Well that was a weird experience…
About a week ago I left my first comment on Dead Men Don’t Rape. I initially avoided that particular blog because the name offends me (not going into what the implications of the title are, but come on, it’s not hard to parse), but then AntiPrincess linked to it and I thought well, if it makes her think, why not at least give it a chance?
So I browsed around a bit. Most of the entries I just didn’t feel engaged with at all, but there was one that I did, so I actually read it in detail.
It was about contemplating throwing away one’s bras and frilly underwear. Now, this idea has always perplexed me – I am a woman who would never under any circumstances discard my bras. This is nothing to do with the feminist implications of wearing or not wearing lingerie, this is because I have big boobs and I’m a fairly active person. I do some sports, I walk a lot and walk very fast – without a bra the bounce factor would be most uncomfortable. My wearing a bra is not a political statement, it’s a necessity for my own comfort. If that meets with anyone’s disapproval…well, sorry about that, but I’m not that fond of walking around in pain. I guess I’m just funny that way.
I’ve never understood the idea that undergarments are inherently patriarchal. I can see why one might come to the conclusion that frilly, lacy, overtly sexy undergarments are so (not that I necessarily disapprove of those either, but that’s another post), but what about your basic, boring cotton panties? What about the sports bra, which in my opinion is the best thing to happen to athletically inclined women since the invention of the sneaker? Are sports bras Tools of the Patriarchy too? Even though mine kind of look like they were designed by the Army Corps of Engineers and are about as sexy as the average military fortification?
This is one of those things that I just don’t seem to be able to grasp no matter how I try. The idea that bras = oppression does seem to be out there floating around, though. I suspect that my questioning that assumption was part of what got my comment deleted at DMDR place.
Please note – I’m not saying that Bea does not have the right to run her blog and moderate her comments any way she sees fit. She does, and my getting the boot is my own fault for not reading her comments policy thoroughly enough first. I’m not a radfem, I’m more of a socialist feminist, therefore I am not welcome. And I can live with that, even though honestly I question the wisdom of making spaces that exclusive – how are any of us every going to accomplish anything if we don’t talk to each other? But, again, her blog, her rules.
The basic idea still puzzles me, though. Where did the concept that bras are inherently a bad thing come from, and do most of us really think it makes any sense? How many of us actually believe that idea? I’m betting a very small minority – I always thought that the bra burning feminist idea was a stupid stereotype with very little basis in reality, brought to you by the same charming individuals who coined the term “feminazi”. I don’t really know what everyone else thinks, though, so I’m throwing it out to the rest of you. Does anyone have any strong opinions about feminine undergarments and their relation to and/or ability to uphold or undermine patriarchy? Is this something that most people think about/care about, or is it pretty much a non-issue?
For me it’s a non-issue. I just don’t see how my altering my choice of undergarments would by some mystical process lead to the fall of patriarchy. To me the whole idea sounds, well, kind of dumb. But that’s just me.
I’m also interested in how this ties in to that unwritten feminist dress code that people always say doesn’t exist. It does exist, though, which becomes obvious each time any feminist is open about violating it. At this point I wish the people who seem to be really, really concerned with what other women wear would just be honest about it, because the “we’re not telling you what to do BUT…” is getting really old.
And on that note, thinking of a recent discussion at PFs place…why are long skirts OK, when short skirts are not? Skirts on women as a whole conforms to a gendered dress code, so why are some skirts frowned upon while others are OK? Is the guideline that anything that might conceivably be attractive to men is verboten? Because to me that seems to be making things all about the men (again), and I’m not sure why as feminists we would want to do that. What if I don’t like long skirts? What if I always feel like I’m drowning in fabric when I wear one? What if they feel restrictive to me? Are all those things less important than what some random guy on the street might think?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
OK, if we’re going to talk about race…
And hey, look, I get to talk about music too!
Remember those concerts I was babbling about going to a few posts down? Japanese metal/punk/industrial band, Dir en grey, two shows (that I went to – more like 20 shows total), Tempe and San Francisco.
I spotted a pretty clear case of race impacting how people perceive things. During the song Dead Tree (link below if you want to hear it) they were playing an old black and white film on the projection screen at the back of the stage behind the band. The film was footage of the atomic bomb falling on Hiroshima, interspersed with some artsy stuff like falling snow and some footage shot in the city afterwards. All black and white, the newer stuff shot in such a way that you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the older film and the newer stuff unless you knew what you were looking at.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The crowd in Tempe was mostly white kids 12-18. The crowd in San Francisco was much more mixed, both racially and in terms of age. I’d say that 30 percent plus of the San Francisco crowd was Asian
When they played the film in Tempe most people didn’t seem to even notice (too busy staring at Toshiya’s ass and Kyo’s abs, I suspect). The few who did notice mostly seemed confused – there were mutterings of “what’s that on the screen? Wow, that’s kind of creepy”. Then there was the Japanese-American guy standing right in front of me, who looked at the screen and froze. I mean that literally – I had one arm looped around his shoulder, and was leaning on his back. The reaction was kind of hard to miss. I couldn’t see his face, but I could certainly feel the tension in his body. And this from a guy who wasn't still for more than a few seconds for the entire rest of the show.
Meanwhile the rest of the kids were completely oblivious.
Now let’s move to San Francisco. I ended up right in the middle of a crowd of Japanese and Korean American kids, with 2 Japanese girls (as in they actually flew over from Japan for the show) right next to me. When they showed the film to that crowd, the reaction was completely different. Obviously I couldn’t see the whole crowd (I was right at the front, I could barely move), but the people around me? Everyone went quiet and just looked at the screen. Apart from the one white girl in the front row, who was obliviously head-banging. The mood was – pensive, kind of sad, more than a little angry. Which was exactly the reaction the footage was intended to provoke, really – I have to admit that I was looking at head-banging girl and thinking “wow, you sure missed the point”.
So there you have it. The people at both venues were about the same age, all were raised in America, presumably exposed to the same curriculum, and yet one group didn’t even recognize what they were seeing while the other group? Every one of those kids knew what they were watching. What does that say about white America? Do we just not teach kids here about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so that they only know if their parents tell them, or is the privilege so pervasive that it actually limits people’s ability to process what they’re looking at? Or is it just that white kids don’t care because they don’t have to care?
And on another note…damn were the (white, older) security guards at both shows freaked out by the outpouring of teenage hormones directed at the band. I noticed the same phenomenon at the Family Values tour last summer – a bunch of white guys looking disconcerted and more than a little pissed off at the sight of a bunch of white girls gazing in open lust at a group of Japanese men. On all these occasions there were all kinds of hostile, threatened-looking responses from the guys including everything from “don’t see what’s so great about them” muttering to open racism (“But Japanese men are blah blah” – insert standard racist stereotypes) and even a few “huh, I’m gonna beat that guy’s ass, that’ll show him” type comments in Sacramento. Charming. Anyway, it was very clear that a lot of white guys find the prospect of white girls lusting over non-white men a bit perturbing. Not that that’s a surprise, really, but it was interesting. Also interesting in that yep, that’s definitely racism, but it’s a slightly different flavor of racism than that directed at the idea of white women with black men (think the Terrell Owens Towelgate drama). I’m not going to get into the way that white America looks at Asian men (or women) here, because that’s a subject deserving of its own post, but if anyone wants to talk about it in the comments…
So yeah, next person who says that this country isn’t racist and that white privilege doesn’t exist gets smacked in the face with a frying pan.
Links…
Dir en grey – Dead Tree
PS Let's hope the link works, I haven't tried this in Blogger before.
And hey, look, I get to talk about music too!
Remember those concerts I was babbling about going to a few posts down? Japanese metal/punk/industrial band, Dir en grey, two shows (that I went to – more like 20 shows total), Tempe and San Francisco.
I spotted a pretty clear case of race impacting how people perceive things. During the song Dead Tree (link below if you want to hear it) they were playing an old black and white film on the projection screen at the back of the stage behind the band. The film was footage of the atomic bomb falling on Hiroshima, interspersed with some artsy stuff like falling snow and some footage shot in the city afterwards. All black and white, the newer stuff shot in such a way that you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the older film and the newer stuff unless you knew what you were looking at.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The crowd in Tempe was mostly white kids 12-18. The crowd in San Francisco was much more mixed, both racially and in terms of age. I’d say that 30 percent plus of the San Francisco crowd was Asian
When they played the film in Tempe most people didn’t seem to even notice (too busy staring at Toshiya’s ass and Kyo’s abs, I suspect). The few who did notice mostly seemed confused – there were mutterings of “what’s that on the screen? Wow, that’s kind of creepy”. Then there was the Japanese-American guy standing right in front of me, who looked at the screen and froze. I mean that literally – I had one arm looped around his shoulder, and was leaning on his back. The reaction was kind of hard to miss. I couldn’t see his face, but I could certainly feel the tension in his body. And this from a guy who wasn't still for more than a few seconds for the entire rest of the show.
Meanwhile the rest of the kids were completely oblivious.
Now let’s move to San Francisco. I ended up right in the middle of a crowd of Japanese and Korean American kids, with 2 Japanese girls (as in they actually flew over from Japan for the show) right next to me. When they showed the film to that crowd, the reaction was completely different. Obviously I couldn’t see the whole crowd (I was right at the front, I could barely move), but the people around me? Everyone went quiet and just looked at the screen. Apart from the one white girl in the front row, who was obliviously head-banging. The mood was – pensive, kind of sad, more than a little angry. Which was exactly the reaction the footage was intended to provoke, really – I have to admit that I was looking at head-banging girl and thinking “wow, you sure missed the point”.
So there you have it. The people at both venues were about the same age, all were raised in America, presumably exposed to the same curriculum, and yet one group didn’t even recognize what they were seeing while the other group? Every one of those kids knew what they were watching. What does that say about white America? Do we just not teach kids here about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so that they only know if their parents tell them, or is the privilege so pervasive that it actually limits people’s ability to process what they’re looking at? Or is it just that white kids don’t care because they don’t have to care?
And on another note…damn were the (white, older) security guards at both shows freaked out by the outpouring of teenage hormones directed at the band. I noticed the same phenomenon at the Family Values tour last summer – a bunch of white guys looking disconcerted and more than a little pissed off at the sight of a bunch of white girls gazing in open lust at a group of Japanese men. On all these occasions there were all kinds of hostile, threatened-looking responses from the guys including everything from “don’t see what’s so great about them” muttering to open racism (“But Japanese men are blah blah” – insert standard racist stereotypes) and even a few “huh, I’m gonna beat that guy’s ass, that’ll show him” type comments in Sacramento. Charming. Anyway, it was very clear that a lot of white guys find the prospect of white girls lusting over non-white men a bit perturbing. Not that that’s a surprise, really, but it was interesting. Also interesting in that yep, that’s definitely racism, but it’s a slightly different flavor of racism than that directed at the idea of white women with black men (think the Terrell Owens Towelgate drama). I’m not going to get into the way that white America looks at Asian men (or women) here, because that’s a subject deserving of its own post, but if anyone wants to talk about it in the comments…
So yeah, next person who says that this country isn’t racist and that white privilege doesn’t exist gets smacked in the face with a frying pan.
Links…
Dir en grey – Dead Tree
PS Let's hope the link works, I haven't tried this in Blogger before.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Psst! Heart and Chasing Moksha – It’s the Clue Phone, and it’s ringing just for you!
So I’ve been following the Special White Lady debacle for the last few days, mostly quietly, and as amusing as it is to laugh at habitual ignorance of some of the less self-aware members of my own race there are times when one gets the feeling that they simply are not grasping what is being said to them. There they sit like the proverbial deer in the headlights, blinking stupidly, apparently completely unable to grasp why, jeez, everyone seems to be all upset with them! What did little old them do to deserve such meanness? Well, as a public service from one white girl to another, let me clue you both in.
What people are objecting to isn’t just what you’re saying, it’s the tone in which you’re saying it. Now I know that tone can be hard to interpret on the internet, but in both your cases the stench of martyrdom hangs pretty thickly over everything you write. What most people are taking away from your threads is a general sense that you consider yourselves to have made huge, giant sacrifices by marrying black men, and that you feel that those sacrifices entitle you to both praise and frequent pats on the back.
This is where the problem lies. Firstly, the idea that you made a sacrifice by marrying your husband? Pretty icky all around. Not very flattering to him, does not speak well of how much you value him as a person. Doesn’t speak well of you, either, the fact that you appear to consider yourselves above an entire category of human beings.
And there’s the other thing. That idea that you “married down” that permeates everything you write? Pretty racist, honestly. Likely to cause offense in most people of the thinking variety. Guaranteed to push the piss off buttons of most people of color, and for good reason.
And then there’s your whole “I speak for my husband” business, Chasing Moksha. Is the man not capable of speaking for himself? Has it ever occurred to you that your claim to speak for him might be met with just a teensy bit of skepticism from most black people, who are entirely too used to other people claiming to speak for them? Ever heard the term “cultural appropriation”? You’re pretty much the poster child.
And as to the claim that you deeply understand racism just because you’re partnered with a person of color…listen, ladies, my husband is Asian (whoops, better whisper that around CM, we all know how she feels about Asian people). Does my marriage to him give me some kind of magical ability to understand what it feels like to be the victim of racism? Umm, no. Not even a little bit. I can lend him an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on when he needs it, be his sounding board or the person he rants to when he’s pissed, but will I ever really understand what it feels like to walk in his shoes? No. And neither will either of you.
And you know what bothers me, personally, the most about all your self-absorbed little rants? How many times in all of this kerfuffle have either of you ever said that you love the guy you married? OK, after we count those, how many references to your own sacrifices have you made? Put the two side by side…how’s that tally looking? And how does that make your partner/former partner feel, the idea that you value him more as a status symbol than a person?
Me, personally? I made no sacrifices by marrying my husband. He’s a great guy, and I’m lucky to have him. Now if only either of you could pull your heads out of your asses for long enough, maybe you might find yourself looking at your partner the same way…
So I’ve been following the Special White Lady debacle for the last few days, mostly quietly, and as amusing as it is to laugh at habitual ignorance of some of the less self-aware members of my own race there are times when one gets the feeling that they simply are not grasping what is being said to them. There they sit like the proverbial deer in the headlights, blinking stupidly, apparently completely unable to grasp why, jeez, everyone seems to be all upset with them! What did little old them do to deserve such meanness? Well, as a public service from one white girl to another, let me clue you both in.
What people are objecting to isn’t just what you’re saying, it’s the tone in which you’re saying it. Now I know that tone can be hard to interpret on the internet, but in both your cases the stench of martyrdom hangs pretty thickly over everything you write. What most people are taking away from your threads is a general sense that you consider yourselves to have made huge, giant sacrifices by marrying black men, and that you feel that those sacrifices entitle you to both praise and frequent pats on the back.
This is where the problem lies. Firstly, the idea that you made a sacrifice by marrying your husband? Pretty icky all around. Not very flattering to him, does not speak well of how much you value him as a person. Doesn’t speak well of you, either, the fact that you appear to consider yourselves above an entire category of human beings.
And there’s the other thing. That idea that you “married down” that permeates everything you write? Pretty racist, honestly. Likely to cause offense in most people of the thinking variety. Guaranteed to push the piss off buttons of most people of color, and for good reason.
And then there’s your whole “I speak for my husband” business, Chasing Moksha. Is the man not capable of speaking for himself? Has it ever occurred to you that your claim to speak for him might be met with just a teensy bit of skepticism from most black people, who are entirely too used to other people claiming to speak for them? Ever heard the term “cultural appropriation”? You’re pretty much the poster child.
And as to the claim that you deeply understand racism just because you’re partnered with a person of color…listen, ladies, my husband is Asian (whoops, better whisper that around CM, we all know how she feels about Asian people). Does my marriage to him give me some kind of magical ability to understand what it feels like to be the victim of racism? Umm, no. Not even a little bit. I can lend him an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on when he needs it, be his sounding board or the person he rants to when he’s pissed, but will I ever really understand what it feels like to walk in his shoes? No. And neither will either of you.
And you know what bothers me, personally, the most about all your self-absorbed little rants? How many times in all of this kerfuffle have either of you ever said that you love the guy you married? OK, after we count those, how many references to your own sacrifices have you made? Put the two side by side…how’s that tally looking? And how does that make your partner/former partner feel, the idea that you value him more as a status symbol than a person?
Me, personally? I made no sacrifices by marrying my husband. He’s a great guy, and I’m lucky to have him. Now if only either of you could pull your heads out of your asses for long enough, maybe you might find yourself looking at your partner the same way…
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Randomness...I just signed up for MySpace (yeah, way behind on that one, I know). Anyone else around here on there? If so pay me a visit, yeah? I'm still trying to figure out how to use the damn thing...
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=162816456
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=162816456
Friday, March 02, 2007
The elephant in the room, or, what’s missing from the feminist conversation about porn and sex work
Class. Can we talk about that for a minute? I know that America likes to think of itself as a classless society but…um, no. Just because your aristocracy don’t have titles or distinctive accents (and even that last part is debatable) doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
In reality the USA has pretty much the same basic class breakdown as every other society. The percentages in each class level vary a bit from one society to another, but the essential structure remains that same. So, how does this apply to porn?
In my experience the vast majority of the people who do any kind of sex work are working class. I do not mean this as an insult – I’m a socialist, working class is not scornful term to me. What I mean is that I have met many women who do some kind of sex work over the years, and I have yet to meet one who was from any kind of a background that could be described as truly privileged. I’m sure there are a few, mind, but I’ve never met one. A few middle class girls, yes, but no one truly upper crust. No, Paris Hilton does not count just because she made a sex tape. That’s not work, that’s a rich kid having a laugh. I’m talking about people for whom sex work is how they pay the rent.
This fact seems to be completely missing from most of the discussions I’ve ever seen about sex work within the feminist world. Part of that I think is that Americans tend to dominate the conversation, and many Americans are still basking in the illusion that they live in a classless society. Not the case – America right now has about as much social mobility as it did in the 1920s, if not less. Most people end up on the same rung of the ladder they were born on, and most significant wealth is inherited. Social mobility is possible, yes, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.
