A Room of Her Own II

 --Princess Kitana,  
Mortal Kombat video game 

Every day I wake up, then I start to break up
Lonely is a man without love
Every day I start out, then I cry my heart out
Lonely is a man without love 
--Lonely is a Man Without Love, 
Englebert Humperdinck 

Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away I've got to
Get away 
--Tainted Love, Soft Cell 

 Under my thumb
Her eyes are just kept to herself 
Under my thumb, well I
I can still look at someone else 
--Under My Thumb, Rolling Stones
__________________

[Pt. II of series ...]

 

The disconnect in our original piece (Sex and Violence) came in the concluding paragraph:

"The same people who would criticize porn (overtly) are the same [sic] who would argue for (someone else's) women to kill, fight and die in the depravity and degradation of war. How is having sex with strangers and pretending to enjoy the encounter less socially acceptable than fighting?"

In fact, the truth is neither so neat nor so partisan. Both liberals and conservatives avail themselves of porn, usually on the sly. Additionally, both would also claim to champion women's rights. Conservatives are no longer all of the Phyllis Schlafley stripe, and presumably accept women in both "Houses" now (though their numbers are still pathetically small.) Liberals give lip-service to women's participation in all walks of life, though neither political party has yet  managed to achieve economic equality for women.

Our main point was, it is hypocritical to argue against the objectification of women in porn, while also arguing for their objectification in the guise of an Infantry soldier. Just as in the identity-less world of porn, so a fighting woman would be separated from her personhood (save on her dog tag.) Just as most men enjoy porn, but would not want their wives or daughters to make a career of spreading her legs before the camera, so, too, would their views of women's roles on the battlefield be conflicted. 

Just as on Ranger's workshop floor, where the Union accord said "no" to helping women, but for the real live woman on the bench next to you, the rules get broken.

If true equality were to be granted, fighting women would become fighting personnel and expected to fully carry their own weight (literally). They would become sexual eunichs and alter their physiology accordingly, a physical impossibility.

Here are the things Ranger knows:

--Men and women are different, and possessed of different strengths

--Like many of his fellows, he has viewed porn and so can state that he feels it to be an objectification versus a glorification of women; it is, however, something men do

--In male's compartmentalized brains, there is also a place for "his" women -- actual women. These women elicit a different response

--There are some spaces and subjects which are the chosen domain of men (see, Fight Club for the idea.) In his life, the Army's Combat Arms was such an area -- their real-world "Outward Bound" in which men tested their limits against their fellows and the enemy, and lived the Jungian warrior archetype.

--We have no warrior princesses today, no Boudiccas, outside of Hollywood or cartoon versions of Zena the Warrior Princess and ilk. For most girls today, that image has been superseded by Snow White or Cinderella. For most women, their reality lies somewhere in between (They can bring home the bacon, serve it up to a man, all the while retaining their ineffable femininity.)

What we wonder is, what of the male-female dynamic? Are men suffering a la feminist Faludi's anthem to men in the age of feminism, "Stiffed"? If women walk onto the battlefield shoulder-to-shoulder, will they fall into line as genderless automatons, one-each? Teams will not be gender-separated -- there will be no women's Field Artillery Unit.

They will fight on a biologically unequal playing field, and to whose benefit?


[more to follow ...] 


p.s. -- Here is a little debate on the topic @ debate.org.

A Room of Her Own

 --"Safety Last!" (1923)

 It's physical
Only logical
You must try to ignore
That it means more than that 
--What's Love Got to Do with It?
 Tina Turner 

I don't know what you think I am
I'm not no magician I tell you no I ain't
Maybe I can open your pants  
But big fucking deal 
--I'm a Boy, I'm a Girl,  Johnny Thunders 
________________ 

When blogwriting, one has the tendency to expostulate, to grandstand and even proselytize (though we're neither Mormons nor Seventh Day Adventists), and Ranger was perhaps not fully exploring every aspect of the issue in a recent presentation, "Sex and Violence"; we may charitably chalk that up to a sin of omission rather than commission.

Comments to the piece @ sister site Milpub have provoked some dialog amongst the principles here at RAW. Friend FDChief is correct: our analogy does not quite hold. Moreover, he states the observation that a member of a democracy only obtains full citizenship when he or she may participate in every aspect of maintaining that democracy, which may mean full participation in the military, if not in the porn industry (though women's role there is guaranteed.)

