Tigtog wrote an interesting post recently at Hoyden About Town, about slurs made against the wingnut duo of evil, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin. Her (justified) concern was:
But I could really do without the inevitable handful of oh-so-helpful lefty men, self-professed allies of feminists, who inevitably come up with some sexist and transphobic slur: â??Mann Coulterâ?? the drag-queen etc.
Slurs against Coulter-wannabe Michelle Malkin based on her Filipina heritage, as well as alleging that she is her husbandâ??s puppet, are sexist insults as well. Malkinâ??s journalistic career was all her own work while her husband was off working for thinktanks: sure they probably discuss topics together and toss ideas around, but she owns her own words, every spiteful one.
Calling a woman whose opinions you despise names based on her appearance is good old-fashioned misogyny. It doesnâ??t matter if she is a rancid warmongering boil on the buttocks of humanity: distilling it down to appearance is sexism, plain and simple.
In the comments thread, reference was made to the fact that some of the sorts of comments tigtog rightly criticised were made on a thread here. Then, what I think is a false analogy was made, about me:
My latest is about the vile suicide girls, who happen to be a favourite of one LP poster (Kim). Do you challenge her about her support of teen porn?
My response is here, but what I’d actually like to comment on is that I suspect lurking in the background of this comment was the controversy over (the excellent) American feminist blogger, Bitch, Ph.D., accepting a paid gig as culture editor of the Suicide Girls news pages. I don’t want to address that controversy, as such, but I want to metablog it, and the investments, affects and concerns that swirl around it (and perhaps this is part of a series of posts about the tensions between independent blogging and paid commercial or political online roles).
Three thoughts occur.
The first is that there is always going to be tension between blogging and seeking a wider audience for one’s work. Being paid to blog or to write seems to carry the connotation of co-optation, which only arises because of the very independence and history of the blogosphere (after all, if it didn’t exist, no one would bag Tim Dunlop for writing for News Ltd. for instance, because no one would know who he was, except a small circle). I was also thinking about glen’s comments on the DERRIDEAN THREAD OF DOOM here, where he claimed that by working in universities and Gleebooks he was making a political statement by refusing the capitalist labour market. Of course, and this is a point made quite powerfully on the comments thread on Bitch Ph.D.’s announcement, academia is totally tied up with capitalism – unsurprisingly, because we live in a capitalist society (and Gleebooks wouldn’t exist if it couldn’t make a profit). Writing is either a vocation or an avocation. If the former, it’s terribly badly paid. But because people have to live, and also, I think understandably want broader audiences for their work, I think it’s pretty dumb, basically, to criticise people for being paid to write. That’s not to say that writing for paid media doesn’t raise issues. Of course, it does. But let’s discuss those, without all the dumbass sellout accusations. I think a lot of them arise anyway only because of the romantic notion that writing is somehow an ethereal and reified sphere, separate from grubby commerce.
Secondly, the issues that arise from these sorts of choices, I’m arguing, are complex and should be thought out and worked through. But so is the debate over erotica, and indeed Suicide Girls (which I’m frankly not interested in defending as such). We do ourselves a serious disservice when we pretend they’re simple. As magniloquence said at Bitch Ph.D.’s place:
The whole ani-porn v. sex-pos argument certianly comes into play, alongside the “complicity with” vs. “subjugation to” debate (is a certain conforming action/set of actions an act of complicity, furthering unhealthy and misogynist social structures, thus making the conformer an Agent of the Enemy, or is it a mark of subjugation, showing just how tainted everything is already, and thus showing that the conformer was really Doing The Best She Could With The Choices She Had?), not to mention the tired old “Conventional Beauty, Makeup, and Gender Roles: Feminist or Not?” issue. I think those are all false dichotomies, and need be explored more… and that your choice to write for SG is a great jumping-off point to start that discussion. I’d dearly love to see what you think about it.
After all, porn, and erotica, are objectification, and accepting payment for writing brings consequences, and ethical issues that aren’t easy. But when was life ever meant to be easy for adults? And where is the pure sphere outside capitalism and the sex/gender relations we inhabit? And where is desire without objectification, as canuckdoc says:
When I used to work in the strip trade, my co-workers would often wonder how on earth I could call myself a feminist.
“Those women don’t understand anything about our lives,” they’d say. “Feminists just want to put us out of work. Then they can get paid as our social workers when we are forced onto welfare, or can’t feed our kids because we had to go get shitty-paying ‘good girl’ jobs.”
I’d be put in the hot-spot, defending strippers to feminists, using a class-based analysis, and theory of performance as subversion and a form of political agency. Then I’d have to defend feminists against charges that they were really just the new iteration of temperance ladies who wanted to turn all women into appropriate mothers for the children of the dominant classes.
