Crowded bar scene. MAN and WOMAN do the standard flirting thing, he buys her a drink, they dance, then exit. Their dialogue isn’t important — the bar’s too loud for us to hear much anyway. But it’s clear that both are willing to engage in the sex that follows.
INT. APARTMENT — LATER
They enter her apartment and move through it toward the bedroom, happily and heatedly, kissing, touching, and unbuttoning each other on the way.
INT. BEDROOM — CONTINUOUS
They are on the bed, then in the bed, which has a nightstand right beside it, then while intercourse is clearly occurring —
WOMAN: So, do you want a girl or a boy?
He stops mid-thrust.
MAN: What?
He pulls out. Grimaces at his limpness.
WOMAN: Well, you aren’t using any contraception, so it stands to reason you want a child. I mean, you must know that —
(she gestures vaguely)
MAN: (rolling off her; things are clearly over) Of course I know — No, I don’t want a kid —
He’s up and dressing.
MAN (CONT’D): I assumed you were —
WOMAN: Pretty important thing to just take for granted, isn’t it?
MAN: (his anger increasing) What is this, some sort of trap?
WOMAN: Not at all. I’m okay with it. I mean, I’ll charge for incubation services, $50,000 is about standard, and then I’ll give you the kid, no strings —
MAN: I don’t want a kid!
WOMAN: Then why —
MAN: Because you’re the one who gets pregnant!
WOMAN: I realize that. And as I said, I’m okay with it. If you’re the one not okay with it, if you’re the one who doesn’t want this to be reproductive sex, then you’re the one who should be using contraception.
He says nothing as he continues to dress.
WOMAN (CONT’D): Are you usually this adept at separating cause and effect? At not looking at the consequences of your actions?
He reaches for his jacket.
WOMAN (CONT’D): I mean, if you and a friend do a B & E together and he’s the only one who gets caught, you’re okay with that? You’d really not consider yourself equally responsible?
I finally figured it out — why the men in my neighborhood react with such escalated lack of consideration whenever I ask them, politely, to limit their noise. I’ve asked snowmobilers who are out racing around the lake and having a good time going VROOM VROOM to please just turn around a few seconds before they get to the very end of the lake, which is where I live; I’ve asked dirt bikers to please ride up and down and up and down on a section of road that doesn’t have a bunch of people living there; I’ve asked men who are building new houses to please put the compressor behind the house (so the building acts as a berm) rather than on the lake side (which means, of course, that the noise not only skids across the lake with wonderful efficiency, but also that it then bounces off the hills, echoing amplified all over the place); I’ve asked men to at least close their lakeside doors and windows when they’re using their power tools inside. (And I’d like to ask them if they really, seriously, need to use a leafblower — we live in the forest, for godsake.)
And almost every single time, not only has the man not acceded to my request, he’s escalated his noise-making and/or responded with confrontational aggression.
Do I live in a neighborhood with an unrepresentative number of inconsiderate assholes?
No. Here’s what’s happening. (As I say, I’ve finally figured it out.) Partly it’s because I’m a woman asking a man to do something. Most men do not want to be seen taking orders from a woman; even to accede to a woman’s request is apparently too much for their egos. My male neighbour has made similar requests and the responses have been along the lines of ‘Sure, no problem.’
And partly, it’s because making noise is perceived to be an integral part of being a man. I’ve long known ‘My car is my penis’ but I never realized that that was partly because of the noise of the car. I didn’t know that men routinely modify the mufflers of their dirt bikes in order to make them louder. And then I happened to catch a Canadian Tire advertisement on television (I seldom watch television) and was absolutely amazed at the blatant association of masculinity with power tools, the promise that ‘You’ll be more of a man when you use this million-horsepower table saw’ or whatever.
So the resistance to my requests is because I’m essentially asking that they castrate themselves.
People are fleeing for their lives from North and South Carolina, but there may not be enough rooms in hotels because — football. Apparently there’s a (male) game scheduled for play and (mostly male) people have come to watch.
Clear evidence of the male obsession with competition having a stranglehold — wait, the hurricane itself is clear evidence of that: a long but incontestable causal chain leads back from the increasing frequency and severity of storms to the desire of (overwhelmingly) male executives and stockholders (of, for example, oil companies) to become rich — i.e., to be #1, to win.
And as is their way, they give the hurricane a female name; as if we’re to blame.
