NOT a win, FAIL Blog and Cheezburger.

(trigger warning on image at the link)

NOT a win. Jesus, how many times do we have to talk about this?

I'm utterly, utterly tired about women's bodies being used as fodder for jokes, much less sexual assault jokes. You spend so much time and energy trying to enact real difference in people's attitudes and interactions with others, and then one image can suck all the air out of any sense of progress. The fact that the core of the image is focused around one simple idea - that women aren't people. That it's funny to see women's bodies assaulted.

Sometimes it just feels suffocating.

Here's the contact page for the people at FAIL Blog and Cheezburger.

Have a nice weekend, I guess.

Today in WTF!?

In light of some of the recent conversations had on this blog about street harassment, I happened upon this story on Feministing.

From BBC:

Pack gathers for wolf-whistling first

On Wednesday, Ireland's first ever wolf-whistling championships were held in Irvinestown, where men dressed up as construction workers and whistled at passing women.

The politically incorrect competition was the work of [Lady of the Lake Festival] organiser, and whistling devotee, Joe Mahon.

"It was all good fun, and we didn't get too many complaints at all - people just enjoyed the day.

Ok. So let me get this straight. Joe Mahon, here, was sitting around a table one day, thinking up events to include as part of this festival, and he gets a brilliant idea. "Gee, I really like to whistle at pretty ladies. That would make a great event! No way this could possibly be considered offensive of just plain fucked up, nope. Not at all. It's golden!"

WTF?

Michelle Obama is not "a big dude," Jay Mohr

Monica Roberts at TransGriot posted the following video on her blog. Comedian Jay Mohr called into The Jim Rome Show, whose annual Smack-Off competition gave him a platform to attack Michelle Obama for her looks, including the shape of her eyebrows and the fact that she is tall. He even called her "a big dude" (starts around 1:50 in the video, which is really quiet - you'll need to turn up the volume if you want to watch it):



Some quotes from when Mohr discusses Michelle (with some help from the post at TransGriot):

"...I'd like to talk about Kevin Garnett. This guy's the Michelle Obama of the Celtics. He doesn't really do anything, but damn he looks good, doesn't he Jim?

Michelle Obama - that is a big dude. When Barack plays pick up games at the White House, you know he picks Michelle as at least his forward, maybe his [center] depending on who’s in Congress that day.

That has to be like being married to Elton Brand. She is a big dude. I like when she put her arm around the Queen of England and she put her in a headlock and told her, "I’ve been waiting 200 years to put my arms around you lady."

I like how she shaved off all her eyebrows, and then drew them back way too high and into an arch, and then way back down, so she always looks super surprised. Michelle Obama kind of looks like the Count on Sesame Street. That's great. One - ah ah ah - One Black President - ah ah ah."

So after reading and watching this video at TransGriot, I tried to do a little background research about what this Smack-Off is, and what I found wasn't surprising.

I am not a fan of insult-based "comedy," especially because it tends to fall back on sexist/racist/and other -ist stereotypes in a way that makes them easily accessible to a larger audience. Making stereotypes for easy consumption, I feel, only helps to perpetuate the problems caused by such generalizations.

And what exactly does Michelle Obama have to do with basketball? Nothing, except that she is tall, and apparently being tall is for men. And men play basketball. How dare her not fit into the little box that the Patriarchy expects all women to fit into.

Good job, Jim Rome, for allowing this kind of decidedly un-funny garbage to air on your show.

The old fall back: blame people of color

Yesterday morning I received the following e-mail with the subject: Come on smile.

They said that a black man would be president of the United States when
pigs fly.....well, 100 days into Obama's administration.........

Swine Flu.

(Swine flew)!!!

I didn't find it funny at all, and was disturbed that the person (a white person) who sent it to me had suggested (in the subject line) that I should find it funny.

This is the response I wrote to the person who sent me this e-mail:

I went back and forth about sending this e-mail, but I think it needs to be sent.
Please note that I do not want to sound hostile, but the concerns I am going to voice may come off as offensive. So I apologize ahead of time.

I guess first of all I think I should explain that since I have been at college, I have learned to be very aware, not only of sexism, but of racism, ageism, ableism, etc. whenever it is thrown around, be it in jokes (like this e-mail seems to be) or in media (music videos, "reality" TV) or in government (pay practices, etc.).

