I have major disagreements, politically, with the ACLU: [U.S.] American Civil Liberties Union. That they value and fight for libertarians in a society in which civil rights are being eroded, means that, ultimately, their power stands with the status quo, with the oppressors. So they defend the KKK, the pornographers, and refuse to frame a blatant discrimination case as a civil rights issue. Read on...
This piece is from *here*:
JACKSON, Miss. – A lesbian high school student embroiled in a legal flap over her school's prom policy has received a $30,000 scholarship on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."
Constance McMillen was speechless Friday when the talk show host pulled out an oversized check from the Web site Tonic.Com, a digital media company.
DeGeneres says she admires McMillen for challenging Itawamba County School District rules that would prevent her from escorting her girlfriend to the prom. The school district canceled the April 2 prom after McMillen's request.
A hearing is scheduled Monday in federal court in Aberdeen on American Civil Liberties Union efforts to force the district to hold the prom.
What follows is from here
Lesbian teen sues to force school to hold canceled prom
The Headlines item is averaging about 100 comments an hour so I guess you guys want to talk (er, keep talking) about this. Offers to host a private prom for the kids are pouring in and the teen herself is getting all kinds of support online and from the media, so I assume there’s going to be a happy ending here. It’s interesting to me mainly as a legal matter: Per the ACLU’s complaint, this is not a discrimination claim. It’s a First Amendment claim, alleging that McMillen would essentially be engaged in a form of speech (“communicative content”) about her orientation in wearing a tuxedo and bringing a girl to the prom. That’s weak — she’s not going to prom to make a statement, she’s going because she wants to dance and have fun with her girlfriend — but because the Equal Protection Clause has never been held to apply to sexual orientation, the ACLU really has no choice but to try the speech argument. Not sure it’ll work, but then the point isn’t to win the suit. It’s to turn up the heat on the school district until the bad publicity makes them cave or, at the very least, scares other districts that might do this into thinking twice. Working like a charm so far. Two videos for you below as illustrations.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Post #666: The Devil in Fess Parker: On Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Walt Disney: every last one of 'em an unrepentant WHM Supremacist. (May they rust in piss.)
Alternate title for this blog post:
Question:
What do four D names might you call a White Serial Killer of "Injuns" or Misogynist, Racist Mythologiser of this Genocide?
Answer:
Davy Crockett
Daniel Boone
The Devil
Walt Disney
Question:
What do you call remembering Crockett, Boone, and Disney?
Answer:
Nostalgia (for white U.S.ers)
Question:
What do you call Indigenous warriors who fought genocidal white men?
Answer:
Unholy savages and committers of massacre against good men. Get how fucked up this all is yet?
(So, too long a blog post title, huh? Yeah, I thought so too.)
Sometimes, not at all infrequently, white het male culture repulses me. I am also taught, often successfully, to feel great fondness and affection for the culture that teaches us all that White is Right and Red should be Dead. This post is about that. And peripherally it's also about white boys' callousness and white men's cruelty to animals, specifically, here, raccoons.
For example, I find the image below sick and twisted, as it portrays the senseless murder of non-human animals by white men, and the murder of human beings by white men, as glorious and entertaining, and somehow NOT the atrocities they were and remain. But it don't stop with the portrayal and de-tailing of raccoons.
The murder of women, the murder of people of color, the senseless murder of non-human animals remains spectacle and sport by and for white folks and men folks. Each remain practices that were and are beloved by millions of whites and men across the U.S.A.(And we can note how often Black women and other women of color are fetishised in mass manly media as non-human animals for white het men's capture and consumption. (That's a subject for another post.)
From keeping rabbits' feet and raccoon tails as symbols of white cultural luck and accomplishment, to scalping Indigenous North Americans to corporate pimp-produced snuff films, white het men, in particular and without apology have, taken serial killing-- and related genocidal, gynocidal, and ecocidal atrocities--to new heights toward the brightly lit hell they mistake for heaven, ruled by their sky-god who they don't recognise as the Devil his-very-self.
Below is a typical image of what was "spawned" from Fess Parker and Walt Disney's TV shows:
The image below is of the "characters" made lovingly famous by Fess Parker's acting. This, however, is a portrait of the actual Davy Crockett, genocidal serial killer of American Indians "extraordinaire" and is from here.
Next we have a portrait of the actual Daniel Boone, a proper portrait of a white man, shown with his weapon. It is from here.
Here's some biographical information about Daniel Boone, from *here*.
Here's a little bit of Davy Crockett's story, as told by the victors, of course, the way all Good Amerikkkan History should be told (that's bitter sarcasm, folks):
Fess Parker's own rendition of the ballad of Davy Crockett is less overtly genocidal than the full length version below. But in case you ain't never heard of Fess Parker, here he is, saluting this white serial killer of "Injuns". There are variations and versions of this song, none of them doing anything else than overtly promoting genocide. How... quaint??
Please don't sing along, but do listen for what was once a VERY popular dominant U.S. American song:
THE BALLAD OF DAVY CROCKETT
(Full Length)
Music by George Bruns
Lyrics by Tom Blackburn
© Disney. All rights reserved.
Here's info about Fess's life and careers, from his website.
Actor Fess Parker of Santa Barbara, California has been called by some an American icon. His portrayal of frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone impacted millions of young viewers in the late 1950's and 60's.
In 1954, Walt Disney signed Parker to play the title role in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
In 1964 Parker began filming his network television series, Daniel Boone. During six years as one of the highest rated shows of its time, Parker not only starred in the series but co-produced it and directed five of its most popular episodes. Parker continued to star in numerous box office hits for Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers' Studios, while laying the foundation for his second career as real estate developer.
In 1987, Parker purchased a 714 acre ranch thirty five miles north of Santa Barbara, in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he promptly set about planning and establishing Fess Parker's Winery & Vineyard. His son, Eli (Fess III), is President and Director of Winemaking & Vineyard Operations. His daughter, Ashley, is Vice President of Marketing & Sales.
And just in case t'weren't clear enough what white het men in power "ethically" and politically VALUE (and profit from), check out this other usage of the term "Davy Crockett", from *here*:
Question:
What do four D names might you call a White Serial Killer of "Injuns" or Misogynist, Racist Mythologiser of this Genocide?
Answer:
Davy Crockett
Daniel Boone
The Devil
Walt Disney
Question:
What do you call remembering Crockett, Boone, and Disney?
Answer:
Nostalgia (for white U.S.ers)
Question:
What do you call Indigenous warriors who fought genocidal white men?
Answer:
Unholy savages and committers of massacre against good men. Get how fucked up this all is yet?
(So, too long a blog post title, huh? Yeah, I thought so too.)
Sometimes, not at all infrequently, white het male culture repulses me. I am also taught, often successfully, to feel great fondness and affection for the culture that teaches us all that White is Right and Red should be Dead. This post is about that. And peripherally it's also about white boys' callousness and white men's cruelty to animals, specifically, here, raccoons.
For example, I find the image below sick and twisted, as it portrays the senseless murder of non-human animals by white men, and the murder of human beings by white men, as glorious and entertaining, and somehow NOT the atrocities they were and remain. But it don't stop with the portrayal and de-tailing of raccoons.
The murder of women, the murder of people of color, the senseless murder of non-human animals remains spectacle and sport by and for white folks and men folks. Each remain practices that were and are beloved by millions of whites and men across the U.S.A.(And we can note how often Black women and other women of color are fetishised in mass manly media as non-human animals for white het men's capture and consumption. (That's a subject for another post.)
From keeping rabbits' feet and raccoon tails as symbols of white cultural luck and accomplishment, to scalping Indigenous North Americans to corporate pimp-produced snuff films, white het men, in particular and without apology have, taken serial killing-- and related genocidal, gynocidal, and ecocidal atrocities--to new heights toward the brightly lit hell they mistake for heaven, ruled by their sky-god who they don't recognise as the Devil his-very-self.
