Not Anonymous

[Trigger Warning: Frank discussion of rape culture]

It is with a great deal of kismet that I woke up this morning to an image that not only angered me, but haunted me throughout the day.

It wasn't an image of explicit violence.

It wasn't an image of gratuitous sexuality.

It wasn't an image of a war crime, news event or accident.

The image, which you can see under the ( cut )

It is a depiction of a white, thin, photoshopped woman. Her lips are painted red. Her eyes are covered with black silk blind fold, tied with a bow. Her nudity is heavily implied.

As you can see, this is the cover of this week's Newsweek. The cover article written by Katie Roiphe in which, and I quote Newsweek's tumblr:

[she] examines the submissive yet empowered female in Newsweek. “It is perhaps inconvenient for feminism that the erotic imagination does not submit to politics, or even changing demographics,” she writes.

I don't want to talk about the article though.

What interests me is the image and the accompanying quote: "The fantasy life of working women. Why surrender is a feminist dream".

Because that, my friends, is the face of backlash.

The reduction of womanhood and femininity into an unseeing nude waiting to be opened, unaware that she is even being gazed at - and how! When she is on the cover a mass produced weekly magazine that is available both in hard copy and as a e-mag - is a work of terror.

Pure and simple.

Femininity and women's sexuality is reduced, in this image and in that quote, to this:

Availability.

Woman, no matter who, where and how, is reduced to being available to someone else. That someone else will always and forever be a man.

This image implies that consent is not needed, because look, she's ready and willing for anyone to come and take her and open her up.

How can you tell?

She surrendered, because she can't handle her own power.

Shut the front door.

Here's the thing; Femininity and submission have been cultural peas in a pod for who knows how long. Femininity has been considered lesser, due to it's linkage to submission. Submission has always been associated with powerlessness... when attached to women.

When a man submits, well, he's kinky, isn't he, he's relinquishing his power temporarily.

Women, well, our power is the temporary thing.

Because we can't handle it. Beyond it, because secretly, we don't really want it.

That image is just another symptom of rape culture, because woman; no matter her background, race, ethnicity, sexuality, physical ability, mental capacity, nationality or even if she was born female; is nothing but a body which must avail herself to the desire of the men.

The fact is, that image and quote use kink as a way to yank and ridicule women's agency, autonomy and text based culture from under our feet. It reduces our sexual expression, fantasies, desires, choices and culture to something that, once again, avails us to be sexual objects in the patriarchy controlled public sphere.

Thank you, Newsweek, for slapping half the population across the face. Of course, according to you, we're asking for it, eyes closed and mouth at the ready.

[Entry #001]

I had one of the best days I've had in a very long time.

I spent the morning and afternoon with my BFF and a close mate (ACM). Ostensibly the morning was to run errands with out close mate, but really, it was just so much fun for me to spend time with my friends, who know what is going on in my life and with whom I don't have to censor myself.

All three of us went to the mall in order to shop for shoes and pants for ACM. Both BFF and ACM are fat and ACM always has problems finding pants that she really likes.

I think BFF and I were good luck charms because she found a pair of shoes that fit her and two pairs of pants that looked amazing and were comfortable for her.

I was the yak of this expedition, seeing as this shopping mission wasn't a gathering, but a hunt - we had an objective and we zero'd in on it - I schlepped the bags belonging to the fat lady and when I started complaining about being hungry, I was dubbed an honourary fatty just as went for lunch.

Which, you know, yay!

I love spending time with BFF and ACM. Well, BFF is who she is and she's one of those people who is just there for me, no matter what and I'm there for her - it's a mutual thing. And ACM is one of those freakishly clever and insightful people and I kind of melt when she's witty and commits word play - so carrying her bags was fun.

There's also a kind of "screw you" to the world when a thin girl carries the shopping bags of fat girls, you know? And I enjoy that feeling, so I was totally selfish.

I actually worried my BFF yesterday by not recognising the fact that I was hungry by my hunger pangs, but thinking they were an ache relating to some kind of stomach bug. Yes, I assume any and all stomach aches are actually not benign.

ACM said, "You think like a thin person, but we forgive you," when I related to above to her today.

Yes, well, nobody's perfect.

Happy International Woman's Day.

