Got up this morning and looked at the news section of the ABC website, in hope of seeing how the NT election went. Oh dear, was that ever a mistake. I thought I could be a grown-up and let it go, but nope; I've had all day to stew, and now it's time to get my ranty-pants out of the cupboard. And a warning, I seem to have gained a couple of kilos since the last time I wore them, so skip this post if you want to avoid poorly-reasoned and potentially offensive belligerence.
[I had a much more mature and nuanced discussion about this sort of stuff with Melba a while ago; but since today it's just me and my pants, don't expect anything approaching that level of sophistication.]
Is blackface offensive? Yes. Undoubtedly, many people are offended by blackface. Is this "a problem we have to tackle as a society"? Only if your goal is to create a society in which nobody ever gets offended.
Look, when a copper goes to party in blackface, with a noose around his neck, and the name-tag of bloke who suspiciously hung himself in police custody—that is deeply—DEEPLY—problematic (yes, it's been about 25yrs, but everyone still remembers this, right?). But see, if he'd shown up with the noose and the name-tag, without the makeup, it wouldn't have been any less problematic; and if the dead fella he was imitating had been white, it still would have been an issue. The problem here isn't the fuckin' face-paint.
I don't have the patience to participate in a society where every time someone puts on some nugget, or some lippy, or a some padding, we have to have a national conversation about racism, sexism, and fat-shaming. What matters is what those people do once they're in costume. And a young kid who paints himself brown because he wants to be the same colour as his hero, is not fuckin' harming anybody.
And another thing—if you paint yourself the same colour as A SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL, because you want to look like THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL—how the fuck is that reinforcing racial stereotypes!?
Are they sexist and discriminatory? Yes, absolutely. You're talking about businesses that only accept female workers and clients. That's textbook sexual discrimination. Does that mean you're a horrible person if you support them. No, I don't think so. Having separate men's and women's sports teams and changing rooms is also textbook sexual discrimination—in the form of segregation—and I support that. Maybe I'm a horrible person. Or maybe discrimination isn't always so bad. Maybe the world isn't black & white, and we should stop getting hung up on labels and start using some fuckin' common sense when it comes to these things. Revolutionary idea, eh?
[This one got me especially riled, because I see more and more stuff like this nowadays; and while I feel it comes from a place of good intentions … well, you know what they say about the road to hell.]
'Don't take nude selfies' and other ways men treat women with contempt
Advising female school students not to take nude photos misses the point. When society shames young women for being sexual, we can't be surprised when young men treat them with contempt.
By Alex McKinnon
Updated Sat Aug 27 11:05:24 EST 2016
No Alex, despite your awesome first name, I suspect it might be you who misses the point.
It is almost a cliche how quickly women are shamed, even when they are the victims of criminal behaviour as appears to be the case following reports of the exposure of a major child pornography ring in Australia.
The news that teenage boys and men had been secretly stealing and exchanging sexual photos of school-age girls and women triggered widespread horror and condemnation and prompted investigations by police.
If you look at the original version on the ABC website, she links to this article as reference. Now, maybe there are more details of this case out there, but if all you're going on is the linked article, it clearly states:
QPS said the site contained images and information that had been obtained from social media sites and from across the internet.
and
does not appear to contain any child exploitation material
In other words, this sounds like a bunch of boys aggregating images that girls have taken of themselves and shared—sometimes privately—sometimes publicly—and then posting lewd, and demeaning comments next to them.
I tend to define pornography as anything that's created to serve as masturbation-fodder, and since some of these images involved underage girls, yes, I guess this is technically child porn; however, I think that describing it as "a major child pornography ring" is misleading and sensationalist, especially if the police are correct in stating the site didn't contain any child exploitation material. Are we going to embrace the American model, where a fifteen-year-old who takes photos of themselves can be found guilty of producing child porn and placed on the sex-offender register for the rest of their lives? Well, no fuckin' thank you mate; as far as I'm concerned, the Yanks can have that bullshit all to themselves.
