Drinking Game Redux: Stanton Biopic on CNN
The day has finally arrived when the trans community groans collectively: Susan Stanton’s CNN myopic is on tonight. Get out the fifth (or your drug of choice) because this one is going to be worse than the usual; previews are clear about that. We’ll get to see Stanton insult crossdressers and other trans people.
Sigh.
Mostly I would like for non-trans community to know that most trans people are nothing like Stanton: they don’t reek of privilege, for starters. White, wealthy trans women who transition later in life have always gotten more than their share of the media spotlight, and that’s unfortunate if only because it skews the picture of who trans people are, what they need, and what kinds of discrimination they deal with. Most cannot afford GRS, much less FFS (facial feminization surgery) or, alternately, phalloplasty & the like. People like Stanton (Chloe Prince, etc.) also make it seem as if every trans person comes from a heterosexual history and not only gets GRS but needs it; in fact, most MTF spectrum people don’t get genital surgery, for various reasons.
So if you’re not trans, please don’t bother someone you know who is tomorrow. If you really want to know more, try a book.
Porn Is Good?
Milton Diamond, who is otherwise best known for being the person who exposed John Money’s failed “experiement” that was the life of David Reimer, has a new article in The Scientists on the cultural, societal value of porn.
Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women. There is no doubt that some people have claimed to suffer adverse effects from exposure to pornography—just look at testimony from women’s shelters, divorce courts and other venues. But there is no evidence it was the cause of the claimed abuse or harm.
I’ve always been a fan – mostly because I grew up in a family where we were born fully dressed, and where no one was going to show me photos of what a vagina actually looked like (which, if you’re a woman, is hard to see for yourself). It can also be a useful instruction manual that’s actually fun to watch.
That said, I know there are plenty of feminists, and non-feminists, who hate porn and will only ever see the side of it that degrades women. I think of it more like comedy – sure, a lot of it’s lousy and mean-spirited and serves no cultural function, but the cultural function it does serve can’t really be fulfilled in any other way.
Read more: Porn: Good for us?
Best Director
Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow for being the first female Best Director, for The Hurt Locker.
& Then, minutes later, it snags Best Picture, too. I suppose I should go see it now.
Learning to Speak Privilege
A few weeks back there was this NYT article about how women need to learn how to speak ‘nanny.”
The whole idea is fucked up in so many ways I can’t even articulate, but let me try: the idea of some women “buying” their freedom as a result of being able to pay other women to take care of their children is screwed up. The cultural differences are screwed up. The fact that most of the women who need to learn to speak nanny are bound to be rich white women – while their nannies are poor brown women – just pisses me off.
Take this paragraph, for instance:
The mother, at times beset by guilt, a touch of intimidation or feelings of her own maternal inadequacy, fails to articulate what she wants from the nanny — and then complains to friends, her spouse or an Internet message board when she doesn’t get it. (The father in many cases steers clear of the whole relationship.)
Wow, right? That little parenthetical is about as huge as Mrs. Ramsey’s death in To the Lighthouse, no? Yes, the father steers clear of it all. Now there’s your article, NYT!
Wiki Win
A sociology student put a fake quote into the Wiki entry for French composer Maurice Jarre nearly immediatley after he died, and the quote got picked up all over the place by journalists writing Jarre’s obituary:
“The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source,” said the readers’ editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.
Superbowl Round-Up, Gender Studies Style
First, clever Twitter responses to the ridiculous amount of sexism in this year’s Superbowl commercials. One of my favorites:
Posted By: denverlen (February 8, 2010 at 5:19 PM)
This was my fav tweet of the night. Saw a couple of others that were similar as well.
mrbilldempsey: Advertising works. Buying some misogyny first thing tomorrow.
(thanks to Erica for that one)
Weird Superbowl Ad indulges in outworn femme stereotype of a gay couple, but as an Advocate reader points out, in an oddly inclusive sort of way.
An hour of Superbowl watching with Gloria Steinem & Shelby Knox (okay, even I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t).
& As if to summarize, my friend Matty Wegehaupt wrote:
If there is any better evidence than the Super Bowl ads that popular American masculinity is in the throes of a pathetic death spiral, I haven’t seen it. The irony is that even while attacking women as withering harpies, the ads portray the men themselves as even more pathetic: illiterate boors who grunt defiantly at an “unfair” world, yearning for the nourishing respite of crap beer, fast cars, and fake boobs.
Geaux men! Honestly, I find the stereotypes of men in mainstream media horribly offensive – at least as offensive as those idiotic, sexist GoDaddy ads, which is one of the reasons I’ve been very surprised by how well Men of a Certain Age is written, and acted.
What Damfinos Do Know
The other night on Olbermann, I caught the tail end of him telling a story about Buster Keaton – except that I didn’t hear the beginning. Luckily, I found the transcript:
First, on this date in 1895 was born actor Nigel Bruce famed as Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone‘s Sherlock Holmes. But it was on the set of the movie “Limelight” that Bruce and co-start Norman Lloyd got to watch unmatched film history. As star and director Charlie Chaplin filmed himself in a complicated bit of business, Bruce and Lloyd heard someone whispering “just to your left, Charlie. Your center frame, Charlie.”
Finally Bruce realized it was another co-star, legendary comic Buster Keaton, whispering guidance to Chaplin. My god, Bruce mumbled, we‘re watching Keaton direct Chaplin.
A Damfino (that’s what us Keaton fans are called) can not fail to remind you that Chaplin cut most of Buster’s scenes out of Limelight. Fucker.
Cagney & Lacey Reunited Tonight
For those who were fans: Cagney & Lacey are going to be re-united on that hip spy series Burn Notice tonight; Sharon Gless, who played Cagney, is a regular on the show, on which she plays Michael Weston’s mom.
“GenderQueer in the Midwest” Mini Documentary
I love JAC Stringer. Okay, there, I said it.
& Now you do too.
Check out the other stuff JAC does at www.midwestgenderqueer.com.