Now let's get the other 364 days!

Holy shit that was so fucking good!

( Spoilers, okay! )

That's all folks!

Hint: It isn’t a debate.

Trigger Warning: This post is about the narratives of dubious consent, non consent, rape, sexual assault, body autonomy (or lack thereof) in fanfiction and fandom, and what being triggered actually means.

Before I begin to dig into this issue, let me put one thing on the table; the only moral issue about sex between two or more adults is consent. Everything else is a matter of what floats your boat. My kink is not your kink and that’s okay – in fact, it’s great, because in fandom we share and learn and discuss these things to a greater degree of openness and detail that in the “real world”.

So, I read a fic. It is a good fic. It’s not perfect, but very few stories are. Much like life, I must say¹.

It is a really good story, which, right off the bat, places the characters in a scenario known in fanfic as dub-con, a short hand of “dubious consent”.

Let me put something else on the table here. In real life, there is no such thing as “dubious consent”. Dub-con is a narrative device, it is a construct of point of view, we see and read the conflict of the person (say, Hermione of “Harry Potter”) whose autonomy has been breached and we know, along with Hermione, that she actually wants this happen, only she’s not sure about why, or how, or some other thing – she just knows, kind of, that she wants this other person (say Snape) to do what he is doing.

Alternately, we have Snape’s pov, he who breaches the aforementioned autonomy and magically (no pun intended) knows that this fine, that Hermione actually wants it. That this is sexy, even if Hermione says “stop” or “no” or says nothing at all.

I use this example from “Harry Potter”, because this type of narrative is so typical in this pairing it is practically a trope. But it is a narrative found in all genres and happenstances of fic, be it het or slash, hurt/comfort or fluff – it is there and frankly, I despair at having to actually talk about this.

In real life dubious consent can’t happen. It cannot. Not because we don’t often feel conflicted about doing something with another person in bed, or because there wasn’t enough communication and the sex ended up being more enjoyable for one of the partners over the other (or others).
It cannot happen in real life, because the narrative in our heads can’t be shared. We can’t know if our partner is conflicted, or not comfortable, unless they tell us. The opposite, of course, is the same.

Dubious consent alleges that Ianto (for instance) can and would fight against Jack’s advances and actions if he really wanted to, this is the context of Ianto being subordinate to Jack in the hierarchy of the “Torchwood” team and their age (putting it lightly). With that in mind, it is likely that this scenario wouldn’t actually be construed by fic authors as an issue of consent because it is happening between two men, in the case of slash.

Consent isn’t about Steve’s (for instance) physical ability to stop Danny from performing fellatio on him. Consent is about the fact that Danny doesn’t care to ask or wait for Steve to actually say what he feels about the idea of it happening at all.

That is the point. The disregard to one’s choice, one’s comfort and one’s own wants (and needs) when it comes to sex is endemic, because the idea that the onus is on the person whose will and autonomy is being violated is simply not true. In the fic I read, there was a clear description of someone wanting to say “No”, but didn’t get a chance to do so, due to the narrative dictating that the “No” or the “Wait a minute” didn’t count because the sex was just that good. Dubious consent hadn’t even been an option here, because this scenario was constructed in order for the inner conflict of “do I or don’t I want this” to be taken as a token resistance as opposed to assertion of free will.

This particular fic isn’t even the only time in “Hawaii Five-0” fandom that this sort of thing has happened. In the name of sexy, how many times have we read Steve or Danny say “wait” or “stop” and have the other guy say “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you” or “I know what you want/need” and continue to do what they were doing despite the “No”.

And yes, “wait”, “stop” or even non-responsiveness when action is taking place in sex is a big “NO”.

You cannot know why a person says “stop” or “wait” during sex unless you actually stop or wait. Possibly, this person has a cramp, or you’re digging your knee or elbow somewhere uncomfortable or maybe, you are doing something that is making your partner feel distressed and things need to change.

When you assume that Steve or Hermione can physically/magically prevent Danny or Snape from violating them, you are perpetuating rape culture².

When you assume that knowing what a character is feeling or thinking when their free will is being disregarded by their sexual partner makes this disregard okay, and when you then normalize this behaviour in your fic, you are perpetuating rape culture.

