With the obnoxious cultural pushing out of the way, let’s get down to business.  As I alluded to above, one of the things Mad Men does so well is gender issues.  However, so much ink (or pixels, as it were) has already been spilled on the topic of feminism and gender issues in Mad Men, that I think it is probably useless for me to try to say too much on the topic, because most everything that can be said about it already has, and more intelligently than I could.  So I am just going to restrict myself to one small point which I think sometimes gets overlooked in this discussion.

*

Most of the discussion of gender in Mad Men has been in the service of analyzing the gender dynamics of that world, particularly as manifested in the differences between the career strategies and outlooks of Peggy and Joan, and through the repressed life that is Betty Draper.  Though occasionally the show falls back into essentially just laughing and poking fun at the ridiculous sexism of the era, at its best (and this is most of the time) it makes you sympathize with and understand all the characters involved, even when we disapprove of and/or cringe at their words and actions.  (In this respect, Matt Weiner, the shows creator, clearly learned a lot from his three years on The Sopranos.)  And though Weiner and the entire team at Mad Men can’t be praised enough for so ably transporting their viewers into the mindset of characters who in some ways are so alien to us (itself a testament to how far we as a society have come in terms of women’s rights), it does more than just that.  In virtue of being a piece of historical fiction, I think it gives some viewers a window into the subjective feeling of sexism as it exists today that would be hard to attain in a show set in the present.

I’m not sure that makes sense, though, so let me try to explain.  I’m pretty sure I’m not a very sexist person.  I know I’ve done and said some things that were sexist at various points in my life, and held (and maybe even hold) views that were sexist in ways I didn’t/don’t realize or appreciate.  But all things considered, I feel like I’m pretty much where I should be gender-wise.  Further, all of the women in my life are strong, independent women—not the kind of people who are going to take any discrimination sitting down.  The only problem with this is that in some way it gives me a distorted idea of how the world is.  As human beings, we kind of naturally expect other people to more or less act like us, particularly people living in the same society as we are.  So when I hear, for example, of sexism in the workplace from a friend or family member, my instinctive reaction can often be to try to play it down, because, after all, I would never do something intentionally sexist, so why would other men?  It therefore must just be a case of misunderstanding—a misinterpretation of a word or gesture or what have you, right?  I know that sounds ridiculous, because it is.  But I think it’s also an unfortunately natural way people process things like this.  My hope is that I’m sufficiently aware of this tendency to not allow it to distort my thinking in any serious way, but I think it still puts some barriers on my empathetic abilities.

This is where a show like Mad Men comes in.  In virtue of being removed from a contemporary setting, it allows one to turn off the tendency to see things through ones own eyes.  And this allows the viewer to subjectively experience sexism in a more unfiltered way, and to then consequently understand better what women go through in the present.  I’m not suggesting that by watching this show I now Understand Women or anything like that, but it helps. (It is also worth noting that this may not be the case if the setting were so removed from contemporary society that it seemed completely alien.  If, for example, it were set in Renaissance France, or early 20^th century Japan.)

I’ll try to illustrate this point with an example, though one that is admittedly a bit on the extreme end of what I am talking about.  (Really most of the interesting gender stuff has to do with Joan and Peggy and gender issues in the workplace, which this is example is not about.)  There is a scene in the show where Betty Draper—the young, good looking wife of the main character—is driving at night when her car breaks down.  She flags someone down and asks them to send a mechanic.  Pretty soon a slightly creepy man from a local gas station or whatever arrives to help fix her car.  She naïvely acts a bit flirtatious with him, and there is an awkward exchange about payment, because Betty doesn’t have enough money for the part that needs replacement—she thinks they are just bargaining, he clearly is expecting something like sexual favors.  Luckily, it ends without event, and she ends up just driving home, blissfully unaware.  For the viewer, though, the whole scene is incredibly tense, as one completely feels the power differential the whole time, and the combination of Betty’s naïveté, the darkness/isolation, and the payment issue amplify exponentially all that tension—throughout the whole scene I just wanted her to run away or for another car to drive by and was constantly in great fear that she would be molested or raped or something awful.  Now, had the scene been set in 2009, I think I still would have felt that tension, but to a lesser degree, because on either a conscious or unconscious level I would have been projecting myself onto the man—the thought that, “Well, I would never do anything evil, so she shouldn’t be worried,” would be more present watching a scene set now than in 1960.  But after watching that scene, it suddenly occurred to me that it could have just as easily been set in 2009.  By putting me in a scene where I’m not inclined to project my own personality, I was able to better grasp the subjective experience of sexism and power differences between genders.  And this kind of thing happens a lot watching Mad Men.  Again, it’s not like I’m suddenly realizing things aren’t perfect in 2009—I obviously know all the horrible things that happen to women today in those kinds of situations, and would never dream of suggesting that such problems have been solved—but it allows me to understand the feeling of sexism better, in whatever admittedly very limited way I am able to do that.

In other words, like most great historical fiction (hence the “not-so-original” above), Mad Men doesn’t just transport you to the past, it circles right back to the present in a profound way.

