Porn Documentary: Inside Deep Throat, Part 1

Note: due to an apparent restriction to my WordPress-ordained image-editing privileges, I’ve decided to shelve the Advertising! series for the time being. If I ever learn how to resize without clicking and dragging, or if I give up on my desire to achieve perceived post-formatting perfection, then I’ll pick it up again.

So I just watched the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat. I remembered watching it when it was first released, so I was interested to watch it again and see if I might make a new reading of it, or absorb the same message, or notice information that I hadn’t noticed before. I had read vaguely that Catharine MacKinnon had had something to do with the film (as it turns out, her only inclusion was in panel discussions about the film, not in the film itself), and certainly, a documentary about a pioneer hardcore porn film should include a radical feminist, humanist perspective. It was entirely possible that I had missed it seven years ago, at the age of eighteen, long before I learned that a group of people believes in my right to have rights.

As it turns out, the documentary was a push for libertarianism, rather than providing a humanist critique of the film. It featured interviews with one self-proclaimed feminist, Camille Paglia, who identifies as a “dissident” feminist – that is, she is concerned with the advancement of women by rebelling and breaking tradition on a structural level, not so much with the advancement of women (or any group) by examining the ways in which discrimination and inequality work against them. Paglia was pro-porn in the film, and the other women who were interviewed had pro-porn perspectives, too. The humanist, radical feminists, however, were largely absent from the film, appearing very briefly so as to be criticised – the feminist perspective was entirely discounted. It’s a shame, because there are plenty of ways in which both Deep Throat and the views expressed in Inside Deep Throat could do with a little feminist-critiquing.

Though the documentary mysteriously champions Deep Throat for its promotion of female sexuality, the premise of the film, in itself, poses a danger to women’s enjoyment of sex, and freedom of sexuality – it objectifies and stultifies women, rather than liberating them. We have the imaginative notion of a woman’s clitoris existing deep inside her throat; only a long penis can bring her to orgasm. The first issue is the incorrect lesson that women can experience sexual pleasure from sex acts that only stimulate the nerve endings on men’s sex organs – a blow job only constitutes a good fuck for a man, the receiver, but here we get the message that women, the givers, are satisfied by it, all the same. Thankfully, in a statement uncharacteristic to the rest of the documentary, writer Erica Jong voices this fact:

This is a male fantasy that says, ‘I like to get my cock sucked, I really get off on it, therefore, she must too. … Look, men want to believe that the clitoris is in a woman’s throat. Because if they can believe that the clitoris is in a woman’s throat, then they can believe that by thrusting their penis into a woman’s mouth, she gets as much pleasure as they do. Guess what? It’s not true.

The film’s misrepresentation of women’s sex organs not only offers a severely warped education about women’s sexuality, steering its audience toward acts that provide women no sexual pleasure; it also posits women, the givers of pleasure in heterosexual fellatio, as the happy sexual slaves – we live to serve, and we love to serve.

Given that the clitoris is grossly misplaced in the film, it is bizarre that Inside Deep Throat celebrates it for promoting clitoral orgasms.  The documentary rightly denounces its critics in the 1972 obscenity trial as diminishing the clitoral orgasm in favour of the vaginal. Dr. Kenneth Levin, a Freudian psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution, is quoted:

A woman seeing this film may think that it is perfectly healthy, perfectly normal if you have a clitoral orgasm. That is all the woman needs – she’s wrong. She is wrong. And this film will strengthen her in her ignorance.

Author Helen Brown then reminds us of the “complete, utter nonsense” belief that “at that time, a real orgasm could only happen if you were with a man and his penis was inside of you.” Her message is perfect, except that the film took the clitoris – the external centre of pleasure on a woman’s body, one that she or a non-penised partner could access quite readily – and moved it penis-length-deep inside of one of her orificies – her mouth this time, instead of her vagina. The woman, essentially, has been revaginised – re-fuckholed – and where vaginal sex isn’t necessarily pleasurable for a woman, throat sex most certainly isn’t. While the documentary claims that the film has a promotive effect on women’s sexuality and women’s orgasms, instead it certainly is deleterious – giving us the same old shit, only worse.

The clitoris-in-throat premise of Deep Throat doesn’t just demote women’s enjoyment of sex, it degrades women as people. A clitoris being in a throat necessitates deep-throat fellatio, meaning that it necessitates that women broaden the scope of sex acts that they can and will perform for the sake of sexual pleasure – really, for men’s sexual pleasure. This means that we pressure women to perform novel sex acts for men’s pleasure, we experiment with a woman’s willingness to perform new sex acts, and we broaden her physical capabilities to perform such acts. Gagging is a natural reflex, but Deep Throat lead actor Linda Boreman/Lovelace learned to overcome it for her husband’s pleasure, and Deep Throat filmmakers were soon to capture it in a reproducible medium to teach to more women. Though in reality deep-throat fellatio provides zero sexual pleasure for women, it’s unnecessary, and it’s uncomfortable for women, the message would be that women must learn about it, and must learn to perform it on their partners, regardless. After all, how can we advance the sexual revolution if women won’t just get with the program already and do uncomfortable things for their menfolk? As women are compelled to perform more and more acts for the pleasure of men, acts which require hard work and practice on their part and which are pointless and uncomfortable for them, so are women degraded as humans.

