Applied Representation

Warning: not recommended for young readers, explicit language and content quoted below.

A little less than a year ago, I watched the documentary entitled Miss Representation for the first time and have since become invested in the women's movement and am now a self-titled feminist. I've seen more instances of sexism in my life than I'd dare to count, as have you all, but it wasn't until I was really looking did I see them everywhere. It's hard to ignore, and it's even harder to find my line amidst it all, the line which will make me the best possible woman I can be.

That's right, I said "my line". It's different for everyone; just because I think the balance I have of professional and feminine works for me gives no indication of whom else it would work for. And because people, women in particular, are trying to find a "generalization" for the movement to base itself on, so many people will be ostracized or ridiculed. It's hard to allow other people to be themselves, it's a problem the whole human race has, and it's hard to fight for the rights of someone unlike yourself. I dunno, that really bothers me.

But you have to begin somewhere. Tonight was the first meeting of the Women in Science club, and I went to my dorm division (shorter walk and, I'm hoping, more intimate discussions). We had a screening of the film and it, again, deeply impacted me. There's something about this documentary that affects me every time I see it, and it's always different. Okay, not always. The last few times it was distinctly the portion where they highlight the amount of rapes, although there's much they leave out.

Truthfully, I could write a book about our rape culture and I still wouldn't have felt like I'd said enough about it. It's something I don't want my children, my daughters especially, to experience, but I know it won't change by the time I have children. I want to live in a world where we teach "don't rape" instead of "don't get raped". The difference between these two ideas is monumental and I've found myself drawn to this portion of the movement more and more. I by no means am uninterested or unconcerned about the millions of other aspects, but this is the one that resonates with me, which could keep me up all night just thinking.

Just think of the implications of "don't rape" over "don't get raped"; it would greatly impact not just women, but men, too. It's true that most men are not rapists and I hope I never give indication or generalize to the degree where it seems I believe the opposite. Most men in the world are not rapists. Fact. But we do live in a rape culture, where women are objectified, sexualized, and dehumanized in almost every facet of our society. Don't even get me started on the porn industry and how it shapes the minds and expectations of young adolescent males in our country.

Okay, I'm started; this continues on the whole "most men are not rapists" statement aforementioned.

Almost all of porn is erotic and demeaning (it's very demeaning to men, too, but I'll discuss that another day) and nearly all of it depicts women being forced to have sex or coerced into sex or very violent sexual images. I'm going to very frank here: how many men get off on that kind of thing? A lot. Way, way too many, which is to say that there are many non-rapists who find overly sexualized rape to be arousing. Problem? Yes. Very, very huge problem.

If young adolescent males are being exposed to this as the idea of "usual sex", then imagine the expectations slowly being formed for regular teenage girls. Destructive to both genders, in ways our culture couldn't even recover from. I don't want to know what this country will be like in a hundred years if we don't do something to change this.

I read Jackson Katz's book The Macho Paradox. I started it a really long time ago, in fact, and it would make me both so angry and so sad I could only read a handful of pages at a time before I would be immensely pissed off to the point of needing to do something else or before I would start crying, so it took me six months to finish. But there's this whole section of the book which is about the porn industry and I have a piece for you that really, to me, illustrates the idea of our rape culture exemplified through the porn industry.

Consider the words of Max Hardcore, a popular porn director and actor whose name calls up over one million hits on Google. In an interview with Hustler magazine that is recounted by Robert Jensen and Gail Dines in their book Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, Hardcore said, "There's nothing I love more than when a girl insists to me that she won't take a cock in her ass, because--oh yes she will!" He described his trademark as being able to "stretch a girl's asshole apart wide enough to stick a flashlight in it," and went on the say that he doesn't hate all women, just "stuck-up bitches." The porn performer Amanda McGuire told this story about him in Icon magazine: "He has made girls cry and lots of girls puke--that's not unusual. I was there once when he throat-fucked a girl so hard she puked and started bawling." Hardcore, whose work has been referred to by porn reviewers as "pseudopedophilia" because of how he dresses up his "actresses" to look like young girls, explained the challenges he faces making his films. "It's pretty easy to get a slut to spread solo for the camera," he said. "And quite a different matter to get her to take it up the ass and puke up piss." (pg. 212)

It's one of the most disturbing things I've ever read, because that director assumes it's okay to behave in such a way to women. It is an entire other discussion about the women who are in such situations in life, and one which I know exist too many facets to get into this time. Wow, haven't we got wonderful discussions on the way.

I hadn't intended the post to take such a sharp, dark turn, but there you are. Thoughts? Questions? Leave them below.

Keep stirring, loves, just keep fighting, and remember to keep it real.