The Guy's Guide to Feminism

I Love When Marketing Practicality Lines Up with Busting Up Sexist Social Mores

2010-08-29T11:25:00.002-05:00

We Have to Be Idealists

2010-08-21T13:05:00.000-05:00

Cary Tennis Advises a Women in an Abusive Marriage

2010-08-01T20:23:00.003-05:00

In his latest column, Cary Tennis advises a woman in an abusive marriage. His advice touches on themes of the history of women's subjugation to men, male privilege, and the connection between fear and anger. It's a candid and fresh perspective on these topics that doesn't rely on Public Service Announcement speak to make a point, nor is his point as one-sided as PSAs.

I read this and, though I think about these issues often, learned something new and was reminded of the sort of nuance that can be lost in considering these clearly-wrong topics. Just because we take a singular stand against domestic violence doesn't mean domestic violence is singular in meaning. Tennis' response reminded me of that today.

Jane Austen's Fight Club

2010-07-31T23:08:00.002-05:00

I always loved Jane Austen. Now I love her even more. Good Society can piss off.

Another Awesome Quote on Being an Example

2010-07-26T15:49:00.002-05:00

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

-Marianne Williamson's A Return to Love

PS - Thanks for the correction, A

Kissinger on the Battle of the Sexes

2010-07-22T19:20:00.001-05:00

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

-Henry Kissinger

Why Rape-aXe Bites

2010-06-28T14:14:00.003-05:00

So by now you may have heard of Rape-aXe, which is basically a female condom with piercing hooks in it removable "only by doctors" who, it is assumed, will automatically turn in to police all patients bearing them.

So, an "anti rape" device that literally requires me to be raped in order to exact physical punishment on a rapist? Gee thanks, Ms. Ehlers, I feel "empowered" now.

Of course, this device doesn't guarantee justice, like its inventor suggests. That would assume that:

1- Said rapist actually went to a doctor to have it removed,
2- Said doctor actually reported him, and
3- Said justice system actually arrests, tries, convicts, and properly sentences said rapist.

And we all know that this, in theory, should happen everywhere. But we also know how rarely, in practice, it actually does.

On a related note, it's always extra disappointing when fellow women perpetuate rape culture by putting the onus to prevent rape on the victims.

Best Safeword Ever

2010-06-01T21:01:00.005-05:00

To top off our discussion of safewords, we want to know: what's the best safeword you've ever heard?

Other than the old standbys like "safeword" and the stop-light series (i.e., red, yellow, green), give us your Best. Safeword. Ever.

Leave 'em in the comments.

Safewords for Trigger Management and More

2010-05-30T11:29:00.017-05:00

Below, Courtny introduced us to safewords and how they are traditionally used in BDSM and sexual situations. Here, I am going to expand the repertoire for safewords beyond their usual scene. Safeword use can be extended to non-sexual situations. Below, I give you the lay of the non-sexual safeword land.

Safewords for Trigger Management

Triggers are things that set off chains of reactions, feelings from, or memories of, often, traumatic or difficult events or experiences.

Trauma Triggers

Safewords can easily be used for managing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other trauma-related triggers. When a situation, particularly a social situation, starts feeling too much like your traumatic event or if someone makes a triggering remark (I've beared witness to a conversation at another table at a restaurant about how "sexy" rapists are), you can use a safeword to discretely signal to your friends or partner (whoever you choose) that you need to leave (or cope in whatever way you need, but for the purposes of this post and to keep it simple, I'm going to continue to use leaving as the post-trigger action.)

Use the comments section to suggest other applications for safeword use. And remember: they only work if both partners respect their use.

Using a safeword here is more effective than just saying, "Let's go" all of a sudden because the safeword you choose and share with your partner automatically tells your friend why you need to leave and cues the appropriate response on their part so they can be supportive. This way you don't say, "Let's go," and get the response of, "Why? I'm having a good time, aren't you? Why, what happened?" and have to go into an explanation (possibly in public) that you may not want to get into or share with other people in earshot. Doing this makes it so that you can cope on your own time without having to announce your issues to the whole room. This is true of all the non-sexual uses of safewords I'm discussing here.

Drug Triggers

The same use of safewords can be applied to triggers related to drug use. Many people trying to stay away from drugs are triggered not just by the sight of drug use and/or paraphernalia, but sometimes, as is the case with recovering crack addicts, just hearing the word 'crack' can trigger thoughts about drug use and provoke thoughts and behaviors they worked so hard to change. Using a safeword in situations (like going to a party and needing to leave when someone shows up with drugs) makes it so that you can discretely streamline your support system and perhaps arrange to not be alone until you feel calm and stable enough to avoid a potential relapse. (Again, without having to announce your issues to everyone around.)

Would-be Drunk Drivers

I've seen safewords effectively used to prevent drunk party-goers from trying to drive home. The host of the party (who also was the holder of the keys) had a drunk friend start to freak out when he refused to hand him the keys to drive home. Previously, the host had agreed with a sober friend that if this happened (and this drunk friend had a habit of getting wasted and trying to drive home), he would simply say, "Call Matt," so Matt would instantly know what the deal was and that he should intervene and distract the drunk friend until other arrangements could be made to get him home or until he sobered up. (Another great idea that this host came up with was having a Breathalyzer around (thanks to another drunk friend who had been arrested so many times for DUIs that he had to get one) and requiring people to pass the legal blood-alcohol reading in order to safely drive home. This was the most accurate way to gauge whether a person's able to drive and it's impersonal enough and backed by the law for most people not to take it personally.) The only thing worse than sending a drunk friend to drive him- or herself home is a drunk friend who gets all riled up because everyone is in their face about not driving home.

Medical Disorders

Safewords have been used effectively at work for people with seizure disorders. (However, safewords are really only effective for people with seizure disorders who get auras before their seizures.) When you notice your aura you can use a safeword to discretely let a trusted colleague or supervisor know that you need to lay down for a while. This could be a good way to manage a seizure disorder at work (or wherever) without sharing your disorder with the whole office.

Safewords can also be used by people who use wheelchairs who need assistance getting to the bathroom. Perhaps you're disinclined to announce to the person who helps you out with these things that you need to take a piss while in a social situation. In such a case, a safeword could tip off your helper and avoid potential awkwardness or embarrassment.

Anger Management

Psychiatrists have effectively used safewords to tip people with anger management problems off that they are losing control. For one psychiatrist, the word 'cut' was used to signal to their client that s/he has gone over the line and needs to step out of the room and take a few minutes to calm down before re-entering.

Of course the safeword in the above situation was used by a trained professional in a therapeutic situation. It would be an abuse of both the person and the safeword itself to use it to just cut someone off when they're trying to share something unpleasant but not out of line.

Guest Blogger: Safewords: When “No” Means “Yes” and “Banana” Means “Get the Fuck Off Me”

2010-05-29T14:07:00.011-05:00

In the glow of the TV, she slides silky black stockings up her legs. He strips off a work shirt and khakis, revealing red tighty-whitey boxers. As they talk about their kids, he pulls on a pair of ass-less chaps, and she takes off her purple bathrobe to reveal a tightly laced black corset. He buckles on spiky wristbands as she pulls on thigh-high black boots. As he zips a black leather hood on, she leans in and says, “The safeword is banana.” “I love you,” he replies tenderly, and she punches him in the face.

Considering that the sequence I described above happened on a prime time cartoon, it’s not going out on a limb to say that safewords have become fairly mainstream.

To clarify for those who've never seen Family Guy or CSI, a safeword is a pre-arranged code word, phrase, or gesture that will allow you and your partners to communicate what you are really feeling without stating it explicitly. They can be useful in many different contexts— when you’re not sure whether a sexy stranger’s ‘no’ really means ‘yes’, if your partner wants to try spanking for the first time, or even manage triggers.

How to Choose a Safeword:

It depends on what you’re doing and what you want to achieve. If something sexy is happening with power dynamics, it’s better to negotiate sooner rather than later. First off, a safeword doesn’t always have to be something silly that will break the mood of whatever you’re doing. Say you and your girlfriend want to wrestle to see who will be on top during a make-out session. Rather than screaming “purple alligator” when she gets you in a headlock, you could use the traffic light system: red for ‘stop everything’ and yellow for ‘ease up’ or ‘stop the action’. The most important thing about choosing your safeword is to make sure that it’s something you’ll remember if you or your partner is freaking out.

When to Use a Safeword:

Tomorrow, Guide Editor Marie Chesaniuk will put up a post about using safewords in non-sexual situations. However, safewords were originally developed by the BDSM community to be used in a variety of sexual situations. Agreeing to use a safeword together, and both respecting that safeword, is an excellent way to build trust--no matter what you're doing. But what’s a good time to use one?

Say you and a hook-up are fooling around. You think your partner wants to say no to you holding them down and having your way with them, but really mean yes. How do you go about making sure that you don’t force your partner into anything they don’t really want to do?

If either of you is drunk, use your moral compass and don’t play those games.

If you’re both sober(ish) but you still get the feeling that a lot of explicit negotiation will kill the mood, still be sure to establish a safeword. It should be something easy for you both to remember, even if you're scared or nervous. The first and easiest safeword to remember is “safeword” itself.

It’s up to each of you to know your own limits and be able to discuss them if necessary. Safewords are also great to use when you’re not sure of your limits ahead of time: use them in the moment when you’re exploring new things if you need to ease up for a bit. Take responsibility for yourself: if you’re getting freaked out, use the safeword.

Once a Safeword Has Been Used (Respecting Safewords):

If either of you uses a safeword, how do you deal with that? Most importantly, do not criticize your partner for using the safeword. Be polite, back off, and ask them what they need from you. Find out why they used the safeword, if you don't know. If it was an ‘ease up’ safeword and you’re not sure what was too intense, ask them. If it was a ‘stop everything’ safeword, stop everything, do a check-in, and ask them what direction they want things to go. This means genuinely asking them what they want, not trying to coerce them into to doing what you want.

Using safewords is a great way to help cut out explicit negotiation if you and your partner find that to be a turn-off. They're also useful for partners who enjoy being playful, pushing each others' limits, and creating power dynamics. Lastly, many of the games that we play in the dating world may involve people, often women, playing coy or hard to get. By establishing a safeword, both you and your partner know exactly where the line is.

Madonna, Glee and Critical Thinking

2010-05-08T18:13:00.009-05:00

A big reason a lot of what I talk about here on the Guide involves elements of pop culture is that, as I may have said before, pop culture is far and away the dominant formative paradigm for most Americans under the age of, say, thirty-five. For both the Gen-Yers (me and my friends) and the children of the Gen-Xers, who are now reaching adolescence, popular movies, TV, pop fiction and, most fervently, the internet, which aggregates and ties it all together, effect a level of seminal influence that—again, this is my opinion—outshines ‘traditional’ institutions like school, church and even the family dynamic.

Yes, yes, this is a generalization. Not every person I or you know is a walking-talking cultural compendium. I’m not talking about day-to-day pop culture references. You know, the ‘we’re brainwashed by corporations into feeling a specific kind of emptiness that can only be filled by certain consumer products’ angle. That’s tired, and it’s just not that true. I’m not talking about that, ever.

Early in the life of this blog, I wrote about Sarah Connor and feminist iconicity in action films with strong female leads. What I like most about that piece—and the method of argument in it—is its insistence on critical thinking. Now, before you start the eye rolling, please indulge me by stripping ‘critical thinking’ of its pretentious subtext and take it as a simple descriptive term. I’m not putting anything on a pedestal here. I want to compare the critical thinking done in the Sarah Connor piece against the feminist didacticism oozing throughout in the now famous “The Power of Madonna” episode of Glee that aired last month.*

Glee’s writers have, during the show’s first season, made a habit of tackling a variety of issues facing American teens, pregnancy, divorce, ostracism, homosexuality, etc. So it’s really not all that surprising that the show decided to discuss feminism. Like most forward-thinking viewers, I will admit that it was—at first—nice to hear these choice sound bites on one of today’s most popular hour-long network dramas:

Tina: “We just have to accept that guys don’t like our feelings.”

Quinn: “The fact is a woman earns 70 cents to every dollar a man earns for doing the same job. That attitude starts in high school.”

Will: “What this is really about is teenage girls feeling like they have no power.”

Tina: “And my growing feminism will cut you in half like a righteous blade of equality.”

Nearly thirteen million viewers watched this episode. That’s a hell of a lot of people exposed to progressive feminist language and sentiment. Misogynist, insensitive, objectification, equality—all of these dropped at one point or another, all in the name of empowering young adult women. And the episode was soundtrack’d and inspired by the music of the most popular American feminist icon of the last quarter century, Madonna (sorry, Oprah). There’s really no downside to this, right?

This is where things get tough—this where the whole act of critical thinking becomes vital.

A large portion of Glee’s audience consists of young children and teens. Even in the media, buzzword saturated world we live in, I think it’s safe to assume that “The Power of Madonna” episode was the first time many young females and males heard the word feminism. I’m not implying that this was the first time these young viewers had experienced instances of gender inequality—I know young girls feel the pangs of gender inequality as early as the pre-school playground—but rather that this was the first time these kids heard and understood feminism in a kind of institutionalized sense. Feminism means X (“because that’s what they said on Glee”).

Pop culture is instructive in this way; it always has been. Here, one of the most popular forms of American teenage entertainment introduces and teaches its viewers—and I’ll put all viewers in this pot now, not just the young ones—about the vital and important topic of feminism. If I stop right there, nothing appears wrong. In fact, Glee seems almost noble, like it assumed a great responsibility to make a positive influence on its young audience.

But it’s wrong to stop there. Why? Because there is absolutely no critical thinking involved. Feminism, like all issues that really matter, cannot simply be absorbed. This is not a soapbox statement, this is a fact that too often gets forgotten because of the effectiveness of popular forms of entertainment and reference: TV shows, cable news, Wikipedia, etc. There is a value to all of these forms of media, one of which is ease. The answer is always there for a person to absorb in an almost instantaneous fashion. Consumption and absorption, though, are not the same thing as thinking. The first two are easy, passive; the latter is hard. Feminism is hard.

So what comes next when thinking of “The Power of Madonna”’s depiction of feminism? One simple question, really: In the episode, what is the version of feminism defined by the writers of Glee used in the service of? For the sake of length, I’ll refrain from a full analysis of the episode. Suffice it to say, the one thing feminism does not serve in the episode is credible character development. Feminism is introduced conceptually to the show’s characters and is reduced to sound bites like those mentioned above. And while sound bites can be seductive, they’re empty without a meaningful context. The concept of feminism does not change the show’s characters in any meaningful way. Feminist sentiment directs them to say certain things and act certain ways at various points during the episode, but, again, it in no way changes them. Bluntly put, feminism is a mere plot device used to forward the action, nothing more.

The cynical part of me would go farther and say that feminism in Glee works purely in the service of selling iTunes singles and copies of Madonna’s Celebration record. But even if that is true, I’m not going to damn Glee for doing so. After all, it is not Glee’s—or pop culture’s—responsibility to teach its audience about vital social issues. It is the audience that endows pop culture with this responsibility. In other words, it’s the audience that allows passive consumption to overtake active thinking.

In my Sarah Connor piece, I took a film character that I always admired and asked myself, simply, why is Sarah so goddamn awesome? Why do I think of her when I envision a power feminist icon? And I thought, rigorously and critically, and formed an answer.

This isn’t about patting myself on the back. This is about a method. Am I’m happy that more young people know about the word feminism now than did before “The Power of Madonna” aired? Yes and no—mostly no. I’ll be happy when these same young people begin asking questions about the gender inequities around them and think themselves to an answer.

*Let me go on record by saying that Glee has kind of lost me. I still watch each new episode, but my enthusiasm for the show is gone and, honestly, Glee is just really bad now. This of course is a discussion for another day, but given that I wrote pretty glowingly about the show on this blog last fall, I feel it best to make my current feelings clear.

Guest Blogger: Safecalls

2010-04-24T22:43:00.006-05:00

Trigger Warning

I sat in silence at the LGBTQ Center, hands sweating, and listened to a woman named Tami tell her story of survival. Unfortunately, thanks to the rape culture we live in, these stories are far too common--though both the circumstances and the aftermath of this particular woman's rape are highly unusual. The purpose of this article is not to suggest that rape, like a hurricane, is more likely to affect those who live in disaster-prone communities and don't put up shutters--or to imply that it's your job to prevent someone from raping you. Like a self defense class, this article will give you another tool in your arsenal for protecting yourself by explaining what a safecall is, why safecalls are important for the mainstream dating community, and how safecalls can potentially help you detect red flags when interacting with someone.

Several years ago, a man who identified himself as a Dominant raped a woman who identified as a consensual "slave"; they met at a hotel after several months of online and phone conversation. Rather than enact the Dominant/submissive scene they had planned, this man put something in the woman's drink, moved her to an unknown location, tied her up, and beat her so thoroughly that she became convinced that she was not going to get out of his basement alive. She was able to escape after over 24 hours only because the man passed out from drinking, and she was able to slip out of the restraints because they were slick with her own blood. Despite the trauma, this woman, who calls herself Slave Tami, went on to win the Pantheon of Leather “Community Choice Leather Woman 2009” award for her work founding and maintaining the National Safecall Network, a BDSM community service that puts people in touch with pre-vetted "safecall" volunteers. Tami now speaks around the world promoting the NCSN and healthy relationships within the BDSM community.

Safecalls: A Definition

A safecall is an arrangement that you make to check in with a trustworthy person when you're meeting with an acquaintance or someone new with whom you haven't yet developed trust. Your trustworthy person should know where you're going to be (specific addresses), who you're going to be with (real names), and what time(s) you will be checking in. If you don't check in, they'll assume something has gone wrong and will contact the local authorities. While the concept of safecalling has become popular in the BDSM community, in no small part thanks to the efforts of Slave Tami and community educators, I believe that safecalling is just as important for the LGBTQ and straight dating worlds. Predators do not just target kinky people any more than muggers only pick on old ladies. While kinky people, especially submissives or consensual slaves, may seem like a more vulnerable target due to social stigma or predators’ preconceived notions about ‘natural dominance’ and the proper place of women, predators target people who they think they can get away with raping. The system for safecalling is flawed because the justice system is flawed (thanks to various iterations of classism, racism, sexism, and transphobia, people may not get the help they need from the police)--but right now, it's what we have.