This image of Fess Parker, with both a dead and a live raccoon on his head, is from here. Do you suppose those raccoons on and around him are wondering why he's wearing their murdered relative? Will they scratch his bloody eyes out for being such a callous prick? No, they LOVE and ADORE him. (Right. The one on the far left does appear to be wondering about this whole matter of the tail of her kin being draped alongside his neck.)
Below is a typical image of what was "spawned" from Fess Parker and Walt Disney's TV shows:
The image below is of the "characters" made lovingly famous by Fess Parker's acting. This, however, is a portrait of the actual Davy Crockett, genocidal serial killer of American Indians "extraordinaire" and is from here.
Is it me, or do all genocidal white men look alike?
Here's some biographical information about Daniel Boone, from *here*.
The name Daniel Boone conjures up the image of an illiterate, coonskin cap-wearing patriot who settled Kentucky and killed countless Indians. The scarcity of surviving autobiographical material has allowed tellers of his story to fashion a Boone of their own liking, and his myth has evolved in countless stories, biographies, novels, poems, and paintings. In this welcome book, Meredith Mason Brown separates the real Daniel Boone from the many fables that surround him, revealing a man far more complex—and far more interesting—than his legend.
Brown traces Boone's life from his Pennsylvania childhood to his experiences in the militia and his rise as an unexcelled woodsman, explorer, and backcountry leader. In the process, we meet the authentic Boone: he didn't wear coonskin caps; he read and wrote better than many frontiersmen; he was not the first to settle Kentucky; he took no pleasure in killing Indians. At once a loner and a leader, a Quaker who became a skilled frontier fighter, Boone is a study in contradictions. Devoted to his wife and children, he nevertheless embarked on long hunts that could keep him from home for two years or more. A captain in colonial Virginia's militia, Boone later fought against the British and their Indian allies in the Revolutionary War before he moved to Missouri when it was still Spanish territory and became a Spanish civil servant. Boone did indeed kill Indians during the bloody fighting for Kentucky, but he also respected Indians, became the adopted son of a Shawnee chief, and formed lasting friendships with many Shawnees who once held him captive.
During Boone's lifetime (1734–1820), America evolved from a group of colonies with fewer than a million inhabitants clustered along the Atlantic Coast to an independent nation of close to ten million reaching well beyond the Mississippi River. Frontiersman is the first biography to explore Boone's crucial role in that transformation. Hundreds of thousands of settlers entered Kentucky on the road that Boone and his axemen blazed from the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River. Boone's leadership in the defense of Boonesborough during a sustained Indian attack in 1778 was instrumental in preventing white settlers from fleeing Kentucky during the bloody years of the Revolution. And Boone's move to Missouri in 1799 and his exploration up the Missouri River helped encourage a flood of settlers into that region. Through his colorful chronicle of Boone's experiences, Brown paints a rich portrayal of colonial and Revolutionary America, the relations between whites and Indians, the opening and settling of the Old West, and the birth of the American national identity.
Supported with copious maps, illustrations, endnotes, and a detailed chronology of Boone's life, Frontiersman provides a fresh and accurate rendering of a man most people know only as a folk hero—and of the nation that has mythologized him for over two centuries.
* * *
In dominant U.S. society, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Christopher Columbus are three of the most celebrated, admired, and nostalgically remembered white het male serial killers to come to Turtle Island and vicinity. (CHRISTopher Columbus also pimped and raped Brown girls, so he gets a national holiday in The United Rapes of Amerikkka. Read more about THAT devilish dood *here*.) Note how there are coded terms and words throughout. "Crafty" means excellent at being a Murderous Killer of Indigenous North Americans. "Frontier" means stolen land soaked in Indian blood. "Settled" means taken with force, through atrocity, through genocide, through theft and deceit (foundational--and prevailing--values of our Founding White Het Fathers). To "settle" means to allow colonising, racist, heterosexist, misogynist whites to move further and further West on Turtle Island, domesticating human and non-human animals in that blood-soaked Earth in part for the purposes of creating the anti-environmental practice now known as U.S. American Agriculture. "Spirit" doesn't refer to the Great Spirit. It refers to white het men's sexxxualised passion for murdering everyone who isn't white and heterosexually male. You don't need Andrea Dworkin telling ya that white men fetishise murder and adore death (as long as the white men get to do the killing, that is, and are the "victors"). It's all here, folks. Just read it and weep.
Here's a little bit of Davy Crockett's story, as told by the victors, of course, the way all Good Amerikkkan History should be told (that's bitter sarcasm, folks):
Davy Crockett stands for the Spirit of the American Frontier. As a young man he was a crafty Indian fighter and hunter. When he was forty-nine years old, he died a hero's death at the Alamo, helping Texas win independence from Mexico. For many years he was nationally known as a political representative of the frontier.
In March, 1836, Davy Crockett, with 139 others, was massacred at the Alamo. Usually, in battles, someone is left to tell the story, but the Alamo had no one. One hundred and eighty-seven men for eleven days withstood the Mexican army of the despot, Santa Anna. When the battle was done, all of the one hundred eighty-seven brave Americans, including Davy Crockett, lay dead on the ground; but with them also lay over two thousand Mexicans, who had died at their hands.
Revered in film, television, and text are the lives of Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone, both, ironically, played on TV by the very recently deceased white actor Fess Parker, whose fame also contributed to the murder of more raccoons for sales of their tails and hides on hats, than any other living human in the U.S. He is fondly remembered as "a childhood hero" by Vanity Fair writer, the very white Maureen Orth, in her tribute to the man and his work, found http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/03/fess-parker-tv-star-wine-impresario-and-sing-along-king-of-santa-ynez.html".
Fess Parker's own rendition of the ballad of Davy Crockett is less overtly genocidal than the full length version below. But in case you ain't never heard of Fess Parker, here he is, saluting this white serial killer of "Injuns". There are variations and versions of this song, none of them doing anything else than overtly promoting genocide. How... quaint??
Please don't sing along, but do listen for what was once a VERY popular dominant U.S. American song:
THE BALLAD OF DAVY CROCKETT
(Full Length)
Music by George Bruns
Lyrics by Tom Blackburn
© Disney. All rights reserved.
[DAVY CROCKETT
King of the Wild Frontier (USA 1955)
Fess Parker as Davy Crockett]
Lyrics:
Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free
Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree, kilt him a b'ar when he was only three
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
In eighteen thirteen the Creeks uprose, addin' redskin arrows to the country's woes
Now, Injun fightin' is somethin' he knows, so he shoulders his rifle an' off he goes
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear!
Off through the woods he's a marchin' along, makin' up yarns an' a singin' a song
Itchin' fer fightin' an' rightin' a wrong, he's ringy as a b'ar an' twic't as strong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the buckskin buccaneer!
Andy Jackson is our gen'ral's name, his reg'lar soldiers we'll put to shame
Them redskin varmints us Volunteers'll tame, 'cause we got the guns with the sure-fire aim
Davy, Davy Crockett, the champion of us all!
Headed back to war from the ol' home place, but Red Stick was leadin' a merry chase
Fightin' an' burnin' at a devil's pace, south to the swamps on the Florida Trace
Davy, Davy Crockett, trackin' the redskins down!
Fought single-handed through the Injun War, till the Creeks was whipped an' peace was in store
An' while he was handlin' this risky chore, made hisself a legend for evermore
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
He give his word an' he give his hand, that his Injun friends could keep their land
An' the rest of his life he took the stand, that justice was due every redskin band
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin' his promise dear!
Home fer the winter with his family, happy as squirrels in the ol' gum tree
Bein' the father he wanted to be, close to his boys as the pod an' the pea
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin' his young'uns dear!
But the ice went out an' the warm winds came, an' the meltin' snow showed tracks of game
An' the flowers of Spring filled the woods with flame, an' all of a sudden life got too tame
Davy, Davy Crockett, headin' on West again!