- Torff

She is touched.
She is fucked.
She so tiny, so infinitesimally tucked into herself with horseshoe pockets
_____and the grandiose panting of unwilling lovers.
The eyes are watching, frowning like clownly laughter,
__________a hideous deluge of the judgment of cyclical stories,
_____black ice in the spring wind [it is so fucking windy] it wisps away her skin
_____to flesh to bones to the gray cradle of nonbeing.
Then it is dim supper rooms, then it is blank staggering blasts, and the eyes,
[the eyes] like flashbulbs bursting and smashing open from the lens of god.
As she beseeches their blindness leave me
Leave me
______Leave
_____Me
Does not the breeze still?  Do we not join hands in our humanity
______with the ferocity of empathy that simmers and wakes each morning
___________in the fluttering in the lids of our sight?
We
_Are
__So
___Small (!)       she cries,
___________Let us shed our brief dresses and love each other,
___________________________is that not everything?
Not when you look at me that way,
Not when you are seething with loathing,
Not when misogyny runs rampant and free,
Stampeding the aisles of the supermarket,
Flooding our faces with ruddiness at the outrage
______________________of spread legs.

Quiet!
We
Do
Not
Want
This.
[Read between the lines,] she says, I am clichéd.
I am tired and all I remember is nothing, the stammering stir of the wine bottle and then nonbeing,
And when I awoke this morning                         I was ashamed.
Three wineglasses, Three wicked, ghoulish sneers and drenched giggles.
It was nothing, really,
____I felt
__sturdy
_____until I
____forgot
_it all,
[She wonders at the slight of slick hands from the orange bottle that damned her.]
I am not ashamed.
Fuck me? she says. Fuck you.

Now, the description on the back had given me some clue as to the disturbing world I was about to immerse myself in, and I certainly wasn’t expecting a humorous, light-hearted walk in the park.  But holy fuck!  Holy fucking fuck.  I mean, I’ve read some crazy, fucked up shit over the years, but this might just top them all—it certainly surpasses Lolita and is right up there with something like Naked Lunch or Crash (the J.G. Ballard novel, not the crappy 2004 movie).  I finished it 24 hours ago as of this writing, and it is still lingering, and is showing a stubborn resistance to my efforts at some peace.  (I had a date last night, and was actually rather glad that nothing happened sexually, because any intimations of sex would have just gotten me thinking of this book, and that would not have been good.) [Update: it has been a bit longer now since I finished, and I think I've gotten enough distance to say with some trepidation that I think the book is also rather brilliant.]

The novel is narrated by a prisoner, a middle-aged pedophile.  A lot of the book is devoted to him describing his life in prison and his obsessions as he slowly reveals to us the details of his past, culminating in the last 100 or so pages, which are simply masterful and where we learn in great detail of the heinous crime that landed him in jail.  The other strand of the story is Chappy’s (the prisoner’s name, sort of) correspondence with a 19-year-old college girl who is home for the summer.  The girl has some sexual peculiarities of her own, and is attracted to and eventually seduces a local 12-year-old boy whom she has been giving tennis lessons to.  (In one particularly unnerving scene, she eats a scab off his knee.)  The book, as you might have guessed from my reaction, can at times be exceptionally graphic, describing prison sex, pedophilia, and violence in great detail, and all from the point of view of a seriously fucked up narrator—in this novel nothing is spared or left to the imagination, it would seem.

Consider just one example of the depravity which the reader is so frequently subjected to.  The narrator in this scene is talking about a 12-year-old girl he has tied up:

Curl my lip, roll it back, and expose my teeth; fuck you with my face, scraping the liquid of your ecstasy, scraping until your flesh is weak, until you break and begin to bleed.  And then I suck that blood, drink you down.

And saving the best for last, I pull out the most favored toy, my precious BB gun—a long-dead father’s gift to his only son.  I travel with it tucked inside my bag and rarely use it, but today is special because I’m here with you.  So I unpack the would-be rifle, pump it up three times, and put it to you.  I blast you once and you buck a bit; the second time you seem still surprised as though no one had ever thought of such a thing.  I stroke the barrel and am filled with memories; screaming squirrels, broken bottles, bull’s-eye pucks in widows’ windows.  The black paint is chipping.  Again, I pull the trigger and then withdraw, leaving you with my ball bearings in your walls.  You look so perplexed.  Oyster, don’t you get it?  In your shell I put three grains of sand.  Make me a pearl!

I’ll stop here, though, as this isn’t meant to be a book review or a work of criticism, per se.  But given everything I have told you thus far, are you surprised to find out that the author is in fact a woman?  (The A in A.M. stands for Amy.)  I can’t say I had this reaction, because I had heard of the author before and knew she was female.  But whenever I have talked about this book to other people, they always seemed surprised to learn of the authors sex.[i] Now, admittedly this is a relatively small sample size, and thus is nothing close to a controlled, scientific experiment, but the reaction has been consistent enough that I thought it was worth thinking about it.  And, truth be told, if I hadn’t known in advance that the author was female, I probably would have been surprised myself.

But why?  Why are people surprised to learn that the author of a sexually graphic and supremely fucked-up novel like The End of Alice is a woman?  What does this mean for women trying to make it in the world of high literary fiction?

