Feminism

[Ninety-Three]

Somebody may have already made that point regarding the misandry discussion we've now moved on from, but I think it may be useful to think of #KillAllMen as ultimately not dissimilar from #AllLivesMatter. Both are presumably said with decent intentions (to mock toxic masculinity or reassert the value of all human life), but both take a generalizing, non-specific perspective that feels wrongheaded in the specific context of these conversations (some lives being disproportionately in danger of being ended prematurely by police violence, and feminism's history of neglecting queer, trans, race etc. issues that also affect men, as well as stuff like white MRAs killing men of color with the stated intention of protecting white women). That's not to say they're the same, just possibly similar.

 

While they certainly have similarities, I'm not sure those similarities are useful or worth remarking upon as anything other than a curiosity. I think the fact that All Lives is a reaction to Black Lives Matter makes it a fundamentally different thing than Kill All Men. Kill All Men is a joke that some people think accidentally turned out kind of offensive, while All Lives Matter is first and foremost a failure to understand the point of Black Lives Matter. Kill All Men bothers people because you didn't think through the implications of the joke, All Lives bothers people because it indicates you're missing the point of Black Lives Matter. With All Lives, you had Black Lives the idea put in front of you, and you still didn't get it, that's different in important ways from simply failing to consider.

[Gormongous]

A good follow-up on this conversation, more directed towards comic acts than trigger warnings on college campuses, but still: https://bitchmedia.org/article/college-students-dont-want-hire-racist-or-homophobic-comedians-why-problem-exactly

[itsamoose]

I caught this last night, it's an interview with the author of the article that the one above is responding to.  I don't think the author of that piece accurately describes the original author's argument, at least from my reading of it.  The article itself seems to be a condemnation of the university system and the incredible emphasis on money, which has lead to a situation where professors are afraid of challenging their students' ideas or even mediating between them because one angry student might mean the end of your career.  I get the sense from reading these and other articles that the university isn't allowing any of the professors to, well... profess.  Probably based on the amount of money involved, the universities seem more interested in conforming to their students' expectations than they are to challenge the students or even moderate between them.  Flanigan (in the original article) outlines a few situations where a student said something they weren't aware was a micro aggression, and as a result they were publicly berated and labeled a bad and even violent person; this coming from the same school of thought that says one action does not define an individual.

 

[Argobot]

Yeah, I would second the idea that Flanagan's article is way more forgiving to college students than the Bitch post lets on. Flanagan acknowledges that college students have their hearts in the right place and are trying to make a better environment for everyone. The problem is there is no appropriate pushback from either school administrations or the student body on what might be good intentions run wild. Flanagan's original article points out that a few minority comedians were passed over because their acts deal with racial identity and the student representatives were afraid of how that would be received. It's one thing to want to weed out comedians who make homophobic jokes, it's another thing entirely to be too worried about bringing in a comedian who uses the uncomfortable discussion of their race or gender for humor. I'm all for the former and have serious questions about the latter. Maybe college students are better judges at knowing when they've gone too far in the name of making everyone feel safe and protected, but I do not like that the atmosphere right now supports the idea that any nod to safer spaces is unimpeachable. It turns out that might not be the case.

[Gormongous]

Yeah, I would second the idea that Flanagan's article is way more forgiving to college students than the Bitch post lets on. Flanagan acknowledges that college students have their hearts in the right place and are trying to make a better environment for everyone. The problem is there is no appropriate pushback from either school administrations or the student body on what might be good intentions run wild. Flanagan's original article points out that a few minority comedians were passed over because their acts deal with racial identity and the student representatives were afraid of how that would be received. It's one thing to want to weed out comedians who make homophobic jokes, it's another thing entirely to be too worried about bringing in a comedian who uses the uncomfortable discussion of their race or gender for humor. I'm all for the former and have serious questions about the latter. Maybe college students are better judges at knowing when they've gone too far in the name of making everyone feel safe and protected, but I do not like that the atmosphere right now supports the idea that any nod to safer spaces is unimpeachable. It turns out that might not be the case.

 

I guess I'm getting frustrated that these articles about the infantilization of something about American culture keep using data as the plural of anecdote. When you lump racist or homophobic comedians excluded for being openly racist or homophobic together with minority comedians excluded because student organizers were being over-cautious, then use the coincidence of both to make the same incredibly tired argument about "runaway PC culture," I'm not inclined to give your article a terribly charitable reading.

 

The main focus of Flanagan's argument is how an organization like NACA causes both students and artists to suffer by restricting their contact with truly good humor, but most of her evidence for how they suffer is built around very specific assumptions of what is good humor and what is not. My inclination, from my own experience as an undergraduate, graduate, and teaching assistant, is that those assumptions about students at least (I'm not a comedian) are somewhat faulty and the conclusions that she derives from them about the state of college campuses ("academic careers destroyed by a single comment," to whom does that literally happen besides idiots like Tim Hunt) are almost entirely so. There is virtually nothing about university administration or finances, save when Flanagan drags it into the conversation to support much more specific points about the development of "political–correctness" on college campuses, almost entirely confined to two short paragraphs in the midsection.

