Roughly two years ago, HBO broadcast Confirmation, a film based on the events surrounding the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, and the controversy which ensued when Anita Hill alleged sexual misconduct on Thomas’s part. That event is considered a watershed moment for women’s rights and the issue of sexual harassment. Around the time of Confirmation’s release many media pieces were written about “how far we’ve come” in taking the concerns of women more seriously. Even the review I wrote for the film talks a lot about how things had changed, and how much the culture had moved over the past quarter-century.
I was wrong. We haven’t learned a goddamn thing.
In fact, I can put forward a pretty good argument things are worse in how seriously the powers that be will take the claims of women. How else can one describe a process where less that 24 hours after an alleged victim testifies before a government committee, the people in charge push forward with no investigation or real consideration of consequences, and had already made up their minds to not give a shit a week ago.
THEY. JUST. DON’T. CARE.
They don’t care about truth. They don’t care about even the appearance of a fair process. All they care about is the expression of power and the fulfillment of their goals, all other considerations be damned … just like an abusive asshole. And, to me, the most galling thing about this is not the awful people confirming how awful they are. There have always been assholes, probably always will be, and we expect the worst from them. What is the most sickening are the people who should know better and who hold their tongues, ignore reality, or rationalize things as “not being so bad” in order to not do anything at all. When Dr. Ford was at that party (and I believe she was at that party), there were others who saw what happened and knew it was wrong. They knew it was wrong but were too chicken shit to do anything about it.
We, as a nation, have the same choice as the people who were there at that party. And we’re blowing it. We’re showing how much we give a damn, and it’s not that much. All of this has me thinking about the way we discuss and consume sex as a culture, how it plays into what we think about consent, and how those issues permeate out to affect other aspects of life.
As a society, most of sexuality is viewed through the prism of a male gaze. And, as such, we prioritize male needs as the default, and anything beyond that becomes … special. But those needs are always prioritized. And this tendency was in full display yesterday.
The Republicans and conservatives approached that hearing as a situation where they were thinking to themselves: why is this woman doing this to this man? And when Kavanaugh began his testimony, Ford became an afterthought. The judiciary committee was only “a stage for a man to clear his good name.” That narrative is what Republicans decided to believe, whether true or not. This is exactly the same attitude conservatives have about climate change, fiscal responsibility, or the lies Donald Trump tell every single day. They create their own version of reality and call themselves victims when the rest of us refuse to accept the fantasy.
And every day this government by selective interpretation of truth goes, the gulf between separate factions of Americans widens. The wider it gets the more bitter the effects will be. Because when the threads of a country fray to the point the populace can’t agree on fundamental ideas like facts, decency, and fairness, historically it’s followed by death and destruction when those sides one day decide enough is enough and start killing each other.
We’re not there yet. And some can only reassess when they’re shamed into doing the right thing … or at least a half-assed move towards the right thing.
How do the stereotypes people hold to inform our attitudes?
The biggest aspect of privilege, whether it be male privilege or white privilege, is how privilege allows those who possess it to make excuses for being horrible. Ever notice how white people’s drug problems are a “crisis” while if it’s thought to be a brown people problem it’s a “war?” If a man blubbers and screams in a professional setting, he’s exhibiting strength and being forceful. A woman who is emotional is being “hysterical” about her problems, and if she talks loudly runs the risk of being called “shrill” or a “bitch.” Of course, we’re also a society that values a pretty face and uses images of women in various states of undress to sell almost everything. Anyone who doesn’t fit the ideal gets comments about their “cankles” in order to devalue and demean. But don’t show too much skin, or be too sexual, otherwise risk being criticized as a slut or a whore.
And even for those who had no choice in how they were used and treated, the pervasive shameful whispers become weapons in the hands of the cruel who can’t or won’t understand the pain they inflict.
These attitudes didn’t just appear overnight, and how they flow to create trends with certain issues is a function of decades, if not centuries old, racial and gender stereotypes everyone is constantly being forced into, and made to feel uncomfortable when they’re something beyond the box.
And, in the end, it’s about how we raise boys to become men, and the value we place on the lives of girls who become women.
Popular culture is a reflection of these attitudes. And mixing women, sex and sexual desire in a story typically reduces the female characters to three basic archetypes that are repeated across most movies, television shows, and literature.
Many of the women I've talked to about this subject feel most sexual/erotic material is not really geared toward them, and shot through a "male gaze." For example, every lesbian I've ever broached this with feels lesbian sex in most movies is not done in a way to depict intimacy, an expression of love, or even female sexual enjoyment, but more centered on what a man would fantasize about with two women having sex.
