Tag: Occupy Wall Street

‘Reality Bites,’ ‘Slackers’ and the Movies Made About Underemployed Youth

Occupy Wall Street started a year ago this Monday. The movement came out of a recession and an underemployed youth culture.

So, of course I want to look at a film that follows the frustrations that young people face in an economic crisis. Unfortunately, save for Lena Dunham productions, there isn’t a lot of that coming out right now – and that issue might be for another post. (As in: our economy is being dragged through the dirt, but our high grossing blockbuster hits are still mostly about rich white dudes. Maybe these rich white dudes observe the plight of the poor, but it is still from their vantage point. i.e. The Social Network/Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/The Dark Knight Rises.)

Surprisingly there’s more films about frustrated-20-somethings in a bad job market from the early 90s. The 90s being the decade where a lot of people were pretty well off. But, there was that recession in the early 90s that influenced music, art and film in a lot of interesting ways.
Two films in particular, Slackerand Reality Bites, came out around the same time to address a youth culture that felt disenfranchised. They both ostensibly sought to delve into the coming-of-age story specific to disillusionment with the American dream. While Slacker is maybe a bit convoluted in its non-narrative narrative, it is far more successful in encapsulating a culture and economic climate that fed into each other. Reality Bites, on the other hand, just sort of bites.

Movie poster for Slacker
Richard Linklater’s Slackerfollows various characters around Austin, Texas. Each person bumps into, or passes another conversation that leads the camera to another story. The characters all seem to share the same sense of detachment from mainstream culture and desire to pontificate in a typical Linklater fashion. There isn’t really an arc to the film, but there is a voice. And, that’s the point. Linklater is trying to capture something while also getting a chance to look at long semi-philosophically titillating tête-à-têtes.

Reality Bitesinstead uses the educated but wandering youth archetype to facilitate an easy-to-consume pop culture-inundated whine-fest where the characters seem a bit more concerned about their love-hate romances than anything else.

When talking about Reality Bites I will be using the abbreviated form of the term “romantic comedy” (i.e. rom-com) as a verb. Here is an example of how I will use this: In Ben Stiller’s directorial debut in the 1994 film, Reality Bites, about 20-somethings trying to get by in a recession-drenched economy, Stiller took what could have been an informative narrative about the emerging 90s youth culture, and instead he went and rom-commed it.

The woefully hip cast of Reality Bites
Reality Bites just about literally fetishizes the economic strife of the young by slapping romantic intrigue on minimum wage and unemployment.

It also seems to miss the mark on what that youth culture was at the time. Did Stiller think grunge meant jerk? Because the male love interest, Troy (Ethan Hawke), is not appealing in any way. He’s a pseudo-intellectual who seems to have plenty of gripes with “the Man,” but nothing much intelligent to say about it. He’s hung up on the female love interest (and yes, that’s how I’m identifying them, since they rarely rise above those archetypes) Lelaina (Winona Ryder), in the most jealous and obnoxious way possible. After he spies Lelaina hooking up with a guy after her date, Troy makes snide comments indicating she’s promiscuous. Lelaina, our primary protagonist, does seem pretty cool sans her narcissistic documentary. But, she’s drawn to the poorly written symbol of her culture, Troy, for inexplicable reasons.

It’s painfully rom-commed. Reality Bites seems so contrived and marketed to a counterculture demographic, but it still relies on lazy plot devices and expects the audience to be intrigued by sexual tension over everything else. Which leaves the audience without much to actually connect with.

These films are both trying to appeal to a specific demographic, but the tone of Reality Bites is one that is perpetuated even while drowning us in unnecessary hormones. 

Reality Bites Slackers: and the Movies Made About Underemployed Youth

Occupy Wall Street started a year ago this Monday. The movement came out of a recession and an underemployed youth culture.

So, of course I want to look at a film that follows the frustrations that young people face in an economic crisis. Unfortunately, save for Lena Dunham productions, there isn’t a lot of that coming out right now – and that issue might be for another post. (As in: our economy is being dragged through the dirt, but our high grossing blockbuster hits are still mostly about rich white dudes. Maybe these rich white dudes observe the plight of the poor, but it is still from their vantage point. i.e. The Social Network/Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/The Dark Knight Rises.)

Surprisingly there’s more films about frustrated-20-somethings in a bad job market from the early 90s. The 90s being the decade where a lot of people were pretty well off. But, there was that recession in the early 90s that influenced music, art and film in a lot of interesting ways.
Two films in particular, Slackerand Reality Bites, came out around the same time to address a youth culture that felt disenfranchised. They both ostensibly sought to delve into the coming-of-age story specific to disillusionment with the American dream. While Slacker is maybe a bit convoluted in its non-narrative narrative, it is far more successful in encapsulating a culture and economic climate that fed into each other. Reality Bites, on the other hand, just sort of bites.

Movie poster for Slacker
Richard Linklater’s Slackerfollows various characters around Austin, Texas. Each person bumps into, or passes another conversation that leads the camera to another story. The characters all seem to share the same sense of detachment from mainstream culture and desire to pontificate in a typical Linklater fashion. There isn’t really an arc to the film, but there is a voice. And, that’s the point. Linklater is trying to capture something while also getting a chance to look at long semi-philosophically titillating tête-à-têtes.

Reality Bitesinstead uses the educated but wandering youth archetype to facilitate an easy-to-consume pop culture-inundated whine-fest where the characters seem a bit more concerned about their love-hate romances than anything else.

When talking about Reality Bites I will be using the abbreviated form of the term “romantic comedy” (i.e. rom-com) as a verb. Here is an example of how I will use this: In Ben Stiller’s directorial debut in the 1994 film, Reality Bites, about 20-somethings trying to get by in a recession-drenched economy, Stiller took what could have been an informative narrative about the emerging 90s youth culture, and instead he went and rom-commed it.

