Seriously?
Some more thoughts on tits and cleavage and the Cuddy Effect and reservations. First of all, to clarify again, I’m not criticizing Jen or her joke; I am expressing reservations about some of the reactions to some of the reservations about the joke.
The overall yay-cleavage line is that women should be free to display cleavage (yes, of course, and are any of the critics really saying otherwise?), and that therefore displaying cleavage is an unqualified good. The second claim doesn’t follow. Displaying cleavage could be mixed, or it could be an unqualified bad. The fact that it shouldn’t be forbidden or illegal doesn’t mean it’s terrific. There are more than two stark possibilities.
Okay so what’s my problem? Why am I such a grouch? What’s not to like?
One thing not to like is the slavishness of it. Don’t shout; give me a minute. It’s the underdog’s move. It’s wheedling, it’s passive, it’s manipulative. It’s asking to be liked.
Look at something Greta Christina said in her criticism of the critics of boobquake:
I’ve written before about how we need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist men (specifically straight men) to express their sexual desires without automatically being treated as sexist, entitled louts and yahoos. This is the flip side of that issue. We need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist women to express our sexual desirability without automatically being treated as dumb, exploited bimbos who don’t understand what men really think of us.
See? We need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist men to express their sexual desires, and we need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist women to express our sexual desirability. Those are two different things. Those are two different kinds of thing.
The first is active, the second is passive. The first is what a subject does, the second is what an object does.
I don’t want to play gotcha; that’s not my point. Greta’s cool. My point is that the resonances of these things just do differ, and we can’t wish that away by the power of thought, or even by the power of blogging. Maybe someday that will change, but it hasn’t yet. Desiring is not the same thing as being desirable.
Hotty clothes signal a desire for sexual attention and admiration. In some situations that’s just the ticket! But is it just the ticket in all situations? No – not if you want to be taken seriously – not if you want to be seen as a judge or a doctor or a secretary of state.
The idea is that we can do both (for a few years, that is, which is another can of worms); we can be both a judge and a hotty. Well that’s a male fantasy, that’s what that is. It pervades popular culture, and a lot of women seem to have bought into it, but it’s a fantasy. A judge who makes a point of displaying her tits is not doing both, she’s doing one at the expense of the other.
This kind of thing is why some feminists have reservations about the “Oh be joyful, let a thousand tits bloom” line. No it’s not the same thing as the Taliban. The Taliban doesn’t want women to have more real power and authority and credibility as opposed to the bogus kind attached to sexual display. We do.
Here is my take as a thoughtful feminist male. Women need to feel free to control how they present themselves without worrying about whether or not men will either leer or stone them. There’s a long row to hoe for all of us. My disgust at the original imam’s quote was that as a male I am powerless to resist a woman who is dressed “immodestly” and will adulter with her so much that Allah will be displeased. At her. I’m kind of a smart guy. I know when relationships should properly be established and negotiated between potential sexual partners or people who are not intending to be sexual partners but who are going to have a relationship of some sort and are of differing genders. Sometimes it takes a few seconds to know what is or isn’t going to happen, and sometimes it takes years.
Women should not be the ones to bear the sole burden for how society perceives the way they present themselves. Men need to take some responsibility and realize that they do have control over their animal, lustful natures and are not enslaved by female dress. For boobquake, the degree to which women choose to express “immodesty” was up to them, and I knew some who dressed in a manner that most would consider very modest but to them was daring.
And I do have an animal, lustful nature, btw; I just know when to let it out of its cage.
At the risk of spouting off a deepity, there’s a sense in which the subject/object distinction breaks down there. For rational non-creeps, expressing desire comes hand in hand with expressing desirability. Only stalkers express desire without caring about their own desirability.
As (I think) you suggested, presumably Christina phrased things with women as targets and men as subjects, just because she thought that was the issue of contention for the purposes of the point she was making with respect to sexual discourse. Of course, she probably doesn’t think it couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t/doesn’t go the other way around too (at least for non-creeps).
Your point, if I understand it, is not restricted to the impacts of behaviors on non-creeps and non-dopes. It’s about the general audience, the mixed bag, dopes and non-dopes alike. You seem to be saying that the fact that someone conveys desirability (i.e., through their social status and power) does not imply that they mean to communicate that they have a desire for sexual attention. On the other hand, just to sharpen the contrast (I hope, helpfully), I think Christina might want us to think about the norms that are in play for people that are vaguely congenial and have a will of their own.
Maybe that’s redundant or obvious and I’m just repeating your own point. I guess sometimes I find it hard to follow these conversations unless people explicitly say, “here’s the audience I’m thinking about …”
Not being too familiar with House, I have to ask what the “Cuddy Effect” is.
Excellent post, Ophelia. The slavishness–the wheedling, the standpoint of powerlessness–is exactly why I have a problem with the “porn and tits-flashing are empowering!” school of feminism, and why I see red when people confuse my objections with Puritanism. Because a truly sex-positive attitude values women’s sexual desire and sexual initiative, not just women posturing for the sake of titillating male desires.
Ben: I don’t think the subject-object distinction really does break down, although you’re right that it SHOULD. But in pop culture, men are constantly encouraged to desire women, while women are encouraged to be desirable. There’s a bifurcation of those two things.
Circumstances matter. The targets of boobquake are misogynistic bigots and their beliefs. It isn’t wheedling or passive or asking to be liked in their case but a direct and deliberate insult to their ideas and attitudes. The effect on others is another matter and should be considered separately.
The tendency to treat women as sex objects is so pervasive that maybe women are going to have to go to the other extreme, that is, to cover-up a bit for a while (and a while may be many years), in order to bring about a level playing field between men and women, as sexual subjects and objects.
I’m going to have to go with Greta Christina on this one. I don’t think it’s much more helpful for feminists to tell women what an appropriate level of modesty is, as it is for religious leaders.
I’m actually a little surprised at your position on this issue. You take such a strong stance against tone trolling, but isn’t this a style over substance argument just as well? I doubt that having women dress respectfully is going to be any more helpful to have people take them seriously on their own terms as having them speak respectfully.
And comments like number 6 are how you get “feminist” defenses of the veil.
Ophelia, I don’t recall anyone saying displaying cleavage is an unqualified good.