In 1998 Francine Prose (side note: great last name, almost as funny as the local meteorologist for Fox whose name is Amy Freeze) wrote a much-discussed article for Harper’s looking at the extent to which female authors are still underrepresented in major literary prizes, and get fewer short stories published in widely-read magazines and journals.  She writes:

In fact, as so often happens, the statistics outdo one’s grisliest paranoias. In last year’s New York Review of Books, twenty-five books of fiction by men were reviewed and only ten books by women—in essays written by three times as many men as women. In 1997, The New Yorker printed thirty-seven stories by men, ten by women; Harper’s Magazine printed nine stories by men, three by women. Since 1992, the Editors’ Choice lists in The New York Times Book Review, arguably the most powerful voice in the book-review chorus, have included twenty-two books of fiction by men and eight by women. Since 1980, sixteen men and two women have won the PEN/Faulkner Award; and fourteen men and four women, the National Book Award. No works of fiction by women were included among the five finalists for the Los Angeles Times book prize last year (though the Los Angeles Times’s winner in a category for “first fiction” was a woman, the short-story writer Carolyn Ferrell, who took the prize with the appropriately named collection Don’t Erase Me). And in 1988, when none of the New York Times’s ten best books of the year was by a woman, the editors (who bypassed, for example, Mavis Gallant’s In Transit in favor of “a circus of storytelling” by Milorad Pavic) published this disclaimer: “In case anyone has failed to notice, none of the books on this year’s list is by a woman. Among more than 40 volumes originally nominated by individual editors were many, both fiction and nonfiction, by women. But none remained among the final choices after two months of weekly discussions.”

Given that this was written 10 years ago, it is worth looking at some more updated numbers.  One sign of progress is that over the last 30 years, the gender split in stories published in the annual Best American Short Stories series is pretty equal, coming in at 47% female and 53% male, with the most published author being Alice Munro (odd, considering she is Canadian and it is an anthology of American short stories—damn canucks!).  On the other hand, if one looks at the 312 stories published in the New Yorker between 2003 and 2008, only 38.1% were written by women.  And, more recently, we have the Publisher’s Weekly list of the 10 best books of 2009, which included no female authors at all.

What does all this have to do with people’s reaction to The End of Alice?  I think they both point to a broader problem.  Namely, that female writers still have to deal with being thought of as “female writers” and not just writers.  And part of being a “female writer” is that one is expected to write in certain styles, constrain yourself to certain subjects, etc.  So long as female writers and their work are at all thought of as “women’s literature” or “women writers” and not just Writers, there will be some marginalization when it comes to acceptance into the world of literary fiction, kind of the same way (though for obviously different reasons) that much genre fiction is.

But I don’t want to suggest that there is no value to the idea of being a “female writer,” because there was a period during which it was useful I think for women writers (or many of them, anyway) to make a point of writing seriously about subjects that were typically associated with femininity, as this allowed them to prove that these topics could be just as Important and Literary and worthy of serious artistic consideration as typically masculine topics.  As Virginia Woolf wrote famously in A Room of One’s Own:

Speaking crudely, football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes ‘trivial’. And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing–room. A scene in a battle–field is more important than a scene in a shop…

It was thus valuable for women writers to really embrace their identities as women when they were writing, and it made sense for them to largely focus their writings on typically feminine topics, because it was a way of fighting against the masculine literary culture which prevailed.  Had they all just tried to write like men and talk about typically masculine subject matter, it would have just reinforced or confirmed for men that their values were the right ones, and it would then be easier for them (the men) to dismiss women as serious writers because, according to their perspective, why would women be able to write better about topics that they (the women) are either explicitly or implicitly agreeing are masculine just in virtue of writing about them seriously.

The problem is perhaps that this idea or conception of female authors has become too entrenched, past the point where it is still very useful.  Granted, I think there is still a bias against the kind of subject matter Woolf discusses, but it is certainly less so than it was when she writing.  (There is still an asymmetry in that a women’s writings about very “feminine” things such as fashion or shopping are still more likely to be dismissed as trivial than when a man writes about, say, sports.)  And people’s reaction on finding out that the author of The End of Alice is a woman is a perfect example.  People now have very little difficulty conceding that a woman can write great literature, but consciously or unconsciously we still have certain biases about what the subject matter of that literature will be.  So we are shocked when we come up against an author like Homes who is writing about something that very few people at all are really willing to tackle, and certainly seems the antithesis of what women should be writing about.

And so this kinda seems like the next real step for women in the literary world: to get people to fully internalize the fact that not only are typically feminine subjects worth of serious attention and capable of producing great art, but that women can write capably on just as broad of subject matter as men.  As a culture we’ve certainly made a lot of headway in this direction, but an example like the one I have discussed here still points at some of its limitations.  And because it is so depraved and disturbed and fucked up in all kinds of ways, The End of Alice is almost like a final test.  If we can reach a day when no one is surprised that a woman has written such a novel, then that’s probably a pretty good indication that we’ve gotten to the point where, as Prose puts it, the “only distinction that will matter will be between good and bad writing.”

- Torff

[i] A few interesting but somewhat unrelated questions:  Would the aesthetic experience of the book change if we thought it was written by a man?  Would we be more offended by the main female character if it hadn’t been written by a woman?

are swollen

the grandeur

of the woman

bright-eyed

hard-eyed

beaming or shrugging

love love love

each other

I say.

The world is love

is terrible

is the infinite connection

of us

every living day

until we die

that we grasp hands

and raise our voices

to the great galactic sky

that we are fighting.

The seedlings

are sprouting

tiny green

pieces of the

universe

breathing

the whole structure

of time

to love one another.

