Kung Fu Hastle?

I went to see this film, Kung Fu Hustle, on Tuesday night with my bofriend. During the film I became increasingly uncomfortable with it, even though it was a very funny, visually clever and really quite witty film. Afterwards I said this to the bf, and he seemed quite dissapointed that I hadn't enjoyed it. With retrospect I did enjoy the the film, I do however have some problems with it.

Within the first 20 minutes we see a woman begging for her life, and being told by the head of a so called gang that he didn't kill women, only to shoot her in the back as she ran away. Not a good start in it's self, but what was even more alarming was that that scene seemed to get the biggest laugh of the whole film. Throughout the rest of the film we see women in characteristic weak-pretty-in-need-of-protection or fat-old-can-look-after-herself gender roles. The men, are stong and skilled, and slightly more nuanced. Why do many films continue to produce the same old tired stereotypes of women; either weak, demure and in needing of a strong man to protect them, or if they are credited with any strength or expertise they have to be old, fat and abusive (which in my mind she was niether, but was contunally refered to as fat by other characters). Maybe if we stopped feeding people these roles, they might start to imagine themselves outside of them.

I'm not a fan of overly violent films and wouldn't normally choose to see one. This one was visually very clever and a piss take of the genre and formula as a whole, and I enjoyed it for that cleverness. It mixes skilled performances of Kung Fu with excessive amount of Tom and Jerryu cartoon violence and minimal plot giving it a feel not unreminicent of porn without the sex. It is slightly alarming that the largest laughs (from the rest of the cineama) produced by the film unfailingly came with escalation of the cartoonish violemce as people were pounded, axed and mushed, and not from some of the more subtle clever moments. I know this film deliberately plays on these stereotypes top produce the comedic effect, and it is in fact a parody of the whole genre. The fact that the characters are so neatly slotted intyo gender roles is part of the joke. My problem is that do the majority of people who see this film get it?

Consumer culture: some notes on product placement.

Has any one else noticed, and been alarmed by the amount of stuff people buy these days, most of it pretty useless and purely for novelty value. In Britain we work the longest hours in Europe, we have little leisure time and what we do have we spend in the shops getting hot, bothered and frustrated while we cue for hours gripping the next must have item between our sweaty fingers. We don’t live lifestyles anymore, we consume them. We buy more and more, and as I say this I know that I am in no way innocent of this and actually quite complicit in the phenomena. I have clothes in my wardrobe I will never wear, books on my shelf that make me look quite intelligent, but somehow I have never found the time to read. My boyfriend is a lecturer in University and he feels that the same feeling has come to surround students as the study for their degrees. Quite regularly people will tell him that they don’t want to do this or that because it’s too hard, shy of anything too challenging and far more interested in consuming large quantities of alcohol in the student union. Here at Mind the Gap head quarters we are just entering our second year of trying to whip up interest in a feminist group and have found lots of interested people. However, quite a few of those interested people don’t actually want to do anything. They are quite happy to sign their name to a group but don’t want to put any effort in when it comes to actually getting the thing of the ground. People have come to consume groups and education like they consume chocolate and new clothes.

So what has this got to do with feminism? Well actually quite a lot. Increasingly the pressure is on how you look, not who you are. Women especially (although the tide is turning for men too) are required to keep up with fashions, wear make up, shave their legs (has anyone else seen and been disturbed by those horrible veet wax virgins advert by the way?), wax their pubic hair, have a sun tan, own the right hand bag and the right shoes. Looking right is a time consuming and costly business, while women ‘invest’ in their appearance, men are investing in their careers. In 2002 54 billion euros were spent on cosmetics. Just imagine if all that money, time and effort had been redirected into some thing else. Why is it that in the first quarter of this year, 21,900 women started up their own business, as compared to 78,600 men?

"Women constitute half the worlds population, perform nearly two thirds of the world's work, receive one tenth of the world's income and own less than one hundredth of the worlds wealth."- UN decade of women 1975-85 findings.