Women should feel free to dress how they like. But in America (as opposed to for example Pakistan) there’s not a lot of pressure on women to cover up, outside of some subcultures. Which is good. But there is a lot of pressure on women to look good at all times and to judge themselves by their sexual desirability. It’s not that women are vain; it’s that women don’t think well enough of themselves. Women sob in horror when they get wrinkled and old, and go under the knife for plastic surgery at much higher rates than men do. Popular culture still promotes the attitude that a woman needs to look sexy at all times. I really think a “dress however you damn well please” day would be much more liberating to women than a “look hot so men can ogle” day, which plenty of women are already under pressure to do.
It sounds so much like: Men have desires, women are to be desirable.
So it’s all for men. How dare women have desires!
First, I would like it if one could be allowed to express both of those things, whether one is a man or a woman.
Second, Amos, getting women to cover up plays into the hands of the religious bigots who make women responsible for — well, just about everything. We only need to insist that we dress appropriately. A judge is a judge, not a “woman” or a “man”, and a woman at a party is herself and having fun.
Sigh. This subject causes people to develop rashes on their eyeballs so that they can’t read. I knew this would not go well…
Roger, yes, but I said at the beginning that this is not about boobquake itself, it’s about the reaction to the reaction.
Deen,
Did I say anything about an appropriate level of modesty? Did I tell women what an appropriate level of modesty is?
No. What would the subtance be? What is the substance of cleavage?
I don’t consider language to be interchangeable with bodies.
But I didn’t say anything about dressing respectfully. I don’t consider cleavage “disrespectful.”
Are you sure it’s not the “cuddle” effect?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8653500.stm
Gordon and others: There is all the difference in the world between women deciding to “cover up” as protest gesture and women being forced or “persuaded” to cover up by a machista ideology, such as religious fundamentalism. I’m not dictating any dress style to women, but I would understand if feminists decide to cover up as a protest gesture. In fact, many feminists whom I know do tend to wear a very male wardrobe, for example, pants-suits or jeans.
Well said, good sir.
But I think this gets at a stumbling block I’m having in this whole discussion now that it’s gone beyond the specifics of boobquake – what, exactly, does it take for a woman to be considered “serious” as a judge or secretary of state or whatnot? Does she have to go to war over the strategic sheep reserves on the Falklands Islands lest she be considered to weak to be head of government? Or is it simply not looking like a “hotty?” I recall an incident early in the 2008 presidential election cycle where there was a hue and cry over the fact that Hillary Clinton had dared to wear a low-cut top that gave the impression she had – shock, horror – breasts and was, in fact, female. The late, great satirical blogger Jon Swift <a href=”http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2007/07/hillary-clintons-cleavage-emboldens-our.html”>commented on it,</i> and IMHO there wasn’t anything inappropriate or unsenatorial about it.
Chris,
There was someone who said some aspect of this was an uncomplicated good on the previous thread – and lots of people certainly have been treating any reservations at all as stuffy Puritanical sex-negative religious weak-minded horseshit. So yeah, I think the claim that’s out there is that women glorying in displaying cleavage and other versions of strutting their stuff is an unqualified good.
Well, a woman can decide what she likes, though in this case I hope she won’t take that route, and I certainly hope she won’t join with others in pressurising women to do as she does. It’s all too easy to go from one extreme to the other, and there are already too many pressures on women to conform to this or that. And why should we have to endlessly explain what our real motives are?
It seems reasonable to insist on some standard of dress appropriate to a position of responsibility, but it would apply to all. It’s a matter of professionalism.
Could we not call each other “good sir” and the like? Jokey Johnsonian affectations all very well ordinarily, but on this subject, perhaps not so much.
In other words, I don’t need guys ganging up and egging each other on.
Can we please discuss this without construing it as me “pressurising women to do as” I do? Just by way of a change?
I could always just close comments…
Good point. Perhaps I should cover up and change my name. How about Hoot?
This wasn’t a comment about you at all, Ophelia. I was replying to Amos and thinking about the consequences of people adopting his suggestion. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
In reference to a previous commenter’s question, the “Cuddy Effect” refers to the propensity of Dr. Lisa Cuddy, the dean of medicine and superior to Dr. Greg House in the TV show “House,” to wear more revealing clothing than is the norm. House constantly makes comments on this fact, and probably only gets away with it because he’s House and the two characters share an ill-defined personal history.
That’s all right. I knew this was a can of worms! I should just take it. :- )
Well, it’s an important can and I’m glad you opened it. Perhaps my first post begins ambiguously, now I come to look at it, but I think the points you make are very good.
The Cuddy Effect…There’s an episode in which House hazes a group of doctors competing to be hired for his diagnostic team by saying he’ll choose the one who presents him with Cuddy’s “thong.” One of the women brings him a “thong” which he smells and announces is not Cuddy’s, adding that the thong is red and Cuddy is wearing a black bra and she would never wear non-matching underwear. (Oh and the “thong” when not called that is invariably called “panties.”)Then he tells the woman it must be hers and tells her to lift her skirt. Then someone brings him a thong that he thinks may be Cuddy’s – it is black after all – and he goes and finds Cuddy in a crowded hall. He pretends to drop a file and then stands there – bad leg, don’t you know – so Cuddy picks it up for him; she does so by bending from the waist; the screen is filled with her bum. “You’re not wearing any underwear!” House shouts. She stands up again, looking flustered. “That skirt is so tight I can see if you’re wearing an IUD,” House adds.
I find the whole thing just a tiny bit degrading and insulting. But I’m weird that way.
Jen, yes I think that’s a good way of putting the point as well.
Thanks Gordon. I hope you’re not saying that just because I’ve scared you!
Hahahahahaha.
Further to the Cuddy thing – I don’t believe her for a second. I think she’s ludicrous. I don’t believe for a second that a woman with her job would dress like that at work. I think it’s male fantasy stuff – and I think it’s deliberately degrading. It’s lecherous and hostile at the same time.
And that’s part of why the “oh be joyful show your stuff” thing doesn’t work – seductiveness and display evoke hostility as well as lust (or mere aesthetic enjoyment, which I’m pretty skeptical about).
Oh, god, the “House” writers could not write female characters if their life depended on it. They just can’t.
The main problem I have with the character of Cuddy – there are two, actually, but I only think one is mainly related to her gender – is that over the past few years she’s been portrayed as almost monomaniacally baby crazy. Her quest for a child is the only thing we’re supposed to consider interesting about the character aside from her relationship with House.
