This Week in Blogs: August 16-22

Happy Sunday! As you may have noticed, I have started posting some link love on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as Sundays now. Sunday's link love posts will be slightly different now. I will include some of my favorite posts since Thursday, but I will also feature some of my favorite posts from the week overall, including posts that were already loved previously. Just a disclaimer: I have been kind of lazy about my reading this week, so the list is not as long as it normally is. I'm always looking for new posts and blogs to read, so don't forget to leave your links in the comments!

New link love:
The Girl on page 194 - Below the Belt
A look at how we judge women's bodies by examining the "real woman" picture in Sept's issue of Glamour magazine.

Sex is scary (at least to some journalists) - Clarissa's Blog
How our fear of sex is a result of the patriarchal culture.

But men aren't pretty - o filthy grandeur
Challenging gender norms through language.

Today's WTF: Fragoli - The Undomestic Goddess
About how lesbianism is portrayed in advertising

Thomas Jefferson: The Face of a Rapist - Womanist Musings
Thomas Jefferson was an integral part of the development of our country, but should we forget that he was also a rapist? Also posted at Feministe.

Weekly Link Love:
Attn. Straight Women: Gay men are not your accessories - Feministing
"Perhaps the more subversive act today is to decline to preface the term "friend" with a description of that person's sexuality."

Michelle O.: "Intellectual Lightweight"? - Salon Broadsheet
Apparently Michelle Obama is not as smart as she thinks she is...

"Blinded by privilege": ableist language in critical discourse - Deeply Problematic
A reflection on how the language we use contributes to the oppression of others.

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There is a new blog on the block: Fiercly Independent
The blog is run by Leftunder Books and focuses on indie publishing, writing, reading, feminism, illustration, and some other stuff. Check it out!

Honey, There Are Gay References in Commercials

I love Sarah Haskins and her Target Women videos. So I was really excited when I found this other series of videos: "That's Gay" featuring Bryan Safi. I was tipped off to these videos via a tweet from Jessica Valenti, founder and editor of Feministing. Here is the most recent one featuring gay characters in commercials:



Living in my heteronormative privilege, I never really noticed the lack of gay people in commercials and the subtle references to gay rights in some commercials. I already knew about some of the commercials that had different "gay versions" because I would see them on Bravo. The most obvious one that I had seen was the Levi jeans ad that features a hot woman in the "hetero version" and a hot guy in the "gay version."

But what I find really interesting are the subtle references to gay rights in some commercials. They are think that I never would have noticed without them being pointed out to me, but I guess that's part of my heteronormative privilege. Like the Orbitz commercial that has a gay pride flag on the golf clubs and the Human Rights Coalition logo on one of the guys t-shirts.

I think it's pretty great that these commercials work these references into commercials. But it would be even better if companies could put gay characters in commercials instead of these subtle references. I guess companies are scared of pushing potential clients away since there is obviously still a strong homophobic community in this country. And by making separate (but equal) commercials that are aired on "gay" channels, these comapnies are still attraching gay clientele.

But why can't these commercials be one in the same? If there are not gay characters in mainstream media, whether in movies, on tv shows, or in advertising, homophobic feelings are going to continue. So while I applaud some of these companies that put subtle gay rights references in their commercials, next time try featuring a gay character that doesn't promote the idea that gay relationships are gross and wrong.

Anti-Homophobic Commercials Hit the Airwaves

When I was babysitting this past weekend, we were watching the Tour de France (I'm not entirely sure why) and what really caught my attention was a commercial that came on. The commercial featured Wanda Sykes reprimanding a group of teenage boys in a pizza place for using the phrase "that's so gay."

I was very pleased with the commercial and reinforced the message to the children I was babysitting. I was so impressed by the commercial that I decided to research it a little further.

This commercial was put out by Think Before You Speak, a campaign of Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network aimed at ending homophobic language in schools.

This campaign aims to raise awareness about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBT bias and behavior in America’s schools. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce and prevent the use of homophobic language in an effort to create a more positive environment for LGBT teens. The campaign also aims to reach adults, including school personnel and parents; their support of this message is crucial to the success of efforts to change behavior.

This campaign has some great resources, so make sure to check them out.

I also discovered that there were two more commercials in addition to the one featuring Wanda Sykes; one featuring Hilary Duff (whom I'm not a huge fan of, but the commercial is still great). This following video contains both the Hilary Duff and Wanda Sykes commercials:



I think that these commercials have the potential to be effective because they point out how using the phrase "that's so gay" can be hurtful by turning it back on the person who says it. For example using "that's so 16-year-old boy with a cheesy mustache" to say "that's so stupid," as in the Wanda Sykes commercial.