And in the case in which there is clear non-consent going on when you assume that by removing the word “rape” from the fic magically fixes the disparity in power dynamics and that the violence perpetrated now isn’t sexual or gendered, you are perpetuating rape culture.

This is doubly so, when you don’t warn that these things actually exist in the fic!

It doesn’t make a difference what your intent was, I doubt authors are actively malicious, but when you have a character (major or minor) that is assaulted, whether “live”, or in a flashback or memory, or discussed, that is still a textual description of sexual and/or gendered violence. The assault, whether explicit violence, psychological coercion or disregard to another’s free will, choice and autonomy, is still written down and as such must be warned for, because the words you use are the same.

The thing is I don’t mind that dub-con exists in fic, as it is a fantasy narrative device and everyone has fantasies they wouldn’t want to actually happen in real life. This is why we have role playing and BDSM and actually talking to your partner(s) when it comes to making fantasies come true. In the name of full disclosure, I read fics that have dub-con, non-con and rape scenarios in them, because I like hurt/comfort and angst – I need to be warned for this, not because I have triggers, but because I need to know that these scenarios are going to be handled with the due respect and sensitivity that they deserve.

The respect and sensitivity should be awarded to the readers who do have triggers.

It is no secret that transformative art fandom (fanfic, fanvid, fanart and more) is made of a majority of women and/or female identified people and a significant amount of gender variant people, LGBT men and women, non-white people, disabled people and other social minorities who are all vulnerable to sexual violence, because our humanity and body autonomy is considered inconsequential.

The notion that a not insignificant part of your readership will have been through a traumatic experience concerning sexual consent, and sexually based and gendered violence, is not out there!

It is not only a courtesy to warn for this in your header, it will save someone from stumbling into a scenario that will make him or her feel less safe in their own lives, because their hobby and their creative community triggered their trauma.

But in the end, what I find distressing is that people do not recognise what they write for what it is, and in slash fiction it is particularly endemic, due to the fact that this happening between two men. Because rape culture dictates that between men consent isn’t an issue. Because rape culture dictates that men never say “no”. Because rape culture dictates that men can stop the coercion by virtue of being “strong” and physically powerful.

Dear readers, this is bullshit.

As a community of vulnerable people who often place characters we love in painful and violent scenarios that happen in real life to real people in a society that considers our trauma to be exaggerated at best and made up at worst, we have to consider the consequences of our actions and take care of each other.

One of the ways we do this is to know what it is we are writing and to warn accordingly.

Footnotes:
1) This post was triggered (no pun intended) by a particular fic and a discussion that followed, but it is not specifically about any one fic. This post is about a trend and a trope that is all too common in H50 fandom and in fandom as a whole, and I am using this fic as a way to exemplify and make clear my points.
Back to text.

2(For a clear and concise definition of what rape culture is I would refer you to Melissa McEwan’s post at Shakesville where she writes:

[…]Rape culture is encouraging male sexual aggression. Rape culture is regarding violence as sexy and sexuality as violent. Rape culture is treating rape as a compliment, as the unbridled passion stirred in a healthy man by a beautiful woman, making irresistible the urge to rip open her bodice or slam her against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, or pull her by her hair, or shove her onto a bed, or any one of a million other images of fight-fucking in movies and television shows and on the covers of romance novels that convey violent urges are inextricably linked with (straight) sexuality.[…]

Back to text.

My whole life it's been thrown in my face.

As an accusation, more than anything. As a way to deflate my arguments, my words and my own feelings.

I'm over sensitive, so I'm looking to be offended.

I'm over sensitive, so I imagined the teasing, it was meant as a compliment.

I'm over sensitive, so the disparaging looks and gazes hurled at me were imagined, in my head, actually want it to happen just so I have something to complain about.

What does it actually mean, to be called out as "over sensitive"?

It has always, always been used as a way to silence me. It has always been a weapon to cut me at the knees and make sure I know my place - silent and weeping in the corner.

And it's not even being aware that the world is shit and that bad things happen due to disparity in power dynamics and gross social injustices.

This has been my life since I was a child.

And now, as an adult, and I swallow the lump in my throat because everything I say is coloured by this prism of sensitivity.

It is flung in my face too often and getting tips by those who silence me how to deal with the silencing is a small comfort - especially when I'm told they feel sorry that I take things so personally.

