Minor Gripes
In Play the Game, the romantic comedy I mentioned in my last post, one trick that the male lead uses pick up women is to “unexpectedly” find gift certificates to Charlie Trotter’s in his coat pocket and say, “Oh, I’ve been looking for these! Gift certificates to my girlfriend’s / mom’s favorite restaurant! Oh, no, they expire this weekend, and my girlfriend / mom is out of town until next week! Here, why don’t you take these, and take someone who appreciates good food?”
At that point, the woman is supposed to bite her lip, look thrilled but hesitant, look coyly up at the lead through her lashes, and say, “Oh, I couldn’t, unless–why don’t you come with me?”
Of course, the male lead accepts, and they happily have dinner at Charlie Trotter’s.
The problem is, no one offers a complete stranger gift certificates to Charlie Trotter’s. It would be akin to saying, “Oh, look, I forgot that I had $300 in my pocket! Would you like to have it?” Charlie Trotter’s isn’t a casual restaurant or even a medium-expensive restaurant, it’s the kind of place that only offers tasting menus at $150 a head. Trotter is one of the most influential chefs in America and was the first to do small plate tasting courses. You don’t just offer a complete stranger your gift certificates to Trotter’s. It’s not believable; get your incidental details right, people, especially when they’re a running joke in the film.
I fully admit it’s a stupid nit to pick, but it bothered me throughout the movie. Frankly, it’s easier to rant about than everything else that bothered me about the film.
I Wish
…that movies would stop making jokes about getting people drunk in order to “have sex” with them. Deliberately feeding someone alcohol in order to get them drunk so that they’ll “have sex” “with” you is rape. Interestingly, it assumes that your victim would not willingly choose to do so when in her or his right mind, which ought to make it even clearer that plying her or him with drink is an explicit attempt to get her or him to the point where her or his judgment is seriously compromised and she or he is incapable of consenting to sex. Having sex “with” someone without their consent is rape. Getting someone to a point where they’re not capable of giving consent means that they are by default in a state of not consenting.
Rape is not just forging ahead and having sex when your partner says, “No.” Rape is having sex when you’ve made it so that your partner is incapable of saying, “No,” or is too drunk to know what the hell yes and no mean, or what they’re saying yes or no to.
The latest offender in this regard is Play the Game, an indie romantic comedy where a young, able-bodied white man tries to teach his old, white grandfather how to pick up “chicks.” One thing he mentions is that when you’re sharing a bottle of wine with a woman and she pours more wine into your glass than hers, it’s a sign that she’s interested in you. As an illustration of this idea, the young man has a bottle of wine with a woman at the bar and then tells her that he needs to go home to his girlfriend. Immediately, the woman asks him to stay for just one more drink and tops off their glasses. Cue a shot of the wine glasses, which look like this:
Her wine glass is a third full. His wine glass is full to the brim.
Hardy har har, indeed–except I must have been the only person in the theater not roaring with laughter. The wine pour becomes a running gag in the film, reoccurring again when the grandfather’s girlfriend slips powdered Viagra into his wine goblet and pours it completely full. Drugging someone without their knowledge! Getting Grandpa drunk and aroused when he’s already expressed an unwillingness to have sex with her! Specifically putting Grandpa in a position of physically wanting to have sex while mentally compromising him in order to overcome his intellectual desire to not have sex! HARDY HAR HAR! Later, the main character pulls the wine trick with the woman he’s been pursuing for the entire film, who has handily resisted him and expressed interest in other men the entire time–HARDY HAR HAR! Pouring people wine to overcome their stated resistance to having sex with you–HARDY HAR HAR!
Getting someone drunk in order to compromise their judgment so that you can have sex with them is rape. Yet, Play the Game treated it as a joke, presenting it as something that’s acceptable for young people to do at bars and as something that’s laughable for old people to do in retirement homes. It’s not a bloody joke, it’s a crime, but the movie normalized it as harmless fun, common behavior, and worst of all, as a sign that your rapist is romantically interested in you. Gee, I guess rape victims should feel flattered, eh?