Other types of female characters and the expressions of their sexuality:
"Anyone who watches soap operas knows that the quickest way to turn a bad girl into a sympathetic heroine is to have her raped." — Lucy Gillam, "When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters”
"Anyone who watches soap operas knows that the quickest way to turn a bad girl into a sympathetic heroine is to have her raped."
Molly Ringwald: At one point in [“The Breakfast Club”], the bad-boy character, John Bender, ducks under the table where my character, Claire, is sitting, to hide from a teacher. While there, he takes the opportunity to peek under Claire’s skirt and, though the audience doesn’t see, it is implied that he touches her inappropriately. I was quick to point out to my daughter that the person in the underwear wasn’t really me, though that clarification seemed inconsequential. We kept watching, and, despite my best intentions to give context to the uncomfortable bits, I didn’t elaborate on what might have gone on under the table. She expressed no curiosity in anything sexual, so I decided to follow her lead, and discuss what seemed to resonate with her more. Maybe I just chickened out … If I sound overly critical, it’s only with hindsight. Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John’s writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time. I was well into my thirties before I stopped considering verbally abusive men more interesting than the nice ones. I’m a little embarrassed to say that it took even longer for me to fully comprehend the scene late in “Sixteen Candles,” when the dreamboat, Jake, essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter’s sexual urges, in return for Samantha’s underwear. The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn’t know, he asks her if she “enjoyed it.” (Neither of them seems to remember much.) Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, “You know, I have this weird feeling I did.” She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn’t. Thinking about that scene, I became curious how the actress who played Caroline, Haviland Morris, felt about the character she portrayed. So I sent her an e-mail. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since she was twenty-three and I was fifteen. We met for coffee, and after we had filled each other in on all the intervening years, I asked her about it. Haviland, I was surprised to learn, does not have the same issues with the scene as I do. In her mind, Caroline bears some responsibility for what happens, because of how drunk she gets at the party. “I’m not saying that it’s O.K. to then be raped or to have nonconsensual sex,” Haviland clarified. “But . . . that’s not a one-way street. Here’s a girl who gets herself so bombed that she doesn’t even know what’s going on.”
Molly Ringwald: At one point in [“The Breakfast Club”], the bad-boy character, John Bender, ducks under the table where my character, Claire, is sitting, to hide from a teacher. While there, he takes the opportunity to peek under Claire’s skirt and, though the audience doesn’t see, it is implied that he touches her inappropriately. I was quick to point out to my daughter that the person in the underwear wasn’t really me, though that clarification seemed inconsequential. We kept watching, and, despite my best intentions to give context to the uncomfortable bits, I didn’t elaborate on what might have gone on under the table. She expressed no curiosity in anything sexual, so I decided to follow her lead, and discuss what seemed to resonate with her more. Maybe I just chickened out … If I sound overly critical, it’s only with hindsight. Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John’s writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time. I was well into my thirties before I stopped considering verbally abusive men more interesting than the nice ones. I’m a little embarrassed to say that it took even longer for me to fully comprehend the scene late in “Sixteen Candles,” when the dreamboat, Jake, essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter’s sexual urges, in return for Samantha’s underwear. The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn’t know, he asks her if she “enjoyed it.” (Neither of them seems to remember much.) Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, “You know, I have this weird feeling I did.” She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn’t.
Thinking about that scene, I became curious how the actress who played Caroline, Haviland Morris, felt about the character she portrayed. So I sent her an e-mail. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since she was twenty-three and I was fifteen. We met for coffee, and after we had filled each other in on all the intervening years, I asked her about it. Haviland, I was surprised to learn, does not have the same issues with the scene as I do. In her mind, Caroline bears some responsibility for what happens, because of how drunk she gets at the party. “I’m not saying that it’s O.K. to then be raped or to have nonconsensual sex,” Haviland clarified. “But . . . that’s not a one-way street. Here’s a girl who gets herself so bombed that she doesn’t even know what’s going on.”