Yes, folks, the “sex wars” were in full swing back then, but even then I was welcomed as a graduate student who didn’t have to hide the fact that she was paying for the fancy pants education by taking off her pants because she wasn’t a spoiled university brat like most of the “good girls” around her. I was called a “rotten cunt” by my own puritanical “feminist” friend, and that was the end of that. But my advisors, my professors… they never made me apologise for my work. Good Marxist analyses they had. And they knew enough not to blame women for the violence of men. And they knew enough not to conflate misogyny with objectification. Indeed, when the grad students got all in a flap over some issue around objectification, *Very Famous Lesbian Feminist* stopped her guest lecture to challenge us:
“Don’t knock objectification so much my dears; without it we would never get anywhere.”
Her point? If we can’t objectify others, then we cannot desire them either. And desire is a key to recognition.
I had forgotten, somehow, that the sex wars were still pitting women against each other out here in the world beyond the academy. Pity, because it means we can’t cooperate to challenge the real problems.
That raises the third point I wanted to make. In my previous post about blogging and politics, I made the point that cheerleading partisan blogs like DailyKos rarely explore issues in any depth, and combine takedowns and talking points with furious agreement in comments threads. That’s why I love the American feminist blogosphere so much. The comments threads contain serious arguments, made largely in good faith, and with good will, and with a will to truth. The whole comments thread on Bitch, Ph.D.’s post illustrates that really well. There’s a real community there, and real discussion. And why not spread the message further? Bitch, Ph.D., herself points out that the capitalist nature of Suicide Girls and the (anyway contested) stories about exploitation do not erase the validity of the participation of many of the women (and quite a lot of the men) in the many opportunities the site offers – through blogs, user-generated content, and groups, for actual communities to form. Like many other online media, it’s a platform and the community that exists there has an independent existence of its own, and are worth speaking to. As their new culture editor argues. What I’m really trying to say is that we can’t run and hide from the world we live in, and the issues engaging with others and the media we use to engage are complex and irreducible (or should be) to sloganeering.
Great great post, with ane excellent conclusion. canuckdoc’s comments are also very right on.
Judging from the lack of para breaks, I’d say you were in a definite moody mood tonight Cap’n Kim.
But I take your overall point. Whether it’s Ann Coulter, Germaine Greer, the Suicide Girls or the DAR, they should have every right to advance their views without regard to feeling exploited or dissed because of their sex or perceived sexuality. And if leveraging your sex to maximise the impact of your socio-sexual-political views (and to turn a good buck as well) is not on, then I suggest John Wayne shouldn’t have camped it up so much in “The Green Berets. (Just first saw it the other day. Ineffably awful. The Devil does have all the best music.)
And point three: um…I didn’t really even have a point one. (move to trash?)
Look, we won’t achieve true sexual balance until there’s as many women as well as men promoted well above their competence
“But when was life ever meant to be easy for adults?”
Oh yes, and yes, any intelligent consenting human with a sense of humour is always making up it up as we go along. Not always easy but sometimes a lotta fun and occasionally surprisingly productive.
And not exactly derailing the thread here but maybe suggesting alternative switchings.
John Wayne was bloody brillant in “Red River”, walking like a dancer through a barely veiled story of men drawn together and then punching eachother apart. Kinda like Brokeback Mountain but with real guns, steers and horses instead of pickups, sheep and corner stores.
When it comes to framing a political point, bisexual gothic chicks are quite one thing, iconically clad faux cowboys like Wayne and Clift are quite another, aren’t they?
And don’t me get started on how crap Rooster Cogburn was compared to True Grit. And neither was a patch on “Unforgiven”.
Sex, violence, moody rooms, revenge and a bit of leg. Hard to argue with that platform.
Just to clarify my two previous comments, it’s well after midnight, I’m drunk and listening to Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats and the Best of Bobbie Gentry – almost at the same time.
But in the morning I’ll be sober.
And the comments will still be there.
I dunno about Michelle Malkin, but Ann Coulter’s appearance is fair game because it’s what she’s used to sell herself to adolescent warbloggers. Does anyone think her insensate ravings would sell a single book if she wasn’t a leggy blonde in a short black dress with a sultry voice?
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Tight work, Nabakov, and you’re right about the music, I do have all the best, and I’ve never insisted on DRM. And you’ve neglected the best Western ever filmed: Cat Ballou.
Kim, well said. Of course it’s impossible to get free from objectification in the temporal world—that’s the whole idea of it. Sounds like the battles you’re describing are really just what I call ‘long spoon’ contests, in which people try and make out that the meals and deals with the Devil they’ve eaten and made are less compromising than those of others.