The final premise-related issue is that the sex act, constructed as pleasurable for a woman, cannot be performed with a non-penised partner; it can only be performed with a penis in a woman’s throat. (As an aside: Were it performed with merely a long object, we see one of the fullest and severest degradations – not a single nerve ending is pleasantly stimulated; the act occurs solely to prove that women’s resistance can be overcome, and that it can be readily done to a woman.) This sexual restrictiveness is heterosexist, though the major victims are not gay men but lesbians – gay men needn’t worry where their clitorises are. As such, the premise of the film reinforces a compulsory heterosexuality for women – according to this plot, when it comes to women’s sexual pleasure, another woman just won’t do – just can’t do.

See how much shit Inside Deep Throat failed to discuss, in favour of promoting libertarianism? And that’s all just relating to the premise of the film.

But I’ll conclude. Just by looking at one element of Deep Throat, we see that the film is highly problematic for women and for women’s sexuality. It promotes men’s sexuality and sexual enjoyment, but it only does so to the detriment of women’s sexual enjoyment, and to the detriment and degradation of women themselves. By basing itself solely on the premise of a woman’s clitoris being relocated to the back of her throat, it provides us a warped message about women’s sexual organs; it claims to promote clitoral orgasm but instead does a reworking and expansion of penetrative sex, which is pleasurable for men but not necessarily for women; it degrades women by encouraging them to perform uncomfortable acts, and to learn new things and expand their physical capabilities for no reason other than to satisfy men; and it promotes penis sex to the exclusion and demotion of lesbian and other non-penis sex. It only works to reinforce the status quo of men being dominant to women, of women requiring men, of men’s sexuality being paramount, and of women’s sexuality and sexual pleasure being an invisible and secondary aspect of men’s and women’s sexual lives.

Advertising! Part 12: Killing Us Softly 4 and Sexualising Little Girls

In case you haven’t been following, I’m discussing Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 lecture documentary film Killing Us Softly 4. We’re up to Part 2, which you can view on YouTube. Click on an image to see a larger version, and click on the link in the corresponding text to see my source for that image.

Having pointed out the danger in infantilising and sexualising women (see Part 11), Kilbourne exposes advertising’s sexualisation of little girls. First and foremost, she notes that companies have been exploiting girls in this manner for decades.

     
A 1959 ad for children’s lingerie from Better Homes & Gardens magazine; a perfume ad from around the 1970s; a 1976 ad for Love’s Baby Soft fragrance whose copy reads, “Because innocence is sexier than you think”.

This has become much more commonplace in recent years. Worldwide, children are sexualised in ads and pictorials – they are scantily dressed, they lie around passively, their eyes engage and invite the viewer’s gaze; sometimes, they display explicitly provocative body language and facial expressions.

    
This 2006 pictorial for Israel’s TNT clothing features a young girl lounging around in her bedroom looking sexy; a little girl poses in a pictorial for French company Jours Apres Lunes and their 2011 range of girls’ lingerie; a billboard in China – albeit obscured by scaffolding – advertises Disney’s range of lingerie for girls in 2008.

In January 2011, Vogue magazine caused much controversy when it published a pictorial featuring young French girls Lea, Prune and Thylane Blondeau (you can see an image of Lea and Prune from the same campaign in Part 6: Getting Us Started Young). Thylane has been the focus of the outrage; while many articles state her age to be 10, I make out that she would have been 9 at the time of the shoot.

The controversy stems from the fact that the girls, especially Thylane, exhibit highly sexualised body and facial language, they display sexual submissiveness, they wear adult clothing, and they appear in adult settings. The image to the left, which features Thylane, exemplifies the exploitative nature of the campaign: she has been told to lie on the bed with its animal print sheets, to pull her skirt to the side so that her legs are showing, and to give a sultry face. Undoubtedly, the rabbits on either side of her have a deliberate significance in the setting.

The image to the right is an ad for Armani Junior that features a prepubescent boy. Notably, his gender appears ambiguous here: his hair is long, blonde and straight, like that of the majority of women featured in advertising; and he is shirtless with only a necklace obscuring his nudity, and so he is sexualised. Unlike all of the other modern ads in this entry featuring girls who have been sexualised, this image was banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority, who agreed with complaints that “the advert sexualised the child, particularly because its gender was ambiguous” (see the image link). While this highlights the double standard in the treatment of boys and girls, it also brings to light some other concepts: first, that girls are sex – sex and girls are one and the same; second, that it is abhorrent for a boy to become like a girl, to become a girl, to become sex.

It is important to note, at this point, that the issue of sexualisation does not stem from children being sexual; the distinction must be made between children’s sexuality (or asexuality) – which is a normal part of their identity and development - and the sexualisation of children – which is imposed upon them by another party, in this case the media, and which forces upon them a dictatorial and artificial sexuality for the pleasure of that other party. (Not to mention that sexualising a person is a method for dominating them – see Part 11 for a clearer understanding of this.) While sexuality is wholesome and important in a child’s development, sexualising a child is destructive because it can distort their understanding of their own sexuality. Sarah McKenney, who is a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology at the University of Texas, discusses making this distinction at Sociological Images.