The woefully hip cast of Reality Bites
Reality Bites just about literally fetishizes the economic strife of the young by slapping romantic intrigue on minimum wage and unemployment.

It also seems to miss the mark on what that youth culture was at the time. Did Stiller think grunge meant jerk? Because the male love interest, Troy (Ethan Hawke), is not appealing in any way. He’s a pseudo-intellectual who seems to have plenty of gripes with “the Man,” but nothing much intelligent to say about it. He’s hung up on the female love interest (and yes, that’s how I’m identifying them, since they rarely rise above those archetypes) Lelaina (Winona Ryder), in the most jealous and obnoxious way possible. After he spies Lelaina hooking up with a guy after her date, Troy makes snide comments indicating she’s promiscuous. Lelaina, our primary protagonist, does seem pretty cool sans her narcissistic documentary. But, she’s drawn to the poorly written symbol of her culture, Troy, for inexplicable reasons.

It’s painfully rom-commed. Reality Bites seems so contrived and marketed to a counterculture demographic, but it still relies on lazy plot devices and expects the audience to be intrigued by sexual tension over everything else. Which leaves the audience without much to actually connect with.

These films are both trying to appeal to a specific demographic, but the tone of Reality Bites is one that is perpetuated even while drowning us in unnecessary hormones. 

Happy Birthday, Occupy Wall Street!

No, this is not a post about film or television. 
Today, September 17th, marks the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street’s existence. I first wrote about OWS at Bitch Flicks on October 6, 2011 in a piece called, “We Interrupt This Broadcast … for an Occupy Wall Street Update,” in which I discuss my first experience marching and protesting with OWS. I wrote two more pieces for Bitch Flicks after that–once I started to feel a little disenchanted with the misogyny in the Occupy movement: “Occupy Wall Street and Feminism and Misogyny (Oh My?)” and “Why Facebook’s ‘Occupy a Vagina’ Event Is Not Okay.”
I published another piece I wrote about OWS at the Ms. Magazine blog, and I’ve decided to reprint it here. 
Contrary to what many people think, the movement is stronger than ever, and women have taken leadership roles and created Feminist General Assemblies (courtesy of WOW, which stands for Women Occupying Wall Street) and sites like Occupy Patriarchy. Much has been written about misogyny and feminism in the movement, and I’ve included links to articles at the Women Occupy tumblr (although I’m very behind on updating this, so the most recent pieces aren’t included here).
Basically, I want to say congratulations and thank you to all the women who’ve worked tirelessly to make OWS safer for women–and to push the needs of women to the forefront of the conversation. 

previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine blog on December 13, 2011

On the November 17th national day of action for the Occupy Wall Street movement, I was interviewed by a man from a Swedish newspaper who wanted to know why I was there. I smiled and said, “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Everyone wants to know, still, even after the two-month anniversary of a movement that’s only continued to grow stronger and gain more momentum, why people are occupying, who and what they’re protesting, and what they hope to change. I regurgitated what has effectively become The Message, “We want the power back in the hands of the people.” He seemed satisfied. But as he started to put his microphone away, I panicked.

“Wait!” I said. “There’s another reason I’m out here: I’m here to represent women.”

Dozens of articles have been written about why Occupy Wall Street matters for women. It boils down to one simple fact: Women suffer disproportionately in the current economic climate, which means that a protest for economic equality is a feminist protest—whether it admits it or not. A majority of the nation’s poor and unemployed are women, especially women of color and single mothers.

But the issue is not just what Occupy Wall Street can do for women; it’s what women have already done for Occupy Wall Street.

1970s feminists coined the phrase “the personal is political” when they noticed, by organizing a handful of women and sharing their private experiences, that their everyday struggles were embedded in larger political systems. For instance, women’s unacknowledged and unpaid labor, especially as caregivers for children, directly contributes to our country’s capitalist gains, yet women see no real compensation for it, only a persistent wage gap.

And one of the things I love most about the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it borrows so much of its activism, specifically pertaining to how the protesters interact with one another, from the feminist consciousness-raising model of the 1960s and ’70s. Like consciousness-raising, Occupy Wall Street started with small groups of oppressed people who spoke to one another about their personal struggles, and in doing so, learned they weren’t alone or insane or weak or lazy, the way Those In Charge suggested. That discovery gave them the strength to channel the individual anger and suffering they experienced into a larger collective call to action.

If the personal has ever been political in this country, take a look at the concerns driving the Occupy Wall Street movement: home foreclosures, college loan debts, health problems representing the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, lay-offs and skyrocketing unemployment rates, rapidly diminishing pensions, unaffordable education, unaffordable and inaccessible childcare. On the November 17th day of action, protesters hopped onto train cars and shared their personal stories of how the current economic inequalities have impacted them. One, using the people’s mic, said:

My name is Justin. I was a teacher before my school lost its budget and I was excessed. This is the United States of America, the richest country in the world, and somehow we can’t afford public high school teachers.

And another:

My name is Troy, and I’ve been unemployed for 10 years. Both my sisters lost their homes. I am here fighting for economic justice for everybody on this train … I am united with you in your struggle to pay your bills.

Other examples of consciousness-raising at Occupy Wall Street include discussion groups reminiscent of those started by ’70′s feminists. There’s the Divine Feminine, a group in which female-bodied or female-identified women talk about the oppressions they experience; Ambiguous UpSparkles, started by Eve Ensler, where people come together and share their personal stories of oppression using the people’s mic; and similar groups, like POCcupy (People of Color), a group for people of color to talk about oppression; WOW (Women Occupying Wall Street) and Safer Spaces, two groups that focus on the presence and safety of women in the movement.