Of course the hidden little factor that doesn’t seem to be acknowledged about writing and the relative ‘evil’ of porno is pseudonymity and clandestine authorship. I mean, who really writes those letters that start with “I never thought it would happen to me…”? Is that her real name or just a stage persona? Or more seriously, take the vicious ‘unmasking’ of Nikki Gemmell, the anonymous author of the Bride Stripped Bare, whose deal was done to try and maintain literary integrity while writing high-class smut. The whole scandal was centred around the shocking idea that nice girls were doing it too (which I could have told anyone).
Be realistic, people. You’re all imperfect and you all make the same pact. On the upside, you’re getting good value.
Wow, Kim: you’ve packed a lot in there!
1) Bloggers are writers. A paycheck for writing would be a huge temptation for most of us. Is accepting the paycheck always “selling out”? I agree that there’s no blanket rule.
2) The feminist “sex wars”/”porn wars” can certainly be a real distraction from more urgent issues of social justice, given that one accepts the distinction between important and urgent. I don’t think there’s any simple answers here either.
3) Communities, not slogans (that can be our slogan).
derrida derider, is it not possible to criticise Coulter’s pandering of her sexuality to her audience without diving into misogyny and transphobia?
Obviously she plays on her legs and hair in a caricature of Barbie as FoxTV Pundit: obviously it’s calculated and effective for her in gaining and maintaining her audience. I think pointing out how cynical this is is “fair game”. I don’t think this should mean that it’s “fair game” for the standard ploy of attacking the masculinity of her male fans by implying that the woman they admire is not at all attractive, or is indeed not even a real woman.
Attacking a man’s masculinity by deriding the fuckability of the women he admires is classic homosocial shaming, implying that the man isn’t good enough to aspire to properly fuckable women, and it uses misogyny as its tool. Forgive me if I’m not cheering on the misogyny fan squad.
I disagree, derrida derider.
No matter how Coulter may exploit her own looks, to attack her makes it harder for women considered less attractive than her to find their own public voices.
That’s bad for all progressive thought, and good for reactionaries.
Re Tigtog’s (1) above (9.47 am): I made a living as a freelance writer for nearly seven years before I took up blogging (and moonlighted — moonlit? — for fifteen before that), so I’m finding this discussion quite strange — although, as most of what I do is in the nasty elitist arty-farty bullshit [insert endless string of RWDB rationalist clichés here] area of the literary, it’s not the kind of directly politicised commentary that Kim is mainly talking about.
But it’s still an odd new mutation of a very old assumption, this notion that unpaid writing is somehow superior to paid, and that paid is always somehow compromised or worse. So it’s good to see Kim unpacking it here in fine style.
At the heart of it is Kim’s suggestion that
– which of course also used to apply before blogging was invented, but back then it referred to the writing one did for Lerve and Art, also regarded as somehow far more ethically and aesthetically pure than one’s day job. But — to take an example from Nabs’s nostalgia soundtrack — does the fact that Bobbie Gentry made a fortune out of Ode to Billy Joe make ‘another sleepy, dusty Delta day’ any less of a classic line?
And yet people are still always asking me meaningfully ‘And what about your own writing?’, as though (a) the daily-bread work were someone else’s writing, and (b) the unpaid ‘own writing’ were far more important and superior, presumably because of its pure and untainted expressions of some essential(ist) selfhood. It’s a hangover from capital-R Romanticism, whose linchpin is the idea of the Artist and his (‘his’, naturally) purity of personality and soul.
All of which should be vigorously contested in these postmodern, post-Freudian and postfeminist times but somehow, weirdly, clings grimly on. (Where is Glen when you need him to do a super rant about this subjectivity stuff?)
This is where the notion of a writing/thinking community becomes useful: instead of sitting at home in splendid isolation, writers both paid and unpaid who really care about getting their ideas sorted out and refined, and their knowledge continually improved, can come to an online community to do it. It’s like the difference between the only child who never had the opportunity to learn in-house how to coexist with other people, and the kid from a big family who has had all sharp corners and rough edges removed in short order by the jostling siblings in the process of growing up.
DD: “…you’ve neglected the best Western ever filmed: Cat Ballou.”
What?! No ‘Johnny Guitar’?!! Ye’ve all gone mad, sez I.
This is an interesting, complex post, in which I find as much to question as to applaud, but time being what it is, I’ll content myself with just these leettle tidbits for the moment…
“they never made me apologise for my work. Good Marxist analyses they had.”
Huh. ‘Good’ ‘Marxist’ ‘analyses.’ As Theseus once said in another comedy: That is hot ice and marvelous strange snow.’