Products aimed at little girls work to socialise them to be women – or to be a particular kind of woman – from a very young age. Recently, girls are sold both products that model to them what it is to be a woman, and products that would once only have been appropriate for use by grown women.

       
Barbie has provided an unachievable “woman” image for girls since 1959 – here she is as a 1965 “American Girl”; Bratz dolls, with their less rigid legs, arms and necks, have provided an even more rigid model for modern girls since 2001; Abercrombie and Fitch came under fire in 2002 for releasing a line of g-strings (thong panties) for children – see the linked article to read an opposition to their more recent release of push-up bras for children; Heelarious (“her first high heels”) is a new company that makes soft high heel shoes for babies – pushing little girls to get an early start on their high heel-induced foot-moulding regime.

Even onesies and t-shirts for infants and little girls aim to brand them, and to socialise them into a particular way of thinking about themselves and their place in the world.

       
Getting her started early on hating her body and tolerating it when everybody around her hates it also, her onesie queries, “Does this diaper make my butt look big?“; reminding her who is her current leaseholder and who should forever be her mentor, her onesie labels her a “Daddy’s girl“; she might have someday opted to date the highly-strung rich man, but her onesie declares to the world that it is the artiste that she prefers: “Sorry boys, I only date Rock Stars“; and in case she ever complains about anything in the future, her t-shirt has proactively shot her down by labelling her a “Drama Queen“.

Boys, too, receive education from their own onesies and t-shirts from their earliest moments. Just like little girls’ clothing teaches little girls to hate women, so do little boys’ clothes teach little boys to hate women.

       
Screaming out to the world his future tendency to commit criminal acts against women (who just happen to be the property of other men), this onesie warns men in advance to “Lock up your daughters“; he’ll hate women’s bodies just as much as they hate their own bodies, so his onesie concedes that he’ll settle for the best-bodied women available: “Sorry girls, I only date models“; as girls must worship their fathers, so must boys narcissistically worship their own penises – and how couldn’t this baby love his own penis? His onesie says that he’s “Hung like a 5 year old“!; but first, his duty is to get started on dominating and hating the first woman he’ll ever know, so his onesie orders her to “Change my diaper biaatch!“.

Well. I think that we could all use a happy sloth right about now.

Isn’t that sweet? It’s happy and it’s cuddling someone.

Take your time.

Back to business for a moment. It is the sexualisation of little girls that secures them as a class to be dominated; when advertisements sexualise girls, they equate girls and women with sex, and they serve as a stern reminder to us all that girls and women are sex.  We rarely, if ever, see a boy who is sexualised – and remember, he would first need to be feminised – because it is considered inappropriate and offensive for a boy to be a girl, that is, for a boy to be sex. This is because, as we learned in Part 11, sexualising a person is about dominating them through humiliation; and while all children are dominated by adults, it is women who must ultimately be forced into a distinct state of submission if their men are to continue leading the world with minimal opposition or confusion.

Recall, though, that sexuality and sexualisation are two different things. Sexuality (or asexuality) is quite natural and safe within oneself, whereas sexualisation is a dominance technique that one party bestows upon another, as described above.

Also recall that models of extreme and widespread dominance are neither naturally occurring, nor are they beneficial, nor are they the fault of the oppressed class, nor are they unchangeable.

Advertising! Part 11: Killing Us Softly 4 and Silencing, Humiliating And Dominating Women

Part 2 of Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 (2010), the subject of this discussion, can be found here, at YouTube. Click an image to view the larger size, and click the link in the text near to that image to check my source for it.

Following on from her discussion of women’s size in advertising and consequently women’s physical diminishment, Kilbourne asserts that this has an effect even more insidious: the silencing of women. Indeed, upon searching I discovered that there is some kind of franchise based on the concept of conflating silence and women:

       
One of the pubs that goes by the name of “The Silent Woman”; one of the books entitled “The Silent Woman”; an opera by a great musician is called “The Silent Woman”; one of the films inventively named “The Silent Woman”. Silent women even have their own recording studio.

So it’s no wonder that advertising depicts women being silenced in various ways. Sometimes they cover their mouths with their hands or with clothing, sometimes they don’t have mouths at all, and sometimes they have a moth where their mouth should be.

       
A magazine ad for Swatch watches from August 2011; an ad for Rexona Teens; a poster for the 2006 horror film Silent Hill; a poster for the 1991 thriller film The Silence Of The Lambs which features most of Jodie Foster’s face and a moth.

The ad for The Silence Of The Lambs is already fun, but awesomenator.com – my source for all of the Silence Of The Lambs images – alerted me to a hidden message in the poster which is even more exciting. Look to the right – a close-up of the moth reveals that there is an image of a skull on its back. If you look closely, you’ll see that that skull, in fact, is made up of seven naked women.

WARNING: The links in the next paragraph link directly to photographic images of wartime humiliation tactics of prisoners in each of the two situations described.

