The Old School Lunch

What irritates me the most about anyone who criticizes women’s fighting (whether that’s boxing of MMA) is the “I love women too much” line of thinking. They say that even though women can fight, we as men just don’t want to see our baby’s momma get mangled (or mangle someone else) in the ring. This sort of baloney chivalry is a complete bag of crap because if men really didn’t want to see women physically beaten to shit day in day out, they’d say something about the rates of men’s violence against women. They’d go all Michael Vick on athletes who beat their wives, not their dogs. They’d beat the shit out of men who rape women. They’d raise awareness to the rates of sexual assault in high school. But do they? If they are, I don’t hear about it.

Gina Carano crushes the nail on the head when she (to paraphrase) says that men can’t have fighting as a gender. If fighting is to be seen as a vocation, a lifestyle, how do you designate that solely to men? Men have been trying to “own” and place their completely bogus stamp on every vocation that is of any worth to people. Men don’t want to be seen as cooks, as women are seen, but they’ll be seen as high paying chefs to the stars. Men don’t want to be seen as teachers, like the elementary school teachers stereotyped as babysitters but they’ll take the high paying, illustrious professor jobs. Men don’t want to be seen as nurses, only doctors, men don’t want to be seen as maids, only janitors, the list goes on and on. The point is this is both a cultural gender stereotype thing and also a money thing. There’s big, growing and young money in MMA and when men say they don’t want women involved (like men’s golf tours, where the biggest paychecks are) it’s another way to disenfranchise women and put them at an economic disadvantage.

If you start to hear men complain and attack women’s fighting, what you’re really hearing is men fearing that they won’t be the high draw with the biggest purse.

[How hard is it to be a movie critic for a newspaper? Apparently not very hard.]

North Country has been out for a while and I just got around to seeing it.

And it’s easy to see why it gets a lot of cheap attacks from movie critics because it follows Charlize Theron’s Oscar winning performance in Monster. Take this review, for example, from Portland Tribune critic Dawn Taylor:

Charlize Theron gives an admirable performance as Josey Aimes, a fictionalized version of the woman behind a pioneering class-action lawsuit that won millions of dollars for 14 women who had suffered appalling treatment on the job at a Minnesota mine. But it’s a performance that sadly flounders, because it’s wedged smack in the middle of a movie that fails horribly at telling a human story.

After leaving an abusive spouse and moving in with her parents (Richard Jenkins and Sissy Spacek), Josey is pleased to get a good, albeit grueling, union job at the mine. But as soon as she arrives, she finds that for the female workers it’s a veritable carnival of misogyny Ñ catcalls, insults, dirty words smeared in feces on the women’s locker room walls, offensive items hidden in lockers and lunchboxes.

With each successive indignity, one waits for Josey to grow a spine and fight back. And, finally, in typical American fashion, she does Ñ she quits her job in tears and then sues the company. Very empowering, that.

With the exception of some terrific work by Frances McDormand and Sean Bean as Josey’s supportive friends, every frame of “North Country” bangs you over the head with its demand that you see it as a Very Important Movie. It’s not. It’s just an overblown, overlong soap opera about a woman who never learns how to truly stand up for herself. But oh, that scent of Oscar is delicious, isn’t it?

Taylor conveniently forgets to mention the physical and sexual assault that women in the film faced. I don’t know how one forgets a pretty brutal scene in which Theron’s character is thrown to the ground and then a male mill worker lunges on top of her and then sexually assaults her, but I digress.

My biggest beef with this shit review is that Taylor says that the film is a story about “a woman who never learns to stand up for herself” because “she quits her job in tears and then sues the company. Very empowering, that.”

Again, if you actually watch the film you’ll notice that Theron’s character tells the other men to stop, talks to the supervisor about it (who immediately tells her to basically shut up), talks to the other women about banding together and talking to the “Boss” of the company and when they’re scared for their jobs and afraid of retaliation, she goes to talk to the boss herself. Again, like the supervisor, she’s told to “shut up and quit if you have a problem.” At this point, I believe, she’s physically and sexually assaulted in the aforementioned scene and then she quits. And yes, she quits in tears, which the reviewer suggests is the character just being too emotional.

Then she moves to sue the company and after some struggling with the other women and men in the company, a class action is formed.

