Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

I'm in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. this week arranging convalescence and rehab for my mom. There's no coffee pot in my mom's apartment. The nearest coffee shop is a strip-mall Starbucks so they play piped-in music instead of whatever is on the barista's iPod. And at least this morning they were playing Billy Joel's treacly "Always a Woman."

Before I'd had any coffee at all.

And therefore before I had any psychic defenses.

And so the lyrics seemed a little fuzzy but the conventional interpretation poured straight into my ear.

She will take all your money and show you the door,
Just like A-a-ava Gardner and Zha Zha Gabor,
She'll admire your Mercedes then ask for the key,
She'll say "not tonight"
But she's always a woman to meeeee.

Or something like that... I dunno, those might not be the real lyrics but they still sound like howling misogyny.

And I thought to myself "Seriously?"

And I thought to myself "But she's always a woman to me?"

And I thought, I dunno.  Each verse is a recitation gender-constructing clichés: "She can kill with a smile / She can wound with her eyes / She can ruin your faith with her casual lies / And she only reveals what she wants you to see / She hides like a child..." and then theres that peculiar tagline "BUT she's always a woman to me"

Seriously?

The word "but" tends to imply a negation or contradiction but whatever the real verses the lyrics always boil down to Joel saying that on the one hand the subject of the song is a manifestation of the "whore" side of the madonna/whore binary but on the other hand.... she's a knowable madonna/whore to him. Or he doesn't mind. Or he knows how to handle her.

Boil down the gendered cues Joel uses in the song and you get, basically, "she's always a woman but she's always a woman." Where, I guess, that "but" maybe just adds to the "mystery that is woman?"

I dunno. I hadn't had any coffee yet.

The melodic earworm was still lodged in my head when I got back to my laptop so I looked up the lyrics and learned that at least in folklore Joel wrote the song about his very savvy MBA wife, Elizabeth, and the ruthless way she negotiated on his behalf to get his contracts in order after he'd been basically manipulated into signing away the rights and proceeds of all his earliest hits.

Sounds plausible. It's very interesting if true. And a nice acceleration from zero to about 55 for Joel on my not-a-troglodyte-after-all speedometer.

But if it's true it doesn't appear to be well known.  To find that explanation I still had to dig through piles of interpretations by others who are simply entranced by the essential romance and eternal mystery of femininity. And/or a sufficiently manly man's ability to cuckold see through the facades and leave her powerless.

So even assuming Joel was playing with the tropes instead of writing paeans to them, it still doesn't explain what the Sam Hill that "but" is doing in what appears to be a pretty enduring definition of what it is to be a woman according to the audience that made and keeps the song so popular.

I dunno.

The coffee's finished soaking in, my hair's dry after my shower, and I gotta get going here.

If nothing else what other song can I hum to get this dang tune out of my head!

"La la la dee dee daa, la la la dee dee dum, la dee da dum dum dum, but she's always a woman to meee."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

On Tumblr STFUFauxFeminists says misandry isn't a thing. While I'm sympathetic I disagree.

Here's how I see it.

There isn't really much misandry in the MRA thread-hijacking-on-feminist-blogs sense but it really is a thing. And like misogyny it's built into patriarchy. Say what one will about "proud feminist misandrists" but they can't hold a candle to the sheer fear, hatred, and contempt anti-feminists have for men.

Two examples: Look at their core belief that women must be kept down or men can't succeed! If men can't succeed on a level playing field with women, as the 'wingers insist, that means the 'wingers are insisting that not only are men not equal to women they're weaker! And what must rape apologists believe about male character to reflexively blame victims? That men generally lack the impulse control of pre-schoolers!

Another example: the persistent "traditional family values" assertion that single men are so dangerous to society that women should be required to effectively sacrifice themselves by attaching themselves to men in order to temper, or tame, or subdue them? Seriously? I'm sorry but if anti-feminists really believed men are superior they wouldn't insist they all needed minders.

