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Apr. 22nd, 2008 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseSo in my spare time in the holidays I've been doing a bunch of reading in different areas of feminism, as is my wont. I've been trying to challenge myself as much as possible and succeeding to varying degrees, so here, have some links. In order of ease of understanding/response (in other words, in order from least important to most important.)
The Blag (the weblog of xkcd artist Randall Munroe) recently featured some quick stats on gender and film billing - he wanted to find out how many of the 20 most popular films in the past few years were billed male/male, male/female, female/male, female/female. Not shockingly M/M were most popular. I was, however, really, really surprised by how few female/female movies there were in his criteria (there are some questions about his methodology: basically, he did the 20 economically biggest movies of each of the last 4 years, the 20 since 1977, and the 20 of all time, all according to IMDB. Plenty of people threw a snit about this. I think it's valuable since this kind of survey really looks at what Hollywood is willing to spend money on - in other words, its predictable, formulaic stories. Of course there are plenty of indie, etc films which are female/female billed, many of which make more money in proportion to the budget they spend. However, Hollywood's biggest films are the sway of popular culture. They reach the most people and, because they are pop culture standards, they are normative.) The comments section is an absolute morass of privileged people pitching fits, including some truly astounding examples of misogyny, but the post and some of the comments are kind of fun. Coming off that, I'm currently downloading some trashy flick about a girl's boarding school in which.... both of the two top-billed cast are men. It's a film about a girl's boarding school! WTF?
I've been reading a lot at the Hand Mirror lately - it's a blog by a group of New Zealand feminists. (Actually, does anyone have a paid account that can syndicate this for me? I'd really love to be able to read it on the friends page. Stargazer, the blog of anjum rahman, is also pretty excellent.) Anyway, after reading a couple of Friday Feminists (weekly posts highlighting the work of an individual feminist) on Marilyn Waring I became sort of intrigued. New Zealanders will probably remember Marilyn Waring as the National Party MP who crossed the floor in 1984 on the nuclear ships issue, causing the snap election which would see David Lange become PM (and also, of course, eventually introduced Rogernomics.) I am quite sure that I disagree with Waring on any number of issues, especially globalisation, but I've been reading her feminist writing and finding it incredibly radical, in the best ways, and stirring. Her most famous work is her book If Women Counted/Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, which was actually made into a short film in Canada (it's on Youtube in three parts and is HIGHLY recommended.) The chief thrust of this book is that the way countries account their economy fails to place any kind of value on work that no-one is paid for - usually women's work. The GDP is a value which says nothing about living standards in a country, distribution of wealth, treatment of land, etc, etc, etc. Waring's book is basically an indictment on this kind of economics, profoundly radical and very moving, based on her own experiences in New Zealand politics and working with the United Nations. I'm really inspired.
And finally, I've been thinking hard about what BetaCandy at the Hathor Legacy describes as narcissist feminism - in other words, feminism that is selfishly or narrowly concerned with feminist issues for one's own group, chiefly white middle-class feminism. This kind of feminism is as privileged within the feminist movement as white middle-class Pakeha are privileged within society. It enables writers to speak of all women while really writing about the issues of privileged women, making invisible the experiences and importance of problems for women of colour and lower-class women. I am finding it a genuine struggle to address within myself and I'm not sure how well I'm going to respond to it but it's not difficult to be the person who listens when people tell her she's speaking with privilege, and do my best to read holistically rather than narrowly about my own experience. Privilege Is Hard Lulz.
The Blag (the weblog of xkcd artist Randall Munroe) recently featured some quick stats on gender and film billing - he wanted to find out how many of the 20 most popular films in the past few years were billed male/male, male/female, female/male, female/female. Not shockingly M/M were most popular. I was, however, really, really surprised by how few female/female movies there were in his criteria (there are some questions about his methodology: basically, he did the 20 economically biggest movies of each of the last 4 years, the 20 since 1977, and the 20 of all time, all according to IMDB. Plenty of people threw a snit about this. I think it's valuable since this kind of survey really looks at what Hollywood is willing to spend money on - in other words, its predictable, formulaic stories. Of course there are plenty of indie, etc films which are female/female billed, many of which make more money in proportion to the budget they spend. However, Hollywood's biggest films are the sway of popular culture. They reach the most people and, because they are pop culture standards, they are normative.) The comments section is an absolute morass of privileged people pitching fits, including some truly astounding examples of misogyny, but the post and some of the comments are kind of fun. Coming off that, I'm currently downloading some trashy flick about a girl's boarding school in which.... both of the two top-billed cast are men. It's a film about a girl's boarding school! WTF?
