Beautiful [and Nauseating] Creatures

‘Tis true that good movies are hard to come by in Cambodian cinemas, but that doesn’t stop me from going most every Sunday. Now that I can (mostly) afford it, I will shell out to see films I would never have considered back home. I’d have probably preferred a sharp stick in the eye to Beautiful Creatures, for example. But these are desperate times I live in.

Having read an interview with the authors of the B.C. series some time ago, I was looking forward to seeing if their ambitions with an anti-Bella female protagonist would translate in the films. Well, shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. I haven’t read the books, so maybe I’m giving the authors too much credit as it is, but the movie’s version of the protagonist Lena wasn’t exactly light years ahead of Twilight’s Bella.

It was sort of refreshing to see the female protagonist fanning her lover after he had swooned, and to see him in awe of her magical powers. (Sort of interesting, too, was that this witch story was set in a very Christian town in the South.) The pluses basically end there. The film (and books, presumably) focus on the boy’s perspective, which is all well and good except that Lena remains bland and personality-less. And for whatever reason, female witches, though not male ones, can’t control whether or not their “true nature” is ultimately good or evil. Unlike boy witches, their fate is predetermined and revealed on their 16th birthday when they become “a woman”. This is a form of ageism that I particularly despise, but I guess they can’t be blamed for using it, how else would this story have worked?

A much bigger hitch, though, was that this movie is a carbon copy of almost all the “romantic” movies I’ve seen in the past couple years. Yes, I’m desperate, I’ll see just about anything in the Kingdom because I love the Big Screen experience, but if I have to watch one more moody, melodramatic, I’m-pushing-you-away-but-don’t-leave-me-I-can’t-live-without-you teenage love story I am going to punch out the nearest theater steward.

On the same note, I can no longer stand overly long make-out scenes, with which B.C. was rife. Sex scenes are always a bore, but I actually prefer them to make-out scenes now because they take up fewer minutes of my movie-viewing time.

I get it: these movies are made for teenagers. But cartoons like Toy Story and Up were supposedly made for children, and people of all ages can enjoy them. Is it impossible for Hollywood to make a movie about teenagers that isn’t just for teenagers? I am quite sure there are plenty of teenagers who are bored by that crap, too.

Are movies like this still being made because there is genuine demand for them, or are they made to perpetuate certain cliches upon which so many high-grossing films are made and about which books and movies are quickly and easily produced? Are we really interested in buying this crap, or is the movie (and book) industry just that good at convincing us we are?

(On a more personal note: is the fact that these movies make me nauseous a sign that I am maturing into a real, live adult? Maybe that’s a bit optimistic…)

The End of Men (…or not.)

A friend got me Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men a couple of months ago (thanks, E!); here (at last) is a review.

Rosin’s book has a rather pejorative title, no? But don’t fear, penis-bearers, she doesn’t intend it in as antagonistic a manner as it sounds. Rather, this book could serve as a warning for those stuck in antediluvian concepts of gender, family, and work. The most pitiful “characters” in TEoM are those guys who have lost– wives, jobs, hope for the furture– because they refused to adapt to a new and different kind of gendered environment.

Rosin suggests that there is a shift taking place in American society, one that finally puts ‘feminine’ concepts in a positive light, particularly in the workplace. It would behoove men, she says, to adopt more traditionally (and stereotypically)-feminine traits and qualities in order to move ahead in the workplace, as their traditionally-masculine traits and qualities are no longer so beneficial– and, indeed, may be hindering them.

She points to this shift as the reason for Women’s Rise, which presumably means more money-making and keeping capacity, and associated benefits: more power in family decision-making, higher status in the sociocultural realm. I enjoyed her in-depth analysis and interviews of women in managerial positions, as well as her observations of women on other up-and-coming career paths, like the pharmacy business.

The most important and provoking lesson that I took from this book, though, is that this may be the End of Men, but it is certainly not the End of Patriarchy: I was struck by how patriarchal the “successful” women featured in this book truly were. Their competitiveness, desire to achieve status and status-lending commodities, aggression and even violence– yes, women of the past were “kept down” by the Patriachy, but our liberation from It does not signal the demise of It. No, we have only obtained more power to participate in the system in a different way… And participate we do.

Nor does the End of Men free women from the oppression of Patriarchy, as the “career women” feature in Rosin’s book still very much adhere to culturally-dictated norms of sexuality and gender.

Nevertheless, TEoM provides hope, too– for women, and for men. It’s a fast read and inspires fun discussion; read it!

Prometheus (review)

I’ve had a long hiatus, I realize. Several reasons for that, but in the meantime I have been doing something. Perhaps not much of merit, but anyways… Here’s a brief critique of Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s latest film.

Plot spoilers follow.

via Rotten Tomatoes

A deep-space vessel millions of light years from Earth stops on an uncharted satellite to search for something of imminent value to humankind. Our protagonist is the leader of a crew of scientists, a spunky, strong-willed brunette, attractive, with a dazzling IQ to boot. If this sounds like a new spin on Alien, I’d have to agree. Just the first of many gripes I have about this film.

Aside from the distracting scientific improbabilities of this Ridley Scott film, there are a myriad other reasons why Prometheus leaves one feeling dissatisfied at the end. It plays on an all-too-familiar sci-fi trope of old rich white dude wants something fantastic (in this case, eternal life), hires a team of scientists to take him beyond the unknown to get it, and disaster strikes in predictable fashion.

In that sense, Prometheus has done nothing new. But like basically every Coldplay album, Ridley Scott films abide by a simple principle: if it’s a good trope, keep reusing it. I can live with that, except that he doesn’t bother to shake up the ingredients. It’s as if this movie were made in the same era as Alien: predominantly white cast, stereotyped female characters (apparently to counterbalance the protagonist?), and a plot based in the mythos of Patriarchy.

The only non-white characters are three crew members who hardly leave the ship. Only the captain (Idris Elba) has any amount of lines, and lucky him, he’s given the ones that reveal Scott has not much advanced his thinking on female characters. Charlize Theron is wasted as an increasingly disinteresting overseer, hypercompetitive and determined in a way that is quickly undermined by the captain. After trying to pick her up, he says she must be a robot for refusing him– which apparently gets under her skin enough that she obliges him: “My room. Ten minutes.” I didn’t watch this in the theater, but I’m guessing that part was supposed to elicit a laugh.

