Pleasure is not a zero-sum pursuit. The skeptical reaction to the Boobquake has centered a lot on the fact (and I'm paraphrasing) that men like looking at scantily clad women, so obviously this simply perpetuates patriarchy. I see this attitude a lot when it comes to ladies who wanna be naked: Erykah Badu shouldn't have gotten naked in her video because men are titillated by her nudity. That's not her fault, and it doesn't mean she can't use her body to express herself. Not everyone will get it, but when does that ever happen?
Especially with boundary-pushing? It's a concern trolling technique that really gets to people. Oddly enough, it tends to put a lid on female sexual expression in the end. The collective clitoris will never be avenged. I just don't believe in revenge (especially when the score is spread across generations. *I* have not been oppressed for tens of thousands of years - just 27). An age of matriarchy would give women a boost, but male oppression wouldn't. Schemes of supremacy do not liberate or avenge, when all it takes to "win" is to come out the least badly.
I'm always fascinated by artists who can transcend traditional Western mores and draw upon (often literally!) the female nude body as media. Vanessa Beecroft is one such artist, staging what I'd call performance art using women as symbols. Badu's video was incredibly effective, both politically and artistically, and I was disheartened--but not surprised--to see so much criticism aimed at her.
As Sinéad O'Connor has said of her own performance art, specifically the tearing-up of the pope's photograph after singing an a capella version of Bob Marley's War: it is the artist's job to provoke, to push boundaries, to inspire discussion.
That so many seemingly grown-up folks cling to a rather juvenile and Puritanical view of the body human is a sad statement on our education system, I think. MOAR ART CLASSES IN OUR HIGH SCHOOLS, PLS!
Posted by: litbrit | April 27, 2010 at 06:03 PM
A couple of thoughts:
I really dislike the puritanical strain of feminism.
Sometimes sexuality can be subversive -- not simply a tool for selling shit.
I think it is possible to be a feminist man and believe fully and deeply in the equality of women -- and yet still enjoy looking at them scantily clad.
Posted by: Sir Charles | April 27, 2010 at 09:51 PM
I think it is possible to be a feminist man and believe fully and deeply in the equality of women -- and yet still enjoy looking at them scantily clad.
Well, the obvious question is . . . do they really need to be clad, even scantily, to preserve the belief in equality?
Posted by: C.S. | April 28, 2010 at 12:41 AM
I think expecting either sex to not enjoy looking at the other (or the same) in various states of dress or undress is just expecting too much of humanity.
Posted by: Corvus9 | April 28, 2010 at 12:48 AM
I won't say that people shouldn't take into account how other people will react when deciding what to do.
But if one gives excessive weight to the reactions of people whose opinions one doesn't particularly value, then one is handing a veto over one's actions to the wrong people.
It seems that the reaction of some feminists to 'boobquake' was up that alley: because some guys were gonna drool over the women involved in the protest, and would holler "show us your tits" and the like, the women shouldn't have protested in this manner.
That's ridiculous - letting a bunch of jerks dictate what you should do is the exact opposite of empowerment.
We might call this approach to life the "Dubya fallacy" because he continually was saying we shouldn't do X, Y, or Z because it would give the terrorists an emotional boost.
It was stupid for Dubya to indicate that he was letting his options be constrained by the terrorists' feelings. (Even if he was merely using that as an excuse to avoid doing things he didn't want to do anyway.) And it's stupid for some feminists to advocate letting a bunch of boors limit women's choices.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | April 28, 2010 at 08:37 AM