Off through the woods we're ridin' along, makin' up yarns an' singin' a song
He's ringy as a b'ar an' twict as strong, an' knows he's right 'cause he ain' often wrong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear!
Lookin' fer a place where the air smells clean, where the trees is tall an' the grass is green
Where the fish is fat in an untouched stream, an' the teemin' woods is a hunter's dream
Davy, Davy Crockett, lookin' fer Paradise!
Now he's lost his love an' his grief was gall, in his heart he wanted to leave it all
An' lose himself in the forests tall, but he answered instead his country's call
Davy, Davy Crockett, beginnin' his campaign!
Needin' his help they didn't vote blind, They put in Davy 'cause he was their kind
Sent up to Nashville the best they could find, a fightin' spirit an' a thinkin' mind
Davy, Davy Crockett, choice of the whole frontier!
The votes were counted an' he won hands down, so they sent him off to Washin'ton town
With his best dress suit still his buckskins brown, a livin' legend of growin' renown
Davy, Davy Crockett, the Canebrake Congressman!
He went off to Congress an' served a spell, fixin' up the Govern'ments an' laws as well
Took over Washin'ton so we heered tell, an' patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell
Davy, Davy Crockett, seein' his duty clear!
Him an' his jokes travelled all through the land, an' his speeches made him friends to beat the band
His politickin' was their favorite brand, an' everyone wanted to shake his hand
Davy, Davy Crockett, helpin' his legend grow!
He knew when he spoke he sounded the knell, of his hopes for White House an' fame as well
But he spoke out strong so hist'ry books tell, an' patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell
Davy, Davy Crockett, seein' his duty clear!
When he come home his politickin' done, the western march had just begun
So he packed his gear an' his trusty gun, an' lit out grinnin' to follow the sun
Davy, Davy Crockett, leadin' the pioneer!
He heard of Houston an' Austin so, to the Texas plains he jest had to go
Where freedom was fightin' another foe, an' they needed him at the Alamo
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear!
His land is biggest an' his land is best, from grassy plains to the mountain crest
He's ahead of us all meetin' the test, followin' his legend into the West
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free
Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree, kilt him a b'ar when he was only three
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
In eighteen thirteen the Creeks uprose, addin' redskin arrows to the country's woes
Now, Injun fightin' is somethin' he knows, so he shoulders his rifle an' off he goes
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear!
Off through the woods he's a marchin' along, makin' up yarns an' a singin' a song
Itchin' fer fightin' an' rightin' a wrong, he's ringy as a b'ar an' twic't as strong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the buckskin buccaneer!
Andy Jackson is our gen'ral's name, his reg'lar soldiers we'll put to shame
Them redskin varmints us Volunteers'll tame, 'cause we got the guns with the sure-fire aim
Davy, Davy Crockett, the champion of us all!
Headed back to war from the ol' home place, but Red Stick was leadin' a merry chase
Fightin' an' burnin' at a devil's pace, south to the swamps on the Florida Trace
Davy, Davy Crockett, trackin' the redskins down!
Fought single-handed through the Injun War, till the Creeks was whipped an' peace was in store
An' while he was handlin' this risky chore, made hisself a legend for evermore
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
He give his word an' he give his hand, that his Injun friends could keep their land
An' the rest of his life he took the stand, that justice was due every redskin band
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin' his promise dear!
Home fer the winter with his family, happy as squirrels in the ol' gum tree
Bein' the father he wanted to be, close to his boys as the pod an' the pea
Davy, Davy Crockett, holdin' his young'uns dear!
But the ice went out an' the warm winds came, an' the meltin' snow showed tracks of game
An' the flowers of Spring filled the woods with flame, an' all of a sudden life got too tame
Davy, Davy Crockett, headin' on West again!
Off through the woods we're ridin' along, makin' up yarns an' singin' a song
He's ringy as a b'ar an' twict as strong, an' knows he's right 'cause he ain' often wrong
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear!
Lookin' fer a place where the air smells clean, where the trees is tall an' the grass is green
Where the fish is fat in an untouched stream, an' the teemin' woods is a hunter's dream
Davy, Davy Crockett, lookin' fer Paradise!
Now he's lost his love an' his grief was gall, in his heart he wanted to leave it all
An' lose himself in the forests tall, but he answered instead his country's call
Davy, Davy Crockett, beginnin' his campaign!
Needin' his help they didn't vote blind, They put in Davy 'cause he was their kind
Sent up to Nashville the best they could find, a fightin' spirit an' a thinkin' mind
Davy, Davy Crockett, choice of the whole frontier!
The votes were counted an' he won hands down, so they sent him off to Washin'ton town
With his best dress suit still his buckskins brown, a livin' legend of growin' renown
Davy, Davy Crockett, the Canebrake Congressman!
He went off to Congress an' served a spell, fixin' up the Govern'ments an' laws as well
Took over Washin'ton so we heered tell, an' patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell
Davy, Davy Crockett, seein' his duty clear!
Him an' his jokes travelled all through the land, an' his speeches made him friends to beat the band
His politickin' was their favorite brand, an' everyone wanted to shake his hand
Davy, Davy Crockett, helpin' his legend grow!
He knew when he spoke he sounded the knell, of his hopes for White House an' fame as well
But he spoke out strong so hist'ry books tell, an' patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell
Davy, Davy Crockett, seein' his duty clear!
When he come home his politickin' done, the western march had just begun
So he packed his gear an' his trusty gun, an' lit out grinnin' to follow the sun
Davy, Davy Crockett, leadin' the pioneer!
He heard of Houston an' Austin so, to the Texas plains he jest had to go
Where freedom was fightin' another foe, an' they needed him at the Alamo
Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear!
His land is biggest an' his land is best, from grassy plains to the mountain crest
He's ahead of us all meetin' the test, followin' his legend into the West
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
* * *
The as yet not updated webpage for Fess Parker brags about his production role in the mythologising of the gentleman genocidalist, as well as the purchaser of stolen Indian land. Ah, mass media. When won't it take an opportunity to glorify mass murder and perpetrators of ecocidal atrocities?Here's info about Fess's life and careers, from his website.
Actor Fess Parker of Santa Barbara, California has been called by some an American icon. His portrayal of frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone impacted millions of young viewers in the late 1950's and 60's.
In 1954, Walt Disney signed Parker to play the title role in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
In 1964 Parker began filming his network television series, Daniel Boone. During six years as one of the highest rated shows of its time, Parker not only starred in the series but co-produced it and directed five of its most popular episodes. Parker continued to star in numerous box office hits for Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers' Studios, while laying the foundation for his second career as real estate developer. Blending his gracious Texas hospitality and tremendous eye for real estate development, Parker built his first resort hotel in Santa Barbara in 1986. Set on 23.5 ocean front acres, Fess Parker's Double Tree Resort faces one of Santa Barbara's nicest beaches. Parker is planning to open a new luxury waterfront hotel in 2004, adjacent to 10 acres of public parkland donated by the Parker Family Trust.
In 1987, Parker purchased a 714 acre ranch thirty five miles north of Santa Barbara, in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he promptly set about planning and establishing Fess Parker's Winery & Vineyard. His son, Eli (Fess III), is President and Director of Winemaking & Vineyard Operations. His daughter, Ashley, is Vice President of Marketing & Sales. And just in case t'weren't clear enough what white het men in power "ethically" and politically VALUE (and profit from), check out this other usage of the term "Davy Crockett", from *here*:
The M-28 or M-29 Davy Crockett Weapon System(s) was a tactical nuclear recoilless rifle for firing the M388 nuclear projectile that was deployed by the United States during the Cold War. It was named after American soldier, congressman and folk hero Davy Crockett (1786-1836).I'm a'tellin' ya, folks, radical lesbian feminists couldn't make this CRAP up! And any white man who blames THEM as being "the problem" for pointing out what het men DO and VALUE doing must have their white het male heads on backwards, or, well, ought to. Preferably scalped.