The Silent Alarm

There are several ways that a safecall can be executed. If you want to use a "silent alarm", you can set up a code phrase beforehand that will get your person to contact the authorities. For example, you could agree beforehand that "can you please feed the cat" means "'I'm seriously afraid for my safety" and that "yeah, I picked up your mail" means "all clear". This is the most subtle and least confrontational way to use safecalling. The benefits are that your date doesn't know that the safecall is in place, so zie can't try to circumvent it if zie does turn out to be a predator. However, with a silent alarm, you also lose the element of potential deterrence that a safecall can provide.

Safecall as Deterrence

One way to use safecalling to actively deter predators is simply to tell your date that you have a safecall, and that if you don't take (or make) a phone call at a prescribed time during or after the date, the police will be summoned. Also, make sure to mention that your friend is waiting to hear that you got home safely after you leave the date. While this may seem like the most major buzz kill on earth, it's something that can be explained through email before your date--and anyone who cares more about your personal safety than their own feelings will understand that. This type of safecall is a good litmus test to see whether your date is actively on your side--a considerate (or halfway intelligent) date will remind you to make (or take) your safecalls. It also creates a sense of dual accountability: you both have to make sure someone's phone is charged, make sure you're not too drunk to make the call, and keep track of the time on the date—and you may even bond over the shared task. Lastly, anyone who you don't know very well or trust very much who protests against the idea of you keeping yourself safe is raising a big, shiny red flag.

So how do you implement a safecall in the mainstream dating community? If you have a friend that you feel comfortable asking, you can have them be your safecall. If you have an iPhone or use Facebook, you can use Plerts to let a trusted friend know what you're up to. If you feel comfortable using the National Safecall Network's contacts (entirely grassroots and prescreened only by local BDSM and Sex Ed groups) you can do so. However, there are surprisingly few resources for safecalling: there's a real need for a hotline or text service connected to a database where you can sign up for safecalling services. In the meantime, use your friends, use your family members, use the NSN, and if you can, be a nonjudgmental safecall resource to your friends, too. Making safecalls a regular practice in mainstream dating is another way that we can come together to support each other--and work to expose the small percentage of predators who perpetuate most rapes.

Guest Blogger: In Response to 'Learning to Negotiate'

2010-04-05T21:48:00.005-05:00

In my previous post for the Guide, I laid out some basic guidelines for beginning negotiation on a date. A fellow friend, artist, and poet, Darryl Ratcliffe, wrote a response which made me realize that I had left out one of the most important aspects of negotiation: emotional well being.

First, a disclaimer: Darryl and I have been artistically and emotionally dancing (with occasional stumbles) for eight years now. He’s a highly insightful poet, writer, and activist—Guide readers should also check out his powerful piece about living in rape culture.

In his response to my piece, Darryl writes:

“Now that has been said - although it is always important to communicate with our potential sexual partners, it is even more important to communicate with ourselves. How we negotiate a physical interaction is far less important than how we negotiate our own emotions.”

And he’s absolutely right. Dating takes a certain modicum of self-knowledge, and you need to know what your own limits are—and what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a long term partnership and the hottie you took home is only looking for a one night stand, the only way you’ll know that is to discuss your desires honestly. And if someone is dishonest and ‘plays’ you—well, they’re probably not someone you want to see again anyway. If you don’t think you can handle a hook-up emotionally, then don’t hook up. If you learn it the hard way, then don’t repeat your mistake. The way that you can know whether or not your partner just wants to hook up is by negotiating—and by setting limits as to how physical or emotional you’ll get, depending on what you want.

Negotiation isn’t just a strategy for first dates or hook-ups. It’s a way to facilitate your interactions with romantic partners in a mature, calm way—whether they’re someone you just want to make out with for an evening or they’re your potential life partner. The unspoken script that I spoke about for first dates can also become one in marriages or long term partnerships. Once you fall into a routine with a lover, negotiation can be a way to grow as lovers and try new things. Ultimately, negotiation is a way of creating or re-sparking connections in a consensual, respectful, and joyous way.

Guest Blogger: Learning to Negotiate

2010-03-21T10:34:00.006-05:00

From Marie Claire's “A Year of Living Flirtatiously” blogger Maura Kelly (“Dudes! 5 Tips for How You Can Become Better Kissers,” Jan. 8, 2010):

Start by moving one hand up to the back of her neck--keeping the other hand either at mid-back or on the lower back," he says. "Then you can tilt her head back a little, which is both hot and calming. Then slowly slide your fingers up the nape, along her head, spreading your fingers out. Then slowly close your fingers into a soft fist, making sure you have a broad grip of her hair. She will feel a tightening, but it won't be painful, the way it would be if you grabbed a small section of hair." He adds that not all women like to have their hair pulled--and if you are sensing that she's uncomfortable with what you're doing, don't force it. (You might even ask if she likes it).

While few people take magazine dating tips seriously, this Marie Claire article demonstrates a phenomenon that’s widespread: asking if your date likes something is often considered an afterthought, if you ask at all. In the mainstream dating world, negotiation is often non-verbal and based on a mutually shared set of assumptions about what romance and sex include: kissing, touching, fondling, cuddling, oral, PIV (penis-in-vagina penetration), anal sex, etc. These assumptions may often be valid, but each person has their own ways of expressing their sexuality, and there is no way to truly know what a person wants unless you have an honest conversation. This step is often skipped due to nerves, shyness, fear of ‘breaking the mood’, or tipsiness when people use alcohol as a social lubricant—or to overcome their own (or their date’s) inhibitions.

The BDSM subculture developed the idea of negotiating in order to allow people to do what they want in a safe, sane, and consensual way. In BDSM, before anyone touches another person, players talk about what will happen to whom, who will be involved, and what the safe-word will be in case anyone wants to stop. Play can be physically and emotionally dangerous: if you’re going to beat someone with a riding crop, verbally humiliate them, stick needles in them, or otherwise do new and exciting things together, then you both need to know what each others’ desires and limits are. Just because someone gets off on being called a ‘dirty little slut’ doesn’t mean they’ll like it if you suddenly use flash cotton to set them on fire.

In mainstream dating, there seems to be an unwritten, unarticulated script with a codified order of operations, much like high school algebra. In its crudest form, you can break it down in to a baseball metaphor—first base involves kissing, second base, feeling up & fingering, third, some sort of oral sex, and fourth, usually a variation of penetrative sex. Rather than assume that this is how things will progress on a date (even if that’s what you want), it’s important to check in with your partner(s) to make sure they’re on the same page. As exciting as fumbling in the dark can be, the grim reality is that we live in a culture where rape and sexual assault are normalized, where women are regularly told that they’re damned if they do have sex and prude if they don’t, and where men are told that they should be up for it all the time, every time.

There’s a lot of pressure on people regardless of sexual orientation or gender. One way to dodge these bullets is to swap the old script for a page from the BDSM playbook. By making negotiation a natural, sexy part of mainstream dating, we can avoid misunderstandings, dodge the wordless awkwardness of ‘should I take off hir pants’, and ultimately create a more progressive way of hooking up and fooling around. By introducing negotiation into our own sex lives, I believe that we can create a socially acceptable way for people to talk about their sexual desires and expectations, negotiate safer sex (for example, condom and dental dam use), and prevent drunken hook-ups that may have negative emotional or physical consequences. In the Marie Claire column, each move depends on how your partner reacts to your actions—it takes a certain level of empathy, self-awareness, and responsiveness to your partner to make the hair pull sexy (unless it happens to be an immediate turn-on for that particular person). As a new partner, you don’t know your date’s comfort level, sexual history, or what gets them going. If both of you are jiving on a non-verbal level, more power to you. If both of you want to follow whatever script you’re writing together, that’s great. But if you’re not sure what you want, or what they want, then negotiation is a tried and true way to build trust, amp up chemistry, and determine what you both actually want. Ultimately, keeping things fun, safe, and sizzling for everyone involved is our goal—no matter what the method.

So how do you actually negotiate in a sexy way? Start by being prepared. On the physical side, that means having safer sex supplies, a movie to watch, or whatever you think you might need to make the evening go smoothly. On the mental side, that means thinking about what you want to do, what you’d be open to doing, and where your hard limits are. If your date agrees to come home with you for some alone time, that’s an appropriate time to start flirting, gauge their interest, and possibly make a move. “I really like watching sci-fi,” I might say, “And the only thing that could make Firefly better is some hot cocoa and cute company.”

After watching an episode or two and gauging their interest, you could say, “I think you’re a really cool person, and I’d love if we did X, Y, and Z together tonight. What about you; what are you interested in?” In these two sentences, you compliment your date and reiterate your interest, tell them what you want, and ask them as an equal what they enjoy. Both of you should step up to the plate and talk about what you want—and make sure that you listen to what the other person wants, too. Rather than cold and clinical descriptions, good negotiations become a way to talk dirty, seduce your partner(s), and increase desire and anticipation.

On my Firefly date, I might say, “Being with you is such a rush. I’d love it if we lay in bed together and kissed all night. Would you be into that?” And depending on what we both wanted, we’d keep talking, maybe make out, and enjoying each others’ company. The most important words you can use are, “Tell me what you’d like to do together”. There is nothing sexier than having a hot date tell you how much they’d like to caress your face while you go down on them, or push them up against a wall and kiss them, or make love while listening to their favorite song (unless it’s a song you don’t like—but then, you’ll know beforehand). If you don’t want to do something, you can simply say, “I’m not really into that. How about we listen to Portishead instead of Savage Garden?” You can also tell your partner what you’d want or need in order to do something. “I’d love for you to go down on me,” I might say to my theoretical Firefly date, “but first you need to learn how I like to be kissed.”

Negotiation doesn’t mean breaking the mood. It means that you don’t assume you know what the other person wants—you ask. It means that you speak up about your own desires and encourage your partner to speak up about theirs, and listen to what they say. It means that if you have common ground, you agree what you want to do, and how. And it means that if your desires are different, you accept the other person’s answers with grace and don’t pressure them to come around to your point of view. Start slow and simple: “I think you’re really cute, and I want us both to have fun. Let’s talk.”

Introducing Our First Guest Blogger!

2010-03-17T20:10:00.012-05:00

So, after a month of dead air, we've decided to return with something special: our first guest blogger.

As an anti-violence blog, we've decided to bring in C's unique perspective on the matter: an anti-violence and sex educator speaking from her vantage point at the intersection of real and theatrical violence. As Florida state's red-belt sparring champion and a competitor in the Junior Olympics in Tae Kwon Do at 16-17. But, when she turned 18, the point at which sparring moves to knock-out rounds, the line between sport and actual violence became too blurry for her comfort. She began thinking about the issues of harm and sanity (the state of mind in which one consents to these acts) and ultimately decided not to continue competing.

Later, she was introduced to the concept of safe, sane, and consensual (SSC) play through sex-ed training, specifically BDSM education. These concepts resonated with C in light of her previous experience as a martial artist. Having an ideology that said it was actually okay to seek out thrills, to explore more dangerous ways of interacting, and do so in a disciplined and safe manner was liberating. In Tai Kwon Do, competitors enter the ring, essentially, to beat the crap out of each other--constrained, of course, by the rules of competition (you can't hit an opponent's face, can't knock them out, or cause a concussion). Years later, when learning about the rules and protocols for interaction in the BDSM scene, the structure built around entering potentially dangerous - but rewarding - activities, be they Tae Kwon Do, BDSM, or dating, seemed all too familiar and clear in a whole new way.

Currently C is a post-bacc student in Psychology at Columbia University where she has presented at Conversio Virium, Columbia's BDSM and sex education group. After spending a year co-running the Journeys of Expression art therapy program in New Orleans, C decided to combine her passions for art and activism by aspiring to become a psychologist and use art as a tool for education. Her latest comic, 10 Things Young People Should Know About, will be published in the anthology Young and Kinky this spring.

So it's Valentine's Day...

2010-02-14T15:26:00.003-06:00

Because we, like many of you, are often hopelessly romantic, please enjoy one of our favorite short films, Mad Boy, I'll Blow Your Blues Away. Be Mine.

Slice of Life

2010-01-12T20:34:00.002-06:00

I wanted to share a little slice of life with you. This happened last year and it remains an example of how one’s history of living as a woman or man can affect their experience of the same everyday events.

So I was walking in midtown Manhattan with my friend, who happens to be a big ripped Marine guy. We were crossing a street when a car passed by. The driver yelled something indecipherable out the window as he passed. My friend turned to me and asked me if I heard what the screaming driver said.

I raised an eyebrow and said, “I dunno, who cares?”

Friend: What if he was trying to tell us something important?

Me: I’ve had countless things yelled at me from men in car windows and none of it was ever important information. I don’t even listen to them anymore. Have you never had dumb shit yelled at you from a guy in a car window?

Friend: No.

It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I was reacting to a lifetime of street harassment that he had never experienced. He, probably, had generally experienced guys yelling stuff at him in the military, so it was probably important to know what they were saying.

I felt like I could trace years of my life to that exact moment. I wasn’t just reacting to a single episode of street harassment. The reaction I had was the product of years upon years of street harassment. These incidents don’t exist in their own individual vacuums, they exist in one’s life and each incident interacts and relates to those that came before and influence future incidents. Our reactions to incidents like these are the product of our life histories.

I had a similar moment with Tyler when I kept my name after marriage.

Sex and the City and "Relationshipism"

2010-01-09T18:18:00.004-06:00

As most of you have probably noticed, the arrival of 2010 has brought with it heaps of obligatory retrospectives on the decade that was. The best of these pieces have offered up insight into specific cultural nuggets or trends that don’t necessarily “define” the 00s but rather crystallize some of the prevalent anxieties or preoccupations of the 00s in a way that looking at a decade’s worth of material can provide (Alessandra Stanley’s “Men with a Message: Help Wanted” in The New York Times is a perfect example). Even in a culture that seems to be moving a mile a minute, we’re in no way far enough removed from the past decade to think we can define it. I think the true benefit of these retrospective projects—and I mean everything from essays to simple “Top 10” lists—is the potential value they add to our own experiences of watching, listening, reading, etc. different forms of contemporary media right now.

So I want to talk about Sex and the City –which you’ve probably seen on many 00s retrospectives—and Lee Siegel’s 2002 essay “Relationshipism” (first published in The New Republic and later in Siegel’s 2006 collection Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination). I stumbled upon the piece while reading Troy Patterson’s decade retrospective in which he characterizes Siegel’s essay as “a hall-of-fame takedown.” And he’s exactly right. Siegel does his best to eviscerate Sex and the City, invoking gay-male conspiracy theories and misogynistic misapprehensions about women’s feelings towards sex in order to do so. Siegel’s main problem revolves around the “Relationshipism” alluded to in the essay’s title:

Just as an attitude toward labor only hardened into an ideology called Marxism when the worker got cut off from the product of his labor, so erotic bonds only hardened into Relationshipism when people started, for a million familiar reasons, getting cut off from each other. A "relationship" is not to be confused with a union. It is an ongoing argument between two stubbornly sovereign selves about the possibility of a union.

I’m not sure what to make about his choice of analogy, but soon thereafter Siegel makes clear his disapproval of Sex and the City’s depiction of Relationshipism:

Instead of plunging into all the strange new present-day configurations of sex and emotion, the series has proceeded to divide sex from emotion. There is an abundance of fucking in Sex and the City, but it is the sort of fucking you did years ago, when you were very young, lying on the bed and cavorting in the head. As the series rolled along, you became aware of a damning artifice, an un-mimetic quality startling in a series that was supposed to be a candid look at urban life: none of these women is hurt by sex.

…

What is startling is that for these smart, canny, emotionally alive women, pretty much every relationship comes down to the quest for sex--for perfect sex--as an end in itself.

It goes without saying that Siegel’s assessment is far from definitive, and I’ll spare you the point-by-point refutation.

What’s great about reading the essay now is that, when examining his conclusions, I think Siegel inadvertently shows just how much Sex and the City got right—and continues to get right—in its depictions of the actions and temperaments of modern American women. As a television series, Sex and the City was (to use critic-speak) charmingly uneven. The show’s dramatic narrative was unmistakably adult, touching on issues as varied as marriage, divorce, money-management and, of course, sex.

Michael Patrick King, the show-runner for almost the entire series (and who remains the brain behind the films), and the writing team used the benefits of HBO and premium television wisely, presenting each story arc in a way they saw as both unfiltered and true as well as properly comedic to sensibilities and concerns of modern American adults. But what is “properly comedic” anyway? For Sex and the City, this meant a mixture of high and low comedy; this meant a group of four adult women enduring and discussing events as mannered as coupling and dating alongside incidents as raunchy as tasting a guy’s “funky spunk.”

For those of you who do or who have attempted to write comedy know, balance is everything: balance not just between high and low but also between the comedy itself and the dramatic arc it supports. Sex and the City, like all television comedies, never managed this balance perfectly. Just take the voice of the show, Carrie Bradshaw. She was not a good writer, and I often find myself laughing at her cheesy, pseudo-profound narration. But this type of writing failure never seemed to dissuade critical or audience opinion. In fact, the narration becomes endearing after awhile, especially when you remember that this is a women using a newspaper column to write about sex and relationships in what I can only describe as a post-liberation way.

I hate to use academic jargon like ‘post-liberation’, but I really can’t think of a better way to describe Carrie’s column writing and what it represents. Carrie Bradshaw is both a product of and an active participant in feminism. She writes about sex and relationships openly, frankly and (this is key) apolitically. The plots and story arcs of Sex and the City follow this same precedent. Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda are not women who realize that it’s okay to talk about the size of a guy’s cock or how awful his spunk tastes. They are women who actually do talk about these things and don’t think one way or the other about it.

This is what Lee Siegel just doesn’t get. The gals of Sex and City, like most modern American adults between the ages of 18 and 35, often just want to get laid. Siegel’s view that the women on the show aren’t necessarily hurt by sex is thus misguided because he’s attaching a value to sex that is not necessarily archaic but is most certainly inaccurate. Fucking is an end to itself for many American adults, just as “ending up with the nice guy” is really not the most palatable option for most young adult women. In his “hall of fame takedown,” all Siegel really does is make Sex and the City a scapegoat for what he feels is mass-cultural devaluing of sex and courtship rituals. It appears that Siegel pines for the days when a woman was supposed to feel that having a man (preferably a husband) stick his cock inside of her was a priceless gift. And how dare a show make light of that way of thinking.

