Rebecca Black and Gender-Based Bullying

This is an interesting piece from Good Morning America with overnight YouTube star Rebecca Black, whose video "Friday" attracted over 20 million views in just a couple of days.

While the song is by almost all standards an incredibly stupid mix of painfully ridiculous lyrics without much musical worth, the unfortunate reality is Rebecca can actually sing, as she demonstrates on yesterday's show.

Furthermore, she's an eighth grader who now has people telling her to cut herself, develop an eating disorder to "look pretty," and in some cases, commit suicide. This is not only cyber bullying, but sexist, gender-targeted cyber bullying that relies on normalized double standards for women. A male with an equally insipid song would not have received the same kind of specifically cruel commentary.

In the long run, while I would never defend "Friday" as artistic speech, the fact of the matter is, the song is an unintended parody that reveals the music industry's ability to market anything (Rebecca even notes it's good that a person who insulted her song said it was "stuck in their head" because that's what it's "supposed to do"). I'm not sure if her low-brain lyrics and auto-tuned singing is any different than most of our radio's top 40. It's simply an exaggerated version. Why should I insult a girl whose work is, in many ways, the same as most of the other singers I dance to? Rebecca doesn't seem to be the problem here. 

My point is, if we want to find something to critique from this entire experience, maybe it should be the music industry, the economic structure of listening to music in the U.S., and whose authority and monopolized control dictates what comes up on our iPod. 

Most tragically, our complicity with attacking and viciously "slut-bashing" (a term coined by some authors to reference double-standard name-calling and bullying toward women) Rebecca as a person needs to addressed. 76 percent of the respondents to a poll issued by Good Morning America thought the comments on Rebecca weren't harsh. Apparently bulimia is the new "butt head."

An attack on an individual clearly caught up in a sudden world of negative fame is totally unproductive and misplaced, especially when it consequently reaffirms that it's okay to slap hurtful and stinging words we reserve exclusively for women.

Biology & Bodies: Sports, Gendered Thinking and "Testosterone"

Today, we had two speakers come and discuss the role of women in sports in my Intro to Women's Studies class. While the women who presented were both great at providing interesting and personal examples from which they successfully expanded to frame relevant discussions on gender roles, equality and athletic culture, I felt the dialogue was constantly limited and muffled. What was making me so frustrated? Why did I feel as though we weren't pushing ourselves to bring individual accounts of gender and sports to a challenging level?

I think a lot of my restlessness stems from the assumptions we make about scientific "fact" and biological essentialism -- concepts that prevent us from exploring or dissecting particular topics regarding men and women because we believe in pure, fundamental differences that are rooted in things like, ah that's right, fucking "testosterone." The virtually undisputed "evidence" of "masculinity".....I like quotes....

So yeah, let's talk about testosterone, because that word was repeatedly used in class today to mean some kind of male strength elusive to the average female -- as though with the hormone came a neatly-packaged set of muscles and "manpower" unmatched by any woman. We regularly come to this type of conclusion that we feel undoubtedly splits men and women.  But hormones themselves are used by the body for all kinds of processes and are not limited to the development of secondary sex characteristics, which they do, in fact, aid, but do not fully and exclusively serve.

Feminist-biologist professor at Brown University, Ann Fausto-Stelring, writes in her fabulous book Sexing the Body about the role cultural assumptions play in shaping scientific narratives: what are we studying in science? What are we not studying? How to societal frameworks circumscribe the facilitation of experiments? Science is not done in a vacuum, people....

Fausto-Sterling writes that "if hormones could not be defined as male and female by virtue of their unique presence in either a male or a female body, then how could scientists define them in a manner that would prove translatable among different research laboratories...?" She is emphasizing that this universal understanding of hormones as biological indicators of fundamental differences in men and women is much more complicated than we think, though it is constantly silenced and/or simplified in mainstream discourse.

This brings me back to the discussion today. People mentioned their own experiences, including many of the women in my class who felt they were regularly underminded, overprotected or held to a double standard as female athletes in high school: boys didn't want to hurt them and nobody wanted the girls to get hurt....

But many of these stories failed to answer burning questions, or should I say, to raise such questions: IS there in fact a known fundamental difference in men's and women's bodies that will forever be a separation of ability in athletics? One of the speakers mentioned co-ed sports on the professional level cannot happen because men and women, while equal, are different, but is that absolute truth? Do reproductive capacities extend to the baseball field as some sort of biological barrier?

