Gay Marriage, and Feminism, and Bears*, Oh My!

Here is why gay marriage is important for the feminist cause:

Marriage is, historically, a business transaction between a man and a woman’s father.  The woman’s father trades his daughter and a dowry, in exchange for protection for said daughter and, hopefully, a higher class status.  Multiple wives have historically been important for bolstering population within the community.  Marrying for love was essentially unheard of until the mid-20^th century in places like the United States and Europe, and more recently elsewhere in the world.  Judeo-Christian tradition called for a woman to be married off as soon as possible, with or without her consent, in order to prevent extra-marital sin (her fault) and extra-marital children (also her fault) from occurring.   And so the institution of marriage everywhere continues to essentially be an antiquated property exchange: for a caretaker for the man, for a provider for the woman, for children borne within the rules of society, and for a transaction of goods provided by both families.

That is, if the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman only.  Because if the definition of marriage relates strictly to a heterosexual pairing, there is also the weighty societal assumption that women cannot provide, men cannot caretake, and that the couple will do their duty to God and procreate.  Love has nothing to do with it; it is strictly business.  But.  If the definition changes as our society has changed and brings love into the mix, all bets are off.  A woman can marry the man she loves, rather than the man her family loves or the man who loves/wants her.  A woman can marry the woman she loves, rather than her best male friend who may or may not also be closeted.  A woman can marry the man or woman she loves, regardless of class, social distinctions, career, or want for children.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Freedom for one minority group of people spells freedom for the majority (52%) of humankind to love, to cherish, to spend her life in sickness and in health with the person she chose.  The tradition of marriage is important; the ceremony binds a couple, their families, and their friends together in a way that simply moving in together can’t do.  The legality of marriage is antiquated but very, very present in a couple’s everyday life.  If a couple has that legal document in their possession, they hold rights and benefits reserved only for family, particularly in the health sector:  for health benefits received from a job, for hospital visitation rights, for the right to decide whether a plug should be pulled, and for property and possession distribution after one of them has died. 

So yes, feminists, marriage is extremely important, and it should absolutely not be done away with.  But our society has changed; there is no population crisis and women are generally taught to marry for love, so the law should reflect this.  Who a woman chooses to marry should reflect on love and shared values, not ability to procreate or heteronormative tradition.

*Sorry j/k there are no bears. Please still like me even though I sometimes lie to you about bears.

AntiPro

I've been mulling this over in my head for weeks now, trying to think of the right words, the most sensitive phrasing, the best possible way to approach this subject. But here again, this morning on NPR, I heard it: "We are proponents of health care reform, but there is one subject that trumps all others, and that is the sanctity of life."

Sanctity of life. When the man on the radio said it he was talking about being pro-life, or anti-abortion or however you choose to describe it, but at this point I feel like it has been reduced to a propoganda buzzphrase that just serves to make its opponents sound like a-holes.

And at the risk of giving away my politics, I don't think I am an a-hole. Because I get being anti-abortion, I do. Where life begins is a belief and far be it from me to knock on anyone's beliefs. But. What confuses and frustrates me is when I hear that that it is the single most important politic in a person's repertoire. Because, if sanctity of life is truly your number one concern, shouldn't your top politic be adoption and foster care reform, or help for the homeless, or bigger budgets for rehabs and crime prevention? What about budgets for rape counseling at schools, abolition of death row, child-care and CPS reform, welfare reform, harsher penalties for dead-beat parents, or proper sex education?

Are people only important when they are half-made?

Because that doesn't seem fair to all the people who have been born and are trying to make it in our harsh, overcrowded world. And I don't think committing murder (see: Scott Roeder) is the way to show people how compassionate you are about all the unborn babies that are just as likely to become abortion doctors or homeless addicts as christian evangelists.

It is important for women to know and understand what their other options are, if for no other reason than that abortion can be extremely taxing for a woman on an emotional, physical, and spiritual level, but as it stands there aren't many because the money and support simply are not there.

So when people say shutting down abortion clinics is their number one concern, I can't help but feel frustrated and helpless, and like we are only pulling an unsightly band aid off a broken leg with no intention of resetting the bone.

Grisly Girl Power, or How I Became a Fan of Lady Gaga

So Lady Gaga's newest video, "Paparazzi," has been leaked.

The eight minute mini-movie opens with an easily too-long make out scene between the Lady and Alexander Skarskard, which quickly turns into a dangerous shoving match on the balcony as he tries to force her into a prime photographing position for the hidden pap. She falls to the cement below and the song begins as she is wheeled onto the red carpet with jeweled neckbrace and crutches in tow. The rest of the video is awash with a grotesquely fascinating mix of hyper sexual glitz and stylized, macabre flashes of young women splayed out in what one must assume are fame-related deaths, ending in Lady Gaga's casual murder of Alexander

Skarskard. As she is carried away in handcuffs, newspapers with headlines like "She's Back!!!" and "We Love Her Again!" fall around her, and the mini-movie ends with her mugging for the police camera.

For someone who is widely regarded as a pop-princess, I'd say that's pretty heavy. And it works.

What fascinates me about Lady Gaga is her armor. As a casual observer, I have never once seen her eyes unmasked by thick bangs, layers of eyeshadow, and false eyelashes. And though, as one YouTube observer so eloquently put it, "does lady gaga beleive in pants cuaes in every music vid shes wairing a bathing suit," she only ever shows her hips, butt, and thighs, which are provocative but at this point in music video history not at all intimate. Every emotional, telling part of her body (ie shoulders, collarbone, neck, face) is almost always covered by several layers or exaggerated fashion features, most famously those face-covering sunglasses or wing-like shoulder padding.

