A Radical Profeminist: Women, Men, Love, and Hate: A Radical Profeminist ...

Just.... wow....

Very, very strong message.  Here is part of a blog post taken from the blog, A Radical Profeminist: Women, Men, Love, and Hate: A Radical Profeminist by Julian Real

"When most men read writings by women men perceive to be hateful, they will take GREAT offence, become histerical, and see such writing as evidence that women hating on men is a global problem that must be snuffed out by any means necessary.

When many women read writings by men they experience as hateful, they will often often respond with a kind of reasoned resignation, as if to say "Yeah, what else is new? Same story, different day."

Online anti-feminist men are apparently convinced there's something 'out there' called misandry--not committed by MEN, but committed by WOMEN. These delusional people will cling to Andrea Dworkin's writings as "proof" because men love to believe women hate them, ridicule them, don't respect them, and find them generally distasteful. And how many countries did Andrea Dworkin rule? How many courts did she oversee? How many juries did she advise? How many institutions or industries did she control? How much profit did she make from selling rape of women as entertainment for men? How rich was she? How much money did she earn from her dozen or so books? (The answer is shockingly low. You have to write books about boys as courageous, about men as heroes, to make any money at all, if you're a woman.)

Can you count on one hand, two hands, twenty hands, the number of men who rule countries that don't respect women as full human beings? Please make sure you put "the United States" on the first hand. Please add "Canada" too. And "England". And "Australia". And "Japan". And most any nation-state you know of. Even the few Scandinavian countries which are trying to end the procurement and rape of women. Because the procurement and the rape hasn't ended anywhere yet. So women are free nowhere. Even in societies in which women are generally regarded as human, there will always be white men to arrive and remind them what white men think women, globally, are for. Class-privileged white het men in Japan do this a whole lot, for example. And they do it a whole lot in Australia. And England. And Canada. And the United States too. Everywhere white het men go, they carry with them a belief in their absolute right to have sexual access to women and girls. But they don't call this protection of a right wrong as "hate".

These privileged men also will not see women who love women, sexually, romantically, socially, and politically, for what it is: being loving. The also won't see women's critiques of male atrocities for what they are: loving.

To whatever extent actual negative portraits of men exist, socially, they will not ever be regarded by men as a class as a crucial aspect of women gaining some sense of freedom from the imposition on will, on being, and on life, of the primary patriarchal commandment: THOU SHALT NOT DO ANYTHING TO INSULT, DEGRADE, OR DEMONISE ME(N), who are to be revered as gods. This follows the commandment, a very Conservative Corporate Christian one: THOU SHALT DO EVERYTHING IN ONE'S POWER AS A MAN, INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY, TO INSULT, DEGRADE, AND DEMONISE WOMEN.

There is a sexual politic to hate. Here is how it works: men are allowed to hate women, or not. Men can show contempt, callousness, or cruelty and always claim "It's because I love ya, baby!! Why don't you SEE that?? Why don't you KNOW that?!"

Women are not allowed to do anything at all that might possibly be perceived by one man or many men as being contemptuous, callous, or cruel to one man or to men in general. If a man takes offence to what a woman does, no amount of pleading for him to understand it as not-hate will stop him from beating the shit out of her, castigating her publicly, or killing her.

A group of college students was segregated for an exercise, by sex. The exercise went more or less as follows.

Female teacher asked a classroom full of male students: "What do you fear most about women?"

The most common answer from individual males was, "She will make fun of me."

Same female teacher asked a classroom full of female students: "What do you fear most about men?"

The most common answer from individual females was, "He will kill me."

This gets to the bloody heart of the matter, doesn't it? Men realities with women are radically different, globally, than women's with men. Women, by media and by men, are incessantly assaulted. Men, by women, are made to accommodate males, to accept males, to appreciate males, to approve of males, to find men endlessly fascinating even when men are boring as hay.

This post, just as it is, noting the most obvious things about men's hatred of women being an institutional and interpersonal problem, that comes up against little to no resistance within patriarchal societies, will be seen as some kind of "threat" to men. As if words on blogs threaten men. As if words on blogs can have any significant impact on stemming the tide of men's misogyny, which floods women's lives at least twice daily.