That is what it is; the truly bothersome part of this film is that the alien beings from whom we are supposedly descended (they having been to Earth many times over the past millenia, disseminating their advanced DNA) are all Caucasian and all male. Whaaaaaat? I was following until that point. Sometimes it just jumps out at you, how in love with itself the Patriarchy is… Mankind was born of the DNA of a superior, male-dominated (perhaps exclusively male) alien race whose individuals look like giant Klan members. So much for modern anthropology’s out-of-Africa theory…

I love sci-fi, and I am more than willing to entertain far-flung absurdities for the sake of a good story. But you can’t have both a tired trope and a unrealistic plot that doesn’t even have imaginative appeal. Good-night…

Better Late Than Never

The media seems to have taken more of an interest (pinterest?) in women lately. And not in the usual fashion, so to speak, but quite a bit more seriously. You know, as if we’re…people. Maybe that’s because much of this media is being produced by women of consciousness, but it has to get through their mostly male bosses at the end of the day– but not at Foreign Policy magazine. I want to take a minute and applaud FP for their May/June issue, The Sex Issue. They are talking about pertinent issues which other media outlets seemed hellbent on ignoring, despite the fact that they impact half the world’s population.

The Sex Issue features 9 illuminating posts, many of them written or co-written by women journalists, covering issues from sex-selective abortion to the dire lack of women in politics to state (and state-sanctioned) violence against women.

Is that soldier about to stomp on that person…? Why, yes, I do believe he is.

The cover story is Mona Eltahawy’s “Why Do They Hate Us?”, which discusses in detail the “real” war on women taking place in the “Middle East”. I’m not one to belittle the plight of rape survivors in the “West” as not as serious as Saudi Arabian women’s inability to drive, or the rape of Egyptian women by security forces during Egypt’s revolutions (as Eltahawy was), but despite the overly simplistic subtitle, I very much appreciate Mona’s starkly honest article. No one can ignore the severely oppressive state to which many Arab women are subjected after she details examples of human rights abuses against women in Egypt, Saudi Arabi, Yemen, and other countries. But it is not so much the social, political, religious, and physical abuses that really got to me… Female oppression extends into, or more likely stems from, an all-pervasive psychological oppression.

“Saudi women far outnumber their male counterparts on university campuses but are reduced to watching men far less qualified control every aspect of their lives.”

That entire populations of women live in a virtual slave state, and that no one bothers to do anything about it, freaks me out. Revolution has brought freedom to Libya and Egypt…for individuals with testicles. We talk about the Muslim Brotherhood as if it is a legitimate political entity, and they conduct their human rights violations (such as female genital cutting as a means to maintain female piety) under the banner of Culture. For so long “Culture” has ruled. It’s time to tear the throne of Culture down, or as Mona sums,

“Resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips.”

Articles, indeed entire magazine issues, of this nature are long overdue. I sort of involuntarily rolled my eyes when I saw this issue in a local bookstore, thinking, “Way to jump on the bandwagon, people…” But then I caught myself. There really isn’t a bandwagon. It’s still basically unfashionable to complain about the subhuman status of half the Earth’s humans in 2012. But this will not always be so, and so better late than never or not, I say to FP: thank you, and keep them coming.

The Means of Reproduction (a review)

This is a review of The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World by Michelle Goldberg (2009).

Reading The Means was a lesson in self-discipline. At times, I was filled with elation and I wanted to run around and jump up and down for the energy it gave me. At other times, I was so frustrated or angry that it was all I could do not to launch the book (which I’d borrowed) across the room at the far wall; “Just take a breath and set the book down…” I would tell this part of myself, and give myself a minute to do something detached. For as sharp and lucid as Goldberg’s writing was a certain parts that could induce such feelings, the overall message of her book put those parts into a deeper, broader, more meaningful context. To that end, she’s a great, readable writer and even if you’re not deeply invested in the “big ideas” of the book, I’d still recommend it if you’re into well-crafted non-fiction prose.

What are the big ideas of this book, anyhow? (From this point on, there will probably be some “plot spoilers”, just to warn you.) That somewhat anthropocentric part of the subtitle, “the Future of the World”, nicely sums one recurring theme: human population on Earth. Perhaps it would be better to say “the Future of the World as We Know It”, but the discussion of population and demography is one which Goldberg examines and dismantles from every angle, from the ironically “anti-imperialist” far right of religious and political America and their far left counterparts, to the Cold War-era voices of Malthusian pushers of the “population bomb” theory.

Another major focus of Goldberg’s admirably well-researched work is the history and development of women’s rights and feminism in the global scheme. I admit to being woefully ignorant of women’s movements in places outside of my immediate experience (i.e. “the West”); Goldberg’s deep research and firsthand accounts of conversations with the major players in the international women’s movement is a crash course in the evolution of perspectives and strategies within that movement.

Another crucial motif is Goldberg’s analysis of “culture versus human rights”. This is an issue with which I have struggled for some time, especially coming out of school with a degree in anthropology (cultural relativism lalala). How can one objectively view the contentious, often incompatible relationship between the relativity of cultural views/values and the fundamental rights of the individual? I felt betrayed when it at first appeared that Goldberg was lending credit to the notion of culture trumping human rights– but that is why one must read this book from beginning to end. The careful examination Goldberg gives to all sides of this argument is edifying and elucidating.

Perhaps the most important theme is that which sums the elements of the subtitle; many, many aspects of this book come down to control, particularly control of female bodies. When put that way, it may sound horrific (what are women– cattle for breeding? Indeed, perhaps…), but the implications go far beyond an individual’s choice to have children, to control of our own persons. The author slowly but clearly builds on this picture, awakening us to the very real and imminent connections between our persons and our collective sustainability within our environments. She manifests some realizations that are impossible to ignore, my favourite of which is this: empowering women (i.e. recognizing women’s rights as human rights) is good for everybody– is good for Earth. (I’m tempted to plot-spoil on this, because it’s such a fantastic point, but because the entirety of Goldberg’s research gradually unfolds this point, I won’t ruin the pleasure of discovering her profound conclusion– you will just have to read it for yourself!)

The struggle between the religious right and more secular liberals is one that overwhelms much of this book (indeed, I think at the loss of including other perspectives on women’s rights, including environmentalists’ thoughts on the matter). As they are the major shapers of rights and policies which directly impact people’s lives, it makes sense that she makes this conflict a central focus. In that sense, we get to see the very irritating, very hypocritical ideology of the religious right at work in international politics: their arguments against women’s reproductive rights often assert that the liberalists’ agenda is merely neocolonialism in disguise, motivated purely by the desire to control the “under-developed” world. They frequently voice their concerns that liberal international (human rights) policies disrespect and undermine a culture’s autonomy– which certainly looks like imperialism. What those same religious bodies never admit is that their colonialism has been attempting to alter and “purify” cultures for millennia (Christian missionaries, Islamic jihad, say what?). Is their denial of the neocolonialism within their own agenda willful ignorance, or do they simply define “culture” and “colonialism” in ways that best suit their own (patriarchal) interests?

