Author Topic: Female Chauvinist Pigs?  (Read 20377 times)

Offline serious crayons

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Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« on: November 10, 2008, 09:08:58 pm »
Since I just posted a nice piece by Ariel Levy in the BetterMost People forum, I was reminded of her book, which I read parts of online and thought was pretty fascinating. It's called Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, and it's about Girls Gone Wild and other examples of women doing things that ... well, the reviews on Amazon probably describe it better:

Quote
Amazon.com Review
Ariel Levy’s debut book is a bold, piercing examination of how twenty-first century American society perceives sex and women. Writing vividly, she brings her readers to places she visited to make her assessment; the elevator of Playboy Enterprises with women auditioning to be Playmates in the fiftieth anniversary edition, a Florida beach where sunbathers urge a woman to take off her bathing suit for the camera crew of Girls Gone Wild, a San Francisco Italian restaurant where a lesbian worries she’s not dressed up enough for her date, a CAKE party in New York, with women grinding each other’s pelvises in time to pulsating dance rhythms, and outside a juice bar in Oakland where a beautiful high school student shares disappointment at her experiences with sex.

Levy cleverly leads us to explore the role models women aspire to emulate. We are not pursuing the confident, self-determined, powerful, free ideal the women’s liberation movement would have dreamed for its daughters. Instead, our icons are porn stars and strippers and prostitutes. Paris Hilton and Jenna Jameson flaunt their successes in the pornography industry, and in doing so seem to earn our adulation.

Levy relates our embracing of this raunchy culture to unresolved tensions thirty years ago between the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement, and amongst feminists; joy at discovering the delights of our clitoris conflicting with disgust at pornography’s objectification of women. She creates a convincing argument by analyzing a diverse spectrum of material; presents a fascinating palette of interviews with revolutionary women’s libbers, nouvelle raunchy feminists, and everyday women and men. Detailed facts and recurring names are sometimes cumbersome, albeit worth ploughing through for the ‘a-ha moments’.

The reality that we model ourselves on images whose "individuality is erased" is harsh, yet Levy’s work is imbued with hope – hope that women can celebrate their uniqueness instead of their ‘hotness’, explore their sexuality as delight rather than consume sex as currency, and succeed professionally because of their brilliant minds and personalities, not because of their brilliant bodies.--Megan Jones Ady

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What does sexy mean today? Levy, smartly expanding on reporting for an article in New York magazine, argues that the term is defined by a pervasive raunch culture wherein women make sex objects of other women and of ourselves. The voracious search for what's sexy, she writes, has reincarnated a day when Playboy Bunnies (and airbrushed and surgically altered nudity) epitomized female beauty. It has elevated porn above sexual pleasure. Most insidiously, it has usurped the keywords of the women's movement (liberation, empowerment) to serve as buzzwords for a female sexuality that denies passion (in all its forms) and embraces consumerism. To understand how this happened, Levy examines the women's movement, identifying the residue of divisive, unresolved issues about women's relationship to men and sex. The resulting raunch feminism, she writes, is a garbled attempt at continuing the work of the women's movement and asks, how is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavored to banish good for women? Why is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering? Levy's insightful reporting and analysis chill the hype of what's hot. It will create many aha! moments for readers who have been wondering how porn got to be pop and why feminism is such a dirty word. (Sept. 13)

http://www.amazon.com/Female-Chauvinist-Pigs-Raunch-Culture/dp/0743249895

Levy wrote a powerful series about Girls Gone Wild in Slate, which I will post here if anyone is interested. GGW and its ilk have come up in conversations from time to time here, too, often as an analogy to the more out-there apparel and behavior seen at some gay-pride events. Regarding raunch culture, does it reflect poorly on women in general? What causes it? Does it set feminism back? Is it exploitative? Or is it simply women celebrating their sexuality? How do you feel about it?




Offline mariez

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2008, 02:12:20 pm »
Thanks for the heads up on the book! I'm going to the library on my way home from work this evening and I'll check that out.  The subject matter, and the questions you've raised, are perplexing to me and I'm anxious to read more about what she has to say.

Marie
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2008, 02:18:23 pm »
Thanks for the heads up on the book! I'm going to the library on my way home from work this evening and I'll check that out.  The subject matter, and the questions you've raised, are perplexing to me and I'm anxious to read more about what she has to say.