My god, is there no end to their psychopathology??
What’s adult about forcing someone to do something she doesn’t really want to do?
What’s adult about doing sexual things to children?
What’s adult about humiliating another person?
What’s adult about hurting another person?
We should call it what it is. The psychopathic sociopathic misogynist market. The sick fucks market.
(I’d intended to be more specific, but I’m concerned that the psychopathic sociopathic misogynist dudes would like that. Plus, merely describing these things repulses me.)
I’ve just finished reading Mike Resnick’s collections Women Writing Science Fiction as Men and Men Writing Science Fiction as Women. There were two rules for submissions to the anthologies: “First, each story had to be told in the first person of a man [woman]; and second, if changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria [or vice versa] didn’t invalidate the story we didn’t want it.”
So what he ended up with was a bunch of stories emphasizing the gender stereotypes we all know and hate so well. The women wrote about men who were competitive and primarily interested in sex. The men wrote about women who were nurturing and primarily mothers. Ho hum.
What would have been far more interesting, and far more challenging (though a challenge sf writers, if anyone, are certainly up to), would have been stories in which changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria (or vice versa) would not have invalidated the story, would have made no difference whatsoever.
Those are the stories I want to read! That’s a future (a fantasy?) I want to live in!
Gretel, by Chris Wind (from Snow White Gets Her Say) www.chriswind.net
We read fables in school to teach us a lesson. And we read fairy tales at bedtime to put us asleep. And indeed they do: especially those of us, a full half of the human species, who are lulled lower and lower into a semi-conscious state by their lessons.
Remember “Hansel and Gretel”? The one about a little boy and a little girl. Who was me. Not particularly proud of it, but there you go. I didn’t write the story. I didn’t intend those lessons.
That, first, women are deceitful. There are two women in the story, the stepmother and the witch. And both of them lie to us. When Hansel and I are taken into the forest to be left there to die, my stepmother says “We’ll come back for you.” And later, when we meet the witch, she assures us she will “do us no harm”. But of course they didn’t and she did. Both women used deceit to achieve their goals.
That, second, women aren’t very intelligent. It was my stepmother’s idea that a good solution to the food shortage was to leave us in the forest. Why not kill and eat the pigeon or the cat first? Why not hunt for squirrels and rabbits? The witch, as well, wasn’t too brilliant when she climbed into the oven to give a little demonstration.
That, third, little boys are competent and resourceful (and therefore can, and do, take care of little girls, like me). The first time we were taken into the forest, it was Hansel who thought to unravel a spool of thread behind us so we could find our way back. The second time, again he planned for our survival, leaving a trail of crumbs to mark our path. Clever though this was, he didn’t think about the birds, who ate the crumbs. I was quite resigned to our fate; it was Hansel who refused to give up so easily. Well, as you know, we found our way to a house, but it belonged to the witch and she locked Hansel in a cage. Still using his head, he held out a bone instead of his finger each time she checked to see if he was fat enough to eat.
However, if you’ve read the story, you’ll know that, notwithstanding this glowing portrait of my brother, I’m the real hero: it was my cleverness that saved us. You’ll remember that the witch told me to creep into the oven to see if it was hot enough to bake the bread. I knew, of course, that she was going to slam the door shut and bake me instead. So, I said, ever so sweetly, “I do not know how I am to do it, how do I get in?” You know the rest, I’m sure: she showed me, I shut the door on her, and then I rescued Hansel and together we escaped.
What bothers me is that I had to be clever in that way. To this day, I resent having had to resort to that ‘dumb blond’ ploy. To begin with, because it’s just that—a ploy, a disguise, a deceit; and it teaches us that pretence is our best method of operation. So we pretend to be something we’re not to get what we want, be it life, love, whatever. But more than that, I resent the ploy because it teaches us that for a woman, ignorance is valuable: it is her defence, her weapon, her salvation.
Why is that so dangerous a lesson, since my ignorance really is just a ploy, and not genuine? Because habits of behaviour become habits of thought which become habits of belief. If I spend most of my life acting like I’m stupid, people will think that I am. And then it’s just a short step to actually becoming what people already believe I am.
But if we wake up, we all will live ever after.
