California Feminist Blogs

I can’t really stand The Girls Next Door, mostly because it’s a boring show about annoying people doing dumb stuff.  I’ll sum it up if you haven’t seen it:  Bridget sweetly chides her little dog and cat to play nice as they attempt to murder each other.  Holly talks about the fairytale wedding she intends to have with Hef as he feigns deafness.  Kendra continually says things that make me wonder if she’s a lesbian, or if she has such an advanced double consciousness, that she can only see herself and other women through the gaze of men watching them.  Hef falls asleep sitting up, and the only reference to their creepy sex life is the economy-size baby oil bottle visible behind Hef on his bed, as he works.

In the rerun I saw last night, the girlfriends all go to get their best body parts molded on chocolate as birthday gifts for their boyfriend, the cryptkeeper.  Holly says her best feature is her VA-GI-NA so she’s going to make Hef a chocolate VA-GI-NA.  She says VA-GI-NA about a trillion times during the episode, enunciated with elan each time.  Later on Chelsea Lately, Chelsea tells her “vagina is outdated” and tells her to choose from a variety of silly euphemisms.   Holly sticks to her guns, since she prefers the more “clinical” VA-GI-NA.

I appreciate Holly’s efforts to use plain and not infantilizing language.    I roll my eyes when I hear grown women use terms like “down there” or “lady bits”.  “Va-jay-jay” sets my teeth on edge.  The problem with Holly’s language, though, is that you can’t make a vagina mold when your legs are together.  She actually made a chocolate vulva, or a chocolate pubic mound.  Somehow Chelsea Handler has the same confusion.  I really think it’s time for adult women to know the names of our own body parts, even if we must have silly nicknames.  The more we all say these words, the more normal they sound to our ears.

This is somewhat late coming–another episode aired on Sunday, but after reading Steve Ward’s comments in his post show interview for last week’s episode, I’ve totally lost what interest I had in watching the show.  That episode, BTW, is called Friends Don’t Let Friends Date Bitches.  That’s not some sly reference to a challenge where they have to take care of dogs, the show is actually just calling the women bitches.  In the interview with Rich, Steve puts to rest any doubt about what he meant.  He starts off by calling people who think he is blaming rape victims “naive”, then he declares that he wasn’t blaming anyone, before launching into a full-scale victim blame-a-thon, for women who lead on men who just can’t help themselves.  Alessia has already written a thorough breakdown of that part of the interview here and I’m not going to try to add to that.  Just go read it.

There was something else that sent me over the edge, something that made me realize that Steve Ward isn’t a good matchmaker who’s just absorbed the popular narrative of rape apologism.  He’s a straight up misogynist no matter what he’s on about.  During the interview he’s asked about a challenge where the women were made to play football, to show how they can do some guy stuff:

The football activity emphasized the importance of women integrate themselves in a guy’s world. I wonder if you would have that the other way if you were dealing with a bunch of men, to integrate them in a women’s oriented environment. It seems like society in general would frown on that. They’d want the girl to play football, but they wouldn’t want the guy to go the spa or out shopping.

Here is how the role reversal works:  When women are fitting in among men, they have to be cool. It’s a test: how cool are you? Whereas, when men try to fit in among women it’s: how patient are you? How much can you tolerate? How much can you grin and bear? How much can you put up with? There are only so many bags that you can carry, there is only so many stores that you can walk into to, there are only so many times that you can try on a pair of shoes. For a man, it gets exhausting. So if we were to do the other way, it would simply be a duration test. How long can you hang there? How long can you go shopping with a group of women?

If that’s the case, you don’t think it’s important for a man to be able to “endure” that?

No, I just think he needs to be liked by them. He doesn’t need to go out shopping with them. He doesn’t need to go the baby showers with them. He doesn’t need to be going to Whole Foods and go grocery shopping with them. But if the girls come over for a glass of wine or if they come over to pre-game for an event or whatever, you have got to be likable.

I hadn’t raised an eyebrow while I was watching the show because there’s nothing inherently wrong with encouraging women who are trying to make a match to accommodate their partner’s interests. Of course women should try stepping out of their comfort zone. But why shouldn’t men do the same? Steve thinks it’s because the man stuff is inherently fun, cool, and potentially interesting to anyone who might try it, while women stuff is clearly the opposite. Leaving aside the absurdity of Steve’s conception of what women do for fun(grocery shopping? baby showers?), it’s really because activities are associated with women or men that make them seem uncool or cool, and not the other way around. Again, this ground has been well covered by someone else. 

It seems like there’s always someone who resists a given challenge or activity you present. It’s not always the same person, but it’s always someone.