Happy Persian New Year 2569 (1389) (20 or 21 March 2010 ECD)
[image is from here]
Now-Rooz (or Naw-Rooz), in word, means “New Day”
It is the new day that starts the year, traditionally
the exact astronomical beginning of the Spring. We
Persians still take that as the beginning of the year.
This exact second is called “Saal Tahvil”. No-Rooz
with its uniquely Persian characteristics has been
celebrated for at least 3,000 years and is deeply
rooted in the rituals and traditions of Zoroastrian
that was the religion of ancient Persians and there
are still many Persian Zoroastrian people in several
countries such as Iran, India, Tajik, and more…
[most of the text above is from here]
[image of national flags is from here]
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Think Dick Tracy: "Dick" is a Synonym for Cops who are Detectives for a Reason, too often
[image is from here]
What follows after my short rant is a cross post from Stop Sexist Remarks blog, here. I am sorry to hear that any woman would have to hear this kind of infuriating CRAP from any law enforcement personnel, but the law is, after all, WHM supremacist. So why am surprised. I'm not. I'm infuriated. I've encountered this shit before. Immediate job termination for any police detective should be mandatory should an officer of the law make a woman feel responsible for men's violations of her. To the cop mentioned below: FUCK YOU!
To Cynthia: I'm sorry this happened. It's disgusting what he said/did. And what the other guy did, of course. Blaming women for being violated by men OUTSIDE THEIR HOMES because the women dress comfortably INSIDE their own homes... Grrrrr. Classic misogynist blaming of the victim. And of course some asshole men blame women for "enticing" them. To those men: get your balls cut off and stay inside your own homes, with shades drawn so you can't be "enticed" by what a neighbor woman is wearing in her own home.
The Serious Nature of Sexist Remarks
One summer night soon after I had graduated from college oh so many years ago, I settled into my favorite chair to talk by phone with the man I was seeing. We were in the final throes of summer, the weather was warm, and light had begun fading a little earlier each evening. The windows of the small house I was renting were open, the shades flapping gently with the breeze. As dusk descended, I glanced up from our engaging conversation to see what looked like a man staring in one of my windows.
My friend told me to hang up, call the police, shut all the windows and then call him back; he would stay on the phone with me until the police arrived. The lone male officer who showed up did a quick tour of the perimeter of my property and returned to my front door to report that he hadn’t seen anyone and if there was someone at the window, they must have moved on. As he was leaving, he turned around and said, “You probably shouldn’t sit around your house wearing shorts like those.”
I was startled then and I am angry now when I think about that remark. If a man broke into my home, was I to believe that I caused him to do so because I was wearing running shorts in the privacy of my living room? Was I not allowed to leave my curtains open because to do so was an invitation to others to come onto my property to watch what I was doing? (It should be noted that you could not see into my living room from the street.) When I think about that comment, it reminds of the importance of the work we are doing to stop sexist remarks.
The messages that we send to women by suggesting that they adjust their behavior in light of the potential actions of others is dangerous. It establishes boundaries that women must live within to be safe or acceptable and therefore—oh so subtly—sets limits on almost all the life choices they will make.
I wish that I could say that times have changed and that those types of messages were a thing of the past—but they are not. We hear them daily, and they seep into our consciousness—the judge who calls attention to the clothing of a young girl who was victimized, the scholar who suggests that girls aren’t good at math or science, and the pundits who describe a woman politician as not attractive enough (or the female newswoman as too attractive). They rob us of our freedom to be who we are, to make the most of our talents, and to select from an array of options when deciding how we want to live our lives.
Sexist comments are not harmless “slips of the tongue” or teasing remarks that we need to “get over.” Sexist comments are serious messages about women that help to define our culture, and we ignore them at our own risk.
Cynthia
LGBT? Where's the I for Intersex? What about the Asexuals? Will Two Spirit people EVER be in the consciousness of dominant cultural queer folks? Why the B at all??? I'm left with LATSTIG
[this image graphically representing Two Spiritedness is from here]
I am retiring the socially used congregation of unpronouncable letters for the queer community: LGBT. There has been a Q for "questioning" tacked on at times. And sometimes there's an A at the end, for Allies. Screw that. If you're an ally, you don't need a letter of your own: you need to be an ally without giving a shit whether or not you have a letter. And if you're questioning, join the list when you've got some answers.
And a heartfelt farewell to the sexist GLBT.
I am increasingly perplexed at the complications involved in writing about something that has been on my mind and in my body, for years: the whole matter of LGBT community: what it is, whether it is, and why it is what it is.
What follows are a series of observations, critical thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and conclusions. None are, in any sense, "done". This is an ongoing conversation within myself and among myself and my queer friends. And to all those who aren't queer: this is not your conversation; read if you wish, and please don't comment. To anyone who is queer, whether genderqueer or queer in terms of not being heterosexual, feel free to post comments as long as they abide by the comment guidelines, which you can find linked to in the top right area of this blog.
I'll start by saying that I understand that all of us who are not appropriately gendered and sexed, and who aren't heterosexual, are stigmatised as many things, none of them good. And that appropriately gendered men who are heterosexual in certain ways, are statused in ways gender, sex, and sexuality queer folks aren't likely to be any time soon. In this way, whether we are addressing the same political issues or not, we are made into a political group, just as "people of color" are formed by the presence of white supremacist violence and racism. And people of color, let's be clear, are the majority of who comprises queer community. Not that white run queer and anti-queer magazines will indicate that.
My white and mixed-class history is not with gay activism. In my little worlds, "gay activism" was white, male dominated, and middle class, through and through. It had little to no relevance for the issues that I cared about and fought for: fighting male supremacy, racism, and, later, classism. There were queer people fighting those things, but not near me. And so my associating with "Gay Politics" remains a classist, sexist, racist movement designed and organised around some very privileged gay men, who want "in" to the world of even more privileges that white, class-privileged, het men enjoy.
From the start, I was far more interested in what lesbians were doing politically, as they tended to be feminist, for one thing, and tended to be more concerned about issues beyond their own direct experience, for another. The feminists who were lesbian were those I most identified with, although I knew and valued the work of plenty of heterosexual feminists as well.
"Progressive" men, back in the day, were interested in questioning gender roles, as it was termed, but not entitlements and privileges, let alone power. Gay men already had a head start on questioning all this, as we didn't fit a heteropatriarchal model very well, given that the model is founded on interpersonally oppressing a woman who you are romantically and sexually involved with, as well as oppressing and dehumanising women socially and publicly. We gay men do that part, in many ways, and one of them is through what is called Drag Shows, in which gay and het men, and now het and lesbian women, do their best to portray the most stereotypical presentations of gendered being, while also being classist and racist as hell.
I have never really understood why the B is in the group. Because regardless of who you can imagine yourself sleeping with, regardless of who you fuck, regardless of who you desire to be sexually or romantically involved with, who you pine away for, have a crush on, or fool around with when drunk, if you're not identified socially as lesbian or gay, you're not dealing with what lesbian and gay people deal with--which is the awareness that we are, without question, outside the mainstream due to who we love in ways forbidden by heteropatriarchal mandates and customs. Bisexuality comes in and out of vogue in a way that being lesbian or gay does not.
I know so many lesbians and gay men who have been hurt and used by people seeking to find out just how bi they are, at our expense. This has happened to me several times. And, yes, part of being lesbian and gay in my society means we are raised to think being het is the most desirable thing ever, and so we are often attracted to people who are out as het, or, bi. Our bad? I'm not so sure.
In the conversations I've had with whites on queerness, not one has been about our obliteration of Indigenist understandings and experiences of what we call "queerness". The idea that "queer" folks might not be queer, but might, instead, be revered and valued as important members of society was not part of my worldview until I read about Two Spirit stories and how some Indigenist societies, traditionally, did not understand there to be only two genders or only one way to express sexuality.
