Yeah, I know, you were all hoping I’d got that out of my system earlier in the “I’m not a bad feminist” rant. Well, I was, too. But reality keeps slapping me in the face like a spastic haddock, and I am bull-headed enough to charge when I see red.
Ok, people… I always smile when I type that. I have a friend who says she knows one of my rants is going to be a good one when I start with “Ok, people…”
What set me off this time? A couple of my favorite Whinging Lefty blogs (Shakesville and Feministe) had entries about a downloadable game from Sony called “Fat Princess,” the original commentary on it can be found at Feminist Gamers. In the game the evil guy forcefeeds the Princess making her fat, and therefore hard to rescue, because fat people are all lazy, sedentary creatures, unable to rescue themselves (particularly fat women) who eat non-stop, voluntarily or not, and never ever do things like run triathalons (the link is to an article about a fat tri-athelete, since she took down her blog after a rain of trolls calling her a fat, lazy, ugly liar) and no one can lift their gargantuan, adipose asses, not even to save them. However, one of the most common comments these blogs got, after “you’re fat and ugly hurr hurr hurr” was, “Why are you wasting your time worrying about video games when there are REAL issues to worry about?”
This is something that gets thrown at me and other Feminist critics of the comics or video game industries, or critics of any media deemed “entertainment.” The idea that if we were “Serious Feminsts” ™ that we wouldn’t be wasting our time on frivolous shit like comics, movies, books, tv shows, etc… Because there are things going on like the rapes in Darfur, and human trafficking and child abuse and domestic violence.
Yes, all those horrible things and many, many more are going on every day. Every day women and children are killed by partners/fathers. Every day women are so savagely raped that they may never recover, in addition to being shunned by their families because rape is “always” the fault of the woman. Women and children are trafficked for sex.
Yes. All of these horrible, terrible things happen. And yes, they are things that I care very deeply about, and believe me, if someone gave me a license to track down and kill every last mother fucker who did them, I would. But no one has, as of yet, gifted me with the job of “Divine Vengeance” so I send money to organizations who can hopefully help the victims of all this horrible shit, and try to raise awareness of it by writing about it and letting people know that it happens all the time and how they can help.
So, there. Yes, I admit there are many more pressing and horrible things going on in the world than the size of Powergirl’s tits.
The thing is the media is a bellweather of attitudes in the society in which it is produced. Now, I’m not going to get into a “chicken and egg” argument with you about whether the fucked up media causes the societal perceptions, or whether the societal perceptions cause the media. Because, frankly, I don’t care whether the chicken came first or the egg, what I care about is that the fucking chicken is shitting all over my house.
Do I believe that comics, videogames, movies, what have you are the source for all the world’s ills when it comes to the mistreatment of women? No. Do I believe that by eliminating the more heinous misogynistic tropes in these media, and the rest, that it will solve all misogyny? No. Do I think it will help if young people aren’t being constantly told that women are decorative and helpless, and secretly want sex even if they say they don’t, and need rescuing? Yes. Yes, I do. Do I think it will help if maybe we have a media that quits normalizing the objectification and dehumanization of women? Yes, I do. Do I think that by re-shaping the media we can help change attitudes toward those very terrible, horrible feminist issues that happen every day? Yes, I do.
Popular culture IS important as a reflection of societal and cultural attitudes and practices. And I think you can do some good by changing the reflection first, in order to influence the rest. If you want some hardcore Feminist perspective on pop culture, Bitch is amazing at deconstructing popular culture as it relates to attitudes toward gender. Do I agree with everything written in it? No, but it always makes me think.
Can I single-handedly stop the rapes in Darfur? No. Can I stop domestic violence, rape, human trafficking and child abuse? No. Can I convince a bunch of angry people to write in and tell media conglomerates that rape isn’t funny and they need to quit making it a joke? Maybe.
One of the rallying cries of the Feminist movement(s) is that “The personal is political” (Carol Hanisch, 1969). What that means to me, is that sometimes that to make big change, you have to start small. People are less resentful of little changes over time than they are of cataclysmic, earth-shaking changes. Think of the end of the objectification of women in media as a little step towards convincing certain men that raping women is not their right, towards not viewing women and children as property, towards actual equality. And yeah, there are days when I wish I had God’s own wrath and power to strike down the assheads, but I don’t. So I do what I can, where I am, how I can. And if that means irritating the fuck out of you by harping on women’s roles in media, then oh well… Suck it up, Sunshine.
ETA: I guess one important point I should have made directly, and didn’t was: I can still care about the big things while I rail at the “frivolous.” Really. I can. Honest.
Geek Girls Rule!!! 
Don’t apologize about caring about the “big things” and railing about the “frivolous”! The horrors perpetuated against women and children are so egregious and widespread nobody could attack all of them.
Thank you for writing this … it IS important.
Entertainment isn’t frivolous. It may not be as visceral and deeply personal as the actual victimization of women going on in places like Darfur, or in broken homes everywhere, but it is important in its own right. Entertainment teaches. Entertainment reinforces, it validates. Opinions and attitudes are shaped by popular media, and whether we want to admit it or not, we are influenced by the things we let into our lives.
What’s more, entertainment is something we can actually do something about. We can make choices about what we watch. We can talk about the issues reflected in the stories and tropes that mold the way we think about ourselves and our culture. We can demand better of the people who want to make a living off of telling us what we want. By taking an active role in forming the entertainment that in turn forms our common societal bonds, we are rewriting the way we as a culture look at things.
How is that not empowerment?
I get tired of the ‘my contribution is more important than your contribution’ attitude anyway. Isn’t the point supposed to be that we all do what we can?
Three possible responses to the “Don’t you know there’s a War On?” brand of Concern Troll (as opposed to the “Isn’t it tiring to be so Angry all the time?” CT or the “You’d catch more flies with honey” CT) –
1. So where’s YOUR socially-conscious 365-days-a-year Serious Political Blog?
2. Do you do this on cooking blogs and WoW forums, too, or just on feminist media criticism sites? Links, please, to prove your non-hypocrisy–
3. (depending on the blog) –I guess you haven’t been reading this blog for very long, have you? Couldn’t be bothered to do the elementary research like, oh, clicking the tag stitled “Torture,” “War,” “Economics,” and so on?
I suspect there won’t be very many links in rx to 1 & 2, but maybe I’m just too nasty and suspicious of Concern Trolls’ actual, you know, *concern*…