Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
30/09/2009
![First published in New Matilda.
If you grew up in Australia in the early 1990s, the rubber bracelets above probably look familiar.
Known as “pash bands” — or “fuck bands” if you wanted to be really naughty — the idea was that each coloured bracelet symbolised a different sex act. According to an article published in a UK paper last weekend: “Yellow represents a hug, while pink means a love bite and orange or purple for a kiss, before moving through different sex acts until black, which means full sex”. Some people would joke that purple actually stood for marriage, being the colour of sexual frustration.
If somebody broke your bracelet, you were supposed to perform the corresponding act on them.
Nobody ever actually did it, of course. Even the most sexually precocious kids I went to primary school with didn’t do more than attempt an unsatisfying first kiss in the playground after school. (To my knowledge, no pash bands were involved in these incidents.) When I was in high school, they made a brief retro resurgence, and my best friend and I at the time bought the black ones — known as “fuck bands” — which we vowed to wear until we lost our virginity.
We lost the rubber bands long before that happened.
Pash bands — or “shag bands” as they’re apparently now known — have always been about shits and giggles, about kids playing at being grown-ups. The humour comes from the fact that most primary school kids think sex is icky. Accordingly, it’s fun for them to talk about it, and gross their friends out by teasing them that they might partake in it someday.
If you read the Courier-Mail over the weekend, however, they represent a rather more sinister — and “new”, which usually seems to correlate with dangerous — trend; “a parent’s worst nightmare”. According to conservative “feminist” commentator Melinda Tankard-Reist, they “[set] up girls as service stations for boys” and “invite sexual assault”. Because nothing invites sexual assault like wearing a coloured bracelet — and nothing says “feminist” like suggesting kids “invite” sexual assault.
Given that most people aged between 25 and 55 having either worn one or parented someone who has, it amazes me that any journalist could find these innocuous pieces of plastic worthy of such fear mongering.
But our readiness to jump on the moral panic train says a lot about our tendency to assume the worst of people younger than us. Even in my own research, which aims to unpack media myths about young adults’ sexual behaviours, the 20-somethings I speak to bemoan how much more “out there” today’s teens are than they were 10 years ago — conveniently forgetting that the same complaints were made about them less than a decade ago. Talk to some actual teenagers, and you’ll get a far more nuanced story.
Tankard-Reist has a new book to promote, about the sexualisation of girls, and if the recent extract on New Matilda is any indication, she has some interesting and relevant arguments to make on the subject. It’s hard to muster up the enthusiasm to listen to them though when she, and others like her, persist in discrediting themselves by participating in this kind of shrill — and factually incorrect — hysteria.
The sexualisation of children is a real issue, but as UQ academic Karen Brooks showed in her 2008 book Consuming Innocence, it’s about a lot more than sex. It’s certainly about a lot more than kids having sex — which, by the way, most of them aren’t. And I’ll tell you one thing: it’s got very little to do with the humble pash band.](http://6.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kqojud1AgN1qz6gl2o1_400.jpg)
First published in New Matilda.
If you grew up in Australia in the early 1990s, the rubber bracelets above probably look familiar.
Known as “pash bands” — or “fuck bands” if you wanted to be really naughty — the idea was that each coloured bracelet symbolised a different sex act. According to an article published in a UK paper last weekend: “Yellow represents a hug, while pink means a love bite and orange or purple for a kiss, before moving through different sex acts until black, which means full sex”. Some people would joke that purple actually stood for marriage, being the colour of sexual frustration.
If somebody broke your bracelet, you were supposed to perform the corresponding act on them.
Nobody ever actually did it, of course. Even the most sexually precocious kids I went to primary school with didn’t do more than attempt an unsatisfying first kiss in the playground after school. (To my knowledge, no pash bands were involved in these incidents.) When I was in high school, they made a brief retro resurgence, and my best friend and I at the time bought the black ones — known as “fuck bands” — which we vowed to wear until we lost our virginity.
We lost the rubber bands long before that happened.
Pash bands — or “shag bands” as they’re apparently now known — have always been about shits and giggles, about kids playing at being grown-ups. The humour comes from the fact that most primary school kids think sex is icky. Accordingly, it’s fun for them to talk about it, and gross their friends out by teasing them that they might partake in it someday.