Marie

I'm glad you found it interesting, Marie. If you haven't seen it already, here's a thread with a piece by the author, which will give you a taste of her writing (albeit on a very different topic):

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30126.msg436473.html#msg436473

And here's the first of a fascinating/horrifying three-part piece she wrote for Slate about Girls Gone Wild:

http://www.slate.com/id/2097485/entry/2097496/


Offline delalluvia

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2008, 01:25:15 am »
Since I just posted a nice piece by Ariel Levy in the BetterMost People forum, I was reminded of her book, which I read parts of online and thought was pretty fascinating. It's called Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, and it's about Girls Gone Wild and other examples of women doing things that ... well, the reviews on Amazon probably describe it better:

http://www.amazon.com/Female-Chauvinist-Pigs-Raunch-Culture/dp/0743249895

Levy wrote a powerful series about Girls Gone Wild in Slate, which I will post here if anyone is interested. GGW and its ilk have come up in conversations from time to time here, too, often as an analogy to the more out-there apparel and behavior seen at some gay-pride events. Regarding raunch culture, does it reflect poorly on women in general? What causes it? Does it set feminism back? Is it exploitative? Or is it simply women celebrating their sexuality? How do you feel about it?

True equality means the ability of women to act just as cheap and raunchy or just as high and mighty and everything inbetween just as men do without it reflecting badly on the whole gender.

For every Paris Hilton there is a Natalie Portman.

[shrug]

You have to take the good with the bad.


Offline milomorris

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2008, 09:53:14 am »
True equality means the ability of women to act just as cheap and raunchy or just as high and mighty and everything inbetween just as men do without it reflecting badly on the whole gender.

I agree. But you have to give that time (generations) to develop and change. We all know what the traditional woman looks like, and to a large extent we have had to get folks to understand that there is much more that women have to offer. I think some significant progress has been made culturally in this area. Now we have the GGW type of woman introducing us to a new angle as we continue to try to figure women out.

The extent to which GGW reflects poorly on all women is going vary from person to person. Personally, I can't tell just by looking at a woman if she is a slut or not. Moreover, I mostly don't care. But what worries me is what young men think of women as a result of this raunch culture?? Does it re-set thier expectations of the young women that come into their lives? read below for more thoughts on this.

For every Paris Hilton there is a Natalie Portman.

That's very true. I don't see women flaunting sex en masse the way the Paris Hilton's of the world do.

You have to take the good with the bad.

That's where I disagree. We don't have to take the bad. We should be working to mitigate it. Part of the bad is a culture where teenage boys and girls have decided that oral sex isn't really sex. Part of the bad is girls who have gotten the message that all boys want from them is sex. Part of the bad is female school teachers who rape their male students. Part of the bad is illegitimacy. My youngest niece ended up pregnant at 16 by a boy landed in jail well before the baby was born, and saw nothing wrong with any of it. Her examples--according to my sister--were her friends at school. Most of them had already been pregnant, and some kept the babies. My niece was the last one in her circle of friends who remained chaste. But that kind of peer pressure finally weakened her. She needed to fit in, so she had sex. When she discovered she was pregnant, she fit right in with the rest of the girls.

I don't see how the bad justifies the good.

Milo
  The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2008, 01:00:20 am »
I agree. But you have to give that time (generations) to develop and change. We all know what the traditional woman looks like, and to a large extent we have had to get folks to understand that there is much more that women have to offer. I think some significant progress has been made culturally in this area. Now we have the GGW type of woman introducing us to a new angle as we continue to try to figure women out.

The extent to which GGW reflects poorly on all women is going vary from person to person. Personally, I can't tell just by looking at a woman if she is a slut or not. Moreover, I mostly don't care. But what worries me is what young men think of women as a result of this raunch culture?? Does it re-set thier expectations of the young women that come into their lives? read below for more thoughts on this.

Raunch culture has been with human civilization ever since there has been civilization.   Straight men find women attractive and anything that enhances that attraction as men see it can be seen as even more sexual.

What turns sexy into raunchy?  Abrahamic religions in the West and patriarchal cultures the world over.  Men had to control their women's sexuality to make sure they were raising their own children, so they had to start differentiating between women whose sexuality could be controlled and those that couldn't.  This was done by raising the social opinion of controllable women and lowering the social opinion of uncontrollable women.

So now women that exuded an enhanced sexuality/sexual appearance, was uncontrolled by men was seen as cheap and trashy.

It doesn't matter what women do, men will always sexualize them.