“using a class-based analysis, and theory of performance as subversion and a form of political agency.”
Why the endless love affair with subversion as a value for-its-own-sake? I get so tired of this. In human historical terms, from the Dionysia to the RSC to your typical wedding ceremony in pretty much any culture, most human ‘performance’ does not subvert, it overwhelmingly re-inforces status quos and norms. An anthropologist might tell you that THAT IS ITS VERY FUNCTION. Even performance that can manage to dress itself up as ‘subversion’ is speaking the language of the norms in which it floats. The fact that you can even tell it apart from non-performance, sort of proves the point. The best performances are simply ‘critical,’ which is different from subversive, except maybe in the occasional ‘Lord of Misrule’ sort of way. My old buddy A. Artaud was not trying to be ‘subversive’; he was just trying to speak in a manner that he thought would be relevant.
“You’re on earth — there’s no cure for *that*!”
– Samuel Beckett, famous dramaturgical subversive… oh, wait…
There is conventional performance and subversive performance. Subversive performance creates, fine tunes, changes and then destroys conventional performance.
There’s no reason someone can’t attempt to argue that their stripping is subversive. I’d have to be convinced though.
Dr. Cat — yeah, but, as surely you yourself know, all that stuff about Art/Money dichotomies is also an old old part of the world as we find it and live in it, who knows why. Probably only for the same reasons that we have four limbs instead of eight tentacles, and there’s only one Sun in the sky instead of five, which would have been just as perfectly astronomically plausible.
The tombstone of Aeschylus boasted of his military prowess against the Persians; not a word about creating Western drama. Shakespeare himself had a problem like ours: he more or less considered that his plays (outside of their personal interest to him) were just a way of makin’ a living, and that his ticket to High Literary Immortality was gonna be ‘The Rape of Lucrece.’ In his time, he wasn’t exactly crazy; but times change. I dunno; go figure.
wbb: “Subversive performance creates, fine tunes, changes and then destroys conventional performance.”
Yeah, but then you’re just talking about changes in fashion and style, as against changes in the fabric of being. Fashions in clothing change all the time, but people still have this odd urge to get dressed, n’importe quoi. There’s a difference.
Well, yes, that’s pretty much what I said: ‘an odd new mutation of a very old assumption’.
or undressed in this case.
I like the point j_p_z makes. It is hard to think of any ‘subversive’ art that stays subversive for long. Any work of art or political viewpoint that is consonant with the values of more than 25% of the average high school staffroom is not subversive or radical, it’s apple polishing.
Theo Van Gogh might disagree.
“Smut”? How terribly wowserish of you, Devil Dude. I knew you were judgemental, but you say it like it’s a bad bad thing, as opposed to a good bad thing.
Interesting yardstick Bismarck…
As for the longevity of subversive art, its domestication can come about in two contradictory ways:
1. Mainstream art entrepreneurs fund projects that incorporate the form devoid of the function in the production of rip-offs.
2. Much, much less frequently, art changes society. Norms are changed.
j_p_z’s formulation has problems:
1. It carries it’s own negation. J_p_z comes close to hinting that subversion is impossible. If so, then what’s all the fuss about?
2. But mostly, j_p_z expresses his ennui at subversion — something he concedes does exist in art. In the West, art has come to mean something of quality done for the very first time. Thus, a conventional bris isn’t art. You’d have to do some mighty fancy knifework to make a bris “art” under the conventional meaning of the word in its western context.
The major reason why art has taken on this special meaning in the west is that art is supposed to celebrate and to legitimise that uniquely western concept — progress.
Art is therefore both a major driver of and the hallmark of “progress”. Subversion is seen as the mechanism by which art drives culture from a “lower” state to a “higher” state.
This is the great legacy of modernism. When the west stops believing in the possibility of “progress”, then art will conform more to j_p_z’s conception of art, but not before.
Or a bad good thing, or a good good thing, Fyodor? Very Rumsfeldian of you.
Don’t know where you got a sense of judgementalism from. I just do the temptations and punishments around here, baby, nice and hot and slow.
(Did I hear word of a screenplay)?
Katz: “Art is therefore…”
Hee hee. You just used the words “art” and “therefore” in the same sentence; a mistake no artist worth his salt would make. Except for maybe Oscar Wilde, and he would be kidding about it.
Actually, though, w/r/t art and the slippery word “subversion,” there are two different sets of debate here: one aesthetic, and one political. The aesthetic one (that Katz is largely talking about) is I think the more interesting, and there’s more to say and argue about it; but I think it’s not the topic of this thread (although I’ll gladly return to it if the thread morphs; just don’t want to hijack it). The political arena is more in the vein of what I originally meant, and in a fairly narrow way, viz., why do people walk around with this silly assumption that subversive = good?