If you read the Courier-Mail over the weekend, however, they represent a rather more sinister — and “new”, which usually seems to correlate with dangerous — trend; “a parent’s worst nightmare”. According to conservative “feminist” commentator Melinda Tankard-Reist, they “[set] up girls as service stations for boys” and “invite sexual assault”. Because nothing invites sexual assault like wearing a coloured bracelet — and nothing says “feminist” like suggesting kids “invite” sexual assault.
Given that most people aged between 25 and 55 having either worn one or parented someone who has, it amazes me that any journalist could find these innocuous pieces of plastic worthy of such fear mongering.
But our readiness to jump on the moral panic train says a lot about our tendency to assume the worst of people younger than us. Even in my own research, which aims to unpack media myths about young adults’ sexual behaviours, the 20-somethings I speak to bemoan how much more “out there” today’s teens are than they were 10 years ago — conveniently forgetting that the same complaints were made about them less than a decade ago. Talk to some actual teenagers, and you’ll get a far more nuanced story.
Tankard-Reist has a new book to promote, about the sexualisation of girls, and if the recent extract on New Matilda is any indication, she has some interesting and relevant arguments to make on the subject. It’s hard to muster up the enthusiasm to listen to them though when she, and others like her, persist in discrediting themselves by participating in this kind of shrill — and factually incorrect — hysteria.
The sexualisation of children is a real issue, but as UQ academic Karen Brooks showed in her 2008 book Consuming Innocence, it’s about a lot more than sex. It’s certainly about a lot more than kids having sex — which, by the way, most of them aren’t. And I’ll tell you one thing: it’s got very little to do with the humble pash band.
Photo posted at 10:00
21/09/2009
It was only last week that I twigged how men’s magazine ZOO got its name. The women are the animals, and the magazine is the “zoo” where the readers go to look at them.
Men’s magazines are strange creatures, the models (or “babes”, as they’re usually called) utterly unlike any woman you’re likely to come across in real life. I’m not just talking about the way they look - their very-thin-yet-curvaceous bodies, pouty lips and perma-tans - but the way they behave.
“Babes” love to run about in their underwear with their girlfriends, soaping each other, play-wrestling, and engaging in other faux-lesbian activities. They can never seem to keep their knickers up. Even the word itself warrants contemplation, distinguishing the models from other women to often seem like a different species altogether.
Which, I suspect, is exactly how it’s intended. Whether you’re a drooling fanboy or derisive critic, it’s all too easy to forget that the “babes” in magazines like ZOO are also human beings - friends, students, daughters, sisters. In a professional capacity, after all, they exist only to flirt, have their picture taken and not wear a whole lot of clothing. But that’s how objectification works - it’s about elevating or decimating someone at the ignorance of their humanity.
As 25-year-old Greg comments in Michael Kimmel’s Guyland:
“I think it’s because the women are so posed, you know, like they’re posing for the camera, for me; they’re not doing some other guy and I’m supposed to get off on that. They’re trying to look sexy - for me! And same thing about that Playboy back to campus issue. God I love that one. It’s like whatever college you go to, there are such hot babes thee who love to pose naked and turn guys on. They’re the best antidote to all that feminist stuff about staring at women. They’re begging you to stare at them. No, that’s not quite it. They’re daring you not to stare at them!”
It’s a strange job to have. I get where the appeal lies - it’s an affirmation that you’re hot, desirable, and it certainly pays more than most jobs young women are employed to do. But it’s sad that it does, and it’s sad that being “hot” has so much cache that young women are willing to be portrayed as less than human in order to be stamped with the accolade.
Photo posted at 10:00
18/08/2009
From the vault: "Something about the way you look tonight"
Over the weekend, Fuck Politeness linked and responded to a post by Melissa McEwan, about the often confronting experience of witnessing sexist behaviour from men one likes: “intellectual men, clever men, engaged men”. Men who identify as progressive.
Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened.
