
One of the old sexist clichés out there is that men want sex while women want romance. While it’s not universally true, it’s a deeply-ingrained part of modern societal gender roles, and ultimately, when fantasy is involved, it does play itself out. I have to admit to having my own idealized fantasy male in the form of Willy Cartier, a *stunning* French model/dancer with beautifully soulful dark eyes, luminous brown skin meant for touching, a perfect chest, and wavy black hair that extends down to his finely-sculpted ass. While I’ve had more than a few sexual fantasies about him, most of my fantasies have been romantic in nature: he thinks I’m a brilliant writer and shares his world of modern dance with me. He finds the way I butcher French more charming than embarrassing. We get married and have beautiful dark-eyed children.
I still have to remind myself that in spite of how wonderful he is in my imagination, I know absolutely jack shit about what Willy Cartier is actually like as a person. He could be a raging douchebag for all I know, or even worse, he could be “pro-life.” *shudder* This is where the fear comes in: if God were to somehow miraculously reverse my fortunes and give me a chance of actually having a relationship with lovely Willeh (or someone like him), how much crap from him would I be willing to put up with in order to have what I dream about?
In any fandom, there are fangirls who yearn for a certain handsome, romantic male. In Twilight, it’s Edward. They insist that he’s perfect in spite of the fact that he consistently treats Bella poorly and creepily controls everything she does. He follows patterns that, as has been pointed out many times, are followed by abusive men. If he were just hot, the fact that he takes the engine out of Bella’s car to prevent her from seeing a romantic rival would still be the move of a classic horror boyfriend. But what separates Edward from other psychos? He’s not only hot: he’s romantic, hurt, and needy.
One of the deepest and perhaps most essential parts of feminine identity is that of the nurturer: she who loves, cares for, and heals. One of the most quoted-by-fangirls passages from the Twilight saga is a monologue from Edward to Bella about how he was lost until Bella found him. She heals him, makes him whole, and makes him a better man. In many ways, this is the ultimate female fantasy, and even in real life women will stay with men who horribly abuse them under the idea that he really loves her and that she can make him better.
One of the best, and perhaps most extreme examples of this male seductor is that of Tate Langdon on American Horror Story. Admittedly, Tate is a deeply intriguing character. (SPOILERS!) We meet Tate as a troubled teenage boy sitting in a psychiatrist’s (one of the show’s main characters, Ben Harmon) office (which is located in the evil house), discussing his fantasies of shooting up his high school. Ben makes the conclusion that Tate is certainly troubled, but he’s not a lost case. He’s been deeply hurt, but with time and therapy could get better. Upon leaving the house, he sees Ben’s daughter, Violet, cutting herself, tells her she’s doing it wrong, and thus the show’s main romantic pairing (known affectionately by fangirls as Violate) is born. The two bond over their shared troubles, and, as the show progresses, we learn that Tate actually did shoot up his high school and is now a ghost haunting the house that the Harmons live in. When Violet asks a teacher who survived Tate’s rampage why a seemingly good person would do something so horrible, the teacher replies, “Maybe he wasn’t a good person.”
As the show progresses, we learn just how true the teacher’s words are: Before going on his rampage, he set his father-in-law on fire. As a ghost, Tate continues his killing spree as the show’s brutal “rubber man” villain. As the rubber man, he raped Violet’s mother and impregnated her with what seems to be some kind of demon baby. He lies to Violet repeatedly in order to seem more sympathetic, and his love for her slowly grows more from innocent teenage infatuation to an all-consuming obsession (also, as one observant fan pointed out, as many times as Tate has told Violet that he loves her, Violet has yet to say that she loves him back). The show’s creator, Ryan Murphy, has even said that Tate is the real monster of the show. And despite all this:
Male evil doesn’t always come in the form of rape. Men are just as good as being disturbingly seductive as any Theda Bara vamp.
About marenges big fat blog
Marenge, 27, Marburg, Germany.
Probably the easiest way to describe me would be that I like liking things too much.
~***INTENSE STARE***~