 

It's just not a very good article, far too impressionistic and dragging its narrative arc relentlessly towards preordained conclusions about the awful wages of PC culture. She virtually has to stand on a soapbox and insist that, even though the students look happy and open to new ideas, they're not, because of this undercurrent she's detected in their preference for "anodyne" comedy — an undercurrent that seems to be common in almost all her articles, which are overwhelmingly about misunderstood targets of controversy and the defects of the modern college-age lifestyle.

[Mangela Lansbury]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/fox-chief-donald-trump-verbal-assaults-megyn-kelly

I don't entirely know how to think of this (or if this even belongs here!), but it's nice that Roger Ailes is standing behind Megyn Kelly and at least saying that doing things like calling her a Bilbo are crude and irresponsible.

Edit: My autocorrect reveals far too much about me sometimes. Calling her a bimbo. She might like to be a Bilbo, I don't know how she feels about the Baggins family!

[itsamoose]

Donald Trump is the Gamergate of political candidates.  I think this article puts it best--his popularity is one of those things that only seems so large because of all the media coverage, and his support is largely incoherent.  His treatment of Megyn Kelly is paying off at the moment with a very angry and racist/sexist/insert-discriminatory-sentiment-here groups, but even noted sexists are disgusted by his comments.  He's been making these comments for a while, and as long as he keeps bringing in the ratings I don't see Ailes and Fox taking a real stand against him.  Also we should probably have an election/civics thread at some point.

[Markson]

Ailes has asked Trump for an apology: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/08/25/fox-chief-ailes-demands-donald-trumps-apology-over-twitter-attack-on-megyn-kelly/

 

Apparently Fox News and Donald Trump have longstanding feelings of enmity between each other? I never knew this, but most of the news coverage I read says that the debate was (paraphrasing) "a detente in a long, cold war."

 

Anyway, Ailes certainly took his time in asking...and the apology is apparently less about how Trump treated Kelly at the debate and more about how Trump RT'd a "fan" who called Kelly a bimbo. Which is also bad, but Trump has been really on her case for a while now! It's rough, and also pretty pathetic how much he needles her. I recommend people look at his Twitter feed.

 

His response is just classic - basically "Well, according to the polls I won the debate. So how dare she ask me tough questions or insinuate that something I said was wrong!"

 

Gross, man! Also, an election thread could be cool. I could talk about how sad I am that Kirsten Gillibrand isn't making a run ;__; But New York does need her, so maybe it's for the best...

[dium]

Donald Trump is the Gamergate of political candidates.  I think this article puts it best--his popularity is one of those things that only seems so large because of all the media coverage, and his support is largely incoherent.

 

Maybe it's reductionist but I think the appeal of Dolan Duck as a presidential candidate comes down to three things (which I put in spoilers below so as not to derail the feminism thread too much).

 

He's a strong-arm businessman who "builds real things" and "gets the results he wants". 

 

He's "good television", which appeals to a contingent of financially/socially comfortable short-sighted young people who openly don't care about political issues and who probably would've treated the election cycle exclusively as entertainment no matter who was running.

 

He's "anti politicalcorrectness". I think this might be the biggest factor. Americans, especially white Americans, tend to loathe politicalcorrectness and loathe it intensely. There are so few (basically no) social disadvantages to being white in America; the perceived subjugation under politicalcorrectness is the worst people can come up with and they hate it accordingly. The powerful (white) man who loudly rejects the idea that he "can" or "can't" say exactly what he wants: that's an intoxicating appeal. An America under Trump, it is imagined, is an America free of the psychic burden of self censorship. It's important to point out that this aspect of his appeal almost couldn't work if he weren't white.

 

(edited to try to get around word filter, lets see if that works)

[Mangela Lansbury]

Also we should probably have an election/civics thread at some point.

I would make one, but Binders Full of Republicans is the best thread name I can come up with so I won't!

I only pay attention to Fox News when I'm home for holidays and it's on 24/7, so I didn't know Donald Trump and Fox News had a history! I just know that Ailes basically bent over backwards after the debate to not support Megyn Kelly, so this is a refreshing change of heart.

[Bjorn]

I would make one, but Binders Full of Republicans is the best thread name I can come up with so I won't!

I only pay attention to Fox News when I'm home for holidays and it's on 24/7, so I didn't know Donald Trump and Fox News had a history! I just know that Ailes basically bent over backwards after the debate to not support Megyn Kelly, so this is a refreshing change of heart.