Well. I certainly didn’t see that coming…
Men aren’t the only people do it, of course, nor are they immune from being on the receiving end of it. There are all sorts of reasons a person might flinch at that kind of subtle (to the person delivering it, at least), institutionalised, unintentional prejudice: race, sexuality, class, the shape and abilities of one’s body. I’ve been guilty of it myself, on this here blog - and the times I’ve had it pointed out to me, while they’ve felt like a bit of a slap in the face, have also been hugely instrumental in challenging and refining my politics.
In any case, FP and McEwan’s posts reminded me of this one I wrote around five years ago now, back in my blonde, pink-clad phase. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Clearly, like many blonde, pink-clad lasses, the peroxide and stereotypically feminine attire did not prevent me from thinking critically or articulating my thoughts. I mention my aesthetics only because they contextualise some of my comments. Like being described as a “barbie doll”, which would be utterly nonsensical now.
Names and identifying details removed, natch.
——————————-
It occurred to me last night that perhaps my tendency to interpret every comment any guy makes about another female’s appearance (“[redacted]’s hot”, “[redacted] has fat thighs”, “We used to like to play this game where we walk down the street and rate each girl that walked past on her face, breasts and legs”) as personally offensive to me might not be purely a sign of Absolut Neuroticism so much as an accurate sign that, well, it really is about me.
Not about me exclusively, of course, but about women in general.
When I hear guys I know begin to evaluate another girl’s appearance it makes me feel uncomfortable because it serves as a reminder that they, and others, are evaluating my appearance, that there is very little I can do to control their evaluation, and that I have no way of ever really knowing what that evaluation is.
Last night, I went with a few friends to a bar in Sydney’s CBD. Towards the end of the night, a group of people a little older than myself came into the bar, including a blonde, possibly tanned, girl in a trench-coat. I probably wouldn’t have noticed her if Guy1 hadn’t pointed her out.
“Is she for real, or is she made of plastic?” Guy1 asked us.
Guy2 started laughing and Girl and I just looked confused. “Huh? Who?” I asked.
“The blonde in the trench coat,” Guy1 said.
“She looks like she’s plastic,” Guy2 said.
“Are you saying she’s good looking, or…?” Girl asked.
“No, she just doesn’t look real…” someone said.
“She just looks like a blonde girl in a trench coat to me,” I said.
So there was discussion for a minute or so on how this girl apparently didn’t look real (and she really did just look like a blonde girl in a trench coat to me) before I collapsed back into my chair and said, “I hate men.”
“No you don’t,” Guy2 said.
“Yes I do,” I said. “I hate men.”
“It’s a love-hate relationship,” Guy2 said.
“No, I really do hate men.”
“Why? Guy1’s being totally PC… he’s saying people should just be real and not look plastic,” Guy2 said.
I couldn’t pinpoint what I found so upsetting and offensive at the time, my reaction was purely visceral. But in retrospect, it was because she could have been me - or any other woman, really. Just because she was blonde and apparently (Girl decided) looked like Sarah Michelle Gellar didn’t mean she deserved to have people talking about the way she looked when in all likelihood all she wanted to do was sit down and have a couple of drinks with her friends.
I’ve had guys refer to me as “that girl who looks like a barbie doll” before, and while it may be intended as a means of saying “she’s attractive”, all it really does it reduce you to a flat, plastic sex object. Equally, I’m sure I’ve had guys refer to me as “an ugly ho-bag”. The difference between the two is minimal.
Of course, there are ways we can express our appreciation of other people’s appearances and attractiveness without being demeaning. I genuinely appreciate it when people who know me tell me I look beautiful, or fabulous, or that I am wonderful. Because there are occasions (particularly when it comes from the mouth of someone who isn’t inclined to say it to every girl and her pet budgie) when it seems like they really mean it. And it doesn’t seem demeaning because I know that they know that there is more to me than that.
But yeah. Objectification pisses me off.
——————————-
Now, Guy1 and Guy2 would probably flinch as much at being labelled sexist as I did at the judgemental things they said. They certainly did when I called them out on other instances of subtle sexism. But the point isn’t to have a go at them so much as it is to show how ingrained such attitudes are, how even people who don’t mean to offend can do so accidentally. And the fact that they didn’t mean to hurt anyone doesn’t change the fact that they did.