I don’t know what the reviewer thought would be Theron’s character standing up for herself. What was she supposed to do? Take a gun and shoot the men there? Talk to the HR person there about the sexual harassment laws and workplace policies? Oh, that’s right, most of those policies weren’t there until after the class action…

Taylor is what I would call one of those folks who is so joyously cynical about people suing other people that she’s willing to call bullshit on anyone who does. Since she offers no other suggestions for “standing up” we have to assume that she seriously meant something like “blow the entire place up with a massive gas leak” or “just hurl sexist comments to men and slap them on the ass or grab their balls.” Because, you know, that will put the offending men in their place! That’ll change things!

That’s not to suggest that I think it’s pointless for women, when on the receiving end of sexist insults and comments, to say sexist insult and comments back to men. It is however, a completely bullshit “take it and if the kitchen’s too hot for you then get out” type of mentality. It also suggests that the culture men have created where that type of verbal abuse goes on is completely acceptable and, of course, normal.

[Rant time]

When I worked in social services, an old co-worker of mine who used to work in a treatment facility for teens said that one of the most disturbing parts of the job was having young girls try and “mount” him whenever he, as a figure of authority in the facility, would try and mediate conflicts or just try and talk to them. “[Some of them] were so screwed up mentally that they responded to just me being a guy and trying to talk to them as that they needed to have sex with me.” I didn’t ask, but I think it was safe to assume that he, you know, didn’t actually rape them (as it would’ve been rape given the ages of the girls he was working with) because he knew that he had a job to do and when someone isn’t in a right state of mind, you do your job, you act professionally and you resolve the situation.

So let’s say you’re a bunch of male police officers behind a desk one night and a woman who is very drunk is waiting for a ride/taxi. She starts talking to you and coming up to your desk and crawling around, putting up her leg on the table and saying god knows what. I don’t care what she says or how she’s acting (unless she said something to the effect of “i’m going to kill you all”) you ask her to sit down and maybe you get her some coffee. You’re a police officer. Half of your job entails dealing with drunk people of some sort. If you’ve got a lot of spare time on your hands and if you want to be real nice, you drive the woman home yourself in your squad car. What you don’t do, is what these assholes did:

What’s especially infuriating is when the reporter asks, “Was she in any way a victim” and the police rep says “she participated…so…” Which is a “no.” Which is a nice way of saying “She started it, she deserved it, she’s the tease.”

Really? She wasn’t groped? They didn’t lift up her skirt? They didn’t’ act like police officers should’ve acted? They didn’t take pictures of her and send it to all of their friends? Who knows where those pictures are on the internet? They didn’t just sit there and let the whole thing play out for however long it did instead of getting her some coffee and driving her home?

There are only a few places in this world where 100% we are supposed to feel completely safe. And there are only a few people with whom we are 100% supposed to feel safe with and trust. The police fall into that category and a police station also fall into that category as well. I can hear the asshole YouTube and Digg critics now, “Dude…I so would’ve tapped that!” suggesting of course that the police are somehow virtuous for not gang-raping her right there in her intoxicated state. It reminds me of how ridiculous it is when we applaud men for NOT being batterers or NOT being rapists. Is that how bad things have gotten? We’ve come to the point of thanking the police for only “coppin a feel” a little bit and snapping a few pics when it could’ve gotten a whole lot worse should she have stumbled somewhere else? I don’t buy it.

[One of the trailers shown before Cloverfield]

If this is supposed to be our generation’s “The Karate Kid” then we are in trouble.

I don’t like the growing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts. But on one hand, I guess that popularity takes away from the audience of WWE and TNA wrestling which is good. But WWE and TNA were/are bad because they of course emphasize the tough guise model while crafting misogynistic, homophobic and racist storylines. MMA meanwhile cuts the crap and just goes straight into fighting which is actually real. And that should worry people. Part of the large cultural worry with wrestling was kids doing backyard wrestling and killing themselves, not the overarching cultural message sent to boys and girls. When the stakes are higher and MMA is real and kids are now wanting to train to do all of these things in real life, then yes the worry about backyard MMA won’t so unfounded anymore. But it’s not as if there aren’t any media implications. There just doesn’t seem to be as much because MMA is still growing. And as it grows and advertisers and investors start to catch on, it’ll be interesting to watch if it continues to go down the boxing macho trash talk big title fight route or if the new media Don Kings of today turn MMA into some mutant form of the WWE where they realize that they can draw bigger crowds and make more money by turning it into a soap opera. In either case, I think unfortunately MMA is here to stay. Barring several athletes dying straight in the ring, I don’t see this going the way of some sports fad and for that we’re worse off.