***
In the story “Hansel and Gretel”, two children are taken into the forest by their father and stepmother, to be left to die because there is not enough food to feed them; this solution is the stepmother’s idea, and her “We’ll come back for you” was simply a lie. The story unfolds exactly as I’ve described it—the spool of thread, the breadcrumbs, the witch’s house, Hansel in the cage, Gretel and the oven, their escape—and they find their way back home to live happily ever after. (The mean stepmother had died.)
So I’ve just finished watching 13 Reasons Why (Netflix) and am struck by the completely unacknowledged elephant in the room. Not one character acknowledges that almost all of the problems leading to Hannah’s suicide stem from sexism and its many tumours – misogyny, male entitlement, male privilege, hypersexualization, objectification, the rape culture, etc., etc., etc.
Consider:
Justin – Being a man is all about getting sex, using women for sex, and bragging about it afterwards to get points, to improve your status (among males). Exaggerating and lying about your ‘achievements’ is, well, standard operating procedure if you’re a guy. ‘Bros before hos’ — even if it means letting your girlfriend be raped (because hey, what’s mine is yours) (and women are just property, after all) (otherwise, it wouldn’t even have occurred to him that what he ‘owed’ Bryce could include Jessica). That said, (weak) applause for his eventual decency, especially given his relative-to-Bryce lack of privilege and the pull of moral obligation for reciprocity (albeit disgustingly overgeneralized, as mentioned).
Jessica – Men are more important than women. One, getting a boyfriend is the most important thing you can do, being someone’s girlfriend is the most important thing you can be; your status, your value, depends on your relation to a male — which is why as soon as she and Alex hook up, Hannah is dropped like a second-class piece of shit. Two, what men say is to be believed, they are authorities, about everything; when they open their mouths, truth tumbles out like little golden nuggets — which is why she believes what she’s told by Alex et al about Hannah. Three, she’s a cheerleader. Her actual ‘job’ is to cheer and applaud men when they do stuff. (In fact, many of the girls in 13 Reasons Why are cheerleaders, and many of the boys are jocks. A whole 90% of the student body is missing. Why? Give you one guess.) (Actually, on second thought, strictly speaking, that’s not true. Of the eight boys listed here, only three are jocks. So why did I get that wrong impression? Because they appear as a group, wearing uniforms. They appear as a team, a gang, a team, an army. That’s why they seem more … powerful.)
Alex – Women are to be evaluated solely on the basis of their body parts, on whether their body parts please you/men. Again, (weak) applause for his regret and guilt, and his speaking up, but, yeah, men like Alex who confront men like Bryce will get beaten up. Thus, his limited confrontation and his suicide attempt can also be traced to the fucked-up patriarchal culture.
Tyler – Women’s bodies are public domain; ergo, photographs of women’s bodies are public domain. It’s not like there’s a person inside or anything.
Courtney – Being lesbian in public means you risk ‘corrective rape’; can we blame her for hiding?
Marcus – When a girl agrees to meet you for a milkshake, she’s really agreeing to have sex with you. At the very least, she’s agreeing to have her genitals fondled by you. In public. In broad daylight. And certainly in the presence of the bros you brought along to witness your conquest. If she objects, well, your outrage is justified. Because you’re entitled to touch her. In fact, you’re entitled to touch any woman. Any time, any place. Simply because you’re a man.
Zach – She doesn’t particularly like you? She rejected your advances of friendship? Well, yeah, FUCK HER! Because men are entitled to the affection of all women.
Ryan – Sure it’s okay to publish someone’s work without their permission, without crediting them, perhaps especially if they’re a woman and you’re a man. Because you, men, know best. What’s best for her, women. (Oh, and thanks for carrying on the great tradition of ‘Anon’…)
Sheri – Perhaps the only episode that doesn’t implicate the elephant.
Bryce – Women don’t know what they want, but you, you, a MAN (well, a boy), you know what they want. (And they all want you. They all want your penis inside them.) (At least, you “assume so.”) (And that’s good enough.) Thanks to the patriarchy, you can be appallingly deluded about your knowledge and your appeal. You can lie to yourself about it. Again and again.