Going all with this, something that makes The Means very difficult to digest is that Goldberg pulls no punches when analyzing all sides of an argument. That means we have to hear some hurtful, angering, at times shocking “logic” from some truly misogynist, racist, or nationalistic individuals and organizations. Whether you believe in hearing all sides of a debate because you believe in critical thinking or simply because you want to “know thy enemy”, this aspect of the book often clouds impartiality as it strikes powerful emotional nerves (not Goldberg’s fault, but the partiality of the reader). Take, for instance, the Uganda parliamentary representative who wanted to deny a spouse’s right to not have sex: “Refusing to have sex is the most violent thing a spouse can do” (p. 10). I still haven’t wrapped my head around that one. Or the fact that the world still takes seriously people like Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who supports spousal abuse and execution of sodomites, though as to the former, “men should beat their wives lightly, and only as a last resort” (p.164). Or take the blatant 1970s sexism of American employers: “You’ll just work with us for a year or two and then you’ll go and have babies” (p. 69)– for, as we all know, maternity and careers are mutually exclusive. Or, in examination of women’s rights in northern India, “To be frank, [a woman] is never consulted whether she will go to bed with [a] man. So there is no freedom of decision” (p. 191). The Means is full of perspectives that are difficult to digest, but they also give a pluralistic view of how humanity sees women– the “point” of women, especially.

That “purpose”, actually, does lend hope in the end. This aspect of Goldberg’s work is neatly summed in this, one of my favourite quotes: “Such religious rivalries, however, masked an equally important polarization, both inside of countries and among them, between secular, liberalizing cultures and traditional, patriarchal ones. One saw women as ends in themselves, human beings with dignity and autonomy. The other treated them as the means of group cohesion and identity whose primary value lay in their relation to men” (p. 169).

A hard-to-swallow issue that, unsurprisingly, surfaces constantly in this book is female participation in and acceptance and perpetuation of hierarchy in general and Patriarchy in specific. Whether it manifests as promotion of female genital cutting (or, as some prefer to call it, female genital mutilation) as initiation into matriarchy (which is only endowed with authority through its position in the larger system of Patriarchy), or the devaluation of female life as seen in many Hindu women’s choices to terminate female pregnancy (sex selective abortion). Why is it necessary to cut off one’s clitoris (or more) in order to gain respect and a measure of autonomy? Why should one accept condemnation because one cannot “produce” a son (which, it is the sperm, by the way, that determines “sex”)? But more generally, why do we acknowledge and abide by the authority of these automatons when they directly violate our rights as individuals? As individuals we function inside of a larger collective, that which most people label as “our culture”, but why does that equate to the forfeit of personal agency? Why should we not actively, consciously seek to transform culture in ways that reflect on, examine, recognize, promote, and celebrate human rights– holistically and collectively?

For me, this book comes down to two things, which are intrinsically connected: the dismantlement of hierarchy, and the prioritizing of human rights over culture. What is manifest again and again in The Means is that hierarchy hurts the vast majority of the world’s people, whether it comes in the form of Patriarchy, the caste system, or capitalist economic dominance (and truly they are all very much interconnected), true fulfillment of human rights is simply impossible within a hierarchical context (unless, of course, one rejects equality as a fundamental, indeed prerequisite, element of human rights).

The dawning realization is that “culture and tradition is not a monolith” (p. 195); culture, as anthropologists have long droned, is dynamic. It is forever changing, evolving moment to moment, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically, at times subconsciously and at other times with human imperatives hugely present. This issue, in my opinion, is one that has been growing more and more salient on the world stage. Maybe the major question every human individual needs to decide is “when culture and human rights collide, which should prevail, and who gets to decide?” (p.104). Traditionalists often cite identity, autonomy, and sheer reverence as reasons for the reactionary approach to culture, but to do so is to maintain harmful systems of hierarchy. That is one reason why I so appreciate the perspective of Agnes Pareyio, whom Goldberg interviews at length: “[Pareyio] wants Masai culture to change to embrace strong, educated girls” (p. 147). Pareyio’s ideas can and should be debated by individuals and groups of people, and globalization has made this somewhat unavoidable anyhow. This is an idea which the themes in Goldberg’s book foreground not only through her analysis of worldwide trends, but also through the relation of individuals’ experiences. It is time for humanity to move out of the age of the Cultural Mandate, and for each of us as individuals to engage in the study, shaping, and reshaping of culture, beginning with a collective redefining of cultural values.

Emergency Sex (a guest review)

The following is a guest post from Ellen Ripley of photography fame which reviews the Cambodia-related sections of Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth.

I was excited to see a book on Amazon about the shortcomings of development in Cambodia as told through the personal experiences of developers, only to be sorely disappointed by what I will refer to as U.N propaganda. This book has sections on countries besides Cambodia, but this review will focus solely on the accounts of the authors on their U.N work for Cambodia’s 1993 national elections.

This book starts out similar to a lot of stories: a bunch of 20-somethings trying to find their place after college or to start some kind of career where it seems like they’re stuck beating their heads against the wall. Anyway, with limited opportunities and intimate struggles, each of the people in this book apply to work for the U.N and end up in Cambodia.

Firstly, the way the authors immediately jump into what is missing in Cambodia bothers me; perhaps because of what’s missing they quickly seek to stay at the “IT” house in the capital of Phnom Penh. Why is it considered the “it” house, you’re wondering? Because that’s where all the cool expats and U.N workers party. Why does this mentality annoy me? Simple: they were put in this country to help the people but each one of them actually seeks out the chance to disassociate themselves from Cambodian people. I still see this today among NGO and U.N workers; it makes it hard to believe that they are here to help others and not themselves.

The other interesting thing about this “it” house is they are so proud of the “diversity” of its residents: people from many different backgrounds and ethnicities, etc. But guess what is strangely missing from the mix (which wouldn’t be hard to find): a Cambodian. This book clearly makes Cambodians into the outsiders, the Other.

I should specify that one author is different in this regards. Andrew, who built himself a house and lives on the outskirts of the city, has been here since war ceased as a doctor. He’s the only one who has attempted to pick up the language and has an interest in working to help this country.

Before I embark on the chapters of this book and how little I actually learned (other than that the world of development work has not changed) I will talk about the shortcomings of the U.N program for the election in Cambodia.