The goal in life seems to have become owning the best objects, leaving a large proportion of the population running to keep up. We all dream of having a better quality of life, but that quality has been redefined in terms of conspicuous consumption. “My life would be perfect, I would be happy if I just had…” Every single day, 30,000 children are dying as a result of extreme poverty in Africa, and yet some how we find 54 billion pound to spend on make up. Why are we all doing this? When you come down to it, what’s really important? Car? House? New breasts? New face? Or is it more than that? Is it a satisfying career, good friendships, strong families and tender lovers, all of which cannot be bought on the high street? I have a challenge for any one willing to take it up. Try spending just £10 less a week on your appearance and on the next best thing purchases. Spend just 10 minutes less a day on your appearance, and with that time and money try writing, drawing, meditating, have an extra ten minutes of quite contemplation in the bath, join a feminist discussion group, plant a tree, sponsor a child’s education in the third world, what ever works for you. Just try it out for a month you never know, you might learn a little more about yourself, and possibly make the world just a little bit better for everyone else too.

Dead Men Don't Rape (part 2): Song lyrics

I came across this song while searching google for the source of the phrase. It's by a riot grrrl band called Seven Year Bitch.

I don't know if my grafitti artist got it from this song, or if the phrase predates the band. I suspect so because apparently Andrea Dworkin had the slogan posted above her desk. In the context of a riot grrrl lyric I can be sympathetic. After all, Riot Grrrl is supposed to be extremely challenging and "in your face" and I can see the point they're trying to make. It's an angry response to victimization as well as rape. But obviously I don't think fighting violence with violence is really the solution, and I still think the phrase, when taken out of context, will not work to challenge anything really.


Dead Men Don't Rape
You ain't got the right tellin' me I'm uptight
And I'm not obligated to give in 'cuz you're frustrated
No, my revenge is death, 'cuz you deserve the best
And I'm not turned on by your masculinity
Dead men don't rape

I don't have pity not a single tear
For those who get joy from a woman's fear
I'd rather get a gun and just blow you away
Then you'll learn first hand
Dead men don't rape

You're getting sucked into society's sickest
Don't go out alone you might get raped
But not by a dead man 'cuz
Dead men don't rape
You ain't got the right tellin' me I'm uptight
Dead men don't rape

- Seven Year Bitch

Dead Men Don't : Some Trouble with Feminist Graffiti

The other day, a friend of mine told me she’d noticed some feminist graffiti as she walked into university. Two texts have been painted in large purple letters on a wall near where she lives. The first reads “FUCK PATRIARCHY NOW” and is adorned with the Anarcha Feminism symbol. The second reads “DEAD MEN DON’T RAPE.” My friend expressed some discomfort and told me she didn’t think this kind of thing was very “helpful.” Talking to a few more women about it, I found that they also felt rather uncomfortable and the word “unhelpful” came up again in conversation. The women I spoke to are all self-identified feminists, although not too involved in anarchism or far left aspects of the movement.


"Fuck Patriarchy Now” is not the problem. It’s a classic, and can still raise a laugh, even among those who think it’s a little bit “aggressive.” Mind you, we have to be a bit careful here in Cardiff, where the rather laid back county council cleaners sometimes limit themselves to removing expletives only. Someone I know claims that she returned to her own efforts only to find the wall bearing another legend “PATRIARCHY NOW.” Feminism undermined by street cleaners.

The trouble has its source in the truism “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” Feminism does need to re-ignite its challenging tradition of saying the things that no one else wants to say. This is what radical feminists have always done. And perhaps there is a place for "shock tactics" although as I get older I feel very dubious about this, because I suspect such tactics only work to harden rather than open people's minds. These days I'm inclined to agree with my friends that this is not a particularly constructive text, except perhaps insofar as it provides a point of departure for addressing some of the tensions currently running through so-called thirdwave feminism.