What men cannot see and cannot accept is that men hating on women is a social problem and men dominating and subordinating women is an ever larger problem. What men cannot see is that women hating on men, however much it happens, has no institutional backing or media support. Even corporate pimps portray it as a kind of fetish of men's: something some men "are into" which has no grounding in cross-cultural social reality. What corporate pimps know, however, is that portraying all women as if they want to be raped has grounding in a very lethal reality: men do wish to rape women and accomplish this, with almost no men ever being charged with a crime, or otherwise suffering any negative consequence, other than more of their heart and soul chipping off and falling away.

We might just as well do away with the term "hate" and find out what's really going on, because "hate" is not really the issue. Men can and do feel all kinds of things for women, and call them all "what is in women's best interests". If men despise women, it's because women deserve it and need it. If men love women, well, men get to behave atrociously and still cling to the claim that it's an expression of love. And, worse yet, they are believed!

When women do disdain or disrespect one man or men in general, she cannot claim that "It's really love, baby--why can't you see that??"

Meanwhile, men do systematically and endemically rape women, singularly and in gangs, at home and in motel rooms and in wars and in "peacetime". Women do not systematically or endemically rape men anywhere.

Father-against-daughter incest, or father-figure or adult male family member against daughter-figure or girl child, is the most common form of child sexual abuse on Earth. Yet the patriarchal media are far more likely to report on boys being abused by men. This is because girls being abused by men is so common a practice that it we would have to add hours to the day to report on all the cases.

I saw a program not too long ago in which the woman host remarked with great sadness, "One in six males will be sexually abused in their childhoods". Is that horrible? Of course it is. It's a criminal shame. And we cannot forget for one moment that over 90% of the perpetrators will be men. "Good" men. "Trusted" men. "Holy" men. Socially adored and respected men.

Let's break down what that means relative to the experience of girls. Twice as many girls as boys will be sexually assaulted--predominantly by men--by the time they reach adulthood, if they reach adulthood.

The sadness felt for boys assaulted in their youth, by men, is felt culturally. It resonates in the bodies of those who hear this news as "Awful. Truly awful." Because it is awful. But the sexual assault of girls is registered in the bodies of the masses as "inevitable", or "unfortunate", or "Why didn't the mother do anything to stop her husband or boyfriend, huh?" As if women have ever been able to regulate men's sexually predatory behaviour. Get this, reader:

If a woman DOES catch her predatorary male partner raping her/their daughter, and she is also being battered by him, and she leaves him, this is what typically occurs:

She is charged with the crime of stealing HIS children from HIM. She is charged with being abusive to the children. Her claims that she was beaten are seen as evidence that she is an evil woman who will do anything she can to selfishly hold onto her children while demonising the prick. The pricks get expensive attorneys who make these arguments to pro-patriarchal judges and juries, who award him full custody and call her a criminal. She's a criminal for leaving the prick; he's not a criminal for beating and raping his wife and children. Now, tell me: where's the social love for women and girls in that?

Is not the act of incestuous molestation or assault or rape a father or father-figure stealing something from a girl? Is this theft not a crime against humanity? Ought not such a man be forbidden by society to ever have access to the child again?

And what of men who desire girls sexually and publicly? What of men who, collectively, socially lust after girls? Who want to fuck girls? Who want to see girls depicted as "sexxx-things for men to get aroused by"? For men to fantasize about, to use as fuel to bring firm up their determination as they make their way into the bedrooms of their daughters?

Is both the desire and the depictions "love" of girls? That's what men say. The term for this condition in men, after all, is "paedophilia", isn't it? "Love of children". Not misopedia: hatred of children. Men who desire to fuck girls and who do rape girls are called "lovers of children". Now, how fucked up is that? If this doesn't show that men don't know the difference between love and hate, what does?

Women, especially over the last forty-three years, have gotten very clear about what men's hatred of women looks like, feels like, and is. And women over the last forty-three years, especially, have realised that men not only hate women, but men don't regard women as human enough to see as full human beings. Some men don't hate women because to hate them one might have to recognise them as human. So some men just hold women in a kind of callous disregard, and in this frame men feel quite comfortable wiping their dicks on girls and women, as if that's what girls and women are for. Men traffic girls and women, as fuck-objects, as objects, as possesions, and as slaves. Men beat women and girls without mercy. Men terrorise girls and women without ever calling it terrorism. Men, collectively, never call this TERRORISM.