So I’ll use my own economic analogy now: I prefer a world where all participants—women and men—set the cultural value on sex. Knowing that Sex and the City is a big ‘fuck you’ to “traditional” forms of Relationshipism only makes me like watching the show more.

Happy to Announce our New Affiliation with XY!

2009-12-31T21:46:00.004-06:00

The Guide is topping off this year with some exciting news: much, if not all, of what you see and read here on the blog will be syndicated on XY Online! "What does it all mean?! What is this XY of which you speak?" To answer these burning questions...

In their own words

XY is a website focused on men, masculinities, and gender politics. XY is a space for the exploration of issues of gender and sexuality, the daily issues of men’s and women’s lives, and practical discussion of personal and social change.

XY is:

* A forum for debate and discussion, including commentary on contemporary and emerging issues in gender and sexual politics;
* A resource library or clearinghouse for key reports, manuals, and articles;
* A toolkit for activism, personal transformation and social change.

In my own words, XY is an Australian-based web resource for all things pro-feminist, male, and anti-violent. It offers hundreds of articles on topics like gender and masculinities, class, race and ethnicity, sexuality, health, working with men and boys toward anti-violence education and social causes, and as many more topics as we contributors can think up! (You think I'm using more than a reasonable person's amount of exclamation points? Now you know how excited I am! (Shit, there I go again with the punctuation...))

XY is a digital knowledge bank for how to change the world for the better through feminist ideals of empathy, education, and activism.

XY is a one-stop-shop for action. Ever want to do something about an issue you care about? Ever think to yourself, "I wish I could organize an event or a group successfully and really make a difference"? Well, lucky for all of us action-seekers and change-makers, XY puts at your fingertips its expansive compilation of activist how-to guides.

And, though lower-key than the vast bibliography, one of my favorite parts of XY is the Image Gallery, which features pages of feminist and anti-violent pictures.

Before I go to count down to the new year, I'll end on a note of hope for action. XY is always looking for volunteers like us to contribute to their world-class database. If you want to see what you can do with XY, click here.

If Only I Could have George Carlin as a Guest Blogger Here...

2009-12-30T16:29:00.002-06:00

Stuff What Boys Can Do

2009-12-27T22:05:00.003-06:00

I've been meaning to write about one of my personal favorite blogs, Fugitivus. The blog initially gained a lot of attention from the now-classic post 'A woman walks into a rape, uh, bar' about how rape jokes sound like triggers to rape survivors.

Since then, blogger Harriet Jacobs added a new section to Fugitivus: Stuff What Boys Can Do, which really excites us here at the Guide!

The new section is a place where people can leave their own stories of things guys did to challenge minds and support women and the people around them. Tyler and I decided to add our own stories to the list. (We're waiting for them to get through the mediation process because Harriet Jacobs runs a tight ship!) And we've included them below to share with you. Check them out and be sure to take a moment and add a story of your own.

From Tyler (the Guy from the Guy's Guide):

So this is around February or March 2005, very soon after Lawrence Summers (who was president of Harvard at the time, not sure if he still is) made those comments suggesting there are less female tenured professors in the math and sciences because women do not have as strong innate abilities for these disciplines as men do.

I'm out to dinner with a group of guys. Most of the members of the group I'm with fashion themselves as Ayn Rand Objectivists, so they are obsessed with ideas of self-interest and pure capitalism.

But really they are just North Carolina conservatives and staunch supporters of Bush/Cheney Republicanism (AKA they are neo-conservatives.) But because they are young, they try and give their views a hip, libertarian twist.

Anyway, so one of the guys works for a Beach resort as part of the catering/events staff. His boss had recently been promoted, and the person they brought in to replace his old boss was a woman.

From what I understood, this woman was already the #2 to the old boss, so the promotion was pretty much a given based on the woman's seniority, experience, performance, etc.

But my friend was angry b/c he felt that i) she wasn't as capable, ii) there wasn't a full interview process (in his dreams he felt that he was qualified, though he in no way had the requisite experience to even merit an interview), and iii) he outright said that he believed his new boss got her position because she was a woman.

Though the L. Summers' stuff did not come up directly in this conversation, I had had plenty of debates in the wake of those comments a month or so before with this very same group. So I know that those sentiments played into this guy's feelings.

Obviously, everyone but me agreed with this guy. They chalked it up as another overreaction to gender inequalities and affirmative action politics that, they felt, are crippling free enterprise.

Quelling my initial reaction to just laugh and say, "You're just sexist, why not just admit it?" I decide instead to try and have all of these guys reach this conclusion through a simple series of questions.

Their love for all things capitalist and Ayn Rand related was clearly the best entry point... So I asked something to the effect of, i) What's one of the main benefits of a pure free-market economy? and ii) What is the goal of policies that look to rectify institutionalized gender or race inequalities in the workforce?

Their answer to the first question was the predictable long spiel that could be boiled down to the naive idea that if everyone acts in their own self-interest, markets will work efficiently, everyone will have the same motivation to work hard and achieve, there are no free-rides, etc., etc.

Their answer to the second question was so muddled and mean and riddled with political rhetoric that I had to prod them for an "objective" answer. Essentially, I had to ask them what they thought the philosophy behind a policy like Title IX truly is.

Eventually, through this line of inquiry (a couple of the guys were philosophy majors in college, so they at least understood my method and sort of appreciated it) I got them to admit that such measures were enacted because women (and non-whites) did not have the same initial advantages as men (whites). They also made the connection that in their free-market dream world, it is assumed that every person starts on the same level playing field. So if their dream world were ever to become a reality, we would have to work damn hard to create a workplace where everyone has the same opportunities (hence, things like Title IX and affirmative action policies).

Lastly, I asked if his new boss had any connections at his workplace that could have influenced her promotion (she's related to the owner, etc.) He admitted that she did not.

So when I asked him that, given the place where we live and the area's predominate politics (largely traditionally conservative), was it safe to assume that his new boss probably had to work a little extra hard to get to where she is b/c she probably had to endure similar biases like the ones he (the guy I was talking to) was espousing a half hour earlier...

And he admitted that that was probably the case.

Who knows if any of what we spoke about that night stuck, but it was a small victory.

From Marie (Editor at the Guide):

Well, I was a Jr. in High School and I did set construction and was a stage manager for HS plays. When new people joined up, we'd have someone with more experience show them around and explain the different jobs and how stuff worked and, literally, show them the ropes (that tied up curtains, backdrops, etc.)

So, as someone with a few years experience, I took this new freshman boy around. He was generally known as someone's weird, awkward and scrawny little brother and was definitely not a 'cool kid.'

I was almost done showing him around and as we walked out of the prop closet I saw my big, older ex-boyfriend struggling to hand-saw a gigantic piece of wood he had propped up on two chairs (our equipment was so pathetic we re-used screws and nails.)

Each time the ex tried to take the saw to it, the vibrations would vibrate the wood off the chair and fall, which is a disaster waiting to happen. So, without any conversation, I took one end of the wood and held it in place so he could saw the thing w/o chopping off his arm.

He proceeded to saw the wood (while I kept it in place) and then told me to "Fuck off." I replied that I was just helping him and his wood would have fallen off if I hadn't. He cursed at me again and I just shook my head and walked away.

The freshman was there the whole time and started to follow me out but went back in. He told my ex not to be such an asshole and that he should thank me for saving him from hurting himself or destroying equipment.

I heard my ex saying as the freshman left (something like) "You little shit," which is how I know the freshman actually got to him. ;)

I thanked the freshman and told him that took some guts. I hadn't realized how used to guys letting other guys treat women and girls like dirt I had become. I guess I took it for granted that guys don't question one another until the least likely guy did.

Review: The Good Men Project

2009-12-13T20:34:00.003-06:00

A recent, positive development in the public discourse surrounding masculinity in twenty-first century America, The Good Men Project consists of a book of essays, a documentary film, a website and a series of events (reading, panels, etc.) held nationwide, all centered on men sharing their own stories about what they feel makes for a good man. The project takes a very “Chicken Soup…” approach. The essays are written for a very broad audience and, as such, are predictably, almost formulaically inspirational. Judging by the doc’s trailer (I haven’t seen the film), the stories in the film work in much the same manner.

Though I don’t care for this genre (self-help) or style (anecdotal personal essays meant to inspire), I don’t doubt The Good Men Project’s intentions and methods. The men behind the Project were, in their previous lives, successful executives whose savvy in the workplace could never translate to their private lives. All the contributors to the Project are like this—guys just trying to “figure it out.” Their stories are genuine and varied, and the book doesn’t feel like it was edited in calculated fashion. The “Chicken Soup…” phenomenon in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the forever popularity of venues like Oprah and Dr. Phil, show how Americans are quite susceptible to stories that tug at our heartstrings. And there are plenty of schools of thought that believe that just getting a conversation started is a victory in and of itself. If The Good Men Project gets “guy’s guys” talking about what it takes to be a good man then, hey, more power to them.

So why I am a still wary about The Good Men Project? Its goals are admirable. The guys all appear genuine. Their multi-faceted approach is unbelievably comprehensive (book, movie, web, blog, events...). Am I just cynical?

I don’t think so.

In interviews on Air America and Fox 25 News, Project co-editor Tom Matlack discussed how men typically don’t like the “Oprah approach,” which he defined as sitting on a couch a discussing one’s feelings. Instead, Matlack and his co-editors surmised that guys prefer to talk about feelings indirectly, namely in story form. More specifically, guys prefer to tell heroic stories. Matlack points out that most of the contributors to the Project depict themselves as heroes: he is a hero because he overcame addiction; he is a hero because he helped his autistic child; etc. So rather than directly confront their own feelings and insecurities, guys get to tell heroic narratives that keep them one step removed from their true emotions. In short, The Good Men Project perpetuates the myth (yes, I’m using that strong of a word) that men and women are uniquely and exclusively different in the ways in which they discuss their feelings. That’s just not a healthy thing to do.

It’s great to see collaborative, well-organized efforts like The Good Men Project. I have no doubt that it will make a positive difference for many men. But to prop up and endorse the idea that a masculine heroic narrative is just as effective as actually talking about one’s feelings—and to justify this by saying that men just naturally do the former and women just naturally do the latter—is to miss the boat entirely on what it takes to be a good man. Good men, in my estimation, actively attempt to bridge such masculine and feminine binaries. I hope that, in the future, The Good Men Project attempts to do this more proactively.

A Quick Note on The Real Housewives

2009-12-05T13:25:00.002-06:00

While none of us actually takes reality tv for reality, what's with The Real Housewives series? The women all get paid for being on the show: they have jobs.

How do they count as housewives once they're on the show?

The Unquantifiable Gap in Women's Sports

2009-11-30T19:55:00.005-06:00

Common talking points in arguments about prevailing gender inequalities in American sports typically zero in on big issues like unequal participation numbers, conflicting amounts and varieties of sports available to men and versus those available to women, and salaries for coaches and professional athletes. All of these points are important and germane to the topic of women’s sports; that said, these points are not as closely related to each other as many advocates and academics often believe them to be. Make a quick jump to the Women’s Sports Foundation’s website and you will find a page entitled “Pay Inequality Athletics” (hat tip to the Women’s Professional Sports blog). This page presents an array of bullet points that reel off numerous statistics that point out just how unequal the American sports landscape remains today. I’ll list a few:

Although the gap has narrowed, male athletes still receive 55% of college athletic scholarship dollars, leaving only 45% to be allocated to women.

Women's teams receive only 38% of college sport operating dollars and 33% of college athletic team recruitment spending.
In NCAA Division I-A, head coaches for women's teams receive an average salary of $850,400 while head coaches for men's teams average $1,783,100. This is a difference of $932,700.
For a WNBA player in the 2005 season, the minimum salary was $31,200, the maximum salary was $89,000, and the team salary cap was $673,000. For NBA players in the 2004-2005 season, the minimum salary was $385,277, the maximum salary was $15.355 million, and the team salary cap was $46 million.
Because disparities are most effectively expressed numerically, it’s tough to look at these statistics and still argue that women are getting a fair shake in both collegiate and professional sports. Numbers don’t lie—this why advocates like those at the Women’s Sports Foundation cite them. Taken at their face value, these statistics are more than enough to convince any rational person that there’s much more work to be done in athletics in order to level the gender playing field. Unfortunately, the numbers contained in these bullet points belie much larger philosophical issues, ones that transcend the numbers and, in fact, go on to show how unrelated these statistics are to each other and how grouping them together is (while good-natured) manipulative.

The common thread amongst most equality arguments—whether it is directly addressed or indirectly assumed—is money. Look again at the stats mentioned above. Scholarships, salaries, recruitment dollars… Whether the issue is high school, college, or pro sports, the elephant in the room is that men’s sports have access to more dollars. Sports, then, is absorbed into a larger gender inequality sphere of argument: economics. This is where the intentions of many women’s sports advocates become disingenuous: sports and economics, while often related, are not the same.

This is where a person’s own philosophical stance towards sports comes into play. Think of it this way:

- Sports as business, or
- Sports as pure athletic endeavor

This major philosophical difference is rarely, if ever, cited in arguments surrounding gender inequalities in American sports. Aside from the obvious reason that one outlook is quantifiable where the other is not, a big reason I think women’s sports advocates avoid the topic of ‘Sports as pure athletic endeavor’ is because the necessary requirement to realize this simple precept already exists: access. Salaries, endorsements and business models are not necessary requirements for those wishing to participate and experience the competitive thrill of athletic competition. Women (and men, for that matter) need only the chance or opportunity to a play a sport (high school sports, youth leagues, backyard games, anything) in order to realize the meaning and benefit of that sport. Clichés like “for the love of the game” originate from the very real fact that sports themselves have an unquantifiable inherent value, and it is that value that supersedes any monetary benefits that a lucky few athletes are able to earn. As I mentioned in my previous post, opportunities for women to participate in a wealth of different sports has never been higher. Title IX’s efforts to sniff out discriminatory practices in events like sports have been extremely effective. Most advocates would not deny this.

It is at the professional-level—where the bottom-line is not the unquantifiable spirit of athletic competition but the quantifiable value of the almighty dollar—that the gap separating men’s and women’s sports is at its widest. Professional sports—not sports in general—are pure business. And if a fair businessperson is to properly run an enterprise the size and scope of a professional sports league, this businessperson should adhere to the laws of supply and demand. All participants in this league (owners, management, coaches and players) should be paid based on the revenue they produce. This is how fair and successful businesses operate.

You see where I’m going with this. It’s a cold, black-and-white way of viewing the world; it’s a way in which I hate discussing things. But if advocates for equality in women’s professional sports are going to invoke monetary statistics, they must also address things like the amount of revenue a women’s professional sports league produces and the actual demand that exists for women’s professional sports in general. The former is often discussed and excused with arguments like “women’s sports do not receive the same marketing pushes as men’s sports, so of course they make less money…” There’s a lot of truth to such points. But the issue of demand is hardly addressed (at least from the research I’ve conducted) at all. How many people are demanding women’s professional sports? And which sports are there demands for?

I want to leave off on a similar note as my last post. How can women’s professional sports be transformed into a viable economic product, one that best utilizes the abilities of our best female athletes? With recent developments like the inaugural season of the Lingerie Football League, it’s easy to see how this question can be answered in exploitative, insulting ways. There are better solutions, like re-inventing women’s basketball by tailoring the game to the unique abilities of its players. I’d like to hear some of yours…

Changes we Like to See here at the Guide

2009-11-19T21:42:00.007-06:00

By now you may have read Aaron Traister’s piece in Salon, And may your first child be a feminine child. You may have even read this XX piece in response to it. But what I have to say is more personal to this blog than what you’ve read so far.

I would like to take this moment to say that Traister’s piece is an example of the kind of change we’re working toward here at the Guide. Here’s the synopsis of what I saw in that piece:

A man wrote about noticing the difference in people’s reactions when he announced he was having a baby boy (his first child) as compared with when he announced having a baby girl (his second child).
He noted that people kept acting like they pitied him or there was somehow less to look forward to with girls.
The pace of the piece was a slow and deliberate; an indication of how the author thought this through. He raised an eyebrow, he didn’t repress or suppress his gut feelings, and he didn’t jump to conclusions, either. There was much to question about this situation. There were benefits of the doubt to give.
Here's the change we're working toward at the blog: a man takes notice of these things and has an understanding of what it means to him and the women in his life.
It doesn't matter whether or not he identifies as a feminist himself, though this lesson would not be possible without the contributions of feminism.
It doesn't have to be a 'women only' issue.
It's everyone's issue.
He's not entering off-limits territory commenting on this subject.
Or stepping on anyone's toes.
He's just a dude with awareness of what's going on around him and has something to say about it. And, most importantly, he did say something about it.

If you wanted an idea of what our goal is here, it is to foster moments like these in the world.

What's the Gameplan for Women's Sports?

2009-11-16T20:24:00.002-06:00

Believe it or not, 2009 has been a vital year for women’s professional sports in the United States. I’m sure few of you—men and women both—have noticed, but the past twelve months have provided highlights and, unfortunately, many lowlights, all which will no doubt reshape the female pro sports landscape for the foreseeable future. Now rather than bore you with a list of events accompanied by explanations on their significance, I’m instead going to use the events of the past year as part of a broader look at women’s sports in general.

I like this topic because, when you really stop and think about it, women’s sports—especially women’s team sports—is a loaded feminist issue that, at a certain point, typically ceases to be discussed outside of academic circles mainly because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t generate much interest from either men or women. Plus, it’s sports, which in twenty-first century America (thanks in large part to women’s movement-inspired legislation like Title IX) is not really the bastion of political movement it once was. Access to sports for women, primarily at the youth, secondary and collegiate levels, gets broader and more diverse each year. There’s really never been a better time to be a young male or female athlete.

Unfortunately, this level of equality doesn’t extend to both male and female professional athletes. While I fully recognize that professional success is in no way the best or most accurate barometer by which to gauge the progress of gender equality efforts (this would be like saying record sales is the main determinant of artistic merit), I still feel that women’s professional sports’ inability to gain cultural traction raises questions about the root nature of women’s sports.