The arrangement of the seven women thus is an artwork entitled ‘Female Bodies as a Skull’ by Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali. The version presented to the right is a photo taken by American photographer Philippe Halsman in 1951. Of course, forcing or compelling nudity in others is a common method of establishing dominance – such as in the treatment of Jewish people during World War II – and arranging and piling a group of nude people to your liking is a way of humiliating and degrading them – such as we saw of Iraqi Prisoners Of War in the photos from Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

When advertising isn’t showing images of women that blatantly evoke wartime humiliation tactics, it’s constantly picturing them in very vulnerable poses. They often cuddle themselves or hold their hands in front of themselves protectively; they may be in a position inferior to the photographer; they are almost always indolent rather than active or sporty; and their facial expressions usually display a softness, perhaps a sweetness or seduction – we rarely see a woman in an ad showing a powerful emotion such as anger.

       
Natalie Portman cuddling herself for comfort and for Miss Dior Cherie perfume; an ad for Nordstrom; a woman looking sexually submissive for Cesare Paciotti; a 2011 Prada campaign.

Not content to construct only grown women as submissive, ads show girls in vulnerable poses from a very young age. Boys generally strike more powerful and dignified poses, with open body language, and are even allowed to sit or stand with their knees apart. The differences in the types of poses of girls and boys in advertising campaigns is striking:

       
Target Kids clothing; Guess Kids clothing; a girl modelling Armani Junior clothing; a boy modelling Armani Junior clothing.

As well as presenting women and girls as vulnerable, advertisements often picture women looking very silly, undignified and uncomfortable.

     
A photo from a fashion pictorial by Terry Richardson of a woman having trouble skating; these women appear to be having trouble with the furniture in this photoshoot for Lanvin; actor and model Jenny McCarthy is always sheepish when Candie’s photographers ambush her while she’s on the toilet.

The photo to the left is from a campaign for Marc Jacobs featuring singer Victoria Beckham’s legs. The author of the linked article actually congratulates Beckham for being “a good sport” for fulfilling the Undignified, Hacked Apart And Possibly Dead modelling role frequently afforded to women (see Part 4: Women As Objects And Body Parts). If Beckham had “misgivings” prior to agreeing to do the shoot, then the campaign photographer Juergen Teller quelled them with his “charm and candour” in telling her, “You’re the most photographed woman in the world. And fashion nowadays is all about product — bags and shoes — and you’re kind of a product yourself, aren’t you?” (She replied, “Uh, yeah.”) Evidently, Teller sees no need to be coy about the fact that women are objects at the beck and call of rich white men who want to nudify and humiliate them in domineering displays.

As well as being removed of their voices, their power and their dignity, women in advertising are also removed of their adulthood.

       
Jessica Stam for Aldo fashions; an ad for Bayan sweets; actor Emma Watson on the cover of Elle in 2011; in this Unshoes ad, the model’s inturned feet allude to the knock-knee condition typical in very young children and infants.

Sometimes, women are both infantilised and sexualised, evoking Lolita and child pornography. The implication of these ads is that women are simultaneously of a class of people who are physically and mentally underdeveloped and therefore in need of guidance, and that they are readily sexually available; they are manipulable and in a state of proactive sexual consent.

       
Actor Lea Michele in a photoshoot for GQ Magazine which promotes high school musical television show Glee; actor Dakota Fanning, aged 17, in a campaign for Marc Jacobs’ perfume Oh Lola! which was banned in the UK for inappropriately infantilising and sexualising Fanning; a young woman dressed up as a little girl and posing provocatively in a fashion shoot by photographer Terry Richardson; American Apparel are well-known for evoking pornography to sell their products, and the pictorial in this ad deliberately portrays a 23-year-old model who appears as a child being photographed while she is coaxed into progressive states of undress – just in case you’d forgotten about the whole nudity, manipulation and humiliation as dominance thing.

The overall effect of all of these types of images in the omnipresent medium of advertising is that women are dominated and repressed in all of the manners traditional of supreme classes of people over their subordinates. Their voice, activity, dignity, maturity and bodily integrity are all deliberately pressed upon so as to ensure compliance and repression; this, in turn, perpetuates the rule of the dominant group over them. In effect, all of this kind of advertising works to secure and reinforce men’s dominance, freedom and governance over women.

Advertising! Part 10: Killing Us Softly 4 and An International Ideal Image Of Beauty

Back to Kilbourne.

We’re discussing Part 2 of Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 (2010), which you can view on YouTube. Click an image to see a larger version of that image, and click the link in the text nearby to that image to see my source for it.

Briefly, I’d like to present a pictorial display of the globalisation of the Western image of ideal beauty for women in print media.

Often, the models featured on the covers of international magazines are white women who meet the Western media’s ideal. These women are often blonde-haired and blue-eyed, their hair is long and straight, their skin is pale and flawless, they are of a slim body type, and of course, the images are photoshopped so that they most strongly match this ideal.

       
Actor Cameron Diaz on the cover of Indonesia’s Joy Magazine in 2011; actor Lindsay Lohan on Chinese Harper’s Bazaar in 2009; actor Ashley Tisdale on the Ecuador version of Seventeen in 2011; singer Madonna on South African Marie Claire in 2006.