I am demanding that men stop terrorising women and girls; that men stop trafficking women and girls; that men stop raping women and girls; that men stop beating up women and girls; that men stop using images of women and girls as their fuel to invade the bedrooms of their spouses or children; that men stop incesting their daughters or other girls in the family; that men stop thinking of women and girls as existing to serve men, to submit to men, to be subordinate to men. I am demanding that men get off women's backs and fronts. That men stop all the hating and love that feels like hate.

And to any man reading this who thinks it is hateful of men, I have only this to say: go fuck yourself. And do it exactly the way you see men in pornography do it to women. And then you might know what hate truly feels like.

I call on humanity to institutionalise male respect, regard, empathy, compassion, and dignity for all women and all girls. To make it mandatory. To make it compulsory. To make it a social requirement for admission into the social and intimate world of women and girls. I won't call on men to "love" women, because I know that for too many men, that word has no spiritual meaning at all. It is, rather, men's excuse for doing to women what anyone with a beating heart would call hatred if women expressed it the same way to men.

I hope women, internationally, rise up against men's domination, men's humiliations, men's indignities, men's assaults, men's insults, men's tyranny, men's terrorism, men's anti-democratic ways of being against individual women and against women as a class of human beings regarded by men as existing for men. And I hope patriarchies everywhere are unplugged soon. Very soon. Perhaps within the next few years. If not sooner. I hope patriarchal societies fall like Dominoes. And that when they fall they crack into pieces too tiny to put back together. I hope for this so that girls and women can know life without men's exploitation, without incest, without rape, without economic servitude, without sexual slavery, and life without men's social and personal terrorism and tyranny. With love in my heart for womankind, I hope for this.Not with hate for manunkind. I will hold out faith that you, dear reader, after taking in the realities described in this post, will intellectually and viscerally know the difference.

The reason I love women of all colors is because women are human beings who show a form courage I've yet to see in white men. Women are collectively enduring a globalised system of male domination, too often in isolation, feeling alone, trapped. These individual women who are experiencing what millions of other women have experienced and are experiencing on this day, will all too often blame themselves for conditions well beyond women's collective control, let alone individual control. At the same time, the most enslaved women are creative, finding ways to survive, get through another day. There is resistance going on, even when it looks like appeasement. I know millions of women worldwide are waiting for the right moment to rise up, collectively, not individually, to get out from under him and his ritually abusive rules, to move out of reach of his grip and to cast off his grim view of what "woman" is for. I refuse to see women as existing for men. I see women as existing for themselves, for Life, for Being. I see women as existing beyond any definitions of "woman" that men entertain and enforce.

The reason I don't hate men is because it is a waste of my energy and it clouds my capacity to see what's going on. Men are human, every one, no matter how monstrously they behave. And there are, after all, some very dear men in the world: Derrick Jensen, Noam Chomsky, and Nelson Mandela. A problem--one of many--is that almost no men on Earth will focus on the oppression of women by men as a central atrocity faced by humanity. Not the only atrocity. But a central one. One worth fighting to end, with all of one's being behind the effort."

Controlling and Un-Controlling the Birds*

Letting a caged bird go is GOOD, but at the same time BAD.  It has consequences.

If the birdy flies away and never comes back, something went wrong… somehow… =(


If it comes back, it LOVES you, and wants to stay with you because you treated it well in the past and nothing too horrible happened to it in that environment you have so little control over.

So, how ‘bout those categories, man and woman?  (Or black and white, or worker and boss, or student and teacher, etc)?

Can men just let go of “their” women, and start letting them live the life they desire with them?  I know it’s very, very hard [I’m not as clear on this issue. I haven’t been raised as “Man”, whatever that is.  You get my drift? I hope so. = )]. But we know that women get hurt, raped, abused when going to bars with her girlfriends and getting looks and men intruding on her unwillingly.  It’s like rape of the eyes. Men look at women and women want to hide because they are so scared of the pain! They’ll hurt without you, but they’ll also hurt with you if you keep her waiting and worrying.  ANYWAYS, don’t fret over my words; we know she’ll come back to you if you truly know in your heart that you love her. ; ) The only true way to know she loves you is if you show it and you *know* she senses it and responds in laughter and smiles.