My original point was more along the lines that people who fall for this cliche typically have not examined closely either the idea of What is the subversive, or of What is the good. They’re still stuck in a hippie hangover from the 60s. They just want what they want, which is quite naturally the default mode for most human behavior, before anyone starts to think about stuff.
Hey, kids! Wanna check out a truly ‘subversive’ act of performance? Dig “Triumph of the Will.” It’s a great work of art, and it subverts dominant paradigms etc etc like nobody’s business…
Get back to me soon, on whether or not it’s ‘good.’
I only mentioned you Kim, because you’re the first person who came to mind.
Tigtog was incensed enough by my observation about Ann Coulter looking like a man, she wrote a post. Considering my strong feminist credentials, I resented it, especially since she says a grand total of ZERO* about a woman on her own blog regularly promoting the SG’s – including posting pictures of semi naked women!! Jeez Louise!
I’m no prude though, and admit to posting nudie pics in the past – something that I now regret.
Anyway, I love you Kim (and tigtog) in a bloggy type way, so don’t read too much into it.
* I found nothing in achieves, but am happy to be corrected.
There was an interesting article about the Suicide Girls in Bitch or Bust magazine. Though supposedly female-driven, there were complaints from ex-Girl’s about exploitation blah blah blah.
Frankly, tattoos are also deeply unattractive (subjective opinion).
You might be interested in the American singer/songwriter, Hammell on Trial.
One of his songs is called Coulter’s Snatch. Read it and weep, baby.
Testing
Sorry, just testing to see if my Avatar was going to work.
Or me when I’m not stating my own opinion, but rather reporting the opinion of others, as is evidenced by the scary scare quotes around the word “progress”.
But again, j_p_z, you seem to want to walk down both sides of the street. If “art” is asserted to escape any encapsulation which contains the word “therefore” art is therefore subversive of any attempt to describe it.
This would have to be the ultimate subversion.
“Hey, kids! Wanna check out a truly ’subversive’ act of performance?”
Somebody say G. G. Allin?
Lordy, was I hammered last night. I have no idea what I wittering on about and offer a free berocca to anyone who can enlighten me.
Interesting point jpz about the distinction between aesthetic and political subversion in art. There’s been a few attempts to combine the two in modern such as John Heartfield, the Dadaists (sorta), the situtationists, the early London punk years a la Jamie Reid (to whom Banksy owes a big hat tip) and numerous theatrical fiascos in the late sixties and seventies.
But in these blasé, web-enabled and irony-overloaded days it’s hard enough to subvert any aesthetic before it does itself, let alone trying to ladle a political message into the mix. Reality’s quite subversive enough already.
Speaking of art, money and subversion though, ’tis interesting to contemplate what lurks at the core of that nice Miss Austen’s Quality St chocolate box world.As Auden put it:
“You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of ‘brass’,
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.”
Why do subversives do what they do? For a million reasons. Ranging from psychological needs to political agendas. And the natural restlessness and unhappiness with the established order that makes the human species what it is.
Just coz subversion upsets innate conservatives such as yourself j_p_z, don’t mean that it is always bad. It can be any of good, bad, tedious, exhilarating, dangerous or impotently undergraduate. One thing it always is though, is to be an essential ingredient in any society wishing to avoid lethal ossification.
Social change isn’t achieved by stolid consensus or powerful fiat alone. Subversives have always played a role.
Your remarks were merely the final straw floating down to give me the hump, Alex. And it wasn’t just you in that thread, either.
“Jeez Louise”? Pearl-clutching over a bit of naked flesh? There’s nothing wrong with photos of naked flesh in and of itself. Exploitation of naked flesh is another thing entirely, but you’re not arguing rationally about whether SG is actually exploitative, you’re just doing a very good impression of a hysterical wowser.
Maybe SG is Eeevil Exploitation Central, but wittering on about the (gasp!) naked women is hardly on its own a convincing case.
Katz: “But again, j_p_z, you seem to want to walk down both sides of the street.”
Well, that’ll happen from time to time; sorry; cost of doing business, one supposes. On the other hand, it needn’t be that way… if, for instance, it were to turn out that there wasn’t actually a ‘street’ there in the first place. If it were a meadow, say, or an autobahn, then all bets would be off…
“It could be Franky, it could be a balloon.
It could be very fresh and clean.
And so then it could be those ways.”
– Christopher Knowles, “These Are the Days” (from “Einstein on the Beach”)
wbb: Subversive is as subversive does, I guess. One of my own personal favorite lines from ostensibly ‘subversive’ art is from the the Living Theater’s “Paradise Now,” performed at the turbulent height of the riot-riddled late 60s. The last line of the play, as the audience was exiting, was,
“Kiss the policemen on your way out.”