On the one hand, women are frequently blamed when rapists rape them, and the victim-blaming is even more intense if the women have had so much as a drop of alcohol. The UK government even ran PSAs suggesting that being raped was the consequence of women drinking. On the other hand, pop culture serves up entertainment that treats getting people drunk in order to rape them as harmless fun. Rape is such a joke–if you’re the one pouring the wine.
“You’re Easy”
I’ve been thinking a lot about random things lately and consequently may end up making lots of short posts.
Sarahtales has a fabulous post about how readers read male and female characters in fiction: “Ladies, Please (Carry On Being Awesome).” In the comments, Serafina_zane says, “There are so many depressing double standards (call a girl a whore? she’s useless forever! manwhore? lol funny joke!”
Her comment reminded me of this incident in my life:
On her first night in A City Abroad, PD has lots of sex with a stranger. The next day, Stranger asks her to come by his shop that night. Owing to Stranger’s English being crap, PD occasionally having hearing problems (sometimes people speak to me and my brain hears gibberish. It is weird.), and PD not expecting Stranger to want to repeat the one night stand, PD does not show up that night.
The next day, PD and Stranger run into each other and Stranger asks PD to go out again that night. PD says sorry, she’s got plans with someone else. Stranger becomes irate and demands to know if the someone else is a man and who he is, and eventually yells, “You’re easy!” He adds something about how he thought PD was special and obviously he was wrong, and storms off.
PD is completely befuddled, thinking,
- I like having sex. What of it?
- You call me “easy” as if it were a bad thing, which is hypocritical considering if I weren’t, I wouldn’t have slept with you the other night.
- Double standard, much? If I’m easy, what does that make you?
- Dude, I slept with you, a complete stranger, on my first night in this city. What did you think, that you were a special, unique snowflake and that I would only ever sleep with you? We had sex; that does not mean that you own me and it doesn’t negate my ability to choose to have sex with other people.
- Grow the fuck up.
I still don’t understand it. Furthermore, I don’t understand why “easy” is supposed to be insulting. It’s a logicfail kind of thing — intellectually, I know why (sexism, virgin/whore dichotomy, fetishization of virginity in women, woman-as-property, construction of man-as-virile-taker-of-sex and woman-as-reluctant-giver-of-sex, etc.), but I fundamentally don’t understand it. It’s like this kind of logicfail, where my brain says, “Does not compute!” Being “easy” is not a bad thing. Being “easy” is not a good thing. It shouldn’t carry any moral connotations, because what matters about sex is not how often or with how many people you have it, but that it is always your choice, with consent freely given and freely accepted.
Escorting at Clinics: 40 Days for “Life”
Via Bitch Ph.D.: Operation Rescue will be protesting women’s health clinics across the country from September 23 to November 1 for their self-proclaimed 40 Days for “Life.” What are the 40 Days for “Life”? Their website claims,
40 Days for Life is a community-based campaign that draws attention to the evil of abortion through the use of a three-point program:
* Prayer and fasting
* Constant vigil
* Community outreach40 Days for Life takes a determined, peaceful approach to showing local communities the consequences of abortion in their own neighborhoods, for their own friends and families. It puts into action a desire to cooperate with God in the carrying out of His plan for the end of abortion in America.