They have the potential to get the message across, especially if they widen their reach. I would like to see these commercials reach network television. So far, I have only seen the one on ESPN (I believe, or whatever channel the Tour de France was on).

This is the third commercial that takes place at a drug store:




Update: I just saw the Wanda Sykes commercial on ABC Family...but it was after midnight.

True Blood is Right Wing's Worst Nightmare

I have a slight obsession with True Blood. I posted earlier about how vampire series like True Blood (and Buffy and Twilight) represent women's sexuality by featuring very few female vampires. But True Blood quickly has become one of my new favorite shows on television right now (I only discovered it a couple months ago). Because of this, every Monday I look forward to Jezebel's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" feature recapping the previous nights episode; it's always smart and sassy. This week's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" tipped me off to an article on The Daily Beast relating the world of True Blood to the "right wing's worst nightmare about post-gay-liberation America."

Looking beneath the surface of True Blood, you can see the connections between the vampires in the series and the gay community. The vampires recently "came out" of hiding among humans (aka heterosexuals, for the purposes of this comparison), exposing the number of vampires in society and demanding an equal place in society. A running theme throughout the first season is the vampires fighting for the right to marry humans. Churches claim that vampires are evil and threaten to destroy the very fabric of society.

I had been aware of this social commentary since I started watching the show (which is also much similar to the X-Men series). But I had never really thought too critically about it because I was too busy enjoying the awesome-ness of the show (ok, so I might be a little biased about the show). So, I have gone over some of the similarities, but there are also some troubling differences...

As the Daily Beast article points out...

it has troubling implications, because the vampires, political rhetoric aside, aren’t really interested in joining human society. Unlike the misunderstood X-Men heroes, most of the vampires we meet are arrogant, perverse, and cruel—everything the far right believes gays to be.

The article goes on to wonder about the true intentions of the show...

It’s hard to tell what creator Alan Ball, who also made Six Feet Under, is up to here. He’s openly gay, so he could be simply tweaking conservative fears. Or, like Rupert Everett, maybe he’s reacting against the domestication of gay life.

It's hard to say. Even though there are similarities between vampires and the gay community, they are not necessarily painted in a good light. Is this Alan Ball just turning conservative fears on themselves, or is it "reacting against the domestication of gay life"?

Even though True Blood offers social commentary on the gay rights movement (whether positive or negative, it's still up for debate), I do not think that the show has much to offer feminism and women's rights. The shows main female character, Sookie Stackhouse, is kind of helpless. She constantly needs Bill, her vampire lover, to rescue her, which has caused Eric, a powerful vampire in the region, to take notice of her as well, often treating her as an object. Sure, she does have her psychic capabilities to offer, but it's always the guys (aka vamps) that do the heavy-lifting. In addition to often having to rescue Sookie, Bill is often highly protective of her, not really letting her do a lot for or by herself. Sookie loves how Bill treats her, most of the time. But she always comes back to him in the end after they have a fight about his protective nature or his vamp nature.

I still love the show. I think it has a lot to offer television, even without being feminist. But encouraging conversation about the treatment of women in the show and the emphasis on sexuality will bring these feminist issues to light.

Further Reading:
True Blood: Pro-gay/Anti-feminist? [Smashing patriarchy daily]
'True Blood' and Female Sexuality [Appetite for Equal Rights]
Rough Sex With Vampires: What Does "True Blood" Tell Us About Women and Sexuality? [AlterNet]

This Week in Blogs: July 12 - July 18

Sorry for the tardiness of this post, I have had a rather busy weekend in Chicago and needed Sunday afternoon to catch up on things and relax. I spent some of that time reading over the numerous blog posts that I missed from some of my favorite blogs. Here are some blog posts from the past week that I found particularly interesting:

Blogger: How Abortion Rights Make Bad Boyfriends [Jezebel]
Sorority Life on Facebook and the Construction of Female Friendships [Deeply Problematic]
Why I Provide [RHRealityCheck]
Calling the Ketel WHACK, or: The Worst Title of Any Post Ever (It Is About Vodka) [Tiger Beatdown]
How do two affirmative action babies raise their own baby? [Bitch]
Food, Class, and Need [Womanist Musings]
"Is Abortion a Public Health Issue?" Sotomayor Hearings, Day Two [RHRealityCheck]
Feel the Homomentum [Shakesville]
Sotomayor: Strong, Rational, Intelligent Woman [Feministing Community]

What have you been reading and writing this week? I have some catching up to do on my blog posts from all the stuff that I have missed while preparing for my trip to Chicago this past weekend.

