Archive for Politics

Bond Girls Are Forever

January 18, 2006 / / 2 comments

Via Carnival of Feminists 7, I found this post on Bond girls vs. Bond women. The writer deplores the sexualization of girls (“Bond girls” says one actress, is a “sexier” phrase than “Bond women”), and that is certainly a good point. On the other hand, the writer admits to neither knowing nor liking Bond films.

In my book, I do use the term Bond girls, and I also go to some length explaining why I do, and why a feminist can love Bond. The short version of the use of the term is that “Bond girl” is a meme. It isn’t the same as a “Bond woman.” A Bond woman is a woman in a Bond film. She could be Judi Dench, playing Bond’s boss with great skill. She could be eye candy, a woman hanging out poolside in a bikini but never interacting with 007. Both of these are Bond women, but neither plugs into the “Bond girl” meme. For that reason, I persist in using the sexist terminology.

The other thing is that every Bond girl has said she’s not “just” a Bond girl “like the others.” Honor Blackman says it all the time, and she was in the third movie; that’s pretty early on, isn’t it? Well, Ursula Andress has also said it, and she was in the first movie! The fact is, the “bubble-headed bleach blonde” stereotype attached to the meme has never been all that true.

Virtually every woman in the first seven Bond films has been self-directed, independent, strong, owned her own sexuality, and sometimes beat Bond at his own game. Okay, not all of them were exactly as independent or strong as all of the others, but the trend was there from Day (or Film) One. It wasn’t until Roger Moore came along that Bond girls were helpless eye candy in desperate need of rescue. The first four women (in his first two films) were all wimpering idiots. But then, I’ve never been a Moore fan.

What is more interesting to me, as a feminist, is not the whole “girl” vs. “woman” thing, but how a stereotype developed despite the existing evidence. (That stereotype was solidly in place by the early 1960s, and Moore didn’t come along until 1972.) I think the sexual aggression and independence of these women was so threatening that it was easier, and safer, to see them just as beautiful and objectified. (True, they were cast for looks, but so was Connery, so was Moore.) I think to be a beautiful woman in an action film engendered the stereotype despite the evidence. And I think that Bond girls rock.

Too Many Gods Spoil the Broth

January 18, 2006 / / 12 comments

Amy wants to know what’s wrong with mixing pantheons, anyway. It’s a good question.

Our culture is an eclectic one by nature; it is the way of modernity. Even the most hidebound Traditionalist is affected by this. At lunch the other day, the Indians were eating pizza, the Libyan had Chinese food, and I ate Greek salad with the Israelis. The polyglot West uses TV, movies, and yes, the Internet, to convey a broad cultural mix. We might think this doesn’t effect religion, but we’d be wrong. In fact, I’d argue that the Radical Christian Right is fighting against exactly this blended cultural stew, more than Paganism, liberalism, or homosexuality, which are merely symptoms of accepting the coexistence of a multiplicity of values. They know that even Christianity grows, changes, and embraces other influences, and it frightens them.

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New York Bitch

January 17, 2006 / / Comments Off on New York Bitch

Pinko Feminist Hellcat has a smart post about “elitist” New York women. The thrust is that too many people are willing to condemn a New York (or Northeastern) feminist woman as de facto “elitist.”

What is that? It’s really not New York women who are, y’know, busting unions and oppressing the poor.

I think there’s two things going on here. First, part of it is an anti-education bias. Somewhere in a screed against a New York feminist bitch, there will always be a reference to her college education. Gods forbid we should have brains. I mean, she’s smart, how bitchy is that?

But more importantly, it’s about attacking women because women are always the easy target. Go after the fur-wearing “rich bitches,” not the leather-clad bikers or, more significantly, the cattle-raising industry. Go after disposable diapers (3% of landfill) instead of corporate waste (80% of landfill), because moms are easier to pick on than corporations. Go after Martha Stewart (endlessly! I thought I was bored with Martha until I got really, truly, full tilt boogie bored with Martha-bashing) instead of the man who actually did the crime.

I don’t know where this instinct to go for the female jugular comes from. Shall we blame the patriarchy? Is it the animal in us, ferally attacking the weak?

I do know we need to resist this impulse. We need to recognize it, acknowledge it (within ourselves or others), and just let it go.

Who’s the Victim?

January 13, 2006 / / Comments Off on Who’s the Victim?

Atrios writes about a heinous Jonah Goldberg post, and an excellent Glenn Greenwald response.

Both Atrios and Greenwald use this quote from Goldberg:

I understand the need for following the procedural niceties, but as a plain moral common sense issue, if you are a drug dealer and keep drugs on the premises with your child, you get zero-point-zero sympathy from me if your kids are searched, warrant or no. It may be wrong for the cops to do it. But you are not a victim for choosing a life where you can rationally expect to expose your kids to far greater risks than a search by a polite cop. The kid’s a victim — of bad parents.

(In case you’re not up on this issue, the reference is to Alito’s argument that a 10 year old girl could be strip-searched without a warrant, because there was an existing warrant to search the girl’s alleged drug-dealing father.)

Greenwald excellently describes how dangerous Goldberg’s ideas are; he wants to sell off the Bill of Rights for the sake of being “tough” on drugs. But neither Atrios nor Greenwald point out a rather reprehensible corollary to Goldberg’s ill-considered argument.