I have come to realize that humor is often not simply "just a joke." It is very often a means of perpetuating the problems that Americans still have not come to terms with, problems we would like to kid ourselves into thinking are in the past.

For example, this "joke" that you send me via e-mail. It proves very much that America is not as "race-blind" as we would like to think it is. The "humor" in this e-mail is based on a longstanding form of racism in which white people blame all the ills of society on people of color (especially black people, who were and often still are characterized as lazy or vicious or rapists or sexually promiscuous). In this case, the connection between the "humor" and the racism is especially clear because there is no real reason to associate America having a black president with the outbreak of swine flu. The fact that this "joke" chose to frame the problem in this way (and that people find it funny enough to forward it so others can read it) illustrates that America is still not free of racism that uses the color of one's skin as justification for blaming them for all of this country's problems, even the ones that cannot be remotely attributed to people based solely on their skin color.

You have sent me similar e-mails in the past, and I have always wondered about your motive. If you disagree with me politically, that's one thing. But sending me things like this just to get under my skin is not really appropriate because of all the other regrettable implications.

Forwarding an e-mail may not seem like a big deal. It probably doesn't feel like you are contributing to a problem at all. But until we all can call out racism, sexism, ageism, etc. when we see it, even in the little ways like in "jokes," we are all doing our part in maintaining an unequal society.

If you feel I have misunderstood your intentions, please e-mail me back.

Amelia

I received a quick response to my e-mail, and the person said they appreciated my response and valued my opinion, but they saw the original e-mail differently than I did. They said that they were originally drawn to the pun and they were not thinking in terms of politics of race. They also apologized for offending me.

They didn't acknowledge that my criticism of the e-mail was legitimate, however, which was additionally troubling. I understand that a lot of times, when I am talking to white people about racism, their white privilege gets in the way of them seeing the point I am trying to make. That's not an excuse for their refusal to call out racism, but it's a true problem that needs to be dealt with. Even I only first began to acknowledge my white privilege when I started to study feminism.

Overall, this was really upsetting to me. Racism, even this kind that is meant to be "funny" is really harmful, and is one of the many ways our society is structured to keep certain people down.

Limbaugh thinks "dikes" in Red River flooding HILARIOUS

Transcript:

“I heard some top-of-the-hour news, and it made me feel uncomfortable. It’s about the flooding in Fargo, North Dakota, brought on by the melting snowpack and the icepack. [Reading from news item]: ‘As the Red River threatens to overflow, they’re filling in the dikes.’ Isn’t there a more appropriate word? Do we have to say, I mean, we don’t have any dikes here. The ‘dykes’ are over there. … They’re filling in the dikes. Couldn’t we change that to ‘they’re filling in the contingencies’ or something? … We really need to change that word. … Hey, would you dykes in North Dakota give me a call and let me know how the flooding is going?”

Hey a-hole, those dikes are saving lifes and saving property, probably put in place by people who don't appreciate your humor. I bet some of those people are even lesbians (dykes, some may say) and gay and bi and trans and allies and straight.

So shut the f up until you graduate 6th grade, mmmkay?

"Your Comments Here"

Some of you may remember the incident at the Yale Women's Center where male students stood outside the Center with a sign saying, "We love Yale sluts" while chanting "dick dick dick" - apparently something they meant as a joke. When the school found the group not guilty of intimation and harassment, I wrote about my own experience and the less blatant, yet still present, sexism at Yale Divinity School.

A group of feminists and graphic artists have taken all the comments left on Yale Daily News articles about the incident and made an incredibly powerful poster that they put up around campus last week:


Reading the comments on this poster brought me to tears. The virulent words, hate and general disrespect for the Women's Center and by proxy, all women, makes me sick to my stomach. The supposed anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in people - or maybe the truth in people, but that they're too ashamed to say to someone's face.

To those people who don't think that sexism is pervasive through our culture, read the poster.

Here's a larger image in case you want to fully experience the poster.

Failing at Irony and Alienating Your Allies: The Liberal Dude's Guide to Satire

So I open my blog reader and the Huffington Post. What do I have the pleasure to find?

Oh Christ, who's the genius behind this?