And, women, can we let our men go?  It feels like we shouldn’t, doesn’t it? They go to war, and they fight in bars and come back broken? They accidentally cripple others with their rage?  = ( Makes me want to cry.  But if you don’t let them go, they’ll just never come back.  We give them our whole selves and then they throw us back like garbage.  We clean up after them, we clean their kitchens and cook, we laugh at their jokes, we try to live beneath their shade as the sun penetrates just so we can BE. I know we wish they could see how much we love them and how much they hurt us, but maybe letting go isn't so bad after all? I know it hurts, but I’m done with the pain, and the sooner we’re done with the pain, the sooner we can see the LIGHT of DAY.

For all those guys (and ladies), here is someone who can help: 

Hard-Fi - 'Fire In The House' [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

 For all those gals (and gents), here is someone who can explain it in a different way:

Universal Solider by First Aid Kit [Official Video]

Also, for good measure, when we talk to others, let's take into consideration the Ancient Egyptian, Ptahhotep:

"Do not gossip in your neighbourhood, because people respect the silent."

__________________________________________________

*Sheesh the word “uncontrolling” doesn’t even exist in Word 2010! I had to put “un-controlling”.  What’s up with that?  I guess we just don’t understand the concept of “uncontrolling” as much... So, if you'll let me, I'll make a leap and I hope you can trust me. Why isn't there a word for "uncontrolling" in word 2010?  Maybe it doesn't exist? Maybe it just doesn't have it? My guess, it exists but Word 2010 just doesn't recognize it.  Maybe Word 2012 when it comes around. = )

The Bechdel Test: A Test for Male Centered Movies

Ever heard of the Bechdel Test?  Well, make sure you do the next time you go to the movies.  The Bechdel Test is a simple way to gauge the active presence of female characters in Hollywood films and just how well rounded and complete those roles are. It was created by Allison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. It is astonishing the number of popular movies that can't pass this simple test. It demonstrates how little women's complex and interesting lives are underrepresented or non existent in the film industry

Here are the 3 Rules:
      1. There are at least two named female characters
      2. These two women must talk to each other
      3. They must talk about something other than a man

Here in this video Anita Sarkeesian talks about The Bechdel Test.  I also HIGHLY recommend checking out her her blog called Feminist Frequency where you can find many other videos like this.



Here is a site where it lists movies that pass the test or not.

Jennifer Kesler wrote this wonderful article below, which I abridged as always.  She took film classes at UCLA and noticed something strange there, which eventually led to her leaving the film industry.

My screenwriting professors taught me not to write scripts that passed the Bechdel/Mo Movie Measure/”Dykes To Watch Out For” test, and I can tell you why, and this needs to be known.

As you go through all your favorite movies (and most of your favorite TV shows, though there’s a little more variety in TV), you find very few movies pass this test.  It’s not a coincidence. It’s not that there aren’t enough women behind the camera (there aren’t, but that’s not the reason). Here’s what we’re up against.

When I started taking film classes at UCLA, I was quickly informed I had what it took to go all the way in film. I was a damn good writer, but more importantly (yeah, you didn’t think good writing was a main prerequisite in this industry, did you?) I understood the process of rewriting to cope with budget (and other) limitations. I didn’t hesitate to rip out my most beloved scenes when necessary. I also did a lot of research and taught myself how to write well-paced action/adventure films that would be remarkably cheap to film – that was pure gold.

There was just one little problem.

I had to understand that the audience only wanted white, straight, male leads. I was assured that as long as I made the white, straight men in my scripts prominent, I could still offer groundbreaking characters of other descriptions (fascinating, significant women, men of color, etc.) – as long as they didn’t distract the audience from the white men they really paid their money to see.

I was stunned. I’d just moved from a state that still held Ku Klux Klan rallies only to find an even more insidious form of bigotry in California – running an industry that shaped our entire culture. But they kept telling me lots of filmmakers wanted to see the same changes I did, and if I did what it took to get into the industry and accrue some power, then I could start pushing the envelope and maybe, just maybe, change would finally happen. So I gave their advice a shot.

Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).

At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation from an industry pro: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”

“Not even if it advances the story?” I asked. That’s rule number one in screenwriting, though you’d never know it from watching most movies: every moment in a script should reveal another chunk of the story and keep it moving.

He just looked embarrassed and said, “I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it.”