The other reason is the radfem idea that gender is the most significant of all things in term of how human societies are divided, summed up in the phrase “sex class”. If women are the sex class, and that’s the primary division in society, then why even bother talking about that other kind of class, the one that affects what school you go to and what food you eat and what kind of house you live in and all those other things which impact where you end up in life?
The problem is that those things count. They count a lot, actually, especially when it comes to educational and employment opportunities. Trust me, I’ve spent a good part of my working life in and around America’s elite, and let me tell you right now that they are not interested in hiring, promoting or even socializing with people who are working class. At one company I was the only non Ivy graduate there, and that’s only because I went to university in the UK. Class has a huge impact on what job opportunities are open to a person in this country.
So, back to sex work. It’s mostly done by people who grew up working class. This is important to acknowledge if we’re going to talk about it, so why is class the elephant in the room in this discussion, and why do so many feminists seem to not even notice that the elephant is standing right in front of them?
Let my throw my own story into the ring. I was a pretty privileged kid. Several members of the British royal family went to my boarding school. We also produced the first female Wimbledon champion (pretty upper crust sport, tennis). My high school was as elitist as it gets. I spent my teens in a nice, safe, clean little upper class bubble, and if my Dad hadn’t been stationed in the Third World for most of my childhood I’d probably be as utterly clueless about how the world really works as most of my former classmates still are.
Then I moved to London. I deliberately cut most of my ties with my former classmates, mostly because I wasn’t very happy about living in the bubble. I was bored, and the idea of sealing myself up in yet another bubble (some of my former teachers are probably still fuming that I refused to apply to Oxford) did not appeal to me at all.
When I got to London I began to move in entirely different circles. I’m a music nut, punk, metal and industrial mostly, so that became my peer group, other people who were into the same music. I still somehow managed to end up with a long term boyfriend who was as thoroughly privileged as I was, funnily enough – you can take the kid out of the bubble but you can’t take the bubble out of the kid, I suppose. For the first time I met a lot of people who actually had to work for a living, who couldn’t rely on Dad to pay the rent and bail them out whenever they got into trouble, and that’s when I first started to encounter the sex industry up close and personal.
There was a group of girls who all did sex work of one kind or another. The Italian girl was a stripper, the London native worked as a barker in a strip club and occasional hooker, the girl from the north of England worked as an escort. They didn’t like me very much, given that one of their friends had been dating a guy very much adored within our little scene who dumped her as soon as he met me – ah, the dramas surrounding boys who are in bands that the girls get unwittingly pulled into. Kind of funny in retrospect since his band sucked and he was a lousy lay, but anyway…suffice to say that I was not popular with these girls. One of them once tried to stab me in the throat with a broken beer bottle, again because of the “boyfriend stealing” thing (amusing since he chased me, not the other way around). That was my first impression of people who worked in the sex industry, and it wasn’t a very good one. The Italian girl I actually kind of liked at first, but then the whole guy drama happened and of course we had to be enemies. Teenage logic at it’s finest.
But then there was Noriko. Noriko was a dominatrix. She actually had a day job in a restaurant for visa purposes, a good thing given that her parents had essentially disowned her and would probably have turned her in to immigration if given the chance. She provided the first revelation for me – she didn’t actually have sex with any of her clients. The idea that people would willingly pay just for the domination and humiliation was a little surprising. I actually hung out and watched a couple of her sessions when we first met, because I was curious and she liked having an audience. She was also, and still remains, the sexiest woman I have ever met. Long dyed orangey red hair down to her ass, ripped fishnets, denim short shorts, big motorcycle boots…sexy punk girl at it’s finest. Anyone looking for something on which to blame my abiding interest in Japanese pop culture can blame her. She was also an awesome human being who introduced me to new music and new people, taught me how to cook Japanese mommy food (which I still do), and took care of me like a big sister. I loved her dearly, and still regret losing touch with her when I moved to San Francisco and she moved to Tokyo.
So there you have my introduction to the sex industry. One set of people that I met were, well, hugely fucked up. The London girl and the Italian were both hooked on heroin, and the girl from the north of England drank more than any other person I have ever met. I know that the Italian girl was an abused child, because she sobbed her story out on my shoulder late one night in a club before it was decided by the rest of her group that she and I needed to be enemies. Basically they fit the negative stereotype that most people have of women in the sex industry perfectly.
And then there was Noriko, and the friends who she occasionally worked with. Part of the difference may have been cultural – they were all Japanese, and blessedly free of the weird Christian hang-ups about sex to which the other group were prone (all three of the others were raised Catholic, interestingly enough). They were also all from a rather higher class background and a whole lot more educated. Part of the difference may have been the client base they worked with – mostly Japanese businessmen who were in town regularly for work, a few who were stationed in London more permanently, most of them married to women who for whatever reason they didn’t want to share their interest in all things fetishy with. Pretty much all of the clients were steady and long-term, and all seemed to be vetted by their boss fairly thoroughly.
The first group horrified, frightened and repelled me. The second…I worried about them occasionally, but they all seemed to be smart women who knew what they were doing and none of them seemed to have been coerced or forced by addiction or some other unfortunate circumstance into their profession. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but I was able to acknowledge that it was their choice to make.
I had my own encounters with the industry, too. I met Noriko’s boss a few times, and she kept trying to recruit me to work for her. She seemed to think that I would have been quite the hit with the clientele, and she was probably right – I’m a petite, pretty woman with soft, feminine features and big boobs, not to mention perfect boarding school inculcated manners, plus I’m one of the rare Western women who’s smaller than most Japanese men. I never for a second considered accepting, though, in fact I was rather offended that she even asked, and here’s where the class factor comes in.
Firstly, for most women of my class the very idea of sex work is unthinkable. It’s easy to pretend that that’s a moral reflex, but I don’t think that’s the case. Really I think it’s all about the class. Sex work is something that those other women do, the ones without the perfect manners and the useless but socially valued skills (horseback riding, piano playing, ballroom dancing, fencing, archery – seriously, who really needs to know how to fence?). It’s déclassé. That was what was going through my mind every time Noriko’s boss talked to me. It was most definitely what was behind my instinctively sneering response to the other group. Funny that it took me years to even realize how obvious my sneering must have been, and that that might have been part of the reason why they resented me so much.
There was also this guy who I ran into all the time who was a photographer. I didn’t know exactly what kind of photography he did at first, although I really should have figured it out sooner given how young he was and what an expensive neighborhood he lived in. At one point I was looking for a new place to live because I hated my landlord, and that’s when he made his move. He offered to let me share his apartment cum studio (gorgeous by the way – I had been there once for an after-party) and pay no rent at all. All I would have had to do was one modeling session a month, a couple of hours maybe. I sat there in shock as he laid it out for me – it was soft-core stuff that he did, pretty stuff, no penetration, just pictures of beautiful girls.
I slapped him, threw my drink in his face and stomped off in a huff. The next few months were weird, because I saw the guy around all the time and he kept trying to talk to me but I wasn’t having it, and of course there was Noriko to the rescue with her perfect punk snarl and her big stompy boots (anyone who thinks all Japanese girls are of the shy and cutesy variety is smoking crack – that girl could have kicked the ass of most men I know).
At the time I was hugely offended and frankly horrified that anyone would say such things to me. Nice, well-raised, steady boyfriend having, upper middle class me. It felt like a judgment, as if I had been called slutty, and it upset me.
A few more years of actual life experience and I see things differently. The fact that I don’t look “slutty”, that I look soft and pretty and girly, is precisely why he was interested in me. His mistake was in assuming that because I was hanging out with Noriko I was open to the idea of working in the industry, which I wasn’t. I also see the really important thing that I didn’t see then – it was laughably easy for me to walk away from that offer, because I could always rely on Dad to pay the bills and keep me out of trouble. Not everyone has that option. It was easy for me to stand on my morals and bathe in my offended feminine virtue, because I was also bathing in class privilege. Refusing that offer had no negative impact on my standard of living whatsoever. It wasn’t a difficult choice, it didn’t hurt me – but what about someone less economically fortunate? What about someone like the Italian girl, who was an illegal immigrant who couldn’t get legitimate work and whose family wouldn’t lift a finger to support her? What would the same offer have looked like from her perspective? And how much of my horrified reaction was based precisely on my outrage that anyone could possibly think I might be “someone like her”?
I really think that that’s what’s behind some of the more virulent hatred directed at women who do sex work by other women, even when those women are feminists. There’s a fear of being tainted by association, of being judged. It’s the Good Girls versus the Bad Girls all over again. It’s kind of pathetic, really – you would think that those of us who identify as feminists would be too smart to buy into that kind of thinking, but that does not seem to be the case. What’s going on is othering – “I’m not like her. She’s a slut, I’m not. God forbid that people think I’m like her”.
So, that’s what I think is really going on. The Good Girls versus the Bad Girls. Sex and class. The ways these things intertwine, how important it is to all of us that other people see us the way we see ourselves. We seem to be forgetting the sisterhood part, and that’s a sad thing, because if we other people and refuse to see women as sisters just because we don’t like what they do for a living then what does that say about what kind of people we are? About our capacity for empathy, or compassion? About our ability to accept that other people are always going to make choices different from our own?
There’s a really old British saying, from a folk song. “Rosy O’Grady and the Captain’s lady are sisters under the skin”. We all seem to have forgotten that recently, and I think it’s time we all remembered.
And on a small, personal note…damn I miss Noriko. Wherever she is and whatever she’s doing now, I hope she’s happy.
Class. Can we talk about that for a minute? I know that America likes to think of itself as a classless society but…um, no. Just because your aristocracy don’t have titles or distinctive accents (and even that last part is debatable) doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
In reality the USA has pretty much the same basic class breakdown as every other society. The percentages in each class level vary a bit from one society to another, but the essential structure remains that same. So, how does this apply to porn?
In my experience the vast majority of the people who do any kind of sex work are working class. I do not mean this as an insult – I’m a socialist, working class is not scornful term to me. What I mean is that I have met many women who do some kind of sex work over the years, and I have yet to meet one who was from any kind of a background that could be described as truly privileged. I’m sure there are a few, mind, but I’ve never met one. A few middle class girls, yes, but no one truly upper crust. No, Paris Hilton does not count just because she made a sex tape. That’s not work, that’s a rich kid having a laugh. I’m talking about people for whom sex work is how they pay the rent.
This fact seems to be completely missing from most of the discussions I’ve ever seen about sex work within the feminist world. Part of that I think is that Americans tend to dominate the conversation, and many Americans are still basking in the illusion that they live in a classless society. Not the case – America right now has about as much social mobility as it did in the 1920s, if not less. Most people end up on the same rung of the ladder they were born on, and most significant wealth is inherited. Social mobility is possible, yes, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.
The other reason is the radfem idea that gender is the most significant of all things in term of how human societies are divided, summed up in the phrase “sex class”. If women are the sex class, and that’s the primary division in society, then why even bother talking about that other kind of class, the one that affects what school you go to and what food you eat and what kind of house you live in and all those other things which impact where you end up in life?
The problem is that those things count. They count a lot, actually, especially when it comes to educational and employment opportunities. Trust me, I’ve spent a good part of my working life in and around America’s elite, and let me tell you right now that they are not interested in hiring, promoting or even socializing with people who are working class. At one company I was the only non Ivy graduate there, and that’s only because I went to university in the UK. Class has a huge impact on what job opportunities are open to a person in this country.
So, back to sex work. It’s mostly done by people who grew up working class. This is important to acknowledge if we’re going to talk about it, so why is class the elephant in the room in this discussion, and why do so many feminists seem to not even notice that the elephant is standing right in front of them?
Let my throw my own story into the ring. I was a pretty privileged kid. Several members of the British royal family went to my boarding school. We also produced the first female Wimbledon champion (pretty upper crust sport, tennis). My high school was as elitist as it gets. I spent my teens in a nice, safe, clean little upper class bubble, and if my Dad hadn’t been stationed in the Third World for most of my childhood I’d probably be as utterly clueless about how the world really works as most of my former classmates still are.
Then I moved to London. I deliberately cut most of my ties with my former classmates, mostly because I wasn’t very happy about living in the bubble. I was bored, and the idea of sealing myself up in yet another bubble (some of my former teachers are probably still fuming that I refused to apply to Oxford) did not appeal to me at all.
When I got to London I began to move in entirely different circles. I’m a music nut, punk, metal and industrial mostly, so that became my peer group, other people who were into the same music. I still somehow managed to end up with a long term boyfriend who was as thoroughly privileged as I was, funnily enough – you can take the kid out of the bubble but you can’t take the bubble out of the kid, I suppose. For the first time I met a lot of people who actually had to work for a living, who couldn’t rely on Dad to pay the rent and bail them out whenever they got into trouble, and that’s when I first started to encounter the sex industry up close and personal.
There was a group of girls who all did sex work of one kind or another. The Italian girl was a stripper, the London native worked as a barker in a strip club and occasional hooker, the girl from the north of England worked as an escort. They didn’t like me very much, given that one of their friends had been dating a guy very much adored within our little scene who dumped her as soon as he met me – ah, the dramas surrounding boys who are in bands that the girls get unwittingly pulled into. Kind of funny in retrospect since his band sucked and he was a lousy lay, but anyway…suffice to say that I was not popular with these girls. One of them once tried to stab me in the throat with a broken beer bottle, again because of the “boyfriend stealing” thing (amusing since he chased me, not the other way around). That was my first impression of people who worked in the sex industry, and it wasn’t a very good one. The Italian girl I actually kind of liked at first, but then the whole guy drama happened and of course we had to be enemies. Teenage logic at it’s finest.
But then there was Noriko. Noriko was a dominatrix. She actually had a day job in a restaurant for visa purposes, a good thing given that her parents had essentially disowned her and would probably have turned her in to immigration if given the chance. She provided the first revelation for me – she didn’t actually have sex with any of her clients. The idea that people would willingly pay just for the domination and humiliation was a little surprising. I actually hung out and watched a couple of her sessions when we first met, because I was curious and she liked having an audience. She was also, and still remains, the sexiest woman I have ever met. Long dyed orangey red hair down to her ass, ripped fishnets, denim short shorts, big motorcycle boots…sexy punk girl at it’s finest. Anyone looking for something on which to blame my abiding interest in Japanese pop culture can blame her. She was also an awesome human being who introduced me to new music and new people, taught me how to cook Japanese mommy food (which I still do), and took care of me like a big sister. I loved her dearly, and still regret losing touch with her when I moved to San Francisco and she moved to Tokyo.
So there you have my introduction to the sex industry. One set of people that I met were, well, hugely fucked up. The London girl and the Italian were both hooked on heroin, and the girl from the north of England drank more than any other person I have ever met. I know that the Italian girl was an abused child, because she sobbed her story out on my shoulder late one night in a club before it was decided by the rest of her group that she and I needed to be enemies. Basically they fit the negative stereotype that most people have of women in the sex industry perfectly.
And then there was Noriko, and the friends who she occasionally worked with. Part of the difference may have been cultural – they were all Japanese, and blessedly free of the weird Christian hang-ups about sex to which the other group were prone (all three of the others were raised Catholic, interestingly enough). They were also all from a rather higher class background and a whole lot more educated. Part of the difference may have been the client base they worked with – mostly Japanese businessmen who were in town regularly for work, a few who were stationed in London more permanently, most of them married to women who for whatever reason they didn’t want to share their interest in all things fetishy with. Pretty much all of the clients were steady and long-term, and all seemed to be vetted by their boss fairly thoroughly.
The first group horrified, frightened and repelled me. The second…I worried about them occasionally, but they all seemed to be smart women who knew what they were doing and none of them seemed to have been coerced or forced by addiction or some other unfortunate circumstance into their profession. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but I was able to acknowledge that it was their choice to make.
I had my own encounters with the industry, too. I met Noriko’s boss a few times, and she kept trying to recruit me to work for her. She seemed to think that I would have been quite the hit with the clientele, and she was probably right – I’m a petite, pretty woman with soft, feminine features and big boobs, not to mention perfect boarding school inculcated manners, plus I’m one of the rare Western women who’s smaller than most Japanese men. I never for a second considered accepting, though, in fact I was rather offended that she even asked, and here’s where the class factor comes in.
Firstly, for most women of my class the very idea of sex work is unthinkable. It’s easy to pretend that that’s a moral reflex, but I don’t think that’s the case. Really I think it’s all about the class. Sex work is something that those other women do, the ones without the perfect manners and the useless but socially valued skills (horseback riding, piano playing, ballroom dancing, fencing, archery – seriously, who really needs to know how to fence?). It’s déclassé. That was what was going through my mind every time Noriko’s boss talked to me. It was most definitely what was behind my instinctively sneering response to the other group. Funny that it took me years to even realize how obvious my sneering must have been, and that that might have been part of the reason why they resented me so much.
There was also this guy who I ran into all the time who was a photographer. I didn’t know exactly what kind of photography he did at first, although I really should have figured it out sooner given how young he was and what an expensive neighborhood he lived in. At one point I was looking for a new place to live because I hated my landlord, and that’s when he made his move. He offered to let me share his apartment cum studio (gorgeous by the way – I had been there once for an after-party) and pay no rent at all. All I would have had to do was one modeling session a month, a couple of hours maybe. I sat there in shock as he laid it out for me – it was soft-core stuff that he did, pretty stuff, no penetration, just pictures of beautiful girls.
I slapped him, threw my drink in his face and stomped off in a huff. The next few months were weird, because I saw the guy around all the time and he kept trying to talk to me but I wasn’t having it, and of course there was Noriko to the rescue with her perfect punk snarl and her big stompy boots (anyone who thinks all Japanese girls are of the shy and cutesy variety is smoking crack – that girl could have kicked the ass of most men I know).
At the time I was hugely offended and frankly horrified that anyone would say such things to me. Nice, well-raised, steady boyfriend having, upper middle class me. It felt like a judgment, as if I had been called slutty, and it upset me.