The other problem is that she always invariably capitulates to House’s insane schemes to cure this or that disease. This problem doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with her gender – make the Cuddy character a man and you’d have to have him capitulating to House every week just to make the show work – but it does not send a good signal about Cuddy’s supposed authority over House.
Sorry to turn this into a House discussion board, but yes, Cuddy is a very unbelievable character.
Heh; well I started it, after all!
I’m interested in these pop culture weirdnesses. Boston Legal and CSI are two more that are heavily into women who are supposed to be hardworking forensic techs or lawyers yet are always dressed like Babes in Hottyland. That pretty much exhausts my knowledge of network tv shows, but anyway, I think the pattern is not exactly a product of feminism, nor yet an ally of it.
I take back “the “oh be joyful show your stuff” thing doesn’t work” – that’s much too sweeping and will cause people to call me a mullah. Sure it works in some situations (“works” in the sense of having the desired effect and not having undesired ones) – but it’s tricky. That’s less sweeping.
I think that’s part of the problem that led to the “oh be joyful show your stuff” sort of reactions to the negative reactions – statements objecting to boobquake were too categorical which in turn led to statements that were equally categorical and led to recriminations.
Back to pop culture… the only time I can think of a female character being pulled out of a “babe in hottyland” outfit was during the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation when Counselor Troi was put in a regular Starfleet space suit after spending the previous five and half years in a catsuit.
No, a woman would not turn up on the bench wearing a short skirt, strappy sandals, and a low-cut sleeveless top. She ought to dress like a judge, in clothes that convey the solemnity of the occasion, the dignity of the law, etc. But likewise, I wouldn’t turn up as a judge wearing nothing but boardshorts and rubber thongs, or in tight jeans and a tank top to show off my butt and my pumped-up biceps (imagine a 20- or 30-year-younger version of me, since we’re talking mainly about people of Jen’s sort of age). It’s true that we distinguish between “fun” clothes and clothes that are meant to convey the seriousness of the moment. But it doesn’t follow that if a young man or woman likes to wear fun clothes on campus as a student, or at the beach, or just while shopping in the mall, that he or she thereby gives up the claim to be a serious person.
Uni students are there to study but also to have fun, and they tend to wear fun, casual, and often quite sexy clothes. In my (ahem, considerable) experience, they are not thereby taken less seriously by each other or by teachers. If a bloke turned up in my class in an expensive suit, I wouldn’t take him more seriously; I’d simply assume that he’d come to the class straight from a workplace where that kind of clothing is the convention and is required to convey adequate seriousness to clients or subordinates, whatever. And mutatis mutandis if a woman turned up wearing very serious, studiously non-sexy work clothes.
These things are contextual. But it was always apparent to me that Jen was not suggesting: “Go topless on Monday when you go to work.” She was suggesting something more like: “On Monday, wear the sexiest clothes that are in your wardrobe, which you feel good about wearing, and which are still contextually appropriate for whatever you are doing at the time.” Admittedly, some people didn’t “get” that that was the message, but it seemed clear enough to me.
More generally, I think that lust and aesthetic enjoyment are great and that the latter is real. I don’t see why the aesthetic enjoyment bit is such a problem; I’m strongly heterosexual, and am revolted if I seriously contemplate, say, tongue-kissing another bloke. But I take aesthetic pleasure in beautiful male bodies. I also think that many women enjoy wearing clothes that provoke a mix of lust and aesthetic enjoyment. That’s not just a heterosexual male fantasy. It’s based on years of deep friendships and loving relationships with women who think that way.
Many people of both sexes simply revel in the feeling that they look sexy and/or good to look at. They can feel “wild” and “fun” – the sorts of things that Ayaan Hirsi Ali complains she was never allowed to feel in her Islamic milieu. Well, good for them … and boo to the Islamic milieu. They should be allowed to feel like that without others carping. And, in an appropriate context (e.g. not a murder trial), I do think it’s pretty much an unqualified good for people to feel that way and for others to able to enjoy their beauty.
I always need a qualifier like “pretty much” because someone can always come up with a downside to anything. But if attractive young people want to strut their stuff in an informal setting like the beach or the park or the lawns of a university campus, or to do so to the extent that is contextually appropriate (staying within the envelope but going towards its boundary) in other settings, I really don’t see much downside. And that’s all that Jen was suggesting for boobquake, as far as I can work out. And yet, as Greta Christina’s links show, she copped a lot of flak – some of it very nasty such as being called a “so-called feminist” – around the interwebs. It was after that that people like me, Greta, and Stephanie Zvan started to speak up to defend her.
I wrote, in the previous discussion on this:
“I thought boobquake was nerdy, geeky and rather fun, it wasn’t especially laddish, and it gave the fingers to people who can do with having more ridicule directed their way. It wasn’t an earth-shaking event, as it were, but it was uncomplicatedly a Good Thing.”
So someone did say something like the words Ophelia complained of: me. But I didn’t say all cleavage display is uncomplicatedly a good thing. I was summing up what I thought of boobquake. Not House (never seen it), nor page 3 girls, but that specific political event.
There are images of “sexiness” that promote the idea that a woman dressed in a sexy way is passive and/or dim: page 3 girls, power drill calenders, the “women soaping hot cars” genre, if it’s a genre. Don’t like those, even if there’s sometimes a split between my het male reaction and my, er, sexual politics, such as they are. But nerdy, geeky sexiness – and that probably is becoming a genre – doesn’t seem to me to have anything of powerlessness or passivity about it, nor the suggestion that those women are remotely anything anywhere near dim.
So it’s not whether cleavage – or more – is displayed, but the origin, meaning etc of the image. As we all know and presumably agree. Some kinds of sexiness seem worth celebrating.
Russell, I don’t think dress on a college campus is quite the simple matter you make it out to be. I teach in a place where there is lots of skimpiness (all female, by the way), and I think female students should think twice about that. It’s a distraction, and not the best way to get professors to concentrate on how smart you are. Also, I think you’re ignoring the pressures on women to be good at skimpitude and how that affects them. You know, obsessions with appearance, eating disorders and all that. It’s not just a simple matter of guys and gals wholesomely strutting their stuff while they get a great education–the picture you paint. Getting back to boobquake in particular–I do “get it” (your headline a few days ago suggested you thought skeptics somehow didn’t), but there’s a bit more to this whole business about how women’s bodies are (over)valued than you’re acknowledging.