Right. A bunch of self-back-slapping professed liberals wouldn’t want you to think they routinely dismiss women in between writing checks to Greenpeace. Gosh, no – it was they. The audience. Those unsophisticated jackasses we effectively worked for when we made films. They were making us do this awful thing. They, the man behind the screen. They, the six-foot-tall invisible rabbit. We knew they existed because there were spreadsheets with numbers, and no matter how the numbers computed, they never added up to, “Oh, hey, look – men and boys are totally watching Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley like it’s no big deal they’re chicks instead of guys.” They always somehow added up to “Oh, hey, look – those effects/that Arnold’s so awesome, men and boys saw this movie despite some chick in a lead role.”

According to Hollywood, if two women came on screen and started talking, the target male audience’s brain would glaze over and assume the women were talking about nail polish or shoes or something that didn’t pertain to the story. Only if they heard the name of a man in the story would they tune back in. By having women talk to each other about something other than men, I was “losing the audience.”

Was I?

There certainly are still men in this world who tune out women when we talk, but – as I and other students pointed out – this was getting less common with every generation, and weren’t we supposed to be targeting the youngest generation? These young men had grown up with women imparting news on national TV (even I can remember when that was rare), prescribing them medicine, representing people around them in court, doling out mortgages and loans. Those boys wouldn’t understand those early ’80s movies where women were denied promotions because “the clients want to deal with men” or “who would take a woman doctor/lawyer/cop seriously”? A lot of these kids would need it explained to them why Cagney & Lacey was revolutionary, because many of their moms had worked in fields once dominated by men.

We had a whole generation too young to remember why we needed second wave feminism, for cryin’ out loud, and here we were adhering to rules from the 1950s. I called bullshit, and left film for good, opting to fight the system from without. There was no way Hollywood really believed what it was saying about boys who’d grown up with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor as action heroes, and so there was no way to change the system from within. I concluded Hollywood was was dominated by perpetual pre-adolescent boys making the movies they wanted to see, and using the “target audience” – a construct based on partial truths and twisted math – to perpetuate their own desires. Having never grown up, they still saw women the way Peter Pan saw Wendy: a fascinating Other to be captured, treasured and stuffed into a gilded cage. Where we didn’t talk. To each other. About anything other than men.

If Men Could Menstruate by Gloria Steinem

Here is one hilarious poem by Gloria Steinem.  The title is pretty self-explanatory.  Enjoy!

A white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior - even though the only thing it really does is make the more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles. Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis envy is "natural" to women - though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb envy at least as logical.

In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless - and logic has nothing to do with it.

What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

The answer is clear - menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.

Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. (Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of commercial brands such as John Wayne Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-dope Pads, Joe Namath Jock Shields - "For Those Light Bachelor Days," and Robert "Baretta" Blake Maxi-Pads.)

Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as proof that only men could serve in the Army ("you have to give blood to take blood"), occupy political office ("can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be priest and ministers ("how could a woman give her blood for our sins?") or rabbis ("without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean").

Male radicals, left-wing politicians, mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different, and that any woman could enter their ranks if she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month ("you MUST give blood for the revolution"), recognize the preeminence of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment. Street guys would brag ("I'm a three pad man") or answer praise from a buddy ("Man, you lookin' good!") by giving fives and saying, "Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!" TV shows would treat the subject at length. ("Happy Days": Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still "The Fonz," though he has missed two periods in a row.) So would newspapers. (SHARK SCARE THREATENS MENSTRUATING MEN. JUDGE CITES MONTHLY STRESS IN PARDONING RAPIST.) And movies. (Newman and Redford in "Blood Brothers"!)

Men would convince women that intercourse was more pleasurable at "that time of the month." Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself - though probably only because they needed a good menstruating man.

Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets - and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and religion, could women compensate for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death-and-resurrection every month?

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind: the fact that "these people" have no gift for measuring life or connecting to the universe, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine traditional women agreeing to all arguments with a staunch and smiling masochism. ("The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month": Phyllis Schlafly. "Your husband's blood is as sacred as that of Jesus - and so sexy, too!": Marabel Morgan.) Reformers and Queen Bees would try to imitate men, and pretend to have a monthly cycle. All feminists would explain endlessly that men, too, needed to be liberated from the false idea of Martian aggressiveness, just as women needed to escape the bonds of menses envy. Radical feminist would add that the oppression of the nonmenstrual was the pattern for all other oppressions ("Vampires were our first freedom fighters!") Cultural feminists would develop a bloodless imagery in art and literature. Socialist feminists would insist that only under capitalism would men be able to monopolize menstrual blood....