Of course, a large part of consciousness-raising exists on the Internet, and I’ve heard people refer to Occupy Wall Street as the first-ever Internet revolution. Suffice it to say, Occupy Wall Street wouldn’t exist without the fast-as-hell sharing of information over Twitter, personal e-mail exchanges among both participants and skeptics, blogs such as We Are the 99% (a site that showcases photos of people from all over the world sharing personal stories of economic struggle), Facebook (where pages for new feminist groups devoted to Occupy camps crop up daily) and YouTube footage that captures precisely how personal struggle translates into collective political action.

It’s important to note that while early feminists focused much of their energy on gender oppression—and consciousness-raising groups later formed in which women discussed the impact of race—the protesters at Occupy Wall Street have turned the conversation toward class oppression. Of course, race, class, gender and sexuality remain interconnected, but as Felice Yeskel, who cofounded the nonprofit organization Class Action, argues:

Women talked about their experiences growing up in a gendered society as girls and the differential experiences of males and females. And when the issue of race was raised, feminists started to meet in same-race groups, with consciousness-raising for white women about white privilege … But it has never happened in any widespread way about issues of class.

By raising consciousness about the economic divide in this country, the Occupy movement protesters have the opportunity to finally start a conversation about an issue we rarely discuss in the United States—how the poorest people in this country, most of whom are women, manage to survive.

The simple fact? Without the feminist movement and discourse of the ’60s and ’70s, and the consciousness-raising tactics of the civil rights movement before it, Occupy Wall Street wouldn’t exist. We owe it to the women within the movement—and our feminist foremothers—to acknowledge women’s work, and to understand that a movement claiming to fight for the disenfranchised can’t afford to erase the contributions of women. And so I’ll leave you with the words of a woman from a 1969 consciousness-raising group, words that I can see plastered all over Occupy signs everywhere, “Women aren’t in a position to make demands now. We have to build a movement first.”

Indie Spirit Best First Feature Nominee: Margin Call

This is a guest review by Jessica Pieklo. 
———-
It’s hardly a surprise that a movie chronicling life inside a major financial firm during the 24 hours before the Wall Street collapse of 2008 would be dominated by men. Margin Call boasts a stunning ensemble cast featuring Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, and Demi Moore as a group of investment bankers, analysts and traders at fictitious financial firm, loosely based on Lehman Brothers, as the bottom falls out of the mortgage-backed securities market. 
Moore plays Sarah Robertson, the steely head of risk management and only woman on the management team. We don’t actually see Moore or meet Sarah until close to midway in the film and she’s given sparse dialogue. As the film unfolds we start to see why.

Demi Moore and Simon Baker in Margin Call 
Instead, the film opens in September 2008 as this unnamed investment firm is in the process of terminating 80 percent of its risk-management team. The terminations are executed with the cold precision that only corporate HR professionals can muster and magnified by the self-importance that fuels Wall Street corporate culture. It’s an assembly-line of assets in and liabilities out and even from the beginning we see the a shedding of “waste” that frames the rest of the drama. 
Senior risk analyst Eric Dale is one of those fired. Dale, played brilliantly by Stanley Tucci, gets the news just as he’s about to discover that the company is recklessly over-exposed in bad mortgages. Dale’s termination, and his behavior in handing over a flash drive full of damaging information to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) telling him to “be careful,” initially sets the story up to suggest Dale was fired just before becoming a whistleblower but instead suggests the fate that awaits anyone else who might question the culture of risk at the firm.
It’s not until the junior analysts have put together the pieces laid out by Dale and alerted their bosses that the real faces of the financial crisis emerge and among them, Sarah Robertson. We first meet Robertson in an emergency middle-of-the-night meeting with upper management to discuss the firm’s exposure and create a strategy to handle it. The strategy, the firm decides, is to dump the bad debts and offer up an executive sacrifice as the face and blame of the disaster.
Of course they choose Robertson.

Kevin Spacey in Margin Call 
The writing is on the wall and it’s clear in Moore’s performance that it’s an outcome Robertson must have been bracing for her entire career. During the meeting Robertson points out, firmly but not too aggressively that she had warned the firm of problems with the mortgage-backed securities and nothing was done. The men in the room just look at her. It’s clear. She’s going down for the whole thing.
Almost the rest of Moore’s performance consists of Robertson sitting in her office, looking out across Manhattan both a part of Wall Street and isolated from it’s upper reaches–the logical and final destination for female executives in this world. 
Writer/director J.C. Chandor’s father spent almost his entire career working for Merrill Lynch and its obvious he understands Wall Street culture. Bright ambitious talent gets wooed away from careers that better serve society like engineering and the sciences, to make buckets of cash moving around buckets of cash. There’s a sense of conspicuous waste in nearly every scene. Boxes line empty trading cubes as nameless traders cycle in and out. Nothing’s permanent and nothing’s real except for the stories of all that cash.
Given Chandor’s intimacy with Wall Street life it’s hard not to see some deliberate choices behind Moore’s character. Shortly after the 2008 collapse some of us started asking if the financial crisis would have been mitigated, or perhaps avoided all together, had more women served in executive functions and on boards of directors. It was hard not to broadly generalize but the major Wall Street Firms–Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America–the list continues–all firms where women were virtually absent in leadership and culture building. In their place was a testosterone-fueled culture of rampant greed and avarice, a world where 25-year-old traders were promised million dollar bonuses over t-bones and strippers and nobody blinks. It’s hard to imagine that culture existing so robustly with a lot more women involved.