Hang on one minute here:
Isn’t being desireable and a judge pretty much what everyone aims to be?
I mean, why do men wear suits? Because they think it looks good. Further, as Russel points out there are different clothes for different occassions.
That a judge gets pictured in a string bikini at the beach and looks good, and wants to look good, shouldn’t mean that she gets less respect in a courtroom where she wears her work-clothes. While it would be inapropriate to wear that in a court room, so would a male judge wearing a speedo.
And here is the thing, the exact same dynamic goes for men too, at a far lesser degree but it is there. Though our “desireable” look tends to be more work-related (Because of society being patriarchal to an uncomfortable degree) that doesn’t mean that men don’t try to look desireable or that there is anything wrong with trying to look desireable.
For want of a better way to put it – in general the only way to get the person you desire is to be desireable to them yourself. I hate making it sound like people treat each other like a pitcher plant treats a fly but there is an element to that in this.
That doesn’t equal objectifying yourself. It is more a means of sexual advertising, which face it without that we wouldn’t have a species anymore. There are times and venues when it is inapropriate, but there are also times when it is inapropriate to dress highly formally too.
And yes there are louts out there. If we let them having a particular reaction to anything rule what we will and won’t do we would probably end up never doing anything. Boobquake I think was basically good – it insulted a very stupid idea, and was highly effective for its fun content.
Another point here is that the central message was for once, not lost in the screaming the way it was with other campaigns. Though there have been points of contention, the pop culture message has been made.
Jean, you’re more easily distracted than I am.
Ophelia:
No, but you did imply that female professionals should hide their cleavage, because they’d otherwise hurt their own credibility. The thing is, you might be right that this is how it works in practice. I just doubt that the solution lies in telling women what they should keep covered up, even if it is for their own good.
The style is how a female professional decides to dress for her job – including how much cleavage she decides to show. The substance is how good she is at her job. It becomes style over substance when women are judged more on the way they dress than on the way they do their job.
No, but the way you dress (including how much of your body it shows) does send messages, which makes it much closer to language. It’s not all that different to tell women to tone down their dress than to tone down their language.
Russell, Read my comment again. I’m making general observations based on discussions with other faculty members and students. Whether you or I can stay focused in a classroom is not the issue.
I really should stay out of this one. It’s a really hot potato! And when this started off and comments were disabled, I thought: Ophelia wants to give her opinion but she doesn’t want to open up a can of worms. And that seemed sensible. It is a can of worms, and should carry a warning.
However (says he, barging ahead anyway), there is something that is being largely neglected here – not altogether, but to a large extent, – and that is the pressure that is on women to conform to men’s expectations. Men, in my experience, dress as they please, and no one, so far as I know, dresses in a suit – unless it is very expensive – and thinks it looks good. Women, however, tend to dress in ways that meet expectations, largely, men’s expectations, and it is this dimension of women’s dress that subtracts from the degree of seriousness with which they are taken. It’s not just that cleavage is a distraction; it’s that cleavage, to the extent that it is an issue, is an expectation (perhaps all in fantasy, but it’s there for many men), at least for a woman who has it to show. And, to the extent that she meets that expectation, she will not be taken seriously. You can’t both fulfil men’s sexual fantasies and be taken as a serious, thoughtful person – the dissonance is simply too great.
But, of course, as Russell points out, context is important. If a woman dresses in sexually signalling ways on the bench, then, not only will she not be taken seriously, she will be thought to have dressed inappropriately, contrary to expectation and commitment. Some contexts, of course, are ones in which sexually explicit signalling is not only expected, but appropriate, to the degree that the persons involved do so intentionally and without feeling pressured. They do it for fun, because they like the way they look, because it is exciting to be looked at as sexually desirable. We are animals after all.
Boobquake was great – though I didn’t see any in my neck of the woods! – but it was a response to the mullahs, not to the general expectations of men. It was deliberately transgressive (sorry to use typical pomoese), and therefore appropriate, especially since the mullahs think that even an inch of a woman’s skin is an incitement to sexual misconduct. But then Islam to an incredible extent is simply riddled with pathological ideas about sexuality. That’s why the burqa and niqab should not be permitted in public places in liberal democratic societies, for they are in fact defined by male sexual pathology. Individual women may, of course, in certain contexts, for personal reasons, choose to cover themselves from head to toe, but so long as this form of dress is defined by patriarchal religion, it cannot be in an ordinary sense a free choice. And that’s what it should be, whether the choice is to dress down or to dress up.
But let’s hear no more of several generations of cover-up, so that women can, at the end of it, be taken seriously. That’s why Muslim women are still so often being bagged by their men. It hasn’t helped anyone take them seriously.
I might have begun, as I meant to, by saying that I agree almost entirely with Ophelia’s take on this issue. I’m also glad that I haven’t ever seen an episode of House. It sounds rather revoltingly daft.
Russell, I echo Jean and Eric on this (surprise surprise!) – I think it’s less simple than that. You frame it as symmetrical, as both sexes wanting to “strut their stuff,” but surely you know it isn’t symmetrical. As Eric says, there are expectations – and they’re largely male POV expectations, even if (many) women end up sharing and helping to impose them. Men slop around in baggy shorts and T shirts, women mince around in tank tops or camisoles and tight shorts.
Think ice skating; think ballet; think gymnastics; think beach volleyball. Women are expected to do many things as close to naked as possible while men are not (I’m well aware of the reversal of this under Islam, which underlines the asymmetry rather than contradicting it).
I think Jean is right that female students should think twice about this – twice, three times, four times. This isn’t a matter of ordering women to dress in a certain way (Deen please note), it’s a matter of pointing out that sexual signaling is just that, and it’s thus fraught, and political, and worth thinking about as opposed to just conforming to local norms. Not least – and this is something that you don’t even mention – they should be aware that in a lot of men it arouses hostility and contempt as well as lust.
Bruce,
Well what do you mean “gets pictured”? Is photographed by a friend or lover or husband or child? Then of course it shouldn’t, and it wouldn’t; there would be no issue. But if you mean “poses for a magazine” then that changes things. Sure, a judge can do that if she wants to – but can she do it while insisting that she should get no less respect in the courtroom? She’s welcome to try, but frankly, she would be being stupid.
I’ve always hated this having it both ways thing, which was and probably still is kind of Standard Feminism 101: that women can wear whatever they want to and at the same time nobody has any right to react in a sexual way to what they are wearing. I do not buy that; I never have. You can’t do both. You can’t wear tit shirts and get righteously indignant at men who leer at your tits.