From the outset, this mission did not begin out of the goodness of the U.N’s heart. It did not want to spend $2 billion on making Cambodia into a democracy. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the declaration that the Cold War was over came the idea of a New World Order and how through this globalized society we will all be free, blah blah. Naturally, all the big wigs sat around and came up with their great plan to prove to the world how things were going to be different, but in order to do that they needed to pick a puppet to demonstrate that possibility. If they could make Cambodia into a democracy, they could help any country make the switch, right? Obviously, because becoming a democratic state is like some sort of math problem wherein there is a set formula. Never mind that Cambodia had just come out of a genocide where the ruling government had led that genocide and now they were supposed to count on said government to help Cambodians– that’s sort of an issue in itself. Then to not remotely understand how the previous dictator Pol Pot enforced lessons on the “right idea” behind politics though education…It may come as a big shock to you, but guess how the U.N went about teaching the Cambodian people about democracy? Through education at wats and schools, without a hint of irony.

Needless to say, the Cambodian people were greatly changed by the genocide, during which time they were forced to agree with whatever they were taught or else it would equal death.

Never the less, when the U.N went on with their education plan, they could not figure out why the people always agreed with whatever they said (e.g. yes, they felt safe voting in the new elections) but then UN workers would find out through the grapevine that people actually didn’t trust the elections. In fact, some people believed satellites could watch them voting and thus the government would get even with them. Maybe this all seems extremely far-fetched to you or me, but to a person who has seen crazier things (and not to mention had a king who was always telling them that the CIA had been watching him and wanted to overthrow him) it’s pretty plausible. Let’s be honest, none of us know what Nixon did to level the war in Vietnam, anyway.

Next was the hiring of all these peacekeepers and UN workers who I’d have thought, to be given a mission like creating a new democracy, would have be pretty well-qualified right? Yeah, not the case. The main people in this book prove this by showing just how easy it was for them to sign up. Yet it gets worse than some lost souls in their 20s– to putting downright criminals in charge. Apparently once the Wall fell down, Bulgaria desperately needed U.N assistance. Nothing is free, of course, so in exchange they were supposed to give the UN some “peacekeepers”. The Bulgarians instead made their own version of the deal with their own people, which resulted in Bulgaria giving the UN people who were criminals or insane. If said “peacekeepers” served the UN well then they would be given a free pass when they got back. This was well-known by everyone at the time. It’s an ongoing joke in Cambodia that the only thing the UN gave this country was AIDs; these criminals were known for rape, buying prostitutes, etc. Shocker, I know, yet these people also had the peace and safety of Cambodia in their hands as well. So what about the 20-something UN workers?

Heidi, the sole female perspective in the book, is from New York, and starts off with how crappy her life is: being poor and not pretty enough. At first I found her relatable, which it is always egotistical of a reader to think that they could be that person, but hey, I’ll admit it, I did. With her experience in social work and understanding what it feels like to be hard-pressed for money, one would think she would understand how a Cambodian would feel and better relate to them. That’s not the case, however; she lets her new salary and the low cost of living in Cambodia go to her head and soon she becomes like the person she once worshipped walking down Madison Ave. She does not even try to make herself an equal in Cambodia; she talks about her trip to Kampong Salm, the beach, how she was able to order everything on the menu, and how the Khmer women came out to serve her friends and herself with out thinking about how that whole situation looked or how the Khmer women felt. She participates in this hierarchy which she helps to create, and in the process makes the people she’s there to help her slaves. As far as any insight on Cambodia, it’s all blocked out by her worrying constantly what people think of her and whether or not she is good enough to be around these lawyers and other UN workers. She views the UN system and its people as ideal; she does not once talk about the system in another way, as one might hope when talking about a “true story of hell on earth”. Instead she talks about her own personal growth, and worse yet views all their efforts as successful– meaning Cambodia’s elections were successful and now has a functioning democracy. This book was published in 2003, so there is no excuse: we’ve seen the results of the UN’s efforts to create a “democracy” here.

The reason I can’t finish this book is the blatant lie that the elections were a success. Back in ’93 people did die; there was political outrage in the streets because the winner was being denied the right to rule. Hun Sen, Cambodia’s ruler at the time, would not step down. Instead there had to be an agreement on shared power between him and the fairly-elected leader. To me that’s a fail. So now thanks to this book I do understand something about why Hun Sen will never be thrown out of power– to do so would show the world that nothing has actually changed since the end of the Cold War, and how the UN failed so they just let their pseudo-democratic system stay put rather than actually fixing it.

Another UN worker in the book was Ken, the misogynist asshole. Why he got under my skin with his sexist undertones is simple: he went to a poor country only prove his masculinity and to prove to the world that he is different from what he refers to as a polka-dot-tied lawyer. He objectifies women and flaunts his masculinity throughout most of the book. When he first gets to the party house, he has to go over the physical appearance of Chloe, the house owner. He is taken by her quick disinterest in him. After all, who would not be taken with him? It’s difficult to handle his type of personality in the sense that here is this guy who is hired to promote world peace and democracy but does not even see how his ideas behind what makes him awesome as a man and all females should recognize this does just the opposite of promoting peace and equality. Some excerpts from the book of things he talks about: someone living in the “it” house has a friend who dies, and he is crying. Ken’s reaction to this is to promise himself he will never cry like that because it isn’t masculine. In another instance, Andrew is someone all of them look up to as he has his shit together and does not put up with the corruption and things most people put up with, so in this regard Ken views him as an ideal and wants to impress him that he is just as good. So to gain some bro power he signs up to go out into the provinces, where upon he comes into contact with those pesky Belgian criminals– I mean, UN peacekeepers– who put him in danger and later that night they get ambushed by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas that are still living in the countryside. Needless to say he does not handle this in the masculine way he thought he would and ends up at some UN building for protection. This might explain why he never talks his masculine dominance again, because in fact he had to come to terms with his lack of dominance.

Now let’s move up to the roof of one of these famous parties where Ken has now decided he thinks Heidi is not what he had taken her for at first glance, but describes her as having “big green eyes with short hair, but not butchy-short, still feminine”. Just then he sees Andrew and wants to talk to him, but “Andrew would never take [him] seriously if [he] was seen standing next to Heidi.” Interestingly, Andrew only approaches them because he wants to talk to Heidi, not Ken. Nevertheless, because Ken has let her know what he thinks of her, Heidi seems to feel that Andrew wouldn’t want to associate with the likes of her, since she is of “below-average intelligence.”

On election day, Ken sees a 7 year old girl holding a naked baby, which prompts him to talk about how he wants a kid– but not just any kid, but one that holds a naked baby and never complains about it. He likes the fact he sees this poor 7 year old girl in a submissive role, being taught by society to keep quiet, and he, himself, yearns to have a submissive female of his own.