The Male Feminist

In my final semester at Beloit College, I was confronted in my Feminist Theory class with the question: can men be feminists? The class was 9 females and 1 male. While many of the women in class were eager to show the inclusion of the feminist movement in saying that of course men can be feminists, the one man in the class spoke up saying that he still wasn't quite sure if they could. While he certainly agreed with feminist values and the "feminist cause," he wasn't sure if they could actually be part of the category called feminist.

Ever since I started my career as a Women's and Gender Studies major, I was convinced that men could be feminists. But this class discussion in my final semester started me questioning (becuase that's what Women's and Gender Studies is all about anyways). Here are some of the points that were brought up in the discussion and some that I thought about later:

Men CAN be feminists:

• Many men believe that women should have equal status in society and do not see this as a threat
• Feminism is about the inclusion of differing opinions centering around women's equality, so men should be included for that differing opinion
• Excluding men can be seen as a form of sexism, which is what feminism is trying to fight against
• With the inclusion of trans and gay rights, men can "benefit" from a feminist "agenda" (this is not to say that they wouldn't benefit from women's equality, there is just a more clear connection between men and feminism)
  

Men CANNOT be feminists:

• Feminism is grounded in women's experiences, which men do not have (yes, trans men do have experiences as a woman and while every woman's experinece is different, trans men's experiences are fundamentally different than women's experiences)
• Can't women just have something that is their own instead of having to share it, like everything else, with men?

After this class discussion, I started asking some of my guy friends (some of whom I knew called themselves feminist and some who I knew didn't) if they thought men could be feminists. I mostly just got a yes or no answer (because it was the middle of the semester and people were busy and I just sent out an email to a lot of people, and only had a full conversation with a few people). But one of my favorite answers was along the lines of: "I think men can be feminists like Jane Goodall can be an ape. They can study feminism, they can believe in feminism, they can act like feminists, but they can never truly be feminist." While this is not the most perfect analogy, it made me chuckle and I could see where he was coming from.

After this discussion and the ongoing debate on my part, I have come to my personal conclusion that men can be feminists, but they are a fundamentally different kind of feminist than women. Men have different experiences and so do women, so everyone is going to approach feminism in a different way. In "third wave feminism," there are many different identity "themed" (for lack of a better word) feminisms, such as black feminism, lesbian feminism, Asian feminism, working class feminism, Middle Eastern feminism, etc. So why can't we add male feminism to that list in which that type of feminism is approached from "the" male perspective.


Note: this picture came from the blog Gapers Block in a post about the 2004 March for Choice.

Sacha Baron Cohen's Humor is Lost on Me

I never saw Borat. I thought it looked stupid. And now Bruno is coming out, Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie. I don't really understand why Sacha Baron Cohen (or SBC, as he will be referred to from now on) feels the need to assume the identity of the characters he plays. He's been travelling the globe dressed up as Bruno and demanding that people interview him as if he were Bruno. He wears ridiculous clothing and portrays a delusional international gay...fashion designer? I'm not quite sure.



I won't see Bruno, because a) it looks just as (if not more) stupid as Borat, b) it just looks "straight" out offensive to the gay community. I was surprised when I read an article on E! Online actually criticizing the movie. Ted Casablanca saw an early screening of the movie and had this to say...

we just couldn't get behind Cohen behaving as though being gay automatically makes you hilarious to watch. It doesn't...SBC's performance is a straight man's limited idea of what he thinks is stereotypically gay. It's unknowing, ignorant, offensive and guilty of the most heinous crime of all: It's just not funny. If he'd made us guffaw we could at least forgive him for giving us a politically incorrect good time.

If only other people could see it this way. Comments on this article range from "Bitter much?" and "It's a movie...Let it go!" to...

I think it's hilarious when people don't get the joke. That's what makes it even more funny for those of us who do. Don't know about anyone else but all of my homosexual friends think he's very funny. Then again, they have a sense of humor and aren't a bunch of whining wankers.

What exactly is the joke that you get and no one else seems to? I'm not sure. I also liked how a lot of the comments in defense of the movie often said something along the lines of, "I have gay friends and they think it's funny, so it must be." I feel like it's along the lines of the argument, "I have a black friend, so I'm not racist." Just because you have friends who are gay and like it does not mean that it is not offensive to the gay communtiy. Some of the comments on the article were in support of what Casablanca said, but most were just defending SBC's humor.

I know that I won't be going to see it. Supporting these stereotypical views of the gay community is just another way that gay people are objectified in our country. By having a homosexual character for the purpose of pleasing a largely heterosexual audience just further enforces the sexual hierarchy.

On Being a Lesbian in Network TV Show - The Case of Heroes

I heard of this via Womanist Musings.