This is a tension at the heart of the “oh be joyful strut your stuff” idea. If you’re putting your tits on display, then that’s what you’re doing – you can’t (reasonably) do that and expect men not to react except in polite admiration. It’s not coherent to say both that women should rejoice in their sexiness and show it off as and when they like and that men should not drool or leer or make lecherous remarks on Facebook. Showing off your sexiness just does look like an invitation to react in some way – some sexual way; it’s not reasonable to expect to be able to control exactly how sexual the reaction is.
So if a judge poses in a bikini for a magazine, then yes, she does risk undermining her presentation of self on the bench. That’s partly because of the slavish thing I mentioned yesterday. A judge wanting mass sexual admiration would look pathetic – needy, narcissistic, vain, silly. A judge of either sex would.
Ah – that reminds me of a good example – think Andrew Sullivan.
Male judges don’t wear suits because they look good. They wear suits (or robes, or whatever) because they look authoritative. If they just wanted to look “good” in the sense that topless women look “good,” they’d go shirtless and wear speedos (unless they had unfortunate body types). And if the standards for men were at all similar to those for women,
Deen: you’re confusing modesty with power/authority, and “toning down” with saying/communicating the right things. It’s not telling women to “tone down” their dress if you say that showing cleavage is inappropriate and will get you taken less seriously, any more than it’s telling people to “tone down” their language if you tell them not to make crude sexual innuendos and hit on people at work. “Toning down” your language means saying the same thing but in a milder way. What Ophelia is saying is that there are some things it’s inappropriate to say at all in certain contexts–and if you say them in that context, you are diminishing your social power. It’s not about “modesty” at all. “Modesty” is about women hiding themselves so they won’t inconvenience or distract men. You won’t catch men carefully configuring their wardrobes so as not to distract women. On the other hand, you also won’t catch men exposing most of their bodies for the sake of pleasing women–which is the polar opposite of “modesty,” and which (when women do it) is still all about pleasing men. Both modesty and tits-flashing are ultimately about pleasing men. Both fixate the viewer’s attention on your body, rather than on your authority or your words. And both get in the way of attaining power.
Sorry, I forgot to finish the sentence at the end of my first paragraph in the previous comment.
What I meant to say was this: if male beauty standards were as strict as the female ones, and if male fashions were as exposed and revealing as female ones, then those males with unfortunate body types who couldn’t wear speedos would be *obsessed* with slimming down so they could wear speedos and put their bodies on display as they are expected to.
The point is that an expectation of displaying one’s body can also be oppressive, just as an expectation of modesty can.
Fecked-up, isn’t it? Welcome to the world… The only good thing is that, fanatics aside, it’s a dam’ sight less fecked-up than it was 30 or 40 years ago. But it still has a dam’ long way to go.
Hmmm… I may be crazy, but I’m not sure there’s necessarily a logical reason why the argument Russell made in his comment and the responses by OB, Eric, and Jenavir are mutually exclusive. One can value human physical beauty (as Russell argues we should) while simultaneously thinking that women are disproportionately expected to meet exaggerated beauty standards and that these unequal expectations are wrong (as OB, Eric, and Jenavir argue).
And I thought a “Cuddy”, was another name for a donkey!
woot, Russell isn’t arguing just that we should value human physical beauty, and I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t, so what you say is true enough but a bit beside the point.
I’m with Dave on this one. I find the fact of the argument more interesting than the argument itself. The equation between puritanism equals fear of the body equals sexually screwed up seems to have sunken in to such depth that accusations of puritanism provoke back-peddling when used rhetorically. An American cultural thing perhaps, given their trick of managing to be simultaneously more and less puritan than other western societies.
Back-pedalling? What back-pedalling? More like front-pedalling, it seems to me. Accusations of puritanism provoke argument, not back-pedalling – unless I’ve missed something. (There is clarification. Is that back-pedalling? Saying I meant this but not that? Well, possibly. But I think I mostly wanted to emphasize that I wasn’t criticizing [much less bullying] Jen, and that’s because I didn’t want to bully Jen.)
Anyway – you’re dead right about the main point. The puritanism-fear of the body-sexually screwed up [as in not “sex-positive”] equation is indeed a dread accusation. Has been as far back as I can remember. That’s a very powerful tool for social conformity…which is ironic.
Woot, the question isn’t one of valuing physical attractiveness so much as differing opinions on what the effects of the protest were. Personally I think the effects were largely positive – both for feminism and atheism. It highlighted real issues, pointed out how stupid those issues were, and did it in a manner that captured the world’s imagination.
As to the feminist backlash frankly I think Blag Hag said it best for herself.
http://www.blaghag.com/2010/05/why-boobquake-isnt-destroying-feminism.html#disqus_thread
Of course you can. Leering is rude, and can even be threatening. Even walking topless on the beach is not an invitation to leer.
There is a reason this is part of Feminism 101. Basically, you are saying that if a woman gets leered at when wearing a low-cut top, she was asking for it. You are placing the responsibility for the male reaction only with the female. Is there anything that a woman can wear that will prevent her being leered at? No, the only ones who can really prevent leering are the men who do it, by taking home the message that leering is inappropriate, no matter what a woman wears.
Maybe that’s not the society we have now, but it’s the society we should aim for.
No, the question isn’t “differing opinions on what the effects of the protest were”; it’s about some of the reaction to some of the reaction to the protest, and the broader subject in which all this is rooted. See the first para of the post.
Yes, that’s right. What else is “express[ing] our sexual desirability”? [Greta Christina] If a woman is expressing her sexual desirability, then in what sense is she not inviting leers? I would really like to know. I think the claim that she is doing something completely different is incoherent.
Look – sex is sex – sexual desirability is what it is – it’s all about leers and drooling and grunts and panting. It’s just stupid to pretend that you can send sexual signals but still avoid all the heat and sweat of sex.
I think there’s something really phony and bogus and irritating about this. It’s all too reminiscent of what in my 14th century youth was called cock-teasing. I really do think women should be more honest than that – I think if they want the fun of parading their desirability then they should be willing to pay the freight.
And this is why I think the whole thing is not always such a great idea. I think women are often oblivious to the effects of the mixed messages – hey hey look at my tits but by god you’d better look in the right way.