We stand

howling through the black night

our cry reaching

the blank heavens

for all to hear

that no one is alone.

we have each other.

we have the world.

"The Damage Done" by Tanith Griffiths

Key Points in this article:

http://www.prolife.com/CONDOMS.html

“Relying on condoms for ‘protection’ can mean lifelong disease, suffering, and even death for you or for someone you love.”

Quote from: ¾ Dr. Andre Lafrance, Canadian physician and researcher.

So does relying on an airbag while driving.  Be safe.  Stay at home.

Also, he’s Canadian.  We’re conservative Americans!  Do we listen to those pansies?

“Saying that the use of condoms is ‘safe sex’ is in fact playing Russian roulette. A lot of people will die in this dangerous game.”

Quote from: ¾ Dr. Teresa Crenshaw, member of the U.S. Presidential AIDS Commission and past president of the American Association of Sex Educators

You know what, you’re right.  Putting a loaded gun to my head and pulling the trigger is equally as dangerous as having sex with someone who, as an American, has a 0.5-1.0% chance of having AIDS.  How many bullets fit in a gun?  I think our odds are a little better than that.  Also, fear mongering?  Real classy.  But it’s good to know that you’ve infiltrated our schools and made yourself responsible for molding the minds of our children.

To give you an idea of how easy it would be for the virus (AIDS) to pass through these holes (in the condoms), just imagine a ping pong ball going through a basketball hoop.

That’s how ineffective condoms are?  Fuck that.  If I sleep with someone with an STD, I’m probably going to get it anyway, so why bother?  Plus, it feels way better without one.  Although, really, that game sounds like fun.

Condoms provide considerably less protection against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) than they do against pregnancy.  That’s because a girl can get pregnant only at ovulation time (that’s two to three days each month) but STDs can pass from partner to partner at any time of the month.

No comment.

Two Republicans, Steve King of Iowa, right, and Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, crumpled a copy of the bill Saturday. (reprint from NY Times)

As anyone who has been paying attention to the news in the past few days is aware, the House recently passed a major piece of legislation to overhaul the healthcare system.  However, it comes with a pretty nasty compromise. As has been widely reported, a key reason the bill was able to get through the House at all is that an amendment was added at the last minute which forbids the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans which cover voluntary abortions.  (Thankfully, this means that federally funded/subsidized insurance will at least still be allowed to cover abortions resulting from rape or incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger.)  Like many others of a progressive, left-wing bent, I am not particularly happy about this.  Nevertheless, if this amendment is going to be here to stay, I would like to suggest a possible silver-lining in this otherwise distasteful turn of events.

One problem with the abortion discussion in this country, and something Obama will hopefully fix as he indicated he will, is that no one really talks about other ways to support pregnant women, and these can be just as important to women’s rights as abortion itself.  In other words, there seems to be an important common ground between both sides that is being completely lost in the media-fueled craziness, and that perhaps the introduction of this amendment will bring to the fore.

Let me explain what I have in mind.  No one likes abortions.  No one thinks high numbers of abortions are a good thing.  And, despite what some Republicans will tell you, just because someone is pro-choice doesn’t mean they go out every weekend and try to get knocked up just so they can stroll into Planned Parenthood in a few weeks to get their monthly abortion.  Of course not.  For most women, having an abortion is not an easy decision, and in some cases it can lead to relatively severe psychological consequences. This is why both sides need to be finding ways to reduce abortions that don’t involve coercion or making them illegal.  We need to be focusing on things like making it easier for working mothers to have a child without fear of losing their job, and on getting them affordable, quality childcare if they can’t pay for it on their own.  In other words, we need to make it more of a real choice.  No woman should ever be in a situation where she has to choose between having a child and financial/job security.  And given that in our society many women do indeed have to make such choices, it can’t really be called a full and free choice at all.  This is perhaps the explanation as to why abortion rates in many European countries are so low—they have the social safety nets and free medical care and equal rights (or more equal, anyway) that allow women to comfortably have a child even when the pregnancy is unexpected.  My hope, then, though admittedly I have very little confidence that this will actually come to fruition, is that this amendment will be an impetus to refocus the debate a bit.  My hope is that when the Senate proposes its bill it will deal with the abortion issue more in the ways that I have described above, regardless of whether or not the amendment stays.  This is an issue all sides should be able to come together on, as it is not just about abortion specifically, but women’s rights more generally.  It’s about time that our society doesn’t essentially penalize professional women or poor women or any women at all for having children.  I can only hope Congress, and the nation, starts thinking more seriously about these things.

Unfortunately, despite what Obama would have us believe, hope don’t seem to amount to much these days.  But here’s hoping anyway.

- Torff

]]> http://thatshesaid.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/the-abortion-amendment/feed/ 5 Torff articleLarge http://thatshesaid.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/getting-fit-why-they-love-the-pole/ http://thatshesaid.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/getting-fit-why-they-love-the-pole/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:49:24 +0000 Torff http://thatshesaid.wordpress.com/?p=130 ]]> (reprinted courtesy of Jo Sanger and Ross Wantland of doinitwell.blog.com)

Recently, Ross was talking to a friend who took a pole dancing class at Flirty Girl Fitness, a gym in Chicago that specializes in exercise a la strip club dancing.  She and her friends really enjoyed the experience, so “Doin’ It Well” decided to interview these women to find out more about their perspectives and understand stripper aerobics a little better.