A few more years of actual life experience and I see things differently. The fact that I don’t look “slutty”, that I look soft and pretty and girly, is precisely why he was interested in me. His mistake was in assuming that because I was hanging out with Noriko I was open to the idea of working in the industry, which I wasn’t. I also see the really important thing that I didn’t see then – it was laughably easy for me to walk away from that offer, because I could always rely on Dad to pay the bills and keep me out of trouble. Not everyone has that option. It was easy for me to stand on my morals and bathe in my offended feminine virtue, because I was also bathing in class privilege. Refusing that offer had no negative impact on my standard of living whatsoever. It wasn’t a difficult choice, it didn’t hurt me – but what about someone less economically fortunate? What about someone like the Italian girl, who was an illegal immigrant who couldn’t get legitimate work and whose family wouldn’t lift a finger to support her? What would the same offer have looked like from her perspective? And how much of my horrified reaction was based precisely on my outrage that anyone could possibly think I might be “someone like her”?
I really think that that’s what’s behind some of the more virulent hatred directed at women who do sex work by other women, even when those women are feminists. There’s a fear of being tainted by association, of being judged. It’s the Good Girls versus the Bad Girls all over again. It’s kind of pathetic, really – you would think that those of us who identify as feminists would be too smart to buy into that kind of thinking, but that does not seem to be the case. What’s going on is othering – “I’m not like her. She’s a slut, I’m not. God forbid that people think I’m like her”.
So, that’s what I think is really going on. The Good Girls versus the Bad Girls. Sex and class. The ways these things intertwine, how important it is to all of us that other people see us the way we see ourselves. We seem to be forgetting the sisterhood part, and that’s a sad thing, because if we other people and refuse to see women as sisters just because we don’t like what they do for a living then what does that say about what kind of people we are? About our capacity for empathy, or compassion? About our ability to accept that other people are always going to make choices different from our own?
There’s a really old British saying, from a folk song. “Rosy O’Grady and the Captain’s lady are sisters under the skin”. We all seem to have forgotten that recently, and I think it’s time we all remembered.
And on a small, personal note…damn I miss Noriko. Wherever she is and whatever she’s doing now, I hope she’s happy.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tribe-related poll
OK, since I’ve been mulling this over myself recently…
How does everyone else classify themselves? What’s your tribe? Do you have more than one? Is your sense of tribe/in-group based on gender? Race? Class? Educational level? Field of employment? Subcultural affiliations? Political orientation? Sexual orientation? Something I’ve completely missed? A combination of all the above?
Sorry it this seems kind of nosy, I’m just curious to see how this works for other people. I’m also really curious to see how one’s upbringing plays into it.
Anyone else ever feel that their membership in one tribe is very much not appreciated by another tribe that they feel equally connected to?
OK, since I’ve been mulling this over myself recently…
How does everyone else classify themselves? What’s your tribe? Do you have more than one? Is your sense of tribe/in-group based on gender? Race? Class? Educational level? Field of employment? Subcultural affiliations? Political orientation? Sexual orientation? Something I’ve completely missed? A combination of all the above?
Sorry it this seems kind of nosy, I’m just curious to see how this works for other people. I’m also really curious to see how one’s upbringing plays into it.
Anyone else ever feel that their membership in one tribe is very much not appreciated by another tribe that they feel equally connected to?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Some thoughts about tribes, set off by BelleDame’s post
I find the whole idea of tribes, and of the way people categorize others into tribes, fascinating. Part of the reason for that is that I’m very much aware of my own tendency to divide people that way. It isn’t in the way most people do, though, and that’s what keeps me interested in the whole subject.
Take the thing I posted a few weeks ago about sexuality and orientation. I think the main reason I posted that, and that I continue to muse over the whole issue, is that I feel like I belong to multiple tribes, not just one, and sometimes I feel like a couple of those tribes resent my not identifying only with them. There seems to be an all or nothing vein that runs through both feminism and socialism, and I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s healthy for either movement, not only because sole identification with one political tribe leads to groupthink and all of it’s unpleasant mutant offspring, but also because it’s a terrible recruiting tool. What sane person wants to join a movement that demands 100 percent allegiance? Who is such a blank slate that, if they did, it wouldn’t immediately create conflict with all the other parts of themselves that they value?
Part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this so much recently is that my favorite band were here, and I went to two shows. Yes, I know that some of my online buddies who I met via the feminist and socialist forums are rolling their eyes at this point – feel free to bypass the music stuff if you like. Anyway…this band that I’ve loved for a very long time has a fan-base that is distinctly tribal in nature. Sometimes this is a good thing – when I flew to Arizona I was picked up at the airport, driven around, and generally taken care of by a woman whose only real connection to me was an ad I put on craigslist looking for concert buddies in Arizona. It all worked out, as we got along well and generally found plenty to talk about, but it got me thinking. Why would either of us assume that we would get along just because we love the same band? Why would either of us be willing to risk meeting a stranger that way, putting our safety in their hands?
The answer is tribes. Tribal loyalty, tribal allegiance, whatever you want to call it. I was willing to put myself in this woman’s hands, and she was willing to take time out of her schedule to drive me around, on the basis of tribal allegiance alone. That’s interesting. Normally I’m pretty friendly, but not necessarily the most trusting of people – there were other people who answered the same craigslist posting offering to drive me around, even offering a place to crash, and I said no, because none of them felt like part of the tribe. She did. On that alone, we were willing to trust each other.
On some level that’s a very illogical response. Why should either of us assume that our belonging to the same tribe means that we’ll both be decent people who might be able to get along with each other? And yet people make those kinds of assumptions all the time.
Another thing to ponder is the issue of tribes in relation to subcultures. I suspect that when the person who Belle was quoting talked about tribes he/she was referring to something on a more macro level – race, or political party, or class. In other words, I suspect that he/she was talking about those tribes that we belong to by birth, not by choice. What’s interesting to me is that I have no particular sense of loyalty to or personal affiliation with those tribes that I belong to by birth, but the ones that I chose of my own free will? You bet I feel a sense of affiliation.
I wonder how this works for other people. The vast majority of the population probably has no ties to any particular subculture, but everyone belongs to the macro tribes whether they like it or not. Even if one has no interest in classifying oneself that way others will be more than happy to do it for you. How does the tribe thing work for people who aren’t connected to any subculture? Do they then identify primarily as “male” or “female”, or as “white” or “black” or “Irish”? Is that the source of all those knee-jerk reactions based on things like race and gender that never seem to make any sense to me? Did my early immersion in all kinds of subcultures break those bonds, or did my parents just somehow manage to raise me without them? Or is the way people relate to the macro classifications simply a matter of individual personality?
Back to why my concert-going experience prompted this little moment of introspection. At the second show I ended up in the middle of a crowd of Asian-American teenagers, most of whom were either Korean or Japanese. There was one girl who was maybe fifteen or sixteen who for whatever reason I ended up talking to, and then somehow temporarily bonding with. The crowd was getting a little rough, and she ended up clinging to me, head buried in my shoulder and one hand clutching mine. She also kept talking to me in Japanese, which was kind of funny since she was Korean and I’m very clearly not Japanese. I speak enough Japanese that I could understand what she was saying and answer, but it was odd nonetheless. It got me thinking about why this girl who was half my age and from a completely different culture would for some reason cling to me as a source of safety in the crowd.
I think the answer, once again, is tribes. And I don’t really know how to explain that, probably because on an intellectual level it makes no sense. Why does subculture trump race, culture (I’m British not American, remember), and age? Why is it that those people involved in subcultures see others involved in the same subculture as their tribe? And what does it mean for my identification as a feminist and a socialist when I see so many members of both groups who I don’t identify with at all? When the visible face of both movements looks nothing like me?
I find the whole idea of tribes, and of the way people categorize others into tribes, fascinating. Part of the reason for that is that I’m very much aware of my own tendency to divide people that way. It isn’t in the way most people do, though, and that’s what keeps me interested in the whole subject.
Take the thing I posted a few weeks ago about sexuality and orientation. I think the main reason I posted that, and that I continue to muse over the whole issue, is that I feel like I belong to multiple tribes, not just one, and sometimes I feel like a couple of those tribes resent my not identifying only with them. There seems to be an all or nothing vein that runs through both feminism and socialism, and I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s healthy for either movement, not only because sole identification with one political tribe leads to groupthink and all of it’s unpleasant mutant offspring, but also because it’s a terrible recruiting tool. What sane person wants to join a movement that demands 100 percent allegiance? Who is such a blank slate that, if they did, it wouldn’t immediately create conflict with all the other parts of themselves that they value?
Part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this so much recently is that my favorite band were here, and I went to two shows. Yes, I know that some of my online buddies who I met via the feminist and socialist forums are rolling their eyes at this point – feel free to bypass the music stuff if you like. Anyway…this band that I’ve loved for a very long time has a fan-base that is distinctly tribal in nature. Sometimes this is a good thing – when I flew to Arizona I was picked up at the airport, driven around, and generally taken care of by a woman whose only real connection to me was an ad I put on craigslist looking for concert buddies in Arizona. It all worked out, as we got along well and generally found plenty to talk about, but it got me thinking. Why would either of us assume that we would get along just because we love the same band? Why would either of us be willing to risk meeting a stranger that way, putting our safety in their hands?
The answer is tribes. Tribal loyalty, tribal allegiance, whatever you want to call it. I was willing to put myself in this woman’s hands, and she was willing to take time out of her schedule to drive me around, on the basis of tribal allegiance alone. That’s interesting. Normally I’m pretty friendly, but not necessarily the most trusting of people – there were other people who answered the same craigslist posting offering to drive me around, even offering a place to crash, and I said no, because none of them felt like part of the tribe. She did. On that alone, we were willing to trust each other.
On some level that’s a very illogical response. Why should either of us assume that our belonging to the same tribe means that we’ll both be decent people who might be able to get along with each other? And yet people make those kinds of assumptions all the time.
Another thing to ponder is the issue of tribes in relation to subcultures. I suspect that when the person who Belle was quoting talked about tribes he/she was referring to something on a more macro level – race, or political party, or class. In other words, I suspect that he/she was talking about those tribes that we belong to by birth, not by choice. What’s interesting to me is that I have no particular sense of loyalty to or personal affiliation with those tribes that I belong to by birth, but the ones that I chose of my own free will? You bet I feel a sense of affiliation.
I wonder how this works for other people. The vast majority of the population probably has no ties to any particular subculture, but everyone belongs to the macro tribes whether they like it or not. Even if one has no interest in classifying oneself that way others will be more than happy to do it for you. How does the tribe thing work for people who aren’t connected to any subculture? Do they then identify primarily as “male” or “female”, or as “white” or “black” or “Irish”? Is that the source of all those knee-jerk reactions based on things like race and gender that never seem to make any sense to me? Did my early immersion in all kinds of subcultures break those bonds, or did my parents just somehow manage to raise me without them? Or is the way people relate to the macro classifications simply a matter of individual personality?
Back to why my concert-going experience prompted this little moment of introspection. At the second show I ended up in the middle of a crowd of Asian-American teenagers, most of whom were either Korean or Japanese. There was one girl who was maybe fifteen or sixteen who for whatever reason I ended up talking to, and then somehow temporarily bonding with. The crowd was getting a little rough, and she ended up clinging to me, head buried in my shoulder and one hand clutching mine. She also kept talking to me in Japanese, which was kind of funny since she was Korean and I’m very clearly not Japanese. I speak enough Japanese that I could understand what she was saying and answer, but it was odd nonetheless. It got me thinking about why this girl who was half my age and from a completely different culture would for some reason cling to me as a source of safety in the crowd.
I think the answer, once again, is tribes. And I don’t really know how to explain that, probably because on an intellectual level it makes no sense. Why does subculture trump race, culture (I’m British not American, remember), and age? Why is it that those people involved in subcultures see others involved in the same subculture as their tribe? And what does it mean for my identification as a feminist and a socialist when I see so many members of both groups who I don’t identify with at all? When the visible face of both movements looks nothing like me?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Dir en grey live report, The Fillmore, 2/25.07
This was originally written for my LiveJournal, which is where all the JRock people hang out, but I thought I might as well repost it here since I post so little nowadays. And yeah, anyone who knows me knows how much I love this band. So, enjoy.
PS Zan - Icon pretty boy? I was happily groping his chest last night, and it is spectacular.
First off, this isn’t going to be one of those reports that’s all about what I was wearing and how everyone else sucked except my cool friends and me and OMG the Lolitas! Because really, it’s a concert, not a prom, so why should anyone really care about any of the superficial stuff?
Dir en grey were amazing last night. I’m probably one of the older fans who went to this tour both in terms of how long I’ve been a fan (since Jealous) and age (I’m 33), and I’ve been waiting a long time to see them. Concert DVDs are great, but it’s just not the same as actually being in the thick of things, with the bass and the drums reverberating through your entire body and the crowd screaming along like one giant organism.
Family Values was actually kind of disappointing for me. The set was too short, and honestly the band just didn’t seem into it. I also went to the show in Tempe, and that was a great show too from a musical point of view, but the vibe in the crowd was just…bad. Bitchy and negative and full of people who seemed to have never been to a concert before and didn’t understand how the pit works (yes, people will push and shove, everyone will steal your spot the moment they get the chance, your feet will get trod on and your ribs will get crushed if you’re against the barrier and it can be hard to breathe – DEAL WITH IT. That’s the way metal, punk and industrial shows always are, and DEG is a bit of all three, so what were people expecting? And no, yelling to people to move back doesn’t help, it just makes you look silly). I spent a good part of that show rolling my eyes at the constant stream of complaints, and the line was full of unnecessary drama. I’m just glad that no-one else seemed to notice Missy Suicide standing at the side of the stage, because that would have just kicked the bitchiness into overdrive.
San Francisco was different. The line was drama-free as far as I could tell, there was some quiet snarking at a few girls who looked as if they must be very cold on a wet and windy day, but nothing big or too blatant. The rain wasn’t fun, but everyone just huddled together and dealt with it, because this is San Francisco and it rains all the time (also, thanks to the tall Japanese guy whose name I’ve forgotten who let us all shelter under his umbrella, that definitely helped!). Everyone seemed to be of the same mind – yep, the line’s a pain, always has been, but it’ll all be worth it once you get inside.
The opening bands were actually a lot of fun at this show. They were doing a bunch of silly end-of-tour shit with TP and little bouncy balls and baby powder (the stage had to be vacuumed before DEG came on), and someone had messed with the projection system so it played random statements like “Everyone point at the bassist and laugh!”. I had heard a lot of unpleasant rumors about the audience booing the opening bands earlier in the tour, and I talked to Fair To Midland’s tour manager and he confirmed that it was pretty hostile at the beginning of the tour. At the San Francisco show, though, the crowd was actually giving the opening bands plenty of love, especially Bleed The Dream, whose singer did a great job of getting the crowd hyped up and defrosted. These are the moments when I love this town.
Those of us in the front also had a lot of fun watching Kaoru, Die and assorted companions sitting up in the balcony laughing at the opening bands throwing shit at each other. There was a kind of “big brother laughing at the crazy kids” vibe – it’s odd for those of who remember them as a wacky little indie band to realize how much older and more established they are now.
The actual show was amazing. This was the show that I was hoping for. The band were all on fire, energetic and engaged with the crowd and looking like they were enjoying themselves up there more than they seem to have been in a long time. It helps that The Fillmore is a great venue with a wide stage – lots of rail – and good acoustics. The crowding was pretty insane at front center, but it was a good crowd and people were looking out for each other and at least trying not to hurt each other more than necessary. I came away with a massive bruise on my hipbone, but hey, it was worth it.
Since I had the first show to just soak up the music, and since San Francisco was a far better crowd, this time I had a chance to really observe the way the band interact with the audience, and it was fascinating. It was hard to see Die from where I was without twisting at an odd angle so I didn’t see as much of him, hopefully someone who was on his side will fill in the gaps, but the other four…
I have to admit that, unlike most other fans, Kyo has always been the one I’ve been least interested in watching. There’s a certain darkness in him that I just don’t empathize with, as much as I admire his talents as a singer and a lyricist. I used to have a boyfriend who cut himself when he was frustrated, and that’s part of it – having been close to that for a while it’s too painful to watch it any more. I understand how cathartic that part of the show is for some people, but there’s a place he goes during shows that I’ve just never wanted to follow him to. I had a moment last night though, when he was staring into the crowd and caught my eye, and for a while I actually went there with him. Concert footage really doesn’t capture how mesmerizing he is in real life, the intensity of his stare when it’s directed right at you, the almost trancelike state he works himself into. He deliberately challenges people, pushes them to places that they would never go by themselves, and it’s an amazing experience. I finally understand why so many fans are so obsessed with him.
Shinya is…Shinya. It’s always amazed me how such a quiet, physically frail-looking man can be such a monster behind the drums, but he really is. He doesn’t interact that much with the crowd, just keeps his head down and focuses on the music, other than the drumstick throwing moment at the end. He’s wonderful to watch though – he was probably the weakest of all of them musically in the beginning, but he’s grown into a hell of a drummer. The look on his face when Kyo threw his box directly at the drum set was priceless, too.
Kaoru live is a thing of beauty, and I don’t mean that in a superficial way at all. He’s the other one who seems to slip into a trance when he’s really into the music – he spends a lot of time with his head down, eyes closed, lost in the music. There’s always been something oddly still about Kaoru, and that quality seems to become more pronounced the older he gets. I’ve always wondered if that’s why so few of the American fans seem to focus on him – in many ways he’s the most overtly Japanese of all of them, and I wonder if people here find that sense of quiet reserve off-putting. He certainly doesn’t get the credit he deserves as being the genius behind the whole thing as often as he should.
He’s been interacting with the crowd a lot more recently, too. Last night he was a fist-pumping, pick-tossing, head-banging bundle of energy. He even came out to slap hands with some of the crowd, and he kept coming right up to the edge of the stage and jamming directly in front of where I was. I haven’t seen him look like he’s enjoying himself so much in years – he looked bored at Family Values. At the end of the night he didn’t seem to want to leave the stage, and after they did finally leave he hung around in the wings just watching the crowd with a smile on his face.
The real dynamo on stage was definitely Toshiya, though. Watching him, Kaoru and Kyo together made something finally click in my head that’s been at the edge of consciousness for a long time. Part of the explanation for the success of DEG, and especially for the sheer fanaticism of the fandom, is that all the members are not only strong personalities, but very different from each other. For every fan there’s at least one band member who they respond to on a personal level, who they feel some kind of empathy towards.