Look at history.  When women wore yards of cloth, from neck to ground sweeping skirts, what was sexy and oooh - cheap and trashy?  A woman showing her ankle.  When hems went up a little - ooh - ankle high - what was daring and risque?  A woman wearing trousers, outlining the fact that they had legs.  Those little sluts.

Fuck, look at Islamic culture today.  I don't have the link, but in a recent article, in a Muslim country, where the traditional garb for women is a tent with only her eyes showing, one cleric recently went on record as saying the two eyes of women looking out from their tents was tooooooooooo racy and marked them as whores of Babylon (you get the idea - it's the women's fault they have two expressive eyes) so he suggested they only be allowed one eyehole.  You see in countries like the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, even two naked eyes showing out from a tent was too much for the poor tempted men to resist, so those women wore their bourkas with screens over the eye slit, so you can't even see these women's eyes.  >:( 

Men sexualize women's bodies.  You've read studies on how often men think of sex.  There's no escaping it.  And in a culture that separates women into virgins and whores, raunch will always exist.

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That's where I disagree. We don't have to take the bad. We should be working to mitigate it. Part of the bad is a culture where teenage boys and girls have decided that oral sex isn't really sex. Part of the bad is girls who have gotten the message that all boys want from them is sex.

Please point out to me a father who thinks his son staying a virgin until marriage is a good idea and that he enforces this by keeping his son in the home, carefully watching where his son goes and who he is dating, does not encourage his independence and tells him to stay away from 'rough crowds' and to wait for the "right girl", someone who cares for him and marriage. 

I think you'd be hard pressed to find such a father.  Men take pride in their sons becoming independent men, and if that includes sexual exploration, I know few men who think that a bad thing.  They only think it bad if no birth control was used.

And society supports young men becoming independent and growing into manhood.  Rites of passage can include getting drunk and having sex (not that these are mutually exclusive).

So what you have are generations of young men growing up who have little to no social or personal brakes put on their sexual exploration.  Hence, when puberty hits, horny teenage boys want sex, and are not told this is wrong or bad or that they shouldn't pursue sexual satisfaction and girls know this or find this out pretty quick.

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Part of the bad is female school teachers who rape their male students. Part of the bad is illegitimacy.

There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.

Quote
My youngest niece ended up pregnant at 16 by a boy landed in jail well before the baby was born, and saw nothing wrong with any of it. Her examples--according to my sister--were her friends at school. Most of them had already been pregnant, and some kept the babies. My niece was the last one in her circle of friends who remained chaste. But that kind of peer pressure finally weakened her. She needed to fit in, so she had sex. When she discovered she was pregnant, she fit right in with the rest of the girls.

I don't see how the bad justifies the good.

Milo

It doesn't.  It's just going to exist no matter what we do.  Please explain what anyone could have done to keep your 16 year old niece from having unprotected sex - and bad taste in partners?  You know teenagers.  Forbid them to do something and they are suddenly Romeo and Juliet being oppressed by their parents.  What are you going to do?  Lock her up until she's 18?  Put her in a convent?  What could have prevented this was birth control.  Then you would have just had a niece who lost her virginity at 16 instead of pregnant niece.  But sex education and the will to use birth control has to be taught and emphasized.  I do not know what your niece was taught or knew.

A friend of mine one time said that these teenaged pregnancies had to be stopped.  And I agreed completely.  But before he could open his mouth and say what I knew he was going to - reinstate the culture of shame and make pregnant girls pariahs in their own homes and neighborhoods and schools; to force them from schools and make them go into special "homes" so they don't embarrass their families - I asked - rhetorically it seemed since he never answered - "Yeah, so what are we going to do to make teenage boys keep their dicks in their pants?"

He had no answer to that. 

[shrug]

Offline Lynne

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2008, 01:11:56 am »
Thanks, Del.  That was a very good post.

Wow.
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Offline milomorris

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2008, 01:59:13 am »
delalluvia,

You're post only disagreed with what I have posted in a way that highlights the problems. I never suggested a return to the past social structures or solutions to these issues. What I am suggesting, unless I was unclear, is a new approach to all of this.

In the light of female emancipation, there has to be a better way for both men and women to view sexuality. Letting girls go wild is not a solution. Saying that there's nothing to be done, so we gotta live with it is not a solution. Blaming males for these problems is not a solution.

We have to be smarter and more creative than that if were going to fix things.