Mr. Porter – Yes, he goes to regretted sex first, then to alcohol and drugs, but when he gets to rape, Hannah says she didn’t tell Bryce to stop, she says she didn’t tell him ‘No’ – so what’s he supposed to think? He suggests she may have consented then changed her mind (which she’s certainly entitled to do) (and which still leaves the door open to rape), then asks whether they should get her parents or the police involved, but she says ‘No’ – again, what’s he supposed to think or do? And of course, he can’t promise that Bryce will go to jail. Guess why. He tells her it may be ‘best to move on’ (but only after he clarifies that Hannah won’t give a name, she won’t press charges, she’s not even sure she can press charges), showing that he too is caught in the mire of our fucked-up patriarchy.
Clay – Clay buys into the Prince Charming shit: he blames himself for not saving Hannah. (He doesn’t blame himself for not saving Alex – though perhaps he doesn’t know yet…) Near the end, he says something like ‘We need to start treating each other better, we need to start caring about each other.’ Well, as Bryce would surely tell him, caring about others is for sissies – females. And in a patriarchy, male values trump female values (and yes, in a patriarchy there’s a difference).
Hannah – She exhibits a lot of passivity, a persistent denial of agency. She wants Clay to kiss her; why doesn’t she want to kiss him? (She wants to be kissed; she doesn’t want to kiss.) She wants Clay to ask her to dance; why doesn’t she just ask him to dance? She wants him to be her Valentine; why doesn’t she just tell him that? She tells Clay to go away, but then expects him to stay. Not only is he not a mind reader, but it’s that kind of shit that got us to ‘no means yes’. (Tony had it right: she asked him to go, he should go, end of story.) Standing outside Mr. Porter’s office, she waits to be saved, for him to come running after her.
And of course as soon as Bryce, whom she’d seen rape Jessica, gets into the hot tub, she doesn’t get out. She probably didn’t want to appear rude. You know, hurt his feelings. Once he begins, she doesn’t scream STOP; she doesn’t scream NO. She just … accepts it, endures it. (And ‘it’ looks like it might have been sodomy, not ‘just’ PIV rape.) That’s what women, girls, are supposed to do. That’s what we’re raised to do.
If the girls wore alarm necklaces (instead of short little genitals-easily-accessible skirts) she could’ve pulled its pin (like a grenade) when she saw Bryce start to rape Jessica … And again when she was in the hot tub … And, backing up a bit, why do we keep our teenaged girls so clueless, so desperate for … what? that they get into a hot tub at a party at a rapist’s house in just their bra and panties (let alone go to a party at his place in the first place)? Not to mention, of course, why do we keep our teenaged boys so clueless the moral wrongness of patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, male entitlement, male privilege …
So the thirteen reasons why pretty much boil down to one.
And it’s not even acknowledged.
Feminists have exposed and fought against patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, male entitlement, male privilege, hypersexualization, objectification, rape culture – hell, we named most of that shit – for decades. Not acknowledged. Not once. Not even a little bit. It’s like Jay Asher was born yesterday and has remained oblivious of such women’s voices. Ironic. To say the least.
(I cheered when ‘the male gaze’ was actually mentioned by the girls – but then they got it wrong, they made it sound like it just describes the attracted look on a guy’s face. Oh for the love of God!)
There are no doubt hundreds of 13 Reasons Why novels written by women. Have any of them been published? Made into a movie? Received great critical claim? No. But a man writes about what it’s like to be raped, what it’s like to be subjected to misogynistic shit every fucking day, well, world, PAY ATTENTION! Asher is himself a shining example of the male privilege his novel criticizes so unwittingly. Again, the irony.
Furthermore, how many more Sylvia Plaths do we need to see? Why must we keep seeing women kill themselves because of this shit? Why can’t we see as many, if not more, saying FUCK THIS SHIT!? Yes, okay, Jessica was drunk, and Hannah isn’t a cheerleader, but why couldn’t Asher have reversed that? Because, hey, if a girl can do four back handsprings (without mats even), she surely has the strength (shoulders, abs, legs) and the courage (without mats, remember?) to fight back at least a little. Why didn’t we see a sober cheerleader, or two or three, bustin’ Bryce’s ass when he tried his shit. Why don’t we see more movies like Jodi Foster’s The Brave One? Give you one guess.
Never mind the elephant. 13 Reasons Why is a trojan horse.
* I’ve just watched the movie, so don’t know how much of this applies to the novel.
Lying is illegal when economic interests are at stake: libel, slander, fraud, misrepresentation, false advertising.* Why isn’t it illegal otherwise? Why is loss of income more subject to compensation than, say, loss of self-esteem (which may, of course, result in loss of income)?