The result will be several days of looking at the issue through different eyes -- both mine and Rangers -- seeking to clarify the problem, shore up the analogy and to explore any possible resolutions. No one installment will be complete, so we what follows will be a series of posts looking at different facets of the issue.

So let's define the topics and what porn and war share as far as opportunities, causal effects and requirements (of all players).

Since at least the Venus of Willendorf 20,000 years BCE, men have enjoyed viewing representations of the female body (head not always needed, thanks). Humans enjoy gaping at protuberances, the more grotesque, perhaps, the more fascinating. Ranger is amongst the crowd of his fellows who has enjoyed the same. However, he also recognizes the necessary objectification and frequent degradation often involved in these depictions; this is an acknowledged tension for perhaps many viewers.

His thoughts actually stemmed from what he sees as the evolution of porn from fairly innocuous early 20th-century blue movies to the more violent representations of recent decades. Crush films -- the brutal murder of animals -- is but one perverse incarnation in an industry that has few bounds on its impositions upon the human body. They, along with "snuff films" -- the human equivalent -- have ostensibly been banned, and represent probably the outermost limit of what has been achieved in this genre. What remains is often not pretty. 

(As an aside to the crush films, a Florida Representative even proposed a ban on the cruel practice of "cow-tipping" in 2004 [it did not pass], yet we may do the same and worse to our women, fat or otherwise, any day of the week. But that is a topic for another day.)

We know what is cruel and what is exploitative, but that does not slake our taste for such things. Most pornography, besides the actuality of the sexual representation, is an exercise in power, both that imposed by the viewer and the producer/exploiter (film industry; actors, etc.)

When commenter "ael" writes @ milpub, "This ability to empathize makes pornography inevitable. Watching people have fun is also fun", he is showing himself a man of compassion, but perhaps not recognizing the darker impulse behind porn. Is "fun" truly the thing sought? Perhaps in the way that self-gratification is "fun" to the narcissist (and with that comes the additional destructive resentment of his need for porn, but that again is another topic.)

A recent piece, "The Conspiracy of Pornography Exposed", indicts porn consumption as a narcissistic retreat from reality and a controlling experience of a simulacrum representation. As such, it cannot move beyond a physical response to the impersonal yet universal carnality spooling out before him. Viewing porn is a release into the libidinal free from the superego (unless mom breaks into your room, or your mind.) 

So porn is basically an avenue for self gratification, at the expense of having to actually engage with the sex partner up close and personal. It does not extinguish the libido of course; it is merely a temporary physical release. The partner used to achieve that end is obviously a projected objectification, a facsmilie of a woman who is used to self-gratify. 

But along with man's desire to own and expropriate the feminine is his strong drive for protection of the female, something which often fuels his lust to fight, presumably for his society's protection (as explained in books like What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II.") In fact, this is one of the main arguments against having women on the front line, namely, that man's protective instinct will kick in and he will act on those intrinsic impulses, ignoring good soldiering and endangering himself and his fellows in the process. 

Ranger spoke with a combat medic yesterday who said his biggest fear is that he would treat a less severely-wounded female soldier before he would a male, thereby violating his triage training. This favoritism on the basis of gender is a very real and indwelling impulse. 

Women seek parity with men when they seek equal pay -- Senator Elizabeth Warren is fighting now for a Paycheck Fairness Act (how many decades after the Equal Rights Amendment Failed?) -- and this is rightly so when one is thinking equal pay for equal work. But what about those domains in which men cut women a break due to their lesser physical capabilities, a reality for most women in strenuous, physically demanding work environment -- an environment like being an Infantryman on the front line of a fight. How would this play out on the battlefront?

When Ranger worked in a machine shop as a young man, he watched as the male workers lift heavy buckets of material for the female workers -- something which was the women's job -- even as this was in violation of union agreements. It's just the way it is. 

So let us summate the truths we have: Men watch porn, a media which is by necessity an objectification of women. Men also have an innate protective feeling toward actual women in their lives. Men are competitive, and excel in certain physical arenas against most women. 