I am a clinic escort at Planned Parenthood and on top of the usual protesters that show up every Monday and Saturday, my clinic was already targeted for the 40 Days for “Life” earlier this year. I can tell you that the 40 Days for “Life” are less about peaceful Christian fellowship than about harassing, intimidating, and shaming girls and women for going to Planned Parenthood, whether it’s for their annual check up or for an abortion. The protesters at my clinic carry giant signs with pictures of what they claim are aborted fetuses (said pictures look like dismembered plastic dolls covered in kung pao chicken sauce, but that’s just my non-medical expert opinion), which are meant to horrify and scare women and girls. They yell at the top of their lungs that anyone who goes into Planned Parenthood will go to Hell. They hand out pamphlets proclaiming the lie that abortion causes breast cancer. They shout, “Adoption is a better option.” With the pictures, pamphlets, and physical intimidation, the protesters try to prevent girls and women from entering the clinic, so that they won’t receive the medical care that they have chosen and need. Additionally, after Scott Roeder murdered Dr. Tiller, when any person with a sense of compassion or two brain cells to rub together would have realized that clinic patients, workers and escorts would be feeling rattled and scared for their safety, the local protesters stepped up their harassment. In an email shortly after the murder, my clinic’s escort coordinator wrote,
Since the appalling murder of Dr. Tiller, our protesters decided to show up the Tuesday before last … And one staff member told us that because there were no escorts present they were fairly aggressive. We had escorts at this clinic this Tuesday and although one of our regular protesters drove by, he didn’t stop because we were there.
and in a later email,
I’m truly amazed at the right wing response to Dr. Tiller’s death – how outrageous can they be? I thought that our protesters would be kinder/gentler and its simply unbelievable that they’re getting more aggressive. I (mistakenly) thought that our protesters would behave.
In retrospect, I believe that the protesters stepped up their harassment because they knew that people would be frightened by the murder, and they wanted to capitalize on that. Hardly a Christian attitude.
ACTION ITEM: The 40 Days for “Life” are targeting clinics across the country. Their website has a list of the locations. Check to see if they’re protesting in your area, and if they are, contact the clinic to see if they could use your help. Search for volunteer opportunities at Planned Parenthood here.
The “peaceful” approach of the anti-choice protesters includes:
- Approaching girls and women and yelling, “You’re killing your baby! Murderer!”
- Approaching girls and women and attempting to step between them and the clinic entrance, while shoving pamphlets about adoption and lies about abortion at them.
- Approaching girls and women and yelling, “Do you know what they do in there? They kill babies! If you kill your baby, you will go to Hell!”
- Approaching girls and women and yelling, “Adoption is a better option!”
- Setting up a sidewalk altar near the clinic entrance with statues of Mary and Jesus. Kneeling in front of the altar and praying loudly.
- Standing near the clinic entrance in groups of three or more and loudly saying the rosary.
- Standing near the clinic entrance in groups of as many as six or more and yelling at the clinic escorts: “You will burn in the flames of hell! And when you have a baby, God will kill him because of your evil!”
- Setting up chairs and a stereo on the opposite side of the street and blasting anti-choice Christian music.
- Holding large signs with graphic images that purport to depict aborted fetuses.
- Repeatedly violating San Francisco’s bubble ordinance by approaching patients as they exit and enter the clinic.
Far from depiction of the small, lone teenager that protests the abortion clinic in Juno, the protesters at my local clinic range in number from three to more than fifteen, often arrive in shifts, range in age from teenage to elderly, are male and female, are vocal, are loud, are physically intimidating, and often gang up on clinic patients so that patients must physically shove through them to get to the clinic. Yes, they are ridiculous, but their intent is to intimidate any girl or woman who so much as passes by a Planned Parenthood.
If you can, please consider finding the time to help out your local clinic by volunteering as a clinic escort or in another capacity. Escorts present a welcoming face to patients and employees as they go in and out of the clinic; deter the protesters from escalating their intimidation and aggressiveness; and help patients avoid the protesters, inasmuch as it’s possible.
More reading: Think Progress on Operation Rescue and Roeder
Shakesville: Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers’ Choice for Women – a guest post about giving a child up for adoption.
Poll!
It has recently been made clear to me that fewer people read in the shower than I had previously thought! I.e., the people whom I might reasonably suspect to be in the habit of reading while shampooing their hair have indicated that they do not, in fact, take books into the shower with them.
Hence, a poll, inspired by this post at TFLN (“(518): im starting to measure my showers by the number of beers i drink while im in there.”), which I shared in Google Reader, and the discussion that ensued in the comments:
Ben: Do you read in the shower?