In late 2008, the Houston Comets, winner of the WNBA’s first four championships, went out of business. The team’s ownership and WNBA’s league offices were unable to find a new owner willing to pony up a paltry $10 million to purchase the franchise. This past October, about three weeks after the Phoenix Mercury won the 2009 WNBA championship, the three-time league champion Detroit Shock announced they were leaving the Detroit for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The WNBA has only existed for thirteen seasons. The league, which was created and is effectively backstopped by the NBA, has received since its inception enviable amounts of corporate sponsorship and television exposure. Yet the two franchises that have won over half of the leagues titles either don’t exist anymore or have moved to another city. In both cases, the team’s home market (Houston and Detroit) was clearly not viable.

I don’t want rag on the WNBA, but the general consensus among sports writers and journalists is that the league’s business model is flawed. Rather than research markets that are open and excited about the prospect of supporting a women’s basketball team, the WNBA began by placing teams in markets with already existent NBA franchises, in effect killing each team’s ability to fulfill a city’s need or meet a specific market’s demand for professional basketball. The WNBA teams, in theory, would act like sister franchises, operating during the summer and early autumn, a kind of lead-in for the men’s professional season. This model has changed as time has gone by and teams have failed. Still, the WNBA’s operating philosophy mirrors that of the larger, more established NBA. A female professional sports league, in other words, attempts to operate in the same way, shape and form as it male counterpart.

As I previously mentioned, the WNBA’s flawed economic model has been roundly criticized. Interestingly, what has not been truly called into question is the actual game of women’s professional basketball itself. I’m talking about the size of the court, height of the baskets, things like that. It’s not such a novel concept. I know I’m not breaking new ground here. But an interesting side-effect of the Title IX-inspired growth of women’s sports is the tendency for the promoters and facilitators of these sports to simply put women on the same field of play, using the same rules, all in an effort to say, “See, women can play too.”

Basketball is the best example of this phenomenon because it is the most popular women’s collegiate sport as well as the female sport with the most well established professional operation. Why have serious discussions about actually creating a space that is custom-fit to a women’s game never been undertaken? The game of basketball was created by men as a team sport for men. The NCAA, NBA and FIBA institutionalized this male creation. Whether or not you love women’s basketball as it is or find it completely unappealing is irrelevant to the question of why a uniquely female version of the game of basketball has not been institutionalized by the NCAA, NBA or FIBA. Am I out of line to think that some of the WNBA’s woes are less economic and more because the on-court product just doesn’t inherently have the same amount of excitement that fans have come to expect from professional basketball? Am I out of line to think that actually tailoring a women’s sport to the unique abilities of women—rather than shoe-horning women into a sport tailored especially for men—would create a product that rivals the excitement of the men’s sport?

The viability of women’s sports at all levels is a very important topic. I have a lot more to say on this issue, but for now I’m really hoping to begin a discussion, to take get an idea of how people—both men and women, athletes and non-athletes—feel about the state of women’s sports. So let’s hear it!

"To Protect" or "To Support"...

2009-11-09T15:36:00.006-06:00

Recently, Salon’s advice columnist Cary Tennis received a letter from a man whose wife was a victim of rape some twenty years ago (“Since You Asked…” 10/28/2009). While his wife has seemingly come to terms with the event, the husband is still, after two decades, unable to move on:

My problem? I can’t let it go. I think about it daily, 20 years after the fact. I wonder about the details. I’m angry at the friend who let it happen. I blame (only to myself) current behaviors of my wife on the fact that she was raped then. I fantasize about causing harm to the man who committed the crime. But this was so long ago, and our lives are so different, and reasonably happy, now. Why my obsession?

Tennis’s advice is standard. He reassures the man that the rape was neither his nor his wife’s fault and encourages the man to open up to a therapist (something the man had also been unable to do, according to the letter) and perhaps consider supporting rape prevention programs. Good advice? Yes. But with delicate subjects like this, it’s tough to expect something revelatory from a major media outlet.

But it’s not Tennis’s response that makes this column so striking. Rather, the letter writer’s unflinching honesty highlights an aspect of trauma that often goes unmentioned in the aftermath of rape crimes. Having been through a similar predicament as the letter writer myself, and so experienced many of the same sentiments and feelings, I was struck less by the longevity of the man’s inability to “get over” his wife’s rape and more with the way the man avoided the proverbial elephant in the room: his own personal guilt. Hovering over his expressed feelings of anger and blame and his fantasies about causing harm to the rapist is the husband’s clear feeling of guilt over even considering making himself an issue in his wife’s trauma recovery.

This, I feel, is a very common roadblock in situations such as these. Many men whose wives or girlfriends (or sisters or friends, the list goes on) have been victims of sexual abuse tend to fall immediately into a sort of paternal or fraternal protective mode. Yet for all the chivalric romanticism attached to these modes of protection comes equal amounts emotional distress. In playing the role of protector, men like the letter writer automatically deny themselves a chance to “get over” the event because 1) they’ve already failed (they did not prevent the rape) and 2) the misplaced notion that it is their place to be the emotional rock in the relationship. In essence, the patriarchal ideal of Relationship Protectorate that guides most men whose spouses are victims of sexual abuse is often the seed to obsessions like the one afflicting the letter writer.

The larger misnomer here is the false notion that ‘to protect’ is the same as ‘to support.’ The letter writer is overtly concerned about his own unhealthy obsession with his wife’s rape largely because he feels wife has seemingly come to terms with the event. One thing I’d be curious to know is whether the man has considered the fact that his obsession may in fact be holding back his wife’s ability to “get over” the rape. As many people who have experienced or spent time around those who have experienced trauma know, triggers exist everywhere. Perhaps if the letter writer recognized that his obsessive behavior could in fact itself act as a trigger that sets his wife back in her own trauma recovery, perhaps then he could more easily overcome his inability to cope with wife’s past rape.

It’s clear that the man’s heart and motivations are in the right place—he genuinely cares for his wife and her safety, happiness and well-being. Otherwise, he would not harp on her past trauma so greatly. Patriarchal notions of protection are reductive, though. In cases like that of the letter writer’s, the notion of protection often completely blinds men to the fact that they are not really supporting their partners—a complex issue involving the emotions of two individuals is collapsed into one simplistic patriarchal ideal. Their compulsive desire to protect actually holds themselves and their partners back. I don’t wish to imply that adherence to unhealthy patriarchal ideals is the only thing preventing men like the letter writer from moving past their spouse’s personal traumas. It’s important to realize just how easily elided notions of protection can be: while they are often beneficial, protection does not equal support.

The Polanski/Brown Corollary

2009-10-31T23:06:00.005-05:00

Continuing the discussion of dirtball artists for just a bit longer, Jonah Weiner wrote in Slate this past week…

If your stomach turns a little at the thought of ever hearing Chris Brown’s voice again—or, for that matter, his name—get ready for one nauseous winter. The R&B singer, who pleaded guilty in June to beating his ex-girlfriend Rihanna during a February argument, is set to release his third album, Graffiti, in December. Last month, the lead single, “I Can Transform Ya,” hit radio, and the follow-up, “Crawl,” came out last week. There’s something audacious about Brown’s return, and not just because it took a scant three months for him to slide back into album-promo mode after entering his guilty plea. Brown has been exposed in the Rihanna saga, after all, as more than an abusive boyfriend. Promising affection and pleasure in his music but brutish and violent in real life, his love oil turned out to be snake oil: An R&B loverman best known for a domestic-violence conviction is an insupportable contradiction…

But Brown is also a major star (his first two albums have sold more than 4 million records combined in the United States), and he clearly isn’t ready to give that up…He may not know how to nail a contrite interview, but he does know how to deliver a first-rate pop song [the aforementioned “I Can Transform Ya”]…

The song raises an old question with no easy answer: What do we do when a bad person makes good art?

Let’s set aside for a moment the notion that Chris Brown makes good art. Weiner does ask an interesting question. Since the end of WWII, with the birth of teenage culture and rock and roll and the rise of television and all of the rest of it, the idea of celebrity has become practically inseparable from popular art—combine the two and you have the foundation for pop culture. And until the last decade or so, celebrity was so effective because it was easily manipulated and controlled by the artist and his/her backers (agents, studio execs, producers, etc.). The salacious details were always kept under wraps, leaving public consumers with glossy puff-pieces in the pages of Teen People (or its antecedents) or music videos that controlled all aspects of the artist’s visual image and personality. This type of control not only bred financial success; it also made questions about the artist’s actual personal character irrelevant.

But along came new media and TMZ and Twitter and the E! Channel. Now the celebrity dirt that once only kept grocery store tabloids alive has become big business. The demand for the type of material that, in the past, would have destroyed an artist’s career now competes with the artist’s actual output (see reality television). The old adage “Any press is good press” now reaches grotesque extremes. It’s often important for an artist to maintain some sort of scandalous side in order to justify their status as a celebrity.

Bringing this back around to Chris Brown, what are we, the listening public, supposed to make of his new music? Weiner avoids a straight answer, first broaching the idea that listeners compartmentalize their knowledge of Chris Brown-as-woman-beater so they enjoy “I Can Transform Ya” as a guilty pleasure, only toss out this idea with the hope that maybe a remix of the song will eventually see release, one that scrubs Brown’s vocals from the track altogether.

It’s a cute little dance, but seeing Weiner refuse to answer the relatively important question he poses is disappointing. I get it—to honestly answer this question is very difficult. It involves introducing ethical arguments into what is supposed to be the most mindless and easy form of enjoyment we have—the consumption of popular entertainment. Who wants to complicate things like that?

I could sympathize more with people who feel this way if I were more convinced that the “art” Chris Brown produces is, as Weiner ranks it, good. If there were some objective criteria, some transcendent quality that elevated the grating rhythm and lyrics of “I Can Transform Ya” to the status of art (not even good art, just art), maybe then I could entertain the setting aside of ethical questions about Chris Brown’s character. But Chris Brown and his collaborators and producers make a specific type of music for a specific type of musical demand. To put another way, Chris Brown and company would not have produced “I Can Transform Ya” if this musical demand did not exist. By every available definition, Chris Brown does not produce art. He produces Top-40 R&B/hip-hop that will exist and slide out of the pop culture canon relatively quickly. Using this criterion, I think it’s self-evident that Chris Brown-as-woman-beater in no way merits exclusion from value judgments about his work. The guy is a misogynist scumbag and, really, his music is an exploitative extension of his personality.

But say this is wrong; say Chris Brown is a producer of good art. In other words, let’s put Chris Brown in the same class as Roman Polanski. What now? This is where being an appreciator of good art in the twenty-first century becomes fraught with complication. It would be so nice if all great artists remained veiled in anonymity the way Stanley Kubrick was and Thomas Pynchon still is. But that is not the case with either Polanski or Brown. We know their dirty laundry just as well as we know their creative output. The two are forever intertwined.

Now I really see why Weiner danced around a clear answer. In my case, I really admire much of Polanski’s work. Chinatown and The Pianist are both incredible works of art. How can I reconcile my enjoyment and appreciation of these films with my knowledge that their creator was, at least for one night in 1977, a pedophilic rapist?

Great art is often so powerful that we forget that art itself exists as a form of human expression. Humans, in other words, come before the art that they produce. A thirteen-year-old girl in 1977 Los Angeles and Rhianna in 2009 Los Angeles come before a handful of great films and a few albums worth of forgettable R&B tracks.

So to answer Jonah Weiner: no, it’s not okay to like this stuff. But how can I un-like films like Chinatown and The Pianist? What if I lived a life of willing ignorance of pop culture? What if I knew nothing of Chris Brown’s and Roman Polanski’s personal lives? I think this is a conversation worth having and would love to hear other’s opinions, thoughts and comments.

Roman Polanski and Manhattan

2009-10-30T22:24:00.003-05:00

The Swiss government’s recent arrest and potential extradition of Roman Polanski has rekindled public interest in the events that caused the director to flee the United States in 1977, and rightfully so. For those unfamiliar with the case, it’s really a simple one that can be summed up quickly: while in Los Angeles in March of 1977, Polanski gave a thirteen-year-old girl a combination of champagne and quaaludes and raped her. It’s pretty cut-and-dry. Polanski should have been sent to prison for the maximum amount of time afforded to rapists, but his lawyers and celebrity status combined to get his sentence reduced to a paltry forty-two days. This was too much for Polanski and he fled to France. He has not returned to the United States since.

Polanski’s case often brings out the hypocritical sides of fans and/or appreciators of art. It’s pretty tough for any person to claim that Polanski is not a dirtball. He’s a dirtball of the highest order. But unlike most rapists, Polanski’s public image is complicated by the undisputable fact that the man is one of the most talented living film directors. One really shouldn’t have anything to do with the other. But, as we all know, when it comes to artists (or, really, celebrities in general) people tend to make excuses in a way that goes against their usual best judgment. Yeah, he may have assaulted that girl, but that was a long time ago. And The Pianist is such a great movie. In a way, this type of conflicted thinking is a testament to the power of art. But that’s just an excuse.

Recently in The New York Times, Michael Cieply discussed how “[m]anners, mores and law enforcement have become far less forgiving of sex crimes involving minors in the 31 years since Mr. Polanski was charged with both rape and sodomy involving drugs.” While, in a general sense, this is a true statement (Cieply cites multiple news articles from 1977 that treat Polanski sympathetically), Cieply takes the obvious and easy (and unnecessary) step of analogizing Roman Polanski circa 1977 to Isaac Davis, Woody Allen’s character from Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan: “Mr. Polanski was treated by the authorities, including Judge Laurence J. Rittenband, not so much as a sexual assailant but…as a normally responsible person who had shown terrible judgment by having sex with a very young, but sophisticated, girl.”

On the surface, making the Woody Allen connection seems like a prudent choice giving Allen’s recent support for Roman Polanski and Allen’s own history with young women. Allen, in the eyes of many, is just as much a dirtball as Polanski. Allen married his then-partners’s adopted daughter, after all. And, yes, in Manhattan—a movie that Allen co-wrote, directed and starred in—a fortysomething Isaac Davis dates seventeen-year-old high school senior Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). Clearly, Allen and Polanski are cut from the same cloth, right?

The answer to this is an indisputable no. Without delving deeply into the history of Woody Allen’s personal affairs, let it suffice that Allen in no way conducted himself around Soon-Yi Previn (his former adopted stepdaughter and now wife) the way Polanski did around his victim in 1977. Allen began his affair with Soon-Yi when she was twenty-one years old and the relationship, from all prevailing evidence, was always consensual. I’m not an Allen apologist, but in reality he is guilty of bad taste and tactlessness, both of which are a far cry from the drugging and raping of a thirteen-year-old.

Cieply wisely avoided discussions of Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi for these reasons. But he did make the Manhattan connection. This troubled me enough to write this post because I, like many fans of Allen’s films and American cinema in general, love the film Manhattan. And in all the times I’ve viewed this film I have never once seen Isaac Davis as “a normally responsible person who had shown terrible judgment by having sex with a very young, but sophisticated, girl.” In fact, to me, Isaac’s relationship with Tracy is the emotional core of the film.

Has the joke been on me this entire time? By enjoying Manhattan, and having never seen pedophilic flaws in Isaac Davis’s character, have I really been an inattentive and insensitive viewer. And, worse, have I subconsciously known all along that Isaac is a dirtball but let my own masculine side create artificial justifications for liking this guy?

In short, is it okay for guys to like Manhattan without feeling a requisite amount of guilt and/or shame?

There are two ways to go about answering these questions. The first and most direct route is to look at New York state statutory rape law. It’s a cold, clinical way to do film analysis, but in this case it’s probably normal for viewers to wonder if Isaac was actually breaking the law. After all, in the film’s first scene he is out in the open on an actual date with Tracy and another couple—at Elaine’s no less, a very non-secluded place. Likewise, in the film’s closing scene, Tracy tells Isaac (in a quote that Cieply also cites), “Guess what, I turned eighteen the other day. I’m legal, but I’m still a kid.” As it turns out, the age of consent in New York is seventeen. So Tracy was “legal” the entire time. But with eighteen being the US’s canonized age in which a teen becomes an adult, Tracy’s statement makes for a great movie line.

But that seems too easy, which is why the second and more difficult route is unavoidable. How did Allen frame and develop Isaac and Tracy’s relationship? This is where a catch-22 snags modern, forward-thinking men. Isaac and Tracy are Manhattan’s most nuanced couple. Their connection seems the most real. Even while Isaac spends most of his scenes with Tracy trying to convince her that she’s better off with someone her own age, it’s tough for a viewer not to want their relationship to work out. Tracy offers Isaac a relief from the self-absorbed women that populate his social circles; while Isaac offers Tracy unique (I won’t say more mature) forms of support and desire that she clearly lacks from her male peers. And Allen’s and Hemingway’s performances are fantastic. It’s really one of the more wonderful and enigmatic film relationships.

But one cannot forget that the relationship is Woody Allen’s construction. When one thinks about it this way, of course Isaac and Tracy are great together. Isn’t this a male fantasy, to be a fortysomething guy who develops the best relationship of his life with a beautiful, intelligent, mature seventeen-year-old? Looking across Allen’s body of work, his characters (as in, the characters Allen plays in his own movies) always tend to end up in the bed of women that are seemingly way too beautiful or young or just plain out-of-his-league. That, after all, is part of the charm of Allen’s films. In Manhattan specifically, though, age cannot help but rear its head. Are we watching Woody Allen’s most accomplished film relationship? Or are we watching a narcissist’s most accomplished male fantasy?

These are interesting questions in large part because, when looking at Manhattan from a storytelling perspective, Tracy’s age is not necessarily an integral piece of her character. This makes the male fantasy argument somewhat valid. But then again, what is the male fantasy—hooking up with a girl who’s not quite “legal,” or is it having a fulfilling relationship with a woman half your age after two failed marriages? There’s a legitimate difference between these two situations. The former is despicable; the latter is, well, a different story. And the former, I feel, aligns more closely with Manhattan. In the film, I feel Woody Allen uses Tracy’s age both for ironic and character purposes. The teenager, in being her non-cynical self, becomes the most honest and engaging woman in the film.

Turning one’s take on a film into Hegelian thought progressions or Socratic dialogues kind of saps the fun out of things, I know. After all, a large part of enjoying movies is taking in the visceral, in-the-moment experience that comes with watching a film for the first time. But great films must be given this type of extra thought as they become ingrained in our culture. I still like Manhattan. I still see Isaac and Tracy’s relationship as accomplished in its non-cynical view of modern romance. But I recognize that my conclusion is not the definitive conclusion. So while I call bullshit on Cieply’s analogizing Roman Polanski and Isaac Davis, I cannot fault Cieply for making the connection.