Over the past five years, pole and chair dancing classes, along with a host of other stripper-inspired fitness routines have swept the nation. Even before Carmen Electra released her Aerobic Striptease videos, women who are notworking in strip clubs have wanted to learn how to perform like women who do. Many women who take these classes leave in awe of the performance of women in strip clubs, of the muscle strength and control that the moves take, all while looking sexy.

Where the Girls Are

Flirty Girl boasts they are “Chicago’s hottest women’s fitness and lifestyle facility.” In addition to pole dancing, chair dancing, video vixen classes, women can also take kickboxing or boot camp classes, get manicure or visit the bar (juice or liquor). Imani (a pseudonym) said, “Probably what I liked most was that they seemed to be very focused on promoting women’s health and empowerment — there were a number of classes… that were not in the pole dancing ‘genre’, but that were geared towards general women’s fitness, like kickboxing.”

As a women-only club, men aren’t even allowed in the waiting room. As Sasha said, “The class was a lot of fun and the instructor made it fun. She encouraged us to feel comfortable in our own skin and that made it enjoyable. Also, the space is strictly for women so that made it a nice place to hang out.” Grad Student added, ” I think there are a lot of women who [have wanted] to be that woman for a while – intrigued by what they know about strip clubs – and like the opportunity to try that in a way that feels safer and gives you more control.”

The women also found Flirty Girl to be welcoming because as women of color, they appreciated that many of the women who were staff and customers were also women of color. Grad Student said, “It didn’t feel like we had to ascribe to ideal/European standards of sexy. There were all different body sizes and shapes… Women were there in sweats and ponytails, not all done up and made up to be super gorgeous. It was more like a real gym class.”

Sexual Empowerment on a Pole

We asked the women if the experience changed how they felt about themselves sexually. Several of the women talked about feeling freer with their bodies after the classes. Imani said, “I tend to be less comfortable with my sexuality, particularly in comparison to some of my friends. Going to Flirty Girl helped me to ‘come out of my shell’ and feel a little more comfortable with moving my body in more sexual ways.” Others talked about feeling more sensual and more connected to their bodies after the experience.

If Pole Dance Occurs Without a Man Around, Does It Objectify?

The women who went to Flirty Girl Fitness were very clear that they did not feel objectified during their visit at Flirty Girl. Sasha said, “The instructor made us feel comfortable with our sexuality and it was not about pleasing a man or learning these techniques to attract men.” Grad Student added, “I feel 10 times more objectified in an everyday night club than I do in these classes.”

It raises some interesting questions: Is strippercise liberating? Or are we buying into the same messages we’ve been told about ourselves? For women who perform in strip clubs, dancing is their job, and they act out a fantasy for the viewer. Strippercise allows women to perform the stripper role without it being tied to paying their bills. Strippercise is marketed as an avenue for sexual liberation and weight loss – two things women are often told they aren’t doing well enough.But it’s also part of a larger porn-inspired phenomenon, encouraging women’s sexual empowerment by acting like sex workers. This benefits the sex industry from a simple marketing perspective: men want her, women want to be her.

At the same time, it may not be objectifying if objectification relies on someone else watching. All we know for sure is that in these experiences these women aren’t dupes; they are making choices about their own bodies and sexuality, aware of the complex messages about what it means to be a woman and “sexy.” And they felt empowered by it and enjoyed it. As Firewoman said, “[Y]ou felt comfortable in your own skin and learned how you can be sexy and healthy at the same time.”It is perhaps each of our ability to make these thoughtful choices that keeps us “Doin’ It Well.”

http://doinitwell.blog.com/2009/09/03/getting-fit-why-they-love-the-pole/

But seriously… Feminism. Dig it.

A history of That’s What She Said:

An atheist and a Christian Jew walk into a bar. The Christian Jew says, “we always talk about feminism, but what are we doing about it?” The atheist says, “nothing, we meet all the time to discuss our thoughts, but nothing ever comes of it.” “Exactly,” says the Christian Jew, “but with my brainpower and your razor-sharp wit, we can come together to form a feminist blog tied neatly into a clever pun.” “Perfect,” says the atheist, “now all we need is a highly specialized team of writers, artists, poets, musicians, badasses and activists to join with us in our cause. We will call it ‘That’s What She Said,’ and it will be spectacular.”

What makes a feminist and how do you become one?

There’s no initiation process. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to believe that women deserve the same rights and respect as men do, then you’re in.

Examples:

Do you believe that men and women deserve equal pay for the same work?

Do you believe that if a woman chooses to raise a family and work at home, her work is equally as important as paid work done outside the home?

If you answered yes to both questions, then you’re on your way to becoming a feminist. Or maybe you’re already there.

What this blog is:

* A sharing space for women AND men to discuss their thoughts and ideas on feminism and feminist issues through a variety of forms, including essays, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drawings, music, graphic design, photography, paintings, pretty much anything.

* A community that upholds all opinions equally, without emphasis on any particular person as a leader or creator.

* A safe place to ask questions and respond honestly and openly without fear of judgment or derision.

*A place that can be humorous yet poignant, lighthearted yet still tackles the tough issues that need to be addressed.

What this blog is NOT:

* A place to complain about things without trying to find the core truth behind them, and working to constructively unpack their meaning to ourselves and to our society.