After the election, he proudly states for the reader that 90 percent of Cambodians voted, but of course doesn’t say how meaningless this is in the face of a leader who refuses to give up power. He leaves us with this advice that he feels he gained for the good Dr. Andrew: “The larger the threat, the more profound the doubts, the deeper you have to dig for faith and CONQUER fear”. Most of his words throughout the book are similar; it’s all about beating and defeating, and little talk is ever focused on the human involvement aspect. It makes me sad to think that he went on a did more “humanitarian work”, and gets to be somebody who is “solving” world problems and fighting for justice and equality. He also never admits that this hell on earth was really a rich paradise for him, and does not seem to see the issues with the job he was doing. Rather, he is bold enough to brag about the supposed success of a truly failed election.

Review by Ellen Ripley.

I know, I know: you’re trained to hate women, right? (a review)

As I started reading David Wong’s article “5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women”, I found myself startled by the (male) author’s willingness to identify and discredit certain misogynist attitudes and behaviors. Wow, what a thoughtful, self-reflective writer, one might be tempted to think. Then I got to the paragraph where he identifies himself as the author of John Dies at the End, and everything started making more sense. I started thinking over Wong’s novel again, this time with his article in mind.

In John Dies at the End, Wong (which is the author’s pen name, by the way) conforms almost exactly to what he says are five misogynist concepts that society has ingrained into “modern men”: #5, Wong (also the name of the protagonist of JDatE) not only gets “the girl”, but he gets a few, even though he, himself, admits that he’s basically a “loser” and demonstrates childish self-entitlement about sex throughout the novel, sadly without irony. #4, all the female characters in the novel are ancillary, and even those which qualify as main characters serve basically the same function that “hot babes who can also wield a sword” serve in video games like the Final Fantasy series. Once in a while a female character in the story will make some comment about how she doesn’t like being objectified or this and that, but this is for comedic purposes, obviously, as she is dismissed and then– you guessed it– sexually objectified. Wong clearly wrote this for what he thought would be an all-male audience; I probably would have ended up a devoted fan had the story not been so cholk-full of predictable, boring sexism. *yawn* Anyway, #3, this one sort of goes hand-in-hand with #4 in that during crucial moments in the action of JDatE, Wong’s sex drive kicks in and he makes random sexual comments even when he and his friends are in imminent peril. If Wong’s real goal was to reinforce every possible stereotype of how “guys think with their dicks”, he did an excellent job. #2, it seems to me that the entire purpose of both the author’s writing this noveland the protagonist’s journey in the story was to regain some kind of “lost” or “diminished” manhood. The character Wong at times expounds on ways he’s been emasculated by society (or more specifically by “girls”) in a very Chuch Palahniuk-esque way; what better way to regain one’s masculinity than by chasing monsters and getting the girl. Or several. And that plays nicely into #1, the powerlessness Wong ultimately claims the Modern Man feels, and which the protagonists of his story experience again and again in the course of the novel– but eventually overcome. You know, the whole “conquering your fears” motif. I haven’t read the sequel. (Notice I didn’t say “yet”.)

Back to the article, itself, specifically #3. I think Wong’s insights into the demonization of women as penile conspirators are quite poignant. It’s the philosophy underlying the classic victim-blaming strategies of rapists who say “she was asking for it” (i.e. “my penis made me do it”?), and which also bolsters arguments I have heard men close to me put forth: “If she didn’t always talk back/defend her ideas, I wouldn’t have to yell at her, call her names, and threaten to leave her.” (In that sense, #3 also goes hand-in-hand with the whole “endangered manhood” argument of #2.) So men hate women for being merely a pair of boobs, but when those boobs suddenly grow lips which voice ideas men hate that even more. Unfortunately, Wong lays all this out as if he’s “telling it like it is”. He, like misguided pseudofeminists who seek to subordinate the male gender on the basis of female moral superiority, reduces men to an organ– and it isn’t their brain. (Well, he does cite that supposedly comedic line which calls the penis a man’s “little brain”.) Perhaps he’s just basing this (as he did the entire JDatE novel) on his personal gendered experience, but at the end of the day all he’s doing is reinforcing ugly stereotypes. Worse, he seems to be using them as a justification, too.

I’ll skip to #1. It’s more reducing-men-to-penises, but he also reduces women to their vaginas. Well, first he reduces them to food, which is nothing new. In this analogy, sex-starved men perceive all women as literal pieces of meat. Again, Wong doesn’t say, “This is messed up,” or “Men are more than their dicks,” or “We should reject this view of sexuality that portrays women as fuck objects”, etc. More or less he seems to accept it. I did appreciate his assessment of George R.R. Martin’s writing of female characters (wherein their breasts are the sum of their parts), but if he really thought this was messed up or wrong, why would he repeat the pattern in his own novel? Oh, because he feels a distinct self-entitlement to portray the stereotypical male fantasy because it’s his book? Classic Nice Guy™.

The final blow is when he (without bothering to connect this idea to the former except to say “Do you see what I’m getting at?” as if it should be self-evident) insults our intelligence by stating that all of civilization was created “with [women] in mind”. Or, more accurately, with fucking women in mind.

See, the sad thing is that all of this is intended to be funny and ironic. But in that Wong fails, because through his writing he embodies the kind of misogyny he’s describing. Sorry, Wong, but I just don’t find sexual objectification all that amusing (which is maybe why my eyes started to glaze over during the second half of JDatE, in particular), and the only irony is that maybe on some level you see this article as actually supportive of women being treated like human beings while it excuses men from doing the opposite of that.

Everybody’s Doing It: KONY 2012

Yesterday I watched “Kony 2012”, the short film which has “gone viral” (to quote BBC and NPR, which frankly they’ve taken all the joy out of that expression with their overuse of it) on the web this past week. Created by the same filmmakers (headed by Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell) who produced the hour-long original “Invisible Children” film and started the awareness-raising campaign of the same name, the video has been seen several million times and has almost quadrupled the number of followers they have on [insert disparaging adjective here] facebook. Almost immediately after watching it, I turned on the radio to hear BBC discussing their opinions of “Kony 2012”.

The title of the film is meant to remind you of a candidate in a political campaign (Bush 2004, Obama 2008), but Joseph Kony isn’t running for any kind of office (well, not in the near-future anyway, but who knows?); actually, Kony is rather obscure despite (what he would call) his accomplishments. The folks from Invisible Children chose the name because they want him to become one of the most famous people in the world this year– or more accurately, the most notorious. He is one of the Ugandan warlords who abducts children, rapes them, tortures them, forces them to kill their own parents, and ultimately turns them into child soldiers and sex slaves. “Kony 2012” is the campaign to make Kony and his crimes against humanity so well-known that world powers will have no choice but to act and get this guy charged and on trial at the International Criminal Court. According to Jason Russell, who is also the film’s narrator, all this has to happen this year, because…er, for reasons unbeknownst to us. Their “deadline” is never actually explained to viewers. (Maybe because the possibility exists that Obama won’t be president, and there’s not a chance in hell that a Republican president will give a #%$ about atrocities in Africa?)