I've been reading a lot at the Hand Mirror lately - it's a blog by a group of New Zealand feminists. (Actually, does anyone have a paid account that can syndicate this for me? I'd really love to be able to read it on the friends page. Stargazer, the blog of anjum rahman, is also pretty excellent.) Anyway, after reading a couple of Friday Feminists (weekly posts highlighting the work of an individual feminist) on Marilyn Waring I became sort of intrigued. New Zealanders will probably remember Marilyn Waring as the National Party MP who crossed the floor in 1984 on the nuclear ships issue, causing the snap election which would see David Lange become PM (and also, of course, eventually introduced Rogernomics.) I am quite sure that I disagree with Waring on any number of issues, especially globalisation, but I've been reading her feminist writing and finding it incredibly radical, in the best ways, and stirring. Her most famous work is her book If Women Counted/Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, which was actually made into a short film in Canada (it's on Youtube in three parts and is HIGHLY recommended.) The chief thrust of this book is that the way countries account their economy fails to place any kind of value on work that no-one is paid for - usually women's work. The GDP is a value which says nothing about living standards in a country, distribution of wealth, treatment of land, etc, etc, etc. Waring's book is basically an indictment on this kind of economics, profoundly radical and very moving, based on her own experiences in New Zealand politics and working with the United Nations. I'm really inspired.
And finally, I've been thinking hard about what BetaCandy at the Hathor Legacy describes as narcissist feminism - in other words, feminism that is selfishly or narrowly concerned with feminist issues for one's own group, chiefly white middle-class feminism. This kind of feminism is as privileged within the feminist movement as white middle-class Pakeha are privileged within society. It enables writers to speak of all women while really writing about the issues of privileged women, making invisible the experiences and importance of problems for women of colour and lower-class women. I am finding it a genuine struggle to address within myself and I'm not sure how well I'm going to respond to it but it's not difficult to be the person who listens when people tell her she's speaking with privilege, and do my best to read holistically rather than narrowly about my own experience. Privilege Is Hard Lulz.
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Date: 2008-04-21 11:22 pm (UTC)Interesting. I've always used the phrase 'Sex and the City' feminism to describe what I think is roughly the same phenomenon.
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Date: 2008-04-22 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 02:39 am (UTC)I haven't read what she's written but from what I've heard it's nothing new. Although I imagine Waring (even if she has foresworn her former Tory party membership card) would shrink at being described as a Marxist, she seems to simply be restating the Marxist-feminist thesis that appeared in the 1960s without any significant commentary. The main problem I have with the Marxist-feminist analysis of oppression is that, AFAICT, a woman who lives by hereself and never has children is not oppressed by men, since she isn't doing any unpaid work on their behalf (except for her employers, who are probably men, but she's no more oppressed than a man in a similar situation).
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Date: 2008-04-21 11:34 pm (UTC)EDIT: It finally updated to show some entries. Enjoy :)
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Date: 2008-04-22 12:04 am (UTC)PS: I have been following your latest posts, but feel a bit incapable of responding w/adequate sympathy - really hope things go well for you & your brother.
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Date: 2008-04-22 12:11 am (UTC)I can't believe I forgot to go to Total Recall last night.
In other news, egad, I got maybe a fifteenth of the way down the XKCD page before I had to give up due to wanting to punch misogynistic fuckers.
Please tell me I've never been guilty of the "men explaining things" problem near you?
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Date: 2008-04-22 12:36 am (UTC)It actually improves somewhat as you get down the page, but yeah, awful.
Hm. Well, not in my memory, but it's definitely something I have experienced and it's absolutely something that guy geeks tend to do a lot. However, since I've had it a LOT, I have developed the self-confidence to tell guys that they don't know what they're talking about, so it's possible I wouldn't let you get away with it. ;) (The old guy at the Westport thing was definitely guilty of this, as an example.)
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Date: 2008-04-22 12:43 am (UTC)But if I do, i do it at -everyone-, and it's because being opinionated is fun. Also there's one person in one of my classes (unfortunately female) who always asks for more basic explanations of concepts. GAAAH.
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