2012-06-21 12:24![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineToday's Sinfest pisses me off, and, more to the point, the reverberating echoes of laudatory comments of it piss me off, too.
"Why?" you might wonder (or you might not; that's fine, but, really, you're in for a boring life if you don't ask that question occasionally).
Do I harbor some kind of deep-seated distaste for women, or their right to express their desires?
No.
Do I think that men shouldn't respect women's boundaries?
No again.
Do I think that the color should be spelled with an "a" and not an "e"?
A third time, no.
Rather, my ire is drawn, two-fold, by both what is stated directly and explicitly in the strip itself, and what it implies by unspoken expression.
There are zero shades of grey here. "No" means "no," and that is black and white.[1] A binary expression is either stop or go, on or off, yes or no. There is no grey. None.
And that's all right; this is a perfectly legitimate, and, frankly, desirable state of affairs in many cases.
But... and this is where the meta steps in and pisses me off...
Leaving this story as "No. The end," strips feminists of agency. It buckets the reader into the author's (both Ishida and Feminist Girl) prescriptive and inflexible definition of what a feminist fantasizes about.
And that, dear reader, is bullshit.
"Feminist" is not a being; it is a descriptor. Using it as a noun instead of an adjective dehumanizes people who identify as feminists. It makes them less than human, incapable of nuance in precisely the same way that yes/no is.
It's reductive to the point of being destructive. And too many people are missing that point in the stampede to laud feminism, even when it's done shoddily.
Yes, laud feminism. Please, for the love of fuck, laud feminism. But also call out those who are against it, actively or passively. And, moreover, call out those who are doing it poorly. Theoretically, we learn from our mistakes; the artist has made one here.
More subtly, and probably invisibly to the author, is the fact that the "he" in the story only respects "her wish," not her. Maybe I'm being too intensely critical and driving needles into minutae here, but this is the way privilege works, and the way it needs to be fought and driven back - everywhere, all the time, no matter how big or small. Call that shit out, bring attention to all the fractal fuckery, because if the language and inflection doesn't treat the problem, and only addresses the symptoms, it's not going to get better, it's just going to get subtler.
To make a gross (in both senses of the word) analogy: if you smack a cockroach with a roll of duct tape, it will make a very impressive splatter[2]. Yes, you've killed the cockroach, but there's now a whole bunch of additional mess to clean up... and, while that mess isn't actively spreading, if you don't get it all, it will draw other unsavory things that might not otherwise have shown up.
I could probably go off on another couple paragraphs' worth of diatribe on the header's byline; it's possible that Ishida is using it to empower Feminist Girl's character (that is, the one in the story being written in the strip); but it's just as possible that it's damning Feminist Girl herself to a cage of her own making.
Feminism is nuanced around the edges, because, much like Soylent Green, it's people. It's not a white circle on a black background. Look at the edges of a spotlight shining on a deeply shadowed thing sometime; there are actual shades of grey.
So, please stop giving Tatsuya Ishida (and everyone else [see also: previous rant vis a vis a certain Joseph Whedon]) feminist cookies when he fucks up like this. He won't learn. People who read his strip won't learn. Encourage him to get better, because right now, he has all the nuance and delicacy of someone doing a paint-by-numbers with a bucket duct-taped to his ass.
Even if the paint happens to be grey.
[1] Of course, the D/s folks have a lovely spin on this: "'No' means 'yes'. '$Safeword' means 'no'." (Yes, kinky people, I'm aware that you might have multiple safwords, for things like "slow down" or "stop" or "JESUS CHRIST IT'S A HARD LIMIT GET OUT OF THE CAR.")
[2] I speak from experience. You would not believe how juicy those fucking things are if you catch them on a hard surface with a firm object with a fair bit of force.
"Why?" you might wonder (or you might not; that's fine, but, really, you're in for a boring life if you don't ask that question occasionally).
Do I harbor some kind of deep-seated distaste for women, or their right to express their desires?
No.
Do I think that men shouldn't respect women's boundaries?
No again.
Do I think that the color should be spelled with an "a" and not an "e"?