Now there’s some real subversion for ya.
Also, hilarious story from that show (which I’ve seen in archival film footage, along with the Polish Lab Theatre’s astonishing “Akropolis”)…
“Paradise Now” was notorious for the part where the cast would get naked and try to get the audience to take their clothes off too (hey, it was the 60s; don’t ask, but it worked). Naturally, as the show toured, their reputation preceded them, and by the time they played at Yale, all the college kids in the front rows were taking their clothes off almost before the show even got started. The saintly Judith Miller, who had co-created the thing, shook her head in dismay and said, “Very difficult, this Yale audience.”
Hey, and now I see we’ve come full-circle, back again to taking clothes off! Yippee!
Tigtog,
Me a wowser? Now you’re sounding like Jason Soon. I’ve given my reasons for not liking porn, and none of them involve prudery.
Of course nakedness on its own isn’t exploitative, and I’ve never even suggested that. But SG’s isn’t nakedness on its own; it’s a subscription porn site.
Can we just compare and contrast the above to your earlier comment?
Your most recent comment puts forward the initial premise of a rational argument. The previous comment is pure pearl-clutching, which is why I said it was an excellent impression of a wowser. If you don’t want to be perceived as irrational, don’t phrase your arguments in purely emotive terms. It’s a pretty easy concept.
None of us are immune to the occasional irrational outburst, but none of us should be surprised when we’re called on it either.
Nabakov:
Kim’s hawt.
Another in a series of simple answers to simple questions.
Oh well, since this thread started with a reference to Ann Coulter, who is not supposed to be criticised for sexist or transphobic reasons, here’s a tatse of her most recent offerings:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003552299
We’re mass murderers and she’s what?
Rape is part of the arsenal we use to, amongst other effects, inflict psychological damage upon an enemy. Women are more often the victims of rape than men.
Furthermore, Coulter is a target more than most women because her positions are primal and unable to be countered using reason. Rape can never be excused and this is merely an explanation of why she is frequently prone to suffering verbal rape.
Coulter should be criticised loudly and often. Go right ahead. Being a sexist shit about it is both beneath us and a sign that some people really haven’t got the memo about the pernicious blight of sexism, but that is just my opinion, not a diktat.
Well just as long as you’re not suggesting that criticism of the Coultergeist as a lying, manipulative, hypocritical piece of shit who should be lampooned mercilessly is equivalent to “verbal rape”
CK, I didn’t quite get where wbb was coming from there either.
That’s OK TT. I generally agree with your comments at the head of the thread, and I do believe people shouldn’t focus on AC mannish traits because, really, the material is so much richer. She’s beyond parody.
Same with Malkin. The problem with these people is that hate-filled crypto-fascist commentary is their basic MO. It invites emotional reaction. In that sense wbb is right. You just can’t reason with it.
Tigtog,
If you clicked on the “semi naked women” link, you’d find the Suicide Girl that Kim posted. I’m not sure how I could have made it any clearer that my objecton is to SG not nakedness.
Alex,
all I can say is that it really wasn’t at all clear to me. I know from what you’ve written later that concentrating on the nakedness wasn’t what you meant to be the prime focus, but the words you actually wrote conveyed a different message to me.
Christine,
The Coultergeist has now called John Edwards a “faggot” at a Republican convention (from DailyKos)
Ok, I’ll take that on board and try to post more carefully
As someone who’s laughed at the Mann Coulter comment, can’t say I’m entirely happy being put upon as an ‘oh-so-helpful lefty man, self-professed allies of feminists’ so we’ll have to part ways on this point of opinion.
I’ll get to that, but anyway talking about subversive art and all got me remembering about Duchamp’s other best gag L.H.O.O.Q. (‘I love your hot arse’ – I’m told) where the Mona Lisa gets a beard and then with great comic sensibility, he followed up with the original ‘L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved’ – there’s your lifetime subversion right there. Was this fair comment on DaVinci’s homosexuality? Did it matter that Duchamp had himself photographed as a woman by Man Ray? Was he just being childish? Or was it mysogyny and transphobia? You could argue about it but is the piece ‘wrong’ or disagreeable or should it have existed at all. Would be we be better of with it or without it? Could he have found a better way to express himself?