Add into this mix Equal Opportunity measures which force the entrance of women into previously all-male domains (the first female SEAL is expected soon, for instance.) Many men, including Ranger, have enjoyed the combat arms as being the last bastion of male camaraderie; this will be gone once women enter their ranks. The time-honored protective impulse will be challenged, and the possible fall-back if uniformity in ranks is to be maintained will be for men to change women into the unfortunate object, a position which they themselves occupy in war.)

The conundrum: How to allow women to escalate through the military ranks sans combat or Special Forces experience, the traditional means of gaining respect in that world, but jobs in which they will not necessarily perform well, and perhaps not even due to their own shortcomings? Their success seems doomed from the outset, and there is no reality game simulator which will be able to definitively represent the actions of the players on the ground once actual fighting starts. 

Just because something can be done, should it? It asks the question, "Where is a woman's place?" The feminists say, "Anyplace she wants to be." 

Maybe, but stand on L street SE in Washington, D.C. at night and even G. I. Jane would be at risk.

More to come ...

--Lisa and Jim

Sex and Violence

Why is it always, "sex and violins"?
--Ruth Buzzi, Laugh-In

The new pornography is left-wing;
and the new pornography is a vast graveyard
where the Left has gone to die.
The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too
--Letters from a War Zone, Adrea Dworkin

I seen ev'ry blue eyed floozy on the way, hey
But their beauty and their style
Went kind of smooth after a while.
Take me to them lardy ladies every time!
 --Fat Bottomed Girls, Queen

Let them eat war
That's how to ration the poor
Let them eat war
--Let Them Eat War, Bad Religion

___________________

Not war pornography -- war AND pornography. Now that we have your attention ...

War is the specialized, systematic application of State violence, and it is a perversion of civilized values, yet it is an activity that few societies have extirpated. It is also an activity designated as a career track primarily for the disadvantaged of our society. But war is an exploitation -- if it were not, our politicians would seek active combat service (which they avidly do not.)

We all know what pornography is when we see it, and aside from those 5th Avenue feminists who have the luxury of arguing that women in the porn industry are empowered by selling their anatomy, porn has traditionally been but one realm of the exploitation and objectification of women. Yet we have now opened a new realm of women's exploitation, and we call this a good: putting women in the combat arms.

To allow women to participate in the perpetuation of the violence will raise their glass ceiling we are told, thereby facilitating their career opportunities. This is the bottom line for arguing for women on the front lines. But this "privilege" will only be seen as such by a certain segment of society.

--Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, 
Reich's Women's Führer

Why are women in porn seen as exploited, while sending them off to fight in war is well and good? Neither war nor pornography are held as social goods, yet our internet lives bathed in porn sites, and the acceptability and necessity of war are peddled as unquestionable. Hypocrisy, thy name is U.S.A.

Is this argument for sending women into combat a backlash to the feminist movement? While women have still not gained economic parity with men in the workplace, we are now fast-forwarding them to star in their own personal snuff films, while screwing them all the way there (20% of women in the military have been sexually harassed by their male counterparts, according to recent studies.)

Further, these women will be fighting and dying for the rights of women in foreign lands to be exploited at the hands of males, as they always have been. It is a historical Mobius strip, for the women who they die for may one day gain their rights to fight and die for some other women to be exploited, ad nauseam. This is presuming that these imagined future women will have the crusading American impulse to help the scapegoat. But few look beyond the present moment, to see the implications of their bravery or foolishness.

The same people who would criticize porn (overtly) are the same who would argue for (someone else's) women to kill, fight and die in the depravity and degradation of war. How is having sex with strangers and pretending to enjoy the encounter less socially acceptable than fighting?

Exploitation by any other name ...

--Jim and Lisa

Public Enemy No. 1

~Did you know Joan of Arc?
~Know her? I went with her, dummy, I went with her!
--2,000 Year Old Man, Brooks/Reiner

2,500 years, and it’s still the same story
--Retracing the steps of Odysseus
__________________

Last month the Federal Bureau of Investigation filled the position held by Osama bin Laden on their 10 Most-Wanted List with Eric Justin Toth, 30 -- "a former third grade teacher at the prestigious Beauvoir-National Cathedral School in Washington D.C in 2008 when a school camera allegedly in his possession was found to contain pornographic images."