And in conversations about sexuality, the notion that some of us are asexual doesn't seem to occur to most people, and I think that's because part of compulsory heterosexuality is compulsory sexuality. For more on that, see *here*.
I've just seen (again) how major media deals, currently, with trans issues. CNN has been doing a lot on the subject--relatively speaking. They normally don't deal with queer issues. But this weekend they've shown a special called "Her Name Was Steven" and an interview on AC360 with Chaz Bono. Both of these people have class privilege. Most trans people do not.
To deal only with class-privileged folks means you're more likely to be dealing with medical issues, surgery, hormone therapies, psychiatric perspectives, and being fired from prestigious jobs with big salaries. So as far as media goes, I don't feel I've ever seen any adequate representation of trans people and trans issues. The same goes for lesbian and gay issues, of course, as most of us who gain media attention are also white and middle class.
The issues tangled up with being trans cross many issues, but only a few are focused on when the subjects are white and class privileged. For example, how racism and transphobia intersect, how poverty and transgendered reality interweave, is never talked about on television, in my experience. We see cases brought before the Supreme Court where a teacher or city manager were fired due to transitioning. But what about the sanitation worker, the factory worker, and the server at a restaurant? Is their firing going to get a hearing at the Supreme Court? I doubt it. And part of the reason for that is that working class people can't afford the surgery, and so live with being trans in a way that people with big bucks don't have to. People with enough spare cash can life with the realistic potential of life being different, in terms of what one's anatomy looks and feels like.
So what we get on CNN and elsewhere is whether someone is going to have their dick cut off and.or inverted into a vagina, and what the effects of taking certain hormones over time are. I just found out that penises can shrink when taking "female" hormones over a period of time. Does this mean that the inverted constructed vagina is smaller the longer one waits to have surgery, assuming someone can, and wants to? We get what's going to happen to the former or current spouse, who was married to someone who wasn't the same gender as them, but who may decide to appear to be that gender to the general public. We deal with how this will impact the children. These people who make the news tend to be liberal and secular, so we don't get to see how being trans plays out in religious community, in cultures where church, temple, and synagogue are central to daily or weekly life.
So am I supposed to base my view about "trans people in queer community" based on what CNN has to say on the subject? I better not. Because dominant media also wants to tell me a story about what becoming a woman means, which means telling me what being a woman is. And it's not pretty. And the jokes abound about how "ugly" men who try and look like women are, as if women all look feminine and should want to. If a woman isn't at all pretty, dominant society doesn't consider her attractive. That's fucked up beyond belief, and is terribly ageist and ableist as well.
Being a woman is so many things that none of the lesbian feminist women I know, of many ethnicities and classes, ages and abilities, consider all that important. The lesbian women I know have to contend with being rejected for rejecting dominant society's standards of femininity, which, it is enforced, are for women to maintain, through purchasing products that create something called "the way women are supposed to look". The lesbian women I know have to fight this battle daily: of being misperceived to be a man, for being seen to be a lesbian, for being misperceived to be heterosexual and "interested" in men. I know lesbian women whose gender identity is fairly ambiguous and who, during the day, are harassed for that reason, but, somehow, at night, are targeted by men who realise they are women and can be harassed and threatened as such. There are heterosexual women who also don't pass as women, as it is defined by racist heteropatriarchy, but unlike with lesbian women, there is not generally any support from ones friends for rejecting the standards imposed by het male supremacist society.
The political project of the lesbian women I have known throughout my life is to do at least two of the following things: challenge patriarchy, challenge white supremacy, and challenge capitalism. In the reporting done on gay men and transgendered people, these matters are not the issue. It is presented as possible, if not probable, that one can be a white gay man and a class privileged trans person and somehow find ones way into the dominant culture, with struggle and many stories of discrimination and homophobia and transphobia.
Finding a way into society is not the project of the lesbian women I know. They do have to survive, but are not trying to reproduce racist capitalist patriarchy in their lives, if possible.
This was never "the term of choice" when I was young. It was and remains a term of derision. Then again, so too does the term "gay". What's a gayboy to do? I could call myself Queer as there are parts of Gender Studies Departments that promote "Queer Studies" which gives a kind of legitimacy to "queerness" that lesbianism and gayness have never enjoyed academically. This whole matter of calling oneself queer is, in my experience, also very tied to class, or at least to access to post-grade school education.
That matter aside, what queerness has become, in my view, is deeply problematic for anyone who wishes to challenge racist heteropatriarchy. I know there are some radical and militant anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-racist queer groups: usually and most often comprised of people who are not white or class privileged. But queerness, perhaps because one can get a Liberal Arts degree studying it, is dangerously liberal in its political agendas. This is true of gay male politics too, generally. And there's something spreading through my community, called liberalism, that means it's now "cool" for lesbian women to promote wearing high heels as somehow liberatory. And it's really "cool" for women to be into pornography, and to value turning oneself into pornography, for people to watch, because it is liberating one's sexuality. I don't see it that way.
Queerness has also functioned, in my experience, to make it more difficult to identify fully as lesbian or gay, and that means that, in this regard and others queer culture dovetails nicely with dominant society, which also would rather not hear about those of us who are LESBIAN and GAY.
Queerness supports fluidity in sexuality, and many lesbian and gay men's sexuality is no more fluid and changing from year to year than many heterosexuals' sexuality. But now there's a perception that if one's sexuality isn't fluid, it's not honest. Polyamory has also taken hold, and while I think this has many radical applications to interrupting heteropatriarchy, what it has meant is that many times, someone's lesbian partner is sleeping with a dood. Or lesbians are encouraged to think of themselves as "bois". And to use male pronouns, not female ones. Because the stigma of being transphobia, when leveled accurately or not against a radical feminist nontrans woman is effectively silencing, I have yet to see meaningful conversation about the issues of misogyny and antilesbianism raised by Sheila Jeffreys in her book Unpacking Queer Politics.
We have to remember that everything female is degraded in dominant society, so the pressure is unrelenting to do away with femaleness as much as possible, or to embrace a form of it that is utterly self-dispossessed and radically impotent. During my lifetime, gayness has also taken a beating from heteropatriarchal imperatives that "femininity" is bad, and so personal ads have tended to note that "fats and femmes" are not desired. As if someone is only their weight or lack of butchness. I don't tend to see gay personal ads that indicated "butch and masculine men are not desired". Why is that?
At least in lesbian community, there still seems to be room to be a range of ways, vis a vis femmeness and butchness. The question is to what degree can one be neither and not be categorised as one or the other. I know lesbian women who insist every women is one or the other, and I find this view terribly misogynistic and heteropatriarchal.
I have never understood my identity or gender presentation as "femme" or "butch". I reject both options as perilously racist, misogynistic, and ageist. My personal-political role models were women and men who didn't identify as either one. I know that in some cultures, butchness and femmeness are significant in ways that they aren't in my own ethnic group. So, for example, when I hear whites put down Black women for participating in butch and femme roles in predominantly African American community contexts, I want to tell them, "Really, this is none of your business". Zami, by Audre Lorde, and other works by Black lesbian writers, have instructed me on how dealing with gender imperatives if not white is different and more tricky than dealing with it in white cultures. This is partly because race is gendered, and therefore stigmatised. So being a Black gay man or a Latino gay man, is a different matter than being a white gay man. Race and class can simultaneously reduce and expand opportunities to reject dominant expectations and pressures to conform to white het male supremacist standards. Place trans identity into this mix and you've got choices and struggles that dominant society, including the queer nontrans folks among it, are not likely to appreciate fully or appropriately.