The same goes for the images of women featured inside international publications, or on their websites.

       
Actor Jessica Alba in Malaysian Harper’s Bazaar in 2011; Polish model Wiola Kowal in Turkish Harper’s Bazaar in 2010; actor and singer Scarlett Johansson in Chinese Vogue in 2011; a screenshot of Vogue Spain’s website, taken this month.

As I touched on in Part 3, Women Of Colour, images of women of non-Western ethnicity or birth tend to stick closely to the white ideal in the popular media, including on the covers of non-Western magazines.

       
Pakistani actor and model Noor on the cover of Pakistan’s Humsay magazine in 2011; British Indian actor and former model Katrina Kaif on Elle India in 2009; a Japanese woman modelling for clothing company Joy Rich on Japan’s Pink magazine in 2008; Colombian-born singer Shakira on the Peruvian publication Cosas.

And in photoshoots and pictorials featuring women of non-Western ethnicity or birth.

     
Japanese model Kumiko “Kumikki” Funayama in a Japanese 2010 calendar that features herself; Brazilian actor Monique Alfradique in Brazilian VIP (men’s) magazine in 2010; Inuit model and actor Tiffany Ayalik by photographer Dave Brosha (Flickr) in Yellowknife, Canada in 2011.

The overall effect is an increasing representation of white women – or women who meet or approximate the white ideal – in international print publications, regardless of the colours and appearances of the women who are reading and viewing them.

Disappointment Followed By Inspiration: More Reactions To The R-Word Joker Interrupting My Life

*****TRIGGER WARNING*****

About a week ago, in a discussion on my friend Sean’s status update on Facebook, a pro-rape joker thrust his material into my life without warning and without obtaining enthusiastic consent. I challenged him, just a little, so he upped the ante and textually assaulted me some more. Nobody said anything and the topic was ignored, including by Sean, who was present in the aftermath of both of the incidences in which I experienced rape – in the second, which was less than a year ago, he was the first person I saw after it had happened, and he was the first person to whom I disclosed my fears when I started to realise that the “sex” that had happened hadn’t exactly been inclusive of the opinions of all parties involved.

In the status update discussion, I presented the facts about why pro-rape jokes are destructive in the lives of people who have experienced rape, and are counter-productive in our society. The pro-rape joker complained that I was dictating his life for him and how dare I suggest that he’s not really there for people who have been raped when it really counts, and then he increased his textual assault against myself and the other women present again. I stuck to my guns, and hoped that I left a positive message for anybody who feels affected by this behaviour and is scared to speak up against it.

The day after the argument ended, I spotted that Sean had returned and had commented on the status update. I had been hopeful for the duration of the argument that he, having been friends with me for a decade, and surely remembering what it was like to see me go through the immediate aftermath of rape, would see what was going on and step in and put a stop to the pro-rape rhetoric by his friends on his Facebook. I went to his Facebook to find this reaction from him:

Sean had made his decision: We were both wrong. Like two children fighting over which game to play. Except that one of those children was arguing, “But I want to play a game where it’s not popular to hate me for being born the way I was, and to normalise committing violent acts against me!” and the other was stating, “Too bad. I declare that we will play a game where I can say whatever I want, whenever I want, at the expense of the comfort and safety of other people.”

The thing is, Sean must have read through the whole thing – the pro-rape joker making his joke, my reaction to it including alluding to my own experiences of coping with rape, myself and two other women agreeing that we normally get attacked if we challenge pro-rape rhetoric and so we’re often too scared to do so, the increase in the severity of the pro-rape jokes as attacks for my challenging pro-rape rhetoric, Sean’s own girlfriend jumping in to plead with the pro-rape joker (now jokers, two of them) to “just stop” and getting attacked herself, and my sticking up for her and staying firm in my convictions – and decided that we were just as bad as each other. He had decided that if you challenge pro-rape rhetoric, then you’re just as bad as people who distribute pro-rape rhetoric, and you’re just as inappropriate, and you deserve to be silenced. Given that he didn’t even respond to the graphic pro-rape jokes when his friend first made them, and only reacted to sternly silence all sides after I had adamantly challenged his friend, then we can safely conclude that Sean thinks that all is well while pro-rape attitudes are being dispersed, and that there is only a problem when somebody challenges them.

Sean is against anti-pro-rape attitudes, and so Sean is pro-rape.

Worse still, Sean states that if “anyone” wants (read: if I want) to hear his opinion on the matter, then the action to take is to contact him about it. So, he’s declaring that it’s my responsibility to go to him and ask him if he thinks that it’s okay that his friends expose me to pro-rape jokes that make me feel shitty about myself because I know that I was raped. We’ve already learned that standing up for myself right then and there is unacceptable to Sean if he doesn’t feel like seeing that “defending yourself” shit on his status about Australian politics. Now we know that we must make our own efforts to seek him out to ask whether or not he’s on our side in the whole I-was-raped-and-now-I-feel-hostility-against-me-everywhere-because-of-it issue.