Toth, 30, a former private schoolteacher, was indicted in 2008 in Maryland on one count related to producing child pornography, according to court records. Authorities found pornographic images on a camera in his possession, the FBI said

There also is a sealed two-count complaint against Toth that has been filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., which charges him with possessing a video that includes an image of child pornography and transporting it across state lines, according to the FBI (FBI 10 Most Wanted Fugitive.)

A few questions:

Were Toth not to have worked at "prestigious Beauvoir-National Cathedral School in Washington D.C.," would his camera even have been searched? Further, what was found on the camera were "pornographic images", but it is not clear if these were underage images.

What is stated is that he was found to possess and transport across state lines a video that included "an image" of child pornography; again, it is not clear whether this was a representation of such or actually a child. Now, this is certainly not good for a 3rd-grade teacher, and Mr. Toth faces a 15-30 year sentence for these actions.

But we wonder if Eric Toth is now in danger of being assassinated by Seal Team 6 (ST6) as he has the misfortune of replacing OBL as Public Enemy #1. If apprehended, will waterboarding be allowed in his interrogation sessions? Will he be tried by military tribunal?

If he escapes to a foreign hideout, will we take him out with a Hellfire missile? If all of these technologies were alright for the likes of terrorists, why not against the prurient and lubricious consumer of kiddie porn, Mr. Toth (that is, alleged kiddie porn purveyor)?

We have precedents here -- would Attorney General Holder please clarify this for us?

Catch Me if You Can

Making love to his ego,
Ziggy sucked up into his mind
--Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie

machismo is not foreign policy
--Obama the Gambler, Fareed Zakaria
________________

The "next great First Amendment battle" will involve muzzling free speech in the case of a man accused of compiling and selling films of dog fights, in violation of a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.”

Though video maker Robert J. Stevens had nothing to do with the dogfights themselves, his films earned him a 37-month sentence (Free Speech Battle Arises From Dog Fighting Videos), 14 months longer than that of football player Michael Vick who actually participated in the dog fighting, which is illegal in the U.S. (Mr. Vick first denied, then admitted to personally killing a half-dozen wounded losers.)

Two of the films show pit bulls in dogfighting events, and the third, 'Catch Dogs and Country Living,' "shows pit bulls being trained to attack hogs and then hunting wild boar. The encounters are gory and brutal. Mr. Stevens participated in the hunting and filmed parts of the third video, which bears some resemblance to nature documentaries," according to the NYT.

"The law has an odd history. It was enacted in large part to address what a House report called 'a very specific sexual fetish.' There are people, it seems, who enjoy watching videos of small animals being crushed."

When Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, he instructed justice to limit prosecutions to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” He was concerned about First Amendment intrusions, and the "crush" videos are certainly disturbing, analogous as they are to pornographic snuff films.

But these are not crush films. "The law applies to audio and video recordings of 'conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.' It does not matter whether the conduct was legal when and where it occurred so long as it would have been illegal where the recording was sold." Catch dog hunting, though sometimes brutal, is legal in much of the U.S.

The Times notes that the government has unsuccessfully tried to ban "depictions of violence against people, notably in videogames. But those laws are routinely struck down, and the Supreme Court has never ruled that speech about nonsexual violence is beyond the protection of the First Amendment."

This case illustrates one of the hypocrisies of our legal system: Bad things can happen, but as long as we don't see it on film, in the wrong municipality, all is copacetic. Bad policy on a personal level, but irreconcilable on a legal one.

Gun shops and the Hunting Channel routinely show bloody depictions of animals being gunned down, often suffering terribly before death, by brave white hunters. These videos are often produced by weapons manufacturers, as a come-on to purchase their products.

Why are these productions legal, while Mr. Stevens's is not?

Why not extend the description of gruesome film depictions of the "intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed" to the brutality depicted in the war pornography of Saddam Hussein's hanging, or that of the bullet-riddled and bloodied bodies of his sons Qusay and Uday, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi featured in news magazines like Time and Newsweek?

While not exactly Oscar material, current You Tubes like al Zarqawi is Eliminated -- which panders to the Limbaugh crowd -- show our hypocrisy in action. We like to watch violence. Boxing is an Olympic sport.

Why do we pretend to care about criminal behavior in relation to animal cruelty when our behavior to our fellow humans is anything but kind?

_________________

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