* A place to bitch about men, or to downplay their role as feminists.

* A place to criticize or attack feminists or feminism. There are enough places where this already happens, so please don’t bring that here.

How to contribute:

Send us your shit. All of it. Because of space, we can’t guarantee that everything will be posted immediately, but we’ll let you know when we are going to post something that you have sent us. Don’t let this discourage you from sending us stuff, though. Send on, sisters and brothers.

Disclaimer: I should apologize in advance for any stylistic atrocities or lack of clarity which ensue—it has been some time since I’ve written for any kind of public audience. Pretty much anything I have put down on paper (or on screen, as it were) in the last couple of years has either been for myself, in an email, or homework assignments for my class. So bear with me, and let’s hope for the best.

When I was first asked to contribute to this blog, I really had no idea what I could possibly write about that would be relevant, interesting, and engaging. But as I walked around I realized that I frequently have little micro-struggles to reconcile my belief in and support of the feminist cause with certain, let us say, less than noble desires and thoughts which occasionally surface. And certainly I hope to explore this more mundane (though in some respects no less important) facet of my experience as a male and self-described feminist in later posts. But you gotta kick things off with an attention grabber, right? So let’s talk about strip clubs! [queue music?]

Now, I’ve only been to a strip club once. And, as you will see below, it was not a particularly good experience. It was an edifying one, I suppose. But it was far far from fun.

A bit of stage setting before I get into this story. As those of you who know me can testify, I am not exactly the most calm, cool person in the world. I get nervous and anxious quite easily, especially in social situations. And especially when it has anything to do with women. The reasons for this unfortunate condition I will not go into here. Suffice it to say, I’ve had exceptionally poor luck with women in all respects, except that of friendship—I seem to be pretty good at that part of it. But at the time of this story, I had been unintentionally celibate (like, really, totally celibate) for slightly less than 3 years.

So then how the fuck did I end up at a strip club in the early morning hours of a Monday night?

Disclaimer 2: In light of my intoxicated state during most of the events described below, I have taken some slight liberties with the truth, and filled in gaps where required. The basic outline of events, however, is most definitely accurate, even if the details might be a bit off.

That fateful night began with basketball. For most people, the night of April 4, 2005[i] will be remembered as the night the U of I men’s basketball team, after a tumultuous tournament, lost the championship game 75-70 to UNC. Given that U of I had not won an NCAA Championship since 1915, or even been to the Final Four since 1989, the atmosphere on campus was already rather rambunctious. I remember that the police actually greased the street lamps [insert juvenile masturbation/phallus joke] along the main thoroughfare of Campus Town in order to discourage people from attempting to climb them in celebration. In retrospect, there is something delightfully ironic about a night starting out with a bunch of drunken cheering and hooting at big, sweaty males running up and down a court and ending with the same behavior directed at naked, sweaty females strutting up and down a stage (of sorts).

I had been invited over to my friend Sally’s[ii] apartment to watch the game with her and some of her college friends. This was still my first year down in Champaign-Urbana, and being new to the area and without many friends, I welcomed an evening spent in the company of others, all drinking for a common purpose. And drink we certainly did. By the time the game was over, I was somewhere between tipsy and hammered—too drunk to drive, certainly, but still able to function reasonably well. Now, had U of I won that night, things would most certainly have been different, as there would have been no pain to escape from. Had they simply been slaughtered, it would have been more tolerable. But no. They didn’t just lose, they lost a close game, one they could have won. And as any sports fan knows, these tend to be the most painful losses, because victory—and in this case the championship—was within your grasp, and it slipped away in those final agonizing moments. More drinking was required.

My friend lived quite close to a bar called the White Horse. As far as campus bars go, this one is pretty tolerable. It generally isn’t über-crowded—it had a bit more a pub feel to it than most campus bars—and one could actually talk to other people without screaming at the top of ones lungs. Not everyone at Sally’s apartment came with us to the bar, and it ended up just being me, Sally, Sally’s hot Indian friend (whom I will hereafter refer to as HIF), and another guy (who was a bit of a semi-total-douche, and who will hereafter be referred to as STD). This was actually a bit of a weird experience in itself. HIF and STD were really not the kind of people I tended to get along with very well. Particularly STD, who seemed like he belonged in a frat house—I was perpetually waiting for him to slip some girl a roofie and then disappear for the rest of the night. I also ran into a student of mine from the previous semester who, apparently due to the inspirational nature of my beard, had started growing one of his own, and really wanted to talk to me about it. Something which I obviously was not particularly interested in. Though, truth be told, I can’t deny that I felt a modicum of pride (or something) that my magnificent beard had inspired another young man to grow a beard of his own. On the other hand, I feared that this was probably the only thing he took away from the class. But I digress.

How the idea to go to a strip club came about I truly cannot remember. I know that in the disclaimer above I said I would fill in the gaps, but I wouldn’t even know where to start here. In my memory, the transition from the bar to the strip club is like an act of god or something—it just happened. About the only thing I feel confident about is that it was STD’s idea. It certainly was not mine, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t either of the girls’. I also don’t remember how I was convinced to go along with this. However I’m sure my high level of intoxication, which was now well into the hammered zone, made it relatively easy to convince me. Further, given my endless capacity for rationalization, I probably told myself that even if there were any number of things wrong with strip clubs, maybe it is something I should nonetheless experience for myself. And so I was on board.