In fact, if men could menstruate, the power justifications could probably go on forever.

If we let them.

Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed

Here is one amazing video made by Jonathan McIntosh who took scenes from both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first Twilight movie to say something meaningful about Edward's stalker-ish, manipulative, and patronizing character. It also takes into account how Buffy would react to Edward.

I abridged an article written by Jonathan McIntosh talking about why he made the video. Here you can find the complete article.

In this re-imagined narrative, Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward's character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy's eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed - in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

I usually try to stay away from the forces of darkness, but last week I killed a famous vampire – and let me tell you, it was fun! Actually, I didn’t stake him myself — I used new media tools to allow one of the strongest female television characters of our generation to do it. OK, let me back up a minute. Last week, at the Open Video Conference at NYU Law School, I debuted my feminist mash-up video, Buffy v. Edward. It’s an example of transformative storytelling which reinterprets the movie Twilight by re-cutting and combining it with the TV series Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

Five months in the making, Buffy vs Edward is essentially an answer to the question “What Would Buffy Do?” My re-imagined story was specifically constructed as a response to Edward, and what his behavior represents in our larger social context for both men and women. More than just a showdown between The Slayer and the Sparkly Vampire, it’s also a humorous visualization of the metaphorical battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Over the course of the film Edward is in turns patronizing, condescending and just downright creepy. He spies on Bella, he stalks her (for “her own good”), he sneaks into her room to watch her sleep (without her consent) and even confesses to a deep, overpowering desire to kill her. We marveled at how the film attempted to present this behavior as sweet and deeply romantic – and how the larger pop culture discussion continued that framing for millions of young Twilight fans. At several points during the film Anita and I found ourselves asking each other: “What Would Buffy Do?”

In sharp contrast to Bella’s story, Buffy’s narrative is one in which gender equity is sexy – and powerful, complex and independent women are the norm. So successful is this normalization of female strength on the show that in the few alternative reality episodes that find Buffy magically weakened, we see her lack of power as utterly absurd. Imagine Buffy being helpless, ridiculous! The very thought is played for laughs. Throughout Buffy’s seven seasons, males that display the type of behavior Edward does are ridiculed or portrayed as dangerous (or both). Buffy is not without its own controversies (especially around race and LGBT issues), but the writers did often succeed in actively and brilliantly subverting expected sexist Hollywood themes.

At first I wasn’t sure if it was possible to take footage from the movie and television show and splice them together in a convincing way. I had made remixes of popular culture before but never tried to re-construct an alternative narrative. But I knew I had to try when I realized that the stalking scene in Twilight was extremely similar to a scene in episode 13 of Buffy.

In both sequences a female protagonist walks alone at night and is followed by shadowy figure(s), while dramatic music amps up the suspense. The similarities end there. Both scenes have radically different outcomes and narrative lessons. In Bella’s case, she is confronted by a group of aggressive, drunken frat boys, and actually starts to defend herself – until she’s interrupted from the act of self-protection when the writers have Edward swoop in and save her in the nick of time. Turns out Edward has also been stalking her (supposedly in case she might need his help). In contrast, Buffy stops in the dark ally and, annoyed, confronts her pursuer – who turns out to be her own vampire love interest, Angel—and who, you guessed it, is following her in case she might need his help. Buffy’s having none of it, delivering her brilliantly pointed line (which I use in the remix): “You know, being stalked isn’t really a big turn on for girls.” She tells Angel she doesn’t trust him and that she can take care of herself, leaving him standing rejected and alone in the ally. To the show’s credit, it’s not ultimately a message of tough female individualism; Buffy does learn that working together with her friends and allies (many of them also strong female characters, alongside resourceful and supportive men) she can overcome any challenge, including saving the world—a lot.

