Jezebel: amanda marcotte

Porn Identity

Sadie — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:30:00 EDT

Amanda Marcotte: "On one hand, [asking why women don't watch more porn]'s like asking why men don't read more romance novels. You can usually tell when you're in the intended audience, you know. Women aren't stupid." [Pandagon]

Is There Any Way To Save The Romantic Comedy?

hortense — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:30:00 EST

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon brings our attention to this poster for The Ugly Truth, noting that the poster is further proof of her theory that "romantic comedies are backsliding into record lows of reactionary bullshit."

The poster, Marcotte writes, is "the classic modern attempt to mollify women about vicious gender stereotyping by phony flattery through insulting men—-men are such dogs, amiriteladeez?!" The string of craptacular romantic comedies to prove this point over the past few years is hard to deny; for some reason, a genre that once thrived on clever lines and honest depictions of the awkwardness and excitement of romance has been boiled down to a simple formula: men are sex-crazed pigs and women have to straighten them out to win their hearts.

Marcotte also points out that the films seem to thrive on the idea that women are wedding obsessed, and that sex is just something that seems to be an obligation in order for them to get the ceremony/dress/life of their dreams. And even the most "professional" women fall into this category: "Women are obsessed with irrational things like weddings and getting flowers, and they lose their minds over this. (Men are compelled by their supposed out of this world horniness, but rarely are they depicted as losing control of themselves to the point where they lose their dignity.) This is why men have the upper hand, because women are too crazy to hang onto it," Marcotte writes, "It’s certainly not that this is a male-dominated society, no siree, and to make that abundantly clear, female rom com characters now usually have a lot of professional power."

A reader sent in a trailer of an upcoming Matthew McConaughey film, The Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, that she seemed "the biggest pile of sexist crap" she's ever seen. In the clip, McConaughey and co-star Jennifer Garner hit on several of Marcotte's points: McConaughey, the sexist, obnoxious horndog, goes through life treating women like objects that he can collect, though his "true love", Jennifer Garner, seems to have a pull over him, as she's the one who really knows how to get to his heart, even though she shouldn't bother, because the dude is clearly an ass.

The trailer sums up this line of Marcotte's perfectly: "The nasty dog who breaks women’s hearts for fun will eventually realize he loves this one, and she’ll get with him, despite the fact that he gave her plenty of upfront warning that he doesn’t respect women. But he does now, because she bowled him over that much. It’s a fantasy for women who don’t feel like they get much respect in their own lives."

So how can Hollywood fix the romantic comedy? Is it even worth fixing at this point?

Romantic Comedies Slipping Into Caveman Territory [Pandagon]

Camille Paglia: Sarah Palin Is The Savior Of "Third World Feminism"

Jessica — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:30:00 EST

Camille Paglia's enormous girl crush on Sarah Palin only intensifies with every gaffe and blunder. In her new Salon column, Paglia covers a lot of the same ground found in her other Palin-loving salvos: mean old liberals despise Sarah because they're big city latte drinking jerks who hate America. "So she doesn't speak the King's English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes," Paglia writes swoonily.

But the provocateur's latest pro-Palin essay takes a weird turn into nonsenseland with this sentence: "Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World." Wait…what?

What a vast oversimplification of the feminism of literally hundreds of countries, each with its own set of cultural values, economics, literature, and religion. How does Sarah Palin, a woman who has barely traveled outside of the United States, who favors "small town," "real" (read: white) America, who is staunchly Christian, help expand feminism into the Third World? Solely by being a pro-life working mom? Of course, Paglia barely explains why Palin is a savior for feminism in developing countries, probably because she's a maverick!

In addition, as Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte pointed out earlier this year, the governments with the greatest percentage of women "including Uganda, India, Pakistan and Costa Rica — have laws mandating that women hold a certain number of seats in some of their lawmaking bodies" Hmm, that sounds dangerously close to the dreaded socialism, and something small-government loving Palin would surely not approve of.

Honestly, I don't understand how anyone can take Paglia seriously as a feminist voice when she's so clearly and grossly biased. She hates, hates Hillary Clinton, as she's expressed on several occasions, mocking her looks as well as her personal life. In this essay, Paglia first says, "I was irritated by Hillary Clinton's aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama's curt dismissal of the issue." But guess what! When her beloved Palin brought up Ayers, Paglia became worried! "My concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign…his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed." Is she serious with this shit?

Paglia decries what she describes as "A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage," Democrats displayed when dealing with Sarah Palin. If she wants to see a shocking level of irrational emotionalism, I suggest she look in the friggin' mirror.