Oh, and notice that she mentions "secretly stealing photos"? She does this a couple of times throughout the article when talking about people downloading and re-posting pictures that other people post publicly through social media. Why? I can only imagine that it's an attempt to fool non-sophisticated readers into thinking there's some sort of nefarious hacking going on.
But some of the backlash has been directed at girls themselves for taking and sharing naked photos in the first place.
Melbourne's Kambrya College was criticised for telling its female students to "protect their integrity" by lengthening their skirts to cover their legs.
Queensland Police came under fire for releasing a statement in which they warned of "the consequences of posting too much personal information online" without mentioning the behaviour of the perpetrators.
And an opinion piece by Mamamia founder Mia Freedman included a checklist of how girls should behave online, with instructions like "NEVER take a nude or partially nude photo of yourself".
Okay, first of all, can we please start writing Mamamia differently? Like MamaMia, or something? I swear, every fuckin' time I see it written as Mamamia, my brain pronounces it Ma-mamia.
Secondly, this is the crux of what I find upsetting. Giving girls practical advice is not "backlash". Look, I'm an independent adult woman living in a first-world country—I shouldn't have to put masking tape over all the camera lenses in my house, but I do, because I know for a fact that there are blokes out there who get their jollies hacking into internet connected cameras; I should be able to hang out at my local park, alone, at 2AM on a Friday night, but I don't, because I know there are opportunistic thieves and rapists out there; and I shouldn't have to lock my front door, but I do, because I know that once in a blue moon some drunk fuckwit is going to come pounding on it, demanding I let him in. I'd love to live in that perfect world where none of this stuff was an issue, I really would … but I don't—I live in the real world. It's a nasty place, full of nasty cunts who do nasty fuckin' things to each other—and you know what? All the young people I care about also have to live in that world—and if you think I shouldn't warn them about the nasty shit, or give them realistic advice on how to protect themselves from it, because—I dunno—it constitutes some sort of victim-blaming or something, then as far as I'm concerned you are deeply—DANGEROUSLY—fuckin' naive.
Besides the uselessness of "advice" like that in an age where sending nude pictures is a common and unremarkable part of young people's sexual relationships (and abstinence-only messages fail to stop teenagers from doing what they want to do), that familiar kneejerk instinct to shame girls and women has a darker side.
Both the high school pornography ring and the gendered response to it stem from the same perverse source: our hostility toward young women who act in ways society deems to be unacceptably sexual. The boys stealing photos of their female classmates learned such contempt for women from somewhere.
When we constantly shame young women for being sexual, we cannot be surprised when young men absorb it, and act it out.
At this point, the article basically becomes self-parody. Girls taking pictures of themselves and sharing them is an empowering expression* of their sexuality that we should embrace—nay, celebrate—rather than foolishly thinking we can stem through disapproving finger-wagging; but boys passing those pictures around and wanking off to them is unacceptable, and that—THAT—is what we can fix through disapproving finger wagging. For fuck's sake, has she ever met a teenage boy? Did she not go out with, or even hang around any when she was young?
* Hang on, I thought those images constituted child pornography!
Also, look, the fellas I knew who hacked into webcams didn't have a "special contempt" for women. They had contempt for everyone. It wasn't like whenever they happened onto a bloke's webcam they immediately abandoned it out of respect or a sense of brotherhood. To the contrary, they were happy to spy on other blokes if they were doing something stupid or funny. The reason they preferred watching women—I believe—is that they were hetero, and that's what they liked wanking off to.
Actually, the whole notion of this being completely one-sided seems kinda bullshit. Generally speaking, women don't amass giant caches of visual imagery for them and their friends to frig off to—that's true; but do you reckon girls are above being fuckin' cruel and spreading nasty shit around (I know I wasn't)? Do you reckon boys don't do nasty shit to other boys? Do you reckon they don't get teased and laughed at when it comes to their nudey pics? Hey, remember The Fappening, when all those nude pics of all those celebrities got leaked onto the internet? Did that ruin the careers of any of those women? I don't keep up on the gossip, so I wouldn't know. I remember a lot of people condemning it, even going so far as to say that looking at the pictures was a form of sexual assault. On the other hand, I can also remember when Anthony Weiner's cyber-mistress went public with photos of his nob—and how talk show hosts around the world showed the pixellated pickies and laughed and laughed and danced around to "Carlos Danger" theme music, and made him the butt of every joke for months, so that eventually he had to resign. Hmmm, funny that.