I knew Rush Hour 3 was going to have the usual stereotypical Asian folks do this, Black folks do that jokes (”You can’t be Black, there’s a height requirement!”) but I didn’t know it was going to have an awful scene where the Chris Tucker “Carter” character goes on to berate and say how he would’ve beat a woman if she really was a man.

Spoiler Alert.

Basically, Carter is making out with this attractive woman with medium length hair (the reason for me including this detail will become relevant later) and they’re about to have sex. A fight breaks out and their party is interrupted. Later, it is revealed that a special clue is tattooed onto the head of the woman and she takes off her wig (which of course reveals that she’s nearly bald). Carter freaks out at the sight of her not having practically any hair and starts ranting about how he “kissed a frenchman.” He goes on in hysterics about he is “Brokeback Carter” even though the woman clearly says that indeed she is a woman. Carter isn’t so sure about this and asks Li (Chan) to “check the equipment” and says that if they do find male genitalia, there they’re going to “beat his ass.”

So what does this tell the young kids watching this? The young girls? Boys? That the “right” sort of gender identity looks like this? That, if you’re a girl, you better not try to shave your head or else you’ll be mistaken for being a boy and if you do ask out that boy in your math class, you might deservedly get your ass beat? That, if you’re a boy, it’s OK to police around gender conformity because girls and women have to look like this in order for you to see them as women? That it’s OK to use physical violence or the threat of physical violence to police people around?

Speak is a film based on a book and, well, this was some interesting shit. Part of I think a film or book’s impact or how it comes across to the reader is just looking at the sort of questions we pose in discussions, in classrooms, to ourselves. In the DVD of speak, in the bonus features, there is a “Penguin Books Study Guide” Provided by Associate Professor Grant T. Smith of Viterbo University. He asks the question,

Is this book about making intelligent decisions? List three decisions that Melinda makes and tell why tou think she made the decisions. What are the consequences of these decisions and were there any consequences of her decisions that she could not have reasonably expected?

Now what the fuck is that shit? What the fuck kind of question is that especially considering this is a book for teens? Excuse the massive spoilers here, but this is a story about a teen girl who is raped by a teen boy. She meets this boy at a party where they’re both sorta drinking alcohol and he convinces her to go off to his car and then the rape occurs in his jeep. For some time, she does not tell anyone and a chunk of the story is her being a “selective mute” and not telling those around her about the rape. At the end of the story, when she is attacked and nearly raped again by the same rapist but this time she wounds the rapist with some paint thinner or some shit, has him by the throat with some sharp glass and then has a dozen girls come to her aid when they hear the commotion, she realizes that she is ready to “speak” and tell someone, namely, her mother.

So what, I ask you, is the guy trying to get at when he asks about “intelligent decisions”? What, that Melinda shouldn’t have been drinking? That she shouldn’t have gotten in that car with the rapist? That she shouldn’t have even been at that party or started to make out with the guy? That she should’ve told someone immediately after the rape? His entire question is completely pointed in such a way that leads the person answering the question to blame Melinda and see a billion reasons for why she was raped and how she could’ve gotten help, gotten justice, gotten revenge, or gotten out of the situation (read: it must be all her fault).

And then there’s this gem of a study guide question:

Melinda demonstrates many of the symptoms of clinical depression. What behaviors does she manifest that would cause you concern if you were her friend or teacher? What would you do to help her?

I don’t know how you write a study guide with questions about a book where the central character is raped by a man and then you don’t have a question talking specifically about the actual rape but instead chalk it up to “clinical depression.” You think kids are going to just forget those hundreds of pages of the story? Why ask this ridiculous question to kids? Kids aren’t equipped to deal with this. I don’t know what I would have said if a female friend told me in high school that she’d been raped. I would like to hope that i’d have been smart enough to have listened to her, provided an ear and then helped her figure out where she wanted to go from there, maybe helped her find different resources but I was a pretty stupid kid. I’m afraid that when kids hear “clinical” they’re going to think that it’s something wrong with them in their heads…that they need mental help because they’re the problem. Of course, there are always benefits to counseling and such but when you say “clinical” that has a very medical and sort of prescriptive, drug connotation to it, doesn’t it?