Milo
  The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2008, 02:28:43 am »
It doesn't matter what women do, men will always sexualize them.

Men are going to sexualize them no matter what, so what the hell, they might as well drunkenly flash their tits and make out with their roommates in order to get featured on a video that gets sold on late-night TV, allowing the male buyers across the country to jack off, the filmmaker to get rich, and themselves to be awarded with a free T-shirt?

Is that women just going about their lives while men sexualize them, or is it women playing along with the sexualization and getting exploited in the process? Just another form of women cooperating with men's oppressive standards, as much as the housewives of the '50s or the burkha wearers of today?

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Please point out to me a father who thinks his son staying a virgin until marriage is a good idea and that he enforces this by keeping his son in the home, carefully watching where his son goes and who he is dating, does not encourage his independence and tells him to stay away from 'rough crowds' and to wait for the "right girl", someone who cares for him and marriage. 

Well, this would be unusual, but a good father would impart some sensibility about sexual behavior to his son(s).

Meanwhile, what sons would flash their usually covered body parts and make out with their roommates simply for the sake of being on a video meant to titillate women? Or turn it around -- how many men don't usually wear loose, comfortable clothes -- with the exception of neckties and sometimes suit jackets on hot days -- while their female counterparts wear skin-tight pants that expose their stomachs and butt cracks, stumbling along in crippling stiletto heels and freezing in tank tops and camisoles and bare legs when it's 30 degrees?

Quote
There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.

Agreed.

Quote
Please explain what anyone could have done to keep your 16 year old niece from having unprotected sex - and bad taste in partners?  You know teenagers.  Forbid them to do something and they are suddenly Romeo and Juliet being oppressed by their parents.  What are you going to do?  Lock her up until she's 18?  Put her in a convent?  What could have prevented this was birth control.

A close friend of mine had parents so strict they used to follow her in their car with the headlights off when she went out at night. She wound up pregnant at 14. She got an abortion with her boyfriend's mother posing as her mom -- her own parents, extreme Catholics, never knew.

Ironically, birth control was readily available, even to teenagers. It's just that she was young and stupid, and wasn't on any yet.

However, the difference between her and a lot of teen moms today was that in that middle-class community, the decision of abortion was almost automatic. My friend had plans for her future, and nobody else she knew was pregnant. Nobody else in high school got pregnant and just went ahead and had their babies and kept them. That wasn't really ... done. On the contrary, in cultures where teenage motherhood isn't stigmatized, where in fact it might even be a mark of status, and when girls have little or no other post-high-school prospects for education or careers, you will find teenagers having babies.

BTW, my friend, 35 years later, is doing well: married for about 25 years to a man she loves, twin sons in college who make her proud, a career she enjoys. Let's fervently hope that abortion-free Bristol Palin is just as happy when she's 50. Seriously.

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"Yeah, so what are we going to do to make teenage boys keep their dicks in their pants?"

He had no answer to that. 

Gee, is that part of the deal?  ::)  You're right, people forget about the boys.




Offline milomorris

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Re: Female Chauvinist Pigs?
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2008, 08:27:42 am »
Men are going to sexualize them no matter what, so what the hell, they might as well drunkenly flash their tits and make out with their roommates in order to get featured on a video that gets sold on late-night TV, allowing the male buyers across the country to jack off, the filmmaker to get rich, and themselves to be awarded with a free T-shirt?

Is that women just going about their lives while men sexualize them, or is it women playing along with the sexualization and getting exploited in the process?

This reminds me of the conundrum of hip-hop culture--rap music specifically. While the dynamics are quite different, the exploitation looks the same. Many in the black community see rap as a form of our young people selling out literally. They are willing to take a uniquely African-American art form, and vulgarize it for the entertainment of the young white men. Rap artists have often been called modern-day minstrels for this reason.

Well, this would be unusual, but a good father would impart some sensibility about sexual behavior to his son(s).

Exactly!!! That is what I'm talking about. You can't make boys not objectify women, but you can give them a healthy context in which to do so.

BTW, what does it mean that there are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents? The dictionary certain says otherwise.


Quote
Main Entry:
    il·le·git·i·mate Listen to the pronunciation of illegitimate
Pronunciation:
    \-ˈji-tə-mət\
Function:
    adjective
Date:
    1536

1: not recognized as lawful offspring ; specifically : born of parents not married to each other

Milo
  The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.