We're Not Alone

2009-10-20T20:42:00.007-05:00

Trigger warning: the video clip, included in the article linked to below contains hurtful, derogatory, and offensive language toward the gay community and more.

So, it turns out we’re not the only ones following the emergence of a new masculinity. As you’ll see here, the very conservatives who continue to make feminism relevant and necessary have conducted a panel on ‘The New Masculinism’ at the Value Voters Summit. As Tracy Clark-Flory reported, the VVF

focused on how “feminism has wreaked havoc on marriage, women, children and men" and discussed the need to get "the principles and ideals for a new ‘masculinism’ right.”

The punchline of this article, “Boys beware: Porn turns you gay!” brings up one of the panel’s methods for fostering their ‘new masculinism’: telling boys that straight porn is ‘homosexual’ and will turn them gay. (The logic of which is based on so many false assumptions that would require a catalogue of encyclopedic proportions to account for all of them…or lots of comments…) Now, this raises some questions, which I hope you’ll help me expand on through your comments.

Question #1: Is it just me, or does the panel’s ‘New Masculinism’ sound a lot like the Old Masculinism? The only new additions to this new masculinism that I can see are hatreds that have been updated for today’s conservative insecurities. Pornographers, move over! Make some room for feminists and gays!

Question #2: Do they realize that feminists derive as much power from our accomplishments as from the power given to us by groups like the VVF? They’re basically saying without question that we have the power to have an impact on issues like marriage, women, children, men, and gender. Thanks, gentlemen, for the recognition and your unwavering faith in our social powers!

Question #3: Aren’t these the same people who generally like to say that feminism is irrelevant? That there’s no longer a need for feminism? But if feminists can no longer make a difference, how is it that we’ve made such a noticeable dent in ‘marriage, women, children and men’ that our work needs to be reversed? Can the VVF fight the very same power they themselves give to us? And wouldn’t that sort of be like they’re fighting with themselves?

Question #4: So how does your run-of-the-mill straight male porn not fall into traditional masculinity? Doesn’t the very porn they’re talking about rely on antiquated attitudes and tropes regarding how men and women relate to one another?

"Amplification Through Simplification"

2009-10-10T21:25:00.012-05:00

I was so excited after watching the first episode of Glee a month ago that I immediately started brainstorming for reasons or excuses I could use to justify writing about it. Needless to say, Glee is my favorite new show of the season. It’s off to the most promising start of any major network show since Friday Night Lights debuted a handful of years ago. Luckily for me, only five episodes into its run (six if you count the pilot episode that aired early in the summer), Glee has given me numerous reasons – so many, in fact, that I’d be remiss if I didn’t write about it (or so I tell myself).

Glee’s main strength is that it is an effective pastiche. The show mixes and mashes generic teenage television show and movie conventions (and the stereotypical stock characters that populate these shows and movies) with musical theater tropes like characters bursting into song during moments of spontaneous emotional expression.

But unlike the High School Musical’s of the world, Glee refuses to downplay dark undercurrents that affect both the teenage characters and the adults that surround and influence them. In fact, the show revels in its darker elements in a unique way. The more edgy and serious a moment becomes, the more likely bits of wry, pointed humor will be layered in, at once undermining the drama of the moment and, interestingly, enhancing it. When Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron)—captain of McKinley High School’s Cheerios cheerleading squad and the leader of the school’s Celibacy Club—becomes pregnant and is confronted by the father, Puck (Mark Salling), she tells him matter-of-factly, “I only slept with you because you got me drunk on wine coolers and I felt fat that day.” It’s a funny moment, and it’s played that way. But it’s also heartbreaking because, with all melodrama and lofty explanations removed, the fact that the honest truth as to why Quinn slept with Puck (and thus severely altered the course of her life) can be whittled down to one line is brutally clear. Quinn really did sleep with Puck because she got drunk and felt insecure. It’s really that simple, that sad.

In the second chapter of his book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud describes how abstract cartoons are often better able to focus a viewer’s attention on an idea than, say, realistic presentations like photographs or live-action films:

Why would anyone, young or old, respond to a cartoon as much or more than a realistic image? Why is our culture so in thrall to the simplified reality of the cartoon? … When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential “meaning,” an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t. … Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing! The ability of cartoons to focus our attention on an idea is, I think, an important part of their special power…

“Amplification through simplification” is how McCloud sums up the power of cartooning. It’s a brilliant deduction and one that is clearly at work in Glee.

Though it is a live-action program, Glee works in cartoon-esque contexts. Much like the MTV cartoon series Daria, the Cheerios in Glee are always dressed in their cheerleading outfits and the football players look and behave like the simpleton jocks we remember from ’80s teen films. Similarly, the glee club is a collection of misfits, openly mocked and ostracized, the lowest of the low. But rather than parade around such stereotypical characters only to thrust them in predictable and contrived situations—in other words, rather than do what nearly all teen-driven television dramas do—the producers of Glee amplify the show’s emotional resonance by making conscious use of the simplicity of these stereotypes.

Using this method, the show’s take on teenage masculinity is fresh, moving and, yes, accurate. The two males lead characters I find particularly interesting and, well, just damn awesome are Finn (Cory Monteith), the stud quarterback and budding glee star, and Kurt (Chris Colfer), a gay glee club member and fashionista who lacks the confidence to come out to all but a couple of people. Both Finn and Kurt embody well-established teenage stock roles: Finn the time-tested jock, Kurt the twenty-first century flamboyant gay teen. As well, both are subjected to the obstacles and anxieties offered up by the modern American high school.

But beyond the clichés, the producers of Glee ratchet up the depth of each of these characters by exploiting the stereotypical, one-dimensional facades that seemingly define them. Kurt, for example, flaunts a stunning array of designer outfits, showing up in Marc Jacobs one day, Dolce & Gabbana the next. His manner of speech and use of make-up, as well, leave absolutely nothing to question: this guy is gay. The interesting twist here is that Kurt exists in world of (for the most part) acceptance. It is clear that nearly everyone at McKinley High knows that Kurt is gay. And the surrounding high school environment is not hostile about this fact. Really and truly, it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. This set of circumstances amplifies Kurt’s internal struggle, his own coming-to-terms with his sexuality. When Kurt asks Finn for a favor during glee rehearsal and Finn says “Thanks, but I already have a date to the prom. But I’m flattered. I know how important dances are to teen gays,” Kurt immediately and instinctively responds, “I’m not gay,” which leaves Finn with a confused ‘Huh?’-look on his face. This simple use of stereotypes highlights the struggles of gay teens like Kurt. Even in safe environments of acceptance—Finn is Kurt’s friend, as is all of glee—Kurt still is unable to come out. Kurt’s apparent one-dimensionality is actually crucial to his pathos.

Finn, like Kurt, has hard time reaching a comfortable level of self-definition. He negotiates the customary struggles of the high school star being pulled in various directions—is he a football jock or a glee star or both? In many ways, Finn is like the Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) character from Alexander Payne’s film Election: hard-working, naïve, heart-of-gold, almost too good to be true. Finn, unlike Paul Metzler, is not spared his fair share of faults, be they hilarious, devious or a combination of both. He may date the cheerleader, but he has a very real problem with premature ejaculation. He may truly like Rachel (Lea Michele), the glee club’s resident star and erstwhile diva, but he’s not above manipulating her talents to help him potentially earn a scholarship.

The point is that the producers of Glee thrive on locating chinks in Finn’s armor. And by exploiting these flaws in comedic ways, Finn takes on a very human, very sympathetic character. He’s not the hypermasculine jock with “a problem” that exists solely for purposes of moving a plot forward. While Glee does not deny that Finn is a football star, that he is a male who embodies masculinity in a very traditional sense, the show successfully humanizes him by keeping him so aligned with the stereotype.

I feel bad not speaking about the girls of Glee, especially the wonderful and complex Rachel. That analysis will be coming shortly, I’m sure. Suffice it to say, Glee is a breath of fresh air for network television which, at least at the moment, lacks in programming that attempts to explore emotional ambiguities and resonances of American high school life honestly. By successfully applying the “amplification through simplification” edict, Glee adds a little heart to the predictable lives of its teenage characters and a little bit of flavor to the predicable social, gender and sexual dynamics of high school.

Irreference

2009-09-19T18:31:00.007-05:00

In our third and final counter-example to those Shira Tarrant offered in her article in Bitch (“Guy Trouble: Are young men really in crisis, or are these boys done just being boys?”), I’m taking on her assertion that the Marc Jacobs fashion ads featuring guys in dresses represents a positive step away from stereotypical masculinity. My counter-example looks at the men’s hairstyles recently featured in the New York Times’ Fashion & Style section. (The article’s not available without signing in to the Times’ website, but I’ll provide you as much as you’ll need here.)

David Colman reports:

There is a minor eruption of major hair atop the country’s young male populace — and, as hair is wont to do, it’s growing.

Curiously, the look is not one of style as much as degree. There is no army of winsomely tousled RPattz clones. Instead, there are Afros, mohawks, dreadlocks and pompadours. There are “Idol”-ized punky pincushions, Allman-esque hippie cascades (with matching beards) and Bowie-style, parti-colored shags. And these are just the styles that have names. Often enough, these clever young dandies are crossbreeding styles into hybrids unknown to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hair Hall of Fame.

So, young guys are opting for a wide range of hairstyles that reach across genres and recent history. What’s the big deal about hairstyles anyway?

Often guys who are after a more extreme look will drop the name of some rocker — Robert Plant, Simon Le Bon, Robert Smith, Anthony Kiedis — as inspiration. But what makes this curious trend even curiouser is how little connection the hair actually has to the moment, the man or the music that spawned it. That guy with the long, brown hair and beard may well have techno on his iPod, and the guy with the dyed blue shag is as likely to be drumming his fingers in time to death metal.

“You can never tell what they’re into from their hair,” Ms. Jukes said. She pointed out that her boyfriend, Ben Koller of the metalcore band Converge, has gone for the early-1970s look of the teenage John Michael Osbourne (back when he was the lead singer of Black Sabbath). His band, however, favors a chaotic clash of punk and metal that makes Black Sabbath’s 1970 hit “Paranoid” sound like Doris Day. And however you though Adam Lambert’s hairstyle pegged him, it was clear to “American Idol” audiences that musically, at least, the man’s got range.

Once upon a time — say, 40 years ago this week, when long-hairs thronged to Woodstock by the hundreds of thousands — you got a hairstyle to show the world your affiliation, to brandish a cultural identity defined by your musical tastes, your political views or how depressed you were. But such literal interpretations of hair appear to be utterly passé, even if the hairstyles themselves are not.

Here’s what’s special. There used to be a time when men’s hairstyles were a sort of uniform or identifier. They were symbolic of one’s adherence to a particular culture and that culture’s values and aesthetic. The hair expressed its signified group’s point of view. In other words, you used to be able to make assumptions about men based on their hairstyles. Not anymore. According to one guy interviewed in the article, “I don’t think it defines people at all anymore.”

What is at work here is the new approach to masculinity we at The Guide have begun describing with our two most recent posts about Tim Gunn and Dennis Rodman. While the traditional approach makes masculinity itself a guy’s end goal, the new approach treats masculinity as a means or a tool a man can employ towards achieving a goal specific to him as an individual. This makes the end goal not some masculine stereotype but something more unique. Tradition doesn’t get to set men’s goals anymore, men themselves do. With this new approach, the number of potential results is endless, whereas with tradition, the result is inherently always the same.

The difference here is semiotics, or how we look at signs or symbols and interpret them. In semiotics, according to its seminal scholar, Ferdinand de Saussure, linguistic signs are made up of two things: 1) the signified and 2) the signifier. In the Times’ article, the signs in question (conceptual stereotypes like “punk”) are a product of the relationship between signifieds (a young guy with anti-establishment tendencies) and signifiers (a spiked, dyed hairstyle). The guys in the article destroy the power of the sign (or, as I’ll refer to it from here on out, the symbol). They do this by changing the signified. The guys determine what the hairstyle symbolizes; they don’t let tradition speak for them. So when you see a guy with a Goth hairstyle or a punk hairstyle, there’s a chance that the guy has reinterpreted the concepts and symbols traditionally attached to his hairstyle according to what holds personal meaning for him. Fashion or society’s definition of what those styles symbolize no longer always define the guys wearing these styles. Guys like those in the Times’ article have taken the act of defining themselves into their own hands. Now, in order to find out what it all means, we would have to actually get to know the guy’s perspective and aesthetic to make sense of what it means to him.

Traditional masculinity, like the hairstyles here, is populated by symbols. What makes traditional masculinity (or traditional anything) so establishment-friendly is that society has agreed upon the definitions of signs and how to read them. What disrupts the establishment is when those definitions are no longer under their control. Remember Tim Gunn’s use of the suit or Dennis Rodman’s use of leather in his Sports Illustrated cover. They determined what those symbols mean for them. They determined how to use masculinity and its symbols not to speak the language of patriarchy, but to speak their individual minds.

To return to the article, “‘I know I’m not a trailblazer,’ said Mr. Cooper, the fashion stylist, ‘to me it’s just personal. It’s a creative outlet.’” In a way, he’s right; it is just one small thing, and a tiny part of something much bigger.

Why Dennis Rodman is the Man

2009-09-13T11:46:00.008-05:00

It’s been over ten years since Dennis Rodman was a relevant presence in the National Basketball Association. That’s a long time in professional sports, a lifetime culturally. Since Rodman’s last full NBA season—the 1997-98 season in which Rodman helped the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls win their sixth title in eight years—we’ve witnessed, amongst many other things, the meteoric rises of both the internet and reality television. I mention these two mediums specifically because, over the last decade, each has contributed to a pop cultural democratization that makes the “antics” of a guy like Dennis Rodman look antiquated. With social networking and blogging websites like Twitter, every person has the ability to make their opinions heard to near-worldwide audience. Professional athletes tweet from the locker room during halftime. Everyday fans converse directly with their favorite celebrities in 140-character increments. Reality television works in a similar manner. Never before has the idea of celebrity been so attainable—there are television channels now wholly dedicated to producing and airing shows starring everyday people who just want to be famous.

These cultural shifts are important to keep in mind when discussing Dennis Rodman because, as wild as it is to think of now, our culture in the mid-90s was much more close-minded and unwelcoming to provocateurs like the Worm. Then, the prime movers of pop culture were print magazines and television networks and cable channels owned by large corporate entities. Nascent independent and non-establishment cultural forces did not yet have the access that, today, the internet provides. Take 1996 Dennis Rodman and plug him into today’s pop culture and NBA and he would not really be as sensational a story. Remember Dennis Rodman in the proper mid-90s context and you’ll realize the threat he represented.

The 1990s NBA in which Rodman played was a microcosm of traditional patriarchal culture, one that thrived on the deification of its ideal, stereotypical masculine stars. More than any other major American professional sports league, the NBA is a league of superstars first, of teams second. This business model can be attributed to the greatest player to ever play the game, Michael Jordan, and the NBA’s management, led by league commissioner David Stern. As Jordan’s skills and worldwide fame crested in the 1990s, the NBA thrived on exploiting the images of its good-natured, family-oriented superstar players. This has always been a contentious dynamic from a racial standpoint. You have a white commissioner molding and controlling the professional destinies of a set of players, over 80% of which are black. Beyond racial issues, though, the NBA has also been (especially in the Jordan era) directly involved in perpetuating archaic, stereotypical masculinity—the strong, straight, family man that plays within the society’s (in this case, the NBA’s) rules and codes. Unlike superstars like Charles Barkley, who controversially proclaimed “I am not a role model” in 1993 Nike commercial but never really departed from the star-driven system beyond that statement, Dennis Rodman rejected the NBA establishment tradition completely. As he described in his eye-opening 1996 memoir, Bad As I Want To Be:

The NBA image of a man is the one they put out on the commercials, with guys smiling and waving to the crowd. All the happy horseshit. They want everyone to be Grant Hill—a guy from Duke with all the flashy moves. Grant Hill can play, I’ve got no problem with him, but isn’t there room for some other kind of player out there? Some other kind of man?

I don’t fit into the mold of the NBA man, and I think I’ve been punished financially for it.

What stands out in this excerpt is Rodman’s call for a new kind of man. After a night in 1993 in which he nearly committed suicide, Rodman chose to “kill the imposter”: “I killed the Dennis Rodman that had tried to conform to what everybody wanted him to be.” His transformation—most strikingly in personality and physical appearance—went completely against the NBA’s preferred image. Bleached hair, wild tattoos, diverse and unexpected outfits off the court, Rodman outwardly projected the multi-faceted personality he had always been. But in finally being true to himself, he was met with utter resistance by an establishment that refused to recognize his personal emancipation as a positive. Despite the NBA’s best efforts to force Rodman into conformity—Rodman was fined nearly $1 million throughout his career—the Worm never acquiesced, staunchly remaining himself:

This [his refusal to conform] scared the NBA. This was out of their control. I was coloring outside the lines, and the league didn’t know where it would lead next.

I know what scared them: they were afraid I might bring something totally different back to the game, and that’s dignity. Dignity for all players. Being human. They’re afraid of that. They don’t want to see guys going out there and getting tattoos or voicing their opinions.

The NBA could never defeat or silence Rodman because he was just too good. Over the course of his career, he was a part of five NBA championship teams; he won two Defensive Player of the Year awards, seven rebounding titles, and appeared on the All-NBA Defensive First Team seven times. Unlike many athletes who struggle to keep their fledgling careers alive with wacky behavior and publicity stunts (think of Freddie “FredEx” Mitchell, the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver who tried to stave off irrelevance with crazy outfits and outrageous press conference comments), Rodman’s “off-beat” personality and behavior was genuine, and his performance on the court never suffered—it thrived—because of it. In fact, the best years of Rodman’s career came when he directly challenged the NBA’s notion of masculinity. Only when he refused to let the dominant, image-making power structure define him as a person—to use the Worm’s own words: when he refused to let the NBA make him into a “robot that can dunk”—did Dennis Rodman peak as a professional and individual.