Although, if I know him, then I should already know his views. It’s up to me to research and remember that shit, not up to him to make sure that I know whether or not he’d be there for me in certain situations.

I felt crestfallen over Sean outright stating – whether he thought that he was or not – that he did not support me, and I checked back at my posts of the incident on my own Facebook.

It was nice of Sa to offer me support. Unfortunately, what he also did was dump something onto me that wasn’t my problem. Why does it matter what the pro-rape joker thinks or feels in the aftermath of his desperate attempts to hurt me with his joke? Why should I be encouraged to keep it in mind? How is that helpful or beneficial to me?

It’s not. We don’t have to always try to be cognizant of a person’s experience just because they’re a member of the dominant group in society (or just because they happened to be exhibiting their dominance over us in a particular situation). It’s not only pointless to do so, it’s also counterproductive. If we’re spending all our time feeling concerned about the experience of the people who attack us, then we’re not going to have any time to do our own healing, or to form our own understanding of the world. Also, if we’re always caught up in concern for the experience of those attacking us, in that we must constantly remain conscious of their humanity, then we’re affording them a humanity that they never afforded us. Furthermore, we’d be using our own voices as a proxy to share their voice – once again – and that amplifies their voice and their thoughts and silences our own.

My goodness, I was thinking, that was hard. Some people offer such great support in these situations, and some give reactions that just leave you with a lump in your throat, a sinking feeling from the the top of your torso to the bottom, and a heavy feeling all across the top of your shoulders and neck that makes you feel like your whole body is drooping. You read back on your own words, and you know that you’ve followed all of the societal rules about expressing anti-pro-rape attitudes, remaining respectful, presenting meaningful arguments, and fighting against attacks when you notice them occurring. But often, you wind up wondering why you even bothered, because there were punishments – both subtle and obvious attacks, a stern and condescending talking-to as though you had been an unruly child, silencing, reminders to keep your attacker’s feelings in mind – waiting for you on the other side.

The same day that Sean and Sa opined and that incredible weight bore itself down upon my shoulders, I felt a burst of optimism when a young friend of mine Facebook-publicly dealt with a negative experience of her own. Somebody that she knew had accessed her Facebook, and had sent her friends unkind messages about her while posing as her, and had edited some unkind information into her public profile.

Not to suddenly change the subject – clearly she’s talking about anti-mental illness attitudes, not pro-rape attitudes. But it’s related, because it’s another issue that is used as an attack against others for the purpose of domination.

Besides, I’m proud of her. I find her statement to be inspiring, because she openly outed herself as suffering from something (that isn’t her fault, but that is for some reason popularly shamed in our society), and she also expressed how hurtful it is to use her suffering as an attack. We shouldn’t be trying to counter these behaviours by trying to be the smarter one, or the funnier one (who shoots the other person down with a more successful joke), or the scarier one – we should be shaming these behaviours because they’re hurtful.

She had more to say, and her words only got even braver, kinder and more supportive.

Ah! Bless! Why don’t more of us express these attitudes? It doesn’t matter if you suffer from mental illness, or if you’ve suffered an attack. You’ve done nothing wrong and you have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s also inspirational that she’s picky about her friends to ensure that the people in her network actually support her. I’d do well to take a page out of her book.

So, that’s my experience. It wasn’t pleasant, though I left in one piece. It did bring out the true colours and the true attitudes of some of my “friends”, though I’m not going down that grateful-for-what-I-learned bullshit path. This wasn’t an isolated incident – it happens all too often, and it needs to stop. Don’t try to tell me that you’re making the efforts to stop it already – especially not in the same sentence as you tell me that it’s not happening to begin with anyway. Actually take a look at yourself. Start to look around more. Listen out for it. Speak to other people, and be a safe person that they can talk to, and actually listen when they tell you their perspective. Remember that just because you have your experience, that doesn’t render contrasting experiences invalid. Aim to be somebody who’s cognizant, supportive and progressive.

It’s the responsibility of one and all to aim for a culture in which our jokes are funny, not disruptive.

Reactions To The R-Word Joker Interrupting My Life

*****TRIGGER WARNING*****

I’m sure that you read my post about the extremely hilarious young man who had us all in fits of pro-rape laughter. And by fits of pro-rape laughter, I mean intense discomfort at speaking up against pro-rape rhetoric for the fear of the consequences for us that would be imminent were we to do so.

After holding my ground on my don’t-make-the-world-worse-for-people-who-have-experienced-rape-with-your-pro-rape-jokes discourse, I decided to post screenshots of the experience on my Facebook page to hopefully garner some cyber-support.

The first responses that I got were from a woman who I’ve just decided should get a little Facebook note just to let her know that she’s awesome and I appreciate her.

Fuck you’re awesome, Cheryl.

The next response – well, perhaps he intended it to be supportive. But it wasn’t.

It’s the old, “Somebody did something unpleasant to you? What on earth were you thinking?” spiel. It’s “victim blaming”. Although, I suppose that in this case it would be called “person who stood up for themselves blaming”. You just can’t win in the aftermath of a man doing something unpleasant to you.

I explained to him why I thought that it was important to speak up about these things.