 

I assume no good intentions when it comes to Fox News.  Supporting Kelly now is just what he's decided is the path with the greatest reward.  If he thought throwing her under the bus would be better for Fox News or the Republican party, he would in a heart beat. 

[Deadpan]

The point about him being a businessman is interesting, but I think this actually extends way beyond people thinking he can apply that experience to running a country (because hoo boy, what could possibly go wrong when you treat a nation as a for-profit entity).

 

It's basically the founding myth of libertarian thought that money comes to those who deserve it. You just gotta work hard, be smart and apply yourself and then... you probably still won't be able to find a job, earn less based on your gender, or be fired for your sexuality. But in their version of the story, you'll get to live the American Dream.

 

By inverse, it means this philosophy has to assume that anybody who has money must have done something to deserve it, and they were able to do those things because they're a good person. This seems to me why (judging from way the hell away) none of his right-wing competitors are able to really give him trouble. They can't call him out as a despicable piece of shit who got rich through a combination of luck, very specific knowledge, and a complete lack of basic empathy, because it would mean going back on their own beliefs. Perhaps they don't really respect him, but their platform is built on respecting his enormous wealth and the qualities they assume were necessary to achieve it.

[clyde]

I think it's interesting that I see this video as grotesquely disrespectful towards women:

 

 

 

 

While I don't feel this one is disrespectful even though it features similar poses, imagery, and fashion:

 

 

 

I'm not sure others will have the same opinion, but I'm trying to work out the difference I feel personally. In the CL video, it seems like women are being displayed and depreciated for use as objects while in the Hyuna video it feels like playful vulnerability is being displayed by women. The women in the Hyuna video appear to be attempting to entice with their sexuality while the women in the CL video (with the exception of CL) seem defeated. Wouldn't it be interesting if my difference of opinion was based on the difference in sonic aesthetics between the two?

[WickedCestus]

I definitely disagree with you there, Clyde, but I don't know if I'll be able to articulate it properly. I think the misleading part is thinking that because Hyuna is the leader in the video, that means that the video was directed or influenced by her. From my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong), Korean girl groups are created and directed by men, for men. It's an industry that recruits beautiful girls at a very young age to turn them into talent. It's, at least from my perspective, a bit skeazy. But, in some ways, no skeazier than the American music industry.

 

I think the main thing I think about with this stuff is that just because the dancers are obviously willing and happy to be dancing and performing in the video, that does not mean that the message the video sends about women is necessarily favourable. 

 

That is just my take on things. 

[Ninety-Three]

Wouldn't it be interesting if my difference of opinion was based on the difference in sonic aesthetics between the two?

 

Not knowing the songs in question, I decided to watch the videos without sound to see if this bears out (jeez that CL video is weird muted). They seemed objectifying in somewhat different ways, and maybe you could say one is more objectifying than the other, but I definitely don't feel that one is empowering and the other depreciating. As WickedCestus mentioned, I think the difference you're picking up on is that the Hyuna dancers all look happy to be there (also maybe the audio, I wouldn't know).

 

My metric for this kind of thing is that there's always a Creepy Marketing Guy in the design meeting saying "Sex sells, add more sex appeal", and if he got his way, it can only be objectifying. I don't know how much of that Hyuna video was made by Creeping Marketing Guy, but the BDSM schoolgirl surrounded by facedown twerking dancers in lingerie, I'm pretty sure that was all him.

[namman siggins]

Ailes has asked Trump for an apology: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/08/25/fox-chief-ailes-demands-donald-trumps-apology-over-twitter-attack-on-megyn-kelly/

 

Apparently Fox News and Donald Trump have longstanding feelings of enmity between each other? I never knew this, but most of the news coverage I read says that the debate was (paraphrasing) "a detente in a long, cold war."

 

Anyway, Ailes certainly took his time in asking...and the apology is apparently less about how Trump treated Kelly at the debate and more about how Trump RT'd a "fan" who called Kelly a bimbo. Which is also bad, but Trump has been really on her case for a while now! It's rough, and also pretty pathetic how much he needles her. I recommend people look at his Twitter feed.

 

His response is just classic - basically "Well, according to the polls I won the debate. So how dare she ask me tough questions or insinuate that something I said was wrong!"

 

Gross, man! Also, an election thread could be cool. I could talk about how sad I am that Kirsten Gillibrand isn't making a run ;__; But New York does need her, so maybe it's for the best...

On The Media did a good job delving into the "relationship" between Fox and Trump and Ailes

 

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/roger-ailes-gets-trumped/

[clyde]

I definitely disagree with you there, Clyde, but I don't know if I'll be able to articulate it properly. I think the misleading part is thinking that because Hyuna is the leader in the video, that means that the video was directed or influenced by her. From my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong), Korean girl groups are created and directed by men, for men. It's an industry that recruits beautiful girls at a very young age to turn them into talent. It's, at least from my perspective, a bit skeazy. But, in some ways, no skeazier than the American music industry.