From Lauren Milici at Birth Movies Death:
I was fifteen when I first watched Sally Hardesty escape into the back of a pickup truck, covered in blood and cackling like a goddamn witch. All of her friends were dead. She had been kidnapped, tortured and even forced to feed her own blood to her cannibalistic captors’ impossibly shriveled patriarch. Being new to the horror genre, I was sure she was going to die. Prior to witnessing Sally’s ordeal, I had just watched The Descent and Eden Lake, where both female protagonists endure intense physical and psychological trauma, only to be (seemingly) killed at the end. At the time, I figured this was the standard in horror, but was determined to find a film that went above and beyond. The truth is, I was going through horror movie after horror movie in an attempt to "find myself" onscreen. It had been a few months since I survived a violent sexual assault, where I subsequently ran from my assailant, tripped, fell and fought like hell. I crawled home with bloody knees, makeup-stained cheeks and a new void in both my mind and heart. My sense of safety, my ability to trust others, my willingness to form new relationships and my love of spending time with people I cared about were all taken from me. This was the year I faked sick almost every week to get out of school. This was the year I couldn’t get out of bed. This was the year I stopped creating. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I locked every door twice. I wanted to die. My sense of self, my identity and any worth I had were stolen from me. There wasn’t anyone in my personal life that I could connect or relate to, so I turned to the fictional world in an effort to cope. It wasn’t until I found the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that something clicked. It was Sally’s strength, and her resilience. It was watching her survive blows to the head from a hammer. It was watching her break free from her bonds and burst through a glass window. It was watching her get back up after she’d been stabbed. It was watching her crawl into the back of a truck, laughing as it drove away from Leatherface. She was the last one to confront the killer, and live. I remember sitting in front of the TV and thinking, There I am. That’s me.
I was fifteen when I first watched Sally Hardesty escape into the back of a pickup truck, covered in blood and cackling like a goddamn witch. All of her friends were dead. She had been kidnapped, tortured and even forced to feed her own blood to her cannibalistic captors’ impossibly shriveled patriarch. Being new to the horror genre, I was sure she was going to die.
Prior to witnessing Sally’s ordeal, I had just watched The Descent and Eden Lake, where both female protagonists endure intense physical and psychological trauma, only to be (seemingly) killed at the end. At the time, I figured this was the standard in horror, but was determined to find a film that went above and beyond. The truth is, I was going through horror movie after horror movie in an attempt to "find myself" onscreen.
It had been a few months since I survived a violent sexual assault, where I subsequently ran from my assailant, tripped, fell and fought like hell. I crawled home with bloody knees, makeup-stained cheeks and a new void in both my mind and heart. My sense of safety, my ability to trust others, my willingness to form new relationships and my love of spending time with people I cared about were all taken from me. This was the year I faked sick almost every week to get out of school. This was the year I couldn’t get out of bed. This was the year I stopped creating. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I locked every door twice. I wanted to die. My sense of self, my identity and any worth I had were stolen from me. There wasn’t anyone in my personal life that I could connect or relate to, so I turned to the fictional world in an effort to cope.
It wasn’t until I found the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that something clicked. It was Sally’s strength, and her resilience. It was watching her survive blows to the head from a hammer. It was watching her break free from her bonds and burst through a glass window. It was watching her get back up after she’d been stabbed. It was watching her crawl into the back of a truck, laughing as it drove away from Leatherface. She was the last one to confront the killer, and live. I remember sitting in front of the TV and thinking, There I am. That’s me.
Beyond the cultural burdens we place on ourselves is the ignorance we impose on just understanding our bodies, allowing that people can enjoy their life with the consent between “partners” (not users or abusers), and moving beyond ignorance about sex. I think my high school biology textbook probably had a better explanation for how mosses and ferns reproduce than the fundamentals of sexual activity in our own species.
Less than forty percent of states require their curriculums be "medically, factually or technically accurate” when it comes to sex education.
As can be stated in many other areas of life, as a society, we are setting up kids for failure. 10 percent of women can't achieve an orgasm. Only a third of women can achieve an orgasm through intercourse alone. If we don't tell young women the science of themselves, if all they're taught is to be ashamed of their bodies and any pleasure they get from it, or the only info they're left with is the musings of their friends and a porn video where someone has their legs bent up to their head in a yoga position, then when they actually have sex and things don't feel the way they think they're supposed to feel and don't match an incomplete fantasy, they'll be left thinking something is wrong with them.
Or they’ll be taken advantage of by people who don’t care about them.
Among the most pervasive sex stereotypes in pop culture:
They’re scenes all too familiar to any TV viewer: A woman is shoved down, she screams or sobs, her eyes grow wide and then blank as she wills herself anywhere else in the world. Lately the small screen has felt particularly thick with such moments of sexual horror, as writers have been churning out story lines in which our saints, our heroines, and our hard and cruel women too, are raped or forced to relive their nightmare of it. Try to imagine a singular abuse endured by an equivalent number of male characters. And yet it seems whenever a female character needs a juicy arc or humanizing touch, writers fall back on the easy, awful crime of rape. ... Here’s something else to imagine: the idea that there are stories to tell about the sources of a woman’s anger, her ambition and fear, her brokenness and resolve, that don’t involve pinning her under some man’s heaving chest.
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