Sex is sex. It’s not all that easily hedged in by expectations of looking just the right amount and not a bit more. I think it’s stupid and often just plain dishonest to pretend otherwise.
And the way to teach men to take home that message is to send a barrage of mixed signals. The thing to do is to trick men by seeming to be saying “Look at me, am I hot or what, don’t you want to do me right now?” and then rebuking them when they say “Yes I do!”
I can imagine a different universe in which sexy clothes are not actually sexy – but then this conversation wouldn’t exist. But within the terms of this conversation, the fact that the clothes are sexy is the whole point. So how can it be fair to say that leering is inappropriate no matter what a woman wears? I just do not get that. I do not get how people are supposed to read sexy clothes as not sexy.
And I think the whole idea is fundamentally anti-feminist (though not deliberately), because the double message just feeds into misogyny. I think a lot of women, especially young ones, tend to be clueless about that.
But who decides whether what you’re wearing is sexy enough that obviously you want to be leered and hooted at and you can’t complain if people do? Because I’m no great beauty, but I’ve had men leer and shout filthy things at me just for wearing a tank top and shorts on a hot day. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to object to that. And yes I agree that you can’t complain about stares if you go out topless, but where is the line, and is it men who get to determine that, or what?
Sure – it’s fuzzy – it’s a vagueness thing – which is the final lost hair that makes someone bald?
But the claims I’m addressing have been explicitly about desirability. I’m not saying which clothes rate high enough on the sexual signaling score card to make leering justifiable, because I don’t know, and because standards do move around. I’m just saying that it’s incoherent to say women should/must be free to express their “desirability” and men must not react to that expression in a sexual (desirous) way.
Well, no. You’re taking this a step too far, OB. A woman who looks “sexy”–whatever that means, and it generally means whatever the leering man wants it to mean–doesn’t justify a man in rude behavior. The man might not be able to control his feelings, but he can certainly control his actions. The woman might be dressed inappropriately (or she might not), but that in no way justifies rude behavior, much less threatening behavior. What you’re saying really is Taliban-logic. The whole concept of the “cock-tease” falls within that category. It makes women responsible for men’s actions, and sets up a construct where women have to constantly walk on eggshells to avoid exciting men. But men need not do the same for women, of course. Men don’t consider themselves to be inviting rude stares or comments by going shirtless. It’s ridiculous to excuse their behavior to women because women are somehow being too desirable, when men aren’t expected to “pay their freight” in the same way. Men can look desirable without being dehumanized, and part of the project of feminism is to get the same privilege for women.
A woman who expresses her sexual desirability is inviting men to desire her. She’s not inviting men to break the normal standards of polite behavior. That’s a different matter entirely. Wanting to be looked at–wanting people to think “oh, she’s attractive” when they look at you–is very different from inviting rudeness. Conflating the two *is* puritanical; it says that sexually desirable people don’t merit politeness. What could be more puritanical and sex-negative than that?
You’re right, OB, in saying that a woman who expresses sexual desirability in the wrong context makes it difficult for people to take her seriously, and diminishes her own authority. But it’s a step too far to say that this makes it okay for people to leer at her, make inappropriate (and often threatening) comments at her, etc.
I mean, for pity’s sake, I’m sexually attracted to many men and I can refrain from leering, commenting, invading their personal space, etc. Even when I think they’re trying to look desirable! I can manage this, and I SHOULD manage this. They should be able to look desirable without me turning into a beast. And I deserve the same courtesy. It’s human to want to look attractive, and it’s human to want to be treated politely. There’s no reason why people can’t have both of these things. Men do, all the time. The only reason it’s even an issue for women is that men have traditionally been granted a great deal of indulgence, not just in this area but in all others.
Indulgence in the sense that men haven’t been expected to control their sexual desires (especially towards “bad” women), I mean.
Well I certainly didn’t say it was okay for people to make threatening comments at her! Nor do I think it is. But leer? Well maybe it depends on how we define “leer.”
So, okay, how do we define it? Is it just staring? If it is…is the idea really that men should not stare at women’s breasts even when the breasts in question are emphatically displayed? If so, what are the men in question supposed to do? Look at the sky? Crane their heads upward so that the breasts are simply out of their line of sight?
Nope, I still don’t buy it. This looks to me uncomfortably like a deliberately set trap. Breasts are just too god damn near eye level for this kind of expectation to make any sense. I’m not saying men should grab their crotches or grunt like pigs, but the claim that they shouldn’t even stare I think is ridiculous. Arguably that’s more “puritanical” than the suggestion that tit shirts aren’t really all that empowering. It’s rather like God saying look here, here’s this fruit over here, now don’t you dare touch it.
And by the way I didn’t say anything about inviting rudeness, either.
I hadn’t seen 59 and 60 when I replied.
Yes; I too can manage to see an attractive man and not fall to slavering and making goggle eyes – but then I’m unusually refeened.
Nevertheless – there isn’t really any male equivalent of displaying tits, so I don’t think “well we can so why can’t you?” applies. I think tit-display looks more like a sexual invitation than anything men can do without just plain taking their pants off – which they can’t do in the sense that women can display their tits. This may be totally unfair, but then so is the fact that women get pregnant. It’s also of course cultural, but it’s how it is now.
See, this – “A woman who expresses her sexual desirability is inviting men to desire her.” – is terribly subtle if it rules out even staring. I honestly don’t know what it means. Does it mean she is inviting men to desire her but also to conceal the fact?
Really, I don’t get it. It’s like saying it’s rude to respond to flirting by flirting back. If X is inviting Y to desire her, then why is Y forbidden to express his desire? I do not get it! Desire is desire – it’s not like looking at a sunset or a still life – it is sexual. I think it’s a bit mean and a bit greedy to mess with it if it’s purely for the thrill of causing some weird twisted throttled desire that is forbidden to do anything.
Eating one’s cake and having it? Well, it’s understandable. Why should men be able to do so, and not women? And isn’t it unfair that women can’t display desirability without actually being desired? And if in fact a woman goes to all that trouble and is not actually desired…?
Is it about wanting to affect a man’s emotions and enjoying watching him pretend that he doesn’t have any? If the question of expressing desirability is involved at all, then being desired is the obvious intention, so how can a woman then claim that it wasn’t, and he got it wrong?
There are ways in which a woman can look becoming without having to thrust her tits into a man’s face (as it were). It goes back to what is appropriate, and (I so hate to sound old fashioned) things like consideration and — dare I say it? — respect. And respect must be mutual. It can’t just come from one side.