A third time, no.
Rather, my ire is drawn, two-fold, by both what is stated directly and explicitly in the strip itself, and what it implies by unspoken expression.
There are zero shades of grey here. "No" means "no," and that is black and white.[1] A binary expression is either stop or go, on or off, yes or no. There is no grey. None.
And that's all right; this is a perfectly legitimate, and, frankly, desirable state of affairs in many cases.
But... and this is where the meta steps in and pisses me off...
Leaving this story as "No. The end," strips feminists of agency. It buckets the reader into the author's (both Ishida and Feminist Girl) prescriptive and inflexible definition of what a feminist fantasizes about.
And that, dear reader, is bullshit.
"Feminist" is not a being; it is a descriptor. Using it as a noun instead of an adjective dehumanizes people who identify as feminists. It makes them less than human, incapable of nuance in precisely the same way that yes/no is.
It's reductive to the point of being destructive. And too many people are missing that point in the stampede to laud feminism, even when it's done shoddily.
Yes, laud feminism. Please, for the love of fuck, laud feminism. But also call out those who are against it, actively or passively. And, moreover, call out those who are doing it poorly. Theoretically, we learn from our mistakes; the artist has made one here.
More subtly, and probably invisibly to the author, is the fact that the "he" in the story only respects "her wish," not her. Maybe I'm being too intensely critical and driving needles into minutae here, but this is the way privilege works, and the way it needs to be fought and driven back - everywhere, all the time, no matter how big or small. Call that shit out, bring attention to all the fractal fuckery, because if the language and inflection doesn't treat the problem, and only addresses the symptoms, it's not going to get better, it's just going to get subtler.
To make a gross (in both senses of the word) analogy: if you smack a cockroach with a roll of duct tape, it will make a very impressive splatter[2]. Yes, you've killed the cockroach, but there's now a whole bunch of additional mess to clean up... and, while that mess isn't actively spreading, if you don't get it all, it will draw other unsavory things that might not otherwise have shown up.
I could probably go off on another couple paragraphs' worth of diatribe on the header's byline; it's possible that Ishida is using it to empower Feminist Girl's character (that is, the one in the story being written in the strip); but it's just as possible that it's damning Feminist Girl herself to a cage of her own making.
Feminism is nuanced around the edges, because, much like Soylent Green, it's people. It's not a white circle on a black background. Look at the edges of a spotlight shining on a deeply shadowed thing sometime; there are actual shades of grey.
So, please stop giving Tatsuya Ishida (and everyone else [see also: previous rant vis a vis a certain Joseph Whedon]) feminist cookies when he fucks up like this. He won't learn. People who read his strip won't learn. Encourage him to get better, because right now, he has all the nuance and delicacy of someone doing a paint-by-numbers with a bucket duct-taped to his ass.
Even if the paint happens to be grey.
[1] Of course, the D/s folks have a lovely spin on this: "'No' means 'yes'. '$Safeword' means 'no'." (Yes, kinky people, I'm aware that you might have multiple safwords, for things like "slow down" or "stop" or "JESUS CHRIST IT'S A HARD LIMIT GET OUT OF THE CAR.")
[2] I speak from experience. You would not believe how juicy those fucking things are if you catch them on a hard surface with a firm object with a fair bit of force.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Oh, Rafe, I love and miss you. Because really, spewing cottage cheese all over my keyboard because I'm laughing too hard is an event that needs to happen more often.
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(i don't care how healthy it is; that stuff, avocadoes, and greek yogurt are on my DO NOT WANT, EVER list)
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[1] actually, that's not true, I usually come with a gasp, grunt, or growl (I'm not usually paying attention at the time)
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stupid carb cravings. ONE packet of goddamned veggie garden wheat thins made me feel like a frigging whale (tasty carb and sodium bloat, plus whatever other stuff is in 'em), but the mouth was SO HAPPY to eat them.
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tomatoes are the same way, except turned into salsa. but even guacamole is irredeemable spackle to my palate.
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Instead, here is a vaguely boob-looking cropped photograph of a giant bronze eyeball.
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(Salsa is good though.)
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So, eff this strip.
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My poorly-verbalized reaction was "Well, that'd be a nice first step, sure, but... What if she wants to say something besides 'no'?"
There's a troubling pattern in which women are cast in the role of moral guardians who set limits for the poor men who can't set boundaries for themselves (because OMG testosterone and rape modules!), in which women don't seek to do or pursue or acquire things, just struggle to preserve their own purity, in which women have fears and responsibilities but no desires or agency, and a "feminist" fantasy that begins and ends with "Men should respect the boundaries set by women" does nothing to question that pattern.
It's like saying "You should never drive above the speed limit if there's a police car visible." It doesn't tell you how to be a safer driver, or respect the right-of-way of other cars; it just tells you there are people whose job it is to punish you for breaking this one particular law, so you should avoid breaking that particular law where they can see you. It's very practical advice, but its assumptions and omissions outweigh its practical value once it's framed as "What all police officers really want" rather than "Times it is really stupid to speed no matter how big a hurry you're in."
The analogy might seem a little harsh, but I find it very accurate. The assumptions and implications here are:
* Women have a right to say no. (Yeah, with you so far.)
* People -- no, sorry, men, since "he" is specified -- should respect the wishes of a woman who says no. (Amen and preaching to the choir.)
* Feminists just want men to respect the wishes of a woman who has said no. (Well, but that's not all of it, just a first step out of a very nasty aspect of our current culture...)
* Once men accept that women can, will, and should set boundaries around men's advances (sexual? romantic? financial? Nothing is specified, only implied) and men must observe those boundaries, the feminist dream will be achieved and we can all be happy. (No, wait, what? No equal pay? No representation in federal policy decisions that affect women first and foremost? No relief from being bombarded with media insistence that women are cock-receptacles whose primary job is to spend lots of time and money to look extra-fuckable while setting those boundaries with the sole aim of preserving their virtue for a future husband? No end to slut-shaming for women who make the first move? No comment on the go-to insult to men being comparing them to women?)
And thus, by omission:
* Women have only a limited right to say "yes" or "please" or "How about you and your cute friend?" because that's the current default that goes utterly unchallenged here.
* Women have an obligation to say "no" (in the absence of a supported right to say anything else) and men have a right/obligation to go ahead and ask, because you never know what she might say! (Except that there are still social penalties for anything but "no".)
* If men would just stop raping women, all the rest of this stuff about not being paid as much as men and men usurping the right to tell us what's best for our bodies and consciences and talking over us in conversations and defining us in everything from casual conversations to big-budget entertainment by our relationship to the nearest man would simply dry up and blow away because all this inequality women perceive is just a reaction to our understandable 24/7 fear of being raped.
That last point is particularly pernicious, because many women do live with that fear, and arrange their lives around it to some degree. Nobody wants to be the person who says, "Nah, rape is totally okay, and teaching men to hear and respect a woman's 'no' is pointless." But that will be the convenient straw man to defeat anyone saying "this is not enough".
"Hey, we got men to stop raping women. What more could you hysterical harpies possibly want? Sandwich and/or blow job now!"
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So, I'll just say that the message I got from the strip (in part because of the greyness of it) is that it's really fucking depressing that we still haven't got to the point where a woman can say 'no' and know that a man will listen to her.
No Means No formed 32 fucking years ago. We should be so far past this shit.
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Regarding your original post,
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::clutching pearls::
pfffffffffft.
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Ishida is, it seems, *afraid* of feminism, because it's this big new scary thing, and he's trying to eat the elephant while still going HOLY SHIT GUYS IT'S AN ENDANGERED SPECIES AND I'M ALLERGIC TO PEANUTS. So he treats it with kid gloves, albeit kid's *boxing* gloves, and wields it like that kid in Sword In The Stone when he first pulled Excalibur out, and it was way too big, heavy, and unwieldy for him to handle, despite it being a force for good.
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It began life as Twilight fan fiction, and, as best as I can tell, didn't really raise any bars.
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