Jezebel 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 2:07 PM
Tue Nov 24
71 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
tips@jezebel.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Anna Holmes
Email | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Dodai Stewart
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Tracie Egan
Email | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Anna North
Email | Twitter
Sadie Stein
Email | Twitter
Reporter:
Irin Carmon
Email | Twitter
Editorial Assistant:
Margaret Hartmann
Email | Twitter
Contributors:
Rich Juzwiak
Email | Twitter
Latoya Peterson
Email
Jenna Sauers
Email
Lizzie Skurnick
Email
Interns:
Katy Kelleher
Twitter
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/21/09
A standing ovation?
I'm lame, but seriously, she is so great, and I love her so much.
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/22/09
Have those boys being hit by those girls tried leaving? Honest question. If they have and the girls refuse to let them go, chasing them down and terrorizing them or threatening to kill themselves, then it's comparable.
11/22/09
@Ginmar Rienne: Slapping is still abuse. If you put your scenario in the reverse (a man slapping a woman) I don't think you'd be so cavalier). And I'm not trying to equalize things. I'm just mentioning that abuse is a equal opportunity kind of thing. Men abuse men. Women abuse women. Men abuse women. Women abuse men. Men and Women abuse children. Now yes, men in many instances have the physical advantage, but to say that a woman doing the same thing to a man wouldn't be just as emotionally damaging is incorrect. Your comment implies women are somehow weaker and can't really emotionally or physically inflict harm. Incorrect. Or that men who are victims of abuse should stay "closeted" because it really doesn't matter in the "gender power structure". Also incorrect. Abuse is abuse. Putting it in terms of women as victims and men as abusers paints a broad stroke that I'm sure Rihanna didn't intend, but because of my experiences working with teens I've had to address more than once. Keeping one's hands to themselves is an EVERYBODY kind of thing. #tips
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
"Why didn't you say no? Why didn't you fight him off?' When people ask such a question...do they have a picture in their mind of what's happening? Say no, try to fight off someone who is already violent and on edge?
Here's the thing (and this is awful, because I've been hit on by old men or guys who knew I couldn't do shit about it)--where's the difference between an entitled creep and a harmless, if unwelcome (but not lewd) advances? (I guess it's as simple as saying, "sorry, not interested" unless the guy's an asshole.
Obviously, some prick who simply wants to comment on a woman minding her own business, put her in her place for daring to go outside.....not the same thing.
Does anyone know who made those music video with the woman kidnapped in a parking lot?
For the most part, I am repulsed by what I saw in those clips and realize why they're offensive. (I had no idea about the "Dreamworld" series...wow) by stuff in videos, even from R and B singers with otherwise clean records, like Justin Timberlake. (Breaking into an ex's house to gawk at her in the shower....blech). But what about cultures untouched by music videos, gangsta rap, or sex as a marketable product, where violence, harassment, suppression and degradation of women is even worse than it is in the West? Where women have NO sexual sovereignty....because they're more or less chattel? Where the thought of ANY female desire scandalizes? (In almost all those videos, of course, the desire was taken for granted, no matter what the circumstances, and portrayed accordingly...still fucked up, but at least they weren't all videos like that Limp Bizkit shit, of a girl's obvious discomfort presented as erotic.)
In places where women "want it" simply for having vaginas--whether they scream and cry or reciprocate and start making out with the prick who climbed in through the balcony and pushed them against the wall (ugh...that balcony shit is too close to real life in all the wrong ways, J.T., and it doesn't end with two people having a good time)? What then? (I am aware that you don't need porn or cartoonish, hypersexualized presentation of women's bodies to create laws or a culture that subjugates women, but it's still notable.....there are cultures that found Western entertainment/capitalistic use of sexuality as abhorrent, but end up with the same ugly byproducts....women as inhuman, as vessels, and little much else. How? What's the difference, religion instead of capitalism?)
Can critical thinking or empathy exist alongside fantasy? Where's the line?
Can society hammer the principle of mutual consent (REAL consent, not "consent" because someone is too afraid to piss a guy off when he's made he's mind up and ready to start swinging, or too intoxicated to say "no") and still make porn? (Not that I don't have reservations about porn...I hate it, and that's just dealing with the stuff that's now mainstream....Playboy looks like GQ magazine compared to the shit you can find easily these days, including the gamut of simulated child porn.)
To some extent I guess it depends on how bad the fantasy is, but I just might be setting the bar low; I don't think Justin's videos were the nastiest or most incredulous in there by a long shot, and that's saying something. I see videos as just that--fiction used to sell CDs. Is that too dismissive? (Those videos involving kidnapping...fuck that "fiction." I'm sorry if I sound hypocritical, but that had a visceral reaction in the way JT's stupid stuff did not.)
Can you make a video where a popstar breaks into a beautiful stranger's bedroom, makes out with her before her boyfriend comes back, and not diminish all the rapes that begin with some cretin crawling into some poor woman's window?