If Kaoru is the pure love of music and quiet contemplation and Kyo is the conduit through which people access the darker side of their own natures, Toshiya onstage is pure love. It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t seen it the way he interacts with the crowd, but it’s amazing to watch. There’s something distant about the way people relate to most of the rest of the band, but not with Toshiya. It’s hard to say if it’s just his natural personality or if it was a deliberate choice about how to handle live performances, but on stage Toshiya is the one who connects most with the crowd on a warm, human level. It’s not a distant admiration the way it is with Kaoru or a dark kind of empathy the way it is with Kyo. Toshiya’s relationship with the crowd is a love-in. The way that he points at his heart, then at the audience, the intense stare he gives people – it’s not an intimidating, challenging stare-down like Kyo’s, it’s warm and alive and somehow very intimate. There’s always been something oddly loveable about Toshiya, which is hard to explain – normally people that physically beautiful can be rather intimidating, but somehow he never has been. As easy as I normally find it to put things into words I’m struggling with this, because it’s not an intellectual thing, it’s physical somehow – Toshiya on stage looks like he wants to reach out to the entire crowd and give them all a hug, and I think that on some level everyone loves him for it. Of all of them he and Kyo are the ones who’ve been most able to bridge the language barrier, so that the fact that they can’t really talk to the crowd here doesn’t matter. The feelings they’re trying to express are perfectly clear, and everyone in the audience who’s paying attention can feel it. It’s amazing that after all these years they still have the desire to reach out and connect with the crowd, to communicate something on a direct and personal level, and in the end, isn’t that what we all love them for?
We had a couple of interesting little close encounters yesterday. Walking right past Kaoru as we were going to the car to dump bags and jackets and he was getting out of the bus (and yes, we were nice, civilized fans and didn’t bother him), my strange little eye-lock with Kyo, Toshiya coming down into the gap between the stage and the barrier and throwing himself into the crowd’s arms – I felt kind of bad (not bad enough to stop, though) that I ended up basically groping his chest, because I was trying to grab his hand but so was everyone else, so eventually I just gave up. I loved that all three guitar and bass boys changed sides at the end, so that everyone in the crowd got to see the whole band even if only for a little while. I really loved the fact that at the end nobody seemed to want to leave – even Kyo left and then came back rather than scuttling away as soon as he got the chance like he usually does, Kaoru made multiple circuits around the front of the stage, and Toshiya seemed like someone was going to have to drag him off he was out there for so long. Even after the lights went on you could still see them all if you were close enough, huddled on the side of the stage watching us, smiling.
It’s a funny thing, really – people who don’t know much about Dir en grey tend to assume that the concerts must be a dark, disturbing experience, and at moments they are, but there’s something else there, and that something else is what gets people hooked, keeps them coming back, makes them willing the sit in line for hours in the pouring rain just to get closer, and it’s not a dark thing at all, it’s beautiful. If I had to try to explain I think it would say that it’s the sheer joy of knowing that there are other people like yourself in the world, that you’re not alone. That’s what keeps us all coming back, in my opinion, and after all these years I’m incredibly happy that I finally got the chance to see and feel it up close. It was more than worth everything it took to get there.
A few small side notes – I ended up in the middle of a bunch of Korean and Japanese kids who all seemed to know each other – sorry if I squished any of you guys or trod on your toes! I was actually kind of worried about the cute little girl in the striped sweater – she was looking a bit overwhelmed during Fair To Midland, and I was trying to keep an eye on her but I lost track of her once the crowd started surging. Does anyone know if she made it OK? I was the woman in her thirties with the curly hair and the black CBGBs hoodie who kept putting my water bottle on her forehead to try to cool her down a bit.
I was also concerned about the girl with the strappy tank top at the front who had to be pulled out. It took longer than it should have to get security to help her since there was no-one on our side at that point and she really wasn’t looking so good, so I hope she’s OK. The guy in the white shirt was looking a bit out of it towards the end, too.
Most beautiful non-band-related moment of the night – when the girl who came over from Japan to see the band, who was right in front of me by the end, and who was screaming for Toshiya the whole show, actually got to touch him…at the end she just burst into tears, and some people seemed to think she was hurt, but it was obvious that wasn’t it. She was happy. And when white shirt guy, who I don’t think she even knew before that day, gave her a hug and she was just breaking down because she got exactly what she wanted from the show…truly beautiful.
This was originally written for my LiveJournal, which is where all the JRock people hang out, but I thought I might as well repost it here since I post so little nowadays. And yeah, anyone who knows me knows how much I love this band. So, enjoy.
PS Zan - Icon pretty boy? I was happily groping his chest last night, and it is spectacular.
First off, this isn’t going to be one of those reports that’s all about what I was wearing and how everyone else sucked except my cool friends and me and OMG the Lolitas! Because really, it’s a concert, not a prom, so why should anyone really care about any of the superficial stuff?
Dir en grey were amazing last night. I’m probably one of the older fans who went to this tour both in terms of how long I’ve been a fan (since Jealous) and age (I’m 33), and I’ve been waiting a long time to see them. Concert DVDs are great, but it’s just not the same as actually being in the thick of things, with the bass and the drums reverberating through your entire body and the crowd screaming along like one giant organism.
Family Values was actually kind of disappointing for me. The set was too short, and honestly the band just didn’t seem into it. I also went to the show in Tempe, and that was a great show too from a musical point of view, but the vibe in the crowd was just…bad. Bitchy and negative and full of people who seemed to have never been to a concert before and didn’t understand how the pit works (yes, people will push and shove, everyone will steal your spot the moment they get the chance, your feet will get trod on and your ribs will get crushed if you’re against the barrier and it can be hard to breathe – DEAL WITH IT. That’s the way metal, punk and industrial shows always are, and DEG is a bit of all three, so what were people expecting? And no, yelling to people to move back doesn’t help, it just makes you look silly). I spent a good part of that show rolling my eyes at the constant stream of complaints, and the line was full of unnecessary drama. I’m just glad that no-one else seemed to notice Missy Suicide standing at the side of the stage, because that would have just kicked the bitchiness into overdrive.
San Francisco was different. The line was drama-free as far as I could tell, there was some quiet snarking at a few girls who looked as if they must be very cold on a wet and windy day, but nothing big or too blatant. The rain wasn’t fun, but everyone just huddled together and dealt with it, because this is San Francisco and it rains all the time (also, thanks to the tall Japanese guy whose name I’ve forgotten who let us all shelter under his umbrella, that definitely helped!). Everyone seemed to be of the same mind – yep, the line’s a pain, always has been, but it’ll all be worth it once you get inside.
The opening bands were actually a lot of fun at this show. They were doing a bunch of silly end-of-tour shit with TP and little bouncy balls and baby powder (the stage had to be vacuumed before DEG came on), and someone had messed with the projection system so it played random statements like “Everyone point at the bassist and laugh!”. I had heard a lot of unpleasant rumors about the audience booing the opening bands earlier in the tour, and I talked to Fair To Midland’s tour manager and he confirmed that it was pretty hostile at the beginning of the tour. At the San Francisco show, though, the crowd was actually giving the opening bands plenty of love, especially Bleed The Dream, whose singer did a great job of getting the crowd hyped up and defrosted. These are the moments when I love this town.
Those of us in the front also had a lot of fun watching Kaoru, Die and assorted companions sitting up in the balcony laughing at the opening bands throwing shit at each other. There was a kind of “big brother laughing at the crazy kids” vibe – it’s odd for those of who remember them as a wacky little indie band to realize how much older and more established they are now.
The actual show was amazing. This was the show that I was hoping for. The band were all on fire, energetic and engaged with the crowd and looking like they were enjoying themselves up there more than they seem to have been in a long time. It helps that The Fillmore is a great venue with a wide stage – lots of rail – and good acoustics. The crowding was pretty insane at front center, but it was a good crowd and people were looking out for each other and at least trying not to hurt each other more than necessary. I came away with a massive bruise on my hipbone, but hey, it was worth it.
Since I had the first show to just soak up the music, and since San Francisco was a far better crowd, this time I had a chance to really observe the way the band interact with the audience, and it was fascinating. It was hard to see Die from where I was without twisting at an odd angle so I didn’t see as much of him, hopefully someone who was on his side will fill in the gaps, but the other four…
I have to admit that, unlike most other fans, Kyo has always been the one I’ve been least interested in watching. There’s a certain darkness in him that I just don’t empathize with, as much as I admire his talents as a singer and a lyricist. I used to have a boyfriend who cut himself when he was frustrated, and that’s part of it – having been close to that for a while it’s too painful to watch it any more. I understand how cathartic that part of the show is for some people, but there’s a place he goes during shows that I’ve just never wanted to follow him to. I had a moment last night though, when he was staring into the crowd and caught my eye, and for a while I actually went there with him. Concert footage really doesn’t capture how mesmerizing he is in real life, the intensity of his stare when it’s directed right at you, the almost trancelike state he works himself into. He deliberately challenges people, pushes them to places that they would never go by themselves, and it’s an amazing experience. I finally understand why so many fans are so obsessed with him.
Shinya is…Shinya. It’s always amazed me how such a quiet, physically frail-looking man can be such a monster behind the drums, but he really is. He doesn’t interact that much with the crowd, just keeps his head down and focuses on the music, other than the drumstick throwing moment at the end. He’s wonderful to watch though – he was probably the weakest of all of them musically in the beginning, but he’s grown into a hell of a drummer. The look on his face when Kyo threw his box directly at the drum set was priceless, too.
Kaoru live is a thing of beauty, and I don’t mean that in a superficial way at all. He’s the other one who seems to slip into a trance when he’s really into the music – he spends a lot of time with his head down, eyes closed, lost in the music. There’s always been something oddly still about Kaoru, and that quality seems to become more pronounced the older he gets. I’ve always wondered if that’s why so few of the American fans seem to focus on him – in many ways he’s the most overtly Japanese of all of them, and I wonder if people here find that sense of quiet reserve off-putting. He certainly doesn’t get the credit he deserves as being the genius behind the whole thing as often as he should.
He’s been interacting with the crowd a lot more recently, too. Last night he was a fist-pumping, pick-tossing, head-banging bundle of energy. He even came out to slap hands with some of the crowd, and he kept coming right up to the edge of the stage and jamming directly in front of where I was. I haven’t seen him look like he’s enjoying himself so much in years – he looked bored at Family Values. At the end of the night he didn’t seem to want to leave the stage, and after they did finally leave he hung around in the wings just watching the crowd with a smile on his face.
The real dynamo on stage was definitely Toshiya, though. Watching him, Kaoru and Kyo together made something finally click in my head that’s been at the edge of consciousness for a long time. Part of the explanation for the success of DEG, and especially for the sheer fanaticism of the fandom, is that all the members are not only strong personalities, but very different from each other. For every fan there’s at least one band member who they respond to on a personal level, who they feel some kind of empathy towards.
If Kaoru is the pure love of music and quiet contemplation and Kyo is the conduit through which people access the darker side of their own natures, Toshiya onstage is pure love. It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t seen it the way he interacts with the crowd, but it’s amazing to watch. There’s something distant about the way people relate to most of the rest of the band, but not with Toshiya. It’s hard to say if it’s just his natural personality or if it was a deliberate choice about how to handle live performances, but on stage Toshiya is the one who connects most with the crowd on a warm, human level. It’s not a distant admiration the way it is with Kaoru or a dark kind of empathy the way it is with Kyo. Toshiya’s relationship with the crowd is a love-in. The way that he points at his heart, then at the audience, the intense stare he gives people – it’s not an intimidating, challenging stare-down like Kyo’s, it’s warm and alive and somehow very intimate. There’s always been something oddly loveable about Toshiya, which is hard to explain – normally people that physically beautiful can be rather intimidating, but somehow he never has been. As easy as I normally find it to put things into words I’m struggling with this, because it’s not an intellectual thing, it’s physical somehow – Toshiya on stage looks like he wants to reach out to the entire crowd and give them all a hug, and I think that on some level everyone loves him for it. Of all of them he and Kyo are the ones who’ve been most able to bridge the language barrier, so that the fact that they can’t really talk to the crowd here doesn’t matter. The feelings they’re trying to express are perfectly clear, and everyone in the audience who’s paying attention can feel it. It’s amazing that after all these years they still have the desire to reach out and connect with the crowd, to communicate something on a direct and personal level, and in the end, isn’t that what we all love them for?
We had a couple of interesting little close encounters yesterday. Walking right past Kaoru as we were going to the car to dump bags and jackets and he was getting out of the bus (and yes, we were nice, civilized fans and didn’t bother him), my strange little eye-lock with Kyo, Toshiya coming down into the gap between the stage and the barrier and throwing himself into the crowd’s arms – I felt kind of bad (not bad enough to stop, though) that I ended up basically groping his chest, because I was trying to grab his hand but so was everyone else, so eventually I just gave up. I loved that all three guitar and bass boys changed sides at the end, so that everyone in the crowd got to see the whole band even if only for a little while. I really loved the fact that at the end nobody seemed to want to leave – even Kyo left and then came back rather than scuttling away as soon as he got the chance like he usually does, Kaoru made multiple circuits around the front of the stage, and Toshiya seemed like someone was going to have to drag him off he was out there for so long. Even after the lights went on you could still see them all if you were close enough, huddled on the side of the stage watching us, smiling.
It’s a funny thing, really – people who don’t know much about Dir en grey tend to assume that the concerts must be a dark, disturbing experience, and at moments they are, but there’s something else there, and that something else is what gets people hooked, keeps them coming back, makes them willing the sit in line for hours in the pouring rain just to get closer, and it’s not a dark thing at all, it’s beautiful. If I had to try to explain I think it would say that it’s the sheer joy of knowing that there are other people like yourself in the world, that you’re not alone. That’s what keeps us all coming back, in my opinion, and after all these years I’m incredibly happy that I finally got the chance to see and feel it up close. It was more than worth everything it took to get there.
A few small side notes – I ended up in the middle of a bunch of Korean and Japanese kids who all seemed to know each other – sorry if I squished any of you guys or trod on your toes! I was actually kind of worried about the cute little girl in the striped sweater – she was looking a bit overwhelmed during Fair To Midland, and I was trying to keep an eye on her but I lost track of her once the crowd started surging. Does anyone know if she made it OK? I was the woman in her thirties with the curly hair and the black CBGBs hoodie who kept putting my water bottle on her forehead to try to cool her down a bit.
I was also concerned about the girl with the strappy tank top at the front who had to be pulled out. It took longer than it should have to get security to help her since there was no-one on our side at that point and she really wasn’t looking so good, so I hope she’s OK. The guy in the white shirt was looking a bit out of it towards the end, too.
Most beautiful non-band-related moment of the night – when the girl who came over from Japan to see the band, who was right in front of me by the end, and who was screaming for Toshiya the whole show, actually got to touch him…at the end she just burst into tears, and some people seemed to think she was hurt, but it was obvious that wasn’t it. She was happy. And when white shirt guy, who I don’t think she even knew before that day, gave her a hug and she was just breaking down because she got exactly what she wanted from the show…truly beautiful.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Should all of society really be made safe for children?
So, next week I’m going to see my favorite band. One the one hand this is a wonderful thing. I love live shows, I love Dir en grey. So what am I complaining about?
There are children going to these shows. I don’t mean 17-year-olds, I mean actual children. Whose brilliant idea was it to make this tour all-ages? Because my foot has a date with their ass.
Someone is planning to take a 10 year old to the Fillmore. The fucking Fillmore. To see a metal/industrial band. Are these people out of their minds?
First there’s the issue of physical safety. There are moshpits at metal shows. There is pushing, shoving, random crowd surging…hair gets pulled, feet get trodden on, ribs get crushed against barriers, elbows meet heads. Even for adults it’s a little dangerous. And people have been waiting to see this band in the USA for ten years. According to all reports so far, these shows are fucking nuts. Most of them are sold out. Does anyone sane really think this is a safe environment for a child? Some of these kids plan to camp out that night before, too. In the middle of major metropolitan areas. Yeah, that’s really smart. I’m sure the junkies and the dealers will be delighted to make their acquaintances.
Then there’s the obscenity issue. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m actually rather a fan of obscenity in general. I have no major issues with porn other than worrying about whether some of them people involved in it did not end up there willingly. I watch horror movies. I swear like a sailor. But…
Obscene material is intended for adults. It is not family friendly. It is not meant to be seen or heard by children. Not only that, but its continuing availability for those of us who are old enough to understand and appreciate it is dependent on its being kept far, far away from kids.
Right now we have a government that would just love to make our entire society safe for 5 year olds. Do any of us really want that, other than the religious wackos? OK then, we all have a shared interest in keeping the questionable stuff away from the kiddies if we want it to continue to be available at all.
Which brings me back to Dir en grey. This band is not suitable for kids. In face, I have a hard time thinking of any band less suitable for kids. Typical songs deal with child abuse, suicide, murder, war, corruption in government and the media, BSDM…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t get much less family friendly than DEG, folks. Last year’s big single contained the immortal line “Some day I will fuck your parents”. During their opener the crowd chants “Kill! Kill! Kill!” along with the intro. And people want to take 10-year-olds to this show?
And then there are the videos. They’re playing the uncensored version of one during the show, apparently (for the song Obscure). Freaky-looking geisha in g-strings, bizarre mecha dildos, naked drummer in a bathtub full of blood, one guitarist pulling his bloody, still-beating heart out of his chest, the other guitarist stabbing himself through the throat with a samurai sword…fun for all the family, huh? Not to mention that the singer carves his chest up until he’s covered in blood and shimmies like a stripper. At the last show I kind of felt like I should tip him, given that he was essentially giving us a lap dance. His live performances make Iggy Pop look like The Telletubies.
So, I repeat...does anyone with any brains really think that kids should be allowed to attend that kind of show? Apparently Ticketmaster didn’t quite realize what they were getting into given that “this show is for mature audiences” warnings went up on the website after the first few shows. No shit, genius. A quick look at the band’s website could have made that pretty clear.