I often think that it would be more productive to discuss sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, fat-phobia and the like not as something that defines a person, but as thoughts and acts that people commit. It would certainly be easier to call people on their sexism if that didn’t make them “a sexist”, to get people to own up to, challenge and change their racism if admitting it didn’t equate to being evil.
Text posted at 09:00
10/08/2009
» Should we write for free?
Australian lit-journal Meanjin has just published a great blog post answering the above question - I recommend you check it out.
My response below. A journalist from The Punch has also left a comment that’s well worth reading.
“Perhaps the question is not ‘should we write for free – yes/no’ but ‘to what extent should we write for free?’”
I agree with this completely. The main questions I ask myself when deciding if it’s worth writing for free are a) does the publisher in question have the money to pay me, and b) will this allow me to be part of a conversation I otherwise wouldn’t?
I’ve always strongly encouraged new writers not to offer their services for free to the major newspapers and magazines - they have the means to pay you and, up until the past six months or so, it wouldn’t have made a difference as to whether they’d publish you anyway - whilst also highlighting the importance of ‘paying your dues’, for which smaller, indie publications make a great place to start.
I don’t agree with Lucy that refusing to write for free is a “sacrifice” - despite the recession, I’m yet to experience a shortage of paying outlets willing to publish my work (although, admittedly, I don’t freelance fulltime and have other sources of income). But I’m okay with doing it when it means writing for my own blog (which I use to have a more interactive discussion about the issues I write about), guest posting for another blog (usually reprints of something I’ve already published), writing for a friend’s (indie) publication, or republishing something I’ve already written to a major news outlet that gets a lot of traffic (such as, well, The Punch).
But usually these pieces involve far less research and effort than pieces I am paid for, and my blog aside, I always prioritise paid writing over unpaid writing.
I’d also be willing to do it if there was something I really wanted to write about and no paying outlet would take it, but to date, this has not happened.
I recognise the sitution is different for writers who don’t have a publishing record already under their belt, but I still stand by my advice. Good writing, reporting and analysis takes time and commitment to produce, and it deserves to be paid for - especially if someone’s making money off it.
Link posted at 10:54
06/08/2009
On the internet, everyone knows you're a pinko, leftie feminist.
A couple of years ago, at a “meet and greet” type meeting with a publication that will remain nameless, I was asked if I kept a blog.
“No,” I told them (at least, not a public one at the time). I didn’t want to cannibalise my own story ideas, I said, and I didn’t want to put poorly thought out ideas into the ether that might later come back to bite me on the arse. The editors nodded, and declared my thoughts quite sensible.
Three months later I set up my Tumblr account, and began to tentatively dip my toe into the waters of public blogging. It’s been an “experimental” process that has evolved over time (and has continued to evolve), but these days I’m mostly unconcerned with my old fears. Most of the things I write here wouldn’t work particularly well as paid articles, and if you want to make a vocation out of writing, well, for the most case it’s more a matter of the more honest the better. I would probably be a better writer if I were more open, but, you know, I have boundaries.
But you know what’s awkward about having so much on the public record? It means that everyone - including the people I would normally feign neutrality with, for the sake of smooth social interaction (friends’ parents, some workmates, anyone you just don’t feel like entering into an argument with - I suppose anyone who tends to play it neutral with me in social interactions) - already knows what you think. Or they do if they care to read your work, at least. And a lot of the people I’m talking about here do.
You can still feign it, of course, smile and play middle of the road and polite, but they know that beneath it all you’re a “wanker, diet coke leftie” who’s doing her PhD on the social construction of sexual norms and ideals (pervert!) and has weirdly dry and inappropriate sense of humour. Or that you’re a raging pro-life conservative who was devo’d when Obama was elected US prez, for that matter.
This is a different type of privacy to the one we usually talk about and, to be honest, it probably relates far more to my paid work than to this here blog or even Facebook, both of which have a much smaller audience than the former. It’s about an anonymity not of name, physical appearance or who you’re connected to, but of how you think and feel. Most of the time, it doesn’t bother me at all - it seems a fair pay-off for doing what I love, and I’m not ashamed of my thoughts or opinions (one of my pet hates is people who are coy about who they vote for).