The good jokes are the subversive ones, or not so much the subversive ones but the ones that turn things upside down or flip them around. So Ann Coulter is and portarys herself as the dream date of a bunch of homophobic mysogynists, someone suggest she’s a man and lets their own prejudices do the rest. Focussed, in context, and a nice bit of rhetorical judo – phantom rough on roughnecks and I laugh. It’s not gold but it’s more than they’re worth and it’s a wee bit more nuanced than ‘shut-up bitch face’. (oh yeah and Ann rhymes with Man)
The hard lines of the wowser do come to mind – trangress in one area and you transgress in all. That’s what adam’s apples are all about aren’t they?
And transsexuals cringe as they are used as a joke. Again.
While women’s sexual attractiveness, rather than the worth of their opinions, becomes the measure of their value. Again.
How about:
Anne Coulter is a nasty, bigoted, pseudo-angry woman who makes a living by stoking prejudice, thus making hate crimes more likely. Any gay man who gets bashed tonight in the USA should remember who thinks it’s OK to use the word ‘faggot’.
Full of hate against Coulter, without breaching solidarity with people who have ask it of us.
I’ll try and think of a funnier one.
Subversive. But most of all funny.
Hmmm…let’s try that again.
Subversive. But most of all funny.
Sorry, Alex, but your comment is misleading – first you refer to promoting the SGs (plural), then you make reference to the time I posted some pics – of one SG (singular) – but even that’s not a clear reference. And I did it for a political point. I read the comment the same way tigtog did.
David
The joke doesn’t hinge on the merits of transsexuality because she isn’t one and it only works if there’s someone who would have problems with it. This is different to labeling someone a transexual because you think that it’s a bad thing to be called – like Ann calling someone a faggot for instance. So blanket ban on transsexual jokes is it?
Ummm I think you could work on the timing maybe, personal anecdote, ‘don’t you hate it when..’ type observation. Here, let’s workshop this
A: My Ann’s got no conscience
B: Really? How does she smell?
A: Terrible!!
[laughs all round, vanguard of leftists circle Ann chanting 'smelly smelly smell smell']
Best antidote to humour is better humour (nice work there TigTog)
David Jackmanson, I rather like Twisty’s take on Coulter:
Twisty notes the usual misogyny in the responses to Coulter, but Pam Spaulding notes the disappointing over-reaction of many in the liberal camp to the nature of the faggot slur itself:
Pam notes that Elizabeth Edward’s response on the John Edwards campaign blog is much better:
The bit in bold is my own emphasis.
Excellent point, TT. It’s hate speech as such that’s the problem, not the individual manifestations of it. When discussions about particular words (‘faggot’, ‘transsexual’, whatever else) get derailed or bogged down, it’s usually because of the impossibility of sorting out context and intention from instance to instance — but ‘words that cause others pain’ is a category whose meaning nobody could challenge.
Hi Anthony, our posts crossed.
I’m glad you appreciate the cartoon.
However:
You don’t think reinforcing someone’s pre-existing transphobia might be a bad idea?
How might such remarks make a transitioning or considering-transitioning person feel about the likely level of acceptance for them in the “progressive” community? How might this affect their general feelings of safety and security that most of us need to be happy?
I don’t make transexual jokes for very much the same reason that I don’t make nigger jokes.
Not entirely, but almost always. What tigtog said above I pretty much agree with.
Don’t have a problem with Little Britain’s “I’m a Lady” shtick myself, because that’s absurdist rather than brutal, but would also not watch it front of a transsexual who said she found it offensive.
Makes sense. Henceforth, we can just substitute abstract markers for the traditional topics of jokes, viz.,
“Okay, a pirate, a robot, and a space alien walk into a bar…”
Wait, that’s still problematic. Let me try again.
“A person with alternative revenue sources, an electronic worker suffering from programmed identity deficit, and an undocumented extraterrestrial individual walk into a bar…”
This is getting worse. I’ve got an idea.
“Okay, 3x(c-2), f(x)[c2 /-4ab] and the square root of 3 walk into a bar…”
Huh. Not working. Alright…
“Popeye, Wimpy, and the Sea Hag walk into a bar. And Popeye says….”
Problem solved!
(p.s., not looking to mock the conclusions of the thread; but when ya see a dollar bill just laying there in the street, if you’re a fool like me, you try and pick it up…)
Don’t really know much about Coulter, but the fact that she would use a word like “faggot” in public discourse more or less disqualifies her from being taken seriously; not on p.c. grounds strictly, but on the simple behavioral principle that grown-ups are supposed to know that you talk differently in public than you talk in the locker room. If she doesn’t know or care about those simple norms, why should her opinion be noted about more complex matters? On the other hand, I also find the rather morbid demonizing of her that one routinely encounters on threads like this to be, whether sexist or non-sexist, well, symptomatic of, er… *some*thing. “maggot chewing on rotting corpse of glabbedy glibbedy gloobedy?” What are we, living in an HP Lovecraft story? I think everybody needs to take a breath and get a bit of a grip, especially when confronting their opponents. Like Bill Cosby used to say, If you’re not careful, you just might learn something.