Her most sexual features are often prominently displayed, especially in this video, but in a "look, don't touch" kind of way. At least half of her dancers are male, and yet she never dances with them in a way that makes her the subservient or weaker partner. She is always dominant;

she is always in control. This is what makes the beginning of the mini-movie so frightening, as she lets down her guard to be with this guy and her cue to begin panicking is when he pushes her onto the balcony ledge and asks her, "Do you trust me?"

The flashes of the bodies of the dead girls are set against the main chorus, "I'm your biggest fan/I'll follow you until you love me/papa, paparazzi," giving the whole video a creepy, unsettling vibe. Necessary, though, to get her point across.

Lady Gaga clearly owns herself, her body, and her art. She is over the top and caricatured, but in this she gives herself the freedom to express herself and be seen in the way she chooses to, not the way the pap, or anyone else, might paint her.

Torture Porn

That title has a certain draw to it, don't you think? It's been on my mind lately - and not in the fun "Oh boy, oh boy" kind of way.

 A few days ago, I had the opportunity to see a play titled Not Such Stuff - written by Chris Wind, produced by Venus Theater, and costume designed by fellow gentleman Brittany Graham. Brittany did an exceptional job designing a fitting costume for each character (an all-female cast), my favorite being Kate's (which complimented the actress and the character very well). The play itself was decent, a little ham-fisted, but well performed all around. The script seems very unfinished, a little unbalanced (Cordelia's part was a bit of a stretch, but appropriate when looked at as simply raising a question), and it read a lot like a term paper. A lot, a lot. But, its heart is very much in the right place - exploring themes into heavy feminism still relevant today in the modern world. The play takes classic female characters from Shakespeare, puts them directly in the spot light, and affords them a voice to speak out. By doing so, Wind explores male fantasy, objectification, token resistance, the classic double-standard, victim blaming, entitlement, and other impositions that have been placed on not just female characters, but on women since the hunter/gatherer days. A quick look might make it appear "anti-male," but a long, hard one reveals a fervent reaction to hundreds of years of masculine imposition on femininity (which is different from feminism) and affords ample relativity to the present day. And, right now, I'm taking a cold, hard look - fire-eyed - at the horror industry. And I do so while stroking my man-beard.

The skew of Hollywood horror has progressed past simple schadenfreude, cathartic reaction, and inventive methods of simulating entertaining violence, and devolved into torture-porn. Movies like Saw (a movie named for the fact that, in order to attempt a proper escape, the main character has to cut his foot off with a rusty saw) and Eli Roth's Hostel (famed for a gruesome scene where, as a brand of torture, an eyeball is extracted and severed while the victim is awake) capitalize on this continuing trend. Normally, I don't object to gore or violence in movies - I've always felt that it's never about what's used, but how it's conveyed to the audience. And, the current trend has turned to a horribly misogynistic conveyance. It's called torture "porn" not just because there may be gratuitous sex involved, but because it conveys violence in a sexual manner by presenting a dominated party (typically attractive, female, usually white, and often blonde) and, literally, orchestrating scenes so that torture is dolled out and screams are uttered in the framing of someone forcing an orgasm (an obvious logical fallacy). Consider the social repercussions in a concept where a woman is violently subjugated in a forced, erotic fashion, presented to a crowd of people who are supposed to think the experience pleasurable because, well, it's not happening to them. The marketing ploy for the film Hostel II epitomizes the concept by presenting women-to-be-tortured as desired (we'll avoid a rant about the many things wrong with how the highest priced "item" on the menu features American women, making them the  most "desirable" to see in this fashion).

Continuing on, I read a blog post a while ago written by Buffy/Angel creator Joss Whedon discussing the Death of D'ua Khalil titled "Let's Watch a Girl Get Beaten to Death" If there's a reason why I'm such a fan of the man, here it is. I've been a Buffy fan since middle-school and, I admit, I am a bit of a "Whedonphile". I acknowledge that he's just a man and that there will be, one day, more "Whedons" to grace the small and silver-screen alike (perhaps one is chosen every generation or so). This one's just our Whedon. And I think that we would see very eye-to-eye on a lot of issues that I don't necessarily see with many of my male friends. If you've ever wanted a fairly accurate take of my perspective on, well, the world click above (although, I'm not sure if "womb envy" quite explains things completely). For those who opt for naught, to the point: it's a disheartening tale of a woman "honor" killed by being kicked and stoned by a group of men, made exponentially worse by the fact that it made itself around the globe, not for awareness or alarm, but because it was something people just wanted to see. The equivalent of a joke e-mail. Seriously, it's depressing - and it proves that this inappropriate kink is not just present in one culture, but nearly all that use technology. Yay.

How does this relate to torture porn? If Joss's example, using Elisha Cuthbert's recent foray into horror movies, does anything, it outlines the striking similarity between what happened to Ms. Khalil and what Hollywood's been crapping out for the past few years. This goes beyond films with poor story-telling, dependent on cheap thrills and gore factor. When Saw V has made $56,729,973 at the box office (noting, of course, many of these people refuse to admit that they watch it - doesn't that sound like porn to you?) we're looking at a symptom of a social disease. I'm waiting for popular horror to return to its glory form (i.e. For awesome storytelling: The Orphanage, For violence used appropriately with some sweet story: The Signal). I know that doesn't mean things will be fixed - for that I have no delusions (being an open feminist will do that). But, it'll definitely be a step forward in the right direction (or at least help me feel like the flames are dying down).

PS - I talk a little more about this on my private blog here. It's a place to explore my creative writing impulses. Click and look around. Let me know what you think.