PD: Yes. Do you?
Ben: No… I’m too busy… showering
PD: I get my showering done, too. I just get bored without a book!
Ben: Doesn’t this prolong your shower –> waste more water –> lead to ecological collapse –> WHY DO YOU HATE MOTHER EARTH, [PD]?
PD: That’s what I thought about the beer-drinker — how long is she/he showering for?! But reading in the shower is ecologically sound, because I just read for brief snippets of time – while getting hair wet or rinsing shampoo out, etc. In fact, if I didn’t read in the shower, I would stand around enjoying the hot water and prolong the shower. So reading in the shower is actually good for the environment!
SW: how do you keep the book from getting soaked? Especially with wet hands?
PD: Carefully. It is not for the faint of heart, or for those who like their books pristine.
I Like You, Too
He said:
I like that you speak your mind.
I like that you’re passionate.
It’s easy to keep my shields up and say, “You’d better, because that’s not going to change,” but that would cheapen his comments and what they mean to me. How many times have my nearest and dearest told me that I care too much, that I’m too strident, that I’m too serious and humorless, that I’m too political, that I read too much into things, that I shouldn’t speak up or speak out so much, that I should let homophobia or sexism or transphobia or racism or classism pass unchecked in order to keep the social peace? How many times have my nearest and dearest muttered, “It was just a joke,” or repeated themselves and said, “but it’s true! Black people are thieves/Muslims are lazy/Transpeople are freaks/Midwesterners are ignorant, gun-toting, Bible-thumping crazies!”* after my jaw dropped and I said, “That’s not true?”
Ask me why family-and-friends get-togethers make me anxious. Ask me why I dislike seeing specific family friends. My worries are always thus: What sexist thing will Uncle X say this time? Will Church Friends talk about Prop. 8 and the “sanctity of marriage?” Will Family Friend A rant about “crazy men who want to be women?” And will I speak up, knowing that my mother will yell at me for being too strident, too political, too rude (too feminist, too queer, too anti-transphobia)? Or will I silently hunker down, sink into my seat, and feel sick and a failure besides?
How many people have said, “I’m sorry for saying a sexist thing, please keep calling me on it and please help me, because I don’t know any better?”
Twice. And that’s good. It’s better than being dismissed or berated, but it’s tiring, too, and sometimes, I wish that those two folks would just know better, or at least remember that we’ve already had that exact same conversation about calling women hags or calling things lame and retarded.
How many people have said, “I like that you’re passionate,” after I ranted about Clinton and sexist double standards in the media?
How many people have said, “I like that you speak your mind,” after I politely called out a friend’s characterization of things as “white trash?”
One. When I chose not to smile and ignore classist and sexist comments at a dinner with friends, the +1 didn’t cringe, didn’t shut me down, and didn’t make excuses for my “poor” behavior (e.g. “oh, she’s a feminist/too PC/etc., you know, don’t mind her!”). That already put him a step ahead of my parents and some longtime friends.
And then, he said that he liked me for speaking my mind. No one’s ever said that before. I’m not an embarrassment to him–he doesn’t like me despite my feminist baggage. He sees that the baggage is inescapably a part of me–and he likes that. I didn’t think I’d ever find someone like that, let alone someone whom I liked who liked me in return. And we met at random. And he’s lovely.
I am so lucky.
I like you, too.
*All real conversations at family-and-friends get-togethers.
Feminism: Concrete Policy Suggestions
[Trigger warnings for the post, especially for the links about the Congo and rape.]
Ben and I recently had a conversation about feminism:
Ben: if i were to levy one criticism
Ben: at the feminist movement
Ben: its that i dont hear very many
Ben: concrete policy suggestions
PD: …
Ben: (not that its their responsibility)
PD: sriously?