I still don’t understand why these shows weren’t made at least 16+ right from the beginning. I suspect that the motive was money, though – no age restrictions increases the number of people who can buy tickets, and the band have a lot of very young fans who came to them through seeing pictures of their early days on the internet, back when they were pretty boys in eyeliner and miniskirts. That was a long time ago, though, and they get darker and more disturbing with each album. I’m willing to bet that if most of the parents of those kids had any idea what they were in for they wouldn’t let their little precious anywhere near these shows.
And that’s another problem. Kids are turning up at these shows with their parents. Parents who then get all pissy because oh my god, there’s blood and violence and sexual content and bad language. If they had decent parenting skills they would have known that already.
Of course the fact that having scowling, disapproving parents getting in everyone’s way is a huge pain in the ass for any attendee old enough not to have a curfew is worth noting, but there’s a bigger problem. What happens when one of these parents gets upset that little precious wasn’t protected from all this nasty obscene behavior? What if they decide to sue? What will that mean for future tours? What if one of those kids actually gets hurt? The girl taking the ten year old was planning to take her into the pit. Which is nuts. Hell, I could very easily get hurt in the pit and I’m 33. What happens if that kid gets hurt? Who do you think the parents are going to blame?
Now, as I’ve already said, I’m very much fond of a lot of material that could very easily be described as dark, disturbing, and unsuitable for minors. That doesn’t mean that I think said material should be accessible to minors. It shouldn’t be. Every society maintains a barrier between children and adults, and a certain part of its culture that is forbidden to anyone under a certain age. That’s the only way to do it, really. That barrier is there for a reason, and it needs to be well guarded, because the alternative is a society scrubbed clean of all deviant art, of all deviant behavior, of anything that might upset a toddler. I don’t want to live in that kind of society, and I’m willing to bet that anyone who I have more than a passing acquaintance with doesn’t either.
So, as much as it vexes the kiddies to hear it, they don’t belong at concerts. Or at horror movies, or in clubs, or watching porn, or in any other space designed for adults. It’s not only for their own safety; it’s for the safety of everyone who doesn’t want to live in Moral Majority-land.
So, next week I’m going to see my favorite band. One the one hand this is a wonderful thing. I love live shows, I love Dir en grey. So what am I complaining about?
There are children going to these shows. I don’t mean 17-year-olds, I mean actual children. Whose brilliant idea was it to make this tour all-ages? Because my foot has a date with their ass.
Someone is planning to take a 10 year old to the Fillmore. The fucking Fillmore. To see a metal/industrial band. Are these people out of their minds?
First there’s the issue of physical safety. There are moshpits at metal shows. There is pushing, shoving, random crowd surging…hair gets pulled, feet get trodden on, ribs get crushed against barriers, elbows meet heads. Even for adults it’s a little dangerous. And people have been waiting to see this band in the USA for ten years. According to all reports so far, these shows are fucking nuts. Most of them are sold out. Does anyone sane really think this is a safe environment for a child? Some of these kids plan to camp out that night before, too. In the middle of major metropolitan areas. Yeah, that’s really smart. I’m sure the junkies and the dealers will be delighted to make their acquaintances.
Then there’s the obscenity issue. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m actually rather a fan of obscenity in general. I have no major issues with porn other than worrying about whether some of them people involved in it did not end up there willingly. I watch horror movies. I swear like a sailor. But…
Obscene material is intended for adults. It is not family friendly. It is not meant to be seen or heard by children. Not only that, but its continuing availability for those of us who are old enough to understand and appreciate it is dependent on its being kept far, far away from kids.
Right now we have a government that would just love to make our entire society safe for 5 year olds. Do any of us really want that, other than the religious wackos? OK then, we all have a shared interest in keeping the questionable stuff away from the kiddies if we want it to continue to be available at all.
Which brings me back to Dir en grey. This band is not suitable for kids. In face, I have a hard time thinking of any band less suitable for kids. Typical songs deal with child abuse, suicide, murder, war, corruption in government and the media, BSDM…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t get much less family friendly than DEG, folks. Last year’s big single contained the immortal line “Some day I will fuck your parents”. During their opener the crowd chants “Kill! Kill! Kill!” along with the intro. And people want to take 10-year-olds to this show?
And then there are the videos. They’re playing the uncensored version of one during the show, apparently (for the song Obscure). Freaky-looking geisha in g-strings, bizarre mecha dildos, naked drummer in a bathtub full of blood, one guitarist pulling his bloody, still-beating heart out of his chest, the other guitarist stabbing himself through the throat with a samurai sword…fun for all the family, huh? Not to mention that the singer carves his chest up until he’s covered in blood and shimmies like a stripper. At the last show I kind of felt like I should tip him, given that he was essentially giving us a lap dance. His live performances make Iggy Pop look like The Telletubies.
So, I repeat...does anyone with any brains really think that kids should be allowed to attend that kind of show? Apparently Ticketmaster didn’t quite realize what they were getting into given that “this show is for mature audiences” warnings went up on the website after the first few shows. No shit, genius. A quick look at the band’s website could have made that pretty clear.
I still don’t understand why these shows weren’t made at least 16+ right from the beginning. I suspect that the motive was money, though – no age restrictions increases the number of people who can buy tickets, and the band have a lot of very young fans who came to them through seeing pictures of their early days on the internet, back when they were pretty boys in eyeliner and miniskirts. That was a long time ago, though, and they get darker and more disturbing with each album. I’m willing to bet that if most of the parents of those kids had any idea what they were in for they wouldn’t let their little precious anywhere near these shows.
And that’s another problem. Kids are turning up at these shows with their parents. Parents who then get all pissy because oh my god, there’s blood and violence and sexual content and bad language. If they had decent parenting skills they would have known that already.
Of course the fact that having scowling, disapproving parents getting in everyone’s way is a huge pain in the ass for any attendee old enough not to have a curfew is worth noting, but there’s a bigger problem. What happens when one of these parents gets upset that little precious wasn’t protected from all this nasty obscene behavior? What if they decide to sue? What will that mean for future tours? What if one of those kids actually gets hurt? The girl taking the ten year old was planning to take her into the pit. Which is nuts. Hell, I could very easily get hurt in the pit and I’m 33. What happens if that kid gets hurt? Who do you think the parents are going to blame?
Now, as I’ve already said, I’m very much fond of a lot of material that could very easily be described as dark, disturbing, and unsuitable for minors. That doesn’t mean that I think said material should be accessible to minors. It shouldn’t be. Every society maintains a barrier between children and adults, and a certain part of its culture that is forbidden to anyone under a certain age. That’s the only way to do it, really. That barrier is there for a reason, and it needs to be well guarded, because the alternative is a society scrubbed clean of all deviant art, of all deviant behavior, of anything that might upset a toddler. I don’t want to live in that kind of society, and I’m willing to bet that anyone who I have more than a passing acquaintance with doesn’t either.
So, as much as it vexes the kiddies to hear it, they don’t belong at concerts. Or at horror movies, or in clubs, or watching porn, or in any other space designed for adults. It’s not only for their own safety; it’s for the safety of everyone who doesn’t want to live in Moral Majority-land.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
I've been mulling this post over for a while, what I wanted to say, how to say it. I'm still not sure it's going to make any sense to anyone else, but what the hell, it's worth a shot.
I'm trying to find a way to describe where I fit on the spectrum of sexual orientation, and of gender identity, and it's not easy. On the surface, to anyone who doesn't know me very well, I look like a very normal person these days. Looks can be deceiving.
Let's start with orientation. I'm bisexual. I've known that since before I knew what the word meant. I'm not right in the middle of the Kinsey scale though, not exactly. When I was in my teens (and younger) I leaned more towards women, and now I seem to lean more towards men. I'm not quite sure why exactly, and I suspect it may be partly because right now I know very few women who could potentially interest me in a sexual way. For some off reason I seem to find myself surrounded by women who are very vanilla, very conventional, and that doesn't really work for me on a sexual level. Even the ones I find physically attractive I suspect I would find very boring in bed.
So that brings us to the men. The older I get the more I seem to be drawn to men on a very visceral level (keep that word visceral in mind, it will be coming up again later). The interesting thing is that the men I find most attractive aren't really particularly "masculine" in a lot of ways.
This is nothing new, of course - I was a teenage goth, so it's not as if androgynous pretty boys are anything new. It is interesting, though - why do I have pretty much no sexual interest in the type of men mainstream Western culture says I'm supposed to find sexy? Athletes with big bulging muscles leave me cold. Overtly macho behaviour turns me off (it turns me off when it's women doing it too, but more about that later). What most people describe as "ruggedly handsome" I perceive as hideously ugly. In fact, it took me until my early twenties to realise that "rugged" wasn't a code word for "Chow Chow the Dog Faced Boy", to realise that other people meant it as a compliment.
I like men who are beautiful. Delicate pretty features, big sparkly eyes, soft skin...basically the men that I love look very much like the evo-psych model of what men are supposed to find attractive in women. Except that, without exception, they all also have something savage about them, something raw and visceral. If they don't then I don't find them sexy, no matter how pretty they are.I think it's a contrast thing.
I like men who are like me. I like men who are adept at operating in polite society, who have perfect manners and strong social skills and a sense of style - but who underneath it all are completely in touch with their dark side. I like them because they are my own reflection.I've never bought the idea that opposites attract. My opposite would be someone ultra-conventional, someone who believed that the traditional way to do things is usually the right one, someone who thinks that the way things are now is just fine. Either that or it would be someone soft and New Age-ey, a lover of Deepak Chopra and angel iconography. I have both kinds of people, and I don't like them. These people and I do not attract, we repel.
So, beautiful men. Pretty boys. Bishonen. That's what works for me. I married one, after all. It occurs to me that many of the men I find sexy would be assumed to be gay by most people. A former boyfriend of mine always was, although in fact he was bi.
And there's another thing. These pretty boys I love? I also love to see them playing with each other. It amuses me that people always assume that if within a couple one person is bi it must be the women, and if they bring in a third party that will also be another woman. That hasn't been the case for me. I used to encourage my ex to hit on guys in clubs just so I could watch him kiss them. Sometimes we used to sneak off into dark corners and both kiss them together. Sometimes we used to do the same thing in public, locked in a tangle of sweat and heat and lust, revelling in the fact that all eyes were on us. Sometimes we used to take them home with us. Sometimes I used to watch my darling boy fuck those other boys. He never let them fuck him, though, because the only person allowed to fuck him was me.
There's the other part. I used to be very much into BSDM. I seem to have drifted away from the scene over the years, mostly because I got bored. I'm not much for rituals, really - generally I live my life in a pretty random way, and after a while I felt like a hamster on a wheel doing the same things over and over again.
That's not the only reason, though, although I didn't realise it at the time. The deeper reason is that I didn't feel like there was a place for me there. What do you call a person who's dominant, who's rough and aggressive and loves skinny boys at least in part because she can throw them around in bed, but who isn't attracted to submissives? Who is in fact rather turned off by people who are submissive in day to day life, but who has a personality that for some reason seems to attract men who want to be dominated?
What I seem to want most is things that feel visceral. Visceral sex, visceral music. Those seem to be the parts of my life where I feel free to let this part of my personality out to play. I'm constantly drawn towards and fascinated with other people who seem to work the same way.
So we're back to the beginning again. I like men who are like me. Soft and pretty and civilised on the surface and all sharp teeth and claws underneath. I like women who are like me, too, although there seem to be less of them out there. Not surprising, since the main aim of patriarchy seems to be to make damn sure that women's teeth and claws are permanently removed.
What do you call someone like me?I'm kind of drawn to the term genderfuck. That sounds right to me, somehow. I look very gender-congruent on the surface, but my personality is anything but. I like men who can often be mistaken for women, at least facially. I don't like butch women, though, which is odd, at least not in a sexual way.
So, once again, where do I fit into the big confusing mess that is gender theory, or queer theory?
That's not a rhetorical question by the way, I really am asking. Because all the recent talk about trans people and differing schools of feminist thought has got me thinking. I've been thinking for years, really, and I still don't know how to define myself. I'd be curious to hear what other people think. Maybe someone more steeped in queer theory than me has a better vocabulary. Maybe there are even other people like we out there.
Side note - the song I'm listening too is AWESOME, and fits my mood perfectly. Hell, it fits my personality perfectly. Download it here.
Dir En Grey - Hydra
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=76CTITI3
password = hydra
I'm trying to find a way to describe where I fit on the spectrum of sexual orientation, and of gender identity, and it's not easy. On the surface, to anyone who doesn't know me very well, I look like a very normal person these days. Looks can be deceiving.
Let's start with orientation. I'm bisexual. I've known that since before I knew what the word meant. I'm not right in the middle of the Kinsey scale though, not exactly. When I was in my teens (and younger) I leaned more towards women, and now I seem to lean more towards men. I'm not quite sure why exactly, and I suspect it may be partly because right now I know very few women who could potentially interest me in a sexual way. For some off reason I seem to find myself surrounded by women who are very vanilla, very conventional, and that doesn't really work for me on a sexual level. Even the ones I find physically attractive I suspect I would find very boring in bed.
So that brings us to the men. The older I get the more I seem to be drawn to men on a very visceral level (keep that word visceral in mind, it will be coming up again later). The interesting thing is that the men I find most attractive aren't really particularly "masculine" in a lot of ways.
This is nothing new, of course - I was a teenage goth, so it's not as if androgynous pretty boys are anything new. It is interesting, though - why do I have pretty much no sexual interest in the type of men mainstream Western culture says I'm supposed to find sexy? Athletes with big bulging muscles leave me cold. Overtly macho behaviour turns me off (it turns me off when it's women doing it too, but more about that later). What most people describe as "ruggedly handsome" I perceive as hideously ugly. In fact, it took me until my early twenties to realise that "rugged" wasn't a code word for "Chow Chow the Dog Faced Boy", to realise that other people meant it as a compliment.
I like men who are beautiful. Delicate pretty features, big sparkly eyes, soft skin...basically the men that I love look very much like the evo-psych model of what men are supposed to find attractive in women. Except that, without exception, they all also have something savage about them, something raw and visceral. If they don't then I don't find them sexy, no matter how pretty they are.I think it's a contrast thing.
I like men who are like me. I like men who are adept at operating in polite society, who have perfect manners and strong social skills and a sense of style - but who underneath it all are completely in touch with their dark side. I like them because they are my own reflection.I've never bought the idea that opposites attract. My opposite would be someone ultra-conventional, someone who believed that the traditional way to do things is usually the right one, someone who thinks that the way things are now is just fine. Either that or it would be someone soft and New Age-ey, a lover of Deepak Chopra and angel iconography. I have both kinds of people, and I don't like them. These people and I do not attract, we repel.
So, beautiful men. Pretty boys. Bishonen. That's what works for me. I married one, after all. It occurs to me that many of the men I find sexy would be assumed to be gay by most people. A former boyfriend of mine always was, although in fact he was bi.
And there's another thing. These pretty boys I love? I also love to see them playing with each other. It amuses me that people always assume that if within a couple one person is bi it must be the women, and if they bring in a third party that will also be another woman. That hasn't been the case for me. I used to encourage my ex to hit on guys in clubs just so I could watch him kiss them. Sometimes we used to sneak off into dark corners and both kiss them together. Sometimes we used to do the same thing in public, locked in a tangle of sweat and heat and lust, revelling in the fact that all eyes were on us. Sometimes we used to take them home with us. Sometimes I used to watch my darling boy fuck those other boys. He never let them fuck him, though, because the only person allowed to fuck him was me.
There's the other part. I used to be very much into BSDM. I seem to have drifted away from the scene over the years, mostly because I got bored. I'm not much for rituals, really - generally I live my life in a pretty random way, and after a while I felt like a hamster on a wheel doing the same things over and over again.
That's not the only reason, though, although I didn't realise it at the time. The deeper reason is that I didn't feel like there was a place for me there. What do you call a person who's dominant, who's rough and aggressive and loves skinny boys at least in part because she can throw them around in bed, but who isn't attracted to submissives? Who is in fact rather turned off by people who are submissive in day to day life, but who has a personality that for some reason seems to attract men who want to be dominated?
What I seem to want most is things that feel visceral. Visceral sex, visceral music. Those seem to be the parts of my life where I feel free to let this part of my personality out to play. I'm constantly drawn towards and fascinated with other people who seem to work the same way.
So we're back to the beginning again. I like men who are like me. Soft and pretty and civilised on the surface and all sharp teeth and claws underneath. I like women who are like me, too, although there seem to be less of them out there. Not surprising, since the main aim of patriarchy seems to be to make damn sure that women's teeth and claws are permanently removed.
What do you call someone like me?I'm kind of drawn to the term genderfuck. That sounds right to me, somehow. I look very gender-congruent on the surface, but my personality is anything but. I like men who can often be mistaken for women, at least facially. I don't like butch women, though, which is odd, at least not in a sexual way.
So, once again, where do I fit into the big confusing mess that is gender theory, or queer theory?
That's not a rhetorical question by the way, I really am asking. Because all the recent talk about trans people and differing schools of feminist thought has got me thinking. I've been thinking for years, really, and I still don't know how to define myself. I'd be curious to hear what other people think. Maybe someone more steeped in queer theory than me has a better vocabulary. Maybe there are even other people like we out there.
Side note - the song I'm listening too is AWESOME, and fits my mood perfectly. Hell, it fits my personality perfectly. Download it here.
Dir En Grey - Hydra
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=76CTITI3
password = hydra
I've been mulling this post over for a while, what I wanted to say, how to say it. I'm still not sure it's going to make any sense to anyone else, but what the hell, it's worth a shot.
I'm trying to find a way to describe where I fit on the spectrum of sexual orientation, and of gender identity, and it's not easy. On the surface, to anyone who doesn't know me very well, I look like a very normal person these days. Looks can be deceiving.
Let's start with orientation. I'm bisexual. I've known that since before I knew what the word meant. I'm not right in the middle of the Kinsey scale though, not exactly. When I was in my teens (and younger) I leaned more towards women, and now I seem to lean more towards men. I'm not quite sure why exactly, and I suspect it may be partly because right now I know very few women who could potentially interest me in a sexual way. For some odd reason I seem to find myself surrounded by women who are very vanilla, very conventional, and that doesn't really work for me on a sexual level. Even the ones I find physically attractive I suspect I would find very boring in bed.
So that brings us to the men. The older I get the more I seem to be drawn to men on a very visceral level (keep that word visceral in mind, it will be coming up again later). The interesting thing is that the men I find most attractive aren't really particularly "masculine" in a lot of ways.
This is nothing new, of course - I was a teenage goth, so it's not as if androgynous pretty boys are anything new. It is interesting, though - why do I have pretty much no sexual interest in the type of men mainstream Western culture says I'm supposed to find sexy? Athletes with big bulging muscles leave me cold. Overtly macho behaviour turns me off (it turns me off when it's women doing it too, but more about that later). What most people describe as "ruggedly handsome" I perceive as hideously ugly. In fact, it took me until my early twenties to realise that "rugged" wasn't a code word for "Chow Chow the Dog Faced Boy", to realise that other people meant it as a compliment.
I like men who are beautiful. Delicate pretty features, big sparkly eyes, soft skin...basically the men that I love look very much like the evo-psych model of what men are supposed to find attractive in women. Except that, without exception, they all also have something savage about them, something raw and visceral. If they don't then I don't find them sexy, no matter how pretty they are. I think it's a contrast thing.
I like men who are like me. I like men who are adept at operating in polite society, who have perfect manners and strong social skills and a sense of style - but who underneath it all are completely in touch with their dark side. I like them because they are my own reflection. I've never bought the idea that opposites attract. My opposite would be someone ultra-conventional, someone who believed that the traditional way to do things is usually the right one, someone who thinks that the way things are now is just fine. Either that or it would be someone soft and New Age-ey, a lover of Deepak Chopra and angel iconography. I have met both kinds of people, and I don't like them. These people and I do not attract, we repel.
So, beautiful men. Pretty boys. Bishonen. That's what works for me. I married one, after all. It occurs to me that many of the men I find sexy would be assumed to be gay by most people. A former boyfriend of mine always was, although in fact he was bi.
And there's another thing. These pretty boys I love? I also love to see them playing with each other. It amuses me that people always assume that if within a couple one person is bi it must be the women, and if they bring in a third party that will also be another woman. That hasn't been the case for me. I used to encourage my ex to hit on guys in clubs just so I could watch him kiss them. Sometimes we used to sneak off into dark corners and both kiss them together. Sometimes we used to do the same thing in public, locked in a tangle of sweat and heat and lust, revelling in the fact that all eyes were on us. Sometimes we used to take them home with us. Sometimes I used to watch my darling boy fuck those other boys. He never let them fuck him, though, because the only person allowed to fuck him was me.
There's the other part. I used to be very much into BSDM. I seem to have drifted away from the scene over the years, mostly because I got bored. I'm not much for rituals, really - generally I live my life in a pretty random way, and after a while I felt like a hamster on a wheel doing the same things over and over again.
That's not the only reason, though, although I didn't realise it at the time. The deeper reason is that I didn't feel like there was a place for me there. What do you call a person who's dominant, who's rough and aggressive and loves skinny boys at least in part because she can throw them around in bed, but who isn't attracted to submissives? Who is in fact rather turned off by people who are submissive in day to day life, but who has a personality that for some reason seems to attract men who want to be dominated?
What I seem to want most is things that feel visceral. Visceral sex, visceral music. Those seem to be the parts of my life where I feel free to let this part of my personality out to play. I'm constantly drawn towards and fascinated with other people who seem to work the same way.
So we're back to the beginning again. I like men who are like me. Soft and pretty and civilised on the surface and all sharp teeth and claws underneath. I like women who are like me, too, although there seem to be less of them out there. Not surprising, since the main aim of patriarchy seems to be to make damn sure that women's teeth and claws are permanently removed.
What do you call someone like me? I'm kind of drawn to the term genderfuck. That sounds right to me, somehow. I look very gender-congruent on the surface, but my personality is anything but. I like men who can often be mistaken for women, at least facially. I don't like butch women, though, which is odd, at least not in a sexual way.
So, once again, where do I fit into the big confusing mess that is gender theory, or queer theory?
That's not a rhetorical question by the way, I really am asking. Because all the recent talk about trans people and differing schools of feminist thought has got me thinking. I've been thinking for years, really, and I still don't know how to define myself. I'd be curious to hear what other people think. Maybe someone more steeped in queer theory than me has a better vocabulary. Maybe there are even other people like me out there.
Side note - the song I'm listening to is AWESOME, and fits my mood perfectly. Hell, it fits my personality perfectly. Download it here.
Dir En Grey - Hydra
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=76CTITI3
password = hydra
I'm trying to find a way to describe where I fit on the spectrum of sexual orientation, and of gender identity, and it's not easy. On the surface, to anyone who doesn't know me very well, I look like a very normal person these days. Looks can be deceiving.
Let's start with orientation. I'm bisexual. I've known that since before I knew what the word meant. I'm not right in the middle of the Kinsey scale though, not exactly. When I was in my teens (and younger) I leaned more towards women, and now I seem to lean more towards men. I'm not quite sure why exactly, and I suspect it may be partly because right now I know very few women who could potentially interest me in a sexual way. For some odd reason I seem to find myself surrounded by women who are very vanilla, very conventional, and that doesn't really work for me on a sexual level. Even the ones I find physically attractive I suspect I would find very boring in bed.
So that brings us to the men. The older I get the more I seem to be drawn to men on a very visceral level (keep that word visceral in mind, it will be coming up again later). The interesting thing is that the men I find most attractive aren't really particularly "masculine" in a lot of ways.
This is nothing new, of course - I was a teenage goth, so it's not as if androgynous pretty boys are anything new. It is interesting, though - why do I have pretty much no sexual interest in the type of men mainstream Western culture says I'm supposed to find sexy? Athletes with big bulging muscles leave me cold. Overtly macho behaviour turns me off (it turns me off when it's women doing it too, but more about that later). What most people describe as "ruggedly handsome" I perceive as hideously ugly. In fact, it took me until my early twenties to realise that "rugged" wasn't a code word for "Chow Chow the Dog Faced Boy", to realise that other people meant it as a compliment.
I like men who are beautiful. Delicate pretty features, big sparkly eyes, soft skin...basically the men that I love look very much like the evo-psych model of what men are supposed to find attractive in women. Except that, without exception, they all also have something savage about them, something raw and visceral. If they don't then I don't find them sexy, no matter how pretty they are. I think it's a contrast thing.
I like men who are like me. I like men who are adept at operating in polite society, who have perfect manners and strong social skills and a sense of style - but who underneath it all are completely in touch with their dark side. I like them because they are my own reflection. I've never bought the idea that opposites attract. My opposite would be someone ultra-conventional, someone who believed that the traditional way to do things is usually the right one, someone who thinks that the way things are now is just fine. Either that or it would be someone soft and New Age-ey, a lover of Deepak Chopra and angel iconography. I have met both kinds of people, and I don't like them. These people and I do not attract, we repel.
So, beautiful men. Pretty boys. Bishonen. That's what works for me. I married one, after all. It occurs to me that many of the men I find sexy would be assumed to be gay by most people. A former boyfriend of mine always was, although in fact he was bi.
And there's another thing. These pretty boys I love? I also love to see them playing with each other. It amuses me that people always assume that if within a couple one person is bi it must be the women, and if they bring in a third party that will also be another woman. That hasn't been the case for me. I used to encourage my ex to hit on guys in clubs just so I could watch him kiss them. Sometimes we used to sneak off into dark corners and both kiss them together. Sometimes we used to do the same thing in public, locked in a tangle of sweat and heat and lust, revelling in the fact that all eyes were on us. Sometimes we used to take them home with us. Sometimes I used to watch my darling boy fuck those other boys. He never let them fuck him, though, because the only person allowed to fuck him was me.
There's the other part. I used to be very much into BSDM. I seem to have drifted away from the scene over the years, mostly because I got bored. I'm not much for rituals, really - generally I live my life in a pretty random way, and after a while I felt like a hamster on a wheel doing the same things over and over again.
That's not the only reason, though, although I didn't realise it at the time. The deeper reason is that I didn't feel like there was a place for me there. What do you call a person who's dominant, who's rough and aggressive and loves skinny boys at least in part because she can throw them around in bed, but who isn't attracted to submissives? Who is in fact rather turned off by people who are submissive in day to day life, but who has a personality that for some reason seems to attract men who want to be dominated?
What I seem to want most is things that feel visceral. Visceral sex, visceral music. Those seem to be the parts of my life where I feel free to let this part of my personality out to play. I'm constantly drawn towards and fascinated with other people who seem to work the same way.
So we're back to the beginning again. I like men who are like me. Soft and pretty and civilised on the surface and all sharp teeth and claws underneath. I like women who are like me, too, although there seem to be less of them out there. Not surprising, since the main aim of patriarchy seems to be to make damn sure that women's teeth and claws are permanently removed.
What do you call someone like me? I'm kind of drawn to the term genderfuck. That sounds right to me, somehow. I look very gender-congruent on the surface, but my personality is anything but. I like men who can often be mistaken for women, at least facially. I don't like butch women, though, which is odd, at least not in a sexual way.
So, once again, where do I fit into the big confusing mess that is gender theory, or queer theory?
That's not a rhetorical question by the way, I really am asking. Because all the recent talk about trans people and differing schools of feminist thought has got me thinking. I've been thinking for years, really, and I still don't know how to define myself. I'd be curious to hear what other people think. Maybe someone more steeped in queer theory than me has a better vocabulary. Maybe there are even other people like me out there.
Side note - the song I'm listening to is AWESOME, and fits my mood perfectly. Hell, it fits my personality perfectly. Download it here.
Dir En Grey - Hydra
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=76CTITI3
password = hydra
Random question for cat peopleWhy is my cat sleeping in his food?
By which I mean, he is sleeping with his body curled up next to his food bowl and his head actually resting in the bowl is if his food was a pillow (I have tried to take a picture of this but he always somehow knows what I'm up to and runs off before I can get a clear shot). For anyone who's thinking "ew" I will point out that he gets dry food, so it's not as bad as it could be but still...why? He's been doing this for a few weeks now and I don't get it. Does anyone else's cat do this?
By which I mean, he is sleeping with his body curled up next to his food bowl and his head actually resting in the bowl is if his food was a pillow (I have tried to take a picture of this but he always somehow knows what I'm up to and runs off before I can get a clear shot). For anyone who's thinking "ew" I will point out that he gets dry food, so it's not as bad as it could be but still...why? He's been doing this for a few weeks now and I don't get it. Does anyone else's cat do this?
Some thoughts about MRAs
Since someone mentioned MRA's, in the sense that I was being unfair to them, in the comments on my last post I'm going to go ahead and lay out my position here, just so that everyone is clear. In my opinion MRAs do not have any legitimate political positions. None. Zero. The whole "divorce is so unfair because men don't get custody" thing? Dude, please...the job of the judge in a custody case is to put the child/children in whatever situation will be best FOR THE CHILD. They don't care about the feelings of the father. They don't care about the feelings of the mother, either. That's not what they're there for. The only person whose welfare they're worried about is the child, and that's exactly the way it should be.And all the "American women are so mean" crap, give me a break. Just because some woman spurned you at some point in your history that doesn't mean that all women are evil bitches. We've all had crappy relationships that ended badly. Get over it. You are not entitled to an unpaid domestic servant just because you have a dick. So sure, go get youself a mail order bride if you think that will make you happy, but just remember that the moment she enters the USA American laws apply to her too, and she just might take a look around and realise that she doesn't have to take your shit forever. And another thing...I've actually lived on every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and women in other parts of the world are just like women here. Some are great, some are not so great, they all have actual individual personalities of their own. They're not the Borg in an apron. Assuming that they're all just dying to be your devoted little woman is a very foolish thing to do.And before you even start on the draft...we currently do not have a draft. I don't think we're going to any time soon, because even Chimpy Mc Flight Suit isn't that enthusiastic about committing political suicide. If we did have a draft I would have no particular philosopshical objection to it including women (Israel's been doing it that way for years), BUT I think the draft is wrong, period. Remind me why we're talking about this even though it doesn't actually exist again? So, yeah, not a fan of the MRAs. Being angry and bitter because you went through a rough divorce is not a great basis for a political movement.And no, feminist aren't criticising MRAs because we don't like men. We just don't like you, because we're generally not big fans of either sexism or stupidity.
And if you think I'm being a bitch and don't want to talk to me any more? The door's right over there. Don't let it smack you in the ass on the way out.
Since someone mentioned MRA's, in the sense that I was being unfair to them, in the comments on my last post I'm going to go ahead and lay out my position here, just so that everyone is clear. In my opinion MRAs do not have any legitimate political positions. None. Zero. The whole "divorce is so unfair because men don't get custody" thing? Dude, please...the job of the judge in a custody case is to put the child/children in whatever situation will be best FOR THE CHILD. They don't care about the feelings of the father. They don't care about the feelings of the mother, either. That's not what they're there for. The only person whose welfare they're worried about is the child, and that's exactly the way it should be.And all the "American women are so mean" crap, give me a break. Just because some woman spurned you at some point in your history that doesn't mean that all women are evil bitches. We've all had crappy relationships that ended badly. Get over it. You are not entitled to an unpaid domestic servant just because you have a dick. So sure, go get youself a mail order bride if you think that will make you happy, but just remember that the moment she enters the USA American laws apply to her too, and she just might take a look around and realise that she doesn't have to take your shit forever. And another thing...I've actually lived on every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and women in other parts of the world are just like women here. Some are great, some are not so great, they all have actual individual personalities of their own. They're not the Borg in an apron. Assuming that they're all just dying to be your devoted little woman is a very foolish thing to do.And before you even start on the draft...we currently do not have a draft. I don't think we're going to any time soon, because even Chimpy Mc Flight Suit isn't that enthusiastic about committing political suicide. If we did have a draft I would have no particular philosopshical objection to it including women (Israel's been doing it that way for years), BUT I think the draft is wrong, period. Remind me why we're talking about this even though it doesn't actually exist again? So, yeah, not a fan of the MRAs. Being angry and bitter because you went through a rough divorce is not a great basis for a political movement.And no, feminist aren't criticising MRAs because we don't like men. We just don't like you, because we're generally not big fans of either sexism or stupidity.
And if you think I'm being a bitch and don't want to talk to me any more? The door's right over there. Don't let it smack you in the ass on the way out.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Some thoughts about the recent outbreak of intercine feminist warfare
I've been politely holding my tongue for a while in an attempt to be a good little team player, but you know what? That's not me. And I'm pissed off.There seems to have been a strange outbreak of "I am the one true guardian of feminism and I'm here to tell you the rules" and you know what my response is? Bite me. And I don't mean that in a "fun" way.The next person who uses the sneering grade-school insult "fun feminist' gets a frying pan to the head. I'm not kidding. When did it become OK to look down on other women because of a bunch of totally trivial crap? Does anyone seriously believe that the point of feminism is to be the conformity police? Because that's not what I signed up for, this is my movement too, and I'm not giving it up without a fight.
Here's the thing. I like men. Not all men - some of them are fucking assholes and the world would be better off without them. If every MRA in the world was struck by lightening tomorrow my only concern would be that it might make a mess and guess who would get stuck cleaning it up? Some men are evil, dangerous bastards. But not ALL men.
Let's all try to remember the words "patriarchy is not men". It really isn't. It's a social system.
Some men are perfectly decent human beings. They do not have male cooties. Everything associated with them is not tainted by association.
Here are a list of terms that I would be very happy never to hear again..."Fun feminist", male identified, pornstitution, "sex postive" delivered in a tone so sneering it is clearly intended as an insult. I could really do without hearing other women being told that their life experiences are invalid too. If a woman says that she likes BSDM or porn or sucking dick or whatever else it is that you don't approve of you know what? Maybe she actually DOES like those things. And maybe that's OK.And all the "penises are so icky" stuff - give me a break. We're not 12. If you don't like dicks, or men's bodies in general, that's fine, but in no way does it mean that there's anything wrong or un-feminist about women who do like those things. If you're really a feminist then give other women enough respect to assume that they are not morons and they actually do know what they do and do not enjoy.Now me personally, I tend to view dicks as interesting toys that nature provided entirely for my personal amusement, so that I would have something fun to play with. This is not because I am a brainwashed sexbot, this is because I'm attracted to men. Look at my icon - I love love love men's bodies, and there is nothing wrong with that. I'm attracted to women too and view breasts much the same way, even my own. I like sex. If that's a problem for anyone, too bad. Feminism is a political movement, not a cult. 100% dedication to the movement to the exclusion of all other interests is not and should not be required. All of our identities are comlex and multi-layered, and that's a good thing. So I guess this is my coming out post. I'm a feminist. I'm also a socialist. Both are equally important to me. Fighting racism is also important to me. I'm obsessed with books, music and movies. Sometimes I'm very femmey and sometimes I'm a complete tomboy. I love ice hockey. Unless you're an Olympic athlete I guarantee I can swim faster than you can. I'm kinky as hell. I love boys who kind of look like girls. I love them even more if their bodies are unmistakeably male. I'm bolshy and agressive and I like to argue. I'm complicated, and most other people are too. I am not a fan of those who try to push others into boxes. I resent it when the pushing is done by those who claim to be acting in the best interests of women. If feminism means anything it means treating other women with respect. Referring to other women as sexbots or snottily implying that they are only saying what they are saying to suck up to the boyz is not respectful. We get enough of that crap from the other side of the political fence.
PS Since there are no icons on Blogger I'm adding the pic here because really who couldn't use more pictures of really hot guys? That and I keep referring to "my icon" and those
viewing this on blogger must be wondering what the hell I'm talking about.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A question from one feminist to some of her fellow travelers – What the fuck is wrong with you?
I am of course referring to the two recent hate-fests that broke out over at I Blame The Patriarchy. Before I get too far into this, let me make myself clear – I do not hold Twisty responsible for what other people choose to post in her comments. She has a life to live offline and she can’t monitor comments 24/7. What I’m upset about is the hateful nonsense being spewed by some of her commenters.