A few months ago I saw a video by an intersex person who warned other intersex people to steer clear of trans community, because trans community promoted as liberating having surgery, whether or not one could afford it. And intersexed existence if far more likely to regard "gender surgeons" as fascistic enemies who butcher our young. To be intersex is very complicated, as there are so many ways to be interesexed. And none of them are allowed to exist without invasive questions and condescending assumptions about what being human is. As Toby once said on the Sally Jessy Raphael Show once stated, one need not have a gender to be human.
To be intersexed and not be medically labeled, well... good fucking luck. Lesbians and gay man, can, to some degree, be assumed to be "born that way" and for "that way" to not require surgical interventions. Not so with many intersexed people. From birth forward, surgery designed to make only two genders socially real is present and waiting, with sharpened knife in hand.
I have always felt a particular kinship with intersex people, as well as lesbian and gay people, because we, collectively, tend to view the medical establishment as suspect, not saviors. I find that the trans community views many dominant institutions with less skepticism. And this may simply be due to having a different condition that warrants different considerations for how to resolve matters during one's lifetime, if possible.
Asexuality, like intersexuality, cannot be easily comprehended by dominant society as anything other than "unfortunate" or "in need of some form of intervention: surgical, if intersex, psychological if asexual. Fuck all that. Trans folks get both imperatives, regardless of what any given trans person wants for themself: surgical, hormonal, and psychological "preparation" is called for by the medical establishment for anyone who wishes to transition, as if transitioning necessarily means having surgery or taking hormone injections. Again, class is an issue here, as is culture. One Indigenist North American person I discussed some of these issues with remarked how odd dominant society is to think that something has to be "done" to people who are queer and trans. Why can't people just "be" who we are, including transgendered? This acquaintance told me, in their society, there are eleven genders... none of which require surgery. Hmmm.
I'm not suggesting this means trans folks who want surgery, and who can afford it, ought not get it. As a white trans person said when I brought up this other conversation, "Well, I don't live in that society, do I?" Good point. We live in a transphobic, homophobic, anti-Indigenist, racist, heterosexist, masculinist, and misogynistic one.
And it is easy to forget, when obsessing about matters of trans-surgery, that there's a gender that isn't trans that is told to get surgery in order to fulfill the promise of what their gender offers society. That gender is "women".
Dominant society tells all women, any women, however you understand the term "women" to do things to their bodies that men are not compelled and impelled to do. The list is long from tending to hair, removing hair, coloring hair, curling and straightening hair, and cutting hair regularly, or not often at all depending on ethnicity and other factors such as age. When I was young, white women could let their hair grow and grow. Some whiteboys could too, but not without being ridiculed by some. Some people of color could grow out their hair, but to do so and not have it chemically treated was seen as a political act. White women growing out there hair was not seen as political. It was what was fashionable to do.
Lesbians, more than any other queer group in dominant society, have great range in how gender is presented. Not safely, mind you. But gay men, to me, seem far more rigid about adhering to masculine norms not serving the radical agenda that used to be part of our community. With Two Spirit, trans, assexual, and intersex folks: the pressure to conform is intense, and the likelihood of finding "community" far more difficult. It's difficult enough for lesbians and gay men, but looking back on my life, there were always non-het people in it. There were always gay males around somewhere. We might not have been out to one another, but I knew I wasn't the only one. I think if I were trans or intersex, this sense of "not being the only one" would be more distant and abstract. As an asexual, let's just say you're likely to meet one other person in your lifetime who identifies as such and has thought significantly about this matter as it relates to capitalist, hypersexxxual society.
Segments of each group, whether lesbian, asexual, Two Spirit, transgender, asexual, or gay are physically and culturally invisible as such. Most of us are ridiculed and scorned, invisibilised and stigmatised by socially dominant men, based on what we look like alone or based on what dominants assume about us. Asexuals, Two Spirited people, and butch lesbians of any color or class are totally, absolutely invisibilised by dominant media. And if a butch woman accidentally appears on television, she is regarded with contempt, and is called ugly. The physical transformation of the not-butch woman singer, Susan Boyle, was a good example of gender policing. I knew she wouldn't be allowed to keep those bushy eyebrows. She's "a woman" after all. Women are supposed to HAVE bushy eyebrows. Except, well, some women do. No one makes Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes tweeze his eyebrows all to hell. This is sexism and this is misogyny. And this is the extreme contempt reserved for women who do not look femme. That many, many women don't look femme, including many femme women, seems to be of no consequence to the preservers of the status quo. Even femme women on television can barely be over fifty, and if they are, they'd better be wearing makeup, dresses or skirts, and be doing something noticeably expensive with their hair.
What I conclude from all of this is that forging alliances, while never easy between the have and the have nots, the "innies" and the "outies", will be made far easier if challenging white supremacy, capitalism, dominant institutions, and patriarchal mandates are central to the struggle to find ways to be human while fending off inhumanity targeting those of us who are not and will never be heterosexual or gender-appropriate. For those of us who salute and wave the LATSTIG flag.
Um, can someone design a LATSTIG flag?
News With Nezua: A War and Peace Combo Edition: Is USA a synonym for WAR? And, on the Internet, Conversation, and pressing Pause
Note:
News With Nezua vids first appear Monday mornings at La Frontera Times. Wednesdays they show up at UMX, as well as in a dim setting at The XOLAGRAFIK Theater. For those who desire closed captioning or can’t view this player, check back later for links to YouTube.
28 Feb 2010 ECD News With Nezua:
News With Nezua | The War on Truth from nezua on Vimeo.
14 March 2010 ECD News With Nezua:
IT’S ABOUT RHYTHM. It’s about flow. It’s about an inner-guided and inspired voice, communication. Expression. Connection. But what is left out when we plug into a current that demands no lull?
News With Nezua vids first appear Monday mornings at La Frontera Times. Wednesdays they show up at UMX, as well as in a dim setting at The XOLAGRAFIK Theater. For those who desire closed captioning or can’t view this player, check back later for links to YouTube.
28 Feb 2010 ECD News With Nezua:
THE WAR ON POVERTY. The War on Drugs. The War on Terrorism. Is it safe to say the USA loves war? Is it more accurate to say the USA is war? Could the nation exist as we know it were we not maintaining a War on Truth every day?
How do we find justice in such a place? Let’s envision a land that exists hand in hand with truth. Let’s fight for that vision.News With Nezua | The War on Truth from nezua on Vimeo.
14 March 2010 ECD News With Nezua:
IT’S ABOUT RHYTHM. It’s about flow. It’s about an inner-guided and inspired voice, communication. Expression. Connection. But what is left out when we plug into a current that demands no lull?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Why Boys Are Heterosexist Boys and Sexual Harassers and Rapists of Girls
[image is from here]Below is a discussion and review of a part of a book with a strange, anti-gay title, which, presumably, is being passed off as acceptable, for one reason or another.
What follows offers experiential evidence that compulsory heterosexuality in combination with virulent lesbophobia and homophobia, in combination with passive acceptance of sexual harassment of girls in grade school, in combination with a climate of "boys will be heterosexist boys", in combination with refusing to teach boys about asexuality and what respect for girls looks like, means that the distance from boys being those violatingly misogynistic boys, and boys and men being rapists, is not measurable in theoretical experiential miles, but in inches.
The image chosen to introduce this post was done to get us off the one-track mind of genetic determinists, sociobiologists, and evolutionary psychologists, who grossly misrepresent (and incorrectly imagine) our ancient human past and our genetic present. This is done in order to portray a contemporary set of pro-rape practices that is wrongly assumed to be inevitable and natural. It is neither natural nor inevitable. If it were nature, we'd have to kill men. If it were inevitable, we'd have to quarantine men and boys who demonstrate disrespect for women and girls. Why it is men argue that it is both, is beyond me, unless they want their nuts shot off, along with their heads. The post which uses that image is one fucked up racist/classist piece of CRAP, although it does take the position that rape is not natural or inevitable, but the privileged white woman who wrote it needs to have her privileges check and her education adjusted. To read that piece, called "Is Rape an Evolutionary Trait?" see *here*.