Before anyone hops over to his blog to bite his head off, (1) Ben is not a troll; (2) he was commenting in good faith; (3) I think this speaks to our society’s general lack of understanding of the political work of feminism. BitchPhD recently posted on the many ways in which she and her family benefits from the works of the government; many of those benefits are invisible in that they’re taken for granted and assumed to be the Way Things Are, as if they’d magically, effortlessly sprung into existence years ago. The political work of feminists (who are by no means a monolithic movement) similarly blends into the landscape, if you’re not actively looking for it and considering, “Gee, why is it that my girlfriend can get birth control every month?” Another factor is that for as much as feminists do, a good portion of their political activism is necessarily about working to prevent sexist laws and policies. When they succeed, few people take notice, because in such cases, success means that the status quo remains the same.
So, here are some ways that I see the effects of feminists’ concrete, political work in my everyday life.
When I wake up in the morning, I wake up in my own apartment. That’s because I’m allowed to sign the lease in my own name, even though I’m a woman. In fact, if I had the money and the desire, I could even have a house with the deed in my own name, because women are allowed to own property these days. I pay for the apartment with rent checks that I write myself from my own bank account, because women can have bank accounts that aren’t in the names of their fathers or husbands. I pay for the rent with a high-paying job that I got because I went to a good university. I was able to go to that good university because it went co-ed in 1969, not without a determined effort on the part of feminists to open up higher education to women.
After I wake up, the +1 and I have sex. If the condom were to break, I could go to the nearest pharmacy and get emergency contraception over the counter, because the FDA approved over-the-counter use of emergency contraception in 2006, not without a determined effort on the part of feminists, both everyday people and political officials:
“We urge the FDA to revisit placing age restrictions on the sale of Plan B,” said Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.). But because the decision represents “real progress” and an “important step in restoring the American people’s faith in the FDA,” the senators said, they were lifting a hold they had imposed on von Eschenbach’s confirmation as FDA commissioner.
In California, I can walk into any pharmacy for that Plan B because California doesn’t allow pharmacists to refuse to provide medications that go against their religious beliefs. The lack of a so-called “conscience clause” at the state level (although the HHS rule change threatens this) is due to the political work of NOW, Planned Parenthood, and the hundreds of everyday feminists who staff, donate to, and volunteer for those organizations, as well as the everyday feminists who contacted their public officials on these matters and asked them to support a woman’s right to decide her reproductive future.
If I were a minor and the +1 and I had accidentally created a fetus, I would be able to go to a Planned Parenthood and get an abortion without needing to get my parents’ permission, because feminists campaigned against Prop. 4 in last year’s election. The campaign involved websites, online ads, TV ads, mailers, op-eds, and thousands of person-hours’ worth of phone banking, building coalitions with local political groups, knocking on doors, canvassing for volunteers, and talking to people. The preservation of a teenage girl’s ability to get an abortion required the investment of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work–but from this side of the election, it’s concrete policy work that’s invisible, because it was about maintaining the status quo rather than enacting a new policy. It was necessary nonetheless, because misogynistic, anti-choice activists are constantly campaigning to repeal all the progress that feminists and their allies have made. Prop. 4 was the third time in four years that anti-choicers tried to pass a referendum requiring parental notification/consent.
If the +1 and I were married and accidentally created a fetus and Plan B didn’t work, I could get an abortion without his permission, because in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruled husband notification laws unconstitutional. However, in the unlikely circumstance that I wanted the pregnancy, but ended up needing a late-term abortion, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Gonzales v. Carhart and the lack of abortion providers (due in no small part to the active harassment of such doctors) would make it difficult to obtain. Incidentally, part of Justice Kennedy’s reasoning in Gonzales boiled down to an argument that women are not sufficiently mentally competent to make decisions for themselves about partial-birth abortions, and so in order to protect them from the regret they may feel after the fact, the state ought to ban partial-birth abortions. This was in 2007; the idea that women intelligent human beings fully capable of making decisions and living with the consequences has by no means permeated the three branches of our government.
