The Muppets, and Why We Can’t Turn It Off

Having just seen the 2011 reboot of The Muppets, I am thinking two things. One: I want to see the Muppet Show, which I already wanted to see. And Two. If memory serves, there is only one song given to the two female leads, and this song is about one of two things. That is, either the song “Me Party” is about the need of a woman to have a man (even if the writers thought they said ‘everyone needs someone’ in a vague sense, or ‘loneliness sucks’), or it’s about female masturbation. I chose to believe it’s about the latter.

Now here’s where my friends, your friends, and most people who aren’t focused on the representation of women and minorities in media, will say either “that’s stupid, you’re reading way too much into it” or “it’s The Muppets, just turn off your feminism senses and enjoy the damn show.” And I do not hold to that. The idea that children’s media is either beyond analysis or too basic for it is a dangerous one: because we don’t question, we end up with statistics among children’s media like the ones found by the Geena Davis Institute a few years ago.

The Muppets is a fun romp, a decent musical (if a slightly lazy script), and unfortunately an example of the quite sexism, racism, and homophobia of the entertainment industry. Mary and Gary are the obvious everypersons, literally from “Smalltown USA”, a place that as far as we can tell is a pasteled and predominantly white suburban paradise. I mention this partially because of the assertion that the mythical Middle America actually exists, but also because it is depicted as a place where the class/racial/gender tensions are ignored to the point of invisibility.

Note the signs: of the few people of color in the opening song, two of the most prominent get the line ‘one to wash and one to dry’ in a song about life being great and working as a team.  Faces met palms around the world.

And then even if Amy Adams’ Mary does awesomely and improbably fix a car in a classroom, the idea that smalltown women are all schoolteachers… That’s some Ann of Green Gables shit right there, that’s 103 years ago. Meanwhile neither Jason Segel’s Gary nor Walter-The-New-Muppet are shown as having… you know… jobs. (Like I said, the script isn’t the most thorough.) When it comes right down to it, Mary’s arc is pathetically old-fashioned: she wants to get married, and for some reason Amy Adams can never propose to anyone in her movies. What happens to her in the movie is almost solely that. Actually I’m not even sure The Muppets, an ensemble film, passes the Bechdel test. Wow. I really don’t think it does. Unless Mary talking to the waitress in “Me Party” counts, since she’s pining for her man.

The homophobia in The Muppets is simply that there seems to be no queerness at all (other than the inimitable Niel Patrick Harris), and everyone and most of the songs are straight as an arrow. And because when I first saw the poster, I was really hoping the matching suits meant that Gary and Walter were gay married. Which would have been awesome, lets face it.

This movie is a throwback, it’s based on 80s content, so the lack of women isn’t really its fault in a way. That said, these things still need to be said. The main dynamic in the movie is between Kermit, Walter, and Gary. Ms. Piggy and Mary even moreso are smaller lead roles, pushed by the wayside, essentially they’re… The Chicks.

But hey, at least they know how to have a “Me Party,” man-free. A song that’s supposed to be about loneliness, but is far and away the most empowering song in the movie. A woman needs no one else, she may like her *cough heterosexist cough* man, but she doesn’t need him. To have a “Me Party.” By which she means masturbation.

News, Media Literacy, The Daily Show, and Consent

I’ve thought for a long time (again) how to work this blog-like-device, and as a news junkie I’ve for a long time wanted to include news coverage and commentary.

And then today I was watching The Daily Show, and there was this joke that… if you think about it… is a major rape politics fail. And I like The Daily Show, so I kept watching the episode, but I couldn’t help but feel that I had invalided my observation because I did nothing about it. I didn’t swear off The Daily Show forevermore, for instance. So instead, I will write about it. By the power of blogging!

Here’s the situation: in discussing the Herman Cain’s sexual harassment problem.

“We all know Democrats don’t think sexual misconduct disqualifies you from holding the presidency.” -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show 11/9/11 ~5 minutes in.

Do you see it? It’s not the dig at Democrats that bugs me, there are tons of problems with the hilariously big tent that is the Democratic Party. But do you see it? What he’s saying there is that President Clinton’s sex scandal is equivalent to the problem Herman Cain has now.