What follows is from here at the Yes Means Yes blog.
Compulsive Heterosexuality And Rape Culture
Yesterday I reviewed Dr. C.J. Pascoe’s book Dude, You’re A Fag. One thing I said I might do is deal at greater length with the public exhibition of symbolic heterosexuality among boys, and how it relates to rape culture. So, this post is that.
Pascoe notes a lot of disturbing, invasive, violent sexual harassment by boys against girls in her year in a California high school. This behavior formed the material for the third chapter of the book, and she concluded with this observation:
Pascoe has some observations of how this culture of constant, low-level assault on girls’ autonomy relates to rape culture, though that is an aside to her book. I have been thinking about closely related issues lately so I have some thoughts of my own. In particular, I want to examine how these behaviors and norms relate to what we know about rapists in the population, particularly from the work of Lesak and McWhorter; see here and here.
The kinds of interactions she witnesses were somewhat shocking. To appreciate the flavor of it, I’ll quote several passages at length here:
Pascoe calls this out for what it is: a chest-beating display of dominance that has little to do with sexual orientation or desire and everything to do with a gender performance that positions the boys in relation to other boys. The boys themselves seem to know this:
The boys felt pressure to be sexually active, and to be reported to be sexually active. One boy said, “If a guy wasn’t having sex, ‘he’s no one. He’s nobody.’” P. 88. Their ostentatious displays of “heterosexuality” are designed to repudiate the spectre of the “fag” identity, a failed gender identity in the Judith Butler sense, that is a major part of what Pascoe identifies as the way gender performance among high school boys is policed. The boys’ own relationships incorporate challenges to perform in this way:
Pascoe coins a term for this, playing off Rich’s term “compulsory heterosexuality.” Pascoe calls these displays to ward off gender policing “Compulsive Heterosexuality.”
So … how does compulsive heterosexuality relate to rape culture? I can identify several ways. As a threshold matter, much of this behavior is itself sexual assault. Just because it is short of rape doesn’t make it acceptable. Pascoe in places calls it sexual harassment; but the physically invasive acts are not just harassment. They are assault.
Next, what Pascoe describes relates to rape culture in a very direct causal way. These boys are under pressure to “get girls” or “have sex”, not for intimacy with a partner or even for self-gratification, but to meet the obligations of their peer community’s gender norms. For that purpose, girls’ autonomy is an irrelevancy or even a hindrance. One student basically admits to rape, while trying to distance himself from what he perceives as real rape:
This account matches exactly what Lisak tells us to expect. This boy thinks real rape involves overt force, but he has a practiced technique — which he developed very early — of using isolation and alcohol to inhibit or defeat girls’ resistance to sexual conduct that they did not want. So, he’s a rapist, but he does not identify what he does as rape. (Notably, Pascoe does not, either. That may have been a choice driven by a desire to stay focused on her larger points.)
Another way that this behavior relates to rape culture is that it normalizes violent interactions where boys impose their desires on female bodies as a display of dominance. Pascoe applies this analysis:
As Pascoe noted in the passage about Cathy, above, girls are routinely hurt and physically manipulated by boys in this environment, but often have no access to tools to stop it. They are being taught that they quite literally cannot stop a boy from doing what he wants with their bodies, while the boys are being taught that doing what they want with a girl’s body even when she says no increases their status among other boys. A clearer recipe for rape I can’t imagine.
In fact, the dynamic is so clearly one that negates girls’ autonomy that it’s a wonder our culture doesn’t teach all high school boys to rape. And yet, most don’t. Lisak’s and McWhorter’s samples show that the overwhelming majority of boys are not growing up to be rapists, and that the serial rapists are a single-digit percentage of the population. And even those are not using force. In high school, force and complaint are obviously taken very lightly; so why are those boys who do grow up to be rapists not completing the progression, and using overt physical force to rape?
Actually, I think this is where decades of “no means no” has been effective. At some point, these boys seem to understand that the use of force against girls’ bodies stops being something acceptable and becomes something they could get in trouble for. Even the rapist understood that.
I’ve argued before, in the linked posts on Lisak’s work, that rapists do what they do because it is effective. I’ve argued that it is effective because rapists can rape outside the recognized narrative of rape, and when they do so they will have ready-made defenses.
To my mind, the most powerful way in which the dynamics Pascoe recorded feeds rape culture, is also the most insidious. This behavior is the tall grass in which the predators hide. Pascoe noted that teachers never intervened to stop this behavior. p. 99. It was so normalized as to be part of the wallpaper. This is a culture where:
- boys’ physical abuse of girls who shut down and barely complain is normal;
- boys’ pursuit of sexual activity that girls do not want is normal;
- boys’ sense of entitlement to date women of their choice is normal;
- girls’ assertion and determined defense of bodily boundaries is not normal.
That is to say, the wallpaper of daily life is so close to what rapists actually do that it is trivially easy for them to operate without drawing suspicion. That’s what it means to have a social license to operate. This culture creates the climate in which they can do what they do without seeming aberrant.
There is a cure for this disease. The cure is an environment where girls’ bodily autonomy and agency are the norm, and invasions against it are the aberration. But to get there, we have to have a culture where girls can identify and vindicate their own desires: only subjects have autonomy, and a girl who can’t say “yes” has no space to say “no.” We have to, as a culture, want — yes, I said want — girls to know what they want, and to go about getting it; in order that they may also know what they don’t want, and understand clearly that they are entitled to reject that. And our boys — for some of us, our sons — must be made to understand that, as Shawna said in the quoted passage above, “girls have a say.” In fact, girls have an equal say, and if she’s not having fun, you have to stop.
Pascoe notes a lot of disturbing, invasive, violent sexual harassment by boys against girls in her year in a California high school. This behavior formed the material for the third chapter of the book, and she concluded with this observation:
As a feminist researcher I was saddened and quite frankly surprised to discover the extent to which this type of sexual harassment constituted an average high school day for youth at River High. Though much of the media and many cultural critics repeatedly claim that we have entered a postfeminist age, these scenes at River High indicate that this age has not yet arrived. In fact gender practices at the school – boys’ control of girls’ bodies, almost constant sexual harassment, and continual derogatory remarks about girls – show a desperate need for some sort of sexual harassment education and policy enforcement in schools.P. 114.
Pascoe has some observations of how this culture of constant, low-level assault on girls’ autonomy relates to rape culture, though that is an aside to her book. I have been thinking about closely related issues lately so I have some thoughts of my own. In particular, I want to examine how these behaviors and norms relate to what we know about rapists in the population, particularly from the work of Lesak and McWhorter; see here and here.
The kinds of interactions she witnesses were somewhat shocking. To appreciate the flavor of it, I’ll quote several passages at length here:
On Halloween, Heath arrived at school dressed as an elf carrying a sprig of mistletoe and engaged in a fairly typical ritual of getting girls. He told anyone who would listen that an elf costume was a brilliant idea for Halloween because “it’s the wrong holiday!” … [Heath] lifted the mistletoe above his head and, moving from behind the table, walked up to a group of girls. They looked at him with a bit of trepidation and tried to ignore his presence. Finally one acquiesced, giving him a peck on the cheek. Her friend followed suit. Heath strutted back to the table and victoriously shook hands with all the boys. …Pp. 93-4.
While the boys laughed and celebrated Heath’s triumph of will, the girls may not have had the same reaction to his forced kisses. In a study of teenagers and sexual harassment, Jean Hand and Laura Sanchez (2000) … girls overwhelmingly indicated that being kissed against their will was the worst form of sexual harassment …
Of course it is unlikely that boys, or girls, would recognize these sorts of daily rituals as sexual harassment; they are more likely seen as normal, if perhaps a bit aggressive, instances of heterosexual flirtation and as part of normal adolescence (N. Stein 2005).