Since yesterday afternoon, I have been thinking quite a lot about this…short-film-meets-documentary-meets-visual-personal-essay. My initial reaction upon watching it was very similar to how I felt after watching the original “Invisible Children” film in college: deep sadness, empathy, anger. Which is how the filmmakers want you to feel after viewing either film. The difference between the two films is that “IC” was more of an educational, awareness-raising piece, whereas “Kony 2012” has an actual, spelled-out political agenda. And what they appear to be banking on is that you will either forget the nidus which produced these films, or you will already be on their side so it doesn’t matter if you know, anyway. If that sounds enigmatic, let me explain…:

When I first saw the original “Invisible Children”, I was sitting in a church. I had been invited by a number of acquaintances from a student group on campus, Spartan Christian Fellowship. No one had told me what the movie was about (before I watched it I was actually under the impression it was a fictional story), and most of the few dozen people who came also seemed oblivious to its content. So I was quite surprised when it turned out to be a homemade documentary about the plight of child soldiers in Uganda (and also a fund-raising program).

I recall that during and after the film, we (the “Christian fellowship”) were deeply touched; many of us cried. At that time I was also a professed and somewhat outspoken Christian, though I had little in common with the ultraconservatives who attended this particular group. What we did agree on, however, was that it was our Christian duty to bring God’s love and justice to the people in Uganda– love for the child soldiers and justice for their torturers. Then we sang some songs, had a group prayer session, and went home.

As the next few weeks passed, I was struck by how suddenly everyone seemed to have Invisible Children apparel, bracelets, DVDs, stickers, and so forth. Even now, I see IC’s scheme to bring to light the suffering of a voiceless, marginalized group of people as a positive: people who had never heard of child soldiers (or of Uganda, for that matter) were suddenly deeply, almost personally invested in helping them. The commercialized, commodified treatment of the plight of child soldiers did nag at me, however. I didn’t buy any shirts nor did I choose to donate money to the IC.

This is not the most widely circulated critique of the video. The BBC’s main complaint about “Kony 2012” is that it is reductionist, oversimplifying what is in reality an extremely complex conflict. Their point is well-taken: “Kony 2012” makes understanding the “main bullet points” of the Kony dilemma so simple that even a five year old can understand them. Literally. Gavin, the film director’s (I’m guessing five year old?) son, is given a very boiled-down, easy-to-understand lecture on who Kony is and what he does, wherein their family friend Jacob (one of the children featured in the original “IC”) is positioned as the “good guy” and Kony is positioned as the “bad guy”. It is the film’s way of presenting and explaining this Ugandan conflict.

Is this an insult to the average adult’s intelligence? I think most people would probably say so, but then again most people who are watching this film aren’t, in fact, adults. This film has mostly “gone viral” with young adults, teens, pre-teens… The facebook generation, that is. What the film sets out to do is not to give people an in-depth (or even broad) understanding of Ugandan politics of conflict; indeed, we hardly even learn anything about Kony, whom the film is supposedly about. IC was also one of the organizations criticized by Foreign Affairs for “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” The purpose of the film, in my opinion, is to create some hype and appeal to people’s emotions in order to further the agenda of the IC.

Before I get into what I believe that agenda might include, let’s look into this “emotional appeal” aspect of “Kony 2012”. There is a scene in the film that is actually taken from the first “IC” film, in which creator Jason Russell is talking with the young Jacob. Jacob has just described how he would rather die than continue his present existence, which Russell seems astounded to hear. Jacob explains that it would be better to meet his brother in heaven than to live in constant fear of being abducted and killed– a reality that hits too close to home for Jacob, whose older brother was violently murdered when he tried to run away from LRA soldiers. Jacob breaks down and cries; it becomes clear that perhaps he does not truly wish to die– he just wants a respite from the terror and agony he feels every day. Watch this part of the film and tell me you don’t get choked up, and I’ll call you a heartless bastard. Like I said, this film does an aces job at striking an emotional nerve.

This is where the film takes a pivotal turn. Russell, perhaps in a desperate bid to ease his own helplessness, tells Jacob, “I promise you we are going to stop them.” He repeats this promise over and over, asking Jacob, “Do you hear me?” Jacob nods and says yes, but seems entirely unconvinced. Actually, he looks even more hopeless than before he shared the story of his brother.

The crisis counselor and the feminist in me at this point exchanged knowing glances. “Well he certainly botched that, didn’t he?” they said with a sad shake of the head. Let me see if I can get them to explain exactly what they thought was botched… Crisis counselor: “Well, he probably thought he was making Jacob feel better by trying to ‘fix the problem’. Unfortunately, Jacob reacts to this by stopping crying and receding– we see him almost physically withdraw, into himself, away from all those feelings he just put out there. It was a huge, brave risk Jacob took, sharing those deep, vulnerable parts of himself, but he didn’t receive any empathy, support, or validation. Instead, Russell tries to make Jacob ‘feel better’– in reality he’s probably just trying to make himself feel better, suppressing his own strong emotions– by promising to solve the problem. This is problematic in multiple ways. First off, there is simply no way to fix ‘the problem’ of Jacob’s brother’s death. It is an unsolvable situation. Secondly, it’s both unempathetic and counterproductive to try to ‘solve’ another person’s problems; we only disempower them to help themselves, and even possibly create a situation in which they keep coming back to us to fix their problems. Lastly, possibly most importantly, we should never presume to know how to fix another’s problems…Whose to say that we won’t exacerbate the situation? It’s awfully arrogant to take such a presumptuous position as ‘problem solver’.” Okay, let’s have the feminist weigh in on this: “Agreed, it is not only presumptuous, but also masculist. Assuming the role of ‘problem solver’, even– especially!– in the face of an unsolvable issue, is a classic patriarchal reaction. Talking about emotions, even revealing emotions, is counterproductive to the masculist: what good does talking about feelings do if it doesn’t fix the problem? Moreover, sharing feelings earnestly is a ‘symptom’ of the feminine: weak, pathetic, deplorable. Contrast this with the stereotypical associations with the masculine: strong, assertive, corrective. ‘Boys don’t cry’, after all, but women cry and complain, and what good does that do them? Russell’s declaration that ‘we are going to stop them’ is also neocolonialist; the white Westerner needs to intervene in the chaos of Africa in order to set things straight. His racist moral high ground figures the ‘we’ he refers to not as himself and Jacob, but as himself and others like him. He is not talking with Jacob, but at him.”