After the +1 and I get out of bed, I dress for work. Usually, I wear pants, even though I work in a conservative field. This is because if my company’s dress code explicitly required women to wear hose, heels, skirts, and makeup, there are laws that would allow me to sue them for imposing rules that unfairly place a material burden on women (hose, heels, skirts, and makeup have a cost in time, money, and physical health) based solely on gender stereotypes rather than the requirements of the job. These laws didn’t spring up out of nowhere, either. Then, I go to the office.
At work, I hold a job other than that of administrative assistant. All of our administrative assistants are women, but there are also women who are principals and managing directors and analysts. This is because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on a number of protected traits, including sex. In other words, my employer can’t hire women solely for the lower-paying jobs. Speaking of pay, the male analysts and I made the same starting salary, doing the same work with the same qualifications. This is because of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. However, if I were to find out that the male analysts made more than I did for doing the same work, I could bring an equal pay lawsuit. I could sue the company even if I found out about the pay discrimination more than 180 days after it had begun, because the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 amended the statute of limitations in Title VII. Incidentally, feminists are still working on the equal pay issue, and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Rosa DeLauro introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act in the House and Senate this past January. That’s awfully recent, and you can’t get much more concrete than a proposed law.
When I check my email, there’s an action alert from Planned Parenthood, who want me to call the governor’s office and my state senator and representative, asking them to repeal the budget cuts for family planning services, which “provides essential health care to millions of women including breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraception and preventive care.” Planned Parenthood also organizes trips to the state capitol on lobbying days so that they can speak with public officials and ask them to support policies for women’s health care and reproductive rights.
Change.org has an email asking me to support Senator Barbara Boxer’s Afghan Women Empowerment Act, which “would provide critical resources for Afghan women for literacy education, technical and vocational training and health care services that would reduce maternal and infant mortality. The bill will also fund programs to protect women and girls against sexual and physical abuse, abduction, trafficking, exploitation, and includes emergency shelters for women and girls who face danger from violence.”
Speaking of feminists and foreign policy, feminists have consistently been advocating both offline and online to raise awareness of the brutal rape epidemic against women in the Congo and urging people to take political and economic action. Clinton pledged to address the rape epidemic as part of U.S. foreign policy in her confirmation hearings and recently pledged $17M to fight sexual violence in the Congo.
Other action alert-type emails in my inbox pertain to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, or refuse to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation or gender identity; overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). All of these are feminist issues; they affect women and are based on confining everyone to patriarchal, heteronormative gender roles.
I work late and end up walking home after nightfall. I know the rape statistics: strangers are less likely to assault me than men I’m already acquainted with. However, when I hear footsteps behind me that match my pace, even when I speed up, I can’t help but think about how as a woman of color, if a man raped me, I couldn’t necessarily trust the police to help me. Even if they did, I might have trouble getting a rape kit. The hospital might bill my insurance provider, opening up a whole new bucket of worms, or they might require me to file a police report within a certain period, or they might require the police to verify that they’re investigating the case (which doesn’t always happen). Assuming that everything went smoothly at the hospital, that’s still no guarantee that the rape kit would ever be processed before the statute of limitations passed. These problems–rape, police brutality, indifferent or rape apologist prosecutors, rape kit billing problems–are all issues that feminists are addressing.
On the way home, a man asks if I’m Chinese, gorgeous. Another man blocks the sidewalk so that I can’t move around him, shoves his face so close that he’s breathing on me, leers, and says, “Mmm.” This is street harassment. Feminists are working to combat street harassment at the grassroots level; police officers aren’t always reliable.
Eventually, I make it home. If it isn’t clear by now, the political impacts and political issues of feminists are woven inextricably into the fabric of our daily lives.
Google Search Queries
I was looking at my blog view stats today, and on the list of search queries, found this gem:
how feminism ruined my sex life
I have to say, if feminism is ruining your sex life, then you’re doing sex wrong.
In a piece of Google WIN, that particular search query pulls up this post, “Dating As A Feminist: Consent & Sex”, which is all about how being a feminist was good for my sex life. I wonder how much the searcher read before thinking, “These are not the droids you’re looking for!”