Shane grabbed her neck with on hand and forehead with the other, shoving her head backward and forward. Cathy squealed, “You’re messing up my hair!” As he continued to yank her head around, Cathy tried to do her work, her pen jerking across the page. While this sort of interaction regularly disrupted Cathy’s work and looked exceedingly painful, she never seriously tried to stop it. When I asked Cathy why they interacted like this, she answered, “He has always been like that with me …He just beats on me.” Her response echoed Karin Martin’s (1996) finding that adolescent girls, especially working-class girls, don’t have a strong sense that they control their own bodies. While some girls, such as Shawna, were able to assert subjectivity and deny the primacy of boys’ desire … not all girls felt entitled to or expressed alternative definitions of gender. … Cathy’s affectively flat response to my question revealed that she simply didn’t have access to or couldn’t express her own bodily needs, desires, and rights.P. 99.
“[I hate] When mixed girls date white guys! Mixed girls are for me!” Shawna attempted to interrupt his rant, saying, “What if the girl doesn’t want to date you? Girls have a say too.” Darnell responded, not in as much jest as one might hope, “No they don’t. White boys can date white girls, There’s plenty of ‘em. They can even date black girls. But mixed girls are for me.” Darnell’s frustration reflects a way in which racialized, gendered and sexual identities intersect. While he felt that he had a claim on “getting girls,” as a “mixed” guy he saw his options as somewhat limited. Girls and girls’ bodies were constructed as a limited resource for which he had to compete with other (white) guys.P. 96.
Pascoe calls this out for what it is: a chest-beating display of dominance that has little to do with sexual orientation or desire and everything to do with a gender performance that positions the boys in relation to other boys. The boys themselves seem to know this:
The way boys talked about heterosexual practices and orientations in their interviews reveals that their public sexuality was as much about securing masculine social position as it was about expressions of desire or emotion. David explicitly talked about this “image” problem as one of “peer pressure,” saying, “If you haven’t scored with someone, then you are not adequate to anyone else, you know?”P. 89, emphasis supplied.
The boys felt pressure to be sexually active, and to be reported to be sexually active. One boy said, “If a guy wasn’t having sex, ‘he’s no one. He’s nobody.’” P. 88. Their ostentatious displays of “heterosexuality” are designed to repudiate the spectre of the “fag” identity, a failed gender identity in the Judith Butler sense, that is a major part of what Pascoe identifies as the way gender performance among high school boys is policed. The boys’ own relationships incorporate challenges to perform in this way:
The ritual of “getting girls” played out in this homecoming skit illustrates one of the ways compulsive heterosexuality becomes part of boys’ friendships and interactional styles. “Rock” and “Jackson,” like boys at River High, jokingly challenged each other to dominate – or, in their words, to “get” a girl. In these rituals girls’ bodies functioned as a symbol of male heterosexuality and tangible evidence of repudiation of same sex desire (Butler 1999).P.93
Pascoe coins a term for this, playing off Rich’s term “compulsory heterosexuality.” Pascoe calls these displays to ward off gender policing “Compulsive Heterosexuality.”
So … how does compulsive heterosexuality relate to rape culture? I can identify several ways. As a threshold matter, much of this behavior is itself sexual assault. Just because it is short of rape doesn’t make it acceptable. Pascoe in places calls it sexual harassment; but the physically invasive acts are not just harassment. They are assault.
Next, what Pascoe describes relates to rape culture in a very direct causal way. These boys are under pressure to “get girls” or “have sex”, not for intimacy with a partner or even for self-gratification, but to meet the obligations of their peer community’s gender norms. For that purpose, girls’ autonomy is an irrelevancy or even a hindrance. One student basically admits to rape, while trying to distance himself from what he perceives as real rape:
“The majority of the girls in eighth and ninth grade were just stupid. We already knew what we were doing. They didn’t know what they were doing, you know?” When I asked him to explain this, he continued, “Like say, comin’ over to our house like past 12:00. What else do you do past 12:00? Say we had a bottle of alcohol or something. I’m not saying we forced it upon them. I’m sayin’ …” He trailed off here as he tried to explain that he didn’t need to actually rape girls, though his friends did[.]P. 88.
This account matches exactly what Lisak tells us to expect. This boy thinks real rape involves overt force, but he has a practiced technique — which he developed very early — of using isolation and alcohol to inhibit or defeat girls’ resistance to sexual conduct that they did not want. So, he’s a rapist, but he does not identify what he does as rape. (Notably, Pascoe does not, either. That may have been a choice driven by a desire to stay focused on her larger points.)
Another way that this behavior relates to rape culture is that it normalizes violent interactions where boys impose their desires on female bodies as a display of dominance. Pascoe applies this analysis:
What really undergirded all of these interactions is what some feminists call a “rape paradigm,” in which masculinity is predicated on overcoming women’s bodily desire and control. A dramatic example of this “rape paradigm” happened between classes during passing period. Walking between government and drama classes, Keith yelled, “GET RAPED! GET RAPED” as he rhythmically jabbed a girl in the crotch with his drumstick. She yelled at him to stop and tried to kick him in the crotch with her foot. He dodged and started yelling, “CROTCH! CROTCH!” Indeed, the threat of rape was what seemed to underlie many of these interactions where boys repeatedly showed in cross-gender touching that they were more physically powerful than girls.Pp. 99-100, emphasis supplied.
As Pascoe noted in the passage about Cathy, above, girls are routinely hurt and physically manipulated by boys in this environment, but often have no access to tools to stop it. They are being taught that they quite literally cannot stop a boy from doing what he wants with their bodies, while the boys are being taught that doing what they want with a girl’s body even when she says no increases their status among other boys. A clearer recipe for rape I can’t imagine.
In fact, the dynamic is so clearly one that negates girls’ autonomy that it’s a wonder our culture doesn’t teach all high school boys to rape. And yet, most don’t. Lisak’s and McWhorter’s samples show that the overwhelming majority of boys are not growing up to be rapists, and that the serial rapists are a single-digit percentage of the population. And even those are not using force. In high school, force and complaint are obviously taken very lightly; so why are those boys who do grow up to be rapists not completing the progression, and using overt physical force to rape?
Actually, I think this is where decades of “no means no” has been effective. At some point, these boys seem to understand that the use of force against girls’ bodies stops being something acceptable and becomes something they could get in trouble for. Even the rapist understood that.
I’ve argued before, in the linked posts on Lisak’s work, that rapists do what they do because it is effective. I’ve argued that it is effective because rapists can rape outside the recognized narrative of rape, and when they do so they will have ready-made defenses.
To my mind, the most powerful way in which the dynamics Pascoe recorded feeds rape culture, is also the most insidious. This behavior is the tall grass in which the predators hide. Pascoe noted that teachers never intervened to stop this behavior. p. 99. It was so normalized as to be part of the wallpaper. This is a culture where:
- boys’ physical abuse of girls who shut down and barely complain is normal;
- boys’ pursuit of sexual activity that girls do not want is normal;
- boys’ sense of entitlement to date women of their choice is normal;
- girls’ assertion and determined defense of bodily boundaries is not normal.
That is to say, the wallpaper of daily life is so close to what rapists actually do that it is trivially easy for them to operate without drawing suspicion. That’s what it means to have a social license to operate. This culture creates the climate in which they can do what they do without seeming aberrant.
There is a cure for this disease. The cure is an environment where girls’ bodily autonomy and agency are the norm, and invasions against it are the aberration. But to get there, we have to have a culture where girls can identify and vindicate their own desires: only subjects have autonomy, and a girl who can’t say “yes” has no space to say “no.” We have to, as a culture, want — yes, I said want — girls to know what they want, and to go about getting it; in order that they may also know what they don’t want, and understand clearly that they are entitled to reject that. And our boys — for some of us, our sons — must be made to understand that, as Shawna said in the quoted passage above, “girls have a say.” In fact, girls have an equal say, and if she’s not having fun, you have to stop.
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