Right, it’s called women. There is always one of them.

I can’t believe this ectoplasmic by-product passes for a matchmaker.  Neither can this customer of his. While anecdotes from unhappy customers aren’t always a fair representation, it’s striking how much the description of Steve and Joann’s customer service is concurrent with how they’ve portrayed themselves on tv.

see the video “Get me out of here” here

Tough Love is a relationship boot-camp show for women, hosted by a matchmaker named Steve Ward, a guy who takes pride in telling it like it is.  It’s more similar to The Millionaire Matchmaker than the usual 51 Minds produced shows.  My feelings on this one have been too fraught to consider it a guilty pleasure, though I’ve watched every episode and I’ve become hooked on the women’s stories.  I also have an odd fascination with dating dynamics.  I find them eternally interesting, however irrelevant they may be to my situation.

During some kind of faux relaxation time at a bar with men, Arian was extremely sexually forward with the guy she was paired with, talking about favorite sex positions and touching his thigh under the table(according to her account during the group session).  When Steve admonished her later for her brash, unladylike behavior, she announced that she was into the guy, she was totally trying to get in his pants, and he was into it, too.  Steve, who had begun with tact and compassion, told her if she continued on the path she was on, she’d end up raped.  This made Arian storm off, yelling “you don’t tell a woman she’s going to get raped”  Steve took the time that she was on her tirade to muse about how sadly misguided she was and rally the other woman around him.  A couple of them voiced their agreement. Even Jody, who I had given more credit, offered that she feared for her life just walking from her apartment to her car.  What that has to do with Arian opening herself up to be rapeable is not really clear.  It only serves to illustrate that someone who’s conservative in her dress and behavior, to the point of being standoffish, like Jody, isn’t making herself any safer, because it’s not women who are in control of when men decide to rape us.

The comments are mixed, with most people, sadly, agreeing with Steve’s point of view.  Blogger Alessia left links to two excellent essays, here and here.  She’s encouraging everyone to leave comments on the VH1 blog, demanding an apology for propagating this dangerous horseshit.  My comments failed to appear on the site, and I’ve incorporated most of my points into this essay.  I usually look forward to Rich Juzwiak’s recaps and commentary after every episode, but after this one I was also hoping to see some acknowledgment that what Steve said was out of line.  Instead Rich thinks Arian was overreacting, wrapping up the recap with this little aside:

“Oh, and then she freaked out after Steve told her if she kept up her promiscuous behavior, she was going to get raped or an STD. How WTF was that whole thing?”

Since no one else did the same, this is the comment I directed at Rich:

WTF is your whole thing, Rich?  How does any woman get herself raped?  If women were really in charge of men attacking them, rape would not be the pandemic that it is. You should know that this blog is read by women who have been raped and disbelieved, and treated as though it were their fault. This blog is read by would-be allies, who worry more about the rapist’s rep than about the woman he used like a meat sock. This blog is read by men, who don’t take responsibility for their own actions, because everyone says that women get themselves raped. I was floored when Steve made that comment and stood behind it. I’m even more disappointed to read Rich’s blase reaction.

Men rape women for different reasons: as an outlet for their rage, to assert their power, to get themselves off. In the case of acquaintance rape(which occurs most frequently) it’s because they are so steeped in rape culture that they feel entitled to the use of their friends and girlfriend bodies, that obtaining consent or respecting non consent doesn’t enter into their thinking. They’ve heard a million times that women who drink, wear skirts, assert their own sexuality, are asking for it, opening themselves up to whatever might happen.  In Steve’s words to Arian, “you put yourself in harm’s way”

This line of thinking does more than place all responsibility on women for their own rapes. It actively encourages men to rape. It tells them that when they feel a sexual urge, they can blame it on the woman who looked like she wanted it. They keep hearing that when women show some skin, they can’t control themselves. They know they can get away with it since the public and the courts will put their victim on trial, looking for any sign that she was the one who put herself in harms way.

Women like Jody buy into this idea, that men are beasts and they must be the civilizing influence because it’s a comforting idea, in a way.  Covering up, restricting activities, not being alone, give an illusion of control to women.  The problem with this is that it’s just not real, and it’s been shown not to work.  Islamic countries that require women to shroud themselves and always be escorted by a male relative, take it to the extreme, beating women in the streets for inciting lust and imprisoning women for being raped.

As a result, men are off the hook and commit more rape.  Women everywhere curtail our own lives and freedoms, and on top of that we still get attacked while guys like Steve Ward tell us to do still more to keep ourselves safe.

Contact VH1 directly, here.