Those two can sometimes get a little reductionist, themselves, not to mention they have a bit of a superiority complex, but their points are well-taken in examining the underlying sociocultural (subconscious?) motives at work.

I want to consider these points as we expand our investigation to include not just the IC films but the organization of IC, itself. IC posts its finances on its website for all to see, so we know how the money is used, but where does it come from? Purportedly a large number of IC’s donations (not to mention moral support) come from their Christian following. Considering the context in which I was first exposed to IC, I am not surprised. But what are the ramifications of this?

Between now and May, there will be IC film screenings at over 150 Christian churches all over America (average of about 3 screenings a day). That’s a lot of support coming from a single sector, which doesn’t include screenings at Christian-affiliated schools, colleges, or other institutions. Clearly there is a bit of hype about IC among Christian Americans. Even if it is not IC’s explicit directive to portray their organization or their mission as Christian, the Christians are doing it for them. At the events I attended during college, it was made clear that we had a divine imperative to “save” these folks (mainly the Ugandan children) because of our God-given duties as Christians and Americans. For it is not for Americans alone to enjoy the glory of Jesus, but we cannot rest until “every ear has heard”. (But quite frankly, my impression of the people participating in these events/film screenings/etc. was mostly that it was just “a cool thing to do”.)

In that vein, I take issue with how IC’s media-oriented strategy seems to focus on and portray only two groups of people: victimized, powerless Ugandans and salvation-carrying, white, largely Christian Americans. (And I’m not the only one whose irritated by this portrayal.) It appears as a retelling of the old classic, the Great White West moves in to save the neoprimitive savages. IC’s activist campaigns and photographs of the movement (which can be seen on their websites) are full of young, fist-pumping white folks, often wearing IC apparel. There is even a section where these folks are called “The Rescue”; perhaps they romantically believe they really are just “helping”, but any time you get together a bunch of people and put them in uniform, you should really question whether or not the participants truly understand the various levels of ideology at work. Another interesting feature of the website are the photographs and descriptions of all their staff. IC staff is strikingly gender-balance, and is also equally proportionate in the number of Americans and Ugandans, though the Americans are almost entirely white. For some reason the Board of IC is listed last: it is comprised entirely of white male Americans.

“But Lee, what are you saying, that white Americans can’t or shouldn’t help Africans?” I’m so glad you asked. Why, not at all, but to unquestioningly and uncritically accept the fantasy of the GWW “saving” black Africa is to ignore deeper, perhaps not-so-entirely altruistic motives subjacent to the movement we see on the surface. I would never say helping another person is bad, in and of itself, regardless of either person’s position in the Universe (e.g. as racialized, genderfied, etc. entities). However, would you accept the help of a person who not only desires to “help” you, but also to fulfill what they perceive as a mandate of their god? Would you accept the help of a person who is primarily helping you because they see you, consciously or unconsciously, as inferior? Would you accept the help of a person who does not see themselves as helping you, an individual, but as helping “correct” a system– a system which perhaps is the culture you live in? These aren’t questions with simple answers, and that’s entirely the point. To reiterate the BBC, “It’s a bit more complicated than the IC films make it out to be.” And simply put, I do not believe this is so simple as some white travelers to Africa trying to make themselves feel better about what they’ve seen there.

I’ll shut up now, but p.s. IC is calling on your (American) government to deploy forces to aid Uganda’s army in capturing Kony, and they’ve already been partly successful. But the Ugandan army has been called out by human rights groups as being guilty of war crimes, themselves, including the mass rapes of women and murders of refugees, not to mention the Ugandan government has also violated the human rights of their people.

p.s.s. For other people’s critical perspectives on IC, check out Visible Children, who links to some other resources of information.

Two Views of the River

Mark Twain struck a chord with me in high school when our American Lit teacher made his essay “Two Views of the River” required reading. The students moaned and groaned about it, including me; I had little appreciation for nonfiction at that time, especially essays.

Yet what I read changed my perception of reality both profoundly and subtly.

“Two Views” is about seeing versus knowing, grasping intuitively versus logically. Twain grew up with the Mississippi, and it features in many of his works, both fiction and nonfiction. In his essay, recognizes that his initial view is romantic, uninformed, and unshaped (unwarped?) by Knowledge. He is held rapt by it. But when he becomes the pilot of a riverboat, the River loses its mystery, and as a consequence some of its beauty. Perhaps the greatest loss, though, is that he loses some of his original Knowing of the River. As a child and a young man, he knew the River in such a way that he will never get back after he has “learned” it; learned its hazards, its turns and bends, its sandbars and eddies and hidden dangers.

In the same way, I have lost my original Knowing of Cambodia: the more I learn, the less I remember of my first impressions. The more I learn, the more the romanticism and beauty wear away. This is not to say I “know” or “understand” Cambodia, in some larger or more profound sense; I can only compare these Two Views between my younger Self and my current Self. And they are different.

I do feel this as a loss, just as I feel the loss of my original Perception. Everyone experiences this, I imagine– perhaps this is a sign that one has “grown up”? Slowly but surely, our original Knowing transforms and transforms again, and maybe what was once Known can never be known again.

“The ‘Process-Oriented’ Virgin”: a letter

Dear Mz Blank:

I am what you would call a “process-oriented virgin”, though I, myself, would reject that label. I was so angry reading through your essay “The Process-Oriented Virgin” as included in Yes Means Yes that I could barely finish it before reacting to it.

I’m not surprised that you (or anyone else) is or was at some point shocked at the notion that virginity is subjective and that “sexually active” human beings can decide for themselves at what point they are no longer “virginal”. I grew up in a very Christian town that still buys into the “scientific” definition of virginity as “loss of the hymen” (obviously men don’t have a hymen, therefore men need not bother with the concept of virginity). But I did not expect such a small-minded view of the subject from a fellow feminist. Then again, I have long refrained from calling myself “feminist” because so many people who label themselves as such are in fact objectifying, racist, classist, ableist, stereotyping, gender/heteronormative and hypersexualizing persons that I felt I had nothing in common with this so-called feminist movement. Compared with the content caliber of the others essays in Yes Means Yes, I’m a little disappointed that your 18th century perspective was included.

Here is why.