As an aspiring feminist guy, I wanted to speak out about issues of sexism and gender oppression in media but I wanted to do so carefully and intentionally. That’s why I chose to focus my critique on Edward’s patriarchal behavior in Twilight rather than on Bella’s actions. I didn’t feel it was my place to lecture her on desire (even in remix form), especially since her character is already disempowered by the original screenplay to the point of absurdity. So I built each scene around Edward, and then looked for appropriate responses from Buffy. Sorting through seven seasons worth of witty dialog and dramatic footage from Buffy was a lot of fun, and telling the tale through her and her friends’ perspective allows us to understand the messages underlying the mythology of the film and the TV show in a new way – and to enjoy the process.

In the end the only reasonable response was to have Buffy stake Edward – not because she didn’t find him sexy, not because he was too sensitive or too eager to share his feelings – but simply because he was possessive, manipulative, and stalkery. Lastly, interspersed among the avalanche of positive feedback are a small handful of responses from people dismayed at the death of the beloved Edward Cullen. Often these notes express concern that my mash-up is a condemnation of the fans of Twilight or of the actor Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward. I would like to say that the video is not intended as a stab at the fans. Rather, it’s an argument against the specific way in which romance and gender roles are constructed in the Twilight series. Ultimately, Buffy’s triumph over Edward is only one small part of much larger story: the story of our collective journey towards a world of gender equity and empowerment.

Gail Dines on Pornography & Pop Culture

Gail Dines talks in this lecture about the pornography industry.  She begins  by talking about the history of pornography, and Playboy and Hustler's begining in Capitalist America.

She continues on to talk about our image culture, where stereotypes of femininity and masculinity are continually bombarded upon us through magazines, movies, celebrities, music, etc.  She speaks of Jessica Simpson, who has become the laughing stalk of American media (just as Goldie Hawn and Meg Ryan were before her).  She states that when we laugh at her, we laugh at every woman because it reinforces those very stereotypes about women. 

Food For Though: The Reader Inscribed in the Text: When you look at an image of a person in a magazine, who is the presumed spectator of the image?  Who is the image geared to?  What is the image trying to communicate?  She then talks about the "fuck me" look; this image is bombarded upon men in our culture, and it is what this image to the right illustrate.

She then goes on to talk about the glamorization of the "perfect"  woman for men in our culture, shifting from the "perfect housewife" image to the "slut, brainless" image of women.  She speaks about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, and Pamela Anderson who are given stardom but then spitted out by our culture for being "whores" and useless.

Lastly, she speaks about the porn industry and the glamorization of violence against women within the porn industry.  Gail Dines ends the lecture by stating that she isn't against porn itself but the culture that is perpetuated within the porn industry, and I couldn't agree more.

Update:  Here is Gail Dines website

The Aka People: Gender Egalitarian Parenting

This article about the Aka people in Central Africa is extremely interesting.  The Aka people are extremely egalitarian parents.  There is no stigma against men who parent or women who hunt.  Here is an abridged version of the article:

Professor Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who was the first person to spot male breastfeeding among the Aka Pygmy people of central Africa (total population around 20,000) after he decided to live alongside them in order to study their way of life more closely.

When it comes to gender egalitarian parenting, the Aka - who call themselves the people of the forest - beat anyone else he'd ever studied hands down. According to the data he began collecting more than two decades ago, Aka fathers are within reach of their infants 47% of the time - that's apparently more than fathers in any other cultural group on the planet, which is why Fathers Direct has decided to dub the Aka "the best dads in the world".

What's fascinating about the Aka is that male and female roles are virtually interchangeable. While the women hunt, the men mind the children; while the men cook, the women decide where to set up the next camp. And vice versa: and it's in this vice versa, says Hewlett, that the really important message lies. "There is a sexual division of labour in the Aka community - women, for example, are the primary caregivers," he says. "But, and this is crucial, there's a level of flexibility that's virtually unknown in our society. Aka fathers will slip into roles usually occupied by mothers without a second thought and without, more importantly, any loss of status - there's no stigma involved in the different jobs." 

Women are not only just as likely as their men to hunt, but are even sometimes more proficient as hunters. Hitherto, it has usually been assumed that, because of women's role as gestators and carers of the young, hunting was historically a universally male preserve: but in one study Hewlett found a woman who hunted through the eighth month of her pregnancy and was back at work with her nets and her spears just a month after giving birth. Other mothers went hunting with their newborns strapped to their sides, despite the fact that their prey, the duiker (a type of antelope), can be a dangerous beast. 