This, in my mind, is Rodman’s enduring legacy: his active attempts to bring dignity and individuality to a culture that prided itself on conformity and perpetuation of unhealthy masculine stereotypes and images. While most people unfortunately remember the Worm through unfairly negative media representations, it’s important that Dennis Rodman be recognized for the ways in which he challenged a staunchly patriarchal culture. In refusing the be the stereotypical man they demanded he be, and in performing better than anyone else at his position on the court, Rodman can actually say he beat the patriarchy at its own game. That’s an example worth hyping.

Why Tim Gunn is the Man

2009-09-12T14:10:00.003-05:00

In my last post, I pointed out the responsibility that comes with “hyping” certain pop culture figures as harbingers of a progressive masculinity. And while this process, if that last sentence is any indication, sounds super academic, it shouldn’t. The idea is a simple one: choose wisely the men you think represent positive, non-stereotypical masculinity. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall into the same trap as Shira Tarrant, when she hyped Brody Jenner and “gender-bending” Marc Jacobs ads. Remember, an important part of rethinking masculinity is rethinking the idea that being a guy comes down to performing a certain set of character traits. Tarrant’s exemplars fail to represent any new form of masculinity because they simply flip a common stereotype: Brody Jenner hangs with his boys in a hot tub and Marc Jacobs dresses his models in dresses. This inversion is not so much thought-provoking as it is gimmicky. Both examples are still firmly ensconced in the box we’re trying to find a way out of. In thinking of a new, progressive masculinity, we need to bypass, as difficult as it may be, the idea of stereotypes altogether. We don’t need a guy who does the opposite of what the stereotypical guy does. To borrow a phrase from a former professor of mine, we need to find examples of men whose entire being-in-the-world is new and fresh and sheds light on just what masculinity (in general) and guys (in particular) can be.

This is where the man pictured above comes in. In a time when masculinity could use a mentor and life coach of its own, Tim Gunn (step back, Ironman!) provides an appealing template for what a new, progressive masculinity might look like.

Interestingly enough, when comparing Tim Gunn against common masculine stereotypes, it’s amazing just how closely he aligns with traditional notions of what it means to be a man. However, for Gunn masculinity acts as a vehicle or means—not an end—towards arriving at a broader sense of personhood than stereotypes allow for. For the misogynists and sexist men of the world—and sometimes even for average guys in their day-to-day lives—masculinity is always the end result. Their lives and perspectives, therefore, can be easily summed up by a set of stereotypes (e.g. a guy acts tough because guys are supposed to act tough). This is not always as bad as it sounds. What it is is limiting. Traditional masculinity artificially caps the space in which a guy’s perspective can grow. Since masculinity is always the end result, thinking beyond masculinity’s restraints never occurs.

This is why Tim Gunn is the man. Because masculine traits and traditions are only one of many available means he uses to express—not define—his perspective, Gunn achieves a more unrestrained sense of individuality. Yet he never loses touch with his own masculinity. He doesn’t eschew or suppress the qualities that traditionally brand him a man. This is very important. When talking about redefining or remaking masculinity, it’s easy to fall into the trap of just throwing out masculinity altogether. What Tim Gunn shows is that by tempering one’s sense of masculinity—by making it a vehicle—the baby doesn’t have to go with the bathwater.

To clarify by way of example, just look at Tim Gunn’s signature suit-and-tie. The suit-and-tie is the traditional outfit of the professional, power male. For most guys the suit truly makes them; it fully represents the masculinity they strive to achieve—“I’m a powerful man because I wear this uniform.” Essentially, the masculine stereotypes embodied by the suit define these men. For Tim Gunn, the suit represents a means of expression. This may seem like an easy example because of his background and career in fashion, but that makes it no less important:

When Gunn arrived in New York City in 1983…he was still wearing his “D.C. uniform” of “boxy, ample suits.” Once in New York, he had “an outer-body experience and realized that no two people on any given street corner are dressed the same. “This is a city that accepts you for however you choose to present yourself.” (He insists that he didn’t have his “real fashion epiphany” until he became the chair of the fashion department at Parsons: “I was 18-months into my time as chair when I had a meeting with Diane von Furstenberg, I’m sure she doesn't even remember this meeting, but I could tell by her quivering eye [that she thought of me] ‘I don't know if this is going to work for you in this industry, this particular look.’ And I thought to myself, I can’t disappoint Diane! So I got a black leather blazer tailored like a suit jacket. That was my solution.”) [Hat tip to Jezebel]

Gunn’s use of the masculine suit-and-tie staple as a means of expression represents a positive way in which he broadens his perspective beyond the traditional limits imposed by rigid adherence to masculine stereotypes. Beyond single vehicles of expression, though, it’s Tim Gunn’s unflappable nature that truly displays the emotional core of his progressive masculinity. Think for a minute about the stereotype that men are the more stoic of the two sexes, that men are less prone to outbursts of emotion. Traditional masculinity assumes that men remain in-control and detached; in other words, they remain unflappable. Men don’t cry over split milk, let alone major emotionally-charged events. They deal with everything internally or else they run the risk of being scolded by their masculine peers. Unfortunately, this sort of detachment typically involves men suppressing their emotional responses.

This makes Tim Gunn’s unflappable nature so impressive and, in this guy’s opinion, revelatory. On both of his television shows—Project Runway and Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style—we see Tim Gunn knee-deep in the emotional moments and transitions of a variety of individuals. Being that he acts in the role of mentor on both shows, Gunn is not afforded the luxury of being there only to console and support each shows’ participants, he must also offer them guidance and advice and criticism. And he does all of this with marvelous effect, all while never losing control of his own emotions. He doesn’t buy into the notion that becoming emotionally involved in a situation necessarily means giving up one’s self control. Men tend to avoid emotional involvement and conflict because of the false belief that these types of engagements mean they must sacrifice their own objectivity or unflappability. So they choose to suppress their emotions. For Tim Gunn, there is no such suppression. He shows that men can remain completely emotionally engaged in a situation without sacrificing their masculine unflappability. Perhaps this is why both the people on his shows, and audiences of all sexes and genders, have embraced him so openly.

Adhering to traditional masculine stereotypes and making these stereotypes the end result—every time—inherently limits the range of personhood possible for men. Tim Gunn doesn’t work for masculinity; he makes masculinity work for him. And in doing so, he achieves a broader range of personhood and enhances our understanding of his perspective.

Remodeling Masculinity

2009-09-03T22:32:00.006-05:00

From Shira Tarrant’s feature “Guy Trouble: Are young men really in crisis, or are these boys done just being boys?” in the Spring 2009 issue of Bitch magazine:

What does it mean to be a real man these days? Is it possible to find models of manhood to replace the old stereotypes that no longer seem to fit, or never felt right in the first place? And if these tropes are nothing new, then what is?

Fortunately for all of us, what it means to be a guy is getting a new spin, thanks to a slew of recent commentary about men and masculinity. A group of male feminist thinkers and activists are exposing the sexism and rigid ideas of masculinity that run rampant in movies, music, sports, and video games…

Hey, that sounds sort of like a plug for the Guy’s Guide! Seriously though, it is great to see articles like Tarrant’s recognize the growing number of men facing down age-old cultural representations of idealized masculinity. In the age of the internet, pop culture carries an unrivaled level of influence. And as pop culture is America’s biggest export, it fits that the men and women in our country produce and consume more images, texts, music, advertisements—any manner of media you can think of—than any other place on the planet. A dominant majority of these pop culture products reinforce a hypermasculinity that puts the patriarchal “lessons” of the twentieth century nuclear family to shame. Seeing hard-at-work dad come home to a meal that stay-at-home mom prepared has nothing on gossip sites, reality television, leaked sex tapes and cartoonishly violent video games and films.

For the Guide’s audience, I assume such recognition is regular practice. The hard work, both for Marie and I in writing this blog and for our readers or anyone with a vested interest in making an impact and facilitating positive change, is taking the initial steps towards some solutions. For this particular discussion, that means scanning the pop cultural landscape and identifying those few diamonds in the rough that illustrate a new, progressive masculinity—a masculinity that would make feminist women and men proud. This task is important because it involves “hyping” certain things or people. This is a necessary evil in any sort of situation where a person takes the risk of stepping out and saying, “I believe such-and-such sets a positive example.” I take very seriously the idea of singling out someone and saying “They’re progressive; they’re not perpetuating archaic, misogynist ideas masculinity.” I don’t think it’s too much to ask, in these cases, that the writer or critic be able to stand by their decision and give a solid explanation of their reasoning. I expect that of myself.

All this said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t single out a disappointing portion of Tarrant’s feature. Unfortunately, I’m referring to the section in which Tarrant singles out some recent pop culture nuggets that she’s sees as representative of the “rumblings of change in mainstream commercial media”:

Take, for example, the ads currently sprouting from fashion magazines that feature gender-bending young men wearing Marc Jacobs dresses…There’s MTV’s new series Bromance, which tries (perhaps unsuccessfully) to flip the usual reality-TV setup by getting guys in the hot tub trying to be The Hills star Brody Jenner’s new BFF. In the music world, the pop-singing Jonas Brothers have made virginity pledges—traditionally something that is emphasized as the realm of girls.

If these are the harbingers of a new age of progressive masculinity in pop culture, consider the battle lost. Putting guys in dresses and putting them in an ad is “gender-bending” at its most empty. There’s no narrative to it, no soul. It’s attention-grabbing nonsense. Bromance is corporate reality show dreck, the sole goal of which is to produce clones of the womanizing, hypermasculine male (i.e. Brody Jenner) we’re trying to get away from. And virginity pledges are not “the realm of girls.” They’re a patriarchal creation, re-popularized by evangelical conservatives, that tastefully allows a father to control the sexual and emotional development of his daughter. This is the culture the Jonas Brothers are (hopefully unwittingly) supporting.

My assessments may sound harsh, but I want them to point out how important it is to find and back the right examples. I don’t think Tarrant got lazy (well maybe a little) when she mentioned Brody Jenner. I just think she forgot to look at the big picture. Bromance may have used non-traditional male reality show tropes. Sure, getting in a hot tub may usually be a girl’s thing. But redefining masculinity does not mean turning masculinity into femininity. You can’t just put a guy in women’s clothes and say, “Here’s the new man!” That’s not doing the work; that’s the same old guy in a dress.

So in the post to follow this one, I’m going to offer up a pop culture nugget of my own, one I truly believe represents a positive step towards a new, progressive form of masculinity. So stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have any ideas of your own to offer, let’s hear them!

The Beginning of a Long-Term Project Here at the Guide

2009-08-30T21:21:00.005-05:00

I came up with the idea for starting this blog when one day this summer I Googled something like 'preventing violence against women.' I scrolled down and read everything that came up in that search for over thirty pages. What I found were plenty of organizations that were women preventing violence against women, but only two organizations that were men preventing violence against women. Considering that men are the most common perpetrators of violence against women, the results of the search seemed unbalanced to me. I heard loud and clear women calling out, "Stop doing this!" but men had no such voice. If we're going to achieve the goal of preventing (and ultimately ending) violence against women, men have to be in on it, too. A stronger male presence in this struggle means the difference between doing something because someone told you to versus doing something because it's the right thing to do. It means that non-violence and respect for women's rights is not a front men put on while women are around and then drop as soon as they turn around. It means changing the context in which violence and the attitudes that support it occur.

In her book Understanding Sexual Violence, Diana Sculley posited that a way we can prevent rape is to change the cultural context in which it is excused. We need to change the cultural context to no longer allow for excuses for rape like slut-shaming, not putting up a physical fight, or impairment. I suggest we take that thinking exercise and apply it to all forms of violence against women and women's rights. I am saying that our work here at the Guide (work that can always be applied to our everyday lives) is to change the context in which violence and the attitudes that support it are excused so that they are no longer excused. This means that respect for women is not a front, it's a choice we own in public and in private. This means that men-only spaces cannot create contexts in which these attitudes and actions are allowed, and only men can change the context of men's spaces.

So I thought of the man who introduced me to feminism, Tyler. (That's right ladies and gentlemen, it was a guy who brought a woman to feminism.) At a time when I wasn't so sure of how I fit into feminism and lacked an education in it, the effect of a man feeling so passionate and at ease with feminism was an unexpected and life-changing inspiration. I thought, "How is it that a guy feels more at home here than I do? If there is space for him within feminism, there has to be space for me." After I did my Google search, I told Tyler how much a guy's voice is needed here. I told him, "You're the perfect person to show men (and women like I was) that there are guys who are committed to these issues. You'd be the perfect person to start balancing that call to stop violence against women through your perspective as a man navigating feminism."

To begin our long-term project of creating a guide for exploring these issues, I will be putting together a running archive of resources for men to explore feminism and what role they can play in the fight against violence against women. Below are just a few such discussions of these issues. If you have more to add, link them or reference them in the comments.

For some reading, consider:
Male Feminists March On by Natalie Hanman for a discussion of the emergence of male feminists.
My Black Male Feminist Heroes by Mark Anthony Neal for a discussion of male feminism from a black perspective. It also references numerous other reads both in black feminism and Womanism and black male feminism and Womanism.
Men! Feminism Needs You! (Not Your Privilege...) by Anne Onne at The F-Word for some thoughts on how men can approach feminism and feminists.
Check out another brand new blog, Step Up, for thoughts and a chance to comment on how men can end violence against women and some links to organizations dedicated to that cause.
And, for some more links to anti-violence organizations and a guy's reaction to 'Men's Rights Activists', check out this post at youth4change by Joseph.

And, don't forget, we want your links! Let's start building a discourse, a community, and a new context.

The Case of Athletes and Rape

2009-08-29T15:10:00.003-05:00

Reactions to the civil suit recently brought against Ben Roethlisberger by a former employee of Harrah’s hotel-casino in Lake Tahoe illustrate perfectly the inherent biases men and women have towards cases of sexual assault. These biases, and the copious amounts of baggage they carry, too often turn rape cases into exercises in futility—‘he said, she said’ arguments that devolve into hardcore character assassinations (usually it’s the victim’s character that’s annihilated) and, oddly enough, out-of-court settlements. This perverse form of due process becomes magnified when the case involves a professional sports star. Beloved professional athletes possess the double-whammy of seemingly endless means (money, top-notch lawyers, image consultants, spin doctors, publicists, etc.) and the benefits that come with large-scale public opinion. It’s not just the athlete’s family, friends and co-workers that think he is a great guy; the fan-base of an entire professional sports franchise (maybe even the fan-base of the sport itself) loves the guy as well, this includes fans and members of the media.

Interestingly, it’s the athlete’s endless supply of means to defend himself against rape allegations—not the athlete himself—that creates the average fan’s bias against the accuser. As our culture has elevated professional athletes to the status of iconic celebrity, the notion that rich athletes are now targets of exploitation and extortion has been canonized. Of course, there is plenty truth to this idea. Wealthy members of our society have always been and will always be the targets of desperate people. However, professional athletes, because of the attachments they engender amongst legions of people throughout the world, elicit an exceptionalism that isn’t afforded to other members of the high-income tax bracket. If a managing director at Goldman Sachs becomes a victim of identity theft, most people shrug their shoulders. Who cares? In fact, this day and age, a lot of people may even chuckle at the thought of some rich banker having to go through such an agonizing process. If the same situation occurs to a professional athlete, often there is an uproar, outrage, an entire SportsCenter segment devoted to the story. Fans will sympathize and give the athlete the benefit of the doubt (e.g. “Damn, that really sucks for him. All this hard work to get to where he is, and all some people want to do is tear him down.”) A fan’s defense of their favorite athlete is also directly proportional to nastiness of the crime. The more discomforting the accusation, the more staunch the fan’s unwavering support (unless, of course, the crime involves obviously innocent dogs).

Which brings me back to athletes and rape. When Ben Roethlisberger was first charged with rape earlier this summer, I remember discussing the initial reactions (or lack thereof) with Marie. Blogs and news outlets that chose to report the story (ESPN, the largest sports media empire in the history of the world, did not report the story for almost a good week after the story broke) harped on the fact that the plaintiff had filed civil as opposed to criminal charges. Additionally, speculation was already being made about the plaintiff’s past. Marie and I both knew that this was going to play out as predicted. Over the last month, the plaintiff’s mental state has been called into question, she’s been accused of extortion and pretty much all media outlets have written her off as unstable or, of course, vindictive, because ‘she really wanted it all along.’ Meanwhile, Roethlisberger has never been cast in any sort of negative light. He is too busy preparing for the upcoming season and how dare anyone try and distract him from working his job and living his life.

Let me be clear: I am not taking a side here. Like all people not directly involved with the case, I do not know all of the facts. And I have no stake in the outcome whatsoever. I am not writing off Roethlisberger as a rapist and the plaintiff a victim, and vice versa. What I’m pointing out here is the massive hole that comes part and parcel with both investigations of athlete rape cases and media accounts of these cases. As the lives of the accusers in these cases are dissected, deconstructed and judged (the judgment is almost unanimously: she’s crazy), the lives and mindsets of the athletes are not only not dissected, deconstructed and judged, they are always considered ideal. Roethlisberger is just “Big Ben,” the heart and soul of the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Kobe Bryant is just a quiet family man who had a momentary lapse in judgment—hey, we all make those.

These idealizations are ironic when one considers the well-documented ego and hubris professional athletes. Ego is the one vital element never considered by fans in cases of athletes and rape. To people like Kobe Bryant and Ben Roethlisberger, they seriously doubt that a woman would ever say no to them. And if she did, she really didn’t mean it, right? She was just playing hard to get. Never once is an athlete’s potential for developing a pathological mental state due to meteoric rises in their fame, money earned and ego—their seeming endless set of means—mentioned or questioned. Never. Women would never say no to the advances of a star athlete, just as fans would never question the star athlete’s word.

The lesson here is that in cases of rape, what we must always call into question are our initial reactions. As cases involving athletes prove time and again, we all have serious biases when it comes to dealing with issues as unsettling as sexual assault. And so rather than deal with these issues, we just write them off in favor of the person we like best. We’ll simply side with the athlete we so know and love, scorching the reputation and credibility of any accuser who comes in the athlete’s path. Rape is no joke. And to treat it in such a flippant fashion is irresponsible and harmful. The moment biases like this creep up in your mind, stop yourself and ask simply, “What about the athlete’s state of mind; what about his credibility?” It’s that simple. More often than not, you know what you’ll realize? Despite your knowledge and passion as a fan, you really don’t know the athlete as a person at all, just as you don’t know the accuser. If we are going to demand that the Justices of our highest court approach each case without bias, shouldn’t we do the same?