President Clinton had an affair with a staffer outside of his marriage – for all the lies, for all the complicated legal jargon that Clinton dickishly defended himself with, and for all of Clinton’s own history of sexual harassment (see Paula Jones), there is one important difference. The Clinton-Lewinsky incident was consensual. Now honestly it may be a little complex to give consent when you’re an intern and the other person is the President of the United States, but as a political scandal, and as it exists in the American cultural memory, the Lewinsky scandal involved consensual (if ill-advised) sex. Herman Cain’s problems do not.

There is nothing consensual about sexual harassment – that’s what makes it sexual harassment, actually. And so what bugs me about all this is that Herman Cain does not have a sex scandal, he has a harassment scandal. And if there had been sex without consent, it would be a rape scandal. Except the media is frightened by the word “rape.” It probably doesn’t do wonders for ratings.

For all their similarities, for all that men in power thinking that they somehow have sexual ownership over subordinate women is an endemic problem of patriarchy and patriarchal government, sex (which means consensual sex) is not the same thing as sexual harassment or rape, which involve a lack of consent. They are not the same thing, to be lumped under “sexual misconduct” as if it was an umbrella term.

It was an off-color, inappropriate joke and I don’t approve. But it comes from the fact that the media thinks of Cain’s scandal as a sex scandal, and sex scandals are… you know… sexy. But they aren’t. The personal remains political, a person’s choice whether or not to have sex is a distinction worthy of national news, and The Daily Show and the media as a whole must do better.

Can I Be A Gender Refugee?

Apologies if this term already means something in legal realms, ie a refugee from domestic violence or femicide.  It was not my intention to steal their thunder.

Genderqueer, gender rebel, gender nonconformist. These are some cool, awesome words that folks use to describe themselves outside binary gender norms. But you probably already knew that. And now, a self-serving post about me, and my strange identity.

Due to the whole self-esteem thing, for a long time I wasn’t comfortable thinking I was different enough from the mainstream man to warrant a different gender identity.  But that’s the whole point of gender identity, it’s your own to do with as you choose. Even after realizing this, however, I decided that I was uncomfortable in the genderqueer camp, as I said in a much earlier post. I felt like I was doing a disservice to the various badasses who take genderqueerness to heart, and can’t or won’t benefit from performing at least the basics of heteromasculinity the way I do.

And in a related vein, I blogged about the Man Box, and how I wanted a theory that let me dismantle masculinity rather than just shift it around. And I’ve talked about not wanting to work in the “engaging men” sector of feminism, because I don’t feel I have the right masculinity to offer in that Man Box shifting (but very awesome) venture. I don’t look up to MAN men, and I don’t expect them to look up to me.

I’m not a gender rebel. Can I be a gender refugee? Can I, as I said in the Man Box post, be a coward and not be demonized? Feminism is a big tent, and in order to make change one thing we do is go outside the tent and talk to the Masculinity tent folks (see: Frat houses. Just kidding. Not really.) and try to “engage” them. Awesome. But what if I want to stay inside the tent and just do work there?

Arguably, privileged as I am, I don’t have the right to ask for the protection of a movement that protects people in actual, real dire straights. The ever-present Gay Teen In Iowa At Risk Of Suicide, the Woman Who’ll Have To Use A Coathanger, the Wife With Two Black Eyes.  It’s not fair to ask to be protected in the same tent that they are protected. But feminism, I know this is low, is about inclusiveness. I perform masculinity to a certain extent, every day, because there isn’t really a place for people like me. (And certainly not in entertainment.)  I am not LGBT, I am interested in women. I am heterosocial, the only people I trust with my whole self are women, and most of my friends are women. I do not feel comfortable in, nor do I want to be part of masculine culture. And I can’t teach others how to adjust their Man Box, because mine is all bent out of shape by now. I’d like to throw it away. But if I have the right to define my own gender identity, then I know very few people exactly like myself, and them being men we wouldn’t necessarily get along. Like it or not, my warped Man Box protects me, for now.

The Mom Box

Working off of my previous post on the masculinity theory/pedagogy known as the Man Box, I want to talk about a different theoretical construction of my own making (if someone has come up with this as well, I apologize, perhaps I’m not that clever after all). It’s called the Mom Box. And if you read my last post, yes, it does involve sneaky, inadvertent essentialism.

I talked previously about how feminism advocates for a range of life and career options for women. I don’t think there’s much disagreement that feminism does that, and that it should do that. And if women want to stay in the home, all feminists can ask is that it was an informed choice. Informed choice. We’re big on that.