It burns my toast when people say:

Now, I don’t have a problem with gay people, I love gay people…I got friends that are gay but I just don’t want them to walk up on me and start hitting on me or something!

People joke about this and say this with all sorts of casual feeling but the basic idea is that to them, being gay is still centrally based on being obsessed about gay-sex. That gay people are these nymphomaniacs who don’t live normal lives because of their orientation.

Not even to mention the suggestion violence of “well if you do that, i’m going to have to stop being so gay-friendly and i’m going to just beat your ass.”

[tell me he’s not being serious]

You know, on a whim, I searched “Lundy Bancroft” on YouTube because I had recently listened to a radio/podcast interview of him. I bought his book about a year or so ago and if paying about $2 bucks to download a 30 minute radio interview with someone is any indication, I liked what he had to say and I liked his delivery. He is what the movement to end men’s violence against women exactly needs: men in various fields who are willing to do the actual work. In his case, he works with abusive men who enroll in court appointed domestic violence classes. Now, imagine my surprise when I stumble across this video of two people having a sort of not-quite-a-regular-conversation somewhat-interview about Why Does He Do That? and the guy “CharlieChan007″ (anyone who pays any sort of homage to James Bond with a username arouses my suspicion, but anyways..) proceeds to try and tear apart the book and take shot after shot at Bancroft for what he perceives to be blatant ignorance for not acknoledging that women are abusive to other women in lesbian relationship and to a lesser extent that women can be abusive to other men. I wouldn’t watch the entire thing, he goes on and on (and on and on) about how Bancroft doesn’t do this and he tries to slam him for…wait for it…using “He” in the title of Why Does He Do That? Now this right here is a good example of just how ridiculous this entire video (and person’s) criticism is. His point is simple: Bancroft isn’t acknowledging that there is abuse in gay relationships and he isn’t saying that women can be abusive. He must be only saying that men can be abusive and thus Bancroft is a sexist and tunnel visioned asshole who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Which is fine if you want to think that way, after all, you titled the damn video “Toni and John talk about gender abuse” but if you actually read the damn book and if you actually take a look at the real world statistics of violence against women, make that men’s violence against women, Bancroft isn’t going to waste his book* and his efforts pandering to you and the fraction of a fraction of the US audience who shits themselves when every single population isn’t specfically addressed. I hate how there are men like this who are so afraid to sound as if they’re going to somehow be homophobic as if they’re going to offend the GLBTQ community if they don’t rise up in arms every single time there’s any instance of male-female relations. I honestly believe men like this are actually a heavy burden on the movement because they do nothing to actually call out (i’ll say it three times now) men’s violence against women. He won’t say it because he’s afraid by saying it, it somehow makes him homophobic because he’s not acknowledging the fraction of the gay population that is in an abusive relationship. Did anyone hear him in this entire video talk about any of the real issues that Bancroft brings up in the book?

*By “waste his book” I mean making it seem like “gender violence” was somehow even across the board. You know it, I know it, Lundy knows it, our friend Charlie doesn’t know it: men commit the vast majority of domestic violence against women and devoting a large part of the conversation to men’s domestic violence against women is just a natural extension of that.

If there’s one thing you learn about what happens to a country/society/people during and after any sort of conflict or war or series of wars, it’s that violence against women (as it was likely present to being with) leaps off the charts even when things are “starting to get better” (or at least when people think they are). So one of the absolutely worst things a country could possibly do is to purposely hyper-sexualize the imagery and perception of women even more under the guise of placating the anxieties and fears of those inside and outside Israel for tourist dollars: “it’s alright, Israel’s alright..see! We’ve got beautiful women here in bikinis! They’re here waiting for you to take them!”

[A recent Letter To The Editor in SI. I couldn’t agree more.]

After years of seeing athletes being convicted of spousal abuse, the lopsided outrage over dogfighting shows the insanity of our society. Dogfighting is bad but nowhere near as horrible as a man beating his wife or girlfriend.

- Jamey P., NY