The Emotional Roller Coaster That is a Guy Watching the Game

2009-08-27T22:42:00.015-05:00

The Date: Saturday – October 12, 2002

The Place: Hanover, NH

The Game: (9) Florida State Seminoles at (1) Miami Hurricanes (live on ABC)

Until I met my beautiful wife, I’ll readily admit that the game of football (American football, for our international readers) was my life’s primary passion. It’s a product of where I grew up. Beginning in 1970s, the state of Florida evolved into a (some would say “the”) hotbed of football talent. As the game moved from one of bulky players and slow, ball-control offenses to one of speed and athleticism and wide-open play, Florida high schools began producing the fastest, most talented and most sought-after players. As a result, the state’s three largest college football programs—Florida, Florida State, Miami—outgrew their regional status and stormed the national scene, becoming household names (the Big 3 have won 10 of the last 25 national championships). At the professional level, the game grew to a level where Florida now boasts three NFL franchises. In lockstep with this tremendous growth in the game itself, of course, has been the growth in the amount of football fans throughout the state. Sure, there’s plenty of golf, basketball, baseball, horse and auto racing, - even hockey - all across the state, but, make no mistake, Florida puts football first. Everything else is a distant second.

I was born in Florida in 1981 and lived there until I left for college in the fall of 1999. During my childhood, I became an avid fan of both the University of Miami Hurricanes and the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (see, in Florida, all kids choose, usually at birth, a college and pro team to which they swear, often for life, their unwavering support). But I was more than just your average rabid fan. I was also a football player: a good one, too. After seven years at the youth-level, I played three solid years of high school football (the missing season coming during my tenth-grade year, when I suffered a torn ACL in my right knee; said injury occurring, you guessed it, during football practice). My success at the high school level prompted me to travel 1500 miles north to the state of New Hampshire to play two ill-fated seasons at Dartmouth College. A myriad of factors—most notably, mounting injuries and dissatisfactions with the team’s coaches and system—contributed to my decision to quit the team after only two years. The unfortunate end of my playing days, however, allowed me to spend my last two years in college purely as a fan. Together with my best friends (two of which also shared the same ‘this isn’t really how I planned it’ end to their lives as football players), I was able to enjoy football as I had when I was a precocious, stat-memorizing, favorite-player-emulating kid: emphatically. This involved lots reading, watching, arguing, the whole gamut. As fate would have it, my final two years of college also coincided with the resurgence of my beloved Miami Hurricanes.

This is where our story really begins…

By the time Florida State Seminoles traveled to the Orange Bowl in Miami in October 2002, the Hurricanes were in the midst of a 27-game winning streak. Winners of the 2001 national championship, the ’02 version of the Canes was nothing short of dominant. The team featured a roster full of future NFL stars like Andre Johnson, Vince Wilfork, D.J. Williams, Kellen Winslow, Jr., Jon Vilma and the late Sean Taylor. And they had swagger!

For a fan, it’s amazing how important a role things like attitude and demeanor play into one’s level of attachment to a team or a player. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, as the team grew into a national power, the Hurricanes became famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for their brash, ‘I don’t give a fuck’ nature: wild celebrations after big plays, arriving at opposing stadiums dressed in army fatigues, t-shirts emblazoned with ‘Catholics versus Convicts’ the week leading up to a game against Notre Dame. Off the field, the team always seemed to match the larger than life presence they imposed on opponents on the field. For a white, middle-class aspiring football star growing up in one of the more redneck parts of the state, I found this type of attitude appealing at a young age because, for me, the Canes exhibited an outspoken confidence (an arrogance that didn’t take itself too seriously) that I just couldn’t recreate in myself on or off the field. I was a fairly quiet kid, and I was always very good at sports. I’d like to think I had room for a bit unserious arrogance. However, trash talking never came naturally to me. But being a Canes fan sure did. So, in a sense, the Canes became a proxy. I could wear my Canes shirt to school, talk shit to friends who followed Alabama or Florida State, talk up the Canes and their successes, run the ball like Edge James; just proclaiming my fandom for the Canes allowed me to co-opt some of their attitude, their swagger. The Canes really became a part of my personality and life in a very rational way.

So what’s with the seemingly irrational and unhealthy emotional investment in a single game?

The Miami-FSU showdown began with the great Willis McGahee scoring on the Canes first possession, capping off a 90+ yard drive. I was sitting on a couch in my buddy Bob’s dorm room. A group of five of us watched the Canes march down the field and score the way they had for almost two full seasons. It all seemed so easy and preordained. Another friend of mine, Joe, quickly proclaimed, “Well this game is over.” Then why did I have a knot in my stomach? In fact, why had the knot in my stomach grown larger with each passing game? I watched the Canes throttle teams each week with sweaty palms. After a half decade of attrition—for a variety of reasons, the Hurricanes had it rough in the late ’90s—my team was finally at the pinnacle, back on top. And I mean way on top. People were already calling the ’01 squad the best college football team ever. My team was back on top. But as the winning streak grew, I grew as a basket case.

The Canes, of course, stall. Before I know it, the score is 17-7 in favor of FSU in the second quarter. It’s an early game, a noon kickoff, but I’m already a couple beers deep—anything to calm my nerves. The Canes get their shit together, scoring a touchdown just before the half, but they were still down 17-14 and, for the first time all year, a truly ominous feeling overcame me. I couldn’t even be in the same room as the game.

Across the street from our dorm the Dartmouth Big Green, the team I had unceremoniously quit a season before, were taking on the Yale Bulldogs at Memorial Field. Nothing better to take your mind off of the annual UM-FSU showdown than watching a couple Ivy League cupcakes square off. At the time, I was pretty bitter towards Dartmouth football. As I mentioned earlier, things didn’t really go as planned between me and the team. And when a person is driven to hate something that they have participated in and dedicated themselves to and loved every year for thirteen years straight, one holds on to a bit of anger in the aftermath. Long story short, the absolute last place I ever wanted to be on an autumn Saturday in Hanover, New Hampshire was a fucking Dartmouth football game. But there we were. My friends indulged me enough to make the trek to the stadium and together we watched Dartmouth pull out a rare win.

This little sojourn was only temporary and offered little respite from the stresses that awaited back at the dorm. We returned to the room just as the Miami-FSU game entered the fourth quarter. The first play of the fourth quarter: an FSU touchdown. The Seminoles were now up 27-14. The Canes just didn’t look like they had it. Around this point, I began pacing endlessly, from couch to bed to desk chair to hallway and back. I’m not a loud screamer, not one of those assholes who rants and raves with each play. I know football. I know it well. So as a game progresses, my emotions and feelings slowly build to match what I feel the outcome of the game will be. It’s a unique elation when things go well. It’s a terrible torture when it goes bad. No amount of beer or consoling words from my friends (who had their own teams to think about—this was, after all, an early game) could stop me from turning my hairs gray. By the time Kevin Beard caught a Ken Dorsey touchdown pass about halfway through the fourth quarter, cutting the Seminoles lead to 27-21, I knew it was too little too late. I wasn’t hopeless—I didn’t proclaim the game lost (again, I’m not one of those assholes). But in my heart, I felt the weight of that 27-game win streak. Just as I know the Canes players did. It took so much effort to get those 21 points on the board. And now there was just over seven minutes left. I just didn’t think they had enough time or energy.

But the defense quickly stopped the Florida State offense. Suddenly, the Canes had the ball with plenty of time. Sure, they were 70+ yards away from the end zone, but at least they didn’t have to throw up junk passes or run a two-minute drill. What followed on the first play this Miami possession was something I’ll always remember. Dorsey drops back, lets the pass rush come at him; he drops a perfectly placed screen pass to Willis McGahee. McGahee turns up field and, in a flash, he’s gained 68 yards! (please see the photo above) I was leaping up and down and screaming so hard that even my friends, who were fully attuned to my emotional state, shot annoying glances in my direction. A play later, the Canes score and it’s all of a sudden Miami leading 28-27.

Then the Canes defense held again! And now the blood rushed to another part of my head. I felt dizzy. This team was not going to lose! All they needed to do was run out the clock by getting a couple first downs. But, as life sadistically loves to have it, the Canes could not manage a first down and had to punt, giving the Seminoles one last opportunity to take the game. No problem—Miami has one of the best punters in the country. The Canes would pin them deep, make a couple tackles and call it a day. But our punter, Freddie Capshaw, shanked the punt. “Are you fucking kidding me,” I screamed, absolutely dumbfounded. The guy who could nail 40+ yard punts in his sleep kicked the ball three yards, giving the Seminoles the ball practically in field goal range. This roller coaster ride was about the end with me getting sick. Four plays later, there’s one second left on the clock and the Seminoles were lining up for a 43-yard field goal.

For those of you unaware of the history of the Miami-FSU football rivalry and the unique place game-ending field goals play in the series, please take two minutes and watch the video here.

It sounds almost anticlimactic, but the field goal was no good. The Hurricanes won. I immediately jumped into the air and hugged my friends. They were smiling and laughing, happy (as funny as it sounds) for me.

The remaining part of that day and weekend are to this day a blur. No, this isn’t due to a drunken celebratory haze. I was hungover from the game. I was so involved, heart and soul, in each play that only a couple hours after that field goal sailed wide left I was back in my room, taking aspirin and trying to sleep. Ironically, at a time when I should have felt absolutely elated—the Canes had just beaten the Noles, their biggest rival!—I felt emotionally drained and physically like garbage.

Men’s propensity to place sports at the center of their lives, to read the up-and-downs of their team into the up-and-downs of their own day-to-day isn’t a recent phenomenon. It’s practically cliché. Nick Hornby managed a whole memoir out of the idea. What often gets lost in all this talk of men and their sports obsessions is how the roller coaster that is a guy watching his team play a big game mirrors the way women are often charged with reacting irrationally to situations that supposedly don’t merit such responses. You know, stuff like getting intensely angry because another woman wore the same dress. Guys like to stereotype women as too emotional because of things like this, label them drama queens. But, really, how different are a woman’s outbursts or internal angers at supposedly benign events from my incredibly tumultuous adventures watching football games? It’s a simple question—a real ‘no shit’ one—but still important.

As men continue to stereotype women and their supposed emotional irrationality, and some women choose to stereotype men and their overblown attachments to sports, it’s easy to forget that these emotions are both two sides of the same coin. In sharing a little bit of my own personal history, by showing the foundation of my attachment to a football team I care about dearly, I want to get your minds working. I want you to search for the rational basis in your “irrational” emotional roller coasters. And, more importantly, I want you to consider the rational bases in the seemingly “irrational” emotions of others.

What Does The Birdcage Have to do With Michael Vick?

2009-08-22T19:37:00.008-05:00

What does The Birdcage have to do with Michael Vick? Think back to the movie for a moment. Think back to the story: the well-meaning parents of a young man want to make a good impression on the parents of his new fiancée. Where’s the conflict? The well-meaning boy’s parents are gay men (Robin Williams and Nathan Lane) who run a drag cabaret and the fiancée’s parents are conservative politicians. At their son’s request, the gay couple reluctantly decides to pretend to have a traditional home. Nathan Lane, the club’s star performer, needs to appear in drag for a whole new audience for a whole new reason: to play the part of the loving housewife. Of course the charade can’t go on forever, and toward the end of the movie Nathan Lane finally reveals that he is indeed a man in drag and half of a loving gay couple. The conservative politician’s reaction is priceless: “You can’t be Jewish?!” The real concern is their queerness. Classic misdirection of concern; classic understatement of importance.

Are you getting deja vu yet?

On August 17, 2009 Public Policy Polling asked a sample of 909 American voters whether or not they supported Michael Vick’s reinstatement into the NFL. Overall, 49% of Americans supported his reinstatement while 34% did not and 17% were unsure. Take a closer look:

There is an even stronger divide along racial lines with African Americans supporting reinstatement 80-9 but whites by only a 42-29 margin.

Here are some more numbers for you: the team that prosecuted Vick recommended that he serve 12 months in prison. The man was sentenced to 23 months and served 18 of them. Really? What else did Vick do wrong to warrant all those extra months added to a recommended 12 month sentence?

There’s your quantitative data.

Here’s some qualitative data: People are still making a gigantic deal out of the dog abuse. I mean protesting and boycotting across the country in person and in print. I mean a Michael Vick chew toy (because there’s a market for people who want the man torn apart and devoured in effigy). I mean three billboards worth of hatred on the roads leading to Lincoln Financial Field where Vick will play with the Philadelphia Eagles.

I’m not saying it’s okay to abuse animals – of course it’s not – but that’s beside the point I’m making here.

My point is, in light of the above information, the reactions to Vick’s reinstatement do not seem to fit a crime worth only a 12 recommended months of federal time. There has to be something else going on here to account for the discrepancy between the crime he committed and the societal punishment the man’s been dealt. And what’s with that racial divide Public Policy Polling pointed out?

Don’t pull a Birdcage, people. Don’t misdirect your more substantial concerns – the ones that really bother you, that are the most uncomfortable to talk about and to recognize in yourself – to the dog issue. The disproportionate importance given to the dog issue gives the lie here. If your issue is with race, come out and own it. Don’t blame it on the dog.

If what is underneath this absurd reaction against Vick is resentment that a young black man has an amazing God-given talent, that he was the #1 draft pick in 2001, that he enjoyed being the top-earning athlete in his sport, that he did something fantastic with his life while you fettered away in a cubicle somewhere compelled to spread your misery far and wide, own it. Come out and say it. If you’re complicit in the epidemic of young black men (Vick’s still in his 20’s, he counts as young) being disproportionately sent to prison for disproportionately severe sentences, own it. If you can’t be honest with yourself, who else can you be honest with?

People should not give in to the temptation to use dog abuse as a cover for their race issues. They shouldn’t pounce on the dog issue as their proof positive that they were right all along, that “Vick didn’t deserve any of his success.” The people who determine whether Vick ‘deserves’ to be in the NFL are in the judicial system and the NFL itself as his employer. No one never screws up, no matter how fantastic his job is. And the dog issue is weak compared to the race issue.

What makes the dog issue weak is that it’s too easy. Everyone loves their pets, and the attachment people have to them is part of what puts pet ownership so close to our hearts. That’s easy to agree on. Everyone can agree that hurting animals is bad. (Sure, there are a precious few outliers with the dog issue agreement, but that’s spit in the ocean.) It’s also easy to speak for animals that can’t speak for themselves and contradict what we say. That (among other things, some of which I will return to below) makes the dog issue, one that legitimately and understandably bothers and makes uncomfortable tons of people an easy one to tackle by comparison to race.

Racial issues also bother tons of people and make them uncomfortable, but our relationships to race are not as rosy as those of pet ownership. In dealing with race, we’re no longer dealing with a voiceless group in need of someone to speak for them. We’re dealing with people who can speak for themselves, and do. There’s a reason race has achieved the monumental institutional status it’s achieved in this country. To compare dog abuse to race in size and importance would be like comparing the Washington Monument to a thimble. It takes some serious denial to turn away from race and say, “No, I think the dog issue is more important than my fellow human beings. I don’t have as complicated a history with dogs. I consider myself their benevolent master. Good thing there’s no racial undertone in that last sentence or I’d have a tough problem to deal with!”

Don’t pull a Birdcage on Vick. And while you’re at it, don’t pull one on anyone else either.

Why I Hate the Jonas Brothers

2009-08-19T21:07:00.005-05:00

This is a look inside the experience of a young woman. This is a story about doing what guys do when approaching feminism for the first time—stepping outside your comfort zone—told through my very feminine experience of having a teenage crush. But instead of starting by telling you whom I liked, I’ll start with—

I hate the Jonas Brothers. I also hate the rest of the Disney manufactured teen/tween heartthrobs. Virginity rings? Do they enforce curfews as well? It wasn’t that long ago when I myself was a teenage girl with a throbbing heart, but the big-ticket item that made my idols worth my while was that they scared the crap out of my parents. What’s the point in longing for someone who panders to your parents? who’s sold with a child safety device?

I know much has been said of Gen-Y’s puny need for rebellion, but this takes the cake. I am a Gen-Yer and I find the appeal of such celebrities disturbing. Teenagerdom is one’s movement from child to adult. Thus, a legitimate teen heartthrob is supposed to exist outside the normal purview of a teenage girl. He’s supposed to represent a life apart from the one you have, a more unsheltered adult life. He’s got an undeniable magnetism, some sort of talent (usually something entertaining), and he’s fucking badass. He’s the type of guy that gives your parents full body shivers merely at the thought that their daughter finds him and, more importantly, what he represents, appealing. They raised you ‘better’ than that. They raised you to cross your legs, to say no to drugs, to do well in school and to want nothing more from a boy than to hold his hand. But this ain’t no twelve-year-old boy; this is a motherfucking rock star and he doesn’t hold hands.

Then there’s the obsession. It’s not a teenage crush unless there’s obsession. You start imagining what your life would be like if you actually had access to this person. You start dreaming of a life away from your annoying parents’ house, where no one tells you when to come home and people take you seriously because you’re mature enough to hang out with your crush and his crew. No one in these daydreams asks what a thirteen-year-old girl is doing at this party or on this tour because, on some level, you’re not thirteen anymore. You’re grown up just enough to suit your dreams, and everyone in them seems to know this.

So you get inspired. You take up guitar, singing, acting, fashion, painting (because you know only you can deliver the perfect album cover) because he invokes desire in you, and, often for the first time, a palpable aspiration to be great at something because, if you achieve it, you know great people inevitably brush elbows with one another. And, of course, by elbows I mean tongues and genitalia because rock stars like you aren’t interested in anyone’s elbow.

Crushes fade eventually, but the dream of a life of your own in which you achieve greatness outside your childhood home and without anyone’s permission stays with you. The rush that accompanies your intense desire to accomplish something impressive and fulfilling stays with you. All this was jump-started by your teenage crush because he challenges you to grow as a person, to explore what talents you have that could match or exceed his, to become independent, to leave your parents’ comfort zones in order to explore your own possibilities, which, in your still thirteen-year-old mind, you really believe are infinite.