I don’t have good examples of this phenomenon handy right now, but you’ve all heard the Mom Box. I’m not talking about feminism versus the Old Maid stereotype. I think feminism has done a good job on that front. This has more to do with the society-asks-too-much-of-women-to-have-a-career-while-being-a-mother-who-usually-does-most-of-the-housework-as-well-even-if-she’s-married-and-living-with-the-spouse problem. I know it’s nothing new to say women are held to unrealistic standards, and motherhood is an example of that, where there’s so much prep work and this and that to get motherhood exactly right. It’s a problem, I agree. But this also has to do with the propensity of female politicians to always talk about their motherhood cred, which is a double standard that man politicians do far more rarely, I feel.

I do not have a vagina or a uterus, I do not have kids, I have not even lived long enough to have vicariously gone through the childbirth/raising process through friends. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of “maternal instincts.” As a socialization theory fan, I don’t want to believe in something that hints of biological determinism. But lets say, sure, maternal instincts. Women have them, men don’t. Ok, lets do that. I still don’t think it justifies the Mom Box, however: the absolute, unwavering demand in society, that IF a woman has children, she always loves them, motherhood is always one of if not the most fulfilling aspect of her life, and above all she is happy to be a mother.

(That IF is thanks to feminism, I think: the career woman is also an accepted stereotype, even if that cultural trope has a lot of problems.)

The Mom Box. I lied, I do have the story that sparked this. I’m glad I found the link to the story in her own words, rather than the many companion stories about this woman’s decision to leave her children and live her own life that propped up in Yahoo! News and others, all with some degree of veiled shock and horror, placated by “Oh it’s ok, she telecommutes, she’s a good mother after all.” She even says that. More power to her for making that bold choice to leave, and for wielding telecommunication tools so well. Awesome. But why is this news?

Men leave women all the time. Huge numbers of households are led by single mothers. It is, lets face it, accepted in our culture that men can leave. There’s alimony, child support, sure. Just like there are laws against rape: we still call it “rape culture,” because on some level the act is acceptable to our psyches. Men leaving their children is like that. It plays, in fact, into the Man Box: real men don’t form connections, blah blah blah. Problems with masculinity aside, however, by the sound of it this woman is living that fairly middle-class white privileged lifestyle second wave feminists are so well known for. That’s why this is news. Because she has privilege, and was not forced by circumstances or poverty or any other reason to leave her kids: she left because she wanted to have her life back. And she would be vilified for that, if she didn’t placate the masses by saying how she became a better parent this way.

That’s the Mom Box. Career woman are tacitly accepted, and loved by feminism. Mothers are loved by practically everyone, feminists in particular. Career mothers, especially politicians, are practically worshiped so long as we aren’t yelling “But think of the children!” But ex-mothers. Women who leave the Mom Box, who even in the best of circumstances (leaving the children with, lets say, the most caring and/or wealthy family member/spouse/friend) choose that child-rearing is not for them… they are vilified. They’re news. Because no one leaves the Mom Box. Everyone is happy in the Mom Box. Happy happy.

The Man Box

I’m back! After months of wondering what to do with this space, I’ve had some more ideas that I want to write down in the ether and maybe eventually accrue a critical mass of posts to show people.

In my previous post on genderqueerness and how I may or may not fit with that term, I talked about my frustration with the demand that I, as a man, must do “engaging men” activism rather than any other normal sort of feminist activism. (Going clinic escorting soon! Yay!) Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the sense of engaging men and appealing to them, and it’s probably the best way to appeal to a wider male (or rather man-gendered) audience. So keep in mind this is something of a theoretical gripe rather than a practical one.

I like TED talks. I recently watched one from a cool fellow called Tony Porter. Similarly I recently saw part of an older Jackson Katz film,  Tough Guise. They both talk about the Man Box, a very sensible and appropriately visual theory on how men are confined by masculinity, that what is outside the box is the fear of women and homosexuality, which means you’re like a woman. In the clip of Katz I saw, he ended by saying that it takes courage to break out of this box. It takes courage to advocate for women’s rights, etc. I don’t disagree, it does take courage. But the appeal, the appeal to a man’s courage, courage is as far inside the Man Box as you can get. More on that later.