My over "sensitivity" fuelled rage wants to take a chair and throw it over someone's head, but social programming prevents me from going feral in a house of residence, or, you know at all.

It's just, you know, this week has had a few wins against the patriarchy, what with Israel's rapist (ex-)president going away for seven years and participating in an event protesting the marginalisation of women in Israel due to growing religious extremism, but reading about the news about Penn State in the United States and that getting into an argument about the position of women in public and the symptom of street harassment and how people do not get that this is all connected, it makes me bury my face in my hands and wail inside my head.

Yeah, if I'm sensitive, I fear how numb so many other people in my life are.

Being called over sensitive is equivalent to being called irrelevant. I am too sensitive to judge anything fairly or have an informed opinion about anything because it the speech of an hysterical woman.

I regret to say I left the conversation. I often do. It is difficult for me to handle the assault over my emotions and my perceptions, because when I fight back I will raise my voice and my abrasiveness will overtake and being of small statue and round face, I do not look like an informed and factual feminist woman, but more like an angry teenage girl with a grudge against the world.

My body dictates the perception.

This is how it has always been.

I'll just sit here and swallow the tears that make my eyes shine and my voice catch, because obviously, it is useless to speak for too long about that which has forced me to grow a skin that feels foreign to me.

Goddamn! Life is kicking my ass.

I have been trying to write about Zachary Quinto and his coming out for days now, because the significance of why he came out, i.e. because it was the socially responsible thing to do, is a clear challenge towards other closeted celebrities.

I think anyone who can come out should, but I also understand why you wouldn't or don't. As it is, being out is more a negotiation or a process than anything else and it needs to happen over and over again.

When Quinto came out, in an interview, in which his sexuality was not the focus of the article (i.e. it wasn't about him coming out of the closet), he did it in a way I find myself doing more often than not - matter of fact and casual.

Of course, it never is, matter of fact or casual that is. You can see the person in front of you rearrange every single thought they have on you, no matter how liberal and no matter if the other person is LGBT themselves - I know this, because my thoughts rearrange themselves and reshuffle my expectations regarding this person, who has decided that the cultural assumption of heterosexuality is not something to partake it, or that living your life in which every time you talk about your life you need to make sure you don't "slip".

Regardless as to whether one is celebrity or just a person going through life and interacting with people, when a person comes out, usually, the main reason is for their own benefit.

The fact that it is the responsible and ethically correct thing to do in neither there nor there, because it is also a matter of personal choice and circumstance.

A matter of personal choice and circumstance, which, when you're a celebrity, opens you up to a whole lot of shit just because you're a gay public figure.

I find it personally offensive and disgusting, as a fangirl, as a slasher and yeah, as a gay person, that in the passing weeks, when two men (Sean Maher came out of the closet a few weeks ago), who are first and foremost genre actors, come out I encounter (via Sparkindarkness) this and I quote from his post:

"Oh I would totally slash him!"

"brb writing that slash"

"Yaaay I have a new OTP!"

"I'm shipping him with X now"

"A new ship is born"

.... and so on so on.

Seriously - a life changing extremely powerful and personal moment, a moemnt that requires support and congratulations - and this is what is presented as support? Yay, a new fuckpuppet! Bring on the fetishisation! What does it even say about these people that the minute a gay man comes out that slashing them is their reaction?

I think fantasising about people, celebrities especially, as they constructed to be fantasy fodder, is fair. I think if you're going to be public about it, you show some fucking respect to the persona you're objectifying.
Attached to that persona is an actual person who is doing a job.

Fictional characters are a whole other kettle of fish, but that's not we're talking about, but it does need to be said.

Beyond the basic human decency mentioned above, I find it absolutely abhorrent that people in slash fandom, my cultural home, my intellectual playground, would actually create a meme that diminishes and marginalises gay people:

( The You Know You're Addicted To Slash Meme )

With a very distinct few, all the ideas under the cut are homophobic. The fact that the ideas that aren't homophobic are contextualised in the meme above renders them just as disgusting and infuriating.