Jeremy Irons in Margin Call 
And that hypothesis seems to infect Moore’s character and her performance. She’s at once tough, ambitious and intensely insecure. You get the sense she’s used to having her work more heavily scrutinized, less-readily trusted. At first during the emergency meeting Moore comes off as emotionless and cold, almost robotic in the face of catastrophe as if aware that showing any emotion as the only woman in the room would automatically kick her out of the club. Later when she’s waiting out the night in her office Moore offers us a woman tragically isolated and coming to terms with the fact that her brief foray into the forbidden world of male privilege has officially ended with not much more to show for it except a severance package that will ultimately cost her reputation and sense of dignity.
The fact that Moore’s character had warned of the crisis approaching and was alternatively ignored or blamed for not warning emphatically enough also perfectly captures the bind so many women in corporate culture face. As head of risk management Moore’s character was in charge of managing exposure and was the voice responsible for setting the culture and appetite for risk. It was the woman who first saw problems, tried to draw attention to them but was ultimately not taken seriously and was dismissed. Rather than push the issue Robertson knew what she had to do–push ahead like the men around her. 
By the end of the film there’s not much left to Moore’s character. She’s practically an afterthought as daylight breaks and the trading panic ensues and we close with a sense that nothing much will change even after the house of cards comes crashing down.
Links of interest:
———-

Jessica Pieklo is a lawyer and writer blogging at Care2.com and Hegemommy.com. Her work focuses on women’s rights, ethics and the law.



Why Facebook’s "Occupy a Vagina" Event Is Not Okay

Last week, a Change.org petition urged Facebook to remove pages that promote sexual violence. Some of the offending pages included, “Kicking Sluts in the Vagina,” and “Riding your Girlfriend softly Cause you dont want to wake her up.” The following passage from the petition explains the overall goal:

First, Facebook needs to clarify that pages that encourage or condone rape–like the ones mentioned above–are in violation of their existing standards. Secondly, they need to make a statement that all pages that describe sexual violence in a threatening way will be immediately taken down upon being reported. Finally, Facebook must include specific language in their Terms of Service that make it clear that pages promoting any form of sexual violence will be banned.

Jessica Bennett wrote about the petition and the #notfunnyfacebook Twitter campaign for The Daily Beast in an article called, “Should Facebook Ban Sexist Pages?” She writes:
In some ways, misogyny on Facebook is just a newer version of the same old problem. Indeed, there are enough stories like Sierra’s for Danielle Citron, a cyber law professor at the University of Maryland, to compile a whole book of them—she’s hard at work on a text about online harassment that will be published by Harvard University Press in 2013. She notes more recent cases that have made headlines: the women smeared by AutoAdmit, the law school discussion board; the case of Harvard sex blogger Lena Chen; and the dramatic story of 11-year-old Jessi Slaughter. “I talk to women every day who’ve been silenced, scared, and just want to disappear,” Citron says. “It’s easy to dismiss these things as frat-boy antics, but this isn’t a joke.”

Then, on November 5th, ZDNet published an article called, “Facebook Finally Removes Pro-Rape Pages,” and the writer goes into detail about Facebook’s “massive problem with sex”:
With zero tolerance for porn and a refusal to define it, Facebook has deleted breast cancer survivor communities (labeling one breast cancer survivor page as “pornography”), retail business pages, individual profiles of human sexuality teachers, pages for authors and actors, photos of LGBT couples kissing (for which Facebook just apologized), and even the occasional hapless user’s profile who has the misfortune of having someone else post porn on their Wall.

With no comprehensible or clear methodology around sexual speech, we see pages deleted that discuss female sexuality, while pages that joke about and encourage raping women and girls rack up the likes.

So, yes, Facebook complied (finally) and removed some of its pro-rape pages, but as Shelby Knox noted on Twitter, “… #notfunnyfacebook isn’t a victory until they clarify the pages violate their terms of service.” We’re still waiting, Facebook …
In the meantime, I’d like to talk about the Occupy a Vagina Facebook event. When it first appeared a little over a week ago, the page was bombarded with offensive and violent rhetoric targeted at women (all in the name of “comedy” and “fun” of course), but when many women and men got angry about the event–and pushed back by leaving comments on the event wall asking the creator to remove the page (because it promoted rape and violence against women)–the creator deleted the comments. Now, the Occupy a Vagina event page says this:

(Edit for all the trolls)

*************

To all of you people who want to assume this event has anything to do with rape, you are completely wrong… This event was created by a WOMAN as a JOKE!!! If you don’t think it is funny, then click not attending and move on… I will be deleted any trolling ass messages about “promoting anything” other than comedy so don’t waste your time……

I mean, where in the fuck do I even begin? (Seriously, I keep starting and re-starting paragraphs because I don’t know where the fuck to begin.) With outrage? Okay, look: I don’t give a shit if a woman created the event, or if a man created it, or if I created it when I was passed out drunk in my bathtub–if it promotes rape, then it promotes rape. The author basically makes the ridiculous assertion that women can’t possibly participate in the perpetuation of rape culture (e.g. “this event can’t even contribute to rape culture because a woman created it to be funny.“) No. See, the thing is–and people still can’t seem to successfully grasp this in Sexual Harassment 101–intent is irrelevant. Do I believe the creator intended to invite a bunch of people to an Occupy event sponsored by rape culture? Or that the “attendees” honestly believe they’re engaging in anything that might directly or indirectly cause women harm? Not really. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the event is out there, and it’s seriously problematic, and it isn’t just “harmless fun”; it’s another permanent fixture in (omg, is she gonna say it again?!) rape culture. Here’s a primer:
According to the rape culture theory, acts of sexism are commonly employed to validate and rationalize normative misogynistic practices. For instance, sexist jokes may be told to foster disrespect for women and an accompanying disregard for their well-being. An example would be a female rape victim being blamed for her being raped because of how she dressed or acted. In rape culture, sexualized violence towards women is regarded as a continuum in a society that regards women’s bodies as sexually available by default.