But things got weirder before we left. While we were waiting outside the bar for the cab, it somehow came about that I had not had any sexual contact (including kissing) with a woman in about 3 years. The wonders of pity. Normally pity is not something I enjoy—it’s not something most people enjoy. But in this case, I was all for it, as only moments after this revelation, HIF started making out with me right there on the curb! About thirty seconds went by before she stopped (probably she opened her eyes for a brief moment and felt the sheer terror of seeing my bearded, bespectacled face at a zoom level no human being should have to endure). Amazingly, still reeling from the shock at what had just happened[iii], Sally then started making out with me too. (Well, not quite.  Due to her equally high level of intoxication, Sally botched it a bit and our teeth kind of mashed… she apologized immediately, and awkwardly.)

And yet there was still more surprise to come before our arrival at the strip club. In a perfect preface to what we were about to see, during the taxi ride Sally and HIF simultaneously flashed STD and I. What the fuck was going on?!?! Like the idea to go the strip club, I have no fucking idea how this happened. What could possibly prompt these girls to lift their shirts and bras for a few second to show us their breasts?!?! What were they trying to accomplish exactly? Did they think I had doubts about whether those suspiciously breast shaped convexities in their shirts were actually breasts? Were they just so proud of them that they simply had to share it with us, like someone showing off their well-toned muscles? This is clearly a behavior I will never understand. Even more so than the decision to go the strip club, this seems like some kind of metaphysical anomaly—a brief pause in the laws of nature, a rupture in the fabric of socio-sexual space-time. (I think I’m taking this analogy a bit too far.) I know this sounds terribly cliché, but unfortunately it is true: the whole thing seemed like some weird, fucked up dream, one that in this case would just leave me feeling somehow guilty. I wasn’t supposed to be seeing this. And it was made more absurd by two things. First was the reaction of the cab driver, a woman, who didn’t seem the least bit bothered, and even laughed a bit. Clearly this kind of activity was well within the norm for her, and nothing makes a weird experience weirder than other people treating it as normal. The second was STD’s reaction. While I was aghast and confused, he was cheering it on as if we were still watching the fucking basketball game. I didn’t know what the fuck to do or think or feel, and here was this guy just unambiguously excited, not the least bit perturbed that we were getting our own version of Girls Gone Wild, right down to the not-only-is-this-morally-wrong-but-deeply-unsexy quality of those videos. And they did this while we were driving down Green Street, in plain view of anyone who happened to be watching our cab go by. A fact I believe HIF was aware of, causing her to briefly point her chest towards the window. I suppose she was just trying to be fair—you gotta bring enough for the whole class, right?

I was still engaging in an unquestionably vain attempt to recenter myself and figure out what the fuck was going on when we arrived at The Silver Bullet[iv]. From the outside it resembled every creepy “adult bookstore” you have ever seen on the side of the highway—one story, basic square, drab architecture, and a crappy, relatively discrete neon sign. Those signs are the best. They have to be prominent enough to be seen, but they generally don’t overtly advertise exactly what they are—it’s this fantastically weird line between publicity and shame, like they know what they do is wrong and/or creepy, but they gotta get the message out anyway. I’m sure there are many strip clubs which don’t follow this rule (like the Bada Bing in The Sopranos), but I feel like ones that are directly embedded in a residential area sort of have to. This subdued approach also I think allows those who are entering the facility to feel like there is a bit more discretion than there actually is.

The inside itself was basically what you would expect. You walk in and to the left there is a lot of empty space filled with tables and such, and a bar set in the back left corner. To the right is the “stage”. In lieu of a wall on the right, it was mostly a dark curtain. The stage went along much of the right wall, with a section protruding into the front-center of the room, which I will just call the runway, for lack of a better term. There was a pole in about the middle section of the runway, and another one on the part of the stage next to the curtain. The walls were painted mostly black, I think, except maybe the back wall, which was a bit lighter.

When we arrived, the place was about half-full. But this was hard to judge, because it’s not as if the people there were spread about the tables as one would expect in a bar or restaurant—they were disproportionately gathered towards the stage, particularly the runway, where there were a few topless girls dancing and moving about in what felt like a bad imitation of every stripper scene I’ve seen in a movie or TV show. And the men were all cheering and hollering and all that. There was also a guy on stage, lying down, with one of the girls over him doing something that can’t quite be described as a lap dance because, as I noted, he was lying down. At one point I remember she was kneeling over him, with her legs set on either side of him such that her torso was directly above his waist—I expected them to start dry humping (or maybe not that dry) at any moment.

The girls really weren’t that attractive. Not that they were ugly in any way, they just weren’t the ridiculously fantasized ideal of strippers that we encounter in the media—these were basically just normal girls, except topless and sweaty, and with slightly larger than average sized breasts, breasts that were flopping around in ways that seemed neither natural nor particularly comfortable, like fish flopping around on land.