But the fact of having these thoughts and opinions, and the fact of putting them out there in the public domain, doesn’t mean I want to talk about them 24/7 (only 22/7), or be in constant combat. Sometimes, I just want time out, to keep the peace, or communicate them in more subtle ways.
Does anyone else feel the same way?
ETA: And while we’re on the subject of pinko, leftie feminists, check out the Fifteenth Down Under Feminists Carnival.
Text posted at 09:00
04/08/2009
It's interesting to observe the difference in the public reaction to the Kyle and Jackie O case vs Matthew Johns...
A couple of months ago, when the Matthew Johns/Clare/gang rape/group sex scandal was all over the media, I wondered what circumstances would be required for the general public to give a rape victim the benefit of the doubt.
In Kyle and Jackie O, it seems, we have our answer. The Australian public has, quite rightly, responded with disgust to the breakfast radio duo’s on-air questioning of a 14-year-old girl about her sex life, a questioning which culminated with the revelation that she’d been raped when she was 12.
Like Johns before them, Kyle and Jackie O have been stood down from their roles (temporarily, at least). But unlike the Johns case, this time everyone is on the victim’s side.
Now, as some of the people I’ve spoken about this to have pointed out, these are quite different cases. In one we’re talking about a girl in her early teens, who was questioned about her sexual history on a high rating radio program by an unsympathetic mother who knew she’d been raped. In another, we’re talking about a woman in her twenties who spoke out about her experience at the hands of a popular football and television star in her late teens, seven years after the event (she also spoke out about it at the time - to both the media and the police - but no one listened and most people don’t know that).
Matthew Johns and his Cronullla teammates were accused of sexual assault; Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson were accused of being insensitive, exploitative dickwards. Matthew Johns was quite - his support groups suggest very - well liked; Kyle Sandilands is pretty widely despised. We have audio evidence of Kyle and Jackie’s offence; for the Cronulla players, it’s essentially one person’s word against another’s.
But those factors aside, I think the public reaction to the two incidents reveals a lot about our treatment of rape survivors, and who is and is not permitted to wear the mantle. Most people are sympathetic to rape survivors in the abstract (or at least, I hope they are!), but the proportion of people who implicitly trust the victim seems to go way down whenever we begin to deal with specifics.
In these two cases, part of the discrepancy comes from who’s delivering the message. The girl on the Kyle and Jackie O show was a child, was presumably a virgin at the time, and was cajoled by her mother and a pair of media celebrities to talk about it on one of the most popular radio programs in the country. It’s almost impossible to shame her. Would we have seen the same response if she was five years older, if she wasn’t a virgin, if her rapist wasn’t an anonymous figure but someone she already knew.
Why is it that the only sexual assault victims we, as a public, trust are those who have been most obviously, black and white, wronged? The virgins, the children, the young women attacked by strangers while jogging at night.
Sydney Morning Herald writer Lisa Pryor touched on the “gray rape” issue in a recent column, responding to a South Australian judge’s comments that a man who “continued sexual activity with a woman after she passed out drunk” had committed only “technical rape”.
“I would put this offence at the lower end of the scale because the sex act began as a consensual one before the victim passed out and became incapable of consenting,” he said.
“To mark this man with the grave offence of rape for the rest of his days will stop him travelling to some countries and prevent him getting jobs.”
Lisa argued that “ghastly as it is for the victims”, some rapes were worse than others; and “[that] the public clamour for higher sentences for certain types of crimes - higher for gang rapes compared to other rapes, higher for murders of police officers compared to other murders - also suggests the public recognises the need for nuanced sentencing.”
I understand what she’s getting at, but it deeply disturbs me that, as a society, we seem to consider any rape bar the most brutal as “gray” or ambiguous. For woman to be “rapable” she has to be considered capable of inspiring lust (think the treatment of Diane Brimble by her attackers), and simultaneously lacking in desire herself. As soon even the possibility of desire enters the equation - if she was on a date, if he was famous, if she was drunk or wore a low-cut top or had engaged in casual sex before - we cast doubt upon her claims.
It’s great that the Australian public has so clearly communicated that Kyle and Jackie’s behaviour is unacceptable. But it’s a shame we can only muster that empathy for the most uncontroversial of victims.
Text posted at 09:00