It's less remarked upon, sure, and conspicuously missing from complaints by the usual suspects. But implicit, institutional misandry like that is central to the insanity of patriarchy.

Amber, at what appears to be a commercial erotica site in Canada called "GirlZPorn," points out a significant problem with the recent Ontario court ruling that's been characterized as "legalizing bawdy houses" a.k.a. brothels: it leaves street/subsistence sex workers figuratively and to a certain extent literally in the dark. (Emphasis mine.)

PRESS RELEASE: Ontario Court leaves most vulnerable sex workers unprotected

In a ruling which many sex workers are calling a disappointment, the Ontario Court of appeal today released a decision that upheld the law against communication for the purposes of prostitution, modified the law against living off the avails of prostitution and struck down the law against operating a common bawdy house.

“The vast majority of all prostitution arrests are under the communication law. The failure to strike down the communication law means that the most vulnerable sex workers will continue to face arrest, police harassment, prosecution and violence.” –Emily Van Der Muelen, Assistant Professor, in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Ryerson University.

“I reject the conclusion that street work is so bad for neighborhoods that stopping it is more important than protecting women’s lives.” -Lux, a current sex worker with street experience.

“This is a letdown for the most vulnerable sex workers who are largely street, Indigenous and transgendered sex workers” –Keisha Scott, Coordinator, Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project.

Source: GirlZPorn

Living as I do in what's approximately ground zero for murdered street/subsistence sex workers, including successful and unsuccessful pickups and body dumps within a mile of my home, the main issue I really care about when it comes to the whole issue of legalization is making it safe for people who are determined to continue working in conditions with mortality rates that would make the average coal miner, logger, or the nearby "Most Dangerous Catch" crew blanche. And so for that reason I share the activist's concerns that the ruling will do very little to bring safety or security to those who need it most.

Via Newfinland/Laborador's @Anjasa's Twitter feed.

Image source unknown -- found on a hard drive archive ca ~2005

While browsing my server logs I found a link from the password-only forum I participated heavily in before I started this blog back in January of 2005. Someone had looked up my profile and found the link I left there when I started posting here instead.

In the past people have asked, wondered, and downright questioned why I use "figleaf" and why I don't capitalize it. (This evidently drives some people crazy.) As luck would have it, here are the thoughts that were going through my head back on Sunday, May 13th, 2001, at around 10:52 AM Pacific Time, about two minutes after coming up with the name.

A fig leaf covers only a little bit but lets you feel comfortable showing the rest.

I don't mind people knowing about my own habits and preferences. But discussing them necessarily reveals stuff about friends and partners who might not care to be identified. Thus the pseudonym.

You can easily find out who I am. (For instance you could email me and I'll probably answer.) But I'd prefer you didn't.

In other words I thought of "figleaf" as more of a description than a name.  So at the time I didn't capitalize it then.  By the time I started this blog I was capitalizing it out of habit.

So anyway, no e.e. cummings tribute, no emulation of bell hooks either.  Just a two-second decision almost eleven years ago(!!!) when I decided to start writing about the politics, sociology, and experience of sex.

Meanwhile, though, I've been doing this for eleven years?  No wonder I've slowed down a bit! :-)

Note: This post references social attitudes about sexual assault and rape.

If you're ever curious what they mean when they use the term "rape culture," check out the conviction of the voyeuristically homophobic Dharun Ravi and how even cutting-edge opponents of homophobia reflexively latch onto the "irony" that Ravi will likely be raped by his fellow prisoners. For example

CT Native
Wait until he meets his new roomate, Buba. He’ll learn what being gay really means………….
March 16, 2012 at 12:17 pm

...

SkellAlert
Good for him. Now he can watch all the gay stuff in prison. Hopefully Bubba sees him dropping the soap.
Do your time. He is getting exactly what he deserves!. He knew what he was doing, he isn't a little kid. So what if people are gay, if they are happy they are happy, you is anyone to tell them different.
March 16, 2012 at 6:29PM

...