When does art (or trash with little artistic value that's nevertheless entertaining) cross the line and give people an excuse to be violent? What about books like "Lolita?"
11/21/09
11/21/09
Why, why, WHY ONLY IN COLLEGE? What about people who DON'T go to college? Hell, this is a public health issue!
I want to bang my head against the desk. What a low bar we set for ourselves, as a country, a culture, a legal system, a society, a species.
11/23/09
Art and entertainment are not made in a vacuum. One single video does not give everyone license to be violent; however, there are plenty of other media and people who reinforce the message that violence is sexy and men have the right to violate women.
11/23/09
I used "Lolita" because it alternately disgusts, draws sympathy (arguably for both Lolita AND Humbert, occasionally, by virtue of the fact that he's telling the story from his point of view), and seduces (as the best art will), even if the the language that "seduces" is ultimately describing something immoral/coming from a narrator who is immoral.
The music video has no purpose but to seduce. Couldn't you argue that what "Lolita" and a shitty music video share in common is that they eroticize something illicit to draw and fascinate the viewer? (Though you could still argue that Nabakov purposely presents Humbert as a villain...those videos just seek to make kidnapping or forcing a model up against a wall titillating. There is no moral counterpoint, implicit or otherwise, in the videos. But does there HAVE to be a break in the fantasy for people to know it's just that--fiction?)
I realize--the comparison might be too easy. I wonder if "Lolita" had ended with Dolores simply running away and ending up barefoot and pregnant at 18 (in other words, worse off than she might have been had she stayed with her mother), it would have had the same effect, without Humbert's confession of explicit remorse.
I agree with your ultimate conclusion--that art does not exist in a vacuum--but I wonder how stupid or impulsive people have to be, that they're too delusional, oblivious or impulsive to tell the difference between music videos and real life, or interactions with actual people.
When it comes to sex, they'd argue, why should they feel hindered? Is it that the "fantasy" sold to them just legitimates something they'd want to do anyway? Again--look at cultures that find our hypersexualized entertainment industry abhorrent, where women are treated even worse than they are here, in theory (no laws to half-assedly enforce...or ignore, as here) OR in practice.
11/21/09
I had a therapist once tell me that my surviving abuse could make me an example to other women. I told him that I'd rather be an example to would-be abusers, rather than a cautionary tale for potential victims.
11/21/09
Finally.
Somebody said it.
11/21/09
but yes, agree with her 100%, the women are not the problem in this equation!
11/21/09
11/20/09
Literally within the last hour I told a friend of mine, only semi-jokingly, that I tolerate more creepster-level flirtation from guys I find hot than from guys I don't.
And I wonder if in some ways that makes me complicit in our societal acceptance of this kind of behavior toward women.
On the other hand, no one seems cute when he's intimidating me and using his power to assert his control over me and my body. So it's also possible that perception of a guy as attractive hinges on my feeling okay being around him, and not being threatened by it.
On the other other hand, sometimes the element of danger is itself attractive. So what are our responsibilities, as individuals and as a society, to solve these problems and to address these problematic (but complicated and possibly not always completely untrue) assumptions?
11/20/09
I don't know exactly what you mean by "creepster-level flirtation from [hot] guys" Isn't it the part where they try to push past our discomfort what makes their behavior creepy?
At any rate, I think the responsibility rests on men to respect and not objectify or attack us since they have more physical and social power. I don't think you're at fault for perpetuating rapey behaviors.
11/20/09
I watched all the videos, and the hip hop stuff really struck a chord with me. I've been a fan since I was a teenager, and will remain a fan, but this really reminds me how important it is to pay attention to the attitudes reflected in the music I listen to. When I was in high school, everyone was listening to Snoop. The girls I knew (myself included) liked it as much as the boys, but I remember feeling really uncomfortable hearing my boyfriend and male friends singing along to things like "Bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks." You can like the beats and the style, but you can't ignore the message. And that message is really insidious to young women.
This is not an indictment of all the positive hip hop out there, which gives you beats and style without a heavy dose of misogyny. But it does remind me to listen a little harder.
11/21/09
11/22/09
11/20/09
If you'd like to read more, the program is going into high schools next year, with a $2 million CDC grant to back it. The grant will allow investigators to actually establish the efficacy of the program in creating attitude change and reducing acts of violence:
[uknow.uky.edu]
and
[www.newswise.com]
11/20/09
/creeper
11/20/09
11/20/09
11/20/09
A quick google scholar search of John D. Foubert brought up 950 articles. This one seems to give a pretty good overview of what these programs aim to do and why they focus on some groups more than others. [publications.naspa.org]
These are programs people make money off of, but them seem pretty solid. Most college speakers make money anyway.
I can't find a link to his program, but I did find this one [www.jacksonkatz.com] for people who want to check out the training.
11/20/09
11/20/09