I have been watching Heroes since it started. The first season was great and ever since then I have been hoping that it will some how get back up to those standards. So far, no luck. Their recent plot twists have left me disappointed. But don't worry, they have more plot twists in store for the upcoming season. One of which is creating a lesbian love interest for Claire, the teenager who has healing powers.

TV shows have done this before. One prominent example is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Willow developed a lesbian love interest after breaking up with her long time boyfriend. But can Heroes handle this as well as Buffy? I highly doubt it. The writing on Buffy was top notch (but I'm kind of partial to Joss Whedon), whereas Heroes has been kind of lacking as of late.

Using a lesbian relationship solely to increase ratings is just further objectifying and exploiting lesbians and the relationships they have. I feel as if this development in the Heroes script is simply serving as a way to attract male viewers who have lesbian fantasies as opposed to bringing awareness to the issues, struggles, and life experiences facing lesbians today.

Renee at Womanist Musings has this to say...

It seems evident that the producers are going for the titillation factor, considering that this is an attempt to raise ratings. Heaven forbid a lesbian relationship exist on television because women actually engage in sexual relationships for pleasure and not to be a visual fluffer for some guy who wants to get off.

Even if they somehow manage to normalize this relationship, the impetus for its creation will always render it a form of exploitation. The idea that GLBT relationships can be affirmed when it suits the needs of heterosexuals only maintains the power imbalance. Heterosexuals should not be able to decide when expression of lesbian love is appropriate, when little to no such disciplining occurs between men and women.

Using lesbian relationships to serve heterosexuals is just another way to placing lesbians in a subordinate position.

On this note, is it any coincidence that the character entering into a lesbian relationship is Claire, the hot teenage cheerleader, instead of someone like Angela Petrelli? This is just another example of exploiting female sexuality for the purposes of heterosexual men.

I'm going to be interested to see how this story line plays out. Like I said, I'm not really holding out a lot of hope that the writers are going to handle this story line effectively or in a respectful manner. But, you never know.

Post Worthy: Gay Marriage Recognized in D.C.

Today D.C. started recognizing gay marriage. This does not mean that same-sex couples will be rushing to city hall for a marriage license. What is does mean is that same-sex couples who are married in states that have legalized gay marriage will be recognized as married within D.C.

While ideally D.C. would have legalized gay marriage, this is great first step. Way to go D.C.!

For further reading:
Marriage EqualiTEA: One Lump or Two?
Gay Marriage in Washington, D.C.: Coming Tuesday at 12:01am

Abortion is a Blessing

This isn't the common belief held by many people, including some feminists. I'll admit that I have occassionally used an argument along the lines of "yes, aboriton is a tragedy, but it is the lesser of two evils." I have used this argument to get anti-choicers to recognize a woman's right to choose and that sometimes it is the better option, even if it is "evil." What I was not aware of when I was making this kind of argument was that this argument might actually be deterring the pro-choice movement.

At the 2009 National NOW Conference, I heard Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale talk about reproductive rights as an Episcopal priest. She says that "abortion is a blessing," never a tragedy. What is a tragedy, according to Ragsdale, is the loss of hopes and dreams. Whether an unplanned pregnancy is a resule of rape or just faulty birth control, abortion is blessing to that woman in need. Unplanned pregnancies can severely disrupt the hopes and dreams of women and abortions help to restore these. And when women want children and have a planned pregnancy, but health issues require her to get a late-term abortion to save her life, the loss of the hopes and dreams of having a child is the real tragedy. Not the abortion. Never the abortion.

When we, as feminists, make concessions that abortion is a tragedy but the lesser of two evils, we lose our footing and this will eventually lead to loosing the pro-choice battle. We are still fighting to uphold Roe v. Wade. Abortion providers are being murdered. This is a pro-choice battle. If we say that abortion is a tragedy, anti-choicers can use the argument that even pro-choice feminists believe that abortion is evil so it should be illegal.

As feminists, we need to stand our ground that abortion is a blessing for women who face the fear and stress of an unplanned pregnancy. We need to continue to defend the ruling of Roe v. Wade. We need to support our local or state abortion providers. We need to work for the reproductive rights of all women around the country and around the world.

The speech that Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale gave at the 2009 National NOW Conference was really inspiring and eye-opening. I am so used to hearing the religious argument that abortion is murder, women shouldn't use birth control, and that LGBTQ people are less than human. But it was amazing to hear a pro-choice, reproductive and LGBTQ rights advocate who was a religious person, not to mention an Episcopal prient. Ragsdale was recently elected as the second woman and first openly lesbian or gay president and deal of Episcopal Divinity School. Ragsdale will be responsible for teaching and training a new generation of priests which will make strides (not steps) toward the religious support of reproductive and LGBTQ rights.

Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale's selected sermons
EDS information on Ragsdale