Wherever Dharun Ravi is going, I hope he's shown the same type of privacy and respect that he showed Tyler Clementi. Enjoy prison, Ravi.

Here's what progressive-politics blogger Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast has to say about Ravi's conviction in general and about the treatment people are speculating he will receive when he goes to prison. (emphasis mine)

I was quite frankly surprised when I heard that the jury in the Dharun Ravi case had thrown the book at him. I never expected conviction on anything other than perhaps invasion of privacy in this case. But a jury clearly decided that there was enough of a trail of evidence to demonstrate that Ravi knew perfectly well what he was doing and that what he did was a hate crime. I suppose I underestimated my fellow New Jerseyans.

There is an element of the bloodthirsty mob about some of the reaction to the conviction, what with people commenting on news sites of their own fantasies about what might happen to a slightly-built, nice-looking young man of twenty in prison.

Source: Brilliant at Breakfast

So... this business about rape as extra punishment (with its ridiculously naive corollary that prison without rape would somehow might not be "enough" punishment at all) is exactly what feminists mean when they say "rape culture."

The idea that genitals are weapons, the idea that genitals are instruments of punishment? The idea that having genitals thrust upon you is punishment or (we do call prisons "corrections facilities) correction rather than simple violent assault? The also barkingly naive assumption that any given prisoner (especially young and/or educated and/or middle class prisoners and/or prisoners found guilty only of "white collar" crime) will always be the victims rather than, oh, say, the perpetrators of sexual assault in prison?

That's a big part of rape culture.

The tacit approval of a system that, when we think about it, necessarily encourages, rewards, and approves of prison rapists to the exact same degree it approves of their victims' "punishment?" Oh, and the notion that the routine use of sex as a form of social punishment, control, and revenge on the one hand and (tacit) approval of perpetrators for helping maintain that system of punishment, control, and revenge regardless of whether their victims are men in prison or women just out and about.

That's a big part of it too.

And yeah, as Jill points out it's not just "conservatives" who go for it, it's not just homophobes or misogynists, it's not just religious hierarchies, and, for that matter, it's not just men, period, who are ingrained in the culture of rape. As Jill points out, when it comes to culturally sanctioning the use of sex as an instrument of punishment or torture liberals and progressives can be as invested as the ones we think of as "usual suspects."

So!

It's part of the culture, right, buried (in plain sight!) so deeply that hardly anyone even notices, right? And it's about rape, right? And a nice, simple shorthand way to say it is rape culture.

---

Does Dharun Ravi deserve to be punished? Oh yeah. He deliberately chose to entertain himself and at least attempted to entertain others by intruding on a young man's privacy, exploiting the same cultural elements of shunning, mockery, and shame about homosexuality that tragically led his victim to commit suicide.* But the sexual assaults and degradation that Ravi probably really will face have nothing to do with the punishment he has been sentenced to.** And everything to do with rape culture.

* It's worth noting that Dharun was found guilty not of driving his victim to suicide but of the far more ordinary and entirely precidented crimes of multiple counts of invasion of privacy, some counts of intimidating Clementi because of his sexual orientation, and tampering with evidence. ** Remember, as far as both the law and the legal system itself punishment concerns only the duration of sentences, not by atrocities committed against or by prisoners while serving their sentences: if Ravi becomes a victim it will neither shorten nor lengthen his sentence. Therefore there's no reason for the legal system to tolerate such atrocities.

David Taintor reports that

The saga continues over former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch’s (R) “inappropriate relationship” with a subordinate staffer. Michael Brodkorb, who served as Koch’s executive assistant and communications director, claims that he was fired after the relationship was discovered because of his gender. He also says he has proof that other female staffers who had relationships with legislators were allowed to keep their jobs.