I really never thought that I would see the day when a feminist would say that they thought ANYONE being raped would be a good thing. Take a look at this comment.
“I can only hope that being raped gives even the most insensitive man some small distaste for raping himself. Once raped, the fantasy is over. Once raped, a man can for the first time know that sex can happen without human dignity, and that losing that dignity is the opposite of arousal.But a man never deserves pity for being raped. After all, it’s not like he had sex. Unless he’s a gay man, it was just a little lesson in what it’s like to be treated like an object.”
I repeat, what the fuck is wrong with the person who wrote that, and all the other who chimed in with similar sentiments? So now rape is OK as long as the victims are men? Rape is a teaching tool? Have you all lost your minds?
For the record I don’t think that a man being raped is in some indefinable way worse than a woman being raped. ANYONE being raped is a tragedy. Feminists of all people should know that. The idea that people who claim membership in the same movement I do could joke about how funny it would be if men were raped more often and how it might teach them something makes me so angry I want to beat the crap out of them. My ex boyfriend was raped. Want me to tell you all about how funny that was? Care to hear about how he cried like a baby on my shoulder when he told me, how guilty he felt, all the ways in which he rationalized how it must have somehow been his fault, how he didn’t want anyone to touch him afterwards because he felt dirty? Still think it’s somehow less of a big deal when it happens to a man, or that it’s all a big joke?
Then there was the “let’s all pick on the trannies” hate-fest. Take a look at this.
“This is about what all this nonsense amounts to. In short, trans are nutjobs. The bathroom is about the last place I want to be alone with a male nutjob. These unfortunate, but seriously disturbed individuals belong on the 5th floor in a straight jacket. Not in a women’s bathroom.”
Again, what the fuck is wrong with you people? With all the real, genuine enemies that feminism has to face, actual enemies who could do us actual harm, you people think that we should be worried about whether the person in the next bathroom stall used to have a dick? Seriously? You don’t think that there might be a few more pressing issues to deal with?
It’s hard to think of any group more generally stigmatized and picked on than trans people. What does it say about a movement and the people in it when they choose to pick on the weak, on the very people who are the most vulnerable? How do you think any trans people who stumbled onto that thread must have felt? Look, I’m not claiming to be any kind of authority on the trans experience. I know very little about the whole issue, and I know that it’s my heteronormative privilege as a woman who has always been completely comfortable in my own skin that allows me to go on not knowing much. What I do know, though, is that there is absolutely no good reason for hate speech no matter how ignorant a person may be about a particular issue. If you don’t know anything, shut up. That’s a pretty good rule. Let the people who actually do know something talk, and then listen to them and try to learn from their experience. Wasn’t that one of the founding principles of feminism? Listening to others and learning from what they had to say? When did some of us forget that, and what is it going to take for us to remember?
I’m seriously disgusted with a lot of you right now. If nothing else couldn’t everyone at least demonstrate a little empathy, a little basic human compassion? Is that really too much to ask?
I am of course referring to the two recent hate-fests that broke out over at I Blame The Patriarchy. Before I get too far into this, let me make myself clear – I do not hold Twisty responsible for what other people choose to post in her comments. She has a life to live offline and she can’t monitor comments 24/7. What I’m upset about is the hateful nonsense being spewed by some of her commenters.
I really never thought that I would see the day when a feminist would say that they thought ANYONE being raped would be a good thing. Take a look at this comment.
“I can only hope that being raped gives even the most insensitive man some small distaste for raping himself. Once raped, the fantasy is over. Once raped, a man can for the first time know that sex can happen without human dignity, and that losing that dignity is the opposite of arousal.But a man never deserves pity for being raped. After all, it’s not like he had sex. Unless he’s a gay man, it was just a little lesson in what it’s like to be treated like an object.”
I repeat, what the fuck is wrong with the person who wrote that, and all the other who chimed in with similar sentiments? So now rape is OK as long as the victims are men? Rape is a teaching tool? Have you all lost your minds?
For the record I don’t think that a man being raped is in some indefinable way worse than a woman being raped. ANYONE being raped is a tragedy. Feminists of all people should know that. The idea that people who claim membership in the same movement I do could joke about how funny it would be if men were raped more often and how it might teach them something makes me so angry I want to beat the crap out of them. My ex boyfriend was raped. Want me to tell you all about how funny that was? Care to hear about how he cried like a baby on my shoulder when he told me, how guilty he felt, all the ways in which he rationalized how it must have somehow been his fault, how he didn’t want anyone to touch him afterwards because he felt dirty? Still think it’s somehow less of a big deal when it happens to a man, or that it’s all a big joke?
Then there was the “let’s all pick on the trannies” hate-fest. Take a look at this.
“This is about what all this nonsense amounts to. In short, trans are nutjobs. The bathroom is about the last place I want to be alone with a male nutjob. These unfortunate, but seriously disturbed individuals belong on the 5th floor in a straight jacket. Not in a women’s bathroom.”
Again, what the fuck is wrong with you people? With all the real, genuine enemies that feminism has to face, actual enemies who could do us actual harm, you people think that we should be worried about whether the person in the next bathroom stall used to have a dick? Seriously? You don’t think that there might be a few more pressing issues to deal with?
It’s hard to think of any group more generally stigmatized and picked on than trans people. What does it say about a movement and the people in it when they choose to pick on the weak, on the very people who are the most vulnerable? How do you think any trans people who stumbled onto that thread must have felt? Look, I’m not claiming to be any kind of authority on the trans experience. I know very little about the whole issue, and I know that it’s my heteronormative privilege as a woman who has always been completely comfortable in my own skin that allows me to go on not knowing much. What I do know, though, is that there is absolutely no good reason for hate speech no matter how ignorant a person may be about a particular issue. If you don’t know anything, shut up. That’s a pretty good rule. Let the people who actually do know something talk, and then listen to them and try to learn from their experience. Wasn’t that one of the founding principles of feminism? Listening to others and learning from what they had to say? When did some of us forget that, and what is it going to take for us to remember?
I’m seriously disgusted with a lot of you right now. If nothing else couldn’t everyone at least demonstrate a little empathy, a little basic human compassion? Is that really too much to ask?
Saturday, December 30, 2006
It’s About Time…Dir En Grey are FINALLY doing a real US tour
Finally, almost 10 years later, a real Dir En Grey tour in the US. An actual tour, with a full set and opening bands and the whole shebang. OK, so the opening bands kind of suck, but nobody’s going to see them anyway. I do feel kind of sorry for them though – they’re probably going to have to play their whole sets with the crowd screaming for DEG all the way through, and musically they’re a pretty poor fit.
I’m very happy about this tour. I was starting to think I’d have to fly back to Europe to see these guys play a full set, and much as I’m happy to go home and visit, the crowds in Germany are kind of scary. I’m a small woman (158 cms), I’m not too fond of being trapped in a mosh pit with big drunk guys. This is a much better option.
The whole thing is kind of amusing, though. To give some background for those who have no idea what I’m going on about, Dir En Grey started out as a visual kei band. Think pretty boys in make-up and feminine clothes. They initially attracted an audience full of adoring teenage girls, like most visual bands do, although in their case these were not the more mainstream teenage girls, and they still aren’t. Then a few years ago they changed their look. They pretty much look like a “normal” rock band now, although the eyeliner still makes the occasional appearance. No more skirts, though, and one of the guitar players has been sporting a rather sexy little goatee recently. For anyone who’s been paying attention over the last few years it looks like they’ve been deliberately moving away from the whole visual thing. One would think that now that they’re making an effort to conquer the West that would be a pretty easy thing to do, since most people here wouldn’t recognize a visual band if one walked up and smacked them in the face with its shiny hot pants. One would think that, but one would be forgetting the power of the internet.
What’s amusing me is that the visual thing seems to have followed them over here. I went to see them back in August as part of a big summer tour with Korn (who were better than I expected them to be, BTW. The Deftones sucked, though.). You could tell who most of the DEG fans were a mile off. There were literally dozens of teenage goth girls in silly stripy tights, cheap corsets and various other Hot Topic-spawned ensembles. In California, in August. It was kind of hard not to point and laugh, but I bravely resisted the temptation. There were even a few dressed up like the band – not the way they look now, they way they looked in 1999. The whole thing was bizarre. The metal guys who were there to see Korn seemed a bit bemused by the presence of angsty, horny teenage girls, especially when they started squealing as if they were at a Justin Timberlake show.
The kiddies seemed terribly upset to realize that the band don’t look particularly girly any more. The funniest moment of the whole day was when a couple of the guys came out to do a meet and greet and one of the girls screamed “Oh my God, Shinya’s a man!”. Now granted, he spent the first few years of his career in a skirt, but still, he’s been photographed shirtless enough times that one wouldn’t think his gender was really in doubt. There was another group of girls who kept complaining about the bass player’s choice of footwear – Doc Martens, or something similar. I spent most of the show with a constant chorus of “Why can’t Toshiya wear the pretty girly clothes like he used to?” droning in my ear. The man’s almost 30, 6 feet tall, and has abs you could bounce quarters off. He’s not a pretty little boy any more, and there’s really no reason he should be. Actually he looks much sexier this way (those who are reading this on LJ – see my current icon and try not to drool. But of course I only appreciate him for his bass-playing skills. Hey, stop laughing!). I was tempted to ask the kids what the hell was wrong with their libidos, but my parents brought me up to be polite…
So, it would seem that the visual subculture is making some inroads in the US. On the one hand this is a good thing. American girls need some alternative to the constant “you must love macho frat boys, even if you think you don’t” brainwashing they’re usually subjected to. The shit-stirring part of my personality is delighted that something that flips the gender script as thoroughly as the visual scene does is taking hold over here. Visual’s anime and manga cousin, yaoi, is also making serious inroads (more about that later), also thanks to the internet. On many levels this is a good thing.
It’s just kind of a shame for Dir En Grey. This is an amazing band. Seriously, everyone I’ve ever introduced to them who likes music at the heavier end of the spectrum loves this band. They deserve a wider audience overseas. On a purely musical level if there’s any Japanese band or artist that could cross over to the US, it would be these guys (although Ellegarden and D’espairs Ray have a pretty decent chance, too, and I would love to see someone take a shot at marketing Sakarai Atsushi or Kiyoharu). The problem is that on a musical level the natural audience for them in the US is metal, punk and industrial fans, and that demographic is mostly male and more than a little homophobic. I can’t imagine what they’re going to think of the cross-dressing, making kissy faces at each other during live performances, being followed around by hordes of screaming fan girls aspect of DEG’s history, especially since it seems to be following them over here.
Just to clarify, I have no problem with cross-dressing, boys making out on stage or any other aspect of the visual scene, although I’m not too fond of the shiny sparkly Alice Nine-style stuff. Back in college I had a group of Japanese friends who were all into the visual scene, which is how I discovered it. I like pretty boys in eyeliner. Pretty boys in eyeliner and skimpy clothing are even better. I’m just not sure how this is going to play out in America. I also suspect that there’s a storm brewing about yaoi, and that once American parents realize that many of their darling little girls are essentially reading gay porn they may not be entirely happy about it. DEG is inextricably tied in to that subculture, no matter how much they may have changed over the last few years. I just hope they don’t get caught in the crosshairs.
If anyone wants me to post some mp3’s I’d be happy to do so, BTW. I’m a huge music geek and am always happy to introduce other people to artists I love. Think of me as a female version of the John Cusack character in High Fidelity. I won’t post whole albums, though, because my connection is too slow and because I think that if you like a band you should actually buy their stuff and not just leech. Support the starving musicians and all that good stuff (and frankly Shinya could use some feeding up – hey, we could use him as the “support the starving artists” poster boy. I like skinny guys, but his arms scare me).
More music blogging later, and if anyone wants to go check out Dir en Grey in February I’m posting a link to the Free Will site below, they’re selling tickets there. Ticketmaster is selling them for some venues too.
Finally, almost 10 years later, a real Dir En Grey tour in the US. An actual tour, with a full set and opening bands and the whole shebang. OK, so the opening bands kind of suck, but nobody’s going to see them anyway. I do feel kind of sorry for them though – they’re probably going to have to play their whole sets with the crowd screaming for DEG all the way through, and musically they’re a pretty poor fit.
I’m very happy about this tour. I was starting to think I’d have to fly back to Europe to see these guys play a full set, and much as I’m happy to go home and visit, the crowds in Germany are kind of scary. I’m a small woman (158 cms), I’m not too fond of being trapped in a mosh pit with big drunk guys. This is a much better option.
The whole thing is kind of amusing, though. To give some background for those who have no idea what I’m going on about, Dir En Grey started out as a visual kei band. Think pretty boys in make-up and feminine clothes. They initially attracted an audience full of adoring teenage girls, like most visual bands do, although in their case these were not the more mainstream teenage girls, and they still aren’t. Then a few years ago they changed their look. They pretty much look like a “normal” rock band now, although the eyeliner still makes the occasional appearance. No more skirts, though, and one of the guitar players has been sporting a rather sexy little goatee recently. For anyone who’s been paying attention over the last few years it looks like they’ve been deliberately moving away from the whole visual thing. One would think that now that they’re making an effort to conquer the West that would be a pretty easy thing to do, since most people here wouldn’t recognize a visual band if one walked up and smacked them in the face with its shiny hot pants. One would think that, but one would be forgetting the power of the internet.
What’s amusing me is that the visual thing seems to have followed them over here. I went to see them back in August as part of a big summer tour with Korn (who were better than I expected them to be, BTW. The Deftones sucked, though.). You could tell who most of the DEG fans were a mile off. There were literally dozens of teenage goth girls in silly stripy tights, cheap corsets and various other Hot Topic-spawned ensembles. In California, in August. It was kind of hard not to point and laugh, but I bravely resisted the temptation. There were even a few dressed up like the band – not the way they look now, they way they looked in 1999. The whole thing was bizarre. The metal guys who were there to see Korn seemed a bit bemused by the presence of angsty, horny teenage girls, especially when they started squealing as if they were at a Justin Timberlake show.
The kiddies seemed terribly upset to realize that the band don’t look particularly girly any more. The funniest moment of the whole day was when a couple of the guys came out to do a meet and greet and one of the girls screamed “Oh my God, Shinya’s a man!”. Now granted, he spent the first few years of his career in a skirt, but still, he’s been photographed shirtless enough times that one wouldn’t think his gender was really in doubt. There was another group of girls who kept complaining about the bass player’s choice of footwear – Doc Martens, or something similar. I spent most of the show with a constant chorus of “Why can’t Toshiya wear the pretty girly clothes like he used to?” droning in my ear. The man’s almost 30, 6 feet tall, and has abs you could bounce quarters off. He’s not a pretty little boy any more, and there’s really no reason he should be. Actually he looks much sexier this way (those who are reading this on LJ – see my current icon and try not to drool. But of course I only appreciate him for his bass-playing skills. Hey, stop laughing!). I was tempted to ask the kids what the hell was wrong with their libidos, but my parents brought me up to be polite…
So, it would seem that the visual subculture is making some inroads in the US. On the one hand this is a good thing. American girls need some alternative to the constant “you must love macho frat boys, even if you think you don’t” brainwashing they’re usually subjected to. The shit-stirring part of my personality is delighted that something that flips the gender script as thoroughly as the visual scene does is taking hold over here. Visual’s anime and manga cousin, yaoi, is also making serious inroads (more about that later), also thanks to the internet. On many levels this is a good thing.
It’s just kind of a shame for Dir En Grey. This is an amazing band. Seriously, everyone I’ve ever introduced to them who likes music at the heavier end of the spectrum loves this band. They deserve a wider audience overseas. On a purely musical level if there’s any Japanese band or artist that could cross over to the US, it would be these guys (although Ellegarden and D’espairs Ray have a pretty decent chance, too, and I would love to see someone take a shot at marketing Sakarai Atsushi or Kiyoharu). The problem is that on a musical level the natural audience for them in the US is metal, punk and industrial fans, and that demographic is mostly male and more than a little homophobic. I can’t imagine what they’re going to think of the cross-dressing, making kissy faces at each other during live performances, being followed around by hordes of screaming fan girls aspect of DEG’s history, especially since it seems to be following them over here.
Just to clarify, I have no problem with cross-dressing, boys making out on stage or any other aspect of the visual scene, although I’m not too fond of the shiny sparkly Alice Nine-style stuff. Back in college I had a group of Japanese friends who were all into the visual scene, which is how I discovered it. I like pretty boys in eyeliner. Pretty boys in eyeliner and skimpy clothing are even better. I’m just not sure how this is going to play out in America. I also suspect that there’s a storm brewing about yaoi, and that once American parents realize that many of their darling little girls are essentially reading gay porn they may not be entirely happy about it. DEG is inextricably tied in to that subculture, no matter how much they may have changed over the last few years. I just hope they don’t get caught in the crosshairs.
If anyone wants me to post some mp3’s I’d be happy to do so, BTW. I’m a huge music geek and am always happy to introduce other people to artists I love. Think of me as a female version of the John Cusack character in High Fidelity. I won’t post whole albums, though, because my connection is too slow and because I think that if you like a band you should actually buy their stuff and not just leech. Support the starving musicians and all that good stuff (and frankly Shinya could use some feeding up – hey, we could use him as the “support the starving artists” poster boy. I like skinny guys, but his arms scare me).
More music blogging later, and if anyone wants to go check out Dir en Grey in February I’m posting a link to the Free Will site below, they’re selling tickets there. Ticketmaster is selling them for some venues too.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Christmas Creepiness
Damn, it's cold!OK, ignoring that for a second, the cold has me trapped in the house on a Saturday night and I've been vaguely glancing in at what my boy's watching on TV every once in a while. Thus, I finally saw part of The Polar Express.Damn that thing's creepy. People took their kids to see this movie? I would imagine doing so had rather the same effect as giving them the traditional Sacred Heart lamp to put by their bed...those must be some freaked-out kids.Why are so many Christmas specials so creepy looking anyway? Frosty the Snowman's a little odd looking too if you ignore the chirpy soundtrack, that old animatronic/stop motion Rudolph thing is bizarre, and It's a Wonderful Life just makes everyone cry. It's almost as if people LIKE making each other miserable at Christmas. The only non-creepy Christmas TV thing I can think of is How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon, not the crappy Jim Carrey movie). I actually miss the UK at Christmas time. American Christmases just aren't the same. the TV sucks, nobody sings any of the good Christmas carols (I miss In The Deep Midwinter), it starts in October, and the food's all wrong.OK, enough of that...Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, or at least celebrate the ritual gift exchange. And Happy Birthday to my cousin Fiona, who turns 34 today.Love and kisses to all.