In Tony Porter’s talk, he talks about the Box, and ends with how we must change the way we raise boys into men, teach them it’s ok to show emotion, etc. This is also great. But there’s something in the language (I’m an English major, sue me), there’s something loving and standardized about the way he, and so many other male educators in this field say “MAN.” or “from boys to MEN.” They cash in on the weight and power of the word “MAN” in order to make their point. And that’s when I started to realize, in light of Katz’s call to courage, that these wonderful activists are not trying to destroy the Man Box. They’re trying to shift it. They’re trying to build a new Box.

Again, the work they do is fantastic, and I do believe feminism must always be grounded in real, tangible gains in the lives of women and humans, even while we do this “theory” BS. I recognize that the fastest way to change the culture is to shift the Man Box, is to rebuild it around that same base courage (with, lets be honest, the historical and militaristic connotations intact), and argue that it takes courage to be this new man inside the new Man Box, which uses the old language to encourage men to do good deeds and improve the lives of women and girls. This is a good, a great thing. But in terms of theory, in terms of the way we scrutinize the concept of “femininity,” is this really fundamentally questioning gender? Is this really feminism?

Second wave feminism’s use of the constructed gender idea has been essential in changing the culture, at least part way, to the point that even while women face many many issues in the workplace, for instance, anyone saying “go back to the home” is generally considered to be rather backwards, at best “traditional.” This is because feminism has tried so very hard to break down the various elements of gender performance involved in being a woman, so that women can (though many don’t) grow up understanding that she isn’t any less human if she wears/doesn’t wear makeup or skirts, if she decides to cut her hair or not, if she decides to be a housewife rather than have a career. (I realize this is getting mighty privilige-y, but using second wave constructions tend to be rooted in middle-class-white-womens. But this is what I’ve got at the moment.) The point is that women are allowed to be strong or weak, traditional or modern. Feminism hinges on inclusiveness.

So where is the masculinity theory that absolutely rejects the idea of “MAN,” that doesn’t offer the label, reformed or not, of “MAN” to its members?  (Seriously, if it exists I totally want to read it.) If my problem is with the courage moniker, am I advocating for men to be cowards? Actually… yes. I am advocating for men to be accepted as cowards. That’s basically it. I realize men hold the privilege in this society, and perhaps men don’t deserve to be carried or cared about if they retreat. Now imagine that sentence with women – how feminist is it to leave a woman out, to forget a woman’s story? I’m not saying Katz and Porter don’t do great work. I’m not saying that in the real world we don’t need this Man Box shift. But I do wish there was a way for us to dismantle masculinity, instead of essentializing it and working under its still confining framework.

The Introduction

And here we are. This is what all the pondering on my part came to, this space on the Interwebs. First off, this blog is not about a theater company, more on the name later.

I’m hard-pressed to understand just what this space is for. To start with, and I freely admit that it may never go beyond this phase, it will be the feminist ponderances and nerdy conundruming of your host. And perhaps someday it will be a space for salient discussion and the feminist work of argument and discovery.

But first, before anything, the reader needs to know a little about me. If I am to write with any semblance of authority, I need to accept that I’ll need to talk about myself honestly.

Therefore. I am 21 years of age. I am from what could best be described as a middle-middle class family, I am white, cisgendered, able bodied, heterosexual and male. I am a nerd, I enjoy Western science fiction and various related genres. I grew up in the Silicon Valley, and while I am not as technologically ravenous as my peers (I am comfortable to be without an iPod and using a phone that’s seven years old), I have been around computers all my life, and I realize that is certainly a place of privilege. I attended a relatively good suburban public school system, and I now attend the University of California, Los Angeles.

I am entering into the entertainment industry, because I wanted to work in a creative field and I want to improve representation of minorities and women in the media. It occurs to me often that this is not a radical enough goal, but such is the life I lead. If the best I can hope for is trying to make the master’s house more comfortable for the disenfranchised until someone else comes along and knocks the house down, so be it.

I am involved in small amounts of local activism, but very little that I can decisively brag about. This blog is part of that problem – while I go to school on a somewhat apathetic campus, I hope that perhaps I can share my thoughts and do some good through this space, the intersectional theater.