If I felt it was entirely about the liberation of women from centuries of oppression, I would simply keep quiet. But I think that it is a great deal to do with our animal nature and self-assertion and power, and this is not always being squarely faced. We need a rapprochement.
This is what I’m saying! It’s too much like a cat playing with a mouse. “Look but don’t touch, don’t even stare, ah ah ah, you looked a little too long, you nasty man” – ecch, I hate it, I think it’s dishonest and manipulative and underhanded – and I don’t think it’s remotely feminist.
One can always play the other game, and come over all Noel Coward: “My dear, those things are simply too distracting at this hour of the morning”…
One of the problems of life as a male academic is in having to conduct serious conversations with young women who are showing you their breasts, but who would be shocked, horrified and mortifyingly embarrassed if you pointed out to them that they were showing you their breasts, even if it were done in a Noel-Cowardish sort of way…
It’s not a major problem, you understand, but tact is everything, as is so often the case.
Anyone who thinks that males can’t do that sexual display thing have never seen the dress uniform of junior officers in the Italian navy.
Indeed any military mess-dress, with obligatory ‘bum-freezer’ jackets. If you like that sort of thing…
Never mind Noel Coward, where’s Frankie Howerd when you need him?
Ophelia Benson
May 3, 2010 at 9:35 amThe reaction to the protest is the effect of it – as is the reaction to the reaction – as is the reaction to the reaction to the reaction – which is about where we are now. They are all ripples from the same pebble.
Whoa, I take one day off reading Butterflies and Wheels … and look at all this! I don’t think I can follow it all just now, though I read the last twenty or so comments quickly. I do agree with Ophelia – if she’s saying this – that a woman can’t reasonably wear a topless bikini at the beach and then get upset if guys so much as look at her. She’s asking to be looked at. But she’s not asking for strangers to look at her in a highly pointed, let alone mocking or denigrating, way, or that they insist on talking to her against her wishes. Everyone has a right to try to initiate a conversation with anyone … but not to persist if the other person signals that they don’t want to chat.
In practice, this doesn’t seem very difficult. I spent a lot of time in the summers of my long-lost youth hanging around at nude or topless beaches, and occasionally at waterholes up the valley, in the company of young women who were, ahem, not circumspect about showing their beauty to the world. Needless to say this was after my brief stint as an Evangelical Union apparatchik.
I don’t remember there being any terrible problems. In fact the only issue I ever remember was when a woman (a stranger) made fun of my two friends for taking off their bikini tops when sunbathing by the river (I still have no idea what her problem was). Different social contexts evolve workable ways of doing things.
This seems a bit remote from where the conversation was last I looked, but I’m not sure I have the energy at the moment to trace through how it got to here.
Just getting back to one point from the other day, though, let me clarify. I was not suggesting that it’s contextually appropriate for a woman to turn up at a tutorial in a French-style two-piece swimsuit: i.e., string bikini bottom plus anklet. That would be disruptive. It’s just fine at the beach (in many parts of the world), but disruptive in other contexts.
But it would also be disruptive to turn up in a gorilla suit or in clown makeup or dressed as Conan the Barbarian or in full bridal regalia. The latter would be appropriate for a bride, and the others would be fine at Dragoncon, but they would be disruptive in a tutorial.
That said, many young women turn up to tutorials on hot summer days wearing the following: short skirt or shorts (which may be quite short), a sleeveless top (which may expose cleavage), and sandals (which are likely to get kicked off when the woman sits down and gets comfortable). Depending, I suppose, on how short the shorts are and how plunging the sleeveless top is, this outfit could go beyond “being comfortable in summer weather” to “sexual display”.
Yet, I’ve never, in all the ridiculous number of degrees I’ve done, or in all my own teaching, including four years as a full-time academic and a helluva lot of sessional tutorials in addition, found that this manner of dress causes disruption. I think it’s perfectly appropriate summer wear for university undergraduates. The other students are invariably nonchalant about it (if it’s hot they won’t be wearing all that much more themselves), and it’s certainly never embarrassed me. Nor have any of the many academics I’ve spoken to about pedagogical problems ever raised this as a cause of disruption in classes. I have a fair idea of the sorts of things that can cause class disruptions at university level: e.g., students who haven’t done the set reading, but insist on having their say in way that’s not responsive to the issues, making the rest get impatient for him or her to shut up. The wearing of the sort of clothing I’ve described isn’t even on the list of disruptive behaviours. It doesn’t rate. (Nor do I think it has much to do with anorexia, but that raises another raft of issues, e.g. the problem of maintaining a healthy weight with the modern Western diet, and the use of absurdly emaciated models and actresses by the fashion and entertainment industries.)
I admit that I once read an article in the Chronicle by a curmudgeonly male academic complaining about his female students wearing this sort of garb. But even he seemed to be talking more about his personal embarrassment/moral disapproval than about actual class disruption. My response is that he ought to, like, Just Get Over It.
Again, it’s contextual … and I doubt that going to uni dressed in the way I described, if someone choses to do it for Boobquake, will adversely affect her legal career years later or prevent her getting a job as a judge. And as I said previously, I don’t believe that Jen was ever suggesting that people go beyond the envelope of what might be appropriate for their own context.
Maybe all this has been covered in one of the comments that I skimmed over, but I think I owed a more cogent comment of my own.
Ugh: “chose”, not “choses”. That’s what I get for restructuring some stuff in past tense.
Russell, Obviously you’re not seeing (down under) what I see on a US college campus (in Dallas Texas). The issue isn’t weather appropriate light clothing, but the sort of flashy, provocative clothes you see on magazine covers. That’s what some women wear to class (while men wear baggy T-shirts and jeans). Faculty do talk about it–with amusement, with concern.
Heh. True about military dress. Here’s a slightly shameful confession: my brother was in Naval ROTC when I “graduated” from 8th grade (at a small all-girls school) and I badly wanted him to attend the graduation in uniform to impress my classmates.
But of course that’s almost the opposite kind of display from tits-display. Very covered; very formal, very rigid (phallic if you like); obviously linked to power; all that.
That difference is part of my discomfort with this stuff, as I’ve said. Tits-display is weak and wheedling in comparison; seduction is weak and wheedling in comparison. [shrug] There’s nothing I can do about that, but it’s one reason I find it impossible to rejoice in the Display of Female Desirability.