Source: TPM News

On the one hand, good for Brodkorb! The only men who come close to full-fledged "slut shaming" are men in (or presumed to be in) relationships with women in recognizable positions of power. And by all the evidence available publicly before trial the treatment he's received from supervisory staff who ultimately report to Majority Leader Koch does smell like classic fall-out and cover-up behavior tarnishing. And yeah, whatever one might think of canoodling with one's boss, or with marital infidelity, or even Republican double-standards when it comes pre-marital sex, extra marital sex or (lately) any sex at all, it's still the case that one shouldn't suffer employment discrimination based on either your sex or the sex of your higher-up paramour. Or at least you shouldn't suffer more than comparable members of other sexes. So again, yeah, good for Brodkorb for dragging this out into the open.

That said...

This part from the story isn't so great: Brodkorb appears to be upping the pressure for a settlement by threatening to depose other women who have had affairs with male legislators but were merely transferred rather than fired.  He also plans to depose those male legislators as well.

While generally strategically offering to embarrass 3rd parties in order to pressure a settlement is probably standard courtroom maneuvering and not even hardball tactics, in this particular case -- subjecting subordinate women potential humiliation by forcing them to disclose (under threat of either contempt or perjury no less) their current or erstwhile relationships with powerful men I think the strategy is pretty rotten.

Kind of funny how those Affordable Care Act rules mandate coverage for vasectomies as well as birth control pills. But all the 'wingers want to talk about is blocking contraception for women.

Does anyone think there'd be nearly the same kerfuffle about insurance-provided birth control pills and other contraception if it was for men instead of women?

Does anyone seriously think Republicans like Senator Blount, political party enforcers like Rush Limbaugh, or Presidential candidates like Rick Santorum would be so recklessly intent on driving their party over a cliff if the issue was male contraception?

To be fair, I think the Catholic Bishops are consistent enough that they'd be trying to stir up a fuss about it.  But what are the chances that 'winger conservatives would be any less disrespectful of Catholic opposition to male birth control than they are about, say, Catholic opposition to capital punishment or Catholic support for the poor and the sick?

Would 'wingers go running around the countryside with poorly-spelled handmade signs on posterboard trying to stop men from getting a "The Pill?"

I mean, yeah, sure, Patriarchy, misogyny, slut-shaming, "sanctity of 'life,'" yada, yada, yada.  All that.

But...

It's like... even after the Utah State Legislature gets through with "sex education" people are still going to understand that it's... pretty irrelevant who's using the contraception.  They're going to realize that women can be just as "promiscuous" if men are using contraception as when women do.  They're going to realize that if the whole point of keeping contraception out of the hands of women is really to raise the consequences of sex such that women are unwilling to have it or else be so wracked by anxiety that they can't enjoy it then all that would still go out the window when men bring the contraception instead.

So on paper you'd think they'd be as liable to throw temper tantrums about male contraception as about female contraception.

But...

But...

I'll ask again, does anyone think there'd be nearly the same kerfuffle about insurance-provided birth control pills and other contraception if it was for men instead of women?

I just don't think so.

That's just so weird to me.

---

For the record, repeated market studies show that if or when a contraceptive "pill" for men became available roughly as many men say they're willing to use it as women say they're willing to use The Pill.  Not all men, no, but then not all women do either -- it's about the same either way.  But, as with The Pill for women, you don't need 100% adoption for it to be pretty darn successful product.

So evidently a bunch of 'wingers are trying to defend Rush Limbaugh with the the "moral equivalent" ploy. They're saying something on the order of "well, Bill Maher does it too."

Well, technically, to the best of my knowledge Maher hasn't spent multiple hours over the course of several days specifically calling one completely average, thoroughly normal person a slut, a prostitute, and a parasite.  Nor has Maher exhorted a one particular woman, nor the ~51% of the population who, frankly, just isn't that different from that woman to "pay him what he's owed" by... posting sex tapes for him to enjoy.  The way Rush Limbaugh has.

But you know what?  You don't have to be as viscous, unscrupulous, as calculated, or as big a bully as Rush Limbaugh to still be a fucking wholesale misogynist jerk.