First is your label of the “process-oriented” virgin: it is inherently pejorative. Your diction makes it obvious that you find the notion of choice (“process orientation”) self-serving and revisionist– which you actually go on to admit to in your essay, even so far as to call it “arrogant”. Forgive us for desiring autonomy and agency over and within our sexual selves. Supposedly you’ve repented of your ignorance, but your choice of words shows that your are still ingrained in the Patriarchy. It would detract from the importance, credibility and necessity of recognizing virginity as subjective and that reclaiming one’s own sexuality begins with a reflective analysis of previous sexual activity (most people don’t reclaim their sexuality before they start having sex/engaging in sexual activity, unfortunately, which is why your so-called “process” is so necessarily healing and empowering). Moreover you put process-oriented in quotations: highlighting irony, or “using scare quotes advisedly”? Either way you are (consciously or unconsciously) denying credibility to the concept. You might have invented a cutesy, armchair, ironical name for it, but the concept is real.

You also refer to “the virgin” as “herself”: maybe you didn’t even catch that during your revision and editing process. This is so blatantly Patriarchal that I’m surprised you haven’t put out an apology note retracting this ugly use of gendered pronouns. Similarly: “Way to raise the bar, ladies.”?? Rather than congratulating a few women on doing something they have already taken for granted, perhaps you should recognize that you are late to jump on the bandwagon? Because you have, for most of your professional career, “unwittingly [?] bought into the patriarchal conceit…[which is] at least broadly congruent with the traditional (misogynist, patriarchal) definitions I had been studying and writing about for so long” [emphasis mine].  You blame “culturally-ingrained notions” for your ignorance. I’m here to tell you that that’s not good enough; accountability within the feminist community is key to the eradication of Patriarchy. Moreover, you are assuming that male-identified persons (and genderqueer persons, for that matter) are not participating in the same self-exploratory historical revision. That is profoundly “unfeminist” in my book.

To jab a flag into the Land of the Process-Oriented Virgin as the “potentially feminist act” you believe it to be is unwelcome and unwarranted. You would need permission from each individual that your “study” and “analysis” exploits to call their personal choices “feminist”; they might be completely offended by this label. Some of them would be offended because their (perhaps not yet or ever-to-be self-identified) feminist standards make yours look Victorian. It’s not your right to label someone else’s personal revolutions and realizations as Feminist or not. It’s theirs, if they choose to do so or not. You also assume that their sex history revision is “fundamentally derived from feminist sex-reform philosophy”, rather than the other way around. You put the cart before the horse, in other words. Which is why you say these persons were doing so “intuitively” seems nonsensical; are you saying they have an inherent sense of feminist philosophy? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that their “intuition” and revolution about their own definitions and standards has informed feminism?

And finally, as to your ideas on why YOUR “‘process-oriented’ virginity” is not “the ultimate answer to the problem” of virginity: there may or may not be a “thing” called virginity, but that is for an individual to decide. Virginity and nonvirginity may be two states between which a person transitions back and forth. Perhaps some individuals never experience virginity or nonvirginity. And perhaps still others see it not as a two-point spectrum, but as a radial continuum, across, through, around, and within which we can navigate and exist. Your “emotional and interpersonal train wrecks” that supposedly derive from “substantial sexual experience” coupled with a “claim [of] virginity” (hysteria, what what?) seem to imply that women aren’t or perhaps more accurately should not be engaging in sex in which they are not emotionally invested. What about having sex with a mutually consenting partner which is not about emotional connection, but is just about feeling good? Well, that would just be manly and unfeminine– unnatural, really. Further, you assume that people attribute some kind of qualitative moral status (“good”, “bad”) to virginity, versus the view that many persons merely think of it as a “thing” that is neither good nor bad, desirable or undesirable, right or wrong– but nevertheless important. And the idea that a person with complete self-direction and autonomous control of their sexuality (including the “virginity”, “nonvirginity”, or “avirginity” aspect(s) of it) would be any more likely than a “normal” person to have a “medical [or] infectious-disease mishap” is utterly misguided. Such a person would be far more likely, given the thought and analysis with which they’ve approach the subject of virginity, specifically, and sexuality, generally, to take seriously or place value on knowing a sexual partner’s history. They would also be much less likely to lie about their own “status”, being that they would find value in sharing their “revisionist history” in all its detail. These factors would greatly reduce the risk of a “mishap” resulting in an STI.

Your initial impression of “‘p-o’ virginity” was that it was self-serving revisionism. But that is also your last impression, according to the essay: if you really understood both the concept and the persons thinking critically about said concept, you wouldn’t have included this paragraph in your essay. I will reiterate what I said above: sexual transparency is more likely be of great value to a person questioning the concept of virginity in the aforementioned ways than to a “normal” person whose default assumption, if they are female, is to claim virginity for fear of stigma, or if male, to claim nonvirginity for the same reason. Either way these claims are lies and disguise the real nature of a person’s sexuality and sexual history. You also assume that the “process-oriented approach to virginity is…profoundly unconscious”. In fact, it is not unconscious/intuitive so much as that you are just trivializing the experience and intimate metamorphoses through which the persons you are analyzing are going. That is, you are objectifying them. And since you readily admit that your evidence is anecdotal, why not try listening to your “subjects” as real, live, decision-making persons, rather than bupkins who are so ignorant in the ways of your feminism that they couldn’t possibly have come up with this idea on their own, through their own experiences. There may be greater self-sought intellectual, psychic, academic, and emotional transformation and theorization happening than for which you give credit. I would claim this as a valid description of my own process of reconstructing and redefining body, sexuality, virginity, consent, among other concepts which are all intimately connected. And I didn’t require a degree in women’s studies to do it. For all your talk of “‘p-o’ virginity” as “arrogant”, you don’t seem to notice that as a reflection of yourself.

I will agree with you on one crucial point, however: “It would be a massive step in very much the right direction…if it became a cultural constant that “losing your virginity” was a subjective, not an objective, transition.” And that massive step starts with individuals, like you and me. I would tell you the title of the book I’m going to write about subjective virginity, but I wouldn’t want you to steal it.

So sorry if this email was a little hostile, but I do feel so much better now. Please consider it directed only partially at you, and more at the overarching Patriarchal hegemony which guides much of how most of the world thinks. Maybe we’re all getting swept along in it, but now that you know there’s an “it” which you’re “in”, you have the responsibility to pull yourself and others out.

Best,
Lee

After some more reflection, I think I figured out another, more deeply-rooted reason why Blank’s essay rubbed me the wrong way: it is intrinsically academically paternalistic. That is, her diction, tone, and anecdotes are strongly reminiscent of the Othering language used by historians, anthropologies, sociologists, psychologists, and others in academe to observe, analyze, describe, and summarize their “subjects”: take Malinowski and his islanders (or should I say savages?) as an example. In other words, Blank is the kid with the magnifying glass and we (or her subjects) are the ants… We couldn’t possibly comprehend the magnifying glass, let alone her bizarrely patriarchal feminism.