It’s important to note that even the language–occupy a vagina–divorces women from their own bodies. It’s a form of dismemberment, and I’ll say it again: we live in a rape culture, a culture that reduces women to body parts, whether it’s to sell a product, to promote a film, or for nothing more than reinforcing (and getting off on) patriarchal power. When we use language that prevents us from seeing a person as a whole human being, language that encourages us to view women in particular as a collection of body parts designed for male pleasure (e.g. occupy a vagina), then she exists as nothing more than an object, a fuck-toy, sexually available by default. It might not have been the intent of the event creator to participate in women’s subjugation, but it’s certainly the fucking reality.

It’s also important to talk about the Occupy a Vagina event within the context of the recently reported rapes and sexual assaults at several Occupy camps. The founders of the valuable Web site Occupy Patriarchy wrote a piece that highlights many of the incidents. In response to the assaults, several women’s groups have moved forward in creating safe spaces (like women-only tents) so that women can fully participate in the Occupy movement without fear, although safer sleeping areas don’t necessarily mean women will experience less groping and invasion of personal space in general. Obviously, we need to address the underlying (and pervasive) privilege in the movement that allows violence against women to occur in the first place, but these are all positive first steps to ensuring women can, you know, Occupy.

Now, let’s talk about what it means, in the context of the movement, to “occupy.” The original organizers of Occupy Wall Street proposed the following: We show up at Wall Street on September 17th, with tents, and we fucking move in. Why? Because it’s ours. You can hear it in the chants and slogans at every rally: “Whose Street? Our Street!” Even the Occupy Times Square protest was often described as, “taking the square.” This, my friends, is a campaign that involves moving into public spaces; it involves taking back, or reclaiming, our cities and reminding the very small yet powerful group in charge that it’s really the people who own this shit. And, perhaps most importantly, it involves resisting when we’re told to leave. [Note: the problematic “occupy” language, as it pertains to Native territory, has been written about far more elegantly and intelligently than I can do here, so please read those pieces as well.]

If we read the Occupy a Vagina event in the context of the other Occupy events (and why wouldn’t we), it’s easy to immediately see the problems: vaginas are not public spaces; they don’t belong to a collective group; they can’t be owned or reclaimed; and resisting when a woman tells you to get the fuck off her vagina–well, that’s rape. It isn’t funny. It isn’t harmless. This isn’t a cute little “event” that’s upsetting a small minority of angry feminazis who can’t take a joke. It contributes to rape. To narcissistically quote myself from a previous piece about rape culture: 
…This constant, unchecked barrage of endless and obvious woman-hating undoubtedly contributes to the rape of women and girls.

The sudden idealization of Charlie Sheen as some bad boy to be envied, even though he has a violent history of beating up women, contributes to the rape of women and girls. Bills like H. R. 3 that seek to redefine rape and further the attack on women’s reproductive rights contributes to the rape of women and girls. Supposed liberal media personalities like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann showing their support for Julian Assange by denigrating Assange’s alleged rape victims contributes to the rape of women and girls. The sexist commercials that advertisers pay millions of dollars to air on Super Bowl Sunday contribute to the rape of women and girls. And blaming Lara Logan for her gang rape by suggesting her attractiveness caused it, or the job was too dangerous for her, or she shouldn’t have been there in the first place, contributes to the rape of women and girls.

It contributes to rape because it normalizes violence against women. Men rape to control, to overpower, to humiliate, to reinforce the patriarchal structure. And the media, which is vastly controlled by men, participates in reproducing already existing prejudices and inequalities, rather than seeking to transform them.

It’s unfortunate that I need to add to this:

Facebook’s refusal to ban all pages that condone sexual assault and violence against women, and their refusal to acknowledge that these pages violate their already existing standards, contributes to the rape of women and girls.

See, at Bitch Flicks, we believe more than anything that the blind and uncritical consumption of media portrayals of women contributes to furthering women’s inequality in all areas of life. And as we all learned from The Social Network, one of the most misogynistic fucking movies I’ve ever seen, Facebook is a form of media that’s defining a generation. (Thanks so much for your contribution, Fuckers.)

Occupy Wall Street and Feminism and Misogyny (Oh My?)

 

I’ve been 100% on board with Occupy Wall Street since it began almost a month ago. I wrote about my experience protesting with them on October 5, and—leading up to the Times Square Occupation—I almost had goose bumps. I was ready to take the square. And then, it happened—I browsed Facebook. In my defense, I went to the Facebook community page for Occupy Wall Street to find out exactly when and where I should meet my fellow protesters, but instead, I found a YouTube video posted by the page administrator that more than seven hundred people had shared and on which hundreds of people had commented. I had to watch it. I wish I wouldn’t have. The “comedian” ranted with so much repressed disdain for women that it couldn’t help but leak out, turning his tirade from something intended to critique Wall Street and the Banks into an opportunity to degrade women directly; when he ranted about the true Economy Tankers, or the mainstream media, or those who don’t support the movement, he conveniently addressed them as an abstract and general “you.” I created a transcript of the entire video just to make sure I wasn’t going all woman and not understanding comedy and getting unnecessarily pissed about little things that don’t matter. Let’s see! Video and transcript below, with bullshit in bold:

The New York Times, the highly respected New York Times, did a great article yesterday about Occupy Wall Street. The entire report revolved around how Occupy Wall Street is a big pain in the ass to the area’s public bathrooms. Now there’s two things you need to know about the last sentence I just said. A: I’m not kidding. B: The double entendre was unintended. There will be several more of those in the following three minutes, and all of them are unintended except for seven. The New York Times, which is a so-called liberal media outlet, is more concerned about the harm done to the public restrooms than they are with the harm done to the American people by corporations and Wall Street titans who make Charlie Sheen’s moral compass look like that of Harriet Tubman. As billionaires continue to shit all over this country like it’s a bathroom near Occupy Wall Street, the media is more worried about the bathrooms near Occupy Wall Street? Are you fucking serious? Get your head out of your ass, and maybe you’ll be able to better see your priorities. This world is a shit storm of greed that desperately needs mopping up. We’re talking about people’s homes, people’s lives, people’s dreams, and the media wants to make it about the discomfort of millionaires who live around Liberty Square? The article said mothers have trouble getting strollers around police barricades. God forbid the revolution should get in the way of your evening stroll with pookie wookie. This may not be a revolution in the traditional sense, but this is a revolution of thought. Americans are tired of greed over good, profitable pollution over people, war for wealth over the welfare of average workers. This is a thought revolution, and the revolution will not be sanitized. It will be criticized, ridiculed, intentionally misconstrued, and misunderstood. But it’ll push through. Shit all over it all you want, but the floodgates are open now. The revolution will not be tidy. The revolution will not fit with your Pilates schedule. The revolution will not be quiet after 10 pm, and it will not fit easily into a mainstream media- defined paradigm. The revolution will affect your bottom line. The revolution will affect you whether you ignore it or not. The revolution will not be dissuaded by barricades or pepper spray, driving rain, police raids, or ankle sprains. It’s like the postal service on steroids; pepper spraying us is like throwing water on gremlins—the more you do it, the more of us show up. The revolution will be annoying to the top 1% and those who aren’t open minded enough to understand it. The revolution does not care if you satirize it; you still won’t be able to jeopardize it. The revolution will not wait until after your hair appointment, your dinner party, tummy tuck, or titty tilt. The revolution does not care about your lack of intellectual curiosity. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be digitized and available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere real ideas are told. The revolution will not be hijacked by your old, tired, rejected political beliefs. The revolution will make politicians squirm, bankers bitch, elites moan, and those with Stockholm Syndrome scream, “Hit me, punk criminal assholes. Shut up and do what our captors told you. There’s a sitcom on about a chubby guy who hates his wife, and we’re supposed to watch it. Now fall in line.” The revolution will not be monetized, commercialized, circumcised, or anesthetized. Good god, don’t you get it? Greed is no longer good, and it’s not god. The thought revolution is here to stay whether you give two shits about it or not. The revolution would, however, like to apologize for shitting all over your apathy. Now pick a side.

Damn me! It’s not like I wanted to be right about this guy being a total misogynist profusely praised by hundreds. (Okay, they didn’t say, “You hate women! Awesome!” but I’m inclined to believe that ignoring the hatred for and alienation of more than 50% of the population, especially among a group of people that claims to represent the needs of 99% of the population, doesn’t exactly bode well for the group’s collective message of inclusion. Remember, the Facebook page administrator for Occupy Wall Street posted this video.) Many women and people from minority groups have written important pieces about their hesitation to fully engage with the Occupy Wall Street movement. I guess up until I watched that YouTube video, as tiny a thing as it may be (it somehow got under my skin), I didn’t truly understand where they were coming from. I’ve mistakenly been abiding by that ol’ standby, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” which meant to me that, yeah, I’m pissed at Wall Street and the Banks; the protesters are pissed at Wall Street and the Banks; therefore, we’re in this together, regardless.

That idea of working toward a common goal, often at the expense of women, has been around forever. We encountered it with Voting Rights. We even encountered it with the identity politics surrounding the 2008 presidential election. The message is always something like, “Don’t worry, ladies; your time will come eventually! We’ll worry about your oppression later.” But while I agree with most of what that video transcript says, I can’t simply ignore the specific rage toward women. I’m a woman. That kind of rhetoric negatively impacts all women. I might not be a mother; I don’t take Pilates classes; I make hair appointments maybe once every eight months; and I haven’t had plastic surgery. But I’m still a woman—regardless of whether I’m as privileged as the women his rant carelessly mentions or whether I’m part of the 99%; I’m not immune. Suffice it to say, by the time Occupy Times Square rolled around, I forced myself down there. For the first time since the movement began, I felt apathetic, confused, and just … icky about it.

But then! After hanging out under a giant rainbow tarp with my fellow protesters in Times Square, and listening to the wonderful street musicians, and chanting, “This is a peaceful protest” when the cops started to get a little edgy, and clapping like crazy when a nice police officer tossed our beach ball back into the crowd, I left with a feeling of … hope? Again? Just like when I participated my first time? And it didn’t feel like that crap hope Obama tried to sell sold during his advertising presidential campaign. It felt … dare I say … real? What is wrong with me?

Like I said—I felt confused. But the thing I realized is I truly believe that most of the organizers and participants I’ve personally met are trying. We live in a patriarchy, which means that smaller groups organized by men and women often inevitably turn into mini-patriarchies. The difference with this movement (I hope) is that the protesters at least recognize the intersecting oppressions of gender, race, class, and sexuality and are trying to change the group dynamics; we’ve had fairly shitty models thus far (visited any matriarchies lately?). It may seem small to merely recognize something, but it’s a pretty big fucking step in the right direction. That isn’t to say that each individual who makes up the group’s members necessarily examines her or his relative privilege as much as she or he should, if at all; but I honestly believe the group wants to get there. The media certainly doesn’t help by painting Occupy Wall Street as a movement organized by a bunch of entitled, young, lazy, pot-smoking white boys who got bored playing video games in their parents’ basements. I can attest—it ain’t like that. Women abound!—a very diverse group of intelligent women whose visibility shouldn’t be minimized, let alone relegated to the sexist bullshit that is Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street. (UGH.)
Now, before I unveil my counter-Tumblr blog to showcase the Women Occupiers, I want to first discuss the main reasons this movement, even after my recent reservations, still works for me as a woman and a feminist.