And words are illegal when physical violence is involved: uttering threats, ‘fighting words’, intimidation, criminal harassment. Why aren’t they illegal when psychological violence is involved? Why, when it comes to illegal speech acts, is there an emphasis on economic and physical injury?**
Is it just that the male mode has ruled? Males engage in business, income-generating activities – making money is traditionally their role, their legitimator. Men also engage in physical contests of all kinds.
Loss of income is more measurable than loss of self-esteem; physical injury is more measurable than psychological injury. And males are more engaged in, more comfortable with, quantitative activities than qualitative activities.
Loss of income is less emotional than loss of self-esteem; psychological injury is often all about emotion. And males, of course, are uncomfortable with any emotion other than anger.
Some may scoff at criminalizing psychological injury. Surely physical injuries are more serious. Are they? I would suggest not, especially if the verbal assaults are ongoing. Many of us spend our whole lives crippled by apparently permanent injuries to our self-esteem, our belief about what we can and cannot do. The consequences of psychological injury can be as severe as, if not more severe than, those of physical injury; they’re just much harder to see and harder still to link to the cause. (And harder to recover from.)
On the other hand, if you punch my body, no matter how strong I am, my body will bruise. But if you punch my psyche, if I am psychologically strong, if I am mature and have a firm sense of my self, that punch need not injure me. So it’s our own fault if we’re injured by insult. As for other kinds of psychological injury, we are responsible to a large extent for our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, values, and attitudes and, thus, our psychological response to injury. So again, it’s our own fault if we’re injured. But a punch will break, not bruise, a less strong body. Just how strong, psychologically speaking, are we expected to be?
And anyway, physical aggression is considered illegal even when it doesn’t injure. It’s the action, not the consequence, that determines its illegality. If you punch me, whether I bruise, or break, or neither, I can still charge you with assault. Why doesn’t insult have the same legal weight? Because men aren’t into words – unless there’s money or a fight involved?
* Libel (written) and slander (oral) both refer to false statements that injure a person’s reputation, and you can bet that the reputation being talked about is that which enables the person to make money, not one’s reputation as a good person. Women don’t have reputations. Except sexual reputations. And they can’t sue if some guy writes her name on the locker room wall. (Hm…traditionally, her sexuality was her ticket to income, either through prostitution or marriage…)
** “Acts which inflict severe mental pain or suffering” are illegal as part of torture (CCC 269.1(1)) – but that’s only when such acts are committed in order to obtain information (the presumed purpose of torture). Why this exception? And emotional pain and suffering are routinely included in civil suits. Why not in criminal contexts?
So it’s not a special insult toward the woman in question (yes, men, wolf-whistles are insulting when they occur in everyday contexts—because they emphasize our sexuality when we’re trying to be seen for our personhood and our various competencies; it thus reduces us to sexual objects) (a wolf-whistle in the bedroom directed toward your consenting sexual partner is, can be, a completely different matter).
Instead, such blanket expressions are indications of the man’s insecurity about his manhood: he feels the need to assure himself and/or others, since his behaviour is public, that he’s a man. Apparently, to such men, finding women sexually attractive is proof of manhood. Heterosexual manhood. So really the wolf-whistle is an indication of homophobia.
So rather than focus on the inherent misogyny, we should focus on his insecurity. And, therefore, we should respond with something like “Don’t use me to deal with your insecurity about ‘being a man’!”
Granted, most men won’t understand that, so you’ll have to simplify and expand with something like “I understand that you’re afraid that your friends think you’re gay, but don’t use me to deal with that fear. Just talk to your friends; tell them you’re not gay.”
(Right. Like that’s ever gonna happen.)
And those who are smart enough to understand our initial response will be so resistant they won’t process it. Because introspection, self-awareness—these are not part of the definition of manhood. (My father hated it whenever I tried to get him to examine his behaviour – ‘Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?’ he’d shout. As if I was proposing castration.) (I suspect that like most men, he was afraid I’d discover there’s nothing much there; men spend so much time thinking about strategy, at heart, a sort of duplicitous insincerity, they haven’t developed any genuine core.)
(Sigh.)
*And once women realize that, perhaps they’ll give up the make-up, the dress, the body obsession: to men, it really doesn’t matter how you look.
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (short drama 15min)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…