How This Isn’t About Men In Feminism

So, as I may have mentioned, I’m a malebodied person.  I know some people like to confuse sex and gender, so call me a purist but I want to delineate. Sex, that biological aspect of what reproductive equipment you possess, coming in ranging varieties of male, female, and intersex goodness that somehow get whittled down into male and female most of the time.

And then gender. What your parents taught you about womanhood or manhood, about this gender or that gender, what you identify as. And many very sensible people don’t identify as one gender or the other, or they identify as “the opposite gender” (apologies for the binaristic terms). But for the moment I’m still, as ever, pondering myself. So. I’m a malebodied person in feminism – therefore I must represent all men, be the token man in the group, and be able to talk to men about feminism. Right? Sure. Thanks. Great.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the importance of men in the movement, like the folks at Men Against Rape and the various other organizations mobilizing men to, for instance, deal with the perpetrators of sexual assault rather than always having to deal with the victim after the fact. That’s good movement planning and good feminist work. But I… well I wear the mantle of “a man,” and I certainly profit from the privileges of apparent gender/sex alignment to that end.  So I suppose I should suck it up and be “a man.” What a marvelous sentiment.

I’ll say something here – I would identify as genderqueer if I didn’t think I’d be insulting the badass folks for whom genderqueer is a way of life rather than a means out of discursive mystery. But I am heterosocial, I prefer the social company of women, and this idea that I am a man in the movement and thus offer a unique perspective, that I am a man in the movement and thus I should appeal to other men on masculinist grounds… why? Feminism is about including those who are excluded.  And I… can’t sell a masculinized version of feminism to men. They don’t want to hear me, I don’t want to hear them. Because my real answer would involve more talk about genderqueerness. And that don’t sound so manly, now do it.

If All The World’s A Stage

Why is this site called what it’s called, you ask? Good question.

The title came from much pondering on my part, and I realized that of course I needed my favorite word in there, but where did “theater” come from. Well, for one thing, I used to do theater back in the day, so I enjoy using its terms. Meanwhile of course, the performative nature of gender also helped. But most of all, it was this concept I’ve been considering lately in regards to “the dating game,” a concept I’ve been referring to as “social theater.”

Social theater referred to the acting out of particular societal tropes, particular cliches so ingrained in the minds of my generation that even the most progressive or transgressive individual might still hold to them. In this case the question I often wonder about is the simple one, about asking someone on a date. The same comes up in deciding who pays. Even the most feminist person may have grown up in the tradition that one party or the other pays, that one party or the other asks the question.  Everyone has adopted or abandoned a certain amount of these social theater traditions that they hope others will act out for them; everyone has a certain amount of critique of their beloved theatrical display they can tolerate before declaring something too progressive, over the top, politically correct.

I’m still working the kinks out of that terminology, but the Intersectional Theater has to do with that idea of the way in which we are socialized to act out certain procedures. And, if you want a war metaphor, this is the Intersectional Theater, the place where we do metaphorical battle. I shudder at the sound of war imagery, but yes it crossed my mind. But about violence and the like, I will say that performative masculinism easily recalls its radical members sometimes by simply demanding that they forgo discourse (fancy word, I know) like the previous post on Intersectionality and just solve their problems with violence. That’s the manly thing to do. And for that reason, I want to use my words, I want to talk it out, I want a new kind of gender structure that values thought over rage.

Intersectionality

I have often described it as my favorite word. Intersectionality, the feminist concept relating to the overlapping and coinciding nature of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, ageism, ableism, etc.  Intersecting oppressions. One word that means that we live in a complicated world, a world that avoids any easy answers, that refuses to be “just that simple.”

Intersectionality to me is a kind of coding, a way of seeing the world. You know that shot in The Matrix when Neo first looks at the Matrix as lined with ones and zeroes? It’s like that. If you start to learn about intersecting oppressions, methinks eventually you’ll come to a moment, a moment where everything is different, where you can’t go home again. That instant when you look at the world and see, just walking down the street in an urban area, that every pebble on up has a social context, a historical context, that the people have a context within their patriarchy, within their designations of race (and you realize that will include all white people as well, who enjoy an invisible privilege), of class, of gender performance and identity, and of countless other factors.  The materials of the buildings you see have a history that feminism is concerned about, the clothes you wear, the air you breath (believe me on this, those ecofeminists don’t mess around). It’s all interconnected, and yes, feminism is just that broad, in my finding.