Consciousness Raising: If that douchebag said anything important in the video, he said that Occupy Wall Street is a thought revolution. I agree. And the particular form of activism this movement employs comes directly from consciousness-raising groups formed by feminists in the 1960s. (That may explain why the mainstream media remains clueless about how to discuss it; it’s got that “woman stench” all over it.) Wikipedia briefly defines consciousness raising as “a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition.” The meetings helped women become more politically conscious while also illustrating that individual problems “reflected common conditions faced by all women.” Occupy Wall Street began as a small group of people camping out in Liberty Plaza and—as the direct result and success of their consciousness-raising tactics—the movement has literally gone global. Not only do people march in protest, but they also occupy public spaces for extended periods in smaller groups, often bringing in speakers and setting up scheduled talks that are open to the public (including their General Assemblies). The We Are the 99 Percent blog on Tumblr also represents a viral version of consciousness raising, where a diverse group of individuals impacted most by the Economy Tankers take to the blog and share their personal experiences in order to raise consciousness about the tangible consequences of the rising economic inequalities. It’s working. Go 1960s feminists!

General Assemblies: I have yet to attend a General Assembly, so here’s a quick explanation from the downloadable guide: “The General Assembly is a gathering of people committed to making decisions based upon a collective agreement or ‘consensus.’ There is no single leader or governing body of the General Assembly—everyone’s voice is equal. Anyone is free to propose an idea or express an opinion as part of the General Assembly.” And in their working draft of the Principles of Solidarity, two of the points of unity include: “recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;” and, “empowering one another against all forms of oppression.” I very much like this. As I stated earlier, the effort to examine privilege, even if it occasionally fails, still represents something important and fairly new as a mainstream ideal. (As Occupy Wall Street continues to gain momentum, I don’t see how it can continue to be described as “fringe.”) I have no doubt that this system works sometimes and implodes other times, and I’ve read accounts from women, specifically women of color, who’ve attended a General Assembly and felt that their voices weren’t heard or their views respected. I find those occurrences unacceptable and disheartening to say the least, but I don’t find them shocking either. I can only hope that the values defined in the group’s literature prevail as everyone struggles to examine her or his privilege. After all, that struggle is, in itself, a feminist act.

Economic Inequality: This issue represents my main reason for staying onboard with Occupy Wall Street. Their proposed list of demands from a few weeks ago (not to be confused with any “official list of demands”) includes raising the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour, instituting a universal single payer healthcare system, free college education, a racial and gender equal rights amendment, and debt forgiveness. It’s no secret (I hope) that single mothers and women of color make up the majority of the poor in the United States. RH Reality Check ran an important piece in August of 2010 that broke down the unemployment rate for these two demographics. Basically, as of around this time last year, the unemployment rate for women who head families climbed to its highest rate in over 25 years. The unemployment rate exclusively for women of color without children jumped to its highest rate since 1986. Newman concludes her article as follows:
If we are not willing to invest in the very programs that will help pull some of our poorest Americans—single mother led households and women of color—out of the spiral, then we are not rebuilding the economy. We are only as strong as our most vulnerable, as the saying goes. To continue a national discussion on unemployment and the recession without acknowledging that our women and children are suffering the most, not because we aren’t able to implement programs and pass legislation like universal, affordable child care, paid sick days, increased food stamp benefits, fair pay standards and more but because we aren’t willing to do so, is something we must own up to and do something about if we are to rise above these hard times and come out stronger than we were when we headed into the recession.

Exactly. And I believe the Occupy Wall Street movement desires to motivate the people to do just that—to push for the necessary programs and legislation that will help the poorest members of our community, you know, not starve, and to challenge our ingrained notions of power—more importantly, who gets to have that power and therefore who gets to make the decisions. The movement makes clear, even though the media keeps pretending it’s an unfocused mess, that what unites the 99% is a collective lack of economic power, which, in an unregulated capitalist society, translates into no fucking power. When your government representatives make decisions about the welfare of the people based on how much money Wall Street pays them, then it’s likely that “the welfare of the people” quickly turns into “the welfare of the people who paid us the most money to look out for their welfare.” Ha. An article from Ms. called, “We Are the 99%, Too: Creating a Feminist Space Within Occupy Wall Street,” further examines this issue of power, privilege, and oppression:
When we think about the elite 1 percent in a position of economic and political power in America, we have to recognize that those elites are predominantly straight, white men. Their position of power is upheld by patriarchy, by white privilege, by heteronormativity. If we want to dismantle oppression in our society, we can only hope to do so by recognizing the ways in which these various systems of oppression intersect and support one another. That doesn’t mean we can’t focus on the economy as a nexus of inequality; clearly, the occupation of Wall Street speaks directly to fighting corporate power and economic privilege. But we cannot imagine creating a society rooted in equality without fighting for all forms of equality, and that includes embracing feminist values. 

I encourage everyone to read the article in full because this discussion is important. The disturbing videos on YouTube—one showing a police officer pepper spraying a group of women, and another showing a police officer picking up a woman and dragging her into Citibank—I’m sure only begin to scratch the surface of what women deal with while occupying. Women deserve to start the conversations about the impact of economic inequality, to participate in the conversations, to change the conversations, and to end the conversations—and they deserve to do those things while not facing police brutality, while not experiencing sexist attacks from a random YouTuber who thinks he’s a comedian, and while, for once, not being sexually objectified. All those things work in tandem to further take away power from women, and we need women in this fight. So, being only one person, but wanting to combat some aspect of this shit, I created Women Occupy, a no-frills Tumblr blog where anyone can upload photos and videos of women occupying, whether that occupation takes place on Wall Street or in Madrid (or wherever). This is also what giving a fuck looks like. Now go. Upload. The end.