Most of the time, when I see criticism of fandom, participatory culture and slash, I read with interest even though I am not the target audience (usually there is a whole lot of misconception and mistakes in talking about fandom - we're not all straight and we're not all women, to start with. Just saying), but the criticisms of appropriation, misogyny and fetishism are ones I do read. I read them with the knowledge that these things happen far too often and are not called on (at all or enough) in fandom.

So let me say it like this; As a gay woman, as a queer fangrrl, as a consumer of slash; reducing gay men (be they real or fictional) to a piece of meat over which one writes their masturbatory fantasies, reduces, diminishes and marginalises me and my sexuality and my culture and every other gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer woman (and man) who chooses to participate in male oriented fandom.

Food for thought, that.

In which everyone becomes straight, because the previous episode was just that gay.

( So many spoilers, oh my god )

Over the past half year or so that I've conscientiously stopped waxing my legs and shaving my underarms, I've struck several conversations regarding why I've stopped removing my body hair.

Some are baffled, some are downright angry, some are admiring (one classmate of mine decided to join the ranks of hairy women, after I told about my experience) and some are simply curious. But the consistent remark, no matter the underlying thought regarding my body - my body and my looks are fair game for criticism and observation.

My decision to grow my body hair is my own. Why? Because it's my body and the way I present it is my own business, and wanting it to look a certain way is also my own business.

The notion that I'm required to present a certain way due to aesthetic convention explicitly suggests that my body is for the consumption of my surrounding, as opposed to me being being a person existing on my own terms in relation to my surroundings.

My self esteem regarding my body has definitely improved since I've stopped thinking about whether I'm presentable in a certain way - wearing shorts with my hair showing, wearing a bathing suit (a bikini no less!) to the pool or the beach with my hairy underarms has been extremely beneficial to upping my self worth.

All the above is to put on the table that while I work hard to be unpack the conditioning I've underwent regarding what is feminine and acceptable on my body, I am still sensitive to direct assault on my body image.

When I was a teenager, my skin was so bad and the acne so deep that they became lesions of my akin and have left scars on my shoulders - being prone to keloids will do that - so at the time my skin was a health hazard so I would go to a cosmetician on a regular basis. This, in addition to drug therapy under medical supervision, that went about to change my body chemistry.

I'm now in my mid-twenties and I hadn't been to a cosmetician in a good number of years, I decided to splurge on a facial in order to celebrate the completion of my degree (I got a haircut as well, pics will be posted asap!).

The litany of strikes the cosmetician assaulted me with when she was committing her sadism over my face was, as follows:
#1 You haven't been to a cosmetician in a long time, haven't you?
#2 You don't take very good care of your skin do you?
#3 You should have those moles removed, it's very dangerous.
#4 You should consider going on drug therapy again. Maybe the Pill?
#5 You should get a hormone check, you have an awful lot of secretions.
#6 You do your eyebrows and moustache yourself don't you? They're awfully long, you should get them waxed and cut.

As someone I ranted to about this said, the beauty industry is built on making us feel ugly, but the workers within the industry don't have to buy into it.

Were it not for the fact that I was doing this for myself and the fact that my own feminism has a broad academic backing with which I can reduce the encounter to a full frontal assault with the Beauty Myth and the judgemental mind set that only other women can have on women, I would have probably gone home and cried.

Cried for the fact that my skin is a health hazard, cried for the fact that I was ugly and that some stranger thought I was hopeless, and, actually disgusting - because the disgust dripped off her.

Once we started talking about her kids did I feel I could I actually lie back and take the pain of having my pores de-clogged without actually wanting to grab the scissors that were lying around the room and stab myself in the eye.

Or stab the cosmetician, it depends.

So here I am, a day later, still obsessing about what a stranger said to me. A stranger, I will most likely, never see again. I can only hope.

My point being, no one has the right to be so invasive about what we do with our bodies and how we present them. Not even so-called "beauty experts". Perhaps, especially not them.

That kind of invasiveness and "up-sale" mentality is part of what makes femininity debased and despised. I like being hairy and femmy. It shouldn't be mutually exclusive and it shouldn't have to make us question our decisions or second guess our self worth.

( Spoilers up to S1E7 You Live or You Die )

This was in lieu of the new "Doctor Who" episode I have yet to see! Tommorow, you'll get my reaction to that. I've already been slightly spoiled, but I'm not sure as to what.