 

I see where you are coming from with thinking that the boy-bands are formed and directed for folks who are sexually attracted to boys and that girl-groups are for folks who are sexually attracted to girls, but being a kpop-fan, this generalization feels like it misses a significant portion of how these bands are appreciated. I just spent a little while trying to research the gender stats of the fandoms, but all I could find was conjecture. I suspect that most Hyuna fans are heterosexual males, but I would think (again this is just the impression I have from consuming this material for a few years) that 2NE1 (the band that CL is in) has a significant quantity of heterosexual female fans. For some reason, I strongly suspect that Girls Generation has a lot of heterosexual female fans. Also, anecdotally, I'm a heterosexual male and I really enjoy a bunch of the songs from kpop boy-bands such as EXO, Big Bang, and Beast. I think you are right though, I just think summarizing it that way passes over the experiences of a lot of folks.

 

I wouldn't go as far as to say that the Hyuna video empowers women or challenges the patriarchy, but from all the press-releases, videos, variety shows, interviews, and such that I've seen (I'm not a big Hyuna fan, but she is a goofily strange person and I began to notice her a lot when reading the kpop news feeds) she just seems like she wants to do what she is doing. I don't know if that reflects on the dancers. I do want to point out that CL has a dominant role in her video and I still feel the difference that I originally mentioned. I don't know how much influence Hyuna has over her videos, but I suspect that she has a lot more than you suspect she does. Again, these are all just impressions; the entire kpop world is a strange hyper-reality that makes and promotes its own truths.

 

Not knowing the songs in question, I decided to watch the videos without sound to see if this bears out (jeez that CL video is weird muted). They seemed objectifying in somewhat different ways, and maybe you could say one is more objectifying than the other, but I definitely don't feel that one is empowering and the other depreciating.

 

What an excellent attempt to debug.

[Gaizokubanou]

kpop... man I can't shake off my bad perception of Korea when it comes to objectification because of its overall strong age-ism and rampant plastic surgeries and the strict culture of beauty that is responsible for such (which also devolves into open discrimination against handicapped).  So I wouldn't put too much hope that stuff that are on fence were created with right intentions in mind.

[WickedCestus]

Yeah, it's really tricky. I get where you're coming from, Clyde, and I didn't mean to devalue your experience or anything like that. Obviously all types of people can enjoy all sorts of music, what I was referring to was what I perceive to be the target audience of the video based on the content of the video and my (limited) knowledge of K-pop and Korean culture. But, it's always tough to tell whether the creator intends their messages or not, or what those messages even are, especially with music funded by giant companies that will be touched by so many different people. In the end, it's all about what viewers see and how they react. To me, it crosses the line and comes off as somewhat uncomfortable, but that line's going to be different for everyone. 

[syntheticgerbil]

Haha, I know to expect the worst if I see Diplo or Riff Raff is involved. Kids these days and their horrible music, I don't get it.

[Mawd]

From an opposite end the latest FKA Twigs EP was really interesting as a series of related songs and as a 15m music video. It starts with the theme of "Girls being turned into Women by Men" and

.
 
 

The point about him being a businessman is interesting, but I think this actually extends way beyond people thinking he can apply that experience to running a country (because hoo boy, what could possibly go wrong when you treat a nation as a for-profit entity).

 
It's also the same cred which NZ's John Key used to become the PM in '08 and '14. Anyway if you're interested New Zealand is doing just fine thankyou, Just Fine..  

[Merus]

It's also the same cred which NZ's John Key used to become the PM in '08 and '14. Anyway if you're interested New Zealand is doing just fine thankyou, Just Fine..  

 

Wanna swap John Key for Tony Abbott?

[Mawd]

Wanna swap John Key for Tony Abbott?

Only if he channels the power of The Sun God and wealth creators like Georgina Reinhart.

Snark aside "Smart businessman who will lead us through economic crisis" was his byline. I mean labour hasn't done enough to keep up with the Nats media spin and they've been pretty happy to let power struggles shit up their own works, and, and, and.. but lets not stretch the comparison too far I mean this post has to end at some point.

-At least we don't have that awful detention centre. That's a plus that should never exist in modern society.-

I mean I'm so proud my country represented by world class diplomats like former Trade Minister Tim Grocer digging his heels in on the TPPA NZ Meat & Dairy agreements; wait didn't the Aussies say they were doing the same thing? Never mind that; the important thing is that we didn't need to keep our cheaper medicines or develop IP agreements that weren't batshit.

Oh woops I got talking again IGNORE ME.

[Apple Cider]

I wrote 1000 words on menstruation between yesterday and today. I will link it up when it's done being proofed. I'm sure you guys are hotly anticipating such topics.

[twmac]

Most of those songs reminded me about the song for "Guess Who" by Rub Ibarra: