is marriage dead?

unrealistic photoshop, but ADORABLE

Time magazine this week featured an article entitled "Marriage: What's It Good for?" which brought forth the fact that a nationwide poll of Americans revealed that 40% of us think marriage is obsolete. Interestingly, only 5% of that group says they will never marry. But since marriage is no longer necessary to get sex, respect as an adult, or even children, many folks think it's an obsolete institution, which is funny as it's something a lot of gay activists are very much fighting for.

The main thing that's seemed to shift, to me, is that marriage is no longer the first step in becoming recognized as an adult: it's the final piece of adulthood, the cream on the cake, somewhat frivolous or unnecessary if you've already established financial success and a career and all that. My mama married the first time at 18, and lived in a house in New Jersey that used to be where migrant workers who picked blueberries would live (i.e., it was incredibly small and cheap). Financial stability was not a pre-requisite then the way it is now.

But I really don't buy this article's premise. If marriage was actually dead, why do 95% of people still say they want to marry some day? Perhaps it's not in the same manner or time frame as our parents did, but that's still a pretty high approval rating! Or maybe I just feel that way because I love weddings with a stupid passion. What do you think?

some thoughts, care of Gloria

Much love,
The Sheriff

oh, the horror: bridalplasty

I'm not one for reality TV, as I'm usually one of those assholes who finds it morally abhorrent to put people into competitive situations and then laugh at their pathetic antics. But I have a soft spot for weddings (yes, that's probably not very feminist of me, but I love big parties and cake and love!), and couldn't turn down an invitation to watch the second episode of Bridalplasty last night for a good dose of shock value and horror.

And I was not disappointed.

The show's basic premise: take a group of brides-to-be with severely low self-esteem and pit them against each other in weekly competitions. Each woman has a "Wish List" of the plastic surgery procedures she wants done (you can check that out on the link above: one woman wants her second toe shortened. Also, one of the contestants is only 20!),and if she wins that week's competition, she gets one piece of work done from her list. The overall winner of the show gets everything done on her list, and gets her dream wedding paid for. As each contestant is voted off, the host (the ever classy Shanna Moakler) tells them, "Your wedding will still go on. It just won't be perfect."

...yep. Because perfection is really something we should strive for, and clearly the only way to achieve it is by going under the knife.

This week's challenge featured them having to write their vows...and then compared that to a video of their future spouses telling us what they wished their brides-to-be would vow. This included things from the sweet (always be faithful) to the mundane (keep the house clean) to the kinds of things that just don't belong in wedding vows (take ski lessons? Make him work out more? Have sex with him on call?).

Although it was obviously catered to their future husbands' wants/needs/dreams, the women took it up in earnest. Sadly, the one girl on the show who was truly sympathetic and could be said to "need" plastic surgery (she'd had a lump removed from one of her breasts, and wanted to even them out, saying she wanted to feel sexy again. Sad.) lost the competition and then was voted off by her compatriots for being too stiff of competition.

The bride who won? She was immediately whisked off to get her nose done, which the surgeon noted was the only thing ruining her pretty face. She came out of the surgery and immediately asked for her mom. When she came back to the house, the rest of the brides surrounded her, cooing over her new nose and that she'd actually gotten it done. But she didn't look good: she looked sick, and she looked beaten. It was hard to watch.

The show is a perfect storm for ratings: it preys on the insecurites of women and makes them look like stereotypical, image obsessed bitches (which always gets fantastic ratings and press...think of how apeshit everyone went over the downfall of Britney and Lindsay), features something gruesome but fascinating, and it's all about competition. I don't have the energy for a serious feminist critique, or even a rant, but I don't think I need to indulge in either of those. This show is just sad. It did inspire me though: I now want to start sitting outside of plastic surgeon office's, protesting and telling women they're beautiful, their tits are great, go home.

Anyone else watch this atrocity?

Much love,
The Sheriff

friday linkage

I kept meaning to watch Bridalplasty and write something on it, but Vagina Drum has taken care of that for me! 

 The male gaze, actively at work in sex toy shops!

EXTREMELY gendered holiday toys for kids. This makes me sad, because apparently girls are only good at caring for things, not actively participating in the world around them.

Why being pregnant would be pretty much a terrible career choice for my girl Beyonce.

As someone who will be teaching next year (AHHH), I found this article intriguing and spot on. (75% of Americans wouldn't qualify for the military?! Sheesh. We are a bunch of undereducated, overweight, criminals!)

I absolutely loved this piece about being a mom. "Feminism lives in the kitchen as much as it lives in the board room."

Much love,
The Sheriff

5-College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference!

Hey all my local, western Mass readers! Below is some information about the 5-College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference, which my awesome friend works really hard to put together. Read through the info and see if you're interested in contributing to the workshops or just attending and participating in awesome conversations about sexuality and gender yumminess in the five-college area.


The 5-College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference 2011 workshop proposal form is now live! Please pass this along to anyone who might be interested in offering a workshop or facilitating a panel: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/401230/queerconf2011workshops

The 5-College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference will be held on Saturday, March 5, 2011 at Hampshire College's campus. In this day-long conference student leaders, community members, and professional speakers and educators team up to offer workshops and panels that address crucial but often ignored topics surrounding sexuality. This conference is open to and inclusive of everyone, and aims to provide a platform to discuss things that are normally labeled off-limits if mentioned at all. Our goal is to provide a safe, fun, engaging, and much-needed learning environment.

For more information check out the Facebook event (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148627125172707&ref=ts) and the website (http://www.hampshire.edu/studentlife/16892.htm) or email queerconf@hampshire.edu.

oh to be so shallow

I've been debating frequently in one of my classes about reproductive technology, designer babies, and genetic engineering for frivolous purposes (to make a child more attractive, primarily...or as one student awkwardly put it, "hot babies"). While much of it is hypothetical ("in the extremely unlikely scenario in which this extremely unreliable technology becomes widespread"), one thing that we got stuck on is this: is it so wrong to want attractive children?

The way I imagine it, at the most base level, selecting your kid's genes (while creepy and eugenics-y and not at all something I endorse for non-medical reasons) is not necessarily that different than selecting an attractive person to mate with (or a sperm donor who describes his looks as something that sounds like it might mix well with your own genetic offerings). No one heads out to the bars and seeks out a mediocre person, or even a downright ugly one to take home that night. We all head for the people who strike us as attractive (whatever that means to you). And naturally, when expecting  a child, no one hopes for their future bundle of joy to be ugly or disfigured in some way that will impede their growth or socialization: shallow or not, we all want attractive, smart kids. And we want to find good lookin' people to make them with.

But my question is: is this desire natural? Or is it learned?

I wholeheartedly think what we conceive of as attractive is often socialized bullshit, but some things seem to be based in a natural desire to find someone who will give our offspring a chance of surviving. So while I might pick the brunette girl with a thick ass or the guy with broad shoulders and someone else might find those features off-putting, the exact traits that make you weak in the knees are almost arbitrary. The really important urge is that the prospective partner is someone who seems healthy looking and reasonably attractive in the purely genetic sense (symmetrical figures, "average" sized, the like), an urge might very well be "natural." But as we are no longer living in the woods, fighting for our survival with our brains and bodies alone, does it make sense that we extrapolate this "natural" urge to raw attractiveness alone?

Just some half-formed thoughts congealing as I write a final paper on gamete donation. Gimmie your more intelligent comments!

Much love,
The Sheriff

Oh, and happy December!

a return to my raunchier roots: the etiquette of cum

As I've jokingly complained about, my posts have grown more mature and theoretical and concerned with feminism and less about the raunchy details of sex, like spanking and threesomes. But on my glamorous Greyhound bus ride to and from Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving break, I found myself pondering one of the less theoretical, more blatantly nasty aspects of hetero-sex: the man cum.

The main argument I've heard for cumming on a female partner (or male, I suppose) is pretty weak: less likely to get her pregnant (false! There is still semen in your pre-cum, and it only takes one little spermy to inseminate that egg). It is, admittedly, easier to clean up. But that doesn't mean it's completely unproblematic.

I distinctly remember the first time a guy came outside of me, making his mark all over my stomach and leaving me furious. I didn't know that it was considered "custom" to have a man's projectile fluids disposed of on one's body, and I was so appalled, I left immediately, dashing off to catch the PVTA back to Smith. I was only a wee first-year at this point, having no real vocabulary to express my discontent with his actions, and so I let it continue until eventually, I got used to it. It no longer infuriated me.