In the first instance, I think the discomfort is symptomatic of wider feminist anxieties about the use of blatantly confrontational and aggressive language, a nervousness born not of cowardice, but from painful awareness of living through an age of backlash. The media has successfully managed to portray feminists as being...well frankly, mad as a bag of snakes. Consequently, some of us feel anxious when faced with representations of feminism which seem to confirm backlash rhetoric. The trouble with “Dead Men Don’t Rape” is the possibility that it already represents feminism for a lot of people.

But anxiety is not the least of it; I think I can detect anger lurking behind the polite word “unhelpful.” Yes, we should admit that it pisses us off when some of us have been struggling for years to undo backlash rhetoric and have worked to re-present feminism to a world which likes to think it’s all over. Moreover, many of us now want men involved in the movement and regard the creation of feminist men as the only way out of this obscenely violent situation in which we are currently living. So the graffiti can actually feel like as much a punch in the face for other feminists as it is for any men who might happen upon it.

I also don’t like the way it seems to invite a reply. It would only take one wag to respond with “Dead Women Don’t Talk,” or something equally horrible. But for me, the trouble really comes down to this question: if I was walking along the street and I saw some graffiti stating, “THE ONLY GOOD FEMINIST IS A DEAD FEMINIST” would I feel inclined to question my attitude to the person who wrote the text? The problem is that this kind of graffiti does not actually shake up people’s perceptions of the world; instead, it quite possibly confirms their anti-feminism. They go home safe, (if a bit threatened), and shored up in their arrogant unquestioning belief that feminism is not even worth knowing about. Then, they throw it back in the faces of women like me as we try to persuade them otherwise. Unhelpful. Perhaps the graffiti writer would tell me that there’s no hope for them anyway, and perhaps she’d be right, but I still believe “non-feminists” should be challenged as much as possible. I don’t think this graffiti achieves that aim. But now the question to consider is what is the best way to shake people out of their complacency?

“DEAD MEN DON’T RAPE” is a close blood relative to that old mythical feminist maxim “ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS,” often attributed to Andrea Dworkin (RIP). Of course, Andrea Dworkin never said any such thing, and the backlash media probably created this phrase [see comments for correction!]. The graffiti seems to confirm the view that this is what feminists actually think – all men are potential or actual rapists. This pisses me off too, because it distracts us from a very nasty reality. Not all men are rapists, but vast numbers of men are complicit in a culture in which rape is used as a kind of gender terrorism. There are so many men, decent enough chaps, who don’t hit their partners or rape women, but nor do they speak out, or stand up against rape, until it happens to someone they care about. “MEN CAN STOP RAPE.” I’m very tempted to buy some spray paint and get busy with that one. Rape terrorism serves patriarchy: it keeps women scared, keeps them off the streets at night, and encourages them to view heterosexual relationships as necessary for their personal protection. This is horribly ironic because women are in far more danger in their own homes than they are on the streets at 3am. Most women are raped by someone they know, usually their partner or ex-partner. One fundamental reason why this graffiti bothers is the fact that rape bothers us, a lot. Raped women in this country still face a system loaded against them in their fight for justice. According to the Guardian in 2002, only 1 in every 13 rapes reported to the police results in a conviction.

What would be the equivalent piece of misogynist graffiti? How about, “Dead feminists don’t… don’t what? Don’t argue, campaign or fight? Dead feminists just don’t, that’s the point. I thought up this alternative graffiti when I read about the murder of Shaima Rezayee, a young Afghan woman gunned down in her own home for pursuing a career in television. I saw a picture of Shamina hosting a music show for young people, observing hijab, but daring to show her face. Worse still, apparently her brothers have been arrested, suggesting a so-called “honour killing.” Do I feel relieved to be living in a country where my brothers are unlikely to burst through the door and blow me away for wearing jeans or talking to men? No, I don’t. Besides, according to Amnesty International 1 in 4 British women will experience domestic violence. Domestic violence is the major cause of death and disability for European women aged 16 – 44. We in the West don’t even try to make “honour” into an excuse for this destruction. When I think about all the women killed and maimed by their own family members around the world, the words painted in crimson on the walls of my mind read “FUCK PATRIARCHY, NOW!”