I know this might be rocket science to liberal dudez who think things like rape are funny, but this really tasteless and poor excuse for satire is not inducing anything but my gag reflex. You know you fail at irony when your art work is indecipherable from the message of those you intend to mock. While I was sleeping, someone decided that mocking the Republicans by depicting the Obamas with racist stereotypes was effective and funny. I can imagine a bunch of balding upper-class white dudes giving each other congratulatory back slaps around some editor's desk at The New Yorker, engaging in mutual masturbation inflation of their over large egos as their wit goes to press.

You know what's really funny? Mocking Nazis by walking around in public, in places where there may or may not be Jews, and acting and dressing in such a manner completely identical to Nazis. So what if you offend a few Jews along the way? Your completely nonsensical message must be conveyed in the manner you see fit, even if you offend a demographic that would otherwise be allies. I might be white, but even I know that the picturing of an afro-sporting woman in military fatigues is probably a dig at her deviant blackness and her radical opposition to white culture. Also, if you think drawing racist depictions of prominent political figures is funny, you might be racist.

The purpose of satire is to shock and inflame your opposition. If your illustration could be used as a poster for the far right and you are offending your political allies, then it's about time someone fired you.

Then again, I am not really surprised. Anyone remember this? :

That was a "liberal" blog, the DailyKos, really failing to understand the nuances of irony.

Heads up to white dudez: if you think the appropriate manner to object to bigots on the right is to be a leftist racist, on the name of "humor", kindly get the fuck out of my political party.

(Cross-posted)

Rockford's Q98.5 plays sexism, country music

I walked into the house today, and my mom was listening to a country station (Rockford's Country - Q98.5). She never does this, so I asked her about it. She said she had been trying to win something off the radio. A little later, I hear the DJ, Mark Charvat, say that it is a fact that women live longer than men. He proceeded to give some "reasons" that this might be true, and he encouraged listeners to call in with "reasons" of their own.

Mark's list, that I'm sure he did not come up with (these are close to, but not verbatim):

- If a woman has a crappy job and low pay, it's exploitation. If a man has a crappy job and low pay, he needs to get off his butt and work harder.
- If a man is promoted before a woman, it's obviously favoritism.
- If a man cries, he's a wimp. If he doesn't cry, he's an insensitive S.O.B.
- If a man buys a woman flowers, he's after something. If he doesn't, he's not thoughtful.
- If a woman has a headache, she's tired. If a man has a headache, he doesn't love her anymore.

I was first struck by the heavy sexist overtones of this segment, during which many people called in. Many of his "reasons" had absolutely nothing to do with living longer. Looks like it was just a thinly veiled attempt to throw some sexism out into the airwaves.

Notice how all the "reasons" listed by Mark portray a stereotypical woman who wants more money for less work, who complains when men do better than her, who strongly desires to be showered in gifts, and who uses physical pain as an excuse. And somehow, the use of this stereotype is supposed to make me feel bad for men? Sorry, Mark. Denying that women face injustice in this society is not funny. Especially when you try to spin it to make those who actually have the majority of the power (men) out to be the real victims.

Even better, after listening for a while, I finally got fed up and decided to call the radio station to let Mark Charvat know how I felt about his lack of taste. That was one of the most infuriating phone calls I have ever taken part in. The phone rang for a while, and when Mark answered, he said something along the lines of "Women live longer than men, but you know that, right?" I said no, I didn't, and that I found his segment to be in very poor taste. Without missing a beat, he told me that it was just a joke and that women were calling in as well. In vain I tried to explain that sexism is a very real problem for women, and that making light of it by joking about it only helps to further the problem by stripping it of its validity. Especially when it is done on the radio where countless people can listen in. But Mark Charvat probably didn't hear me as I tried to explain that, because he refused to let me speak in peace. He continued to try to talk over me the entire time until I finally got fed up with him not taking my concerns seriously and hung up.

"Jokes" like this are not funny. They only function as a distraction so that we as a society don't have to look our problems in the eye, own up to them, and work toward fixing them. Maybe if people were more considerate and actually listened when people voiced their concerns, I wouldn't be writing this post right now.

If this bothers you as much as it bothers me, follow the links at the top and tell the station how you feel.

EDIT: I was thinking about this, and I realized that I didn't address one thing that I'd like to say. Gender roles and expectations affect men, too. When Mark said If a man cries, he's a wimp. If he doesn't cry, he's an insensitive S.O.B., he did touch on (however accidentally) a real problem that men face within the limits of what is expected from their gender. But joking about it? Please. That's not going to solve anything.