I then dated Beefcake, who always wanted to blow a load on my face, a desire I curtailed as much as possible. Cum on one's face feels blatantly demeaning: it makes no mistake of the fact that you are there as an object, not as an equal partner. Or at least that's how it felt. But now, with the ever-considerate Meatball, I don't mind it (he certainly doesn't mind when I cum on him). And at some point, I began to enjoy it, being able to see that my partner did, in fact, get off on having sex with me. Is this internalized misogyny? Just a little vain? Is cumming on a woman just rude? Or am I over-analyzing this? What say you?

Much love,
The Sheriff

the failures of Kate Obenshein's speech

The Smith College Republicans (yes, we have some) hosted a Conservative Women's Conference this weekend, and I went to a few of the speeches. Their keynote speaker was Kate Obenshein, whose speech was entitled "The Failures of Feminism." For the record, she asked if she could come to campus, so it's not necessarily that they sought out a particularly controversial speaker, but they did market her as anti-feminist (which didn't raise the ire of Smithies as much as I thought it would...perhaps people were afraid of another Ryan Sorba event?). I went to A) hear another perspective, and B) support a friend who helped arrange the event.

Primarily, I was disappointed by her complete lack of intellectual rigor backing up any of her statements. Her speech rested on the 5 Failures of  Feminism, including rise in abortion, the divorce rate, STDs/promiscuity, and the War on Boys (there may be another that I'm forgeting). And she could've made a case connecting anyof them (pretty weakly) to feminism, but instead she ranted about how they were bad and said that feminism caused them and moved promptly onto her next topic without establishing any causal link.

I think she also suffers from a disease that a lot of people have when they think about oppression. When someone says "the patriarchy," it's easy to just imagine a group of old white dudes sitting around a table and controlling things. Maybe they look like this guy.

But the patriarchy isn't some club that people belong to (though that would be a hilarious name for a country club...), it's a system of oppression that works it way into every aspect of our lives (just like racism, hetero-sexism, classism, etc.), from pop culture to social interactions to the workplace. It's not always blatant, and I think she missed the point on that one. She said she's started a leadership program for Republican women in her home state of Virginia and she was shocked at the fact that these women weren't confident, didn't want to run for office, etc. and that she just had no idea why that might be, but definitely had nothing to do with sexism in the Republican party. Or MAYBE it has something to do with the fact that women are socialized from birth to be less bold, less confident, less fitting for positions of leadership?

Kate's reliance on gender roles as inherent and natural was also grating. I know at Smith (and probably tons of other liberal artsy fartsy places) it's drilled into us that gender is a social construct and the associated traits are 98% crap, and Kate was just approaching it from a whole 'nother viewpoint. She often talked about her son and chalked up things to a "boys will be boys" platitude, claiming that their interest in guts and gore and dominating people is inherent because they're supposed to be strong, bold, and courageous to balance out women (...so women can't be bold, strong, and courageous? Oh good). 

When someone asked her if she thought this "boys will be boys" mentality lead to excusing rape/sexual assault/harassment, Kate skirted around the question, and actually said that we need to raise boys with discipline and loving guidance to "rein in their instinctive behavior." Wait. So rape is instinctive? I'm sorry, but no. Let's give men some credit: sure, some of them are brutes and rapists and just douches, no doubt. But they asbolutely have the miniscule amount of self control that it takes to refrain from violating a woman. Period.

She quoted the Feminine Mystique, clearly never having cracked the spine of that book (Friedan was NOT a radical. She had children, and a husband, and wanted to improve the lives of housewives. Not exactly crazy ass shit) . She also called a ten-year-old girl who sent her son a picture of herself (with her shirt on) a hussy. She also cut me off when I wanted to correct her about her statement that "radical feminism" (put into quotations because I have no idea what kind of definition this lady was workin' with) leads women to see themselves as sexual and thus as sexual objects solely for men. So I did not much take a liking to Miss Kate.

But what did you guys think? Did anyone find any validity in her speech?

Much love,
The Sheriff