He explained that the atmosphere in Western culture of widespread hostility toward people who have experienced rape doesn’t exist. I hadn’t realised that, so I graciously thanked him for informing me, and I moved out of my fantasy world where pro-rape rhetoric is common. No wait, no I didn’t. I explained to him how this example linked back to the hostile climate to which I had alluded, and hinted that our culture is currently pro-rape by describing that I would like it to be reversed so that it is anti-rape.

The next response was nearly there. Unfortunately, it also attempted to educate me on the state of the current social climate with regard to rape and to people who have experienced rape.

Oh, and also in this piece: “I would shame people who said anything pro-rape. It’s just what I do.” Are you sure? I mean, really sure? I don’t watch you every moment of every day, so I couldn’t dictate to you whether or not that’s true. But given the high incidence of pro-rape rhetoric in our culture, and also the high incidence of denial of self-pro-rape attitude (including among people who I have known who have committed rape or sexual assault), I would posit that it’s highly unlikely that you somehow managed to avoid that conditioning.

I would say that it’s highly unlikely that we live in a world, both where somebody makes a pro-rape joke and everybody else confesses to being too scared to speak up against it, and where that person confidently and self-assuredly shames anyone who does try to speak up against it, and in a world where all of you (including you) are anti-pro-rape rhetoric. How did the pro-rape joker get so confident, if our culture – and when we’re talking about attitudes forming a culture, we mean the majority of people in a population being either active or complicit in expressing these attitudes over a very long period of time – told him that it wasn’t okay for him to do so?

Here’s the other thing: it’s also highly unlikely that you would have noticed whether or not you support pro-rape attitudes if you’re in a position where it’s not essential to your survival or your comfort that you notice it. Read: People who feel directly hurt and pressured by certain attitudes are much more likely to be cognizant of it when these attitudes are expressed. People who are not affected by others expressing these attitudes are far less likely to notice it.

On a positive note, I do admit that I was entertained by the thought of mobbing pro-rape jokers.

Sadly, when the activity on my profile died down and I zipped back over to my Facebook News Feed to see what else was going on, I found, in between some of my posts of screenshots of the pro-rape joker and his rhetoric, a disparaging status update. I can’t say for certain whether or not it was intended to be directed at me, but given its content and the fact that it appeared around the same time as my posts, I feel quite sure that it was.

This one’s not so simple. I didn’t even read the disparaging remarks as being disparaging at first. I just felt terrible. You see, Jo, from the miniscule understanding that I have, also experienced something terrible many years ago. I believe that it was a long process for her in going through the system to overcome it, and judging by the myriad pregnancy and new baby photos on her Facebook profile of late, she’s moved on in life and is now having happy experiences.

I sent her a long Facebook message immediately upon seeing the status update, explaining how she could set it up so that my posts won’t appear in her News Feed, that I should really be more careful in warning people of the content of my posts, and that it’s important to me that I do what I do but that doesn’t mean that she should be forced to see my stuff. She didn’t reply, and that’s okay.

I kept feeling terrible, and as I went back and reread her status a few more times over the next few days, I saw the disparagement in it. “This is how I use my Facebook, so you should do the same.” “If you’ve been through something, then all of your actions regarding that instance should be to try to help yourself.” “The way that you’re choosing to help yourself is the wrong way.” “You should consult a mental health professional.” That last statement is perhaps the most insidious. It’s relying on the basis that: experiencing something terrible means having disordered mental processes (requiring medical attention); having disordered mental processes is bad; and the way to cope with disordered mental processes is to speak privately with a professional, not to speak publicly or with your friends.

And yet, these implicit messages that I’m sure she intended to send don’t therefore negate what she went through, and how she must feel about that. This doesn’t mean that she’s going about her stuff in the wrong way any bit as much as as it means that I’m going about my stuff in the wrong way. It’d be easy to get pissed off at her for being disparaging toward me, but that sort of a reaction just wouldn’t be helpful in a situation like this. And besides, she really shouldn’t be forced to see my stuff pop up on her without warning, and she mightn’t have known yet that she could block it.

Going back to my profile the day after posting, the next response was so much more supportive. It still didn’t quite sync with my position on it all, but it was much, much closer. I felt really supported after reading it.

(It’s a different Jeremy to before.)

I’m going to leave it there, because that’s a positive note – somebody who just faces up to the fact that maybe, if somebody tells you that they experience something popularly considered to be terrible and taboo every day, then just maybe they’re telling the truth. Maybe they really are seeing this stuff all around them, and feeling pressure from it. Perhaps people aren’t lying just because they tell you about something that they’ve noticed that you’ve never noticed before.

There’s a little more to this story. Some more grimness followed by something that is, quite frankly, inspirational.

The thrilling conclusion tomorrow, on qvaken.

The R-Word Joker Interrupts My Life

*****TRIGGER WARNING*****

Breaking news (well, not really – it happened about a week ago): A man made a rape joke while I was around to read it. So I’m taking a brief break from the Kilbourne posts to share how I went about it, and the reactions that I got.

It all started with the Facebook status update of a friend of mine, in which he complained about Australian politics.