Obama Surfs Through [Salon]
Checking In On Feminism Overseas [LAT]

Earlier: Camille Paglia Fighting Old Personal Battles With New Palin Sword

Allegations Of Theft, Racism Rock The Feminist Blogosphere

Dodai — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:00:00 EDT

There's a furor going on in the feminist blogsphere. The issue is complicated, but what follows is an attempt to give a general gist of what's gone down: On March 29 in Cambridge, the blogger known as Brownfemipower (BFP) spoke at WAM (Women, Action & the Media conference). Apparently, Brownfemipower (who has been called "one of the most important feminist bloggers in the history of the web") spoke about the racism and sexism faced by immigrant women in the US in our current "build a wall" climate. On April 2, writer Amanda Marcotte published an article on RH Reality Check called "Can A Person Be Illegal?" (It was republished a few days later on Alternet.) The jumping off point was a New York Times article about a 22-year-old immigrant from Colombia whose immigration agent used the threat of deportation to rape her. (The woman recorded the assault on her cell phone and the guy was busted.) Marcotte's article made many of the same points BFP made in her speech (the text of which she posted on her blog immediately after the conference.) BFP was not credited or linked to; Amanda Marcotte maintains that though she reads BFP's blog, she did not "steal" her ideas from BFP. In fact, Marcotte replied to a post on Feministe thusly:

"Considering the severity of the accusations leveled at me—plagiarism is not a minor thing to accuse someone of—my right to defend myself with the much-maligned facts shouldn't be a matter of question, regardless of race. I'm extremely eager to address racism, but I won't be made a scapegoat who has to roll over to scurrilous accusations to make anyone feel better. If you have to unfairly malign someone's reputation to make your point, then you have to reconsider if you have a point. Maligning people's reputations—making up lies and then spreading them around and saying, "Well, where there's smoke, there's fire" is a right wing strategy. I am deeply disturbed to see it picked up by people who ostensibly on the side of the angels."

Some WOC (women of color) bloggers maintain that BFP's views were marginalized because she is not white; Marcotte is white, gets and has a book deal. The book in question? It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Which, to make matters worse, is illustrated with retro comics picturing a blonde, white woman wearing animal print. Writes Holly from Feministe: "You know, the jungle. Where the savage brown people and ferocious animals are defeated by heroic white folks." She continues:

"The saddest thing about these images is that they have practically nothing to do with the content of the book, as far as I can tell. They're a riff on the title; they're part of the marketing. But what they end up doing is making a disturbing commentary, a damning exegesis that's surely not part of the real intent of the author or publisher but that can't help but bubble to the surface of our minds after recent events."

It is, as previously stated, complicated stuff. There is a history of tension between white feminists and black women; some of it was covered in the Times article about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass, who worked together on abolition, but then had a bitter split over who should be first to get the right to vote — women or blacks. The worst part is that BFP, tired of being attacked and forced to defend herself has taken down her blog. She has a farewell post which reads, in part:

"I never said that it's important to recognize that I had the idea first. I don't give a shit who came up with the idea first—even if it WAS me. I don't give a shit who thought of what first. I don't fucking want credit for anything outside of existing. (For those who care, what I really said: There's a lot of women of color (and men of color!) who have talked about immigration. There's a lot of women of color and men of color who have examined how sexualized violence has been the foremost result of the "strengthening" of borders. There's been a lot of us who have insisted for a long time now that immigration is a feminist issue, goddamn it, get your head out of your ass."

You are encouraged to read all of this post (and all of the posts linked) for more on this issue, which simply cannot be summed up in the (admittedly infinite) space here. But if you only glean one thing from all this, hopefully it is that we are living in a country — and an era — in which sexism and racism are not only alive but well, often in ways that may not immediately be obvious.

Update: Feministing is reporting that Seal Press has issued an apology in reference to the images in 'It's A Jungle Out There.' "We do not believe it is appropriate for a book about feminism, albeit a book of humor, to have any images or illustrations that are offensive to anyone." They also plan to remove those images from Marcotte's book.

Second Update: Marcotte has now issued an apology.

This Has Not Been A Good Week For Woman Of Color Blogging [Feministe]
Can A Person Be Illegal? [RH Reality Check]
Abuse Fueled by Abusive Immigration Language [Alternet]
TODAY: Amanda Marcotte at KGB Bar in Manhattan [Feministe]
Taking Credit For Other Womens' Work Isn't Feminist. It's Just Tacky. [Fetch Me My Axe]
Feminists, too, Steal [A Woman's Ecdysis]
Intellectual Theft Is Still Theft [High On Rebellion]
If It's "Stealing," You'd Better Prove It: On Amanda Marcotte, BFP, And RH Reality Check [Hugo Schwyzer]
BFP Final [Problem Chylde]
Some Context [BFP]
I Guess It's A Jungle In Here Too, Huh? [Feministe]
Related: Rights vs. Rights: An Improbable Collision Course [NY Times]