Later on, when you look back at these crushes and wonder, as an adult, what the appeal was you realize that you’re still challenged by this person. Maybe they made you think about whether, how, and why your attitude might have change toward them when they came out as gay (George Michael and Lance Bass). Maybe they put your patriotism in perspective when they started mouthing off against the country you shared (Johnny Depp). Maybe your old crush, like mine, challenged you to consider that drug addicts and people who suffer from depression and mood disorders (Kurt Cobain) might actually contribute something important to society because the experience of your earliest and most earnest pursuit of personal growth is part of the risk-taking, dynamic individual you’ve become. You’re a person that can now appreciate the safety your parents gave you without throwing anything in their faces. Your parents realize that, despite how scary your growing process was, you are exactly what they raised you to be: a self-sufficient adult. Something not exemplified by a bunch of children who tour with their parents and mislead kids into believing that a career comes with someone to hold your hand (the Jonas Brothers).

Where is the challenge to anyone in the Jonas Brothers? Where is the opportunity to leave your comfort zone and dream of a fantastic grown-up life? There seems to be only a pat on the head and the reassurance that you never have to grow up or take risks, especially those risks that jeopardize other people’s willingness to like you. They teach that likability is one’s most important asset because celebrities like the Jonas Brothers are meant to be liked by everyone. What real teen idols teach you is that not everything is meant to be liked all the time, and that some things are more important in life than pleasing everyone around you.

I didn’t realize I was growing at the time I had my crush; I don’t think a lot of girls do. But I can look back and see how far I’ve come as a result of it. I guess the most surprising thing about stepping out of one’s comfort zone is that sometimes you don’t even know you’ve done it until you realize you’ve outgrown your old perspective. I can articulate this now the same way some of the guys I know can describe coming to feminism. “What’s the big deal,” they say. “I just took a class, just talked to my daughter, just became friends with someone different from me.”

I can tell you, from this side of it: learning is huge.

Staring Down the Barrel of Masculine Privilege

2009-08-17T22:21:00.004-05:00

The phrase “masculine privilege,” and all the ideas and traditions it suggests, is probably the single most daunting obstacle awaiting any guy tackling feminism for the first time. For any man—be they the open-minded, liberal thinking sort; the close-minded, misogynist variety; or anything between—it’s tough not to take as an insult notions that their biological sex buys them any sort of advantage in our society. It’s easier to just point at a successful woman and give the requisite, “See!?! Clearly, if women can be CEOs of multinational corporations, heads of state, or Justices on the US Supreme Court, then this whole masculine privilege idea is no longer relevant.”

The mistake some guys make is that they confuse a large cultural norm with a critique of their own personal behavior. This confusion tends to occur in a knee-jerk sort of way to guys who’d like to consider themselves (often rightfully so) sensitive and bright. Men that care and respect women don’t like to hear about masculine privilege, at least not in accusatory fashion. The topic is unsettling in ways all discussions of exploitation and unequal privilege are unsettling. Beyond that, though, bright guys often breeze over or outright avoid talking about masculine privilege because of the inescapable levels of introspection involved: you may see something in there that you wished you hadn’t. The fact is, no matter how forward thinking a guy may be, no matter how outspoken or active he is in feminist venues or other such causes, all men benefit from their masculinity. Whether they willingly accept or openly decry these benefits does not change the fact that the benefits exist to begin with.

A year ago, I married this blog’s editor. In the months leading up to our wedding, Marie decided to keep her name (or, rather, she decided not to change her last name to mine). It was a decision she discussed with me; and, as the sensitive, forward thinking guy I believe I am, it was a decision I accepted. So the wedding passes, as do multiple holidays and family events—you know, occasions in which a couple receives only one card or invitation. In nearly all cases, an envelope arrived addressed, annoyingly, to a Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Haney. At first, Marie would only say, “That’s not my name.” But as time passed, and this scenario continued to repeat itself, her annoyance grew. “Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Haney” became more than just a case of misidentification; it became an outright sign of disrespect. Now, we know our friends and family do not hold Marie in such low regard that they enjoy taking jabs at her whenever the holidays roll around. To them, “Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Haney” is just convenient shorthand. (This is patriarchal hegemony at its finest…Patriarchal what-y what?—don’t worry, we’ll discuss those topics and more down the road.) Nonetheless, the pain and annoyance is there regardless of intention. Her name is not Mrs. Tyler Haney: never has been or will be.

It was when these cards began arriving that I truly realized that the use of this traditional name conflation caused in Marie a pain that I could never feel. See, we will never for the life of our marriage receive in the mail an envelope addressed to Ms. and Mr. Marie Chesaniuk. In other words, my name will never be erased or ignored. What’s more, looking back to our pre-marriage months, I never had to deliberate and discuss whether or not I would have to give up my last name. I never had to hope that my future spouse would accept my decision to do so. I never had to constantly explain… fuck it, let’s be real, I never had to justify to more “traditional” folks why keeping my own last name wouldn’t be weird or detrimental to our non-existent children. I didn’t have to go through any of this. And, for the foreseeable future, no guy ever will. This is masculine privilege. And for most guys (and many women, really), sticking with tradition is a whole lot easier than confronting it.

So how does a guy go about facing down masculine privilege? I’m no doctor, but developing a sharper awareness and an explicit recognition of the advantages masculinity provides is good first step. In recognizing and confronting the pain Marie feels as a result of this last name ordeal, I’ve approached an understanding with her that helps us feel less cut-off from one another. That’s a good feeling.

What are some other first steps?

I Miss Sarah Connor

2009-08-12T19:02:00.002-05:00

Since Jaws’ original theatrical release in June 1975, summertime at the box office has been synonymous with Hollywood event films. And in addition to bloated budgets, high grosses and often sophomoric scripts, a common thread among most studios’ summer entries is a pretty blatant sexism. Like the opening scene in Jaws, when a beautiful young woman is quite literally eaten alive, the modern action movie has relegated women (with few exceptions) to variations of the damsel-in-distress or hyper-sexed sidekick stock characters. (Think Megan Fox in this summer’s highest grossing monstrosity, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.) The most commanding and vital stock role—the action star—is practically always saved for the Harrison Fords and Will Smiths of the world.

But this isn’t a post about the lack female action stars. What I want to talk about is the uniquely sexist way most Hollywood films often depict the female heroines that have been able to break the glass ceiling and become action stars.

At this point, before I go any further, allow me to politely interject that I’m not out to ruin summer action movies for anyone. I know there are plenty of Tomb Raider and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle fans out there. Hell, there are probably just as many, if not more, fans of the Transformers series, some of which probably see Megan Fox’s character as anything but mere eye-candy (after all, she is a motorcycle repairwoman!). Point is, I’m not trying to tell anyone how or what to like. What I’m talking about is a different perspective.

In nearly all female-driven action movies, like the two mentioned above, one of the most common and pervasive feminine stereotypes is always at the forefront: sex appeal. Now before you roll your eyes, I’d like to point out that I know how obvious this is. In fact, it’s this very obviousness that makes the truly sexist elements of the modern female action star so easy to miss.

To clarify, let’s talk about the one thing most of today’s movie stars, men and women, share: looks. Strong, sexy, drop-dead good looks. A common and easy feminist argument (and, not coincidentally, one that turns a lot of guys off of any sort of feminist ways of thinking) against the depiction of women in Hollywood films is, simply, that many female stars are just too damn attractive. You know the company line: these beautiful women create impossible standards for young girls and influence women in general in ways more negative than positive. This is all well tread territory. And while there is truth to this argument, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the physical beauty of stars of both sexes affects viewers of both sexes. In the age of Photoshop and performance-enhancing drugs, young men, too, are falling under the spell of the chiseled action star or stud athlete.

So this kills the obvious sexist argument, right? I mean, if the beauty of both male and female action stars is exploited, this is no longer a uniquely feminist issue, right?

Wrong.

Like many issues across the feminist landscape, this is a case where an obvious point (no matter how true) actually obscures a more malignant problem. Think for a second about the modern action film from a directorial perspective (as oxymoronic as it may sound, the artistic perspective). Like all movies, the stars of actions films are presented to viewers through a series of camera shots. A commonly overlooked element of these individual shots is their subjective nature.

I know, I know, this sounds like a bunch of film school mumbo-jumbo. So let me put it another way. Like pictures in a magazine, each camera shot in a film suggests something about the character being photographed. When we see a man constructing a suit containing jet packs and missile launchers (Robert Downey, Jr. in Ironman), it’s clear the director suggests ingenuity, brilliance. When we see a grown woman waking up, taking out her retainer, and dancing across her bedroom in a t-shirt and underwear not unlike that worn by adolescent boys (Cameron Diaz in Charlie’s Angels), it’s clear the director suggests a playful, girlish sexiness.

The stereotypical ways directors choose to present their action stars often goes unnoticed in modern action films. The sex appeal, the allure that frames both male and female action stars, is a product of these presentations, these directorial suggestions. For male action heroes, the sex appeal comes first and foremost from his actions. We see Ironman destroy the villain; we see Spider-Man stop the train before it careens off the tracks. We see, in other words, the acts of a heroic man and thus find him appealing; his body comes second. For the female action hero, we first and foremost see her body—beautiful and deeply sexualized—captured lustily by the camera. Think of Angelina Jolie as Fox in Wanted or Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider films. Think of any of Charlie’s Angels. The bodies of most of our female action stars are subjected to the same exploitative directorial shots that practically define the Megan Fox’s of the world; only a veil of heroism shrouds this exploitation. For female action stars, the body comes first; their acts come second.

This is why I miss Sarah Connor so much.

I’m talking about the most emphatically feminist action star of the past few decades, that’s who. As anyone who has seen Terminator 2: Judgment Day can attest, Sarah Connor (as portrayed by Linda Hamilton) is probably the most physically intimidating—badass—female presence to grace the screen since the heyday of Pam Grier. But unlike Grier’s blaxploitation films, and most of female-driven action films of today, Hamilton’s body is never, not for a moment, the subject of the camera’s gaze. In fact, the only time the film shows-off her physique is when we see her doing pull-ups, a typically “masculine” exercise, in her hospital room.

Sarah’s dress and appearance also go against the grain of the stereotypical hyper-sexed action heroine. At the start of the film, she appears seemingly without make-up, wearing only nondescript hospital sweats. Later, Sarah dons black cargo pants and a black tank top (see the above picture). Does she look good? You bet your ass she does: cigarette in one hand, semi-automatic rifle in the other; sunglasses on and a holstered knife adorning her belt. She looks like… she is an action star. Her wardrobe works in conjunction with the development of her character and the arc of the film’s story. Sarah Connor is as tortured and flawed as she is heroic. She exhibits true pathos. So to see this hardened figure preparing for battle, a viewer cannot help but think of the events that led her to this point and the badass fight she’s about to enter. In other words, Sarah’s actions come to mind first. Any sex appeal she gives off derives from these actions.

Take a look now at Lara Croft as portrayed by Angelina Jolie.

What we have here is not a female action hero but a male fantasy. In the Tomb Raider films, Lara Croft is a sexist caricature of a female heroine—beautiful almost beyond words, wealthy, and completely one-dimensional. It’s easy to focus on her solely on her looks because, really, there’s not much else to her character. Look at her short shorts, the accentuation of her breasts; see the garter-like weapons holsters and her pouty lips. Lara Croft’s appeal is exclusively sexual and not limited only to her classic outfit. All of clothes she wears in both films highlight Lara Croft’s otherworldly beauty. Even her movements, whether she’s walking, working out or fighting, are smooth and seductive. Any feelings of empowerment Lara Croft provides are partly empty because the character remains solely a male sexual fantasy masquerading as an action hero.

This sort of viewing perspective is useful for guys approaching feminism because it brings attention to one of the most common exploitations that feminism speaks out against: objectification of the female body. I’ll be the first to admit that, as a guy, female objectification is not always the easiest thing to catch. After all, guys are a primary audience for badasses like Sarah Connor and hyper-sexed icons like Lara Croft. We’re supposed to like them both, a lot. So it’s easy to get suckered into the false conclusion that all of today’s female action heroes represent greater parity—in quantity and quality—among women in action films simply because they exist at all. Like I mentioned in the last post, it’s no longer enough for a woman to simply play the role of action hero; now the question becomes, ‘How well does she do the job?’

An action hero’s true authenticity is a product of how the hero is presented. So the next time you watch a female action hero command the screen, ask yourself what are the camera shots are suggesting about the heroine. What does her wardrobe suggest? Remember, feminism and physical beauty are not mutually exclusive. But as the Sarah Connor/Lara Croft comparison proves, the presentation of an image often demands just as much attention as the image itself.

The Death of Who?

2009-08-10T19:30:00.001-05:00

Discussions about the decline (or outright demise) of the male-dominated workplace have been a side effect of the current recession. Just take a look at the July/August 2009 issue of Foreign Policy. In it you’ll find a feature by Reihan Salam titled—cue the orchestra—“The Death of Macho.” Salam, a writer with a penchant for the dramatic, begins with, “The era of male dominance is coming to an end.” Apparently, the recent failures of finance capitalism are only harbingers of something more ominous. Sure, the economy will eventually recover; housing bubbles will once again emerge and grow. But the modern male? He has no such luck:

What will not survive is macho. And the choice men will have to make, whether to accept or fight this new fact of history, will have seismic effects for all of humanity—women as well as men.

If you sift through these grand pronouncements (seriously, where is the line separating ‘grabbing a reader’s attention’ from ‘argument-killing hyperbole’?), Salam indirectly makes a great point about the static nature of masculinity. In the age of late capitalism (translation: the modern, post-Industrial Revolution economy we all know and love), a man’s role in society—what Salam calls “macho”—has not changed much or at all. I’ll spare you the laundry list of examples that prove this point (stuff like men’s roles as primary income earner; men making up the vast majority of power positions, government and corporate; etc.). Suffice it to say, it’s a fact that men have dragged their feet or outright fought to stop efforts towards sexual and racial equality in the workplace, even when it is an ultimate detriment to success.

Contrast this against the fluid nature of feminism. Over the last century or so, one of the most impressive features of feminism has been and continues to be its adaptability. When a newbie glances at the history of Western feminism, the first things they’ll likely notice are terms like ‘first wave,’ ‘second wave,’ and ‘third wave.’ These waves each revolve around different set of concerns (e.g. voting rights, workplace equality, gender identity). Feminism, in other words, evolves; it’s principal concerns shift to match the major issues of the era. Rather than fight change, feminism embraces and thrives on it.

Feminism’s fluidity presents a great lesson to men and masculinity in general. Returning to Salam, he has no problem pinning the current economic crisis on men and their “macho” ways. But rather than announce that these men are now in their “death throes,” I’d rather ask the old guard to take a look at feminism, and not just its messages but its method. “Macho” does not have to die. Men can still be men. To invoke the cliché, “macho” men just need to evolve. As feminism proves, especially in comparison to the masculine ways that killed the economy, this sort evolution is not only realistic and possible in theory; it is vital and effective in practice.

Switching gears for a second, I want to point out that while there’s a lot of truth in Salam’s article, his doomsday scenario for men drowns out the very important fact that men and women are already working across job sectors in more equal ways. Across industries (even the “macho” world of finance capitalism) women hold positions of all levels. All Salam’s article, as well as a companion piece by Valerie Hudson (which pretty much only buttresses Salam’s main points), does is state the obvious: that women’s influence in the workplace is growing in size and scope.

This workplace co-existence, and the meritocracy that is emerging, highlights for me one of the key emotions involved in any sort of male approach to feminism: empathy. Things—emotions, facts, food, whatever—are much easier to appreciate and understand not when they are simply pointed out to you but, rather, when they are experienced. Empathy provides the most effective bridge to understanding for those moments when we cannot experience something directly. It is easier for guys to warm up to and engage with feminism once they can identify something that allows them to relate to the struggles women face. The workplace is a common ground we both share. We share the same offices, the same positions; we share the same nagging bosses and the same paths of advancement.

In the American workplace today, men must understand that their sex does not guarantee them the same lifetime career security it may once have just as women must accept the fruits of the labor of nearly a century of feminists. Granted, the sexual politics of the American economy are still not completely level for women. Still, the possibilities, realities and responsibilities of high-level positions do exist for and are already being met by talented women across America. The expectations for modern women extend beyond merely getting the job and into how far they take the job. On-the-job expectations, in other words, are as equal as they’ve ever been; and they represent a shared experience that is so easy to overlook yet, at the moment, is so helpful. By recognizing that there is a common ground on which we both deal with the same shit, guys gain a degree of understanding with women and the struggles they face that may have otherwise remained invisible.

Guy's Guide Takes on Void!

2009-08-07T21:44:00.001-05:00

The absence of any sort of guy’s voice in today’s feminism is staggering. This is a problem. Men need to understand feminism. Feminism needs sincere male understanding in order to effect the changes it ultimately hopes to gain. Guys and feminism are practically always portrayed as being at odds or in conflict. And judging by the feminist blogs and websites from around the world, the lines of communication between men and women are still not open. Still, the fact remains that there is a vital place within broad discussions of feminism and the women’s movement for a genuine male perspective, one that sets aside the snarky male takes on the subject and enters into something a little more honest.

The Guy’s Guide to Feminism takes on this void. The blog is not a masculine critique of feminism, just as it does not subscribe to the satirical, insecure, and often downright hateful approaches of most men’s magazines and blogs on the subject. Grounded in the belief that anyone who can benefit from open thought on feminism should benefit, The Guy’s Guide is just that, a guide promoting male understanding of feminism in a way that supersedes the stereotypical images and lessons our culture passes down to us. After all, superseding stereotypes is a big reason why guys benefit from understanding feminism. By putting traditional ideas and expectations of themselves into new contexts, guys can develop new ideas and understandings of what it really means to be a man.

The Guide looks at feminism from the inside out:

Where do guys fit within feminism?
How can guys better understand their place in a world where feminism is a matter of fact?

These are valuable questions worth discussing not just because they carry cultural significance. Feminism is so much more than a catalogue of historical events or a series of arcane theories left to academics; it is one of our time’s most visceral and exciting movements. It’s in action across our entire landscape. From our home and work lives, what we watch and read, all the way down to the way we think and interpret the world in front of us, feminism is at work. And it involves everyone, men and women. Too often have discussions of feminism centered on men’s relationships towards women. The Guy’s Guide considers men’s relationships with women, with feminism.

While our blog’s title mentions guys specifically, The Guy’s Guide works in and promotes a spirit of inclusiveness. We encourage and hope that men and women of all ages, backgrounds and levels of interest read, comment on, and push each discussion further.

Welcome to The Guy’s Guide to Feminism!