Ultimately, the unadulterated anger in the phrase “Dead Men Don’t Rape” does shake us up, because it forces us to confront our own anger, yes, with men, with patriarchy, and with other feminists who seem to be doing things wrong, or not in the way we think best. Sometimes I feel I just can’t keep up the required level of anger. I’m 28; I’ve been a feminist since I was 18 and I’m not a naturally aggressive person. I’m a softy, an incorrigible romantic. I love kittens and baby birds and I don’t want to live my life in a state of rage destructive to me and those around me. It was a relief to come across bell hooks talking about love recently: “A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.” But, she continues, “there can be no love without justice” (Feminism is for Everybody 104).

We do need to get less squeamish about anger. On some level I applaud the honesty of the graffiti artist, but anger is not the exclusive property of any one kind of feminist, it belongs to all women living under patriarchy. I am concerned that our anxieties about the backlash have caused some feminists to become embarrassed about anger and reject it in the project of claming not to be "scary". But surely we can differentiate between righteous, just, anger and aggression, or violence. In my view, all feminists need to think again about anger, how to use it, channel it, and manage it in the interests of feminist movement. We also need to address some of the tensions within feminism, especially between those who pursue a highly confrontational approach and those who try to persuade through convincing people of the reasonableness of the feminist view that true equality is necessary for everyone to thrive and live happily together. There are no easy answers and I am not suggesting anyone should compromise herself, but we need to be open to listening to each other and surely there is room both for expressions of anger and carefully constructed arguments. One thing Andrea Dworkin did say was “Remember; resist; do not comply”. On that one I’m with her all the way, but the question for us all to discuss is how to resist. And, although we really don’t like to talk about it in these terms, what is the best kind of rhetoric to get the message out?

Social stereotypes.

This my first post and my first attempt at blogging, so I’m quite excited. I was going to write about men and feminism, or rather feminist men, or pro-feminist men or what ever you want to call them. But when I sat down to write this I realised that to tackle that issue I want to go away and do a little research to do the issue justice. Yesterday I replied to a few comments made in response to our very first post on this site. Brad and Razorblade, I’m sorry if I caused any offence, which was not my intention. But the exchange did get me thinking about a subject that I have been researching for the last couple of months in a more applied way. On that note, I’ve decided to talk about something I already know a little about, the use of social stereotypes.

I’ve always thought it was helpful to define these things so, when I say stereotype I mean a widely shared set of beliefs about a group of people which are generally over simplistic, over generalised and often negative. People, all people, form stereotypes as they pass through life, by soaking up information in the environment and making associations in their grey matter between objects, people, events feelings and the information provided by other people (Bare with me there will be a point to all this I promise). As this process begins very early on in life, complex webs of associations are formed, and these associations are rarely under conscious control. People, faced with so much information, and in the process of trying to make sense of the world find it particularly useful to slot people, like objects or animals, into categories. As people experience the same characteristics in connection with another certain types of people over and over in life, be it in person or via the media, they become automatically linked in the complex webs of information in brain. When people experience other people in the world, the rest of the things associates with that person or type of person become activated in the brain like a constellation of stars shining in the night sky. The more a person experiences the same characteristics as applied to the same group of people, the stronger the links in the web become. This works in the opposite direction, so the more experiences have with groups of people that do not fit into their preset ideas, the weaker those links become. (At least according to current theory)

This is where it gets interesting. The activation of stereotypes is automatic, and although the content of those stereotypes differs from person to person depending on their experiences in life, the activation of them happens for everyone. When you see a fat person is your first thought ‘lazy,’ or ‘comfort eater’? When you first hear the word ‘feminist’ is your first thought ‘vegan carpet-munching man-hater’? When you think ‘man’ is your first thought ‘aggressive predatory potential rapist’? Well probably not the later two but the point is that everybody thinks in terms of stereotypes because it is and automatic and easy way to organise our thoughts about the world. Even the least prejudice among our number will make use of this organising system. What is more, it is possible that the associations we have do not represent what we actually believe. If we are constantly bombarded by the media with images that are gross over simplifications, if every time we hear about a black man, it is in connection with gun crime. If all we are told is that thin is good, fat is bad, that women are weak and men are aggressive rapists, it is not unreasonable to at least consider the possibility that the connections within out neural networks will come to represent this, even if it is not what we actually believe.