Goldberg says “The kid’s a victim — of bad parents.” Really? ‘Cause I thought the kid was a victim of a warrantless strip-search. While Goldberg is snotting off about how drug dealers (he doesn’t say “alleged”) aren’t “victims,” he completely forgets that they weren’t the ones victimized, that theirs weren’t the rights violated.

A ten year old girl was strip-searched. Without a warrant. And, it turns out, without finding any drugs. Goldberg thinks it’s the parents who are the portray themselves as victims, and the parents who may, or may not, deserve sympathy—presumably because children are simply parental property or appendages. But whether or not the child is a victim of having bad parents, she is certainly the victim of a violating and illegal search. Her rights should not be set aside while we discuss Constitutionality. She is the victim.

Feminist Men and the Patriarchy

January 9, 2006 / / 4 comments

I’ve been having an interesting exchange with Ben in the comments section of another post. One issue that came up is the idea of blaming men for the patriarchy. Ben said:

Or to put it another way, that may be your experience of men, sweetheart, but I’m sick of getting blamed for the bad apples. Do I blame all women for Jessica Simpson?

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Alito Nomination Doublethink

January 7, 2006 / / Comments Off on Alito Nomination Doublethink

Per Amy, this strange story about the Alito nomination.

Falwell Backs Alito
The AP reports:

The Reverend Jerry Falwell says he’s backing Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito because he trusts that President Bush picked someone who opposes abortion.

But the Lynchburg minister and Liberty University chancellor says that senators shouldn’t ask Alito whether he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So, it’s okay for Falwell to have a litmus test, and it’s okay to say that Alito passes that litmus test, but it’s not okay for the Senate to ask about the litmus test? ::wocka-wocka-wocka:: (That’s my sound effect for the Lewis Black cheek-shaking thing.)

And let’s not overlook the remark about ‘trusting Bush.’ Falwell wants you to think that there’s nothing specific Alito has said to him or anyone else, because he knows a specific statement could tank the nomination. So he wants you to think he believes Alito passes the litmus test based only on his deep faith in Bush. You know—the same faith he and other Christian Conservative wingnuts exhibited during the nomination of Harriet Meiers.

Pat Robertson is Confused

January 6, 2006 / / 2 comments

Usually Pat Robertson’s declarations on politics are evil, wrong-headed, or hilarious, in some combination. But his latest is just completely muddled.

Sharon had a stroke as punishment for “dividing God’s land?” You know that weird sound that Lewis Black makes when he’s so confused that his cheeks shake back and forth? I’m making that sound right now.

Let’s set aside the part where Robertson sees God’s hand in selected situations, but not in other situations that don’t make his evil, wrong-headed, hilarious point. Let’s forget that all manner of overweight, overworked, stressed-out 77 year-olds have strokes, even if Robertson isn’t directing God’s wrath towards them. Let’s just, y’know, skip all that.

Dividing God’s land? WTF? (Dear Lady of the Stars, Robertson has made me use the despised “WTF”—I must truly be losing it.) Does Robertson not know that Israel has already been divided many, many times? That Israel today is smaller than Biblical Israel? That after the Six-Day War, the land was redivided? That it was redivided again after the Yom Kippur War? Were there lots of strokes and TIAs during that period?

But what’s really bothering me is the very notion of “dividing God’s land.” Is it less God’s if it’s not occupied by Israel? Are Palestinians not God’s people? Don’t Christians like Robertson believe that all humanity is born of Adam and Eve? If so, aren’t Palestinians included in that?

It must be hard to sleep at night when your theology is so twisted. I think it must twist up the bedsheets too, or something.

The Perils of Heterosexuality

January 3, 2006 / / 9 comments

Over at I Blame the Patriarchy, Twisty is twisting over The Pill. In part, she says

It is the duty of the patriarchy-blamer–particularly one who supports zero-population growth– to cast a jaundiced eye on any research that impugns contraception, but you know what? Fuck the Pill. As liberating as it has been for straight women, it is not without its vile misogynist elements. While it leaves men footloose and fancy-free to roam the earth pronging at will, it consigns women to shoulder the entire burden of contraception, and it does this while making us fat and giving us heart attacks, strokes, and, depending on who you talk to, breast cancer.

That’s a strong statement. Yeah, I get that the Pill is a product of the patriarchy. What isn’t? It’s like saying cars are products of the automobile industry (which, y’know, sucks). That doesn’t mean that the choice between a Hummer and a Prius is meaningless.
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Ganymede and Hyacinthus

January 3, 2006 / / Comments Off on Ganymede and Hyacinthus

When I was a kid I was obsessed with Greek mythology. By the time I was 13, I’d read every book in the school library on the subject, and every book in the town library to which children had access. Then I moved on to Norse myth, then to fairy tales. But Greek myth was my first love and remained my favorite. Perhaps it is too obvious to say that this had a strong influence on my religious life.

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CensureBush.org

December 21, 2005 / / Comments Off on CensureBush.org

Via Pandagon:

Congressman John Conyers has submitted bills that would censure Bush and Cheney, create a select committee to investigate the Administration’s possible crimes, and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

The good folks at AfterDowningStreet.org have created CensureBush.org, a clearinghouse for information about this effort.

H.Res.365 would create a select committee to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, and retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.

H.Res.636 and H.Res.637 would censure, respectively, Bush and Cheney for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that they and others in the Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of the Administration, for failing to adequately account for certain misstatements they made regarding the war, and – in the case of President Bush – for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958.

Write to your congressperson today!

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