[BRIEF NOTE] A misogyny in miniature
May. 1st, 2008 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI've been following, with a certain amount of horrified fascination, the commentaries of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
james_nicoll and annafdd upon a proposal by LJ user theferrett. This would see female attendants at a particular science fiction convention be sorted out into classes of people who are and are not sexually attractive to a particular demographic of male attendants, those women who are sexually attractive being encouraged (pressured?) to wear badges allowing male passersby to grope their breasts at will.
Yes, I know: It's not as bad as génocidaire porn, but it is very nasty. Keep in mind that comes from a guy who actually wrote and published (!) the below statement.
giandjakiss makes a good point when she dissects theferrett's arguments to reveal he seems to believe that that attractive and polite women would have no choice but to submit if the men behaved politely enough. Their supposed ability to choose would be fictive, compromised fatally by the way that the "Open Source Boob Project" is structured to empower the gropers and place the true burden of choice upon the gropes.
(As a side issue, I wonder if people like theferrett would be willing to attend a mainly gay/bi science fiction convention where straight men would be encouraged to wear buttons allowing other attendants to grope them. They'd further get bonus points if they went to Woody's, better yet the Black Eagle. Would they accept? Might this exercise perhaps reveal correlations between misogyny and homophobia? But I digress.)
Unsurprisingly,annafdd reports that a lot of women are reconsidering their participation in said fan conventions, decidedly enthusiastic calls at organizing a self-defense movement aside. Who could possibly blame them for doing so?
For that matter, who would blame people in general who were appalled by the fact that this scheme actually got seriously discussed left? Any repressive culture that allows enough space for people to challenge its norms will see challenges, and hopefully, eventually, change. Any culture that tries to emulate this repression when it's quite possible for members to defect at little to no cost risks either marginalization or collapse. It's just a pity that misogyny in the wider world can't be unmasked with similar thoroughness.
james_nicoll and annafdd upon a proposal by LJ user theferrett. This would see female attendants at a particular science fiction convention be sorted out into classes of people who are and are not sexually attractive to a particular demographic of male attendants, those women who are sexually attractive being encouraged (pressured?) to wear badges allowing male passersby to grope their breasts at will.Yes, I know: It's not as bad as génocidaire porn, but it is very nasty. Keep in mind that comes from a guy who actually wrote and published (!) the below statement.
Unfortunately, I can't decry the process of "asking repeatedly," mainly because it's the only stimuli a lot of women respond to. Frankly, I think any woman who has to be begged fifteen times before she eventually accepts should be drug into the back alleyways and beaten, because her rampant need for a string of pleadings trains the wrong sort of men that no doesn't mean no. And then we should go beat up the men for good measure.
giandjakiss makes a good point when she dissects theferrett's arguments to reveal he seems to believe that that attractive and polite women would have no choice but to submit if the men behaved politely enough. Their supposed ability to choose would be fictive, compromised fatally by the way that the "Open Source Boob Project" is structured to empower the gropers and place the true burden of choice upon the gropes.(As a side issue, I wonder if people like theferrett would be willing to attend a mainly gay/bi science fiction convention where straight men would be encouraged to wear buttons allowing other attendants to grope them. They'd further get bonus points if they went to Woody's, better yet the Black Eagle. Would they accept? Might this exercise perhaps reveal correlations between misogyny and homophobia? But I digress.)
Unsurprisingly,
annafdd reports that a lot of women are reconsidering their participation in said fan conventions, decidedly enthusiastic calls at organizing a self-defense movement aside. Who could possibly blame them for doing so? For that matter, who would blame people in general who were appalled by the fact that this scheme actually got seriously discussed left? Any repressive culture that allows enough space for people to challenge its norms will see challenges, and hopefully, eventually, change. Any culture that tries to emulate this repression when it's quite possible for members to defect at little to no cost risks either marginalization or collapse. It's just a pity that misogyny in the wider world can't be unmasked with similar thoroughness.