If it all sounds like a feminist paradise there is, alas, a sting in the tale: Hewlett found that, while tasks and decision-making were largely shared activities, there is an Aka glass ceiling. Top jobs in the tribe invariably go to men: the kombeti (leader), the tuma (elephant hunter) and the nganga (top healer) in the community he has studied are all male. But that doesn't detract, he says, from their important contribution as co-carers in the parenting sphere: and nor, either, does it reduce the impact of the message he believes the Aka people have for western couples struggling to find a balance between the demands of employment, home-making, self- fulfilment and raising kids. 

One thing that's crucial in the raising of the young is the importance placed on physical closeness: at around three months, a baby is in almost constant physical contact with either one of her parents or with another person. There's no such thing as a cot in an Aka camp because it's unheard of for a couple to ever leave their baby lying unattended - babies are held all the time." Aka fathers, apparently, aren't averse even to heading down to their equivalent of the pub with a child attached to their chest (or even their nipple); the Aka tipple, palm wine, is often enjoyed by a group of men with their infants in their arms. 

It's all a far cry from the west and, says Hewlett, the first thing fathers here could think about is the lack of time and physical contact they often have with their young kids. "There's a big sense in our society that dads can't always be around and that you have to give up a lot of time with your child but that you can put that right by having quality time with them instead," he says. "But after living with the Aka, I've begun to doubt the wisdom of that line. It seems to me that what fathers need is a lot more time with their children, and they need to hold them close a lot more than they do at the moment. There are lots of positive contributions fathers can make to bringing up their children, but we shouldn't underestimate the importance of touch and cuddles." 

Another lesson the Aka have for us - and this is for all of us, mothers as well as fathers - is about how precious children are, and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. If it sounds a bit schmaltzy well, that's exactly why we need to hear it: the fact is, says Hewlett, that we've strayed into believing that our kids are a burden rather than a blessing and that's something the Aka never do. "To the Aka, your children are the very value of your life. The idea of a child as a burden would be incomprehensible there ... children are the energy, the life force of the community." A saying from another tribe he's studied, the Fulani, sums the sentiment up: they say that you're lucky if you've got someone who will shit on you.

But back to that male breastfeeding: Jack O'Sullivan of Fathers Direct says he was invited on chat show after chat show on Monday in the wake of the report going public, and faced a mixture of horror, consternation and support. "Some fathers phoned in to say they'd let their child suck their nipples - often it had just happened when the baby was lying on their chest in bed," he says. But some people were disgusted: the words "child abuse" came up more than once, which points up interesting cultural differences when you think that, to Aka folk, much of the way we raise our kids would count as child abuse to them (babies being left to sleep alone in a different room from their parents, for example). 

For O'Sullivan, what is sad is that the negativity to the Aka revelation points up the continuing awkwardness around intimacy between fathers and their infants: while mother-child intimacy is very public, and celebrated, father-child intimacy is still shied away from and worried over, despite an increasing body of evidence showing that, given the chance, fathers can be every bit as respondent to their infants as mothers in terms of reading their signals and communicating with them. In a nutshell, says O'Sullivan, men are scared of intimacy with babies and small children - and it could be that looking anew at that fear, with reference to the Aka experience, could be a useful and liberating male experience.

Media Education Foundation

Here you can find many GREAT documentaries for FREE (other than a slightly annoying watermark on the films...).  The full length videos are offered as previews for purchase considerations of colleges.  While the semitransparent watermark "For Preview Only" is embedded over the films, I highly suggest checking them out. 

Media Education Foundation is committed to exploring how the media (particularly advertising such as TV commercials, Magazine ads, and the like) affect our culture.  There are several categories of films to chose from including gender, politics, race, health, and commercialism.

I highly suggest Killing Us Softly 4, Micheal Kimmel on Gender, and Codes of Gender found under the the category of gender.  I also recommend Red Moon under the category of health.  All of these are great for some interesting conversation about gender issues.  

Here is Micheal Kimmel on Gender from youtube without the watermark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-rpbihTvlY&feature=PlayList&p=14C11A9B6693D5C6&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Here's Killing Us Softly 3 on youtube, although I highly recommend Killing Us Softly 4 too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpMan9cWyo&feature=PlayList&p=14C11A9B6693D5C6&playnext_from=PL&index=9