Our bodies are wondrous things. They adapt to crazy environments, interact complexly with our emotions and cognitive development. They can shape and grow to fit amazing circumstances. Our culture creates our bodies as much what genes predispose them to. Who's to say that if different conditions or less limited possibilities would rule a culture, women and men wouldn't necessarily see athletic competition more egalitarian?

The assumption that women are "naturally" more fragile, less aggressive, physically weaker is assuming we can even define human nature when attempting to do so is in and of itself an act of cultural assignment based on our value systems. Humans are not pure forms of nature; we are messy, sometimes democratic, sometimes intellectually curious beings who make interesting ideas that affect the entire human system's understanding, treatment and production of bodies in different forms.


I disavow from the "women are inherently weaker" mentality. It's too limiting. You say women have always been a certain way, that football is somehow connected to levels of testosterone. I'm calling bullshit. Let's explore more. Push more.

Gendered Ears & Model UN

This past weekend, I went to a Model UN conference to represent the Minister of Education (a racist jerk of conservative and farming heritage) in the simulation of the South African State Security Council, meeting in 1980. Each session our committee went forward 2 years, making decisions that would preserve the apartheid regime. We sang national anthems, assassinated people at our own discretion; it was clearly a play in political fantasy, yet there was so much more to it than that.

Besides conflicting feelings on what it means to reenact racialized conflicts like the near-genocidal experience of Blacks in South Africa, I also let my "gendered ear" do some listening to a mostly-male group.

There were five women on my committee. Five out of fifteen. Two of the women didn't talk at all; all of the boys had something to say at least a fair amount of the time. The other women who did speak did no do so in a way that seemed as confident as most of the males. While admittedly one of the ladies spoke with masterful language and unapologetic emotion, she was the only one who did. True, this experience does not necessitate any kind of conclusion regarding gendered relations, but it's an important observation.

It reminded me of what we discussed in class when women formulate thoughts into question to be confirmed rather than facts to be understood or thoughts to be listend to carefully. The disproportionate amount of females on an intense, war-oriented crisis committee not only shows the way in which males and females circumscribe their own spectrum of political interests, but also how women might not feel compelled to speak to the same extent or as often as men, especially when they are being judged for their accuracy, employment of language and reference to law and history.

Vagina MONOlogues....who's included and who's not?

Yesterday was the first time I saw The Vagina Monologues. I had never been able to go in years past because of my commitments to Model UN, whose conferences usually fell on the same weekend.

This year, I had the privilege of attending and thought the cast did a fantastic job!

Before I went, I read a few negative reviews to gauge the level of contention among pro-sex, pro-feminist critics; many of them argued the show is monochromatic in its thematic organization -- that the discussed male characters and heterosexual moments were always portrayed negatively, the play focused too heavily on lesbianism/female-on-female sexual moments, and other assorted critiques.

While I'm not sure if IC Players amended the script at all for their own production, I would argue that the show is fairly comprehensive, albeit inevitably incapable of including all of the women (and men) (and others) whose multiple genders, races, classes, nationalities, abilities, bodies and experiences need to be discussed, too.

The monologues performed represented a diverse range of identity and character: an old lady, a black homeless woman, a British newcomer afraid of not finding her clitoris, a Bosnian refugee, a Haitian women's rights activist and yes, even a leathered-up, lesbian S & M enthusiast whose nomenclature for female moaning was both hilarious and thoughtful.

In contrast, many of the counterarguments are fair and insightful. Several feminists would prefer the show to be called the "vulva monologues" rather than "vagina monologues," arguing that the latter title commits psychic genital mutilation itself. The lack of healthy heterosexual relationships and presence of male feminists is noteworthy as well because it often limits our imaginations by assuming the only people who want to talk about these issues and embrace gender equality are women.

Still, while I do understand the extent to which the performances are less representative and self-critical as they could be, the show was still pretty damn good at providing what our culture lacks: a space for females to express sexuality.

The Vagina Monologues affirms that women, in fact, have variable and important sexual experiences, backgrounds and philosophies that should be welcomed and recognized. Sure, their employed hints at imperialism (particularly disturbing was the "female genital mutilation segment") weren't favorable, and it would have also been interesting to include contemporary feminist movements that are grossly misunderstood and manipulated in the U.S. (think grassroots organizing in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan).

In the end, the show did a good job by providing room for a dialogue and discourse on women's sexuality. It lifted up the taboo and challenged the dichotomous, culturally-assigned roles of purity and impurity that females are expected to fulfill simultaneously. For that, I give the show props.

S & M = more like S & S (sexy or sexualized?)

I've always been  honest about my love for pop music. Despite its crystal-clear origins (the corporate record industry's americanization/homogenization of what the entire world listens to via mass marketing and endless auto tuning), I can't help but get up and dance to my girls (Gaga, Ri-Ri and Ke$ha, to name a few).