Because she is noticed, she gets a lot of attention, and she reinforces bigotry – bigotry that is really dangerous to someone who gets gay-bashed by a group of thugs.
I guess people gotta let off steam now and again, and the ‘maggot’ comment was quoted here (and used on the original blog) as a way to show people who are righteously angry at Coulter that they can hate her without sneering at transsexuals.
But yes, it might well be useful to tone down the hate even more, and not talk about maggots either, and rather discuss what could be done to weaken Coulter’s influence.
Maggots are baby flies.
That has to be ageism.
On the other hand, I also find the rather morbid demonizing of her that one routinely encounters on threads like this to be, whether sexist or non-sexist, well, symptomatic of, erâ?¦ *some*thing. â??maggot chewing on rotting corpse of glabbedy glibbedy gloobedy?â?? What are we, living in an HP Lovecraft story? I think everybody needs to take a breath and get a bit of a grip, especially when confronting their opponents.
That sounds very reasonable just on the face of it, JPZ, until you actually read some of AC’s writings. Maggot doesn’t go far enough. She really is a piece of work.
Well, enough people certainly seem to get incensed by her, so I guess I’ll take your word for it.
Meantime, I believe I have at last perfected the ultimate Joke Designed To Offend Nobody ™:
“Okay, so A, C, and G walk into location W. There they meet N, a person associated with the location and its purposes.
So N says to them, “In what fashion would you three persons like to participate in the services and/or activities offered at W?”
So A says, “I’d like to [response fairly consistent with A's normative behavior, in the context of a location like W].”
N says, “Fine.” A normative exchange ensues.
C says, “I’d like to [response not only consistent with B's normative behavior in context, but also similar to A's response; but with certain minor differences that create in the listener's mind the detection of a developing pattern.]”
N says, “Fine.” A second, normative exchange ensues, and in addition the subtle perception that a behavior pattern is developing continues to advance.
G says, “Well, as for *me*, I’d like to [response that is literally logical and consistent with G's normative behavior, but which is not contextually normative in a location like W, and which furthermore breaks the pattern which the listener has begun to expect]!”
Get it?
It’s okay to laugh now. No one will be angry at you.
Boom boom!
I’ve just sumbitted tigtog’s original article to digg.
This was provoked by this smug post from Little Green Footballs, who (correctly) criticise the sexist and transphobic attitudes of some who attack Coulter, and (incorrectly) draw the conculsion that, roughly, ‘all leftists are hypocrites’.
Feel free to head on over and digg (vote for) the post – click on the top link. If you’re not registered, you’ll have to do that.
Hey Tig Tog
We’ve cross-addressed eachother.
I’d never argue that it’s that straightforward. Is it bad to make someone feel uncomfortable because of their prejudices?
Would it be correct to say I’m not accepting of transitioning people based on my laughing at the joke? This isn’t making it personal, just curious as to what degree this would be the case?
Well we could ask them. I’m guessing there are more fundamental aspects to their safety and security than the minutiae of a joke.
I’ll restate – Mann Coulter isn’t based around saying she’s bad because she’s a transsexual. Can you think of a nigger joke in the same context, or any that really meet any reasonable standards of being humour?
David it’s not absurdist, absurdist humour disorients – Little Britain’s “I’m a Lady” is basically some of the oldest and most reassuring gags in the book. Men Dressing Up Like Women (see Ronnies, Two) and someone being crap at something they’re supposed to be good at (see Cooper, Tommy).
Now you’ve admitted you’ve found it funny and it is – mainly due to the performances (that’s why Are You Being Served dates better than Benny Hill). As for your not watching it in front of a transsexual, that’s being considerate. But does that mean we can laugh at transsexual jokes as long as there aren’t any around? Isn’t that hypocrisy? And if it’s about being brutal, we’ll what’s this ‘full of hate’ stuff. ‘Maggot’? Can’t we deal with the arguments?
I’m not shit-stirring here and I don’t think I’ve got the definitive answer. I think humour is one our most precious social assets, and it’s a very sophisticated and complex aspect of social behaviour – the type that adults have to negotiate with a bit of nous and take on the risks. The sort of thing, like sex, some people think we can’t be trusted with. Why I’m writing long boring screeds on humour is that I think the last thing we need is prescriptivism argued on the grounds of solidarity based on unlimited possible sensitivities. Humour deals with itself in terms of it’s own rules, most offensive jokes fail because they’re not funny.
One of my faves from Spy magazine, commenting on a quote: