Sad stuff in the headlines yesterday – the idea that preventing bullying is coddling select groups is ridiculous.  Every person – every child – is entitled to safety in public, at school, and at work.  No name calling.  Talk to Jesus about it or something.

Focus on the Family attacks anti-bullying efforts as part of the “gay agenda” [feministing]

For these groups to use “what’s good for the children” as a guise to promote their intolerance only puts kids further at risk of serious harm — and we’re not just talking about hurt feelings; children are dying because of it. So if saving children from killing themselves over hatred that Focus on the Family is trying to protect is a “gay agenda,” then yeah, that’s exactly what this country needs.

The Pro-Bullying Lobby [yes means yes]

Their answer is tactically obvious: they have to try to encourage more homophobia at younger ages. They have to prevent young people from coming out in their early teens, forming their own peer groups and being seen to be happy. They need to use the social structures of teen life to enforce conformity to a heterosexist hegemon. They need to shut up the antibullying activists, and get those bullies back to beating up the queeny boys, the dykey girls, the gender nonconformists; marginalizing them by brutal force in the great public school tradition while the administration looks the other way.

Anti-Bullying Measures Are A Gay Plot, Says Gay-Bullying Org [jezebel]

In an interview with The Denver Post, Candi Cushman of Focus On The Family said, “We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled.”

I think it’s about time for another round of body image links.  It’s always helpful to know that I’m not the only one struggling with self/body acceptance, so I thought I’d pass these along.

Image linked at gimme some feminism!

Struggling With Body Image [fbomb]

I’m not happy with the way I look. I may tell you that I am, but I’m not. I constantly worry if I’m too fat to wear certain clothes, too fat to be desirable, too fat to be beautiful. Who should I turn to for support? My friends? My family?  They feel exactly the same way. All of them, every single person I know says the same thing, that thinness is interchangeable with beauty, that skinny=good and “fat” = bad.

Power and Beauty [feministe]

Because it must be granted that women who fit a certain standard of appearance can sometimes get perks from that. It may be easier for them to find romantic partners. It made the news a while ago that women who were considered attractive tended to earn higher wages. Even if they might be too pretty to work in a bank or a traditionally male, blue collar workplace, you know, worse things could happen to a person than being born into a conventionally attractive female body.

Eminem and Rihanna have stirred up quite the controversy with the video for “Love the Way You Lie.”  I happen to be of the opinion that Eminem’s track record of homicidal misogyny prohibits him from ever doing anything that will redeem him or be seen as feminist in some sort of “edgy” way, but others out there have made an argument for the song portraying mutual abuse in a negative light, thereby being a statement against violent relationships.  You be the judge.

Love the Way You Lie (Feministing Group Chat) [feministing]

I think that you’re right to point out that there is nuance to a violent relationship – and that a depiction of a complicated DV situation shouldn’t be criticized out of hand.  That said, I don’t think this particular video does a good job depicting that complexity, and I worry given the intended audience of the video, that it will be taken at face value.

Love “The Way You Lie”? Maybe [amplify]

Many can’t get past the fact that the song is by Eminem, known for violent and homophobic lyrics… [Y]ou can hardly blame those who aren’t ready to forgive a guy who has threatened in song to murder his ex-wife AND his mother  - why is THIS threat to murder a woman somehow different?

I HATE I Love The Way You Lie [tiger beatdown]

I can’t even believe I have to say this, but a music video about Intimate Partner Violence shouldn’t be sexy. Which this video is, in places. This video is so very close to PROMOTING the thing it is supposed to be preventing. We have Eminem, who is singing about his relationship with his ex-wife. And we have Rihanna, whose only lines seem to be about STAYING in an abusive relationship, not getting the f*** out.

People are still talking about Lisbeth Salander and whether or not she represents feminism, whether or not Stieg Larsson represents feminism, and how to make sense of a series that revolves around rape and violence against women, yet has garnered a feminist following and reputation.  Here are some more articles to keep the discussion going:

Lisbeth Salander, The Girl Who Started A Feminist Franchise [forbes]

Would we be as obsessed with the books and this character if a) Larsson were alive and b) if they were written by a woman? No. I am convinced that if the books had a female author they would be dismissed as “crazy chick” lit and not a political look at violence against women and its repercussions. Larsson was so serious about the issue that the literal translation of the title of his first book is Men Who Hate Women.

The Girl With The Lots of Creepy Disturbing Torture That Pissed Me Off: On Stieg Larsson [tiger beatdown]

I am certainly curious, as I think are many ladies, as to why some men hate women so much; that, I believe, is a question worth exploring. And since ladies have had little success so far in answering it, perhaps it is time for the gentlemen to start doing some of the heavy lifting around here. But here’s a hint, fellows: writing a story about a father-son pair who dismember hundreds of women in a “private torture chamber [contrived] with great care” is not a successful answer to this question.

Lisbeth Salander Is The Cure To Elizabeth Gilbert [jezebel]

…it’s the girl’s hyper-vigilant, emotionally unfulfilling life we’re consumed with, just as we were consumed with Gilbert’s hyper-self-consumed search for emotional fulfillment. Is Salander’s hostile, embattled avenger the responsive ying to Gilbert’s sunny, drifting yang? Are we avoiding some golden mean of literary womanhood, or is the appeal their clumsy extremes?

This post goes out to a special someone out there who suggests that I find better things to do than whine about the misogynistic plot devices in Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 book, American Psycho, and the “toned down” violence against women in it’s 2000 film companion.  Clearly Bret doesn’t hate women or use objectification and violence towards them for attention.  Feminists just don’t get it.

Woman Taunted in Promotion for Bret Easton Ellis’ New Book [adrants]

Bret Easton Ellis fans are now directed to The Devil in You where they can step into the shoes of Clay, a Hollywood producer, as he runs a seedy casting session somewhere in LA. You direct the actress; you tell her what to do. You can encourage her, fill her with booze and drugs, make her dance for you or take things to a whole new level. Although the levels are quite tame. There’s no nudity, no sex, no elicit behavior. Which is too bad because, well, we thought there’d be more from a dude like Ellis.

Bret Easton Ellis Markets Book With Painful Subservient-Woman Game [jezebel]

At the bottom of each screen is the choice to “Let her go.” It’s kind of like “Choose Your Own Adventure” but less entertaining since no actual story emerges — as soon as each segment is done you’re back to the choice screen. When you realize how boring the “game” is and click “Let her go,” you’re taken to a screen that gives you a percentage meant to show how much you have “the devil in you.” You can then send the special meaningful score of exactly how bored you are at work to Twitter or Facebook and promote Ellis’s book to your friends.

I’m still pretty enthralled with Stieg Larsson’s Girl trilogy, and almost through the final book.  Sadly, the second film isn’t going to be shown anywhere near where I live until the end of August, so I’ll probably end up reviewing the final two books before I get to the second film.  In the mean time, there are plenty of other bloggers out there writing some great stuff about the series.

(Beware of spoilers for the first and second books if you haven’t read them yet.)

Why “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” Is So Important [Women Undefined]

Yet what on the surface seems to be an entertaining but purely aesthetic read offering little to no intellectual exercise, there is a gripping examination of gender equality and discrimination in Sweden (by extent Western society). Larsson examines the state of the country’s gender relations and brings to light such issues like violence against women ( often brutal violence) , discrimination against sex workers, gender equity in the workplace, child abuse and molestation, rape, sex trafficking, and the stigmatization of female rape victims worldwide.

Stieg Larsson’s 4th manuscript clouded in mystery [associated press]

“The question about the fourth manuscript is entirely hypothetical,” head of publishing at Norstedts, Eva Gedin, said. “We have never studied this manuscript and therefore don’t know if it exists, how much has been written and if so what shape the manuscript is in.”

The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut [the new yorker]

But where in Sweden were they? There was no way to know, especially if you’d never been to Sweden. A few chapters ago, for example, an unscrupulous agent from Swedish Intelligence had tailed Blomkvist by taking Stora Essingen and Gröndal into Södermalm, and then driving down Hornsgatan and across Bellmansgatan via Brännkyrkagatan, with a final left onto Tavastgatan. Who cared, but there it was, in black-and-white, taking up space. And now Blomkvist was standing in her doorway. Someone might still be following him—but who? There was no real way to be sure even when you found out, because people’s names were so confusingly similar—Gullberg, Sandberg, and Holmberg; Nieminen and Niedermann; and, worst of all, Jonasson, Mårtensson, Torkelsson, Fredriksson, Svensson, Johansson, Svantesson, Fransson, and Paulsson.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I won’t pay to see Eclipse so we’re going to have to wait awhile before I review the most recent installment in the Twilight saga.  However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading about it.  Check out these discussions of the problematic themes of the third film:

Racism in Twilight? [random babble]

All throughout the series we are bombarded w/ an image of beauty as white.  As pale, flawless, sparkling alabaster skin as the image of perfection.  Smeyer’s vampires are all various shades of white, and this is part of their perfect beauty, pallid, nigh transparently pale skin.  It glitters in the sun like diamonds.  It is the epitome of perfect beauty.

Being Native in the Twilight Saga and The Importance of Being Sam and Emily… [random babble]

And knowing the stats of Native women and domestic violence, and knowing that they are shockingly higher than other minority women living in the U.S., devastatingly higher than White women, I wonder how anyone could possibly make this allusion in a book and not see the racist undertones that they had created. How they could not see the triggered memories that they might invoke in some people? Emily’s unquestioning acceptance of Sam’s treatment of her…how it is all OK because he really, really loves her… and how anyone could read this and then accuse me of digging for racist undertones to get upset about.

Twilight, tweens, and abstinence [feministing]

Stephanie Meyer wrote a very thinly disguised book about Mormon dating from a fundamentalist pro-abstinence perspective. Her books normalize gendered violence, present their young female protagonist as unable to think, defend herself, or even be a whole person without a man, and hammer home an abstinence message. And don’t even get me started on the anti-abortion, pro-sexual violence, pro-pedophilia mess that is Breaking Dawn.

I love this stuff.  I hate the films, but I love that they have given us the opportunities to have these discussions.  However, it seems like the Twihards and anti-Twihards are always having separate conversations.  It would be nice to find a way to talk about the problematic themes without simply alienating fans of the film and sending them into defensive mode.  Hmm…

Here are some more recommended articles on dealing with body image concerns:

My Body Is Not Your Fairytale [amplify]

So, dear Unilever, dear NBC, dear Jillian Michaels, dear anyone else who’s ever tried to sell me fictional “health” in order to make me feel like a failure so that I’ll buy more of your crap: Eff you. You can be my fake friend all day and all night, and I’ll still see you for who you really are: the enemy of my strength. And don’t be mistaken: I’m getting stronger every day.

I Used to be a Skinny Person [eat the damn cake]

And you know what’s ridiculous? I don’t even really believe that whole thing about skinniness. I see heavy women all the time and think that they’re gorgeous. And I see women who aren’t skinny all the time and think that they’re gorgeous. But when it comes to myself, I have this impulse to make all the stereotypical corrections. I don’t know why.

Loving My Body—Kinda, Sorta, Sometimes [sexis]

Part of me was hesitant to even broach this topic, because it doesn’t feel very “feminist” to be worried about my weight, and yet I do—worry, obsess, berate myself… There’s a fine line, for me, between generally trying to be in good shape and questioning every bite that goes in my mouth.

The chances of me forking over cash for a ticket to Eclipse is about as likely as me forking over cash to have my eyeballs mauled out of my head by rabid kittens, so don’t expect a review of the film around here until after I can Netflix it in between Ginger Snaps and Buffy (in order to protect me from the crappy mythology and buffer the straight-up misogyny).   However, io9 has a sweet post up on all this Twilight Eclipse stuff, which is full of win.  Here are some highlights:

Why Team Jacob always has to lose in Twilight

Team You Are Not Allowed To Have An Interracial Relationship

Jacob represents humanity, warmth, frank eroticism . . . and an interracial relationship. Though Jacob’s tribal identity has played a part in previous films, it’s in Eclipse that we learn what that means. At one point, Jacob brings Bella to a tribal meeting where one of the pack leaders tells us a story that unfolds in flashback like a cross between Dances With Wolves and Dark Shadows. “When the cold ones came,” he explains, they fought the native wolves. We see a white vampire in European garb slaughtering native wolves. Then when the wolves kill him, his wife comes to their village, destroying everyone in a blaze of fire and imperialist nastiness.

Team You Must Be Controlled By An Older Man Who Hates Sex

Pretty much as soon as they are together, Bella asks Edward if he’ll have sex with her, and tries to get him to take off his clothes. He makes a “yuck” face and refuses, claiming he does want to but that he comes from an era when he would court her and ask her father’s permission to marry her. Then he gets on one knee and proposes, giving her what my great-grandmother would have called a “dinner ring,” a giant, Victorian-style sparkle monstrosity. She says yes, and they hug. Nobody gets laid.

Team Don’t Date The Guy Who Wants Sex As Much As You Do

Rejecting Jacob is a way of rejecting the consummation of her desire. It’s a rejection of the man who finds her unambiguously appealing, and isn’t horrified by his own desires either. (Edward is always insisting that if he had sex with Bella it could kill her.) “Being with me would be as easy as breathing,” Jacob tells Bella. But she doesn’t want to breathe, or even be alive. She wants to remain frozen in unrequited desire, lusting after a man who finds lust disgusting.

Team Choose Not To Choose

Her “choice” of Edward is a foreclosure of so many other choices that go beyond losing a chance to make it with wolf boy. And we’re reminded of this constantly, as if the movie itself wants to alert us to how problematic Bella’s choice really is. Her best human friend gives a speech at graduation that’s about how being young means making lots of bad choices before figuring out who you want to be. Meanwhile, members of the Cullen family explain to Bella how they were dragged into vampirism against their wills, and how horrible it is to lead a life that is so devoid of choice and opportunity and hope.

Flippin’ awesome – it almost makes me feel excited about tearing Eclipse apart, and like maybe it will do it in a more interesting and less stomach turning way than New Moon.  Now go read the whole post. READ IT!!!

I recently read Stieg Larsson’s trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), and am pumped to see the Swedish film.   Expect a review of all three novels and the film in the next week or so.  Until then, here are some other mixed reviews of the film:

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [heroine content]

A lot of screen time that could have been spent showing Salander’s coolness was instead used to show men beating the crap out of her. Whether or not I agree with Salander’s actions as an avenging vigilante, I can’t get past my disagreement with the filmmakers on whether it was necessary to go to these lengths to establish that violence against women is wrong.

Why, oh why, is everything filled with rape? [kills me dead]

What I’m not really understanding is how any of the violence inflicted on her as an adult does anything to flesh out her character… I suppose it could be argued that it ends up empowering Lisbeth since she fights back and doesn’t allow herself to be a victim™ — [spoiler removed] — but I feel like there are probably less exploitive ways of showing that kind of character development.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [women and hollywood]

There has been a lot of debate about whether the film and the books are feminist.  Some argue against it because there is so much graphic violence against women in of them.  There is.  It’s not easy to watch.  The violence against women is one of the most important pieces of the story.  But to me, while the violence is graphic, I never felt that either in the book or the film that it was gratuitous.  And that’s what I usually hate most about violence against women especially in movies.  People put violence against women in just to titillate. The violence in this film drives the story and legend has it that one of the reasons Larsson wrote the book was  to expose this pervasive issue.