(In the interest of reducing Googlability, by the way, I won’t be transcribing any of these images. This one looks clear though, as it is.)

Myself and a couple of others who I haven’t met before briefly discussed our views on the current party leaders in the comments section. That for some reason turned into a discussion about religion, with a young man complaining about how bad religion is, a young woman defending the religious perspective, and myself being a boring fence-sitter.

Another woman entered the arena to tell a joke. Unfortunately, the young man read it and decided to make his own joke. Unfortunately, his joke was pro-rape. Furthermore, I – somebody who has experienced rape – was around to read it.

Shannan’s attempt to save face was not enough, and Matt’s intelligence was not high enough to offset his white manly privilege. The world had just become ever so slightly worse for people everywhere who have experienced rape.

The topic was ignored while the discussion continued. Even my friend Sean (the status-poster) took the time to opine on the religion discussion without calling out his friend on his words. (More on his reaction here.)

It’s pertinent to mention, at this point, that Sean was around after both of the times that I experienced rape (two, if you want to be generous to men with your definition of “rape”). He was the first person who I spoke to after the most recent incident, and he was the first person who I talked to when it started to click in my own head that something really wasn’t right about the “sex” that I’d had. He had been reluctant to believe me then, and apparently, he was ignorant of the notion of supporting me now.

Sean had let me down, so I sought support from my own Facebook friends. I posted the above image on my wall. The comments on the image gave me my energy and my optimism back.

My nervousness at the thought of truly challenging the pro-rape joker, and my knowledge of the types of responses that I could expect, got the better of me for a day. Then I decided, eff it, I’m saying something. Sean has since deleted my comments on his status update, so this is copied from the comments section of my own posting of the above image.

As you can see from the “like”s, I got some support in my own space. Over at Sean’s status, Matt was nowhere to be seen, and much relief was felt.

The other women commenting there at first expressed offense because I had called them out on their participation in, or enabling of, the joke. I told them that, well, sure I had called them out, but I kinda didn’t blame them. After all, I had been scared to say anything. We all conceded that yes, there is a fallout to speaking up against pro-rape jokes, and it’s hurtful – even when it’s online it’s hurtful – and that makes it scary. In turn, it means that the preferable option is for us to shut up and let them keep happening. We all agreed that we didn’t blame one another.

I thought that this was a nice conclusion, but Matt didn’t. He returned from his siesta to find women suggesting that he had been out of line, and he was not happy.

Because he does have an idea of what rape and sexual assault victims go through. So don’t claim he’s ignorant on that matter. Also, he’d much prefer that he continues to make pro-rape jokes and use gendered insults, because otherwise how can he be as funny and likeable as he is?

That shit didn’t work on me and I stuck to the point. But Matt was just too funny.

I left it at that, but another woman, Sean’s girlfriend in fact, spotted the conversation. Being a regular, normal, decent human being, she opined that perhaps pro-rape jokes were best kept for non-raped people. (Probably best to keep them for – oh I dunno – no people, but this is a good compromise.)

By the way, I’d like to state that I firmly and wholly support the idea of people coming up with jokes that are actually funny.

I’d also like to state that Jessica is effing awesome. Seriously, go her. I don’t see this kind of support for the little guys ’round the place much. So props to her.

This was all just too funny for Matt. He completely disproved what myself and the other women had said earlier about there being consequences for speaking up against pro-rape jokes, because he was so humble and compassionate – oh no wait, I mean he exemplified the fact that women are punished for speaking out against men, where ridicule is frequently men’s weapon of choice.

As you can see there, I threw in a bit at the end, hopefully for the benefit of those lurkers who don’t say anything to let you know that they’re there. I did get really nervous, and it wasn’t pleasant reading his responses, but in the end, I was fine. It felt good that I’d said something, I’d held my ground, I don’t think that any points that I made were frivolous, and I hope that anybody else who’s been through what I’d been through and had the misfortune of stumbling upon the jokes saw that some of us were there saying, “Nup. Not okay. Don’t care that I’m not allowed to say anything – I’m saying it anyway.”

By the way, sure, I didn’t get upset. (This time. In most scenarios, I’m quite the cryer. I’m also the shrieker, the pusher, the pack of playing cards-thrower, and the “I can’t believe that you’re treating me this way when you’re supposed to be my friend”-er.) But that doesn’t mean that getting upset in these cases is bad. You’re not adding fuel to their mirth-fire, you’re expressing yourself. And getting emotional doesn’t negate or cloud your opinions. It just means that somebody was, you know, mean. Meanness tends to upset people – you responded accordingly.

And sure, I was stubborn. I just kept at it. But that doesn’t mean that you have to. If it gets to be too much, step out, and go and recuperate. You’re not forced to keep fighting if it’s draining you way too much. On the other hand, if you feel like you want to continue speaking up, then continue. It’s fine for you to do so, either way.

After all, you’re the one whose life was rudely interrupted by the pro-rape joker.

More to come. It’s not all pretty. But screw it, I’m proud of how I stood up. I think that that’s the first time that I’ve ever done that. It felt good. Wouldn’t it feel even better for us all if these jokes were just never gratuitously fired into unsuspecting public spheres?