Damn, it's cold!OK, ignoring that for a second, the cold has me trapped in the house on a Saturday night and I've been vaguely glancing in at what my boy's watching on TV every once in a while. Thus, I finally saw part of The Polar Express.Damn that thing's creepy. People took their kids to see this movie? I would imagine doing so had rather the same effect as giving them the traditional Sacred Heart lamp to put by their bed...those must be some freaked-out kids.Why are so many Christmas specials so creepy looking anyway? Frosty the Snowman's a little odd looking too if you ignore the chirpy soundtrack, that old animatronic/stop motion Rudolph thing is bizarre, and It's a Wonderful Life just makes everyone cry. It's almost as if people LIKE making each other miserable at Christmas. The only non-creepy Christmas TV thing I can think of is How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon, not the crappy Jim Carrey movie). I actually miss the UK at Christmas time. American Christmases just aren't the same. the TV sucks, nobody sings any of the good Christmas carols (I miss In The Deep Midwinter), it starts in October, and the food's all wrong.OK, enough of that...Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, or at least celebrate the ritual gift exchange. And Happy Birthday to my cousin Fiona, who turns 34 today.Love and kisses to all.
Friday, December 22, 2006
GPS Tracking of Registered Sex Offenders – Most Misguided Law Ever?
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about the changes in California law requiring registered sex offenders to wear GPS tracking devices. The change in law seems to have spawned more debate after the fact than when it was actually voted on, which is a shame, as a public debate would have been a very good thing in this case.
Before I go any further let me make my perspective absolutely clear. I think people who commit sex crimes are the scum of the earth. My mother was an abused child, my best friend was raped in high school. I hate these people. I think all of them should be strung up by their balls, or at least locked up where they can’t do any harm for the rest of their lives.
So, I have no problem with increasing the level of punishment meted out to sex offenders. The problem is, I would really rather that punishment focus on making sure that they don’t repeat their crimes, and in that regard tagging them with GPS devices is completely useless.
Firstly, the things don’t work very well. They’re easy to disable (seriously, some aluminum foil will do the trick). All they show is where a person is – they can’t track what the person is doing. Unless our concern is keeping a particular person away from a particular place, and we have cops on hand to swoop in and stop them if they get too close to that place, the things are basically useless. Where they might have some applicability is in cases of stalking, where a person has been forbidden to be within x number of feet of a particular building, but even in that case they wouldn’t do much good when the stalking victim had to leave the house.
Secondly, they deceive the public into thinking that we’re “doing something” about sex offenders when in face we’re missing the real issue by miles. Whether we’re talking about child abuse or the rape of adults one fact remains the same – in the majority of cases the victim knows their attacker. What the focus on high-tech hocus-pocus like GPS devices does is reinforce the idea that most cases of sexual assault are the result of “stranger danger”, of the masked man in the dark alley or the creepy guy hanging out by the playground. In the majority of cases that just isn’t the reality. I’m not saying that those people don’t exist – they do, but the fact remains that in a minimum of 70% of cases (some agencies say the number is over 90% when considering attacks on children) those who are sexually assaulted are assaulted by people they know and trust. That’s the icky fact that society just can’t seem to face. This whole GPS idea is another way to not face that unpalatable fact.
What we’re doing is dodging the real conversation that needs to happen about what to do with sex offenders. Since obviously I know that the string them up by the balls idea isn’t actually a viable option, what is? I’m voting for lifetime sentences for serious offenders – and I mean for the actual lifetime of the person, not 8-10 years.
We also need to take a serious look at how sex crimes are classified in general. Putting flashers in the same category as rapists doesn’t make much sense, though I still think that flashers need to be caught and to basically have the crap scared out of them badly enough that they think twice before doing it again. Actual, bone-fide rapists need to go to jail for life, and there need to be a lot fewer legal loopholes that allow them to escape punishment. Our age of consent laws are a mess of confusing and conflicting regulations, and they need a serious overhaul. Prosecutions for statutory rape when the participants are only a couple of years apart are absurd. Sentences for actual child abuse, with an adult abuser, need to be much, much heavier. The fact that the law treats gay sex differently to hetero sex is a disgrace.
There’s a lot of work to be done, and applying silly technological band-aids isn’t helping.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about the changes in California law requiring registered sex offenders to wear GPS tracking devices. The change in law seems to have spawned more debate after the fact than when it was actually voted on, which is a shame, as a public debate would have been a very good thing in this case.
Before I go any further let me make my perspective absolutely clear. I think people who commit sex crimes are the scum of the earth. My mother was an abused child, my best friend was raped in high school. I hate these people. I think all of them should be strung up by their balls, or at least locked up where they can’t do any harm for the rest of their lives.
So, I have no problem with increasing the level of punishment meted out to sex offenders. The problem is, I would really rather that punishment focus on making sure that they don’t repeat their crimes, and in that regard tagging them with GPS devices is completely useless.
Firstly, the things don’t work very well. They’re easy to disable (seriously, some aluminum foil will do the trick). All they show is where a person is – they can’t track what the person is doing. Unless our concern is keeping a particular person away from a particular place, and we have cops on hand to swoop in and stop them if they get too close to that place, the things are basically useless. Where they might have some applicability is in cases of stalking, where a person has been forbidden to be within x number of feet of a particular building, but even in that case they wouldn’t do much good when the stalking victim had to leave the house.
Secondly, they deceive the public into thinking that we’re “doing something” about sex offenders when in face we’re missing the real issue by miles. Whether we’re talking about child abuse or the rape of adults one fact remains the same – in the majority of cases the victim knows their attacker. What the focus on high-tech hocus-pocus like GPS devices does is reinforce the idea that most cases of sexual assault are the result of “stranger danger”, of the masked man in the dark alley or the creepy guy hanging out by the playground. In the majority of cases that just isn’t the reality. I’m not saying that those people don’t exist – they do, but the fact remains that in a minimum of 70% of cases (some agencies say the number is over 90% when considering attacks on children) those who are sexually assaulted are assaulted by people they know and trust. That’s the icky fact that society just can’t seem to face. This whole GPS idea is another way to not face that unpalatable fact.
What we’re doing is dodging the real conversation that needs to happen about what to do with sex offenders. Since obviously I know that the string them up by the balls idea isn’t actually a viable option, what is? I’m voting for lifetime sentences for serious offenders – and I mean for the actual lifetime of the person, not 8-10 years.
We also need to take a serious look at how sex crimes are classified in general. Putting flashers in the same category as rapists doesn’t make much sense, though I still think that flashers need to be caught and to basically have the crap scared out of them badly enough that they think twice before doing it again. Actual, bone-fide rapists need to go to jail for life, and there need to be a lot fewer legal loopholes that allow them to escape punishment. Our age of consent laws are a mess of confusing and conflicting regulations, and they need a serious overhaul. Prosecutions for statutory rape when the participants are only a couple of years apart are absurd. Sentences for actual child abuse, with an adult abuser, need to be much, much heavier. The fact that the law treats gay sex differently to hetero sex is a disgrace.
There’s a lot of work to be done, and applying silly technological band-aids isn’t helping.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
The God question
I saw an interesting book reading on MSNBC or some such on Sunday which got me thinking about the whole issue of religion and how it fits into society - or doesn't.
The person reading was Richard Dawkins (lefty British intellectual known for his dislike of religion). His reading was plenty interesting, of course - witty and clever in the way that British intellectuals are so very good at. That wasn't really what got me thinking, though. What got me thinking was the Q&A afterwards.
There were several people in the audience from Liberty University (ridiculous institution that it is). One of them asked Dawkins the usual smug religious person question - I'm paraphrasing here, but basically the gist was, if you abandon God how can you hope to have any kind of morality?
Smug religious types always ask this question in one form or another. It's kind of funny really - they seem to honestly believe that this question is the way to bring all discussion of atheism to a halt, that it conclusively proves the rightness of their position.
What a bunch of bullshit. Some of the most deeply ethical people throughout history have been nonbelievers. Would you call Siddharta/Buddha an unethical person? The real question is, if a person thinks that nobody would have any sense of right and wrong without a book to tell them what to do (which is after all what the question implies), what does that say about the person asking the question? Nothing good, in my opinion. Does anyone really need the Bible/Torah/Koran to tell them that murder, rape and child abuse are Very Bad Things? Doesn't their own conscience tell them that?
See, I think that at it's core morality is really a very simple thing. All you have to do is, in any given situation, ask yourself if what you are about to do is going to cause harm to anyone else. If the action is completely harmless, go ahead and do it. If it is clearly harmful in a way that could be avoided, don't do it. If you find yourself in a grey area, think about it some more and the answer will soon become clear.
I know I'm simplifying here, but the basic principle holds true. Any truly authentic morality is always going to be based on a desire to help rather than harm. It's honestly not that complicated, when you get right down to it.
Unless you're a fundamentalist. I don't really care which religion we're talking about because the Big 3 are basically all the same. Instead of a careful examination of one's conscience and decisions made based on the desire not to do harm they substitute a kind of slavish devotion to a heavenly rulebook. It's the morality of a 5 year old - don't do that or Mommy and Daddy will be mad! Adults are supposed to learn a more nuanced way of looking at things (check out Piaget's theory of child development if you don't believe me).
It's a strange thing, the way religion is evolving in America. It seems to be moving more and more rapidly in the direction of a kind of primitive, knee-jerk fundamentalism at exactly the same time that the rest of the First World is moving in precisely the opposite direction. It's peculiar - why is America going in so different a direction? If anyone asked Dawkins a question like that in Europe the rest of the audience would probably laugh at them. Why is it so different here? And what can we do to fix it?
The other interesting question that was asked at the Q&A was about the issue of comfort. Again I'm paraphrasing, but basically the question was, if people find comfort in their religion, who are you to take that away from them?
That's an interesting question. I personally don't understand why people find the belief in something that is manifestly not true to be comforting, but they do. To me, believing in god is rather like believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. It might have made sense when you were a child, but as a rational adult surely it's obvious that the very idea is ridiculous? The wierd thing is, I've had lots of believers ask me variations of this question, and whenever they do there's always something nervous and insecure about their tone. It's as if they desperately want me to agree with them, but already know that I won't. They expect to be laughed at. The guy who asked Dawkins the question expected to be laughed at - it was written all over him. Why then do they keep asking the question?
It's a thorny question for the largely non-religious left. Whether we as individuals identify as Marxists, feminists, Greens or whatever, one thing that most of us share is a lack of religiosity. Most of the population in this country does not agree with us. What are we supposed to do about that? Tell the truth about how we feel, or just keep quiet and let others assume that we're believers just like them.
It's clear that fundamentalists are the enemy, but what about the "Jesus is my blankie" people? How are we supposed to relate to them? We don't understand them, and they don't understand us. How do we handle that?
Just musing, but if anyone else has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
I saw an interesting book reading on MSNBC or some such on Sunday which got me thinking about the whole issue of religion and how it fits into society - or doesn't.
The person reading was Richard Dawkins (lefty British intellectual known for his dislike of religion). His reading was plenty interesting, of course - witty and clever in the way that British intellectuals are so very good at. That wasn't really what got me thinking, though. What got me thinking was the Q&A afterwards.
There were several people in the audience from Liberty University (ridiculous institution that it is). One of them asked Dawkins the usual smug religious person question - I'm paraphrasing here, but basically the gist was, if you abandon God how can you hope to have any kind of morality?
Smug religious types always ask this question in one form or another. It's kind of funny really - they seem to honestly believe that this question is the way to bring all discussion of atheism to a halt, that it conclusively proves the rightness of their position.
What a bunch of bullshit. Some of the most deeply ethical people throughout history have been nonbelievers. Would you call Siddharta/Buddha an unethical person? The real question is, if a person thinks that nobody would have any sense of right and wrong without a book to tell them what to do (which is after all what the question implies), what does that say about the person asking the question? Nothing good, in my opinion. Does anyone really need the Bible/Torah/Koran to tell them that murder, rape and child abuse are Very Bad Things? Doesn't their own conscience tell them that?
See, I think that at it's core morality is really a very simple thing. All you have to do is, in any given situation, ask yourself if what you are about to do is going to cause harm to anyone else. If the action is completely harmless, go ahead and do it. If it is clearly harmful in a way that could be avoided, don't do it. If you find yourself in a grey area, think about it some more and the answer will soon become clear.
I know I'm simplifying here, but the basic principle holds true. Any truly authentic morality is always going to be based on a desire to help rather than harm. It's honestly not that complicated, when you get right down to it.
Unless you're a fundamentalist. I don't really care which religion we're talking about because the Big 3 are basically all the same. Instead of a careful examination of one's conscience and decisions made based on the desire not to do harm they substitute a kind of slavish devotion to a heavenly rulebook. It's the morality of a 5 year old - don't do that or Mommy and Daddy will be mad! Adults are supposed to learn a more nuanced way of looking at things (check out Piaget's theory of child development if you don't believe me).
It's a strange thing, the way religion is evolving in America. It seems to be moving more and more rapidly in the direction of a kind of primitive, knee-jerk fundamentalism at exactly the same time that the rest of the First World is moving in precisely the opposite direction. It's peculiar - why is America going in so different a direction? If anyone asked Dawkins a question like that in Europe the rest of the audience would probably laugh at them. Why is it so different here? And what can we do to fix it?
The other interesting question that was asked at the Q&A was about the issue of comfort. Again I'm paraphrasing, but basically the question was, if people find comfort in their religion, who are you to take that away from them?
That's an interesting question. I personally don't understand why people find the belief in something that is manifestly not true to be comforting, but they do. To me, believing in god is rather like believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. It might have made sense when you were a child, but as a rational adult surely it's obvious that the very idea is ridiculous? The wierd thing is, I've had lots of believers ask me variations of this question, and whenever they do there's always something nervous and insecure about their tone. It's as if they desperately want me to agree with them, but already know that I won't. They expect to be laughed at. The guy who asked Dawkins the question expected to be laughed at - it was written all over him. Why then do they keep asking the question?
It's a thorny question for the largely non-religious left. Whether we as individuals identify as Marxists, feminists, Greens or whatever, one thing that most of us share is a lack of religiosity. Most of the population in this country does not agree with us. What are we supposed to do about that? Tell the truth about how we feel, or just keep quiet and let others assume that we're believers just like them.
It's clear that fundamentalists are the enemy, but what about the "Jesus is my blankie" people? How are we supposed to relate to them? We don't understand them, and they don't understand us. How do we handle that?
Just musing, but if anyone else has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Ding dong, the witch is dead!
Can I just take a minute to celebrate the Repugs getting their self-righteous asses kicked to the curb? Because seriously, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys...
I must say that this restores some of my faith in the intelligence of the American people. Not all, not even much, but some. Of course they say that nearly half of the public still believes that Saddam Hussien had something to do with 9/11, so clearly the few brain cells in our collective cranium must be feeling a bit lonely, but some is better than none, I suppose.
I know it's a bit petty of me, but I have to admit that the thing I'm finding funniest about all this is the way that all the talking heads are now babbling about the Republicans needing a "moderate" (by which they mean anyone to the left of Jesse Helms, I assume), when just a few months ago they were calling "I love the war, yes I do!" John McCain a raving hippy. What happened to your faith in the godlike Bushie administration, guys? And what about "values"? And to think that these people accuse Kerry of flip-flopping...
The other funny thing is that the nation at large seems to be celebrating. Both of the last two nights I've been out on the town and every single place I've been has been swamped with happy drunk people, far more so than is normally the case. Or maybe it's just the Bay Area? My working theory at this point is that they're assuming that the Dems in the House will fix the economy (say by, oh I don't know, maybe not spending billions funding the Halliburton retirement plan?). And if only that were true...still, the Dems can't possibly do any worse than the last lot did, so the only way to go is up!
Hmm, not sure that martinis and blogging are a good mix. I'll stop for now. More later! Sorry about another extended absence, I'm definately back on a more permanent basis this time.
And about the witch (as in wicked and of the West), that could be any one of a number of people, but my personal vote goes to Rick Santorum. The only scary thought is that now he might actually be forced to practise medicine again, and seriously, nobody wants that.
Can I just take a minute to celebrate the Repugs getting their self-righteous asses kicked to the curb? Because seriously, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys...
I must say that this restores some of my faith in the intelligence of the American people. Not all, not even much, but some. Of course they say that nearly half of the public still believes that Saddam Hussien had something to do with 9/11, so clearly the few brain cells in our collective cranium must be feeling a bit lonely, but some is better than none, I suppose.
I know it's a bit petty of me, but I have to admit that the thing I'm finding funniest about all this is the way that all the talking heads are now babbling about the Republicans needing a "moderate" (by which they mean anyone to the left of Jesse Helms, I assume), when just a few months ago they were calling "I love the war, yes I do!" John McCain a raving hippy. What happened to your faith in the godlike Bushie administration, guys? And what about "values"? And to think that these people accuse Kerry of flip-flopping...
The other funny thing is that the nation at large seems to be celebrating. Both of the last two nights I've been out on the town and every single place I've been has been swamped with happy drunk people, far more so than is normally the case. Or maybe it's just the Bay Area? My working theory at this point is that they're assuming that the Dems in the House will fix the economy (say by, oh I don't know, maybe not spending billions funding the Halliburton retirement plan?). And if only that were true...still, the Dems can't possibly do any worse than the last lot did, so the only way to go is up!
Hmm, not sure that martinis and blogging are a good mix. I'll stop for now. More later! Sorry about another extended absence, I'm definately back on a more permanent basis this time.
And about the witch (as in wicked and of the West), that could be any one of a number of people, but my personal vote goes to Rick Santorum. The only scary thought is that now he might actually be forced to practise medicine again, and seriously, nobody wants that.
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