I'm not going to reprint the whole article, but I will share a few nuggets:
Take selfie culture, a phenomenon widely derided as shallow, self-obsessed, vain and stupid because it is associated in the public mind with young women supposedly "desperate" for male sexual attention.
Bullshit. I don't deride "selfie culture" as shallow, self-obsessed, vain and stupid because it's associated with young women (in fact, it's fuckin' news to me that it is), I deride it as shallow, self-obsessed, vain and stupid because it's literally a fuckin' culture of taking photos of yourself.
"Whenever we talk about people taking selfies, we're unconsciously bringing to mind an image of a young, self-obsessed woman," said Professor Amy Dobson of the University of Queensland.
No.
"The reaction to men engaging in it is completely different. People look with affection and admiration at old men taking selfies, for example."
What the fuck!? Which old men are being praised for this? Why? By whom? Is this a reference to something specific?
Jacinta* is a 24-year-old from Victoria whose public selfies were stolen by male strangers and posted on online forum 4Chan. There, she was labelled a "slut" and an "attention seeker" with low self-esteem.
Again with the "stealing" of public images. Also, why not mention that 4Chan (and more accurately /b) is a "shock" humour site, where people try to "outdo" each other by posting the nastiest fuckin' things imaginable—about anything or anyone. Frankly, if she became a topic of discussion on there, I can't imagine that slut and attention seeker were the worst things people said. You can find people saying much worse on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, which is also far more relevant, considering they're not supposed to be sites that are specifically dedicated to offending people.
The preconception that women are the only ones taking naked photos of themselves is also misguided — we just pay more attention when girls do it.
Yes, some of us apparently write giant articles about it for the ABC. Are you seriously making this complaint, other Alex?
According to Associate Professor Kath Albury, who co-authored the UNSW study, "boys take as many sexy and naked selfies as girls do".
"[But] a young man's naked photo is allowed to have a range of possible meanings," she said, from being sexual to being a joke or a sign of confidence. Girls' photos are not.
Oh sorry, I guess I was wrong about boys being mocked for their nudey pics. Must have dreamed that whole Weiner thing. I'll stop giving the boys in my family the same warnings I give the girls, since obviously none of this applies to them.
Professor Dobson argues that whether an image is deemed appropriate or not has less to do with its actual content than whether the woman in the picture is perceived to be displaying sexual agency for reasons other than male gratification.
"I find it ironic that we fetishise images of women in our everyday media lives on billboards and elsewhere, but when young women actually take the images themselves, we put them down for it," she says.
[Photo Caption] Women are shamed for displaying sexual agency separate from male desire, Professor Albury says.
Wait, is it Albury or Dobson who's saying this?
Also, the fuck? So, if I'm a typical teenage girl, and I take a regular picture of myself, my peers are going to slag me off for it; but if I take a picture of myself with—say—my boyfriend's dick in my mouth, then nobody'll give me shit, because I'll be showing "sexual agency for reasons of male gratification", and everyone finds that acceptable.
In actual fact, I'll bet my left tit that if you let people "comment" on billboards the same way they comment online, you'd see pretty much the same repugnant shite in pretty much the same quantities.
Personally, I feel this would be a more accurate summation: If you post anything online, somebody is going to try to make you feel bad about it. Doubly so if you're a woman. Triply so if it involves anything sexual. Sadly, the world is full of arseholes, and so far, nobody has discovered cure.
The End
Oh, and the NT voters gave the Torries a fuckin' hiding—so I guess it's not all fuckin' bad news, eh?