 

We Interrupt This Broadcast … for an Occupy Wall Street Update

Yesterday, I participated in my first Occupy Wall Street march. I’ve followed the movement—through blogs, twitter, and the live video stream—since it began three weeks ago, so when I left my apartment yesterday, I certainly had a shit-ton of information about the protest. I didn’t, however, really know what the hell to expect (aside from the beatings, gratuitous use of mace by the NYPD, and mass arrests of people exercising their constitutional right to protest, I mean). I kept hearing stuff, like how the protesters aren’t united over a single issue; that they don’t have concrete demands; that they’re leaderless and unorganized; that they’re a bunch of bored college kids who got sick of hanging out in their parents’ basements; that they’re just ungrateful vegan hippies who don’t understand how the world works; that they’re radical anarchists socialists atheists communists artists humanists and—to top it all off—that they’re engaging in all this unacceptable class warfare.

Well.

First, these amazing protesters seriously have it together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so … opposite of unorganized. We knew exactly what was happening at all times, including where we were marching, what we were yelling, when we needed to stop, and when we needed to speed up. This group may officially be leaderless, but it certainly knows how to coordinate, plan, and carry out tasks. At one point, a man handed me a piece of paper with a list of my rights as a protester, and it included a protocol to follow if an officer attempted to question or arrest me. Helpful! A woman walked by and insisted I take a bottle of water to keep with me while I marched. Thank you! And any time I bumped into someone, whether attempting to take a picture or just, you know, tripping for no reason (as I’m wont to do), my fellow protesters steadied me or laughed with me or apologized profusely even if it clearly wasn’t their fault. It was fun. We were peaceful and chill. It kind of felt like … solidarity.

I mean, sure, people carried different signs for and against various issues. I saw signs about protecting the homeless from police brutality; signs directed at corporations; signs for going green and protecting the environment; signs for abolishing the death penalty; signs for animal rights; some anti-Obama stuff; some anti-Bush stuff; and many signs representing protestors’ specific unions. I didn’t have a sign—I just yelled with the rest of them, my favorite slogan being, “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” Truth! Having said all that, I would hardly call this movement divided or unclear in its goals. All these concerns fall under the umbrella of a much larger issue—the fact that 99% of the population is at the mercy of that tiny little 1% at the top of The Money Pile.

I took an Introduction to Political Science course when I was about eighteen and an idiot. I remember my teacher asking us, “Is money speech?” We were all, like, “Um, like, I don’t get it.” The class that day was focused on the concept of free speech in our country, which we all agreed was a constitutional right. But our teacher had to go and make it all complicated. “Is money speech?” he asked again. Our class ultimately decided it was the most ridiculous thing we’d ever heard. I wish I could go back to that classroom, knowing what I know now. One finds out fairly early in her adult life that when she graduates from college, and the bills start rolling in, and the bills start eating up the paycheck, and that emergency room visit happens for that fucking hive outbreak, and wait—how is this visit a thousand dollars when I have health insurance?!—and the bank wants her student loan repaid at this new interest rate, right when her brakes go out, and every broke neo-con in her family is somehow still convinced this whole bootstrap thing is real (and possible)—yeah, she learns that money is, in fact, speech. But how is it speech, you ask?

Well.

In a capitalist society, money matters; but in an unregulated capitalist society, the only thing that matters is money. The people’s right to free speech; our right to democratically elect our government officials; our right to affordable healthcare; our right to breathe clean air; our right to have access to pesticide-free foods; and our right to peacefully protest against, you know, all of our rights being violated; well—you can throw that garbage out the window.

Because, in an unregulated capitalist society, the 1% at the Top of the Money Pile gets to exercise its right to free speech, too, which its elite members happily and unapologetically do in the form of: donating millions of dollars to campaigns, ensuring that when their candidate is elected, they have effectively bought a politician who will work tirelessly to keep them comfy on the Money Pile (in exchange for those pesky campaign contributions again next year, score!); profiting, literally profiting financially, off people who have chronic illnesses, people who become sick and don’t have access to healthcare, people who become sick and have access to healthcare, people who don’t have health insurance, people who do have health insurance, and people who die (pretty good deal for you, insurance companies, amirite?!!); and basically doing whatever the hell they want with our environment and our food supply—the welfare of the people be damned—as long as they make a profit.

The problem with that “I’m using my billions of dollars as speech” thing is that we don’t all have billions of dollars. The 99%, in fact, certainly doesn’t have billions of dollars to throw at politicians as some kind of motivational force to get them to act on our behalf; all we have is our lousy vote. That issue—and this is why the 1% is quaking in its collective [insert expensive brand of shoe here]—transcends political parties and affiliations. My conservative uncle and I can’t post a link on Facebook without each of us having partisan cyber-feuds on each other’s walls. But this issue? It ain’t like that. We’re both pissed that we, the 99%, bailed out The Economy Tankers with our tax dollars, only to stand back helplessly and watch them dole out bonuses and other unaccounted for luxuries to themselves. I mean, are ya serious, assholes?

Now that the mainstream media finally wants to pretend-acknowledge the Occupy Wall Street movement, and its global impact (wait, are they pretend-acknowledging that yet?), I’m not surprised that much of its “coverage” centers around how the protesters aren’t united over a single issue, that they don’t have concrete demands, that they’re leaderless and unorganized. The reality is that the 1% owns the media too, and it’s in the best interest of the 1% to keep this movement from gaining momentum, lest its constituents suffer actual tangible consequences for their thievery. So, they get their media to make Occupy Wall Street about how young liberals are just pissy that Obama isn’t as hopey-changey as they’d hoped; or they get their media to say that those clueless Wall Street kids don’t have any real goals so this can’t be a real thing that we need to pay real attention to; or—their most effective tactic—they get their media to start comparing and contrasting Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party as if this movement is just the eruption of another political fringe group with an exclusively left-wing agenda, rather than what it is: A Call to Action for those of us who don’t get to throw down a cool million here and there and call it “speech.”

But they forgot that we do have ways of speaking up. And that the whole world is watching.