Okay, Jean – so just as well I clarified, as my original comment evidently conveyed an impression to you quite different from what I actually had in mind. So I take it you agree that the kind of clothing I was talking about undergrads wearing on the university lawns (which was my original example IIRC) is not a problem even if it involves an element of sexual display? (Btw this kind of thing was pretty definitely what was being described in the curmudgeonly Chronicle article that I mentioned, though I can’t quickly find it to check and be 100 per cent sure.)
As for the clothing you described, I’m not sure why faculty there are so “concerned”, but I do kind of see your point about it. I’m not actually a big fan of the sort of “glamour” clothing that you’ve now clarified that you had in mind, and I can see how it could be mildly disruptive if taken to an extreme. I also think it would look pretty ridiculous on a university campus, but that may be because I have a certain cultural bias.
So now we’ve both clarified what we meant, and it seems that we were thinking and talking about different things, we’re not so far apart after all. Yes? It’s always good to make progress. :)
Russell, Yes, we’re probably talking about different things. What comes to my mind is the Cosmo girl sitting in the front row of my class, what comes to yours is a more natural, happy scene. Yes, there’s much more reason to worry about Cosmo girl–because people have to overcome biases about her to see that she’s really smart (sometime she is). There are more subtle issues even on the other “natural dress” campus…where the women more than the men are under pressure to be look good, but I don’t want to be curmudgeonly. Women enjoy looking great, and not just to manipulate men.
A couple of quick points. First, for clarification, I wasn’t only referring to tits-displaying in particular, which is just one extreme example of obviously inappropriate behavior, but to anything that gives the impression of being “sexually desirable”–which is a much vaguer and looser category that involves a lot of stuff that’s not inappropriate or (as gordonwillis said) disrespectful. I agree that tits-displaying is inappropriate and disrespectful, though still not an excuse for rudeness.
Then, Ophelia, you said:
No. But it means that they must express their desire in socially acceptable ways! You can always ask a woman (or a man) to have a drink together or something. If you already know them a little, you can say they look nice. It’s not about having your cake and eating it too; it’s about eating your cake but not shoving it into your mouth in an unsightly, offensive manner and then chewing with your mouth open and spraying people with the crumbs.
I think your statement that they’re inviting leers, comments, etc. seemed to me like you were justifying rude behavior. But that’s apparently not what you meant. Leers are rude, though, and yes, the line between looking and leering is a fuzzy one. But then, so is the line between “attractive yet appropriate” and “inappropriately sexual,” no? It’s a bad idea to condition people’s right to basic politeness on something fuzzy, but it’s a good idea to make them aware that the line exists, even though it’s fuzzy. So women should be aware of their dress, as should men, although inappropriate dress is not an excuse for rudeness to either; but men (and the few leering women out there) should be aware of the line between looking and leer. For clarification, the way I’d describe the difference is that leering involves threatening intent. It’s sexual, but it’s also somewhat hostile (unlike the more neutral “staring”–possibly rude if it goes on too long, but without malicious intent–or the totally innocuous “looking”).
You’re quite right that the cultural meaning of tits-display is more sexual than male chest-display. But that’s arguably part of the problem, albeit a minor one. There are cultures where bare-chested women are as normal as bare-chested men, and you could make an argument that the Western distinction between the two harms women somewhat.
Well, forgive me, Jenavir, but I’m afraid all that looks to me like a lot of words to point out the obvious. If you define “leer” as threatening then obviously I wasn’t saying that women are inviting leers – and so on with all the rest of it. I don’t disagree with any of it, but then I never did, and I don’t think I said anything implying that I did, so I don’t quite see the need to spell it all out.
Oh, hum. So, why does the phrase “protests too much” jump to my traitorous mind? Along with “beating a dead horse”?
*roll eyes*
And off we go, with a sneaky little straw man to get the blog post going. Well, after such a beginning, there’s nothing much to discuss, is there?
But, hey, I’m optimistic. Maybe, just maybe, it’s still time to see the hole and stop digging.
Excuse me?
This post is more than a week old; comments dried up five days ago, apart from two stragglers; now you suddenly drop in to make comment #79 accusing me of beating a dead horse?
And what’s with the sneering? Who the fuck are you? If you want to disagree with me, go right ahead, but just turning up all of a sudden to accuse me of protesting too much and beating a dead horse (got any other banalities in your bag?) and roll your eyes and declare a straw man and say there’s nothing to discuss and tell me to stop digging –
Well it’s not very impressive, is it?! Let’s see: quote; sneer, sneer, sneer; quote; sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer.
Notice a certain lack of substance? Or are you too busy with the sneering.
Okay, I see the hole. Would you like to jump into it?
But that’s just it. It’s not obvious, to a lot of people, and when you say that women who are “sexually desirable” are “asking for it” (whatever “it” is) then it raises red flags, and it’s not unreasonable for me to get heated about it. Considering what sort of penalties are inflicted world-wide on women who are too “sexually desirable.” You clarified your meaning, sure–I’m just explaining my initial reaction.
No doubt, but I did not say ‘that women who are “sexually desirable” are “asking for it”’ and you have a colossal gall saying I did. I’m getting very god damn tired of this. I’m getting very god damn tired of people putting disgusting words in my mouth, I’m getting very god damn tired of people pretending I said vicious things that I did not say. Address what I really did say or don’t say anything.
This is really really really tedious. It ought to be possible to have a serious discussion of nuances and implications and difficulties without having people convert that into accusations of the crudest common denominator of vulgar sexist bigotry. It ought to be possible to do something besides exchanging platitudes – “women should be free to dress any way they like without being raped.” Yes, no kidding, so they should. But that’s not what I was talking about!
Saying “that women who are sexually desirable are asking for it” is saying that women who are sexually desirable are asking to be raped. That’s a stupid, vicious, sexist, primitive, ridiculous, foul thing to say, and I profoundly resent not being able to say what I said on this thread without being accused of saying that.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just complaining about stupidity, which is unfair, because people can’t help being stupid. That’s a stupid reading of what I said. But I don’t think I am complaining about just stupidity – I think I’m complaining about a combination of sloppy reading and self-righteousness and willful blindness to the obvious unwavering feminism of this website. I think it’s both moronic and malicious to pretend to think that I was saying that. It pisses me off.
i still watch Boston Legal because for me, this is the best coutroom drama TV series,`”