You can just be a plain old retail sexist jerk.  Like Bill Maher when he says things like

‘If you were on a sinking ship and yelled, “Women and children first!” how much feminist opposition do you think you’d get? . . . Women want to fight men for equal pay, but how often do they fight a man for the check? . . . And any man who questions a woman’s physical capabilities gets branded a sexist — but who do they call when there’s a spider to be killed? Convenient feminism — crackpot theory or dangerous lunacy?’

Or when he opined that it was a bad idea for Ellen Degeneres to cry about adopting a dog or something because it would hurt then-candidate and, I guess, fellow woman Hillary Clinton's chances on the campaign trail.  Or something.

Or how about just check out the time he actually got the jump on Limbaugh's call for Sandra Fluke to post sex tapes by asserting that since (in his opinion) breast-feeding moms really just want to show off their boobs they should only do it at Hooters restaurants.

So yeah,

In pretty much exactly the same way a clock tattooed on a pig's ass the Right Wing can be right about something twice a day.  And they're right that just like people should call out Rush Limbaugh for emitting truckloads of misogynist pig shit every single day, people should also call out left-leaning people like Bill Maher on those occasions when he pinches out an equally offensive little misogynist turd of a "joke."  Like the time Maher "joked" that he hoped Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann would "split the MILF vote." Or when the late Christopher Hitchens did it.  Or David Letterman.  Or Stephen Fry. Or techno-geeks.  Or me (because I'm probably not that much of an angel either.)  Or...

Gee.  It actually looks like people on the left call out other people on the left for being sexist jerks all the time.  As compared to people on the right who...

Ok, so maybe a better analogy might be that a calendar tattooed on a pig's butt being right once a year.  Or however often someone on the right goes so far off the deep end that even Republican kowtowing wimps say something... however kowtowing and wimpy.  But the point remains!  While right-wingers lament only Limbaugh's "choice of words," preferring he had only called Sandra Fluke a... what?... a trollop and a fallen woman, and thus don't actually give much of a shit how much abuse their party bosses excrete on the "other" 51% of the population, most people to the left of Joseph McCarthy, Lee Atwater, and Paul Ryan actually care about sexism.  And so I think the 'wingers are probably right that we could be a little more organized about opposing sexism in our own ranks.  (Actually, we could be a little more about organizing anything, but I digress...)

Anyway I'm going to do the right wing a little favor here.  I'm going to propose an annual awards presentation to the year's biggest sexist jerk on the progressive side of the aisle.  With maybe lesser monthly and special occasion awards as well.

And to acknowledge the important contribution the right has made to sexism awareness I propose calling it the Rush Limbaugh Memorial Sexist Pig's Ass award.

Anyone care to Photoshop up a suitable trophy involving, say, an image involving a pig's butt, a Limbaugh profile, and a tattooed clock?

Image via Tumblr Blogger Muslim Feminists

I've really been enjoying the high signal to noise reblogging ratio on the Tumblr blog Muslim Feminists.  She (or possibly he, or maybe they) find a lot of great posts and bring them together in one convenient-to-browse location.

I like this image a lot because it highlights the incontestable truth of gender policing of women's appearance... while also highlighting just what vastly different forms such policing can take.

And can I say somewhere around this point that it seems like a lot of assumptions about what's "innate" about hetero/patriarchal dynamics isn't so much about male desire for maximal "seed spreading" as it is about intra-male influence, status, and display?

I know I'm hijacking my own post here but it just doesn't make sense that men would prefer "nubile," barely pubescent women for reproductive purposes.  Especially since very young women are generally themselves neither the most successful at reproduction either physically, psychologically, or... I dunno... call it "preparationally."  Certainly not compared to more mature women.

Therefore there's got to be something else going on.  But I digress...

Anyway, I've spent way too long enjoying the blog this afternoon.  I'll just add it to my blogroll and you can decide whether you want to follow it too.