But even if my guiltiest pleasure takes shape in the form of recycled style and painfully simple lyrics, one of my most crucial concerns regarding the entire culture itself is the women who become involved.

Let's take a look at Rihanna's latest video for her smash-hit "S&M" as a particularly fascinating example. In the music video itself -- a video about a song that is already implying sexual themes in its title -- Rihanna is wrapped behind a giant sheet of plastic in a white dress sprinkled with labels applied and emphasized by the mainstream media ("Barbados" and "slut" are two of many). Rihanna breaks through this elastic barrier and whips the reporters into shape, literally; she parades around in sexual clothing and plays with the press as her own S & M objects of pleasure.

This, on one hand, seems empowering. And perhaps it is. Rihanna is exposing the world to the series of unavoidable identities she receives from the paparazzi in their endless pursuit to destroy the border between private and public life, and decides to not only fight back, but to so without cultural limitations under the name of "purity." She has fun in her sexy costumes and with her provocative toys. For Rihanna and female viewers, it might seem rewarding to watch another women express and articulate these kinds of desires.

At the same time, we have to keep in mind an important question: is Rihanna being sexy or sexualized? We tend to mistake the patent objectification of women as a branch of liberation. Women aren't necessarily being sexually empowered if the male gaze dictates her actions. So, then, whose eyes are being targeted in this video?

While I can't be certain on whether the video was directly conceived by men wanting to stimulate male thoughts, I can point out that Rihanna's consumption of bananas is suggestively phallic, and her infantilizing moment as a makeup-caked, doll-like girl tied-up near the end renders the entire experience alarmingly sexualized. It's hard to claim Rihanna is declaring herself sexy when an entire cast of agents, directors, fashion/makeup artists and the pressures of fame itself all have a say in how she should pursue this video. Is that the same thing as assigning oneself the ability to be and feel sexy? I don't think so.

Julian Assange and Rape

Again, I'm not trying to avoid "original" content for this blog, but another post for one of my blogs on independent media for another course of mine is totally relevant to this blog, too. I'm sure I'll write something up this week that is directly for this site, but you might find this post interesting, too....

http://chriszivalichdmm.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/collusion-of-commitment-feminism-democracy/

Forcible Discrimination

The freshly elected Republican House majority seems to have no problem explicitly stating their agenda; just look at the names of their legislative endeavors.


In addition to a bill that aims to repeal the health care law passed last year (one that includes "job-killing" in the title), our favorite reps of red districts have further capitalized on their well orchestrated mass manipulation of American pathos rooted in class antagonism (aka the "Tea Party Movement") by bringing this gem of a bill to our attention: the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act."


The bill attempts to redefine rape, reserving federal funds exclusively for those who have experienced "forcible rape" or "incest" in the case of a minor. Limiting the definition to rape with a "forcible" prefix consequently prohibits funding abortions as a result of coercive rape -- this includes rape influenced by date rape drugs, alcohol, psychological trauma/exploitation, etc.


It is not only the ambiguity of the "forcible rape" rule that worries feminists, women's rights activists and others concerned for reproductive freedom. The bill, like the Stupak Amendment tastelessly slapped onto last year's health care bill (which states that "no funds authorized or appropriated by this Act...may be used to pay for any abortion") is a direct attack on poorer women, particularly women of color.


Banning federal funding for abortions in cases not designated "forcible" disables many working-class women from seeking a healthy abortion. It privileges those of higher socioeconomic power and directly sends the message that an abortion is usually permissible, but only if you have the money for it.


The process of terminating an unwanted pregnancy is already a difficult decision with serious implications. By putting additional pressure on women with less financial and medical resources -- an increasing number in the U.S. considering our widening inequality gap that surpasses countries like Egypt and India -- we are underscoring the inexcusable notion that women of less privileged backgrounds don't deserve the same rights as their richer (mostly whiter) female counterparts.


Many may render an abortion "murder," and refuse to pay for them via taxpayer dollars accordingly. Nevertheless denying an entire class of women the right to choose what they do with their body and for whom they will allow a baby to enter the world regardless of why they were impregnated in the first place positions these women in a challenging scenario -- one with few healthy options that shamefully trivializes their rights as American citizens.


Let's not further segregate the ability and option to choose what's best for a woman's body based on the needs of herself, her family, her partner, her friends, her mind and her spiritual and psychological state.


Sign a petition at MoveOn.org today to help join the fight against the classist, anti-woman hatred in this bill!