The question in my mind then, is not how do you stop people using stereotypes? Because, on a very basic level, I don’t think you can. The questions in my mind are how we alter the way people use information available to them from all sources. Does the fact that we have these automatic responses justify their use as a primary source of information when making our way through the world? Or does knowing that we have these automatic responses that are not with in conscious control just make us lazy when we fail to think things through? Does knowing how our brain works on a basic level arm us with defences against using flippant stereotypes and brash generalisations? If we know that our first response to something is possibly automatic, like Pavlov’s dogs salivating to the tone of a bell, does that not give us a responsibility to think carefully about why that response has come to us, and indeed if it is what we actually believe?

One of the aims of Mind the Gap is to challenge stereotypes and critique patriarchy. This does not mean that we are in any way anti men, although we are anti-misogyny. The patriarchal systems in place are detrimental to the majority of people but that is another topic of conversation. Another of our aims is to explore all kinds of feminism, and to get to know the people who support diversity and diverse ways of thinking. We look forwards to all the possible questions and all the possible solutions.

Rx

Gobbing

I wasn't planning to kick this blog off with a rant, but a man spat at me this morning as I was walking into college and this has somewhat affected my mood. There I was, trotting along, very happy to be out in the sun and thinking about some feminist graffiti I heard about the other day, and which I'm going to write about on this blog (it is absolutely beautiful here in Cardiff by the way and I hope you're all equally blessed with sunshine today). Suddenly, a man walking in the opposite direction launched a gobful of spit at me at the exact same moment I walked past him. Fortunately for us both, he missed. It landed just an inch or so away from my bare toes peeping out from my summer sandals. He lumbered off quickly in the opposite direction and I was so surprised I didn't say or do anything. If it had landed on my foot, or my nice clean jeans, things might have been very different because I have a short temper. The first thought which crossed my mind was, "He can't have meant to do that." But of course, I know nobody ever has to spit and, certainly, nobody ever has to spit in the direction of their fellow pedestrians, unless they want to cause some upset. It's quite possible he didn't intend to actually hit me with the saliva, but just to shake me up a bit, mess up my morning by spitting on me symbolically if not literally. Nice.

I'm quite lucky really, I don't get much street harassment from men. A lot of my friends have a worse time. Oddly enough, this seems to have something to do with my short hair, because I used to get a lot of it when I had long flowing locks - long hair appears to signify feminine vulnerability to some men. But the experience did serve to remind me that the summer is really here, for this is the season for insulting women on the street. If there are any men reading this, when you see a woman getting bother from men, at the very least register it as a "bad thing." If you've got the guts, show some solidarity, smile at her with sympathy, or, if you get the chance, say something like "They're bastards, don't let them get to you". Try not to ignore it, because women do not like being harassed by strangers on the street. We don't like being told to "Cheer up cos' it'll never happen" and we definitely don't like receiving comments on the state of our "tits." Most of us experience street harassment as rude and even intimidating. Some women will smile, or even laugh, but this doesn't mean they like it - smiling can be a nervous reaction: smile, look down and hope that it won't get any worse, perhaps they'll leave me alone...or so the logic goes. Sadly smiling often makes it worse and this leads some of us to walk around with a scowling expression avoiding eye contact with men. Street harassment spoils a good day for many women and makes them feel anxious about going out, especially in the more revealing clothes necessitated by lovely weather, so be nice to women out there today. There's nothing wrong with a friendly smile; there is a lot wrong with "Look at the tits on that!"

If you've experienced street harassment, check out the Campaign Against Street Harassment

But I'm not going to let it mess up any more of this beautiful day.

Mair

Girls are Strong