Rogueish
Beyoncé, Gaga, Heterosexism, Feminism and Other Things
12/17/11
So I’m in the middle of a Facebook debate with a friend of mine about Beyoncé that was basically provoked by this article, which he agrees with and has led him to broadly assert that Beyoncé “affirms heteronormative heterosexuality as the sole way for girls to assert their sexuality.” That seemed overly reductive to me, and we’ve been bantering back and forth about it. Figured I’d rather compile what I wrote somewhere easier for me to locate than someone else’s Facebook wall. However, I’d be interested in hearing the rest of y’all weigh in on this. Is B thoroughly tied into heteronormativity? Moreso than your average pop or R&B star? Less so? Should she really be, as the article suggests, embracing Gaga-esque positions in her music?
Robin James has written a bunch of great stuff about pop, gender, and race, and Beyoncé specifically, and this post on “Single Ladies” even more specifically.
New Statesman - Curves ahead is hardly progress→
09/24/10
What seems particularly insidious is that the celebration of “curvy” as a supposed resistance to standards of skinnyness manages to send two messages at the same time: “You must look like Christina Hendricks” and “If you look like Christina Hendricks, you’re fat.”
another overview of recent Taylor Swift debate
09/08/10
one of them consists of things Taylor Swift actually does (like writing lyrics and singing songs) and the other consists in large part of other people’s decisions and perceptions. A lot of the most pointed criticisms of Swift go out of their way to ignore Swift’s own voice, which is a little weird.Here’s the thing: it’s not so much that the two camps are talking about different aspects of Taylor Swift as it is that music critics are talking about Taylor Swift in particular and cultural critics are talking about Taylor Swift as an exemplar of more widespread issues.
The problem is, though, that the kind of “cultural criticism” the anti-Swift people are engaging in is bad cultural criticism, and, indeed, is bad in a way that ends up being sexist. Ignoring the details of Swift’s lyrics and performance doesn’t just erase her voice, it substitutes the cultural critics’ imagined version of the response to the music to the actual responses of Swift’s listeners, erasing the voice and perception of her (mostly young, female) fans.
The model of cultural criticism animating the anti-Swift people seems to be didactic: if Swift narrates a sexist scene, this is taken to be an endorsement or even celebration of this, which endorsement is then transmitted seamlessly into the minds of the listeners. This underestimates the way in which listeners are able to negotiate these narratives and respond with both recognition and criticism, and the way in which this negotiation is an inherent part of Taylor Swift’s work (perhaps the best example here is “Love Story,” the patriarchial fantasy of which can’t be understood without paying attention to the way this very same fantasy is rejected in “White Horse”).
The truth about the porn industry | Life and style | The Guardian→
07/03/10
Images have now become so extreme that acts that were almost non-existent a decade ago have become commonplace…. vaginal, oral and anal penetration by three or more men at the same time; double anal; double vaginal; a female gagging from having a penis thrust into her throat; and ejaculation in a woman’s face, eyes and mouth.
A couple of responses suggest themselves. To what extent are these really “commonplace,” except to the extent that the internet has allowed enthusiasts in all areas to connect with others with the same interests? And what, actually, is wrong with double penetration anyway?
These both miss the more important point, though, which is that this complaint doesn’t make sense from the point of view of feminist anti-pornography theory. The point of the theory is that pornography per se is the eroticization of images of the subordination of women, and from the point of view of this theory triple penetration and gagging is not “more extreme” than the most vanilla missionary-position pornography.
04/18/10
Constantly fiddled with, adjusted, exposed, covered-up or discussed, contemporary breasts resemble nothing so much as bourgeois pets: idiotic, toothless, yapping dogs with ribbons in their hair and personalized carrying pouches.
― Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman
Let girls wear Primark's padded bikinis | Laurie Penny | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk→
04/15/10
Laurie Penny argues that the ginned-up concern about the supposed “sexualization” of young girls clothing is not only misguided (as I’ve thought for some time), but actively harmful:
The notion of “sexualisation” deserves serious critical unpacking. The term envisions girl children as blank erotic slates upon which sexuality can only ever be violently imposed. This narrow vision of sexuality leaves no room for young girls to explore authentic desire at their own pace, insisting instead that girls need to be protectedfrom erotic influence….
Far from protecting young girls, the “anti-sexualisation” agenda actually serves a culture that shames girls if they have sexual feelings of their own while fetishising them as objects of erotic capital.