I could feel the anxiety mounting from the moment we walked in. Everything about it bothered me. The dark colors of the walls and curtains and furniture made me feel like this was some secret underground activity which isn’t and shouldn’t be sanctioned by society. The way all these men were leering at these women as if they were nothing more than sexual objects. And god, the pole dancing! For some reason I had never really registered how disgustingly Freudian pole dancing was. I mean, fuck, these naked girls are literally wrapping themselves around a long shaft! I wouldn’t have been surprised if the top of the pole occasionally (and too quickly, I might add) shot off some hot, white ooze into the crowd—no wonder these things are standard issue for every strip club in the world. In the middle of all this I found myself thinking—and I know this is going to sound weird and maybe even controversial in a way that I’m not sure I can defend—that what I was witnessing was one of the closest things we have in contemporary American society to a minstrel show, except this was about gender not race. Quite simply, this all freaked me the fuck out, and my mind starting racing a mile a minute…

… look at all these poor girls who are probably just normal people with normal aspirations reduced to parading their bodies in front of a bunch of fucking creepy small town hicks from central Illinois who seem to have no fucking problem treating and thinking about women as nothing more than vehicles to fulfill their sexual desires and half of whom probably have a girlfriend or a wife to go back to in which case what the fuck are they doing here when they could be home in the presence of a woman who probably actually cares about them but who they probably also objectify because how can someone who so unabashedly enjoys paying to see half naked women who they don’t know walk up and down a stage not also objectify to some degree all the women in their life and fuck it’s so fucking sad that these girls can find no other reasonable source of income and are in some sense forced to do this to put themselves through school or support a kid even but then maybe they aren’t forced at all and maybe they actually enjoy this and find some kind of empowerment in this because they have a degree of control over these pathetic guys that maybe is difficult to find elsewhere in life and certainly it’s hard to find other equivalent type jobs and maybe I should be happy for them and for women that they have this option that they can choose and are not really forced into that pays them so well and kinda sorta even exploits sexism to their financial advantage but is it really worth making a bit of money to sacrifice their dignity to the disgusting perverse things going on in these guys heads right now and I can’t imagine that they would find this to be an empowering activity if they were really aware of what these guys are thinking and how they are seeing them but fuck maybe that is just being totally presumptuous of me and they are probably totally completely aware of the sick disgusting things going on in the heads of all these fucking losers and maybe they even relish it in some fucked up way but isn’t that relishing itself fucked up and perverse and unhealthy but christ who the fuck am I to think that these girls’ dignity is being robbed somehow and doesn’t that just make me as worse as anyone because by seeing things in that way I am completely denying them agency and control and how they see things must play an important part into whether this is really OK or acceptable but I have to think that were it up to women there wouldn’t be such things as strip clubs because there must be something a woman would always rather be doing right there has to be and so maybe it’s the fault of capitalism and the free market and this is like the problem with selling kidneys or something but what are they selling exactly and but fuck if we stopped it would all these women find other work and perhaps it’s overall better this way because they are able to support themselves with this money and in the end that’s probably better for women and feminism and this is just a short term sacrifice or something but that doesn’t make it fair for these girls standing right here in front of me and oh fuck now STD is getting up on stage and doing that same thing with the lying down and some part of me wishes that were me up there because fuck let’s not fucking kid ourselves those are some nice tits fuck I shouldn’t be thinking things like that fuck fuck fuck me and Sally and HIF seem amused but not really bothered by all this and I really need a fucking beer I think I feel a panic attack coming on and why is it that I am clearly way more disturbed and conflicted and deeply uneasy about all this than the two girls I am with and perhaps I shouldn’t be disturbed at all and maybe this is all just good harmless fun despite nothing about this feeling harmless or fun but it should be especially for me I mean shit what the fuck this is probably the closest I will get to seeing a naked woman for years at the rate I’m going and of all people I should be enjoying this as I’m getting what I have been fantasizing about the last three sexless years a naked sweating gyrating female but I’m not enjoying this fucking at all and I’m starting to shake and I don’t think I can handle this much longer and I have to fucking get out of here right fucking now but god this is so cliché and like something right out of a bad movie where the pathetic sensitive liberal guy can’t even handle the sight of a naked women and then goes home to his little liberal hybrid and does philosophy and cries when he watches movies and tells his friends how offended he was at the dirty strip club and what the fuck have I become this is so ridiculous and but so fuck it fuck it just fuck it I don’t care I just have to get fucking out of here right fucking now before I really lose it…

Luckily Sally and HIF were pretty understanding (STD wasn’t very happy with me I don’t think). I don’t remember how long we were actually there, though it couldn’t have been more than like 45 minutes. I know it was enough time to finish like half a beer that I had gotten to try to calm myself down, which clearly didn’t work. When I dropped off Sally at her place before walking home, we shared a really awkward kiss, and had I wanted to, I’m confident that I could have taken it further. Instead, I went home and slept uneasily, wondering if I had done something wrong that night. To this day, I’m still not sure.

[i] It would be kind of creepy if I could remember this date off the top of my head. But, no, I looked it up online. Sadly, I can easily remember the score of the game that night.

[ii] Just in case—and this is pretty improbable—anyone reading this essay knows this person, I have altered her name.

[iii] Yes, I realize that this kind of thing is par for the course for many or most men in their early 20s, and I suppose the level of shock and excitement I felt at that moment is testament to the truly pathetic and depraved state of my love life. Quite frankly, it is embarrassing how high my heart rate probably jumped at that moment. But so it goes. Everything is relative, right? I’ll keep telling myself that…

[iv] This name is just too easy to pick on. I think it speaks for itself.

- Torff